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Emergency Republic 1792-1795 The Terror. Section 9.44. The National Convention 9/1792. Met on 9/20/92 and proclaimed Year 1 of French Republic Military successes expanded France French occupy Belgium, Savoy region, the Rhine and Austrian Border - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Emergency Republic 1792-
1795 The Terror
Section 9.44
The National Convention 9/1792• Met on 9/20/92 and proclaimed Year 1
of French Republic• Military successes expanded France• French occupy Belgium, Savoy
region, the Rhine and Austrian Border• N.C. abolishes privileged position of
the nobility as it expands• British and Dutch can’t tolerate
occupation of Belgium and begin talks with the coalition
• Partitioning of Poland issue and mutual distrust weakened emerging coalition against France
Radicals get more Radical• The Convention becomes more
radical• All leaders were Jacobins but
they began to split into:• Girondins
– Came from provincial cities• Called Mountain or Montagnards
– Liked to sit in highest seats in the hall
– More radical group– Represented the city of Paris
(especially its radical element)
Radicals get more Radical
Sans-culottes – working class interestswore long trousers and not breeches or culottes as middle and upper classes didwere pre-industrial shopkeepers, shop assistants, skilled artisansextremely militantfeared that Convention might be too moderatefavored direct democracyGirondins saw them as anarchistsPromoted military engagement to protect the revolutionDenounced the king and queenLook to the Mountain for leadership
Execution of the King• Convention put King on trial for
treason in Dec. 92
• 1/15/93 pronounced him guilty and of 721 deputies, 361 (majority by 1) sentenced him to death
• regicides could then never allow Bourbons back in power
• those against execution are branded as Girondins, moderates, counterrevolutionaries
Background to the terror• Military events turn against the French 4/1793
– General Dumouriez defects to Austria and invasion in threatening
• Wages, prices, food shortages become acute• Activated the sans-culottes who call for:
– Price controls– Currency controls– Rationing– Control against hoarding food– Requisitioning– Denounced the bourgeois as exploiters and
profiteers
•Mountain sides with Sans-culottes against Girondin5/31/93 demonstrators invade the Convention and arrest Girondin leaders•Other Girondins flee to provinces (including Condorcet)
Mountain faces many difficulties• Enemy at the borders• Insurrection in the rural areas• Vendee peasants revolt against
conscription• Cities rebel• Lyon, Bordeauz, Marseilles
want decentralization of Parisian control
• Rebellions serve émigrés and clerics against the revolution
• Robespierre comes to the leadership
Maximilien Robespierre• A Jacobin, against anarchy• Was he a bloodthirsty fanatic, dictator,
demagogye or an idealist, visionary, patriot?• He was unselfish, honest, integrity, “the
Incorruptible”• Noted in early stage of Revolution for his views
against capital punishment and favor toward universal suffrage
• Prominent member of Mountain and welcomed purge of Girondins
• Believed strongly in idea of a Republic of Virtue– unselfish public spirit, civic zeal, personal
uprightness, purity of life
Program of Convention 1793-1794: The Terror
Program of the Convention was to :
• Repress anarchy and counterrevolution
• Win the war
• Prepare a democratic constitution
• Convention granted wide powers to the Committee of Public Safety
Reign of Terror• Set up Revolutionary courts• Committee of General Security –
supreme political police• Victims included: Marie
Antoinette, royalists, old Jacobins, Girondins, Mountain, peasants (70 percent of victims)
• Atrocities left feelings of antipathy to the Revolution and to republicanism
• At Nantes, two thousand were loaded on barges and drowned
The Committee of Public Safety• Operated as a joint dictatorship or war cabinet• Issued Bulletin des loix• all persons could know what laws were
supposed to enforce or obey• declared levee en masse• Conscripted all able bodied men• Enlisted scientists to develop technologies for
the war• Economic controls• price and wage controls• Produced a constitution but held off
implementing it because of the military “emergency”
• universal male suffrage after emergency is over• Manorial regime is done away with
The Committee of Public Safety• Public improvements and social services• Abolished slavery in the French colonies
1794• Toussaiant L”Ouverture had led the slave
revolt in 1791 in Haiti• Repressed “ultra-revolutionary” voices • called enragesand led by Jacques
Hebert(journalist, officer in Commune)• they denounced bourgeousie and merchants• Herbert had directed the mass drownings at
Nantes
The Committee of Public SafetyCalled for DechristianinzationBlot out all Christian cycles and replace with Republican calendar (10 day decade (not week), 30 day months
see bottom of page 373Committee of Public Safety orders toleranceRobespierre: created the cult of the Supreme BeingRecognizes the existence of God and the immortality of the soulTurns Catholics and freethinkers against himCommittee fights Hebertists (leading the working class)
The Revolution eats its own• Committee declares the
right of the Mountain (Dantonists) as counterrevolutionaries and they are executed
• Georges Jacques Danton• Undistinguished until 3rd
year of Revolution• Organized much of the
Terror while a member of the Committee of P. S.
• April he was sent to guillotine by his opponents
• “Show my head to the people; they do not see the like every day.”
The French Military• 800,000 strong; more motivated than opponents
• officers promoted on grounds of merit, not birth• Coalition distracted by third partition of Poland)• 6/1794 France invades Belgium, Netherlands• Military victories make France less tolerant of
Committee of Public Safety’s strict leadership• National Convention afraid of its own ruling
committee• So: group in the Convention votes to outlaw
Robespierre 7/27/1794 (9 Thermidor)– Robespierre is executed with his associates the
next day– Troubles of France are blamed on Robespierre to
protect Convention from public criticism
The Thermidorian Reaction• The Terror subsides• The Convention Reduces the power of
the Committee of Public Safety• Price controls are removed and
inflation resumes• Disoriented and leaderless working
class erupts into insurrection• Barricades in Paris – army comes • Foreshadows the social revolution to
come• Reaction is led by bourgeois
Bourgeois had been the secure element of the Old RegimeLawyers, officeholders, some land holders becamethe nouveaux richesSelf serving, ostentatious, and disreputable,they unleashed a White Terror (Jacobins were simply murdered)They still believed in individual rights and a
written constitution, and Produced the Constitution of the Year III (1795)
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