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Help us keep publishing stories that provide scholarly context to the news. Few were nobles, very few were clergymen, and the majority came from the middle class. The members were generally young, and since none had sat in the previous Assembly, largely lacked national political experience. The rightists within the assembly consisted of about Feuillants constitutional monarchists , whose chief leaders, Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette and Antoine Barnave, remained outside the Assembly because of their ineligibility for re-election.
They were staunch constitutional monarchists, firm in their defense of the King against the popular agitation.
The leftists were Jacobins still including the party later known as the Girondins or Girondists and Cordeliers a populist group, whose many members would later become the radical Montagnards. They were committed to the ideals of the Revolution and thus generally inclined to side with the left but would also occasionally back proposals from the right.
Some historians dispute these numbers and estimate that the Legislative Assembly consisted of about Feuillants the right , about Jacobins including Girondins; the left , and about deputies, who did not belong to any definite party but voted most often with the left. The differences emerge from how historians approach data in primary sources, where numbers reported by the clubs do not overlap with analyses of club membership conducted independently by name.
The Legislative Assembly was driven by two opposing groups. The first were conservative members of the bourgeoisie wealthy middle class in the Third Estate that favored a constitutional monarchy, represented by the Feuillants, who felt that the revolution had already achieved its goal. The other group was the democratic faction for whom the king could no longer be trusted, represented by the new members of the Jacobin club that claimed that more revolutionary measures were necessary.
From the beginning, relations between the king and the Legislative Assembly were hostile. The war declared on April 20, , against Austria soon joined by Prussia started as a disaster for the French. Tensions between Louis XVI and the Legislative Assembly intensified and the blame for war failures was thrown first upon the king and his ministers and the Girondins party. The King vetoed the decrees and dismissed Girondins from the Ministry.
When the king formed a new cabinet mostly of Feuillants, the breach between the king on the one hand and the Assembly and the majority of the common people of Paris on the other widened. The Demonstration of June 20, , followed as the last peaceful attempt made by the people of Paris to persuade King Louis XVI of France to abandon his current policy and attempt to follow what they believed to be a more empathetic approach to governing.
The popular demonstration of June 20, , was organized to put pressure on the King. The Girondins made a last advance to Louis offering to save the monarchy if he would accept them as ministers. His refusal united all the Jacobins in the project of overturning the monarchy by force. The local leaders of this new stage of the revolution were assisted in their work by the fear of invasion by the allied army.
The Assembly declared the country in danger and the Brunswick Manifesto, combined with the news that Austrian and Prussian armies had marched into French soil, heated the republican spirit to fury. On the night of August 10, , insurgents and popular militias supported by the revolutionary Paris Commune assailed the Tuileries Palace and massacred the Swiss Guards assigned for the protection of the king.
The royal family became prisoners and a rump session of the Legislative Assembly suspended the monarchy. Little more than a third of the deputies were present, almost all of them Jacobins. What remained of a national government depended on the support of the insurrectionary Commune. With enemy troops advancing, the Commune looked for potential traitors in Paris and sent a circular letter to the other cities of France inviting them to follow this example.
In Paris and many other cities, the massacres of prisoners and priests known as September Massacres followed. The Assembly could offer only feeble resistance. In October, however, there was a counterattack accusing the instigators of being terrorists.
This led to a political contest between the more moderate Girondists and the more radical Montagnards inside the Convention, with rumor used as a weapon by both sides. The Girondists lost ground when they seemed too conciliatory, but the pendulum swung again after the men who endorsed the massacres were denounced as terrorists. Chaos persisted until the National Convention, elected by universal male suffrage and charged with writing a new constitution, met on September 20, , and became the new de facto government of France.
The Legislative Assembly ceased to exist. The next day, the Convention abolished the monarchy and declared a republic. The Insurrection of August 10, , was one of the defining events in the history of the French Revolution. The next day the Convention abolished the monarchy and declared a republic.
