Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONfrom the bigoted illiterate peasantry, made Jacobinism easy to suppresseven when, as in Austria, it ventured on a conspiracy. A generationwould have to pass before the strong and militant Spanish liberaltradition was to emerge from the few tiny student conspiracies orJacobin emissaries of 1792-5.The truth was that for the most part Jacobinism abroad made itsdirect ideological appeal to the educated and middle classes and thatits political force therefore depended on their effectiveness or willingnessto use it. Thus in Poland the French Revolution made a profoundimpression. France had long been the chief foreign power in whomPoles hoped to find backing against the joint greed of the Prussians,Russians and Austrians, who had already annexed vast areas of thecountry and were soon to divide it among themselves entirely. Francealso provided a model of the kind of profound internal reform which,as all thinking Poles agreed, could alone enable their country to resistits butchers. Hence it is hardly surprising that the Reform constitutionof 1791 was consciously and profoundly influenced by the French Revolution;it was the first of the modern constitutions to show this influence.*But in Poland the reforming nobility and gentry had a freehand. In Hungary, where the endemic conflict between Vienna andthe local autonomists provided an analogous incentive for countrygentlemen to interest themselves in theories of resistance (the county ofG6m6r demanded the abolition of censorship as being contrary toRousseau's Social Contract), they had not. Consequently 'Jacobinism'was both much weaker and much less effective. Again in Ireland,national and agrarian discontent gave 'Jacobinism' a political force farin excess of the actual support for the free-thinking, masonic ideologyof the leaders of the 'United Irishmen'. Church services were held inthat most catholic country for the victory of the godless French, andIrishmen were prepared to welcome the invasion of their country byFrench forces, not because they sympathized with Robespierre butbecause they hated the English and looked for allies against them. InSpain, on the other hand, where both Catholicism and poverty wereequally prominent, Jacobinism failed to gain a foothold for the oppositereason; no foreigners oppressed the Spaniards, and the onjy ones likelyto do so were the French.Neither Poland nor Ireland were typical examples of philo-Jacobinism,for the actual programme of the Revolution made little appealthere. It did in countries of similar social and political problems to* As Poland was essentially a Republic of the nobility and gentry, the constitution was'jacobin' only in the most superficial sense: the rule of the nobles was reinforced rather thanabolished.80