Religion, Revolution and the Rise of Modern Nationalism: Reflections on the American Experience

Abstract

In 1789, two months after the inauguration of George Washington as president of the “first new nation,” the foundering regime of Louis XVI, in the 802d year of Capetian rule in France, was forced to convene the Estates General. As the French crisis deepened, all of Europe was deeply stirred—and in radically diverse ways. One Sunday morning in the spring of 1791 some Tübingen University students, including the future philosophers Hegel and Schelling, were bold enough to celebrate the revolution's progress by erecting a Freedom Tree in a nearby meadow. A more characteristic response came in August of that year when the Hapsburg Emperor Leopold II, whose sister, Marie Antoinette, had recently been made a prisoner in the Tuilleries, joined the King of Prussia in the Declaration of Pillnitz. This threat of foreign intervention, in turn, awakened the French nation and brought the revolution to a new pitch of excitement. Paris soon heard for the first time the thrilling strains ofLa Marseillaise. While a citizens army marched off against the forces of Reaction, the newly elected delegates to a constitutional convention made their way to Paris. Then on 20 September 1792, the very day on which the Convention proclaimed the Year One of the French Republic, the Prussian march on Paris was gloriously halted at the battle of Valmy in the Argonne near Belgium.