Liberation and Annexation: 1792–1793

In 1792, the French army occupied Belgium, and the Russian army, closely followed by the Prussian, occupied Poland. In both cases the entering powers announced themselves as liberators, and were welcomed as such by certain elements in the population. The French in Belgium within a few weeks passed to a policy of annexation. The Russians and Prussians had annexationist designs on Poland from the beginning. The French were soon driven out, but returned in 1794, so that Belgium remained incorporated into France for twenty years. The Russian and Prussian monarchies never gave up what they took of Poland in 1793, except that for a few years the Prussian segment belonged to Napoleon's Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Only with the destruction of the Russian and Prussian monarchies themselves, in 1918, were the annexations of 1793 undone, and then only in part. This chapter, under the formal parallel of liberation and annexation, traces the realities which these terms represented in 1792–1793—that is, to show who was liberated from what, or how and why annexed—and to indicate also the impact of these events on the further radicalizing of the revolution in France itself.