Emergency Republic 1792-

1795 The Terror

Section 9.44

The National Convention 9/1792• Met on 9/20/92 and proclaimed Year 1

of French Republic• Military successes expanded France• French occupy Belgium, Savoy

region, the Rhine and Austrian Border• N.C. abolishes privileged position of

the nobility as it expands• British and Dutch can’t tolerate

occupation of Belgium and begin talks with the coalition

• Partitioning of Poland issue and mutual distrust weakened emerging coalition against France

Radicals get more Radical• The Convention becomes more

radical• All leaders were Jacobins but

they began to split into:• Girondins

– Came from provincial cities• Called Mountain or Montagnards

– Liked to sit in highest seats in the hall

– More radical group– Represented the city of Paris

(especially its radical element)

Radicals get more Radical

Sans-culottes – working class interestswore long trousers and not breeches or culottes as middle and upper classes didwere pre-industrial shopkeepers, shop assistants, skilled artisansextremely militantfeared that Convention might be too moderatefavored direct democracyGirondins saw them as anarchistsPromoted military engagement to protect the revolutionDenounced the king and queenLook to the Mountain for leadership

Execution of the King• Convention put King on trial for

treason in Dec. 92

• 1/15/93 pronounced him guilty and of 721 deputies, 361 (majority by 1) sentenced him to death

• regicides could then never allow Bourbons back in power

• those against execution are branded as Girondins, moderates, counterrevolutionaries

Background to the terror• Military events turn against the French 4/1793

– General Dumouriez defects to Austria and invasion in threatening

• Wages, prices, food shortages become acute• Activated the sans-culottes who call for:

– Price controls– Currency controls– Rationing– Control against hoarding food– Requisitioning– Denounced the bourgeois as exploiters and

profiteers

•Mountain sides with Sans-culottes against Girondin5/31/93 demonstrators invade the Convention and arrest Girondin leaders•Other Girondins flee to provinces (including Condorcet)

Mountain faces many difficulties• Enemy at the borders• Insurrection in the rural areas• Vendee peasants revolt against

conscription• Cities rebel• Lyon, Bordeauz, Marseilles

want decentralization of Parisian control

• Rebellions serve émigrés and clerics against the revolution

• Robespierre comes to the leadership

Maximilien Robespierre• A Jacobin, against anarchy• Was he a bloodthirsty fanatic, dictator,

demagogye or an idealist, visionary, patriot?• He was unselfish, honest, integrity, “the

Incorruptible”• Noted in early stage of Revolution for his views

against capital punishment and favor toward universal suffrage

• Prominent member of Mountain and welcomed purge of Girondins

• Believed strongly in idea of a Republic of Virtue– unselfish public spirit, civic zeal, personal

uprightness, purity of life

Program of Convention 1793-1794: The Terror

Program of the Convention was to :

• Repress anarchy and counterrevolution

• Win the war

• Prepare a democratic constitution

• Convention granted wide powers to the Committee of Public Safety

Reign of Terror• Set up Revolutionary courts• Committee of General Security –

supreme political police• Victims included: Marie

Antoinette, royalists, old Jacobins, Girondins, Mountain, peasants (70 percent of victims)

• Atrocities left feelings of antipathy to the Revolution and to republicanism

• At Nantes, two thousand were loaded on barges and drowned

The Committee of Public Safety• Operated as a joint dictatorship or war cabinet• Issued Bulletin des loix• all persons could know what laws were

supposed to enforce or obey• declared levee en masse• Conscripted all able bodied men• Enlisted scientists to develop technologies for

the war• Economic controls• price and wage controls• Produced a constitution but held off

implementing it because of the military “emergency”

• universal male suffrage after emergency is over• Manorial regime is done away with

The Committee of Public Safety• Public improvements and social services• Abolished slavery in the French colonies

1794• Toussaiant L”Ouverture had led the slave

revolt in 1791 in Haiti• Repressed “ultra-revolutionary” voices • called enragesand led by Jacques

Hebert(journalist, officer in Commune)• they denounced bourgeousie and merchants• Herbert had directed the mass drownings at

Nantes

The Committee of Public SafetyCalled for DechristianinzationBlot out all Christian cycles and replace with Republican calendar (10 day decade (not week), 30 day months

see bottom of page 373Committee of Public Safety orders toleranceRobespierre: created the cult of the Supreme BeingRecognizes the existence of God and the immortality of the soulTurns Catholics and freethinkers against himCommittee fights Hebertists (leading the working class)

The Revolution eats its own• Committee declares the

right of the Mountain (Dantonists) as counterrevolutionaries and they are executed

• Georges Jacques Danton• Undistinguished until 3rd

year of Revolution• Organized much of the

Terror while a member of the Committee of P. S.

• April he was sent to guillotine by his opponents

• “Show my head to the people; they do not see the like every day.”

The French Military• 800,000 strong; more motivated than opponents

• officers promoted on grounds of merit, not birth• Coalition distracted by third partition of Poland)• 6/1794 France invades Belgium, Netherlands• Military victories make France less tolerant of

Committee of Public Safety’s strict leadership• National Convention afraid of its own ruling

committee• So: group in the Convention votes to outlaw

Robespierre 7/27/1794 (9 Thermidor)– Robespierre is executed with his associates the

next day– Troubles of France are blamed on Robespierre to

protect Convention from public criticism

The Thermidorian Reaction• The Terror subsides• The Convention Reduces the power of

the Committee of Public Safety•  Price controls are removed and

inflation resumes• Disoriented and leaderless working

class erupts into insurrection• Barricades in Paris – army comes • Foreshadows the social revolution to

come• Reaction is led by bourgeois

Bourgeois had been the secure element of the Old RegimeLawyers, officeholders, some land holders becamethe nouveaux richesSelf serving, ostentatious, and disreputable,they unleashed a White Terror (Jacobins were simply murdered)They still believed in individual rights and a

written constitution, and Produced the Constitution of the Year III (1795)