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Example research essay topic: Committee Of Public Safety Sans Culottes - 3,531 words

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... ards - Believe the attack was over until the Swiss started firing, King ordered his Swiss grade to cease fire - THE RISING WAS AS MUCH A REJECTION OF THE ASSEMBLY AS IT WAS OF THE KING - Deputies had to hand over the King to the Commune, who imprisoned him - As a consequence of the fall of the monarchy, the 1791 Constitution became inoperative. The Assembly had to agree to the election, by universal male suffrage, of a National Convention to draw up a new, democratic constitution - The constitutional monarchists, about 2 / 3 of the deputies, did not feel safe, so they stayed away from the Assembly and went into hiding - Left the GIRONDINS in charge, the beneficiaries of a revolution they had tired to avoid - Convention met for the first time 20 September 1792. On the next day they abolished the monarchy REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT AND THE TERROR -symbol of the Terror is the guillotine, and is symbol most ppl have in mind when they think of the French Revolution, bloodthirsty purges, terrified citizens, dictatorship and the suppression of the liberties which had been so triumphantly announced in the Declaration of Rights and Man in 1789. French historians Free and Richet saw the period from August 1792 to July 1794 as time when militant sans culottes knocked the revolution off course STRUGGLE FOR POWER: GIRONDINS AND JACOBINS THE CONVENTION (20 September 1792 - 26 October 1795) - all men over 21 could vote in the elections to the Convention - but the result was distorted by fear and intimidation - IN Paris, all who had shown royalist sympathies were disfranchised - Thus all 24 members for Paris were Jacobins, republicans, and supporters of the Commune - Robespierre came head od the poll in the capital - At first about 200 Girondins and 100 Jacobins in the Convention - Majority of the deputies, uncommitted to either group, know as the Plain or March - middle ground they sat - Until 2 June 1793 the history of the Convention is that of a struggle between the Girondins and Jacobins - The latter came to be known as Montagnards (Jacobins) as Girondins too members of the Jacobin club - Girondins and Montagnards were all bourgeois and agreed on most policies - Both strongly in the Revolution and the Republic, hated privileges, were and-clerical and favoured a liberal economic policy - Both wanted a more Enlightened and humane France - Differed in source of suppor - Both Girondins and Montagnards committed to winning the war but the latter more flexible in their approach - Girondins thought that Robespierre wanted a bloody dictatorship, the Montagnards convinced that the Girondins would compromise with conservative, even royal, forces to stay impower - They therefore, accused them of supporting center-revolution - As neither side had the majority in the Assembly each needed to have the support of the Plain - They too were bourgeois, believe in economic liberalism and were deeply afraid of the popular movement - At first supported the Girondins, who provided most of the ministers and dominated most of the Assembly's committees SEPTEMBER MASSACRES - August the situation of the French armies on the frontier was desperate, Lafayette fled to the Austrians on 7 August - With leading general deserting, who could still be trusted? - Panic and fear of treachery swept the country - By the beginning of September Verdun, the last major fortress on the road to Paris, was about to surrender - Commune called on all patriots to take up arms, thousands volunteered to defend the capital and the revolution - BUT ONCE THEY HAD LEFT FOR THE FRONT, THERE WAS CONCERN ABOUT THE OVERCROWDED PRISONS, WHERE THERE WAS A RUMOUR WHERE THERE WERE MANY PRIEST S AND NOBLES, COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY SUSPECTS - a rumour arose that they wee plotting to escape, kill the helpless population and hand the city over to the Prussians - Marat, called for conspirators to be killed - Massacre of prisoners began 2 September and continued for 5 days - Killers the sans-culottes - this massacre cast a shadow over the first meeting of the Convention - just as the routines of war had brought about the September Massacres, they also brought an end to this part of the Terror - political history of the first phase of the National Convention (20 September 1792 to 2 June 1793) is that of the power struggle b / w Girondins and montagnards - it was clouded by the debate over the arraignment, trial and execution of the King, and the political contest for power among the divided republicans is confused and compounded by the escalation of the more limited war of 1792 into the war of the First Coalition THE TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI -Jacobins insisted on the trial of the King, in order to start republic more firmly - increasingly depended on the sans-culottes, who wanted the King tried and executed - held him responsible for the bloodshed at the Tuileries in August 1792 - Girondins tried to prevent a trial - What finally sealed the King's fate was the idea of Marat to have an 'appel nominal' ppl had to say there vote in public - KING EXECUTED 21 JANUARY 1793 (For radical republicans this was a logical action since Article VI of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen stated that 'the law must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. ' - First Jacobin victory in the Convention - By Louis' execution the Montagnards gained an ascendancy in the Convention which they rarely lost afterwards THE WAR EXTENDED - At same time war, civil war in the Vendee - to the surprise of the French the war went badly EFFECTS OF THE WAR - by winter 1792 - 3 the counter rev. in France had virtually collapsed - REVIVED by the expansion of the war and conscription - Govt.

