This may seem an odd question with the gift of hindsight. When the French Revolution exploded into an international crisis, no country fought harder to suppress France than Great Britain (United Kingdom from 1801). Britain would not only act as financiers against the French Revolution, funding the multiple coalition wars, but the British Empire would also play an important military role both on land and at sea. It may come across as odd, perhaps, to ask why Britain would be opposed to the French Revolution.

However, it is worth asking. Great Britain in 1789 had largely gone against the trend of European history. It was the Age of Absolutism, and the various European monarchies were centralising their power, replacing the web of feudalism. Centralisation offered several advantages - chief among them, it made it easier for European states and kingdoms to maintain professional standing armies, as opposed to having to rely on the levies provided by the nobility. So widespread was this push towards absolutism that even many nobles in Poland offered to give up their power to central authority in an attempt at saving their country from partition. What is perhaps interesting about Britain is that the opposite very much occurred. Charles I had attempted to centralise power but this only led to civil war. Parliamentary supremacy was codified in 1689 when, a year after the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights was signed alongside the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.

With the usual disclaimers that come with forming collective groups for the purposes of simplification, it is worth looking at enlightenment era politics through the lens of the 5 political estates battling for power: The monarchy, nobility, burghers, church and everyone else. The monarchy, of course, in most European states being the absolute rulers. The nobility, landed gentry and other aristocrats representing the remnants of the feudal system, often not as wealthy as the burghers due to the belief that business deals were inappropriate for men of that standing. The burghers, merchants, bourgeoise and other self-made men of business representing the ‘middle class’ of the day - this could range anywhere from secretaries who were literate enough to write but made less than many working class individuals, to business titans who had more money than most of the nobility but did not have the right last name. The church, who despite the fracture during the Protestant reformation, and the intellectual debates with many enlightenment philosophers, still wielded significant influence, especially among the poor in rural areas of Europe. Finally, everyone else just trying to make a living and survive. This, for the most part, meant the peasantry and general working class of the day.

There are a few common denominators when highlighting how Britain was different to the rest of Europe at the time. Both in Britain and on the continent, the nobility were the big losers of the day. Absolutism had seen their power slowly ceded to the monarchy in most of Europe, whilst the rise of the burghers had diminished their de facto standing due to losing their relative wealth advantage. The working class and peasantry remained poor and disenfranchised on both sides of the channel. The church, as a political entity, was largely weaker both in Britain and abroad than it had been in the past. This was largely due to the various religious divisions and conflicts that arose from the Protestant reformation, and with that the rise of contract theory, providing clear evidence of growing secularisation (at least among the literate of the day). However, the two unique estates in Britain were the monarchy and burghers. The monarchy, as already stated, had been unsuccessful in absolutism and largely relegated out of political importance by parliament. This then helped to aid in the facilitation of the rise of the middle-class burghers as important players in British politics in a way that they had not been in Europe. An important tactic employed by absolutist monarchs during the era, to diminish the power of other estates, was mercantilism. Essentially, the legal right to trade across borders sat firmly with central authority and could be taxed as such. As well as being economically harmful, this did not sit well with the self-made men of the middle-class. There was little they could do about it on the continent, but the English civil wars and Glorious Revolution had provided an opportunity on the British isles. Absolutism had failed and with it came the opportunity to push against mercantilism and towards an era of free-trade. This was not yet the Britain that would come to see the largest real wage growth in recorded human history, and on the back of this usher in the industrial revolution and an assortment of inventions and technological breakthroughs, but this was a significant step in that direction. It was abundantly evident to many in 1789 that Britain was on course to be the next global hegemon, and this was in-large part on the back of the relative power of the middle-class and push away from mercantilism (on the theoretical justification of French physiocracy - history has a good sense of ironic humour). It was not a coincidence that Napoleon would go on to call Britain an island of shopkeepers.

But what does this have to do with the French Revolution?

When the French economy finally collapsed and the government was forced to declare bankruptcy, right as a famine was ravaging the countryside and enlightenment era philosophers and political theorists were calling for radical reform, these same estates were battling for power. The only major difference was that the estate of the middle-class burghers, and the state of the working-class and peasantry, were considered to be the same thing (the third estate). In-fact, the French Revolution kicked off because of radicals in this very estate. Louis XVI, realising the mess he was in, decided to call the Estates-General together to fix the country. However, the various factions began attempting to win his favour. There were many radicals in the third estate who wanted a constitutional monarchy, like they had in Britain. This was particularly appealing to many in the middle-class who saw themselves as being unfairly held back in a hereditary system and longed for an overhaul into something resembling the somewhat more meritocratic formula across the channel. However, there were many reactionaries in the nobility who cautioned against this. They, of course, knew that the middle-class presented a huge threat to their very way of life and so saw them as a bigger threat than an absolutist monarch. Eventually they won out, and managed to convince Louis to ban them from the Estates-General.

