French Revolution; session vi, The Terror

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Terreur

French Revolutionsession vi

Terror


Terreur

French Revolutionsession vi

Terror


“On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings...laws are to be supported only by their own terrors…. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every [vista], you see nothing but the gallows.”

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Present Revolution 1790


“So, citizens, it must be feared that the Revolution, like Saturn, successively devouring its children, will engender, finally, only despotism with the calamities that accompany it.”

Pierre Vergniaud--13 March 1793


“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


Major topics for this session

• Twelve Who Ruled

• Beginnings

• The “Foreign Plot” and 14 Frimaire

• Terror in the Provinces

• Virtue and Terror?


Twelve Who Ruled


Twelve Who Ruled

R.R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled; The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution, p. 1



PRIEUR OF THE COTE-D’-OR PRIEUR OF THE MARNE


“one of the most shifty politicians of the Revolution”--Palmer

• his noble blood gave him many advantages including early (age fifteen) admission to law school and an inherited seat as a judge

• “extraordinary memory, strong grip on facts and an interesting way of presenting them to others

• “his weakness [was agreeing] with whichever group was successful”--Palmer

• 1789-elected to the Estates General, achieved notice when David gave him prominence in the Tennis Court Oath

Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac

1755 –1841








1755 –1841







• 1792-elected to the National Convention, he was prominent in the King’s trial

• 7 April 1793-the first man elected to the newly created Committee of Public Safety (hereafter, Committee)


1755 –1841


“More than any other of the Twelve [he] gave intimations of the terrorist he was to become” --Palmer

• “ ineffectual drifter,” educated for the law, his father’s profession

• could find no practice in La Rochelle, his home town

• wrote a comedy which failed, took up teaching

• 1784-went to Paris on his father’s money and was admitted to the Paris bar

• 1787- wrote an anticlerical tract The Last Blow Against Prejudice and Superstition

• “However painful an amputation may be when a member is gangrened it must be sacrificed if we wish to save the body” This metaphor was widely used in Jacobin circles and became the justification for the guillotineJacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne

1756 –1819


“...not a mere thinking machine.”--Palmer• 1784-at the Arras Literary Society he first met his

future colleague Robespierre

• “...not unlike [him]. He, too, was austere in manner, rather chilly except to his own friends, inattentive in company, absorbed in his own problems.

• “His private world was a mathematical one, in which he was just short of being a genius.”-Palmer

• his own career was blocked by his lack of noble birth

• before the revolution he put forward plans for “careers open to talent” in the army

• the Revolution, as we have seen last week, opened the doors to his talent

• 14 August 1793- with fellow officer Prieur de la Côte-d'Or, elected to the Committee

Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot

1753 – 1823


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%B4te-d%27Or


“...a mild-mannered humanitarian, known for his courteous and gentle ways, generally liked and trusted.” --Palmer

• born into the petit bourgeoisie, he became a notary like his father

• 1790-a member of both the Masonic lodge and the literary society of his native Clermont-Ferrand

• 1791-elected to the Legislative Assembly

• 1792-at the National Convention he sat with the Montagnards, voted for the King’s death without appeal

Georges Auguste Couthon

1755 – 28 July 1794








1755 – 28 July 1794







• 1793-his meningitis had progressed to the point that he could no longer walk


1755 – 28 July 1794









1755 – 28 July 1794








• 30 May 1793-elected to the Committee

• 2 June-he was the first to call for the arrest of the Girondins


1755 – 28 July 1794


“...the nearest of all to being a plain man of the people.” --Palmer

• born in Paris, left home in his teens to join the traveling theaters of provincial France

• successful as an actor, he craved more recognition. He wrote plays and directed theaters in Geneva and Lyon (1787)

• 1789-he returned to Paris at the outbreak of the Revolution, “where his lead actor's voice, his writing skills, and his ability to organize and direct large-scale fêtes (civic feasts) were to make him famous.”--Wikipedia

• 10 August 1792-a member of the Commune de Paris, he was elected to the National Convention

• 21 September-he was the first to speak for the abolition of the monarchy

• 16 January 1793-in the voting on the sentence for the King he voted for death “sans surcis” (“without delay”)

Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois

1749 – 8 January 1796


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%AAte

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%AAte

“It is as a connoisseur that [he] is best to be understood.”--Palmer

• “born after his father’s death, he possessed title and wealth from the cradle

• “at eighteen he was the king’s attorney in the Paris courts--by special privilege, since the age required by law was twenty-five

• “...a good-hearted, agreeable, and completely unmoral person, who saw others chiefly as beings on whom it was advantageous to make a favorable impression

• “He knew wines, clothes, women, tones of voice, books, ideas---and he was fastidious about them all

• paid 24,000 livres for the autograph of Rousseau’s Nouve$e Héloïse

• “...he became the chief author of the republican constitution of 1793, which never went into effect.”

Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles 1759 – April 5, 1794


“I am here to feed citizens and not to murder patriots.”--Lindet

• initially close to the Girondists, he was very hostile towards the King and was chosen to prepare the indictment, Rapport sur les crimes imputés à Louis Capet

• 6 April 1793-initially a substitute, then a regular, member of the committee of Public Safety

• he was the oldest at forty-six. The average age was thirty

Jean-Baptiste Robert Lindet

1746 – 1825

• of the twelve on the Committee he was the oldest

• elected to both the Legislative and the National Convention, he became well known

• concerned about the food supply, he became the “examiner” of the National Food Commission, a 500-man bureaucracy

• although he went on mission, Lindet spent most of his time presiding over the bureaucracy in Paris


another ci-devant nobleman

• like Robespierre, a bachelor, the youngest except Saint-Just

• 1790-as an officer of engineers, he presented to the Constituent a Mémoire on the standardization of weights and measures

• 1791-elected by the Côte-d'Or to the Legislative

• 1792-elected by the Côte-d'Or to the National Convention, voted for the King’s execution

• 1793-sent to the Army of the Rhine to announce the King’s death

• as a representative-on-mission he surveyed the ports of Lorient and Dunkirk

• 14 August 1793-elected to the Committee where he allied with Carnot, his fellow engineer officer, in the organization of national defense

Claude Antoine, comte Prieur-Duvernois, commonly known as

Prieur de la Côte-d'Or

1763-1832


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte



“...typical of the anonymous world that lies behind all revolutions.”--Palmer

• he follows his father into the legal profession

• 1772-1775--he studies law in Rheims

• he becomes a lawyer in the Parlement of Chalons, joins a Masonic lodge there

• 1789-elected to the Estates General, later a secretary of the Constituent

• there he was nicknamed “Crier of the Marne” for his eloquence

• 3 September 1792-elected to the Convention with 386 of 442 votes

• he was representative-on-mission many times before his recall

• 10 July 1793-elected to the CommitteePierre-Louis Prieur, dit Prieur de la Marne