ordered a levy of 30000 troops in Feb. 1793 - This led to massive risings in the Video - Troubles in the Vendee had begun long before 1793 and conscription - Peasants there were paying more in land tax than they had under the ancien regime and so dislike date revolutionary government - This dislike turned into hatred with the Civil Constitution of the Clergy - Sale of church lands also unpopular - Economic problems, for which the war was largely responsible, added to the difficulties of the government - To pay for the war more and more assignats were printed and had fallen to half their nominal value by February 1793 - This pushed up price - Although good harvest Nov 1792, bread share - The results of high prices and scarcity, were as usual, widespread riots and demands from the sans-culottes for price controls - Support of the people necessary to fight the war, so it was clear some of their demands would have to be met - Realised first by the Montagnards - The Plain joined the Montagnards in favour of repressive measures - BARERE, A LEADER OF THE PLAIN, TOLD THE CONVENTION THAT IT SHOULD RECOGNISE THREE THINGS: IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY NO GOVERNMENT COULD RULE BY NORMAL METHODS, THE BOURGEOIS SHOULD NOT ISOLATE THEMSELVES FROM THE PEOPLE, WHOSE DEMANDS SHOULD BE SATISFIED, THE BOURGEOIS MUST RETAIN CONTROL OF THIS ALLINACE, AND SO THE CONVETNION MUST TAKE THE INIATIVE BY INTRODUCING THE NECESSARY MEASURES. ' These measures were passed by the Convention between 10 March and 20 May 1793. They had 3 objectives. 1. to watch and punish suspects 2. to make govt.

