Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Introduction
- 1 England and France in 1789
- 2 The Revolution
- 3 From the Federation to the Terror
- 4 Dramatising (the) Terror
- 5 Performance and performing
- 6 The Shadow of Napoleon
- 7 Theatre and alienation
- Reflections towards a conculsion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Shadow of Napoleon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Introduction
- 1 England and France in 1789
- 2 The Revolution
- 3 From the Federation to the Terror
- 4 Dramatising (the) Terror
- 5 Performance and performing
- 6 The Shadow of Napoleon
- 7 Theatre and alienation
- Reflections towards a conculsion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Much of the subject matter of this chapter is excellently covered by Gillian Russell in The Theatres of War, and she in turn acknowledges the insight of Linda Colley into how the French wars forced Britain to redefine the social agencies attacked by the Revolution: royalty, aristocracy and patriotism. Earlier in the century England had fought France with relatively small armies over specific political issues. In Europe these had been questions of dynastic succession effecting the balance of power; across the rest of the world the issues had been trade and imperial territory. England had tended to win the colonial conflicts because of her naval supremacy, while gaining the epithet ‘Perfidious Albion’ for failing to support her European allies. The American War had been different, not only in that the British navy failed to guarantee victory, but that American Independence raised ideological issues that were to have serious internal repercussions for both England and France, as discussed in earlier chapters. The wars of 1792—1802 and 1803—15 were similarly ideological, but, being fought on home territory, they were even more challenging to the political systems and social structures of the participants. For the French, the campaigns of 1792—4 determined the survival of the Revolution, but only with an internal policy of terror. In England this distortion of Revolutionary ideals and the war itself, discredited the moderate reform movement, and seemed to vindicate Burke's alarming predictions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789–1805 , pp. 156 - 187Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001