1756 -1827


http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/1756




“The turn of Robespierre was at hand…”• he had no detailed or specific program at this time

• his economic ideas were unformed

• he gave expression to the feelings that patriots most widely shared:

• glorifying the people

• calling for vengeance upon aristocrats and traitors

• urging that government bodies be purified

• branding as counter-revolutionary both middle-class moderates and proletarian malcontents

• eagerly heard at the Jacobins, respected as a democrat by the Commune, he was an idol not a master for the unruly cohorts from which he drew his strengthMaximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre

“the incorruptible”1758 – 28 July 1794 Palmer, Twelve, p. 39


We want an order of things...in which the arts are an adornment to the liberty that ennobles them, and commerce the source of wealth for the public and not a source of monstrous opulence for a few families….In our country we desire morality instead of selfishness, honesty and not mere ‘honor,’ principle and not mere custom, duty and not mere propriety, the sway of reason rather than the tyranny of fashion, a scorn for vice and contempt for the unfortunate...good men instead of good company, merit in place of intrigue, talent in place of mere cleverness, truth and not show, the charm of happiness and not the boredom of pleasure...in short the virtues and miracles of a republic and not the vices and absurdities of a monarchy.

Robespierre, as quoted in,

Palmer, Democratic Revolution; The Struggle,vol. ii, p. 124


“There was something dogmatic and absolute in his manner…”--Palmer

• the religious toleration of the revolutionaries won the support of this basically conservative man who believed in firm government

• September 1792-he was elected to the National Convention, sat with the Mountain, voted for Louis’ execution, and became a part of the Jacobin leadership

Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Jeanbon Saint-André, 17951749—1813

• forty in 1789, a man of wide experience. He had studied with the Jesuits, been a merchant and a sea captain, gone to a Protestant theological school

• for several years he had been a pastor in his home town, Montauban in the Midi-Pyrenees

• July 1793-elected president of the Convention, chosen to join the Committee and sent on mission to the Armies of the East

• 20 September 1793-his maritime experience led him to seek and obtain 100 million francs to reorganize the harbors and fleets at Brest and Cherbourg


“enfant terrible of the Revolution”--Palmer

• father a cavalry officer, mother the daughter of a notary, two younger sisters

• 1777-his father died, his mother sacrificed to give him an education for the law

• 1786-he was spoiled, stole the family silver and ran away to Paris

• his mother had him confined (Sept ’86-Mar ’87), later went to law school in Rheims

• 1789-elected lieutenant colonel in the National Guard of Aisne

• 1790-begins a fan-correspondence with Robespierre

• 13 November 1792-gave his first speech in the Convention as an attack on the King, became a prominent figure of the Montagne

• 30 May 1793-he was added to the Committee, age 25Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just

“Angel of Death”1767-28 July 1794


[They were] intellectuals [who] were not only out of sympathy with the world in which they lived; most of them were attached emotionally to a world of their imagination. They looked to America, and saw thirteen small republics of simple manners and exemplary virtues. They remembered their ancient history...Athens...Sparta...the incorruptible heroes of early Rome….their conception of statesmanship was patterned on their dream. Their ideal statesman was no tactician, no compromiser, no skillful organizer who could keep various factions and pressure groups together. He was a man of elevated character who knew himself to be in the right...who, like Brutus, would sacrifice his own children that a principle might prevail.

Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled, p. 19


[They were] intellectuals [who] were not only out of sympathy with the world in which they lived; most of them were attached emotionally to a world of their imagination. They looked to America, and saw thirteen small republics of simple manners and exemplary virtues. They remembered their ancient history...Athens...Sparta...the incorruptible heroes of early Rome….their conception of statesmanship was patterned on their dream. Their ideal statesman was no tactician, no compromiser, no skillful organizer who could keep various factions and pressure groups together. He was a man of elevated character who knew himself to be in the right...who, like Brutus, would sacrifice his own children that a principle might prevail.

Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled, p. 19


Nor were the ideas to be gleaned from Rousseau more suited to encourage conciliation. In the philosophy of the Social Contract the “people” or “nation” is a moral abstraction. It is by nature good; its will is law. It is a solid indivisible thing. That the people might differ among themselves was a thought that Rousseau passed over rather hurriedly. Believers in the Social Contract thus viewed political circumstances in a highly simplified way. All struggles were between the people and something not the people, between the nation and something antinational and alien. On the one hand was the public interest, self-evident, beyond questioning by an upright man; on the other hand were private interests, selfish, sinister and illegitimate….

Palmer, Twelve, pp. 19-20


BOOK IV

Chapter 1

That the General Wi" is Indestructible

In the end, when the state, on the brink of ruin, can maintain itself only in an empty and illusory form, when the social bond is broken in every heart, when the meanest interest flaunts the sacred name of the public good, then the general will is silenced: everyone, animated by secret motives, ceases to speak as a citizen any more than as if the state had never existed; and the people enacts in the guise of laws iniquitous decrees which have private interests as their only end.Does it follow from this that the general will is annihilated or corrupted? No, that is always unchanging, incorruptible, and pure, but it is subordinated to other wills which prevail over it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract


Nor were the ideas to be gleaned from Rousseau more suited to encourage conciliation. In the philosophy of the Social Contract the “people” or “nation” is a moral abstraction. It is by nature good; its will is law. It is a solid indivisible thing. That the people might differ among themselves was a thought that Rousseau passed over rather hurriedly. Believers in the Social Contract thus viewed political circumstances in a highly simplified way. All struggles were between the people and something not the people, between the nation and something antinational and alien. On the one hand was the public interest, self-evident, beyond questioning by an upright man; on the other hand were private interests, selfish, sinister and illegitimate….

None of our twelve was consciously revolutionary before 1789. There was no such thing as a professional revolutionary before the nineteenth century--before the French Revolution set the example.



Beginnings


Beginnings

5 September 1793


In the capital of France men prepared for insurrection in an eerie atmosphere of twilight. They laughed...at this odd derangement to their plans.

In more than one way the eclipse was symbolic. It is significant that the Parisians laughed. Their grandfathers...would probably have been struck with fear….The men of 1793 simply stared, exchanged a few witticisms and proceeded with their business. After fifty years of the Age of Enlightenment even men in the street, uneducated though they might be, saw in the eclipse a mere phenomenon of nature. Old superstitions had lost their force--a fact of importance in producing the French Revolution.

