On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Bradford DeLong wrote:
> > After all, were the other European monarchs trying to do Louis XVI a
> > favor when they declared war on the Convention?
> >
> >They were, actually.
>
> The twelve-year-old has snarfed _The Age of Napoleon_ and taken it to
> school to read when he gets bored in class...
Wow. I didn't realize the Durants were worth reading until well into my 30s. (In part I think because I tried the _Story of Philosophy_ first, which is as superficial as _The Story of Civilization_ is deep. I never have been able to explain the discrepancy. The discussions of the same philosophers in _Story_ are magnificent.)
Tell him to xerox you page 36. There you'll see that the both the King and the Queen actually asked all the surrounding monarchs to make war on France to restore its royalty. So it literally was the granting of a favor. And the people who tirelessly pressed this request for years were the French royalist emigres, who also formed part of those forces. Restoring the royalty was always an express war aim from the beginning.
Although, to be fair to the intelligence of all the monarchs involved, restoring royalty didn't mean restoring any particular king. Louis the XVIII, who would eventually become king in 1815, was already on the outside, safe and sound among the royalists. When outsiders wanted to restore royalty back then, finding a king was never a problem.
Michael