- the old ministers had carried out wishes of the King, the new ones obeyed the Assembly
- both the Assembly and the Govt now wanted war, especially new foreign minister Dumouriez
- he hated Austria, but had aims similar to that of Lafayette
- France declared war on Austria 29 April 1792
- Prussia declared war on France a month later
THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY
- War showed the weakness of the French armiestreason and traitors were blamed for for French defeats and with some justification: Marie Antoinette had sent details of French military plans to the Austrians
- Govt also had other problems to deal with, such as opostion from non-juring preists and counter-revolutionaries
- 27 May Assembly passed a law for the deportation of refractory preiest
- another law dibanded King’s Guard, and third set up a camp for 20 000 National Guards (known as federes, because their arrival coinced with the feast of the federation)
- were to protect Paris from Invasion and the govt. from a coup
- Louis refused to approve these laws
- Leader of the sections responded to these events by holding armed demonstrations on 20 June anniversary of the Tennis Court Oath
- Leaders came from Cordeliers club
- 8000 demonstrators , many of them national guards, poured into the Tuilleris
- Louis behaved great dignity – probably saved his life
- This journee did not achieve its desired end: King did not recall the Girondin ministers
- **did show very clearly the weakness of the King and the Assembly and the power of the Sections
- Assembly soon took steps which recognised the growing imporance of the sans-culotttes
- 11 July it declared a state of emergency, issuing ‘la patrie en danger’ (the father land in danger) which called on every french man to fight
- titled the favour to democrats
- how could u ask a man to fight and not give him the vote?
- Federes demanded the admission of passive citizens into the sectional assemblies and National
- Tension in Paris was increased by the arrival of federes from the provinces and by the Brunswick Manifesto
- The fedres were military revolutionaries and republicans , unlike the Paris National Guard, whose officers were conservative or royalist
- **THE BRUNSWICK MANIFESTO, issued by the commander in chief of the Austro-Prussian armies, was published in Paris 1 August
- it threatened that any National Guard captured fighting would be punished as ‘rebels of the king’
- Parisians were collectively held responsible for the safety of the royal family
- If it was harmed the allies would execute ‘an exemplary vengeance?by delivering the city of Paris to a military exectuion.’
- The Manifesto was intended to help the King, but had the opposite effects
- **FRENCH MEN INFURIATED and many who has supported the monarchy not turned against it
- a new innsurrection was was being prepared by radicals and federes, Girondins changed thie rattitude of oppostion to the King and tried to prevent a rising
- Louis was warned that there was likely to be more violent uprising then that of 20 June, and to recally the ministers he had dismissed 13 June
- Louis rejected their offer
- Robespierre abandoned his previous support for the Constitution of 1991 and called for the overthrow of the monarchy
- He also wanted a national Convention, elected by a univeral male suffrage to replace the Legislative Assembly
- *On 3 August, Petion, Mayor of Paris, went to the Legislative Assembly and demanded, on behalf of the 47 out of the 48 sections, the abolition of the monarchy
- *yet Assembly refused to depose the King
- *9 August Sans-culottes took over the Hotel de Ville, overthrew the old municipality and set up a revolutionary Commune
- the next morning several thousand National Guard, now open to passive citizens, and 2000 federes, led by those from Marseille marched on the Tuileries
- the paace was defended by 3000 troops
- 2000 of whom were national guard
- the others were Swiss mercenaries who were certain to resist.
- During the morning the royal family had sought refuge in the Legislative Assembly
- The National Guard defending the Tuileries, joined the insurgents, who entered the courtyards
- Belived the attack was over until the Swiss started firing, King ordered his Swiss gurads to cease fire
- ***THE RISING WAS AS MUCH A REJECTION OF THE ASSEMBLY AS IT WAS OF THE KING
- Deputies had to hand over the King to the Commune, who imprisoned him
- ***As a consequence of the fall of the monarchy, the 1791 Constitution became inoperative. The Assembly had to agree to the election, by universal male suffrage, of a National Convention to draw up a new , democratic constitution
- The constitutional monarchists, about 2/3 of the deputies, did not feel safe, so they stayed away from the Assembly and went into hiding
- Left the GIRONDINS in chargee, the beneficiaries of a revolution they had tired to avoid
- Convention met for the first time 20 September 1792. On the next day they abolished the monarchy
REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT AND THE TERROR
-symbol of the Terror is the guillotine, and is symbol most ppl have in mimnd when they think of the French Revolution, bloodthirsty purges, terrified citizens, dictatorship and the supression of the liberties which had been so triumphantly announced in the Declaration of Rights and Man in 1789. French historians Furet and Richet saw the period from August 1792 to July1794 as time when millitant sans culottes knocked the revolution off course
STRUGGLE FOR POWER: GIRONDINS AND JACOBINS
THE CONVENTION (20 September 1792 – 26 October 1795)
- all men over 21 could vote in the elections to the Convention
- but the result was distorted by fear and intimidation
