Technikatörténeti szemle 19. (1992)

KÖNYVISMERTETÉS - Papers of the First „MINERALKONTOR” International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Veszprém, 12-16 August, 1991)

in February 1790 Lavoisier wrote to his friend Benjamin Franklin the „we look upon (the Revolution) as over, and well and irrevocably completed". However, this soon proved to be a mistaken judgement. The aristocrats had lost their exemption from taxation and other privileges, and many had emigrated to foreign courts where they found sympathisers. In 1791 Louis XVI and his Austrian queen, Marie-Antoinette, tried to flee to Austria, but they were stopped before the frontier and bought back to Paris. In France there were fears than an invasion was being planned, so in April 1792 the National Assembly took the initiative by declaring war on Austria and some of the German states. As a result the country was led into a series of military disasters. The King and Queen were suspected of treason and deposed, and a republic was proclaimed in September 1792. Louis XVI was tried, and executed on 21 January 1793. Within a month Britain and Spain declared war and the republican government, now fighting against most of Europe and threatened by a royalist rebellion at home, set up a Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris. The Reign of Terror had begun and it lasted until the execution of Robespierre on 28 July 1794. At the begining of 1793 the Academy of Sciences was still meeting regularly and hearing accounts of research done by its members, and chemical papers appeared in Annales de Chimie and other journals. The lives of the academicians were, however, affected by politics, for in the Convention, the republican parliament, the Academy was attacked by J. P. Marat and other extremists because of its former association with the monarchy, and Lavoisier, the treasurer, found it difficult to obtain funds for the salaries of the membersss. Eventually, in August 1793, all the academies in France were suppressed by order of the Convention and, as most universities and, other educational institutions had closed because of the emigration of some of their professors and shortage of funds, pure scientific research came virtually to a halt. Annales de Chimie ceased publication in September 1793, not to start again until 1797, and other journals were published infrequentiy. Most of France's leading chemists were, however, far from idle. Since April 1793 the country had effectively been ruled by a small Committee of Public Safety, elected from the member of the Convention. Its president until July 1793 was Lavoisier's colleague Guyton, who had dropped .deMorveau'from his name, and it later included two engineering officers with scientific interests, Lazare Carnot and Claude Prieur. Large armies were raised by conscription after the military reverses early in the war and they needed great quantities of gunpowder. In September 1793 the Committee of Public Safety requisitioned all the sulphur in the country, and a few months later it decreed that, apart from gunpowder manufacture, saltpetre was to be used only for certain essential metallurgical and medical purposes. Since both sulphur and saltpetre were required for the lead chamber process, the manufacture of sulphuric acid almost completely ceased. This had immediate effects on other branches of the chemical industry. Chlorine had been prepared from hydrochloric acid which in turn was a product of the action of sulphuric acid on salt, and the same reaction formed the first stage in Leblanc's soda process, so his factory at Saint Denis had to close, not to reopen until long after the Revolution, by which time he had committed suicide.