This group (mob? it was well-organized) pushed aside the constitution written by the National Constituent Assembly, and also pushed aside the first Legislative Assembly elected under that constitution -- all in the name of saving the revolution from foreign and domestic enemies. The new revolutionaries identified the King and Queen among those enemies -- quite correctly -- and therefore demanded that the monarchy be abolished and that a National Convention be called to write a constitution for a republic. The Legislative Assembly, overawed by the show of force, did what it was told.
A new phase of the French Revolution, in which various factions would try to restructure society ever more radically. Those who undertook restructuring were under constant threat of violence of those who disapproved.
Ostensibly , the calling of the Convention was a victory for democracy. All men, not just the wealthier "active citizens" could vote for the electoral colleges that chose delegates. This vote took place in September of 1792.
But the role of force in those elections was clear to everyone. The elections were rigged, most successfully by the Jacobin Club and its affiliates, who watched the polls and intimidated the 10% of the eligible voters who bothered to show up.
The most famous case of intimidation was the September Massacres in Paris. At the beginning of that month the prisons of Paris were invaded by mobs who tried all the inmates in kangaroo courts, which convicted and executed about half of them -- approximately 1300 in all. The Massacres usually treated as a spontaneous outburst of popular hatred for the enemies of the revolution -- even though most killed were common criminals. That hatred existed, but But the Massacres were as spontaneous as death squad killings today, and served the same purpose. The leaders of the mobs were paid agents of the Paris Commune, which made no attempt to stop the proceedings, which took several days. And the beginning of the Massacres, September 2, was timed to coincide with the elections to the Convention. The Parisian electoral college, on its way to vote, was marched right by a pile of bleeding corpses. Understandably, their deliberations, which took place at the Jacobin club, resulted in an all-Jacobin slate of delegates being sent to the Convention
Lord Acton, who lectured on this subject a century ago at Cambridge, has provided two quotations from Jacobin leaders of the time. Collot d'Herbois, a future member of the Committee of Public Safety, said "The 2nd of September is the first article of the creed of Liberty. Without it there would be no National Convention." Danton, one of the foremost enemies of the monarchy, both explained the Massacre and laid out the program for the future: "France is not republican. We can only establish a Republic by the intimidation of its enemies."
The National Convention was not, therefore, a body that represented public opinion in France. Rather, it was group of the most zealous believers in the Revolution. Their real claim to power was their leadership in a movement of national regenereation.
Thus the proceedings of the Convention became a continuing competition in virtue and radicalism, with each set of winners taking a bloody revenge on the lastbunch, and becoming the targets of new, even more radical leaders. The struggle within the Convention, and its ruthlessness are explained by several factors. . The revolution was in real danger, both from foreign armies and from a variety of disaffected people at home.
Paris was still short of affordable food, which made the popular agitators impatient with any delay in finding and punishing those whom they held responsible for such subversion.
And finally, the revolutionaries lacked the idea that there could be a loyal opposition. Any opposition must spring from ill-will, even treason. And indeed, those who opposed the revolution, for whatever reason, also lacked this idea.
Thus the two years that followed the fall of the monarchy (1792-4) is a story of executions, purges, and civil war.
The first execution was that Louis XVI, who was brought before the Convention on charges of treason. He was easily convicted, because the evidence was overwhelming. What the penalty should be was more contentious. The Girondist party, a group that had passed for radical in the early part of 1792, hesitated at execution, but was defeated -- by a single vote. Louis was hustled off to the guillotine (Jan. 1793), and the Gironde was discredited for its lack of dedication.
As a result, the "purer" and more radical "Mountain" took the initiative, the ountain being the Jacobin-led party that sat in the high seats on the left side of he hall. In 1793, the Girondists were gradually crowded out of the assembly by Danton and Robespierre (leaders of the Mountain). Mobs influenced by the Jacobins and the Commune of Paris finally forced the Convention to purge and execute 31 Girondist deputies, including men who had dominated the government six months earlier. (May-June 1793)
The Mountain then took power. The question was, whether they could hold on to it.
In 1793, the Convention faced three sets of actual or potential enemies.
1. There were the royalists and their foreign allies. Austria, Prussia, Britain and Holland, all committed to overthrowing the revolutionary government. The royalist revolt of the Vendée (in the west of France).
2. Federalists. French federalists believed in decentralization, in limiting the role of Paris in directing local affairs. The federalists included many who resented the role of the capital's mobs and clubs and section assemblies in making policy that affected the whole country. Example: further attacks on Christianity emanating from Paris. Of course, the Convention saw any resistance by such men as disloyalty, especially since the displaced Girondists were active in these revolts.
3. The third dangerous group included the mobs, clubs, and assemblies of Paris, the voice of the sans-culottes, men (though there were women too) who though they could not afford the culottes of a gentlemen, and wore plain trousers, had become a political force, a democratic force, a force that pushed a government they still distrusted for even more radical changes.