And yet an omniscient mind, peering down upon the Europe of 1793, might have interpreted the eclipse as a portent. This same day, September 5, was, in the judgment of most historians, the first day of the Reign of Terror. A shadow, more horrible and longer lasting than the passing shadow of the moon, fell over the minds of the people of France, eclipsing the sentiments of sympathy and humanity, obscuring the principles of liberty and justice.

Palmer, Twelve, p. 44


1793; the mounting crisis

• 21 January-”Citizen Capet” (Louis XVI) is executed

• 1 February-the Convention declares war on Britain and the Dutch Republic, adding them to Austria and Prussia

• March--in the west counterrevolution in the Vendée breaks out and many cities in the south reject centralized control from Paris, so-called federalism

• 50% (against gold) inflation rages, with life-threatening effect for the poor

• the army experiences desertions from Dumouriez to the lowest private

• the advance into the Low Countries stalls and the Allies of the First Coalition advance slowly into France

• all depends on the National Convention and there division and mutual suspicions increase


the journée of 2 June• 30 May-five new members are added to the Committee, including Saint-Just,

Couthon, and Hérault-Séchelles

• 31 May-33 of the most radical sections capture city hall, subjugate the Commune officials, and place their man, Hanriot, in command of the national guard, the only armed force in Paris

• 2 June-after two days of confusion, the guardsmen besiege the Convention with loaded cannons and fixed bayonets. A mob of 80,000 mill around the Tuileries

• insurrectionists march into the Manege, demand the arrest of twenty-two Girondists

• after some face-saving speeches by Hérault and Couthon, the Convention “caved” to the mob, arrested the 22, and began the fatal process of purging the Convention

• periodic removal of the people’s chosen representatives would continue until 1799, when General Bonaparte will put an end to representative government


the Enragés

1752-1794 . Figure incendiaire, l’abbé Jacques Roux est aux côtés des petites gens affamés par la crise des subsistances. Il siège à la Commune de Paris, critique la notion de propriété, multiplie les attaques contre les riches, justifie les pillages des boutiques, il devient l’un des chefs des « enragés ». Pour Robespierre et Marat, son mentor, il va trop loin…

Jacques Roux 1752 – 10 February 1794l’abbé Rouge

(he went too far…)

You can read his speeches and pamphletsat www. marxists.org


paranoia and anger builds; June through August

• 24 June-hoping to contain the Revolution, the Convention adopts the Constitution of the Year I as rewritten by the Committee, especially Hérault

• 25 June-still, the “Red Abbé,” J. Roux, delivers his denunciation of their efforts in speeches at the Convention and the Cordeliers

• Lindet’s mission to Lyons failed and the city government went to “federalist”war against Paris and the Republic, as did the federalists of Marseille and Bordeaux

• the war in the Vendée was losing ground and Danton’s efforts to negotiate peace with Austria failed

• 10 July-the Dantonist government fell and the new group chosen for the Committee included seven of the twelve who were to rule:

• in order of votes gained-Barére, Saint-Andre, Couthon, Hérault-Séchelles, Prieur of the Marne, Saint-Just and Lindet

• 13 July-Marat assassiné


The assassination of Marat

Poor old Marat,In you we trust.You work ti$ your eyes,Turn as red as rust.Poor old Marat,We trust in you!



Marat, we’re poorAnd the poor stay poor.Marat, don’t make us wait any more.We want our rights, and we don’t care how!We want our Revolution!Now!



Marat, we’re poorAnd the poor stay poor.Marat, don’t make us wait any more.We want our rights, and we don’t care how!We want our Revolution!Now!












paranoia and anger builds; June, July and August

• 13 July-Marat assassiné

• 26 July-Billaud-Varenne & Collot d’Herbois, not yet of the Committee, forced through a law against hoarding. Valenciennes surrendered to the Austrians

• 27 July-Robespierre joined the Committee, selected to strengthen it by his hold over Jacobins and sans-culottes

• 14 August-needing their military expertise, the Committee demanded and got Carnot and Prieur of the Côte-d’Or

• 23 August-the levée en masse is proclaimed

• 4 September-the Hébertist organizers make the rounds of workshops, forcing workmen to quit, gathering the forces of rebellion

• later that day, Paris learns that the federalist government of Toulon, with all the Mediterranean fleet, was in the hands of the British Admiral Hood


The Paris Communethe former Hôtel de Vi$e

was now home to the Commune


These sections were the very springs of the revolution. Here met the true “sans-culottes,” the men who did not wear the knee-breeches of the upper class. Direct popular government was the rule. Each section had an assembly in which its citizens (males over twenty-one) were supposed to deliberate and vote. ... only a fraction ever attended the meetings. When the mayor of Paris was elected he received only 14,137 votes in a city of over six hundred thousand--somewhat less than an average of three hundred in each section assembly. Some members of the city council had been elected by as few as twenty votes. Hébert, assistant procurator of the Commune and the man whose name came to stand for the proletarian movement, held office by virtue of fifty-six votes in his section. Chaumette, the procurator and Hébert’s follower, received fifty-three.

Even in Paris not one Frenchman in five cared anything about the vote, and many of those who did would not put themselves to the trouble [and risk] of attending a section assembly...



the one-mile route of the demonstration of September 5th


the one-mile route of the demonstration of September 5th


5 September 1793--the decisive day

• the mob of enragés, organized the day before, arrived in the early afternoon after their mile-long march from the Hôtel de Vi$e

•“...a band of shouting and excited men, carrying placards that threatened “War on tyrants, hoarders and aristocrats.”

• some took seats among the delegates and in the galleries, others stood

• the chairman of the day was none other than Robespierre. He and the other Jacobins on the Committee didn’t approve of the demonstrators, although many other Jacobins did

• the mob also had allies among the delegates, most notably Danton, who had left the Committee that summer but still had a large following among the delegates

• when the disruption subsided a little their spokesman, enragé procurator Chaumette, read a petition:


“Citizen legislators,” he began, “the citizens of Paris, tired of seeing their destinies too long floating in uncertainty, wish at last to fix them invariably. The tyrants of Europe and the domestic enemies of the State atrociously persist in their frightful system of starving the French people, to conquer it by forcing it to shamefully exchange its liberty and sovereignty for a morsel of bread. That will never happen.”

“No, no!” came the shout from hundreds of throats.

“New lords, no less cruel, no less greedy, no less insolent than the old have risen upon the ruins of feudalism. They have bought or leased the property of the old masters, and continue to walk in the paths beaten by crime, to speculate on the public misery, to dry up the sources of plenty and to tyrannize over the destroyers of tyranny.”