When the third estate saw that they were locked out, they (perhaps sensibly) thought that this was the first step in what would end in the rounding up and arrest of many individuals deemed to be pushing for revolution. In what can only be described as a bit of genius diplomacy - remember, the third estate consisted of many lawyers, administrators and diplomats, so they knew how to play this game - they took radical action in a way that tied Louis’ hands behind his back. They found the next available room (the tennis courts at Versailles) and swore what is known as the tennis court oath - an oath not to separate, and to re-assemble wherever necessary until a constitution was signed. However, the name doesn’t do it justice. These were official legislators and so they had legally passed a document calling for a constitution. The third estate was, by head, the largest estate at the Estates-General. Were Louis to oppose this, he would be actively choosing not to listen to the Estates-General which could only end in calls of tyranny. Louis had been placed in an awkward situation and this began the long spiral of him agreeing to support the revolution’s increasingly radical descent.

This third estate now began calling themselves the National Assembly (with their own militia group, led by Lafayette who had been famous during the American War of Independence). A mob representing the National Assembly, a few months later, accidentally stormed the Bastille in search of ammunition (which was hard to come by as most of it was locked up). This was ‘accidental’ in that there were hours of efforts to negotiate but many outside got the wrong impression that the negotiators had been arrested and so took violent action. This ended when King Louis joined the National Assembly, celebrated with them and even pinned a revolutionary cockade onto his hat. And so this is how the French Revolution started - a group of middle-class burghers, lawyers and diplomats legally ratified an oath to create a constitution, which the king chose to support and even celebrated the storming of the Bastille with them, donning a revolutionary cockade. Louis, who had studied what had happened to Charles I in England, was keen to avoid losing his head and so made efforts to help the revolutionaries and accept a constitution, even ordering his armies outside of Paris to disband and head home. Of all of Europe’s great nations, Great Britain would surely be the place where widespread support of this could be found? A constitutional monarchy that had undergone a revolution and now (largely) oversaw the most meritocratic system in Europe.

Except, Britain didn’t support this revolution and actively led the way to extinguish it. Why was this?

The answer lies in the more radical shifts in the revolution as it progressed.

The French at the time didn’t distinguish between the people in the third estate. To them,the burghers, merchants, businessmen and lawyers of the middle-class were, as it pertains to social standing, no different to the peasantry and working-class. I have chosen to distinguish between them and it is precisely because it helps to demonstrate how suddenly and recklessly the French Revolution spun out of control. It had started as a push from the middle-class for a constitution,using (somewhat) peaceful methods and relying on a bit of political trickery. It would not end that way. Whilst many of the middle-class were pushing for a constitution, they had unknowingly opened the floodgates to those who chose to represent the most desperate. If the lawyers and merchants could push aside the king to get their representation, why couldn’t those starving on the street, during an atrociously damaging famine, do the same? It wasn’t long before radical groups, such as the Jacobins, hijacked the revolution and the guillotines came out. There were many more of the desperately poor, and they had much stronger incentives for change. The first sign of this came with the women’s march on Versailles, when Lafayette and the National Assembly were instructed to stop the mob. Fearing things escalating, they decided instead to accompany the mob. This was only the beginning.

As things got more and more radical, many refugees began arriving in London. The ‘émigres’. They probably wouldn’t have left had the revolution ended in a shift to a constitutional monarchy, but things quickly spiralled out of control and they were forced to look for help abroad. With them, they brought to London terrible stories of the revolution. These fears were confirmed when Louis himself was executed. What had started as a revolution not too different to the one that had occurred in England (not Great Britain until 1706) very quickly spiralled into something else, and this is why Britain found itself not only unable to support, but totally opposed to the French Revolution. The two sides had, essentially, been forced to change. Those who wanted to adopt a constitutional, meritocratic system inspired by Britain and the young US - those who sat on the ‘right wing’ of the Assembly - were now labelled counter-revolutionaries. Meanwhile, the more radical groups, who wanted a complete system overhaul and led France into the ‘reign of terror’ where tens of thousands of people were lined up to be guillotined - those who sat on the ‘left wing’ of the Assembly - were now the revolutionaries. There was little chance they would get much support from Britain let alone the absolute monarchies across Europe. To those in London, these radical groups - such as the Jacobins - were exploiting the poor, and using their very valid hardships as a justification to assume power and exercise tyranny. This was not, from the perspective of many in Britain, any longer a revolution to provide a constitution and tried and tested change. This is why when the Bourbon monarchy was finally restored in 1814, many historians refer to this as the end of the French Revolution and a restoration period - despite the fact that it was a constitutional monarchy, the very thing the third estate had begun the revolution to put in place.