more effective 3. to meet at least some of the demands of the sans-culottes 10 MARCH - REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL SET UP - tribunal set up in Paris to try counter-revolutionary suspects and was intended to prevent massacres like those of September 1792 - tribunal to become one of the main agencies of the terror - owing to the resistance to conscription, and the suspicion of generals after Dumouriez's defection, representatives on mission were sent to the provinces - they were deputies of the Convention, mainly Montagnards, whose job was toi speed up conscription and keep an eye on the conduct of generals on 6 April perhaps th east important of all these measures, THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY, was set up to supervise and speed up the activities of ministers, whose authority is superseded - Committee not a dictatorship, depended on the support of the Convention which renewed its powers each month - Who was to be on the new Committee? - All these measures - Revolutionary Tribunals, representatives - on-mission, watch committees, the Committee of Public Safety summary execution decree - were to become vital ingredients of the Terror THE FALL OF THE GIRONDINS - 2 June 80000 National Guardsman surrounded the Convention and directed their cannon at it - they demanded the expulsion of Girondins from the Assembly and a maximum price on al essential goods - when deputies tried to leave they were forced back - for the first time armed force was being used against an elected parliament - to avoid a massacre or a revolutionary commune seizing power, the Convention compelled to agree to the arrest of 29 Girondin deputies and two ministers THE NEW COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY - 2 June most deputies feared and distrusted the Montagnards - however, did not want to see the Republic overthrown by domestic or foreign enemies and so for the next 14 months they were reluctant accomplices of the Jacobin minority - when a new Committee of Public Safety was formed between July and September 1793, the 12 members were all either Montagnards, or deputies of the Plain who had joined them - the new committee was to become the first strong govt. since the Revolution began - all members were re-elected to the Committee by the Convention every month from Sept. 1793 to July 1794 - Robespierre joined the Committee on 27 July - As Robespierre shared many ideas with the sans-culottes he was popular with the people of Paris but he was never one of the people as Marat was THE JACOBIN REPUBLIC AND THE REIGN OF TERROR (JUNE 1793 -JULY 1794) The crisis of the Revolution - June - December 1793 -when the Jacobins assumed state power in early June 1793 the French Republic was beset by multiple crisis over the summer and autumn of 1793 the gravity of this crisis would augment to a pint where the very survival of the Republic, and hence of the Revolution the Republic was simultaneously threatened by foreign invasion across all land frontiers - counter revolution in Western France, internal rebellion (the federalist revolts) savage inflation - assignats, the volatility and potential anarchy of the sans-culottes in the cities, and the rural community who remained, over whelming ly, Catholic and royalist at heart under the violently anti-clerical republic regime - when Marat assassinated 13 July 1793, Parisians feared that the virus of counter revolution had finally penetrated the capital itself THE FEDERALIST REVOLTS AND THE DISINTERGRATION OF NATIONAL UNITY - 'federalist' revolts that broke out like an epidemic in France in the summer of 1793 were the fruit of both factional conflict in the Convention b / w the Gironde and the Mountain in APRIL-May and of the Paris insurrection of 31 May- 2 -June which forced downfall Girondin govt. - whatever form the 'federalist' revolts assumed - civil disorder, passive resistance to national govt. , armed rebellion, or factional terrorism, in provinces - federalism revolts were seen as royalist plots to destroy the unity of the Republic - Federalism appeared as a serious threat to the Government - most serious consequences of the revolts was the disruption of the harvest, and dislocation of the war effort, and the severance of lines of communication to the frontiers CREATING THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE TERROR - the Terror should be viewed as an outgrowth of the siege mentality that gripped Paris in Year II - as a response to pressure from the sans-culottes for total solutions to to problems, and as a reaction to ther exigency of war, rebellion and counter-revolution - it was always viewed by the convention, the Jacobin Party, and the sans-culottes as a temporary phase in the history of the Republic, as a disruption of the normal course of development of the revolution - strictly speaking the Terror means extra-parliamentary govt. - it became de jure on 5 September, 1793, when the constitution of 1793 ws made inoperative - during the reign of terror - declared that they 'were revolutionary until the peace' - the machinery of the Terror was fashioned in an atmosphere of patriotic exaltation, suspicion and violence CONSTITUTION OF THE TERROR - OCT 1793 INSTITUTIONS OF THE TERRO The Executive Committees - b / w July and December the Convention slowly defined and enlarged the functions and powers of the executive committees of finance, public safety and general security - the Convention retained sovereign power in the formal sense that it elected all members of the three committees each month, and the committees were ultimate responsible to it - committee of public safety and General Security were given enormous discretionary powers, and by the end of 1793 had become virtually autonomous - eventually, during the first half of 1794, the Committee of Public Safety came to monopolise all the powers of govt. , a situation in which quite literally 12 ruled France The Levee en masse and the creation of Armees Re volutionnaires - rev. govt. helped enormously in its work of national defence by the levee en masse of 23 August, 1793 - and the creation of civic militia - - the levee en masse was both an act of military conscription and a call for a national, patriotic rising to extirpate the enemies of the Republic - response in Paris electric, but in provinces the peasants had to be bludgeoned into the army and terrorism into co-operation with civil authority - to make dangerous generalisation - e / where throughout France townsmen responded magnificently to this call for a national rising, while in rural communities it was received with apathy and fatalistic passivity - the armees revolutionaries recruited in Paris and the larger towns, staffed by sans-culottes elected by the rank and file, para-military, ultra-revolutionary, and dangerously autonomous, went out into the countryside in the autumn and winter of 1793 - 4 to promote recruitment, to requisition grain, ECONOMIC POLICIES AND CONTROL - the principal economic policies of the Convention b / w June and December 1793 were introduced in response to sans-culotte pressure - most important economic decree abolished all remaining feudal rights without indemnification - declared monopoly of capital crime, stabilised the assignats, established, established a compulsory loan - Of these decrees the LAW OF MAXIMUM - 29 SEPTEMBER 1793 - was the most important - it empowered the state to regulate the supply and prices of essential commodities (food stuffs, fuels, industrial raw materials. Representatives on Mission and the Agents National - C.