“If we do not beat them, they will beat us. Let us throw between us and them the barrier of eternity! [i.e.,kill them]” More applause.

Palmer, pp. 46-47


“Make terror the order of the day.”--Barére

• Chaumette’s demand was a Revolutionary Army of food battalions to compel farmers and grocers to supply the poor Parisians at a price they could afford

• Robespierre and Saint-Andre were correctly concerned that such a move would lead to anarchy and thus stalled for time, the Committee had a plan to address the food issue

• Danton and others spoke in favor of adopting the enragé’s demand. Also:

• to encourage true sans-culottes to attend section meetings, they should be limited to two a week, Thursdays and Sundays

• the poorer workingmen should be paid 40 sous for attending

• 100,000 livres should be appropriated for the manufacture of arms

• Danton’s motions were adopted

• Barére finally arrived with the Committee’s plan. He promised justice to the enemies of the people, “the blood of Brissot and Marie-Antoinette.” He proposed a Revolutionary Army of 6,000 foot and 1,200 cannoneers under the control of the Committee. “Make terror the order of the day”


In what sense was it the beginning?

• terror was not a new thing in September, violence and insecurity were endemic

• over 400 persons had already been put to death by revolutionary courts

• September 1792-mobs had massacred thousands in the prisons of Paris

• July 1789-from the beginning, heads had been stuck on pikes, people hung from lampposts

• even before there had been the Grand Peur in the countryside, riots in the cities

• September 1793-the new thing was that terror was organized, and became for the first time a deliberate policy of government


the Committee moves to the left

• 5 September-that evening, in a special session, Billaud-Varenne was elected president for the next two weeks, another sign that the national government had again succumbed to organized pressure from the city

•“A coalition government was to be formed….The Committee would silence trouble-makers by inviting some of them to share its responsibilities

• 6 September-Barére requested the Convention to add both Billaud-Varenne and Collot d’Herbois to the Committee

• the war was the primary concern facing the Committee. “The Hébertists urged guerre à outrance, war to the knife upon the enemies of the human race

•“Billaud and Collot brought this wild frenzy into the councils of the Committee.”-Palmer

BILLAUD-VARENNE COLLOT D’HERBOIS


control of the committees

• as fears of counter-revolution mounted, criticism of the Committee of General Security increased

• 9 September-one of its members demanded that the Convention elect a new committee, so done two days later

• meanwhile, Hébert at the Jacobins opened an attack on all the committees

• 13 September-the matter was re-opened at the Convention

• Danton proposed that all except the Committee of Public Safety be renewed and that it should be given the job of appointing all the lesser committees

• the motion carried and the Convention gave away the power of controlling its own committees

• the importance of one committee had been enormously enlarged


The Committee of Public Safety henceforth appointed the members of the others. Another step toward dictatorship had been taken. A power which the Convention was too weak to wield, and which might have fallen to the Jacobin club, where it would have been a mere incitement to mutual denunciation, passed into the hands of the one body which might yet save France from chaos.



The Law of Suspects; 17 September 1793

• many laws against refractory priests, émigrés, hoarders and monopolists had been passed. But there was no organized supervised way of dealing

• 17 September-the new law defined suspects vaguely. There were six categories, two so loose that almost any might find themselves “guilty”

• the efforts of local committees of surveillance, a.k.a. revolutionary committees, were finally legalized

• an attempt was also made to control them. Lists of those seized and the charges against them, along with any documents discovered were to be sent to the Committee of General Security

• thus the local committees became branches of the central government

• lacking concentration camps, suspects were sent to “national buildings,” improvised central prisons maintained by the departments. There conditions were better than in 20th century political prisons


Deserted convents, vacated chateaux, abandoned schools...served as living quarters for incarcerated suspects. In them took place many of the scenes described by the picturesque school of historians: fair ladies and fine gentlemen reduced to poverty,...tormented by sans-culottes, awaiting trial in the grim revolutionary courts, and soon thereafter marching out to the guillotine.




Deserted convents, vacated chateaux, abandoned schools...served as living quarters for incarcerated suspects. In them took place many of the scenes described by the picturesque school of historians: fair ladies and fine gentlemen reduced to poverty,...tormented by sans-culottes, awaiting trial in the grim revolutionary courts, and soon thereafter marching out to the guillotine. As a matter of fact, with most of the suspects the purpose of the authorities was simply to detain them. Many were never tried, and only a small fraction were put to death. This low proportion was a reflection of the high number of persons confined, who in time numbered 100,000. In Paris, during the month of September, the population of the prisons rose from 1,607 to 2,365.



The General Maximum; 29 September 1793

• the result of a mixture, humane sentiments and patriotic detestation of the rich

• one of the fundamental laws of the Terrorist régime

• like the Law of Suspects, it systematized and extended existing practices

• maximum prices were set for a number of necessities: fresh and salted meat, salted fish, butter and oil; wine, brandy, vinegar, cider and beer; coal, charcoal, candles and soap; salt, soda, sugar and honey, leather, iron, steel, lead and copper; paper, wool and various cloths; shoes and tobacco

• the Subsistence Commission drew up this plan as a response to “a general conspiracy of malignancy, perfidy and unparalleled fury...to famish and despoil us.” Only thus were they willing to suspend laissez-faire

• anyone who sold above the maximum was to be treated as a suspect


The month of September was the turning point in the transition from anarchy to dictatorship. The Levy in Mass, the enlargement of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Law of Suspects and the General Maximum were the means toward controlling the resources of the country in the interests of the Revolution. They would have been useless, however, without a relatively stable body of leaders to integrate and apply them…. The Committee of Public Safety had begun to supply this need; but Jacobins, Mountaineers, Hébertists, Dantonists, etc. were not men to be easily governed.