On November 20, opinion turned sharply against Louis following the discovery of a secret cache of documents of his personal communications.
Most of the pieces of correspondence in the cabinet involved ministers of Louis XVI, but others involved most of the big players of the Revolution. These documents, despite the likely gaps and pre-selection showed the duplicity of advisers and ministers—at least those that Louis XVI trusted—who had set up parallel policies.
The trial began on December 3. Louis XVI sought the most illustrious legal minds in France as his defense team.
It was even suggested that Mailhe had been paid, perhaps by Spanish gold. Paris voted overwhelmingly for death, 21 to 3. There were voters in total. Louis was to be put to death. His royal seal was to go to the Dauphin and his wedding ring to the Queen. At 10 a. She was guillotined on October 16, The body of Louis XVI was immediately transported to the old Church of the Madeleine demolished in , since the legislation in force forbade burial of his remains beside those of his father, the Dauphin Louis de France, at Sens.
In April , members of the Montagnards went on to establish the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre, which would be responsible for the Terror September 5, — July 28, , the bloodiest and one of the most controversial phases of the French Revolution. The time between and was dominated by the radical ideology until the execution of Robespierre in July Across Europe, conservatives were horrified and monarchies called for war against revolutionary France.
France declared war against Britain and the Netherlands on February 1, , and soon afterwards against Spain. Thus, the First Coalition was formed. The period of the Jacobin rule known as the Reign of Terror, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, was the first time in history that terror became an official government policy with the stated aim to use violence to achieve a higher political goal.
The Committee—composed at first of nine and later of 12 members—assumed its role of protecting the newly established republic against foreign attacks and internal rebellion. As a wartime measure, the Committee was given broad supervisory powers over military, judicial, and legislative efforts. It was formed as an administrative body to supervise and expedite the work of the executive bodies of the Convention and the government ministers appointed by the Convention.
As the Committee tried to meet the dangers of a coalition of European nations and counter-revolutionary forces within the country, it became more and more powerful. In July , following the defeat at the Convention of the Girondists, the prominent leaders of the radical Jacobins—Maximilien Robespierre and Saint-Just —were added to the Committee.
The power of the Committee peaked between August and July under the leadership of Robespierre. In December , the Convention formally conferred executive power upon the Committee and Robespierre established a virtual dictatorship. Influenced by 18th-century Enlightenment philosophes such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, Robespierre was a capable articulator of the beliefs of the left-wing bourgeoisie and a deist. He opposed the dechristianization of France during the French Revolution.
In June , Paris sections took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone.
The Jacobins identified themselves with the popular movement and the sans-culottes, who in turn saw popular violence as a political right. The sans-culottes, exasperated by the inadequacies of the government, invaded the Convention and overthrew the Girondins.
In their place they endorsed the political ascendancy of the Jacobins. Robespierre came to power on the back of street violence. Meanwhile, on June 24, the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, the French Constitution of It was ratified by public referendum but never put into force. Because of this fear, several other pieces of legislation passed that furthered the Jacobin domination of the Revolution.
This led to the consolidation, extension, and application of emergency government devices to maintain what the Revolution considered control. Although the Girondins and the Jacobins were both on the extreme left and shared many of the same radical republican convictions, the Jacobins were more brutally efficient in setting up a war government.
The year of Jacobin rule was the first time in history that terror became an official government policy, with the stated aim to use violence to achieve a higher political goal. The Jacobins were meticulous in maintaining a legal structure for the Terror, so clear records exist for official death sentences. However, many more were murdered without formal sentences pronounced in a court of law.
The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion or because others had a stake in getting rid of them. The execution of the Girondins, moderate republicans, enemies of the more radical Jacobins. The passing of the Law of Suspects stepped political terror up to a much higher level of cruelty.
This created a mass overflow in the prison systems. As a result, the prison population of Paris increased from 1, to 4, people over a three months. In October , a new law made all suspected priests and persons who harbored them liable to summary execution.
