1792 - Political Events

Political Events

The Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II dies suddenly at Vienna March 1 at age 44 and is succeeded by his son, 24, who will reign until 1806 as Franz II, the last Holy Roman Emperor (he will then reign as the first Austrian emperor Franz I until 1835).

A Swedish assassin shoots Gustav III in the back March 16 at a midnight masked ball in the Stockholm Opera House; his wound is not fatal, but it becomes infected and the king dies March 29 at age 46 after a 21-year reign. His 13-year-old son succeeds to the throne and will reign as Gustav IV until his forced abdication in 1809.

Austria and Prussia form an alliance against France, partly at the instigation of émigré French noblemen, and France declares war on both countries April 20, beginning what will escalate into a world war that will continue until 1815. Army veteran Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez, 53, has been appointed minister of foreign affairs in March and is named minister of war June 12, but he resigns June 15 to take command of the army in the north as Austrian and Prussian troops invade Flanders and march on Paris.

The beheading machine proposed in 1789 by Joseph I. Guillotin is used for the first time April 25 at Versailles to execute a thief. Built by harpsichordist Tobias Schmidt, it has a collar to hold the victim's neck in place and a blade shaped to make it slice cleanly. The executioner holds the thief's head up for all to see, but the crowd at Versailles is accustomed to hangings and expresses disappointment. Only 10 percent of guillotine victims will be of the nobility, most of the 400,000 people put to death in the revolution will be shot, burnt, or drowned, and the guillotine will often require several chops to do its job.

Three French armies commanded by Lafayette, Rochambeau, and Marshal Nicolas Luckner, 70, suffer reverses in combat with the Austrians and Prussians. Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Wolfenbüttel, dies at Vechelde July 3 at age 71; a brother-in-law of the late Friedrich the Great, he is succeeded by his son Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, 56, who will be less successful on the battlefield. France's Legislative Assembly announces July 11 that the nation is in danger.

A Paris mob storms the Tuileries Palace August 10 at the instigation of Georges Jacques Danton, now 33, after Louis XVI orders his Swiss guards to stop firing on the people. Some 600 guardsmen are massacred, the king and his family are held prisoner in the Temple, and the Paris commune takes power under Danton.

Marie Antoinette's aristocratic superintendent of household and intimate companion Marie-Therèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan, Princesse de Lamballe, 42, is transferred to La Force prison August 19, refuses to take the oath declaring her detestation of the monarchy, and is torn to pieces by the mob as she leaves the Paris courtroom September 3 (her head is lopped off and carried on a pike before the queen's window). She escaped to England in 1791 but returned to share the queen's imprisonment in the Temple.

The French National Assembly declares General Lafayette a traitor August 19 and he flees to Liège, where the Austrians take him prisoner. The emigration of her aristocrats has cost France nearly all of her high-ranking military officers and most of the army's subalterns; the zealous but untrained troops mustered to support the revolutionary regime panic at the sight of enemy troops.

French authorities arrest monarchist Antoine Barnave August 29 and imprison him at his native Grenoble (see 1791). He has been systematically attacked for his royalist sympathies since January and is transferred to Paris November 3 to face trial, having written while in prison an Introduction to the French Revolution (Introduction à la révolution française), outlining a "natural history" of society's evolution toward the supremacy of the middle class (see 1793).

Verdun falls to the Prussians September 2 as France's foreign invaders continue their march on Paris with support from Hessian mercenaries and some 15,000 French noblemen.

Monarchist André-Boniface-Louis Riqueti, vicomte de Mirabeau, dies at Fribourg-en-Brisgau September 15 at age 37, having boasted of his late brother Honoré's genius even while opposing him. He has raised a legion abroad to fight the revolutionists, but the German princes who initially helped him later found his insolence intolerable and removed him from command.

The new duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Wolfenbüttel Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand leads an army of more than 30,000 Prussians and Austrians into France and lays siege to Lille; French patriots who include many women enlist in the army to fight the invaders and defend the ideals of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité." General Dumouriez outmaneuvers Brunswick in the Argonne Forest to hold up the invasion; forced to fall back, he manages to check the panic in his ranks. The invaders are closer to Paris than the new regime's defenders, but Dumouriez orders General François Christophe de Kellermann, 57, to wheel around with his 20,000 troops and confront Brunswick's army on the plateau of Valmy.

