The Society of the Friends of the Constitution (French: Société des amis de la Constitution), commonly known as theJacobin Club (Club des Jacobins, pronounced: [ʒa.kɔ.bɛ̃]), was the most famous and influential political club in the development of the French Revolution. There were at least 7,000 chapters throughout France, with a membership estimated at a half million or more.[1]
At their height in 1793–94, the club leaders were the most radical and egalitarian group in the Revolution. Led byMaximilien de Robespierre (1758–1794), they controlled the government from June 1793 to July 1794, passed a great deal of radical legislation, and hunted down and executed their opponents in the Reign of Terror.
After the fall of Robespierre, a more conservative reaction took place. The club was closed and many of its leaders were executed.
Today, Jacobin and Jacobinism are used in a variety of senses. "Jacobin" is sometimes used in Britain as a pejorative forradical, left-wing revolutionary politics, especially when it exhibits dogmatism and violent repression.[2] In France, "Jacobin" now generally indicates a supporter of a centralized republican state and strong central government powers[3]and/or supporters of extensive government intervention to transform society.[4] It is also used in other related senses, indicating proponents of a state education system which strongly promotes and inculcates civic values, and proponents of a strong nation-state capable of resisting any undesirable foreign interference.[4]
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[hide]Foundation[edit]
It was so named because of the Dominican convent where they met, which had recently been located in the Rue St. Jacques(Latin: Jacobus), Paris. The club originated as the Club Breton, formed at Versailles from a group of Breton representatives attending the Estates General of 1789.[5]
When the Estates-General of 1789 was convened at Versailles, the club was initially composed exclusively of deputies fromBrittany. However, they were soon joined by deputies from other regions throughout France. Among early members were the dominating comte de Mirabeau, Parisian deputy Abbé Sieyès, Dauphiné deputy Antoine Barnave, Jérôme Pétion, the Abbé Grégoire, Charles Lameth, Alexandre Lameth, Robespierre, the duc d'Aiguillon, and La Revellière-Lépeaux. At this time, meetings occurred in secret, and few traces remain concerning what took place or where the meetings were convened.[citation needed]
Transfer to Paris[edit]
By the March on Versailles in October 1789, the club, still entirely composed of deputies, had reverted to being a provincial caucus for National Constituent Assembly deputies from Brittany. The club would be re-founded in November 1789, after an address from the London Revolution Society congratulating the French on "conquering their liberty" led National Assembly deputies to found their own Société de la Révolution. The group rented for its meetings the refectory of the monastery of the Jacobins in the Rue Saint-Honoré, adjacent to the seat of the Assembly.[6] The name "Jacobins", given in France to the Dominicans (because their first house in Paris was in the Rue St Jacques), was first applied to the club in ridicule by its enemies. The title assumed by the club itself, after the promulgation of the constitution of 1791, was Société des amis de la constitution séants aux Jacobins à Paris, which was changed on 21 September 1792, after the fall of the monarchy, toSociété des Jacobins, amis de la liberté et de l'égalité (Society of Jacobins, friends of liberty and equality). It occupied successively the refectory, the library, and the chapel of the monastery.[citation needed]
Rapid growth[edit]
Once in Paris, the club underwent rapid modifications. The first great change was its extension of membership to others besides deputies. All citizens were allowed to enter and even foreigners were welcomed: the English writer Arthur Young joined the club in this manner on 18 January 1790. Jacobin Club meetings soon became a place for radical and rousing oratory that pushed for republicanism, widespread education, universal suffrage, separation of church and state, and other reforms.[7] On 8 February 1790 the society became formally constituted on this broader basis by the adoption of the rules drawn up by Barnave, which were issued with the signature of the duc d'Aiguillon, the president. The club's objectives were defined as:
- to discuss in advance questions to be decided by the National Assembly;
- to work for the establishment and strengthening of the constitution in accordance with the spirit of the preamble (that is, of respect for legally constituted authority and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen); and
- to correspond with other societies of the same kind which should be formed in the realm.