The Revolutionary Government; 10 October 1793

• 20 September-the Hébertist Thuriot resigned from the Committee, leaving the Twelve, but beginning criticism in the Convention

• the Committee was summoned to appear

• Robespierre-”Whoever seeks to...divide the Convention is the enemy of the country….We need your confidence...or replace us!” It worked

• once a month, for ten months, the Convention re-elects the Twelve

• 10 October- Saint-Just puts a measure before the Convention: The provisional government of France is revolutionary until the peace

• this was the first description of the Committee as a government

• the measure definitely put aside the Constitution of the Year I, drawn up four months earlier and ratified by popular vote: 1,801,918 to 11,610


October 16th

• 2 August-Marie Antoinette had been taken from the Temple to the Conciergerie in the middle of the night

• 12 October-she was taken to the nearby Tribunal for interrogation

• Hébert had prepared public opinion with a barrage of abuse in Père Duchesne

• at her trial he appeared with absurd charges including the forced confession from her son, the Dauphin, that she had taught him to masturbate and committed incest with him

• there were more accurate charges of treasonable correspondence found in the iron chest discovered in the Tuileries. The inevitable verdict was pronounced

• 16 October-she is horrified to see an open tumbril rather than the carriage which had conveyed her husband to the guillotine


October 16th

• 2 August-Marie Antoinette had been taken from the Temple to the Conciergerie in the middle of the night

• 12 October-she was taken to the nearby Tribunal for interrogation

• Hébert had prepared public opinion with a barrage of abuse in Père Duchesne

• at her trial he appeared with absurd charges including the forced confession from her son, the Dauphin, that she had taught him to masturbate and committed incest with him

• there were more accurate charges of treasonable correspondence found in the iron chest discovered in the Tuileries. The inevitable verdict was pronounced

• 16 October-she is horrified to see an open tumbril rather than the carriage which had conveyed her husband to the guillotine






October 31finis Girondins

24 October-the trialDufriche-Valazé cheats

the guillotine





Jacques Pierre Brissot Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud




The “Foreign Plot” and 14 Frimaire


The “Foreign Plot” and 14 Frimaire


“...he showed signs of a new affluence, notable, if not suspicious, in a man of letters.”--Palmer, Twelve, p. 111

• 5 October 1793-the same poet who created the names for the Revolutionary Calendar which went into effect on this date

• several days later he asked for a meeting with Robespierre and Saint-Just to reveal an important matter

• “a vast foreign conspiracy, a network of secret dealings between hypocritical patriots and foreign spies

• “The Foreign Plot was a myth, but it disguised a mass of intrigue…”

• there were indeed foreign spies and intriguers in Paris who cultivated relations with government officials

• but Fabre was trying to cover his tracks in a swindle involving the extortion he and his accomplices had made during the liquidation of the East India Company

• as an ally of Danton, he feared the Hébertists and wanted to put the blame on them first before they blamed him

Philippe François Nazaire

Fabre d'Églantine

1750 – April 5, 1794


Robespierre and Saint-Just were both men with a strong tendency to believe evil of foreigners, and to accept as fact any conspiracy that they heard of. Fabre found it easy to persuade them. The story had a certain plausibility…. Hérault-Séchelles had long cultivated a mysterious Belgian named Proli…[who] had for a long time lived at Hérault’s house, and was Hérault’s secretary while Hérault was on the Committee. Proli was a member of the Jacobin club….Thomas Paine….Anacharsis Cloots….

What was really behind the Foreign Plot was the animosity of factional chieftains, and a sordid story of systematic racketeering.



The India scandal was the reality and the Foreign Plot the myth. Both contributed to wreck the Mountain, but the myth had more immediate and pronounced effect. Providing a means for repressing the Hébertists, it marked a turning point in the Revolution. The drift to the left, which had swept away every government of the past five years was now slowed down. It was now the radicals who bore the taint of treason. Significantly enough, one of the first men arrested because of the Foreign Plot was the notorious agitator Maillard, who had led the famous march of the women on Versailles in October, 1789.



Robespierre and Saint-Just did not like Hérault-Séychelles. His noble birth, his wealth, his elegant manners, his flippancy, his irony, his self-assurance and frank love of pleasure inspired in his two colleagues...a stiff sense of middle-class disapproval….Between two moralists and an aesthete there could be little understanding.

It seemed all too likely that Hérault was selling secrets to the Austrians through Proli. He could be classified as a Hébertist….He was the friend of Carrier, soon to be famous as the Terrorist of Nantes.

Hérault was too powerful abruptly arrested.



Robespierre took the lead in dealing with Dechristianization. He saw in it the workings of the Foreign Plot, a shameful travesty of Revolutionary principles, instigated by persons who wished to disgrace the Revolution before the world. He called it “ultra-revolutionary,”[ultra Lat., too far, too much] by which he meant that it was a form of counter-revolution. The ideas of universal upheaval and an international crusade against tyrants he also branded as “ultra.” He used the corresponding term, “citra,”[too little, not far enough] for those who thought the Revolution was going too far. “Ultra” and “citra” are, of course, relative terms….

The abolition of the Christian calendar, the reduction of the salaries paid to bishops, the laws forbidding the clergy to teach school, all coming in September and October, showed that the National Convention was in a decidedly anti-clerical mood.



• November 1793-tensions developed between those Jacobins who wanted to assault the Church more vigorously and those, like Robespierre, who saw this as a dangerous distraction

• the Committee sent a letter of warning to a representative on mission who was going too far

• “...in your last operations you have struck too violently against the objects of Catholic worship

• “We must give no opportunity for saying that the freedom of worship is violated or that war is being made on religion”

• 10 November-the Hébertists and baron Cloots took the war to Notre-Dame de Paris itself

Dechristianization







Dechristianization

The décadi 20 Brumaire of the Year 2 of the French Republic one and indivisible. The fete of Reasonand her celebrated in the former church of Notre-Dame

Festival of Reason







• the Convention decreed that Notre-Dame should be known as the Temple of Reason

• Robespierre viewed this as a test of power between the government and the Commune and the patriotic societies

Dechristianization







• the Convention decreed that Notre-Dame should be known as the Temple of Reason

• Robespierre viewed this as a test of power between the government and the Commune and the patriotic societies

• he believed they were hired by foreign powers to push the Revolution to a ruinous excess

Dechristianization


Revolutionists from that time to ours have availed themselves of foreign conspiracies, but whatever may be said of Hitler or Stalin, it seems to be true that Robespierre really believed in this one….

...certain advanced Conventionals, including the German Anacharsis Cloots...organized the celebration of 20 Brumaire in Notre-Dame.

These leftists were in sober fact discrediting the Republic in the judgment of the world. Robespierre believed that they deliberately meant to do so.



At the Jacobins, he made his main attack, and there, on November 21, he delivered one of the great speeches of his career

Some have supposed that the Convention has proscribed the Catholic religion. No, the Convention has not taken this rash step, and wi$ never take it. Its intention is to maintain the &eedom of religion that it has proclaimed, and to repress at the same time those who would abuse their &eedom to trouble public order. It wi$ not a$ow peaceable ministers to be persecuted, but it wi$ punish them severely whenever they dare to use their functions for the deception of citizens or the arming of prejudice and royalism against the Republic. Priests have been denounced for saying the mass; they wi$ say it longer if an attempt is made to prevent them. He who would prevent them is more a fanatic than he who says the mass.

