Emergency Republic 1792-1795 The Terror

1. Emergency Republic 1792-1795 The Terror Section 9.44

2. 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

3. 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)

4. Radicals get more Radical Sans-culottes – working class interests wore long trousers and not breeches or culottes as middle and upper classes did were pre-industrial shopkeepers, shop assistants, skilled artisans extremely militant feared that Convention might be too moderate favored direct democracy Girondins saw them as anarchists Promoted military engagement to protect the revolution Denounced the king and queen Look to the Mountain for leadership

5. 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

6. 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

7. Mountain sides with Sans-culottes against Girondin • 5/31/93 demonstrators invade the Convention and arrest Girondin leaders • Other Girondins flee to provinces (including Condorcet)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. The Committee of Public Safety • Called for Dechristianinzation • Blot out all Christian cycles and replace with Republican calendar (10 day decade (not week), 30 day months • see bottom of page 373 • Committee of Public Safety orders tolerance • Robespierre: created the cult of the Supreme Being • Recognizes the existence of God and the immortality of the soul • Turns Catholics and freethinkers against him • Committee fights Hebertists (leading the working class)

15. 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.”

16. 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

17. 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

18. Bourgeois had been the secure element of the Old Regime • Lawyers, officeholders, some land holders became • the nouveaux riches • Self 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)