Brissot declared on December 31 that “the time has come for a new crusade, a crusade for universal freedom.”45 Whether this beautiful crusade was intended to install human freedom or French domination in the territories to which it advanced depended, however, on the eye of the beholder. In any case, many in France itself did not share Condorcet’s openness to outsiders – whether legal foreigners or mere “strangers” – as war loomed on the horizon.
