The Brunswick Manifesto was a proclamation issued by Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Allied army (principally Austrian and

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

n), on 25 July 1792 to the population of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

during the

War of the First Coalition The War of the First Coalition () was a set of wars that several European powers fought between 1792 and 1797, initially against the Constitutional Cabinet of Louis XVI, constitutional Kingdom of France and then the French First Republic, Frenc ...

. The

manifesto A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent ...

threatened that if the French royal family were harmed, then French civilians would be harmed. It was said to have been a measure intended to intimidate Paris but rather helped further spur the increasingly radical French Revolution and finally led to the war between Revolutionary France and counter-revolutionary monarchies.

Background

On 20 April 1792, Revolutionary France declared war on

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. On 28 April, France invaded the

Austrian Netherlands The Austrian Netherlands was the territory of the Burgundian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire between 1714 and 1797. The period began with the acquisition by the Austrian Habsburg monarchy of the former Spanish Netherlands under the Treaty of Ras ...

(roughly present-day Belgium).

joined the war against France. On 30 July, Austria and Prussia began an invasion of France, hoping to occupy Paris.

Manifesto

On 25 July, the Duke of Brunswick issued his manifesto, which promised that if the French royal family was not harmed, then the Allies would not harm French civilians or loot. However, if acts of violence or acts to humiliate the French royal family were committed, the Allies threatened to burn Paris to the ground. The manifesto was written primarily by Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, the leader of a large corps of French émigrés in Brunswick's army, and intended to intimidate Paris into submission. Brunswick maintained a secret correspondence with

Louis XVI Louis XVI (Louis-Auguste; ; 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. The son of Louis, Dauphin of France (1729–1765), Louis, Dauphin of France (son and heir- ...

and

Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette (; ; Maria Antonia Josefa Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last List of French royal consorts, queen of France before the French Revolution and the establishment of the French First Republic. She was the ...

, and two days before making the manifesto public, he sent a copy to the Tuileries Palace, and both the king and the queen approved it. On 1 August, news of the manifesto began sweeping through Paris. Many believed the Brunswick Manifesto was final proof that Louis XVI was collaborating with the Allies. Also on 1 August, the Prussian Army crossed the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

near

Koblenz Koblenz ( , , ; Moselle Franconian language, Moselle Franconian: ''Kowelenz'') is a German city on the banks of the Rhine (Middle Rhine) and the Moselle, a multinational tributary. Koblenz was established as a Roman Empire, Roman military p ...

; consequently, the French Legislative Assembly ordered that citizens prepare for battle.

Impact

The prevailing historiographical tradition suggests that the Brunswick Manifesto, rather than intimidate the populace into submission, sent it into furious action and created fear and anger towards the Allies. It also spurred revolutionaries to take further action, organizing an uprising – on 10 August, the Tuileries Palace was stormed in a bloody battle with Swiss Guards protecting it, the survivors of which were massacred by the mob. In late August and early September, the French were defeated in skirmishes with the Allied army, but on 20 September, the French triumphed in the Battle of Valmy. Following its defeat, the Prussian army withdrew from France. Recent research, however, argues that the Brunswick Manifesto did not have nearly the impact upon the revolutionaries suggested in earlier source material. Firstly, the opinion of what amounted to an external foe among the French radical left was altogether trivial, both before and after the issuance of the manifesto; their attention remained firmly focused on the internal threat: the French monarchy. Secondly, the literary and artistic record from the summer of 1792 suggests that Brunswick created not fear nor anger but rather humor; French cartoonists in particular took to satirizing Brunswick and his manifesto with great vigor. Lastly, the French refused to take the Brunswick Manifesto seriously in any respect, believing it to be inauthentic. This determination stemmed from what they believed to be its illegality, disrespect for the law of war, and denial of national sovereignty.Cross, p. 210.

Notes

References

* *Cross, Elizabeth. "The Myth of the Foreign Enemy? The Brunswick Manifesto and the Radicalization of the French Revolution." ''French History'' 25, no. 2 (2011): 188–213. *Doyle, William (1989). ''The Oxford History of the French Revolution''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . *

External links