Some would go further. Under pretense of destroying superstition they would make a kind of religion of atheism itself. Any philosopher, any individual may have on that matter whatever opinion he pleases. Whoever would make a crime of atheism is a madman, but the public man, the legislator, would be a hundred times more mad to adopt such a doctrine. The National Convention abhors it….Not for nothing has it proclaimed the rights of man in the presence of the Supreme Being….Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.


On November 21, he delivered one of the great speeches of his career

I repeat: we have no other fanaticism to fear than that of immoral men, paid by foreign courts to reawaken fanaticism and give our Revolution an appearance of immorality, characteristic of our cowardly and savage enemies.” Foreign courts, he said, maintain two armies. One is on the frontier. “The other, more dangerous, is in our midst; it is an army of spies, of paid rascals who insert themselves everywhere, even in the heart of the popular societies.” He named a few, including Proli.

I demand that this society purge itself fina$y of this criminal horde! I demand that a purifying scrutiny be held….

The Jacobins responded immediately to this powerful address. The men named by Robespierre were immediately dropped….No one could afford to seem to fear an investigation….Hébert declared that the plotters were trying to embroil him with Robespierre….Hébert, it must be repeated, was not the head of a party. His name was used, like Trotsky’s among the Communists, to describe a “deviation.”

Palmer, Twelve, pp.121-122


the scrutiny

• at the Jacobins the purifying scrutiny began at once and lasted several weeks

• members denounced one another and then took the tribune to defend their own records

• those of the Committee who were in Paris passed the scrutiny, though Robespierre had to defend Barère who was accused of being “a waverer”

• Cloots was denounced By Robespierre as “an agent of foreign tyrants, a preacher of universal revolution and ringleader in the philosophic masquerade of Dechristianization.” He was expelled from the Jacobins

• on the other hand, both Hébert and Fabre d’Églantine passed. For now

• the process of purging both the Jacobins and the Convention raised the related issue of all the independent agents of government throughout France, elected local officials, representatives on mission, revolutionary armies foraging for food. How could they be brought under central control? Ultimately, under the control of the Committee?


Billaud-Varenne, who had become a kind of minister of the interior, because charged with much routine correspondence with the provinces, took the lead in framing new administrative machinery

18 November-He began [before the Convention] by describing the prevailing anarchy which he said was characteristic of the infancy of republics. Everywhere the laws were without vigor. In some places they were not even known. Everywhere the wise measures of the Convention were distorted by local officials to promote their own ambitions….Hence came all the troubles of federalism, a “legal anarchy,” a “political chaos,” in which counter-revolutionaries...could manage their intrigues.

Billaud proposed a rigorous centralization of power. All public officials were to become mere “levers” for the transmission of force; this force was the will of the people as determined in the Convention and its Committee of Public Safety. No one, whatever his position, was to possess any immunity. Anyone, even members of the Convention, could be arrested if he obstructed the public will. “Surely this government wi$ not be the iron hand of despotism, but the reign of justice and reason.”

When elected officials were removed, their successors would be appointed by the Convention, meaning effectively the Committee. The law of 14 Frimaire (December 4), passed virtually as Billaud proposed it, definitely founded the revolutionary dictatorship. It was the constitution of the Reign of Terror.



14 FrimaireBy the new law the Convention became “the sole center of the impulse of government.” Counterfeiting the Bu$etin des lois was to be punished by death. Officials who perverted the laws...were to spend five years in irons and have half their property confiscated. a swarm of locally elected administrators, or those of them who survived the purge for which the new law provided, became “national agents” removable at the pleasure of the Convention…. Revolutionary Armies not authorized by the Convention were dissolved…. The enforcement of all these provisions was handed over to the Committee of Public Safety….

The law of 14 Frimaire, it is hardly too much to say, had as permanent a significance as the Declaration of the Rights of Man. They were poles apart, for they attacked antithetical extremes, anarchy and despotism. Each was a statement of a fundamental demand, one for public order, the other for individual liberty….

Suspects poured into the prisons, and the guillotines fell more frequently on outstretched necks…. By the end of the year … 4,554 persons had been put to death by revolutionary courts. Over 3,300 of these perished in December, for it was in December that rebellious Lyons was punished and the civil war in the Vendée put down…. No class escaped; most of the executed Vendéans were peasants, and three-quarters of all victims came from the shopkeeping, laboring and agricultural classes. It was not only aristocrats who felt the sharp edge of the new order.

Palmer, pp. 127-129


Terror in the Provinces


Terror in the Provinces


The Missions to the Auvergne

• 29 August 1793-three of the 100 representatives on mission arrived at Clermont-Ferrand with unlimited powers




• senior among them was Georges Couthon, returning to his home town




• senior among them was Georges Couthon, returning to his home town

• their purpose was to organize forces to subdue Lyons and to attach the department to Paris

• the departmental officials and a good share of the population sympathized with the Lyonnaise

• within three weeks, however, Couthon managed to raise a modest force

• the local foundry was engaged to produce weapons, the women to make bandages, their version of the levée en masse


Le siège de Lyon eut lieu du 9 août au 9 octobre 1793


http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_ao%C3%BBt


http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_octobre


http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octobre




Le siège de Lyon eut lieu du 9 août au 9 octobre 1793

• June 1793-the second city of France, about 100,000 people in 1789, had announced its opposition to the Convention in Paris

• August-the Republic committed its armies piecemeal with an initial 10,000 men

• September-an additional 30,000 arrived, commanded by General Kellermann with 9 representatives on mission, including Georges Couthon

• 9 October-with the city’s surrender, the repression began. Couthon believed that destruction of the houses of the leading federalists would be sufficient

• 12 October-the Committee decided that a more drastic example needed to be made










3. The city of Lyons shall be destroyed. Every habitation of the rich shall be demolished; there shall remain only the homes of the poor, the houses of patriots...the buildings employed in industry and the monuments devoted to humanity and public instruction.4. The name of Lyons shall be effaced from the list of cities of the Republic. The collection of houses left standing shall henceforth bear the name of Ville-Affranchie---the Liberated City.5. On the ruins of Lyons shall be raised a column attesting to posterity the crimes and the punishment of the royalists of the city, with this inscription:

Lyons made war on Liberty.Lyons is no more.

18th day of the first month of the Year Twoof the French Republic, One and Indivisible


...one of the most remarkable documents of the Revolution. After articles one and two came the following:


Couthon’s successors

Collot d’Herboisarrived 4 November

Joseph Fouchéarrived a week later


Lyons is no more

4 December- 605 December-2098 December-100;

the rest by guillotine


By April 1794 almost two thousand [Fr. Wikipedia, 1,867] persons had been put to death at Lyons, more than a tenth of all those sentenced by revolutionary courts for all France during the whole period of the Terror. Of the victims of Lyons 64 percent came from the middle and upper classes. For France outside Lyons the figure for these classes was only 28 percent. The Lyonnese bourgeoisie paid dearly for its rebellion.