- IN Paris, all who had shown royalist sypathies were disfranchised
- Thus all 24 members for Paris were Jacobins, repubicans, and supporters of the Commune
- Robespierre came head od the poll in the capital
- At first about 200 Girondins and 100 Jacobins in the Convention
- Majority of the deputies, uncommitted to either group, know as the Plain or March – middle ground they sat
- Until 2 June 1793 the history of the Convention is that of a struggle between the Girondins and Jacobins
- The latter came to be known as Montagnards (Jacobins) as Girondins too members of the Jacobin club
- Girondins and Montagnards were all bureois and agreed on most policies
- Both strongly in the Revolution and the Republic, hated privilges, were anit-clerical and favoured a liberal economic policy
- Both wanted a more Enlightened and humane France
- Differed in soure of suppor
- Both Girondins and Montagnards committed to winning the war but the latter more flexible in their approach
- Girondins thought that Robespierre wanted a bloody dictatorship, the Montagnards convinced that the Girondins would compromise with conservative, even royalst , forces to stay inpower
- They therefore, accused them of supporting couter-revolution
- As neither side had the majority in the Assembly each needed to have the support of the Plain
- They too were bourgeois, blieved in economic liberalism and were deeply afraid of the popular movement
- At first supported the Girondins, who provided most of the ministers and dominated mnost of the Assembly’s committees
SEPTEMBER MASSACRES
- August the situation of the French armies on the fronttier was desperate, Lafayette fled to the Austrians on 7 August
- With leading general deserting, who could still be trusted?
- Panic and fear of treachery swept the country
- By the beginning of September Verdun, the last major fortress on the road to Paris, was about to surrender
- Commune called on all patriots to take up arms, thousands volunteered to defend the capital and the revolution
- *****BUT ONCE THEY HAD LEFT FOR THE FRONT, THERE WAS CONCERN ABOUT THE OVERCROWDED PRISONS, WHERE THERE WAS A RUMOUR WHERE THERE WERE MANY PRIEST S AND NOBLES, COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY SUSPECTS
- a rumour arose that they wee plotting to escape, kill the helpless population and hand the city over to the Prussians
- Marat, called for conspirators to be killed
- Massacre of prisoners began 2 September and continuted for 5 days
- Killers the sans-culottes
- **this massacre cast a shadow over the first meeting of the Convention
- just as the routunes of war had brought about the September Massacres, they also brought an end to this part of the Terror
- political history of the first phase of the National Convention (20 September 1792 to 2 June 1793) is that of the power struggle b/w Girondins and montagnards
- it was clouded by the debate over the arraignment, trial and execution of the King, and the political contest for power among the divided republicans is convused and compunded by the escalatoin of the more limited war of 1792 into the war of the First Coalition
THE TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI
-Jacobins insisted on the trial of the King, in order to start republic more firmly
- increasingly depended on the sans-culottes, who wanted the King tried and executed
- held him responsible for the bloodshed at the Tuileries in August 1792
- Girondins tried to prevent a trial
- What finally sealed the King’s fate was the idea of Marat to have an ‘appel nominal’ ppl had to say there vote in public
- KING EXECUTED 21 JANUARY 1793 (For radical republicans this was a logical action since Article VI of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Ctizen stated that ‘the law must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.’
- First Jacobin victory in the Convention
- By Louis’ execution the Montagnards gained an ascendancy in the Convention which they rarely lost afterwards
THE WAR EXTENDED
- At same time war, civil war in the Vendee
- to the surprise of the French the war went badly
EFFECTS OF THE WAR
- by winter 1792-3 the counter rev. in France had virtually collapsed
- REVIVED by the expansion of the war and conscription
- Govt. ordered a levy of 30000 troops in Feb.1793
- This led to massive risings in the Vedee
- Troubles in the Vendee had begun long before 1793 and conscription
- Peasants there were paying more in land tax than they had under the ancien regime and so dislike dthe reovutionary government
- This dislike turned into hatred with the Civil Constitution of the Clergy
- Sale of church lands also unpopular
- Economic problems, for which the war was lrgely responsible, added to the difficulties of the government
- To pay for the war more and more assignats were printed and had fallen to half their nominal value bhy February 1793
- This pushed up price
- Although good harvest Nov1792, bread scarse
- The results of high prices and scarcity, were as usual , widespread riots and dmands from the sans-culottes for price controls
- Support of the people necessary to fight the war, so it was clear some of their demands would have to be met
- Realised first by the Montagnards
- The Plain joined the Montagnards in favour of repressive measures
- BARERE, A LEADER OF THE PLAIN, TOLD THE CONVENTION THAT IT SHOULD RECOGNISE THREE THINGS: IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY NO GOVERNMENT COULD RULE BY NORMAL METHODS, THE BOURGEOIS SHOULD NOT ISOLATE THEMSELVES FROM THE PEOPLE, WHOSE DEMANDS SHOULD BE SATISFIED, THE BOURGEOIS MUST RETAIN CONTROL OF THIS ALLINACE, AND SO THE CONVETNION MUST TAKE THE INIATIVE BY INTRODUCING THE NECESSARY MEASURES.’