This third group were among the first to claim they stood for democracy (a word seldom used postively before, even in the American Revolution).
Were they democrats? Yes and no.
In an important sense they were as democratic as the Nazis or the Bolsheviks, not at all. Their basic appeal to force.
But they were by 1793 a real cross-section of the city's population. Workers, apprentices, small craftsmen, inspired the idea of direct democracy, exercised more power than ever before.
However, the sans-culottes were not, however, composed of any single social group, many were quite well- off bourgeois. Certainly the sans-culottes enjoyed the complete confidence of no economically-defined social class.
Rather, ideologically dedicated minority, those who were willing to attend meetings, demonstrate, even fight in the street. To be a sans-culotte took dedication. To take the wrong line at a section or club meeting might lead to denunciation and death.
If the Republic was going to survive this disorder, the emergence of some form of central control was necessary. This was achieved beginning in 1793 by several measures.
1. The Montagnard (Mountain) representatives in the Convention pacified the sans-culottes by taking firm action against prices. Earlier revolutionary leaders, inspired by a faith in the free market, had been unwilling to do this (it was an attack on property.
Under the Mountain, the demands of the poor and near-poor for a safety net were recognized, and all- embracing price control legislation was brought it. Forceful actionsto obtain food for Paris were taken simultaneously. There were even promises made to redistribute the property of the disloyal rich among the deserving poor, promises that were never carried out.
2. At about the same time, the Convention declared a state of emergency, during which everyone in France should consider him or herself at the service of the state. All able bodied men were declared liable for military service. This levee en masse was successful in both raising fourteen new armies to fight at home and at the frontiers, and in diverting popular energy into channels where it could be controlled.
These measures, and others to produce munitions and feed the army and navy, were under the direction of the famous Committee of Public Safety, which, for less than a year,(July 1793-June 1794) controlled the government. This period is known as the Reign of Terror, and for good reason.
The Committee continued the policy of using any means necessary to root out opposition to the cause. A ruthless purge of subversives. These subversives included both those who spoke for moderation and those who wanted more radical measures. In other words, there was no objective standard of loyalty.
During the Reign of Terror, about 20,000 people died for being royalists, Girondins, federalists, or Hébertists, in other words urban radicals. Danton, the man most influential in bringing down the king, was executed for going soft. (This left Robespierre as the dominant figure).
Not a period of chaos. In fact it was the end of chaos, as the Committee of Public Safety established its predominance over all the other revolutionary associations. R.R. Palmer compared the committee to a 20th c. wartime cabinet. This makes a good point. The committee was not a group of wild men, rather a determined, businesslike bunch whose determined purpose was the defense of the country and the revolutionary government -- and it succeeded.
Was it worth it? Could the same goal have been accomplished in another way? It is hard to avoid the fact that this first avowedly modern democratic government was also the first modern dictatorship (though there was no single dictator). It was effective partly because it was a revolutionary government, not shackled by privilege and out-of-date thinking.
But there was more to the effectiveness of the Committee and the Convention than that. Their efforts were fueled by a secular religion that was shared by a dynamic minority of their compatriots, who willingly followed where they were led.
It was a religion that professed human equality, reason -- and nationalism. According to the revolutionaries, all Frenchmen were equal partners in a great mission to free themselves and the rest of the world from slavery, and to create a better civilization. Because their beliefs had no obvious supernatural element, we might overlook its religious essence. But it had all the inspirational power of religion.
One of the greatest successes of the French Revolution was the incubation of this faith, which survived the First Republic to become a force that could be exploited even by emperors and kings, and which easily spread to other peoples besides the French.
But the faith failed to save the Republic as a Republic. Terror must eventually burn itself out -- to save themselves, the survivors will eventually end it on one excuse or another. Eventually the committee turned on Robespierre, whom they blamed for terror getting out of control. He and his closest collaborator were overthrown and executed in July of 1794.
But those who overthrew Robespierre could reach no consensus save the consensus against terror. The Terror had confirmed and tended the Revolutionary faith -- but also confirmed the "infidels" in opposition to it. France still had no government that enjoyed general support, and after the Terror the Convention drifted.
Central control was reasserted eventually by military dictatorship, which transformed itself into a new model monarchy, with Napoleon as a younger, more talented, single-minded Cromwell. The French Revolution had given him a tool that would allow him to beat the rest of Europe -- an administratively reformed state that could claim and inspire dedication from many if not all of its citizens, given the right circumstances.
By making himself the high priest of the French revolutionary religion, Napoleon exercised an absolutism beyond the grasp of Louis XIV. With the emergence of what is often called the nation-state, a state supported by a religious faith in its national mission, we end the course.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution
R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution
R.R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled
George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution
R.B. Rose, The Making of the Sans-Culottes: Democratic ideals and institutions in Paris, 1789- 92
J.M. Thompson, Robespierre.
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