Palmer, Twelve, p.170


“May this festival,” wrote the judge Dorfeuille [in Lyons] to the president of the Convention [in Paris], “forever impress terror upon the souls of rascals and confidence upon the hearts of republicans!” It was the ultimate fatuity of the Terrorists to believe that confidence could be created by intimidation. “I say festival citizen president; yes, festival is the word. When crime descends to the grave humanity breathes again, and it is the festival of virtue.”



The Missions to Brittany


To Prieur of the Marne went an unenviable distinction. He set up a special court for dealing with the rebels, the Commission militaire Bignon (named after Bignon, its president), which first following the army, then sitting at Nantes, pronounced death sentences on 2,905 persons, more than any other revolutionary court in the whole country, not excepting the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris. Other agencies of revenge and prevention were at work at the same time. Into the Vendée poured the “infernal columns” of Turreau, who, by order of the Committee of Public Safety, systematically devastated that breeding place of insurrection. Great numbers of Vendéan peasants, some months later, were resettled in more soundly republican regions.


The Missions to Brittany



DROWNINGS ON THE LOIRE, BY ORDER OF THE FEROCIOUS CARRIER,the 6 & 7 December 1793; or 5 & 6 Frimaire Year 2nd of the Republic


DROWNINGS ON THE LOIRE, BY ORDER OF THE FEROCIOUS CARRIER,the 6 & 7 December 1793; or 5 & 6 Frimaire Year 2nd of the Republic




Carrier of Nantes

“...was a normal man with average sensibilities, with no unusual intelligence or strength of character, driven wild by opposition, turning ruthless because ruthlessness seemed to be the easiest way of solving a difficult problem.”


Jean-Baptiste Carrier

1756 – 16 November 1794


Carrier of Nantes

“...was a normal man with average sensibilities, with no unusual intelligence or strength of character, driven wild by opposition, turning ruthless because ruthlessness seemed to be the easiest way of solving a difficult problem.”


Jean-Baptiste Carrier

1756 – 16 November 1794


Virtue and Terror?


Virtue and Terror?

NO GOD! NO RELIGION!! NO KING! NO CONSTITUTION!!


The Narrow Way• Dantonism

• Camille Desmoulins

• Fabre d’Églantine

• “citras”

• “Indulgents”

• less Terror

• enjoy the gains

• Hébertism

• Anacharsis Cloots

• Charles Ronsin

• “ultras”

• “Dechristianizers”

• more Terror

• no time to relax


The speech of 5 February 1794, was not only the best expression of Robespierre’s real ideas, but also one of the most notable utterances in the history of democracy--Palmer

We need “an exact theory and precise rules of conduct. It is time to mark clearly the aim of the Revolution.“We wish an order of things where a$ low and cruel passions are enchained by the laws, a$ beneficent and generous feelings awakened; where ambition is the desire to deserve glory and to be useful to one’s country; where distinctions arise only &om equality itself...where industry is an adornment...and commerce the source of public wealth, not simply of monstrous riches for a few families….

“If the basis of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the basis of popular government in time of revolution is virtue and terror: virtue without which terror is murderous, terror without which virtue is powerless.

The tragic misconception was Robespierre’s idea of the people….The French people was nothing like what he imagined. It was not all compact of goodness; it was not peculiarly governable by reason; it was not even a unitary thing at all, for only a minority was even republican. Robespierre’s “people” was the people of his mind’s eye...



The great oration of February 5 was a menace to many, and gave a new direction to the Terror. Robespierre’s own ruin was implicit in it….Step by step as he discovered in others weaknesses of character or differences of purpose which he did not believe were natural to humanity, and which he therefore attributed to conspiracy or perversity, he isolated himself from those who had been his companions in guiding the Revolution, to the point where not the staunchest Republican could feel safe, and the majority of the Committee of Public Safety turned against him.

Palmer, op. cit., pp. 278-279


Ventôse (19 February-20 March), the month of wind and storm produced a tempest of peculiar fierceness--Palmer

• Robespierre, sick, took to his bed for most of the month (until 22 Ventôse) and the Committee was dominated by Collot and Saint-Just

• 3 Ventôse (21 Feb)-Carrier returned from Nantes, scene of the infamous noyades. He was hailed as a hero by Collot, author of the fusi$ades of Lyons. The Hébertists took heart.

• 8 Ventôse (26 Feb)-Saint-Just proposes a series of laws to sequester the property of “enemies of the Republic” for distribution to “indigent patriots.” The Convention approves. But this long term measure does little to solve the immediate economic crisis and the demands for “justice” against the “hoarders,” (shopkeepers) great and small

• 14 Ventôse (4 Mar)-the Cordeliers proclaim an insurrection, but attract little support from most of the 48 Parisian sections

• Barère and Collot denounce the Hébertists behind the insurrection and the Convention votes its monthly support of the Committee

• 23 Ventôse (13 Mar)-Saint-Just addresses the Convention with a speech worked out the night before with Robespierre’s help, as he returned from his sick bed


There is,of course, a right to insurrection, as guaranteed in the Rights of Man. But the present sovereign is not a tyrant, it is the people. Whoever attacks the present government is therefore evil and counter-revolutionary.

There is in fact, he said, a great secret intrigue afoot in the land, instigated by foreign courts, which are frightened by our confiscating the goods of enemies of the Revolution. There is a plot to starve the French people….Countless Frenchmen are the tools of this nefarious enterprise. Some cry loudly that the government is too sluggish, others wring their hands and call for moderation (Hébertists and Dantonists, of course)….There is no modesty, no acceptance of humble station. “Everyone wants to govern, no one wants to be just a citizen.”

Nothing more concrete was charged against those whom Saint-Just had just entered the Convention to accuse. Division itself was the crime.

Palmer, pp. 289-290

Report on the factions of foreign inspiration, and on the conspiracy plotted by them in the French Republic, to destroy representative

government by corruption, and to starve Paris--23 Ventôse


“Every party is then criminal, because it is a form of isolation &om the people and the popular societies, a form of isolation &om the government. Every faction is then criminal, because it tends to divide the citizens; every faction is criminal because it neutralizes the power of public virtue.

“The solidity of our Republic is in the very nature of things.”

This was the Rousseauist doctrine of the general will….

In Ventôse of the Year Two matters had reached the point where the slightest “independence &om the government” in Saint-Just’s phrase, was a menace to the existing order…critics of the government could not be distinguished from enemies of the state.

