Chapter Twelve - War on All Sides

CHAPTER TWELVE

War on All Sides

YOU CAN’T SET your own country on fire without making the neighbors nervous.

By 1792, the French Revolution had gone from internal crisis to international threat. The king had tried to run. The Jacobins were rising. The people were armed and angry. Now France had a question on its hands:

If the Revolution is right for us, why not make it right for everyone?

It wasn’t just idealism. It was fear. The revolutionaries knew the old monarchies of Europe were watching. Austria, Prussia, Britain, and Spain weren’t exactly rooting for liberty. They were rooting for France to crash and burn so nobody else got any ideas.

Louis XVI was still technically king. Still wearing the sash. Still playing the role. But everyone knew he was just waiting for a foreign army to show up and restore him, which made him look less like a king and more like a traitor sitting on borrowed time.

So the Assembly made a move.

In April 1792, revolutionary France declared war on Austria.

That was the first domino.
Prussia joined in.
Then Britain.
Then pretty much everybody else with a crown and a grudge.

At first, France got wrecked. The army was a mess. Most of the old generals were royalists who had fled. The new officers were untested, the soldiers were raw, and discipline was questionable at best. They lost battles. They lost ground. Panic set in fast.

But the war did something else, too. It radicalized the revolution.

Back in Paris, things were boiling. The king vetoed laws. The people took to the streets again. A mob stormed the Tuileries Palace in August. They arrested the king, massacred his guards, and handed him over for trial.

The monarchy was done.

But the war wasn’t.
Now it was France versus Europe.
And inside the country, it was revolutionaries versus anyone who hesitated.

There were enemies at the borders, and enemies inside the gates.
And in the name of liberty, they were about to come for all of them.