The climax of extreme anti-clericalism was reached with the celebration of the goddess Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral in November. In June , Robespierre, who favored deism over atheism and had previously condemned the Cult of Reason, recommended that the convention acknowledge the existence of his god. On the next day, the worship of the deistic Supreme Being was inaugurated as an official aspect of the revolution. This austere new religion of virtue was received with signs of hostility by the Parisian public.
Following a decisive military victory over Austria at the Battle of Fleurus, Robespierre was overthrown on July 27, His fall was brought about by conflicts between those who wanted more power for the Committee of Public Safety and a more radical policy than he was willing to allow and moderates who completely opposed the revolutionary government.
Robespierre tried to commit suicide before his execution by shooting himself, although the bullet only shattered his jaw. He was guillotined on July The reign of the standing Committee of Public Safety was ended.
The National Convention , the first French assembly elected by universal male suffrage, transitioned from being paralyzed by factional conflicts to becoming the legislative body overseeing the Reign of Terror and eventually accepting the Constitution of The National Convention was a single-chamber assembly in France from September 20, , to October 26, , during the French Revolution. At the same time, it was decided that deputies to that convention should be elected by all Frenchmen ages 25 and older domiciled for a year and living by the product of their labor.
The National Convention was therefore the first French assembly elected by universal male suffrage, without distinctions of class. The election took place in September Owing to the abstention of aristocrats and anti-republicans and the fear of victimization, the voter turnout was low — The universal male suffrage had thus very little impact and the voters elected the same sort of men that the active citizens had chosen in The full number of deputies was , not counting 33 from the French colonies, of whom only some arrived in Paris.
According to its own ruling, the Convention elected its President, who was eligible for re-election, every fortnight. For both legislative and administrative purposes, the Convention used committees, with powers regulated by successive laws. Most historians divide the National Convention into two main factions: the Girondins and the Mountain or the Montagnards in this context, also referred to as Jacobins. The Girondins represented the more moderate elements of the Convention and protested the vast influence held in the Convention by Parisians.
The Montagnards, representing a considerably larger portion of the deputies, were much more radical and held strong connections to the sans-culottes of Paris. Traditionally, historians have identified a centrist faction called the Plain, but many historians tend to blur the line between the Plain and the Girondins. Within days, the Convention was overtaken by factional conflicts.
Girondins were convinced that their opponents aspired to a bloody dictatorship, while the Montagnards believed that Girondins were ready for any compromise with conservatives and royalists that would guarantee their remaining in power. The bitter enmity soon paralyzed the Convention. The political deadlock, which had repercussions all over France, eventually drove both major factions to accept dangerous allies, royalists in the case of Girondins and the sans-culottes in that of the Montagnards.
In June , 80, armed sans-culottes surrounded the Convention. After deputies who attempted to leave were met with guns, they resigned themselves to declare the arrest of 29 leading Girondins. Thus, the Girondins ceased to be a political force. Throughout the winter of and spring of , Paris was plagued by food riots and mass hunger. The new Convention, occupied mostly with matters of war, did little to remedy the problem until April when they created the Committee of Public Safety. The French also established a new clock, in which the day was divided in ten hours of a hundred minutes of a hundred seconds - exactly , seconds per day.
The mathematicians contributed equal month division, and a decimal measures of time. The poets contributed the name of the days, choosing the names of plants, domestic animals and tools; the months rhyme three by three, according to the "sonority" of the seasons. The calendar was one of the great reforms undertaken by the national Convention, like the Metric system.
A year consists of or days, divided into 12 months of 30 days each, followed by 5 or 6 additional days. The months were:.
This was an attempt to de-Christianize the calendar, but it was an unpopular move, because now there were 9 work days between each day of rest, whereas the Gregorian Calendar had only 6 work days between each Sunday. Each year was supposed to start on autumnal equinox around 22 September , but this created problems as will be seen below.
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