98
PARTISAN REVIEW
to have rights. The "loss of residence," a "loss of social framework"
worsened by "the impossibility to find one" are characterstic of this new
barbarity issued from the very core of the Nation-state system.
The cosmopolitan trend, heir to certain ideas of Montesquieu or
Rousseau, was powerful at the beginning of the Revolution and found
concrete political fulfilment in many decrees and other judicial actions.
Thus Guy Jean-Baptiste Target, a moderate member of the National As–
sembly, suggested on April
30, 1790
that all foreigners having resided in
France for five years and owning some property be naturalized.
Pacifist at the beginning, the Assembly had proclaimed on May 20,
1790
that it would never undertake any conquest nor use force against
any people. In that spirit, the support of an international elite for revo–
lutionary ideas could only be applauded. After the abortive flight of the
King and the Declaration of Pillnitz by the King of Prussia and the Em–
peror of Austria and in order to fight the accord of the European
monarchies against the revolutionaries, the Girondists chose cosmopoli–
tanism as the trump card in their political battle. They were hoping that
the principles of human rights would contaminate neighboring people
and incite uprisings against tyrants. Refugees and political exiles were
then encouraged, and the Legislative Assembly legalized the formation of
foreign legions.
Those policies were not even modified on the eve of the war. For–
eigners had never been better treated in France than when the govern–
ment was getting ready to fight their countries of origin. Thus, on Au–
gust 24,
1792,
a group of men of letters, led by the dramatist Marie–
Joseph Chenier, brother of the poet, requested the Legislative Assembly
to adopt, as "allies of the French people," a set of foreign writers whose
works were already supposed to have abolished "the foundations of
tyranny and prepared the way for liberty." To put it plainly, "these
benefactors of humanity" were to be elected deputies. For the first time
in the history of mankind, a statute of (honorary) integration was voted,
which, in the name of human universality, recognized as
French
those
who had done the most for mankind.
The course of events, however, particularly the launching of the
Revolutionary Wars, did change the climate. Cosmopolitan ideas and
their promotion, quite obviously, had not led European countries to line
up under the revolutionary banner. As the time of armament arrived,
foreigners appeared embarrassing, if not suspicious or guilty. Some for–
eign groups must have been "infiltrated" by the enemy. On that basis, an
overall suspicion spread against all foreigners, to the point of making
them liable to be sent to the scaffold, where many of them did perish.