P. S. slowly centralised its power over the provinces during the autumn and winter of 1793 - 4 with the aid of ad hoc and permanent officials - Reps on mission (at one time up to 100 members of the Convention) carried the power of the state personally into the more troubled regions of France and made lightning check on the armies of the frontiers - The power of the reps on mission symbolized for frenchmen in the Provinces waas both august and terrible GREAT TERROR - the govt wanted to be in complete control over repression, so in May 1794, it abolished all the provincial Revolutionary Tribunals - all enemies of the Republic had now to be brought to Paris, to be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal - did not mean Terror less sever - Law of Prairial, passed 10 June 1794 'Enemies of the people; were defined as those 'who have sought to mislead opinion... to drive customs and to corrupt the public conscience. ' - Terms so vague almost anyone could be included - No witnesses were to be called and judgement wa to be decided by the 'conscience of the jurors' rather then by any evidence produced - Defendants were not allowed defence council and the only possible verdicts were death or acquittal - this law removed any semblance of a fair trial and was designed to speed up those process of revolutionary justice - MORE PEOPLE WERE SENTENCED TO DEATH BY THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL IN THE NINE WEEKS AFTER 10 JUNE THAN IN THE PREVIOUS MONTHS OF ITS EXISTENCE 9 THERMIDOR - FALL OF ROBESPIERRE -throughout July, moves were being made within the Committees and the Convention to organise a coup against the Robespierre - the conspiracy was very difficult to organise, since it encompassed moderates and extremists whose dislike for each other was only subordinate to their greater hatred and fear of Robespierre - in the end it was Robespierre's final speech to the Convention on the 8 Thermidor that finally cemented an alliance of the Thermidorians - the speech took several hours to deliver - as it progressed became increasingly hysterical, irrational, and paranoid - near the end Robespierre made wild allegations of reason and corruption within the Committees of Finance, General Security, and Public Safety, but when challenged to name the traitors he refused - when the Convention reassembled the next day (9 Thermidor, 27 July) a motion to impeach and outlaw the Robespierrists was moved and carried - Robespierre arrested and executed - Thus began the Thermidorian reaction - Within a month of the whole machinery of the governemtn of the Terror would be dismantle NAPOLEON The effective ruler of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, 30 year old general, first consul between 1796 - 1799. After years of turmoil, or rebellion, revolution and counter-revolution, people yearned for a stability and security. In 1802 another plebiscite approved Napoleon's appointment of consul for life, in 1804 he assumed the title of emperor.

At the crowning ceremony 2 December 1804 Napoleon took the crown from the hands of the pope and placed it on his own head as a symbolic enthronement of a 'self-made' emperor The bank of France established to stabilise the currency. New codes of civil law, pean and commercial were formulated into the Code Napoleon, ensuring equality before the law and bestowing a sense of permanence on the gains of the Rev... OUTCOME AND INFLUENCE OF THE REVOLUTION - rev many diff. Things to many diff people - its effects varied from city to country side, from northern France to the south - evaluation of the significance of the revolution brought about during the rev. involves an identification of the aims of the revolutionaries, and judgement of the extent they were attained - both 'democratic' and 'liberal' aspirations became influential forces in European society as a result of the Rev. period - in the early stages of the rev.

the liberals and democrats were united in their efforts to achieve an alteration of the old order THE REVOLUTION AS AN ASSERTION OF REPUBLICANISM - the establishment of a republic had not been one of the primary aims of the revolutionaries - a form of constitutional monarchy was widely preferred opinion in the early years - after the republican administrations had failed to achieve stability and order, the French people returned to the monarchical form of govt. DESTRUCTION OF PRIVLEGE - through the momentous 1789 declarations abolishing feudalism and proclaiming the rights of the citizen, together with that abolishing the monarchy (1792) - french revolutionaries destroyed the power and prestige of both previously privileged aristocracy and the monarchy - people could no longer be 'born to rule' and the principle of divine right did not return THE REDUCTION IN AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH -through the revolutionary proclamations of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and the confiscation and sale of Church lands, the Roman Catholic Church lost its dominant position in French society in effect society was largely de-Christianised and secularizes IMPORTANCE OF REV. HISTORIANS VIEWS Since the re most historians have argued that for better or worse, the re profoundly altered most aspects of life in France. Since mid 1950 s, when Alfred Combat attacked 'the myth of the french revolution' revisionist historians have increasingly questioned the long accepted certainties of the origins and outcomes of the rev. British historian Roger Price 'In political and ideological terms the revolution was no doubt crucial importance, but humanity was not transformed, thereby at the end of all the political upheavals fo the revolution and Empire little had changed in the daily life of most frenchmen t. 's oboe: 'A classic bourgeois re, its uncompromising abolition of the feudal system and the seigneurial regime made it the starting point for a capitalist society and the liberal representative socialist re. ' Nobles - greatest loses in the re - lost their feudal dues - Nobles who stayed in France and were not prosecuted during the Terror realized their lands and never lost their position of economic dominance


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