What Went Wrong? Would debate always be rational? Could it be? Obsession with Unanimity – the General Will Emphasis on Transparency and Virtue

What Went Wrong? Would debate always be rational? Could it be? Obsession with Unanimity – the General Will Emphasis on Transparency and Virtue Who are the People? Who Speaks for the

People? What is the Nation? Where should sovereignty

lie in the Nation? The Paris Commune, The National Convention, the Committee of Public Safety, Lyon-Marseilles-Bordeaux?

What kind of economy is possible? Desirable?

The National Convention

• Fall of Verdun to Prussians (September 2, 1792)

• September Massacres (September 2-6,1792)

• French Victory at Valmy (September 20, 1792)

• French Annexation of Savoy (27 November 1793)

The Jacobins

The Girondins

Brissot and Verniaud

Hebertists and Pere Duchene

Jacques Marie Hebert

Camille Desmoulins

Georges Danton

Robespierre

Trial of King: Move to Terror

Execution of Louis XVI

Growing Split Between Mountain and Girondins

• Execution of Louis XVI (January 21, 1793)

• French Declare War on England, Holland, Spain (Feb-March 1793)

• Levée (Draft) of 300,000 (February 24, 1793)

• Creation of Special Revolutionary Tribunal (March 10, 1793)

• Creation of Surveillance Committees (March 10, 1793)

• Creation of Committee of Public Safety (April 6, 1793)

Counterrevolution in Western France, March 1793

Number of Capital Sentences Passed

Have People of Paris Become Source of Sovereignty?

• Law of Maximum (May 4, 1793)

• Invade Convention – Persuade Mountain to Arrest 31 Girondist Deputies for Treason (June 2, 1793)

• Ascendancy of Committee of Public Safety - Robespierre

July- August 1793 – Situation Dire

• Federalist Revolts in Caen, Bordeaux, Marseille, Lyon – Provinces should be sovereign, not just people of Paris

• Charlotte Corday Assassinates Jean-Paul Marat (July 13, 1793)

• Toulon Surrenders to British Navy (August 27, 1793)

• Defeat of French Revolution Seemed Certain

• Popular Movements in Paris pressure Convention to Take Radical Measures (September 5-6, 1793)

Marat Becomes Martyr

Charlotte Corday on Trial

• “I knew that he was perverting France. I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand. Besides, he was a hoarder; at Caen they have arrested a man who bought goods for him. I was a republican well before the Revolution, and I have never lacked energy.”

Constitution of 1793

“The aim of society is the happiness of all.”

“Public assistance is a sacred debt. Society owes a living to the unfortunate among its citizens, either by finding work for them or by guaranteeing the means of subsistence to those who are not in a fit condition to work.”

“Education is a necessity for all.”

“When the government violates the rights of the people, then insurrection …is the most sacred and necessary of duties.”

Ended Serfdom

Radical Measures of Terror

• Levée en masse (August 23, 1793):

“The young men will go in battle; married men will forge arms and transport provisions; women will make tents and clothing and serve in hospitals; children will make bandages; old men will get themselves carried to public places to arouse the courage of warriors and preach hatred of kings and unity of the republic.”

The General Maximum – Organize Economy for War (September 29, 1793)

Emergency War Economy

• Planned Economy: Fixed Prices, Wages

• Food Rationing• “Equality Bread”• Organized

Industry/Society to Produce Arms and Ammunition

• “Emergency Socialism” of a Profound Kind

Women’s Clubs

• Universal Manhood suffrage proclaimed with Republic (September 1792)

• Women actively involved in clubs, Parisian sections, Convention (as hecklers)

• Women’s Clubs Closed (October 30, 1793)

Divorce

• September 1792 – Couple could divorce by mutual consent, or for reasons like insanity, battering, or criminal conviction

• April 23, 1794 – Women could divorce husbands who abandoned them and remarry immediately

Terror – Order of the Day (September 5, 1793)

• Chaumette (Paris Commune):– Food supply under attack– We are threatened by “new

seigneurs, no less cruel, avid or insolvent than the old, who have arisen on the ruins of feudalism” –those “who had bought or leased productive farms . . . Intent on a ruinous exploitation . . . To speculate on public misery.”

Danton Saves Convention

• Creates “Revolutionary Armies”

• “We must know how to profit from the sublime elan of the people who press in around us. I know that when the people present their needs, when they offer to march against their enemies, we must take only the measures they themselves present: for it is the genius of the nation which has dictated them.”

Terrorists – Javogues, Carrier

Joseph Fouche

Dechristianization

Can This Be Totalitarianism?

Whose in Charge?What is Radicalism?Who has power in Paris? The Sections?

The Clubs? The Paris Commune?Who has power in the countryside?Who has power in the Nation? The

Convention? The Committee of Public Safety? Danton? Robespierre? The Sans Culottes?

“The Only Enemy of the People is the Government”

• “Everyone has pillaged the state. Generals have waged war against their armies. Those possessing goods and provisions, together with everything that was vicious in the monarchy, have joined in league against you and the people.”

• “A people has only one dangerous enemy, and that is its government. Yours has constantly made war against you with impunity.”

Robespierre

• “There must be one single will”

• If this will is to be republican, “there must be republican ministers, republican newspapers, republican representatives, a republican government”

Trial of Marie Antoinette

Execution of Marie Antoinette

Danton Critiques Terror

• “The will of the people is that Terror should be the order of the day, but that it should de directed against the real enemies of the Republic and against them alone. It is not the people’s will that the man whose only fault is a lack of revolutionary vigour should be treated as though he were guilty.”

Abolition of Slavery

• Abolition of slavery in French colonies (February 4, 1794)

The Revolution “Devours Its Own”• Terror: Put on Trial “Enemies of the

Nation” for crimes against “the nation,” “against the people”

• Arrest and execution of Hébertistes (March 13-24, 1794) “Ultras”

• Arrest and execution of Dantonists (March 30-April 6, 1794) “Indulgents”

• Law of 22 Prairial II (June 10, 1794): “Every citizen is empowered to seize conspirators and counterrevolutionaries, and to bring them

before the magistrates. He is required to denounce them as soon as he

knows of them.”

• 40,000 Killed, 300,000 arrested

Robespierre Takes Charge

• “If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, amid revolution it is at the same time both virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.”

Thermidorian Reaction• French defeat Austrians at Fleurus

(June 26, 1794) – removal of external military threat

• 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794) Execution and overthrow of Robespierre

– Wanted to create “A Republic of Virtue”

– Wrote early treatise against the Death Penalty

– How could the Revolution have gone so wrong?

• Abolition of General Maximum (December 24, 1794)

• Force used to restrict Popular Political Activity

• Runaway Inflation• Restricted Suffrage

The Terror as Genocide/Totalitarianism

• 250,000 Insurgents killed in Vendée Fighting Alone -15% population– But 200,000 Revolutionary

troops killed too• Victims of Vendée describe

the Terror as a Genocide of the Catholic Western France

• Probably 40,000 officially executed in all of France

• Others described coercion, the Jacobin Dictatorship, the price controls, and levée en masse (universal draft of all citizens) an example of early Totalitarianism • Drowning Prisoners – The Vendée

Question of Sovereignty Up for Grabs