****These meausures were passed by the Convention between 10 March and 20 May 1793. They had 3 objectives.
1. to watch and punish suspects
2. to make govt. more effective
3. to meet at least some of the demands of the sans-culottes
10 MARCH – REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL SET UP
- tribunal set up in Paris to try counter-revolutionary suspects and was intended to prevent massacres like those of September 1792
- tribunal to become one of the main agencies of the terro
- owing to the resistance to conscription, and the suspcion of generals after Dumouriez’s defection , representatives on mission were sent to the provinces
- they were deputies of the Convention, mainly Montagnards, whose job was toi speed up conscription and keep an eye on the conduct of generals
***on 6 April perhaps th emost important of all these measures , THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY, was set up to supervise and speed up theactivities of ministers, whose authority is superseded
- Committee not a dictatorship , depended on the support of the Xonvention which renewed its powers each month
- Who was to be on the new Committee?
- All these measures – Revolutionary Tribunals, representatives – on-misson, watch committees, the Committee of Public Safety summary execution decree – were to become vital ingredients of the Terror
THE FALL OF THE GIRONDINS
- 2 June 80000 National Guardsman surrounded the Convention and directed their cannon at it
- they demanded the expulsion of Girondins from the Assembly and a maximum price on al essential goods
- when deputies tried to leave they were forced back
- for the first time armed force was being used against an elected parliament
- to avoid a massacre or a revolutionary commune seizzing pwer, the Convention compelled to agree to the arrest of 29 Girondin deputies and two ministers
THE NEW COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY
- 2 June most deputies freared and distrusted the Montagnards
- however, did not want to see the Republic overthrown by domestic or foreign ememies and so for the next 14 monmths they were reluctant accomplices of the Jacobin minority
- when a new Committee of Public Safety was formed between July and September 1793, the 12 members were all either Montagnards, or deputies of the Plain who had joined them
- the new committee was to become the first strong govt. since the Revolution began
- all members were re-elected to the Committee by the Convention every montyh from Sept. 1793 to July 1794
- Robespierre joined the Committee on 27July
- As Robespierre shared many ideas with the sans-culottes he was popular with the peole of Paris but he was never one of the people as Marat was
THE JACOBIN REPUBLIC AND THE REIGN OF TERROR (JUNE 1793-JULY 1794)
? The crisis of the Revolution – June – December 1793
-when the Jacobins assumed state power in early June 1793 the Frency Republic was beset by multiple crisis
over the summer and autumn of 1793 the gravity of this crisis would augment to a pint where the very survival of the Republic, and hence of the Revolution
the Republic was simultaneously threatened by foreign invasion across all land frontiers
- counter revolution in Western France, internal rebellion (the federalist revolts) savage inflation – assignats, the volatility and potenial anarchy of the sans-culottes in the cities, and the rural community who remained, over whelmingly , Catholic and royalist at heart under the violently anti-clerical republic regime
- when Marat assassinated 13 July 1793, Parisians feared that the virus of counter revolution had finally penetrated the captial itself
THE FEDERALIST REVOLTS AND THE DISINTERGRATION OF NATIONAL UNITY
- ‘federalist’ revolts that broke out like an epidemic in France in the summer of 1793 were the fruit of both factional conflict in the Convention b/w the Gironde and the Mountain in APRIL-May and of the Paris insurrection of 31 May-2-June which forced downfall Girondin govt.
- whatever form the ‘federalist’ revolts assumed – civil disorder, passive resistance to national govt., armed rebellion, or factional terrorism, in provinces
- federalism revolts were seen as royalist plots to destroy the unity of the Republic
- Federalism appeared as a serious threat to the Government
- **most serious consequences of the revolts was the disruption of the harvest, and dislocation of the war effort, and the severance of lines of communication to the ffrontiers
CREATING THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE TERROR
- the Terro should be viewed as an outgrowth of the siege mentality that gripped Paris in Year II
- as a response to pressure from the sans-culottes for total solutions to toal problems, and as a reacton to ther exigency of war, rebellion and counter-revolution
- it was always viewed by the convention, the Jacobin Party,and the sans-culottes as a temporary phase in the history of the Republic, as a disruption of the normal course of development of the revolution
- strictly speaking the Terro means extra-parliamentary govt.
- it becaem de jure on 5 September, 1793, when the constituion of 1793 ws made inoperative
- during the reign of terror – delcared that they ‘were revolutionary until the peace’
- the machinery of the Terro was fashioned in an atmosphere of patriotic exaltation, suspcion and violence
CONSTITUTION OF THE TERROR – OCT 1793
INSTITUTIONS OF THE TERRO
The Executive Committees
- b/w July and December the Convention slowly defined and enlarged the funtions and powers of the executive committees of fincance, public safety and general security