At the same time the rules of order of election were settled, and the constitution of the club determined. There was to be a president, elected every month, four secretaries, a treasurer, and committees elected to superintend elections and presentations, the correspondence, and the administration of the club. Any member who by word or action showed that his principles were contrary to the constitution and the rights of man was to be expelled, a rule which later on facilitated the "purification" of the society by the expulsion of its more moderate elements. By the 7th article the club decided to admit as associates similar societies in other parts of France and to maintain with them a regular correspondence. This last provision was of far-reaching importance. By 10 August 1790 there were already one hundred and fifty-two affiliated clubs; the attempts at counter-revolution led to a great increase of their number in the spring of 1791, and by the close of the year the Jacobins had a network of branches all over France. At the peak there were at least 7,000 chapters throughout France, with a membership estimated at a half-million or more. It was this widespread yet highly centralised organization that gave to the Jacobin Club its formidable power.[1]
Initial moderation[edit]
At the outset, the Jacobin Club was not distinguished by unconventional political views. The somewhat high subscription confined its membership to well-off men, and to the last it was—so far as the central society in Paris was concerned—composed almost entirely of professional men, such as Robespierre, or well-to-do bourgeoisie, like the brewer Santerre. From the first, however, other elements were present. Besides the teenage son of the Duc d'Orléans, Louis Philippe, a future king of France, liberal aristocrats of the type of the duc d'Aiguillon, the prince de Broglie, or the vicomte de Noailles, and the bourgeoisie who formed the mass of the members, the club contained such figures as "Père" Michel Gerard, a peasant proprietor from Tuel-en-Montgermont, in Brittany, whose rough common sense was admired as the oracle of popular wisdom, and whose countryman's waistcoat and plaited hair were later on to become the model for the Jacobin fashion. The club ostensibly supported the monarchy up until the very eve of the republic; it took no part in the petition of 17 July 1791 for the king's dethronement, nor had it any official share even in the insurrections of 10 June and 10 August 1792.[5]
The club was radicalized by the departure of its conservative members to form their own Feuillants Club in July 1791. This club saw far less success than the Jacobins, surviving barely a year before its members were arrested and tried for treason.[8]
The Terror[edit]
Main article: Reign of Terror
After the fall of the monarchy Robespierre became a central figure in the Jacobin Club, and his faction in the National Convention, assembled in the autumn of 1792, became known as Jacobins. They were at first a minority group, also called "The Mountain" (French: La Montagne), and its members Montagnards, because they sat together in the higher seats in the Convention's hall; they were dubious about the war with Austria which had begun that spring, but supported more revolutionary measures at home.[9]
The Jacobins assumed more and more power during the spring of 1793, with the support of the Parisian mob, which overawed the Convention, culminating in a coup at the end of May. They were to hold power until the summer of 1794, and they repeatedly purged the Convention of those they held disloyal to the Republic, ending with a widespread program of execution, the Reign of Terror, in their last months. Robespierre, generally the spokesman for the successful faction, had great esteem for his reputation as "the sea-green incorruptible", and set up the slogan of the Republic of Virtue, until the Jacobins' last purge, 9 Thermidor, 27 July 1794. Although some eyewitnesses said Robespierre was shot by a soldier, some historians state he attempted suicide; in any event, his lower jaw was shattered. He was executed the next day on Thermidor 10, 28 July 1794.[10]
The Jacobin club, its leadership having been decimated with Robespierre's execution, was disbanded 12 November 1794. The Jacobins' overwhelming power rested on a very slender material basis. The club's autocracy to that of the Inquisition, with its system of espionage and denunciations which no one was too illustrious or too humble to escape.[11] The power of the Jacobins was frequently felt through their influence with the Parisian underclass—the sans-culottes – who the Jacobins could reliably count on to support them, and to mass ominously in the streets and at the National Convention when a display of force was considered desirable. Yet at the height of the Terror, the Jacobins themselves could not command a force of more than 3000 men in Paris. A primary reason for their influence, or strength, was that, in the midst of the general disorganization in revolutionary Paris and in the provinces, they alone were organised.
