carried out by force of arms. However, the aim was not to harmthe reasonable liberty of individuals, but to abolish a governmentin the form of a republic incompatible with the existence of a greatkingdom, all the more because it was contrary to the wishes of thenation prescribed in the cahiers (statements of public opinion) forthe maintenance of monarchical government and the RomanCatholic religion.The deliverance of the king and royal family must be carriedout in a manner least likely to cause the risk of a revolt of the princeswhich would plunge France into open civil war. Calm andtranquillity should be reborn from the provinces, whose harmonywould oblige the capital to follow their example. Moreover, asmonarchical government was being re-established, old customswhich inspired respect for rank among the public should not beneglected or despised. Soldiers must always wear their uniform incamp, while persons of superior standing should not appear inpublic without their appropriate dress, nor princes allow anybodyinto their presence in similar circumstances. Such measures woulddiscourage any lingering illusion of perfect equality, and introduceanew the dignity of rank in military and civil life, along with thecertainty of hierarchy in the three estates. Generally speaking,Catherine was aiming in her measures for the restoration of thekind of monarchy favoured by Montesquieu, true to the Frankishheritage as set out at length in Part 6 of The Spirit of the Laws, andreflected by French public opinion in the cahiers: that is, absolutemonarchy, but constitutional. She also revealed some of her ownbureau-cratic-autocratic outlook.31After the radical turn in the French Revolution signalled by theexecution of the king and queen early in 1793, Catherine’s hopesfor restoration were dashed, and her disillusionment with thecourse of events moved towards horror. About a year later, inFebruary 1794, she wrote to Baron Melchior von Grimm:And so you were right, never expressing the wish to beincluded among the luminaries, the illuminés and thephilosophes, since experience proves that all this leads todestruction; but whatever they have said and done, theworld will never cease to heed an authority...it is better toprefer the foolishness of one, than the madness of many,infecting with fury twenty million people in the name of‘freedom’, of which they do not possess even the shadow

 after which these madmen rush forward to ensure that itwill never be achieved.32Catherine’s final position, then, was even more absolute, and lessconstitutional.Her far-sighted correspondent, Baron von Grimm, had made along-term forecast of the French Revolution’s impact at the end of1790, writing of a future when:Two empires will then share all the advantages ofcivilisation, of the power of genius, of letters, arts, armsand industry: Russia on the eastern side, and America,having become free in our own time, on the western side,and we other peoples of the nucleus will be too degraded,too debased, to know otherwise than by a vague and stupidtradition what we have been.33The quality of Grimm’s forecast was adversely affected byanother of its features, his declaration that the French Revolutionwould mean the end of Europe, rather than leading towards thecontinent’s further ascendancy. We can compare the actual impactof the French Revolution on the transcontinental and transoceanicfrontiers by considering successive episodes in the career of a singleindividual. Edmond Charles Genet was born early in 1763 atVersailles, a location aptly suggesting the background ofcomfortable circumstances, even if bourgeois rather thanaristocratic. An ambitious father pushed him towards a careernormally above his station, in diplomacy, and after an appropriateeducation including a version of the Grand Tour, followed by someyears in the civil service, he was appointed Secretary of the Legationin the St Petersburg Embassy. Arriving at the beginning of 1788, hebecame chargé d’affaires in 1789 when the Ambassador returned toFrance soon after the outbreak of the Revolution.At first, Genet was taken aback, writing at the beginning of1790 that ‘We have shown Europe the sad sight of all those illsbrought about by anarchy.’ By July 1791, his position had shiftedconsiderably, as was shown by some of his comments ondevelopments in Poland: ‘For a long time I could not assimilatethe direction of the new constitution. The consequences ofrevolution frightened me, but now I am completely attached tothat system which the people have chosen.’ Later in the same year, he exclaimed: ‘The more numerous the enemies of freedom,the stronger burns the flame of my patriotism.’ He wrote to hissister:I am a patriot not from calculation, but from goodconscience, as always. I love freedom, hate violence, andthe rules of my conduct are based on the citizen’s oath. I amtrue to the last breath to the law, the nation and the king.Towards the end of 1791, there was some doubt in Genet’s mind,and he wrote: ‘If we cannot instil respect for our order, then it mustbe abandoned.’ But he soon recovered to reiterate: ‘My conductwill show that it is possible to love freedom and to worship theking.’ He thus confirmed an earlier instruction to his sister: ‘Informthe king of my feeling and tell him that I shall spill my blood forhis defence with as much readiness as in defence of theconstitution.’ Just before his departure from St Petersburg, Genetobserved in July 1792: ‘Hereditary constitutional monarchy is thebest way of opposing the disastrous intervention of foreigners.’34Catherine opposed what she saw as his disastrous interventionby ordering him to leave in July 1792. His moderate support of theFrench Revolution, even though not far from her own originalattitude towards it, was too much for her.