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Primary Source Analysis

Excerpts from The Collected Dispatches of Earl Gower to London
September 1792
Duncan Stone
Who was the author?

The author of the dispatches concerning the September massacre of 1792 was an

English diplomat serving as ambassador to France by the name of George Levenson-Gower. Earl

Gower was the son of a minor English noble, and he had secured the position of ambassador to

the French despite his lack of experience due to the influence that his father held both in

parliament and at court. While serving as the ambassador to France, Earl Gower was able to

experience firsthand the revolution that swept through France and its aftermath, as the original

group of revolutionaries, comprised of mostly intelligentsia and minor nobles was replaced by

the more malevolent and increasingly violent mobs and communes of Paris. As 1792 wore on,

Gower became increasingly concerned with the violence that had begun to occur in Paris,

advising that any English travelers avoid France altogether. He left France for England after the

events of the September Massacre of 1792, and he spent the remainder of his life in several

powerful if uninteresting governmental positions.

Who was the intended audience?

As earl Gower was the ambassador to France, his dispatches would have been intended

for his immediate superiors in the foreign office. However, it does not seem that the

information presented in this document was intended to be private and restricted only to his

immediate superiors. Dispatches such as these would have been widely circulated throughout
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the government and parliament in the form of copies of the dispatch, while the juicer and more

shocking excerpts would have been distributed to the public through a variety of physical and

vocal mediums. While Gower may not have intended for his dispatches to be collected and

reprinted later, he certainly did intend to write them as a record of the events that were

occurring during his tenure as ambassador to France, and he would have understood that his

dispatches would be read by a far wider audience than his immediate superiors back in London.

What is the story or argument that the document is relating?

The dispatch relates the events of the beginning of August 1792 and serves to highlight

the loss of control on the part of the original group of revolutionaries over the commune and

mobs of Paris. The document is broken up into a daily report, and it begins with Gowers

comments that he believes that the revolutionary French government has lost control of the

mob that they had used to seize power during the revolution (Baker, 297). The next several

entries go on to relate the worsening situation in Paris as news arrives that Verdun has been

attacked and captured by Prussian and Austrian forces. The document then relates the events of

the September massacre, as the mobs of Paris slaughter much of the local prison population.

The document concludes with the comment that the bodies were laid out on the Pont-neuf, and

those attempting to plunder the bodies killed on the spot (Baker, 302).

What is the purpose of the Document?

The document is a dispatch, and as such was written to provide information to the

British government in London on current events occurring in France. Dispatches would have

been critical in providing information used in decision making on the part of the British
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government. However, although dispatches would primarily have been used to inform, the

writer could also use them in other ways as well. Diplomats of the time sometimes had an

agenda as well, and they would use dispatches to try and influence the decisions of their

governments one way or the another. Dispatches would also contain predictions about future

events. (For example, such as those presented in Earl Gowers dispatch about the violence

occurring in Paris and France as a whole.) They would many times contain advice on what

actions the government should take with regards to diplomatic relations with the country. Many

times classified information was transmitted in dispatches using ciphers or phrases already

arranged prior to the diplomatic mission. As one may see, dispatches served many purposes

since prior to the age of modern telecommunications they were the primary method of

communication between the diplomats and their countries. Dispatches were essential since

many times they were the only reliable sources of information in a world filled with hearsay and

rumor.

What assumptions are made in the document?

The main assumptions of the document are that the author assumes that those reading

it are up to the current events of the time, are British or a member of the British government,

and that they have a mastery of reading the English language. It also assumes that the various

mobs and groups of citizens that participated in the September massacre did so because of

events occurring outside of Paris, and not for some other more simpler reason. Finally, there is

the assumption made in the document that these groups acted the way that they did without

direction on the part of the revolutionary government, and that this event had occurred

spontaneously and was not planned beforehand.

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What does the document tell me about the society that produced it?

The document does not provide much information on British society in the late

eighteenth century, as it is a government document and does not contain much in the way of

personal opinions. However, it does provide us with a window into how British diplomats

communicated with one another, and what sort of information they provided to their superiors

back in London. Although much of the information that is presented in this document is a

collection of facts about the events as a whole, it does contain several anecdotes about

individuals or individual events. This means that for the most part, the dispatches were

dispassionate and full of dry facts compiled and confirmed by a number of sources, with

specific examples reinforcing a point that the diplomat wishes to make. This seems to show that

the discourse that occurred between diplomats and the government in London was more

calculated and dictated by cold-hard fact than by gripping first accounts of an event.

To what extent can I believe what I am reading?

Although there is always an inherent bias in any sort of work written about events, I

think that is possible to assume that most, if not all the information in the document is

accurate. I believe the information in the document to be true as an official political dispatch is

held to a higher standard than a normal letter or memoir. As dispatches were the primary

sources of information for the governments of the time, the information in these documents

had to be accurate on at least some level, as a government which found that it was acting based

on faulty information would be quick to condemn and censure the diplomat responsible. This

would mean that even if a diplomat was trying to convince and influence his superiors, the
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information provided in his dispatch would have to be mostly accurate, for their self-

preservation if nothing else.

What did I find surprising or intriguing about this document and why?

I found the official tone of the document to be interesting, as the emotions of those

witnessing these events first hand must have been running pretty high one way or the other. I

think that the dispassionate nature of the document shows us as the reader that the author was

able to relate most of the events of the massacre without getting caught up in emotional

outrage over the event. I also found it surprising to learn that the official reason for the

massacre was the capture of Verdun after a brief siege by the armies of Austria and Prussia, as I

would have thought that the response to such an event would have been much more measured

and constructive than the bloodshed that occurred instead.

What did I find confusing about the document? What unfamiliar names, events, or terms

appear in the document. What statements did I not get?

In the reading I was confused by the statements in the reading that these inconsistent

murderers seemed nearly as much pleased at the acquittal of a prisoner as they were at his

condemnation. Although it may seem rather nave, I had always thought that the communes of

Paris were relentless in the pursuit of revenge against the nobility, and were characterized by

their violent anarchy and bloodlust. I therefore found this statement to be rather surprising and

out of character for a group that had already largely massacred the prison population of Paris. I

would also like to know just why the paranoia about the possible occupation of Paris by the
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Austrians and Prussians manifested in the bloody way that it did, instead of in a more ordered

and peaceful response.

If I were to write a longer paper that took this document as my point of departure, what

would I want/need to know more about?

If I were to use this document as the jumping off point of a larger and more detailed paper, I

would like to know more about the state of military affairs in France circa 1792. (For example,

how desperate was the situation in France during this time?) I would also need to know more

about the communes and groups that controlled Paris during this time, and what their

relationship with the original revolutionary government was during the period. If possible, I

would like to learn more about the British diplomatic mission in post-revolutionary France,

specifically, how they acquired and corroborated the information that they forwarded to

London in their dispatches. Finally, I would like to have a more detailed and in-depth analysis of

the September massacre using both primary and secondary sources to obtain a more complete

understanding of the events that occurred before, during, and in the immediate aftermath of

the September massacre.

Why does this document matter today? What larger issues in todays society does it prompt

me to think about?

I think that this document matters today more than ever, as we see various political

movements (some peaceful, others less so) sweeping the globe, and the current aftermaths of

revolutions and changes in political power from the Middle East to the American continent. I

think that this document provides us with the views of someone who observed very similar

events occurring almost two hundred years ago, and we can perhaps take the insight presented
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in the document and apply it to how we view various events and movements across the globe.

Although some may say that history is doomed to repeat itself, I think that it is possible to use

documents such as these to learn so that violent events such as those narrated by Earl Gower

within his dispatches never occur again.