The reason for the actions of the Jacobins proffered by republican writers of later times and some modern scholars is quite different: that is that France was menaced by civil war within and by a coalition of hostile powers without, requiring the discipline of the Terror to mold France into a united Republic capable of resisting this double peril.[11]
Fall from power[edit]
An attempt was made to re-open the Jacobin Club, which was joined by many of the enemies of the Thermidorians, but on 21 Brumaire, year III (11 November 1794), it was definitively closed. Its members and their sympathizers were scattered among the cafés, where a ruthless war of sticks and chairs was waged against them by the young "aristocrats" known as the jeunesse dorée. Nevertheless the Jacobins survived, in a somewhat subterranean fashion, emerging again in the Panthéon Club, founded on 25 November 1795, and suppressed in the following February (see Babeuf).[citation needed]
The last attempt to reorganize Jacobin adherents was the foundation of the Réunion d'amis de l'égalité et de la liberté, in July 1799, which had its headquarters in the Salle du Manège of the Tuileries, and was thus known as the Club du Manège. It was patronized by Barras, and some two hundred and fifty members of the two councils of the legislature were enrolled as members, including many notable ex-Jacobins. It published a newspaper called the Journal des Libres, proclaimed the apotheosis of Robespierre and Babeuf, and attacked the Directory as a royauté pentarchique. But public opinion was now preponderatingly moderate or royalist, and the club was violently attacked in the press and in the streets. The suspicions of the government were aroused; it had to change its meeting-place from the Tuileries to the church of the Jacobins (Temple of Peace) in the Rue du Bac, and in August it was suppressed, after barely a month's existence. Its members avenged themselves on the Directory by supporting Napoleon Bonaparte.[12]
Influence[edit]
Political influence[edit]
The Jacobin movement encouraged sentiments of patriotism and liberty amongst the populace. The movement's contemporaries, such as the King Louis XVI, located the effectiveness of the revolutionary movement not "in the force and bayonets of soldiers, guns, cannons and shells but by the marks of political power". [13] Ultimately, the Jacobins were to control several key political bodies, in particular the Committee of Public Safety and, through it, the National Convention, which was not only alegislature but also took upon itself executive and judicial functions. The Jacobins as a political force were seen as "less selfish, more patriotic, and more sympathetic to the Paris Populace."[14] This gave them a position of charismatic authority that was effective in generating and harnessing public pressure, generating and satisfyingsans-culotte pleas for personal freedom and social progress.[citation needed]
The Jacobin Club developed into a bureau for French Republicanism and revolutionary purity, and abandoned its original laissez faire economic views in favor ofinterventionism.[citation needed] In power, they completed the abolition of feudalism that had been formally decided 4 August 1789, but had been held in check by a clause requiring compensation for the abrogation of the feudal privileges.[citation needed]
Maximilien Robespierre entered the political arena at the very beginning of the Revolution, having been elected to represent Artois at the Estates General. Robespierre was viewed as the quintessential political force of the Jacobin Movement, thrusting ever deeper the dagger of liberty within the despotism of the Monarchy. As a disciple of Rousseau, Robespierre's political views were rooted in Rousseau's notion of the social contract, which promoted "the rights of man". [15] Robespierre particularly favored the rights of the broader population to eat, for example, over the rights of individual merchants. "I denounce the assassins of the people to you and you respond, 'let them act as they will.' In such a system, all is against society; all favors the grain merchants." Robespierre famously elaborated this conception in his speech on 2 December 1792: "What is the first goal of society? To maintain the imprescribable rights of man. What is the first of these rights? The right to exist."[16]
The ultimate political vehicle for the Jacobin movement was the Reign of Terror overseen by the Committee of Public Safety, who were given executive powers to purify and unify the Republic. The Committee instituted requisitioning, rationing, and conscription to consolidate new citizen armies. They instituted the Terror as a means of combating those they perceived as enemies within: Robespierre declared, "the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror.".[12]
