Tentatives envisageant le changement de la situation politique dans l'Est de l'Europe Centrale sous la Révolution française

Abstract

Eva Ring, "Attempts to change the political situation in Eastern Europe at the time pf the French Revolution. " The starting point of this article is a description of the situation and of the balance of power on the diplomatic level during the Revolution, especially between 1792 and 1798. The studies shows how French diplomacy, personified by Dumouriez was still steeped in ideas inherited from the Ancien Régime and set on the search for traditional allies. After Thermidor, these ideas are again put into practice in a modified context. Working on the spot, the author has analysed the ideas and projects of Polish émigrés in Saxony and the changes in central Europe during the summer of 1793. She underlines the close ties and contacts between Polish groups and the movements that developed in the Habsbourg states, in Austria, in Hungaria and in Bohemia and she gives special attention to the Galician conspiracy which was to play a key part in the whole plan as it was set up. The failure of the revolutionary movements, among which the Martinovic plot is the best known episode, left the national elites to dream of a confederation or an "Eastern Switzerland" wich would act as a framework for changes more adapted to the heterogeneous ethnic and religious structure of these countries.