Discussion 7

Lecture 13

The French Revolution: The Radical Stage, 1792-

1794

The proof necessary to convict the enemies

of the people is every kind of evidence,

either material or moral or verbal or written.

. . . Every citizen has the right to seize

conspirators and counter-revolutionaries and

to arraign them before magistrates. He is

required to denounce them when he knows

of them.

Law of 22 Prairial Year II (June 10, 1794)

Inflamed by their poverty and hatred of wealth, the SANS-

CULOTTES insisted that it was the duty of the government to

guarantee them the right to existence. Such a policy ran

counter to the bourgeois aspirations of the National

Assembly. The sans-culottes demanded that the revolutionary

government immediately increase wages, fix prices, end food

shortages, punish hoarders and most important, deal with the

existence of counter-revolutionaries. In terms of social ideals

the sans-culottes wanted laws to prevent extremes of both

wealth and property. Their vision was of a nation of small

shopkeepers and small farmers. They favored a democratic

republic in which the voice of the common man could be

heard. In this respect, their ideology falls into line with that of

Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the English radical who argued

that the best form of government was the one which

governed least: government should guarantee basic natural

rights and then lay off the citizen (on Paine, see Lecture 14).

In other words, and this is important to grasp, the social and

economic ideas of the sans-culottes were politicized by the

Revolution itself.

On AUGUST 10,

1792, enraged

Parisian men and

women attacked

the king’s palace

and killed several

hundred Swiss

Guards. The result

of this journee was

the radicalization

of the Revolution.

Louis and Marie

Antoinette were forced to flee the Tuileries and took refuge in

the Legislative Assembly itself. The royal family was placed

under house arrest, and lived rather comfortably, but the king

could not perform any of his political functions. Although the

revolutionaries had drafted a constitution, now they had no

monarch.

By September, Paris was in turmoil. Fearing counter-

revolution, the sans-culottes destroyed prisons because they

believed they were secretly sheltering conspirators. More

than one thousand people were killed. Street fights broke out

everywhere and barricades were set up in various quarters of

the city. All this was done in order to consolidate the

Revolution – to keep it moving forward. On September 21 st

and 22 nd

, 1792, the monarchy was officially abolished and a

republic established. The 22 nd

of September, 1792 was now

known as day one of the year one. In December, Louis XVI

was placed on TRIAL for violating the liberty of his subjects

and on January 21, 1793, Louis was executed like an ordinary

criminal. From this time on, the Revolution had no recourse

but to move forward.

After the execution of

Louis, the National

Assembly, now known as

the National Convention,

faced enormous

problems. The value of

paper currency

(assignats) used to

finance the Revolution

had fallen by 50%. There

was price inflation,

continued food shortages, and various peasant rebellions

against the Revolution occurred across the countryside.

France was close to civil war.

Meanwhile, the revolutionaries found themselves not only at

war with Austria and Prussia, but with Holland, Spain and

Great Britain. As the Revolution stumbled under the weight of

foreign war and civil war, the revolutionary leadership grew

more radical. Up to June 1793, moderate reformers had

dominated the National Convention. These were the

Girondins, men who favored a decentralized government in

which the various provinces or departments would determine

their own affairs. The Girondins also opposed government

interference in the economy.

In June 1793, factional disputes with the Convention resulted

in the replacement of the Girondins with the Jacobins, a far

more radical group. The Jacobins and Girondins were both

liberal and bourgeois, but the Jacobins desired a centralized

government (in which they would hold key positions), Paris as

the national capital, and temporary government control of

the economy. The Jacobin platform managed to win the

support of the sans-culottes. The Jacobins were tightly

organized, well-disciplined and convinced that they alone

were responsible for saving and "managing" the Revolution

from this point forward. On June 22, 1793, 80,000 armed

sans-culottes surrounded the meeting halls of the National

Convention and demanded the immediate arrest of the

Girondin faction. The Convention yielded to the mob and 29

Girondin members of the Convention were arrested.

The Jacobins now had firm control not only of the Convention,

but the French nation as well. They were the government.

And they now had even more pressing problems: civil war

was everywhere, economic distress had not been lifted, they

had to keep the sans-culottes satisfied, they suffered

continued threats of foreign invasion and the nation’s ports

had all been blockaded. They lived, dreading the possibility

that if they failed, so too would the Revolution. Only strong

leadership could save the Revolution. The Committee of

Public Safety assumed leadership, in April 1793. As a branch

of the National Convention itself, the Committee of Public

Safety had broad powers which included the organization of

the nation’s defenses, all foreign policy, and the supervision

of ministers. The Committee also ordered arrests and trials of

counter-revolutionaries and imposed government authority

across the nation. What is amazing is that only twelve men

controlled the CPS, although the CPS was ultimately led by

MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794).