Palmer, p. 291

Report on the factions of foreign inspiration...


Trial of the Hébertists

• 13 March-Hebert, Ronsin and Vincent were seized during the night following Saint-Just’s speech

• fifteenth more were rounded up in the next few days

• twenty defendants were soon hustled before the Revolutionary Tribunal

• Hébert, the editor of Père Duchesne, was in the Commune; Ronsin, commander of the Revolutionary Army; Vincent, assistant to the Minister of War; Proli, the Belgian “Foreign Plotter,” a Dutch banker, a French general, a hairdresser, Momoro, the printer and bookseller; a tobacconist, a doctor, an ex-peasant woman who avoided the guillotine temporarily by claiming pregnancy

• the only member of the Convention was Anacharsis Cloots, the “personal enemy of Jesus Christ”

• all were soon condemned to death except for the police spy who had been shut up with them to get more names

• 4 Germinal-”at five o’clock in the afternoon, Mme. Guillotine put an end to eighteen of her warmest admirers”--Palmer


François Chabot

Jacques Hébert

François Momoro

Anacharsis Cloots François-Nicholas Vincent

Charles Philippe RonsinPierre Gaspard Chaumette

Execution of the Hébertists-24 March-12 April 1794finis Ultrarum (the end of the Ultras)

Jean-Baptiste-Joseph GobelConstitutional Bishop of Paris


Execution of the Hébertists-24 March-12 April 1794finis Ultrarum (the end of the Ultras)

“With the fall of the Hébertists more happened than could be easily realized.”Thursday, August 26, 2010

If the Revolution was not over, at least the first step in reaction had been taken….On 23 Ventôse, for the first time in over five years, central authority asserted itself, and instead of yielding to insurgents put them in jail. The Revolution would henceforth be the work of government, not an upheaval from below. To threaten established rule had again become treason.



Unfinished business was pushed through. Hèrault-Séchelles was at last imprisoned….The grafters, Fabre d’Églantine Chabot and two others, were packed off to trial. According to Saint-Just’s report of the 23rd, corruption was an intrigue against the state.



Danton stood in the way, and even Danton, titan of yesterday, was to go. There are stories of last-minute attempts to bring a reconciliation. A dinner was given in the suburbs at which Danton and Robespierre were present….The two were beyond hope of agreement….

On the evening of March 30th the Committee of General Security was called in for a joint conference. A warrant for the arrest of Danton, Desmoulins, Philippeaux and Delacroix was drawn up and presented for signature….Robert Lindet refused to sign. He is supposed to have said he was there to feed the patriots, not to kill them.

Palmer, pp. 296-297


All died with fortitude except Camille Desmoulins, who had mocked at others in the same plight, and who now struggled as the clothes were torn from his chest and shoulders….Camille seems to have been surprised that the “people” hissed at him as he passed.

Palmer, p. 303


At a café a long the route Da v id , functioning as an artist, not as a member of the Committee of General Security, stood making a sketch of Danton which can still be seen.

Palmer, Ibid.


Georges Danton

Charles Delacroix(father of the painter)Pierre PhilippeauCamille Desmoulins

Execution of the Dantonists-16 Germinal (5 April) 1794finis Citrarum (the end of the Citras)

Hérault-SéchellesFabre d’Eglantine


Georges Danton



il pleut, il pleut, bergère,

rentre tes blancs moutons.

(It rains, it rains, shepardess.

Take your white sheep back

to the fold.)


Georges Danton



"Des vers... Avant huit jours, tu en feras plus que tu n'en voudras!"--Danton


Georges Danton




“...Robespierre’s narrow way had become a tightrope, which stealthy hands were waiting implacably to cut.”--Palmer, p. 304


Carnot’s model; 1 April 1794

Reason

The People

The Elected Representative Body

The Committee of Public Safety

Twelve Executive Commissions


Fête de l’Etre Suprême20 Prairial (8 June 1794)


The Author of Nature has bound a$ mortals by a boundless chain of love and happiness. Perish the tyrants who have dared to break it!….

Robespierre’s speech as High Priest@ www.historyplace.com/speeches/robespierre.htm

The day forever fortunate has arrived, which the French people have consecrated to the Supreme Being. Never has the world which He created offered to Him a spectacle so worthy of His notice. He has seen reigning on the earth tyranny, crime, and imposture. He sees at this moment a whole nation, grappling with a$ the oppressions of the human race, suspend the course of its heroic labors to elevate its thoughts and vows toward the great Being who has given it the mission it has undertaken and the strength to accomplish it….

Robespierre


Frenchmen, you war against kings; you are therefore worthy to honor Divinity. Being of Beings, Author of Nature, the brutalized slave, the vile instrument of despotism, the perfidious and cruel aristocrat, outrages Thee by his very invocation of Thy name. But the defenders of liberty can give themselves up to Thee, and rest with confidence upon Thy paternal bosom. Being of Beings, we need not offer to Thee unjust prayers. Thou knowest Thy creatures, proceeding *om Thy hands. Their needs do not escape Thy notice, more than their secret thoughts. Hatred of bad faith and tyranny burns in our hearts, with love of justice and the fatherland. Our blood flows for the cause of humanity. Behold our prayer. Behold our sacrifices. Behold the worship we offer Thee.

Robespierre’s speech as High PriestIbid.


CELEBRATORY FESTIVAL IN HONOR OF THE SUPREME BEINGthe 20th Prairial of the Year ii of the Rep.


Robespierre on this occasion was more priestlike than ever, and the eminence he thus obtained, together with whispers that he was planning a personal theocracy, hastened his fall. But the worship of the Supreme Being only realized a common dream….There was much in the Revolution recalling the Protestant revolution at the time of Luther and Calvin. Couthon cried out for a religion of God not of priests. Extremists smashed images in churches. Jacobins generally thought well of Jesus [“the first sans-culotte”, jbp], but considered most of Christianity since the first century a corruption of simple truths.

Palmer, p. 323


There was in Robespierre himself, apart from other causes of his ruin, something that produced complete political frustration. His narrow way led to a stone wall. Spokesman of democracy he could be, and apostle of principle; but builder of a political society he could not be, because his character and his experience made him, in actual practice, exclusive and sectarian. The chasms in the new France were not to be bridged by Robespierre but by a man with no open party commitments, sufficiently cool to Revolutionary ideals to compromise with conflicting interests, arriving as if it were from another planet--Bonaparte returning from Egypt.

Palmer, p. 334



French Revolution; session vi, The Terror

Education

present revolution

judge extraordinary

strong grip

inherited seat

law school

early age

noble blood

whichever group