The Battle of Valmy September 20 ends in victory for General Kellermann, whose 36,000 troops halt the Austrian and Prussian invasion in a fog-shrouded artillery duel wherein women, often dressed in rags, fight in the front ranks alongside men. Largely because the French cannon are superior to those of the enemy, the revolutionary armies gain their first triumph with help from the women; heroines of the army include Reine Chapuy, Rose Bouillon, Catherine Pocheta, and the young Fernig sisters (see 1793).

The French National Convention meets September 21, abolishes the monarchy, decrees perpetual banishment for French émigrés, and declares September 22 to be the first day of the Year One of the new French Republic.

The duke of Brunswick negotiates with the French for a week following the Battle of Valmy, the talks come to naught, disease has decimated Brunswick's army, and Brunswick leads his troops home in a retreat that turns into a disaster. An epidemic of dysentery halts Prussia's Friedrich Wilhelm II in his march against France's revolutionary armies; he retreats across the Rhine with only 30,000 effectives, down from an original force of 42,000 counting Austrian allies. French forces under Adam Philippe, 53, comte de Custine, rout the Prussians to take Mainz and Frankfurt-am-Main (but see 1793); Custine served with General Rochambeau in the American Revolution. General Dumouriez invades Flanders, crushes an Austrian army November 6 at the Battle of Jemappes, and takes Brussels and the Austrian Lowlands before the Prussians retake Frankfurt.

Thomas Paine enlarges upon his 1791 pamphlet "The Rights of Man" to urge the overthrow of the British monarchy; British authorities indict him for treason, he escapes to France, and the French make him an honorary citizen.

The French National Convention issues a proclamation November 19 offering assistance to peoples of all nations who want to overthrow their governments.

Former British prime minister John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute, dies at London March 10 at age 79; former admiral Edward Montagu, earl of Sandwich, at London April 30 at age 74; Admiral George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney (of Stoke-Rodney), at his native London May 24 at age 74; Sir John Burgoyne at London June 4 at age 68; John Paul Jones at Paris July 18 at age 45 (he served Russia's Catherine the Great after the American Revolution but was dismissed following a sex scandal. His body is buried in St. Louis Cemetery but will be found in 1905 and reinterred in 1911 at Annapolis, Maryland); former British prime minister Frederick North, Lord North (of Kirtling), dies of dropsy (edema) at his London home August 5 at age 60.

The Treaty of Jassy signed January 9 in Moldavia concludes the Russo-Turkish war that began in 1787 and confirms Russian domination of the Black Sea. Confirming the Treaty of Kücuk signed in 1774, it advances the Russian border to the Dneister River and restores Bessarabia, Moldavia, and Wallachia to the Ottoman Turks.

Relations between Poland and Russia grow strained (see 1791). Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, 22, returns from travels in western Europe and plays a prominent role in an anti-Russian campaign (see second partition, 1793).

Brazilian patriot and revolutionary Joaquim José da Silva Xavier is convicted after a 2-year trial at Rio de Janeiro (see 1789). Sentenced to death, he is publicly hanged April 21 at age 43 and cut into pieces as a warning to other would-be revolutionaries against Portuguese rule (see 1822).

The Insurrection Act signed by President Washington May 2 authorizes the president to send in federal militia to suppress an uprising when notified by a federal associate justice or district judge that the unrest cannot be handled by ordinary judicial proceedings (see Whiskey Rebellion, 1794).

Kentucky is admitted to the Union June 1. The 15th state, it incorporates territory ceded by Virginia in 1781.

Virginia planter-statesman George Mason dies at his 34-year-old Gunston Hall plantation home October 7 at age 67; former Continental Congress president Henry Laurens near his native Charleston, South Carolina, December 8 at age 68; former diplomat Arthur Lee at his Middlesex, Virginia, estate December 12 at age 51.