In Robespierre's utopian vision, the individual

has the duty "to detest bad faith and

despotism, to punish tyrants and traitors, to

assist the unfortunate and respect the weak, to

defend the oppressed, to do all the good one

can to one's neighbor, and to behave with

justice towards all men." Robespierre was a

disciple of Rousseau--both considered the

general will an absolute necessity. For Robespierre, the

realization of the general will would make the Republic of

Virtue a reality. Its denial would mean a return to despotism.

Robespierre knew that a REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE could not

become a reality unless the threats of foreign and civil war

were removed. To preserve the Republic, Robespierre and the

CPS instituted the Reign of Terror. Counter-revolutionaries, the

Girondins, priests, nobles, and aristocrats immediately fell

under suspicion. Danton (1759-1794), a revolutionary who

sought peace with Europe, was executed.

The CPS also closed the numerous political clubs of the sans-

culottes. The CPS feared spontaneous action, that is, that the

revolutionary leadership might pass into other hands. About

17,000 people died as a result of the Terror. The choice

instrument, was the guillotine -- it was quick and humane. In

1794, there were mass executions at Lyons. Boats were fired

upon and sunk at Nantes -- 500 were killed in one execution.

About 15,000 people perished officially and over 100,000

people were detained as suspects.

Robespierre and the CPS resorted to the

Terror but not because they were blood-

thirsty madmen. They did, however, wish to

create a temporary dictatorship in order to

save the Republic (a Roman idea). By the

summer of 1794, there seem to be less need

for the Terror. The Republic seemed a reality,

an aristocratic conspiracy had subsided, the

will to punish traitors decreased, and most

sans-culottes went home to tend to

business. And, as the need for the Terror

decreased, so too did Robespierre's power

and leadership. Some members of the

Convention, fearing for their own lives, ordered the arrest of

Robespierre. On July 27, 1794, (the NINTH of THERMIDOR)

Robespierre was arrested and guillotined the next day -- the

sans-culottes made no attempt to save him. With the 9th of

Thermidor, the machinery of the Jacobin republic was

dismantled. Leadership passed to the property owning

bourgeoisie, that is, those men of the moderate stage of the

Revolution (see Lecture 12).

By 1795, the government had passed into the hands of the

five-man Directory. The new legislature sat in two chambers:

the Council of 500 and the Ancients (or Senate). The

Directory tried to preserve the Revolution of 1789 – they

opposed the restoration of the ancien regime as well as

popular democracy. They refused to leave the door open for

either the excessive radicalism of the Jacobins or the

spontaneity of the sans-culottes. The Directory muddled on

until 1799. By this time the French Revolution was over and

the French tried to get back to business as usual. Radicalism

had been effectively thwarted as well. But France was still at

war with the rest of Europe. And because of the war,

leadership began to pass into the hands of generals. One of

these generals would seize control of the government in

November 1799. And on December 2, 1804, this general,

Napoleon Bonaparte, would declare himself Emperor of the

French -- the new Augustus Caesar. As François Furet [The

French Revolution, 1770-1814, (Blackwell, 1996)] has

remarked:

Ten years after 1789, the French Revolution had largely

become in public opinion that very special something

which eluded [Benjamin] Constant's analysis: a

universalist nationalism, in which the historian can

discern its component elements of anti-aristocratic

passion and rationalism, transfigured by the idea of the

nation's historico-military election. The Directory could no

more identify this mixture of sentiments than it could

reassure those whose interests were threatened. On both

sides there was the implicit demand for a king, but one

who was radically different from other kings, since he

would be born of the sovereignty of the people and of

reason. This was where Napoleon Bonaparte, king of the

French Revolution, was born. In 1789, the French had

created a Republic, under the name of a monarchy. Ten

years later, they created a monarchy, under the name of

a Republic. (215)

With all this now behind us, what did the Revolution

accomplish? First, the Revolution weakened the political

influence and leadership of the aristocracy. The aristocrats

lost their privileges based on birth because from this point

on, privilege would now be based on property and wealth. As

the sans-culottes quickly realized, one evil simply replaced

another. Second, because careers were open to talent, the

bourgeoisie had access to the highest positions in the state.

In fact, throughout the 19 th

century, the French state was a

bourgeois state which echoed middle-class needs and values.

Third, the Revolution transformed the dynastic state of the

ancien regime into the modern state (natural, liberal, secular

and rational). The state was no longer just a federation of

provinces, it was not the private property of the king. Instead,

the state now belonged to the people. The individual,

formerly a subject in the old order, was now a citizen, with

specific rights as well as duties. Lastly, the Revolution

managed to give practical application to the ideas of the

philosophes -- equality before the law, trial by jury, the

freedom of religion, speech and the press. In the 19 th

century, all these ideas led to the quickening pace of reform.

And in that century, the voices of the sans-culottes would be

heard once more. All these developments were accelerated

by the Industrial Revolution itself (see Lecture 17). While the

French Revolution politicized the sans-culottes, the Industrial

Revolution industrialized them. Both events had the ultimate

effect of making the European working classes.