The meeting place of the Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes was an old library room of the convent which hosted the Jacobins, and it was suggested that the Fraternal Society grew out of the regular occupants of a special gallery allotted to women at the Jacobin Club.[17]
Cultural influence[edit]
The cultural influence of the Jacobin movement during the French Revolution revolved around the creation of the Citizen. As commented in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1762 book The Social Contract, "Citizenship is the expression of a sublime reciprocity between individual and General will."[18] This view of citizenship and the General Will, once empowered, could simultaneously embrace the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and adopt the liberal French Constitution of 1793, then immediately suspend that constitution and all ordinary legality and institute Revolutionary Tribunals that did not grant a presumption of innocence.[19]
The Jacobins saw themselves as constitutionalists, dedicated to the Rights of Man, and, in particular, to the Declaration's principle of "preservation of the natural rights of liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression" (Article II of the Declaration). The constitution reassured the protection of personal freedom and social progress within French society. The cultural influence of the Jacobin movement was effective in reinforcing these rudiments, developing a milieu for revolution. The Constitution was admired by most Jacobins as the foundation of the emerging republic and of the rise of citizenship.[20]
The Jacobins were foes of both the Church and of atheism. They set up a new religious cult to replace Catholicism.[21] They advocated deliberate government-organized terror as a substitute for both the rule of law and the more arbitrary terror of mob violence, inheritors of a war that, at the time of their rise to power, threatened the very existence of the Revolution. Once in power the Jacobins completed the overthrow of the Ancien Régime and successfully defended the Revolution from military defeat. However, to do so, they brought the Revolution to its bloodiest phase, and the one with least regard for just treatment of individuals. They consolidated republicanism in France and contributed greatly to the secularism and the sense of nationhood that have marked all French republican regimes to this day. However their ruthless and unjudicial methods discredited the Revolution in the eyes of many The resulting Thermidorian reaction shuttered all of the Jacobin clubs, removed all Jacobins from power, and condemned many, well beyond the ranks of the Mountain, to death or exile.[22]
List of Presidents of the Jacobin Club[edit]
- 1789 – Isaac René Guy le Chapelier
- 1789-1790 – Jacques-François Menou
- 1790-1791 – Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau
- 1791-1792 – Pierre-Antoine Antonelle
- 1792-1793 – Jean-Paul Marat
- 1793-1794 – Maximilien Robespierre
- 1794-1795 – Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras
Electoral results[edit]
| Election year | # of overall votes | % of overall vote | # of overall seats won | +/– | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legislative Assembly | |||||
| 1791 | unknown (#3) | unknown |
136 / 745
| ||
| National Convention | |||||
| 1792* | unknown (#2) | unknown |
360 / 749
|  224 | |
- Notes
- The Jacobins were presents in "The Mountain" also "The Gironde"
See also[edit]
The Jacobin Club of Mysore was the first Revolutionary Republican organization to be formed in India. It was founded in 1794 by French Republican officers with the support of for Tipu Sultan 'framing laws comfortable with the laws of the Republic' He planted a Liberty Tree and declared himself Citizen Tipoo.[1]
The British regarded the link up of Revolutionary Jacobin forces and Indian resistance as an extremely dangerous development.
The Rocket Corps ultimately reached a strength of about 5000 in Tipu Sultan's army. Mysore rockets were also used for ceremonial purposes. When the Jacobin Clubof Mysore sent a delegation to Tipu Sultan, 500 rockets were launched as part of the gun salute.
The French declared their hatred for all Kings except Citizen Tipu.[2]
Franics Ripauld was elected President Citizen, and they declared their hatred for Royalty and loyalty to the Republic.[3]
The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794),[1] also known as The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between two rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution". The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris),[2] and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.[3]
The guillotine (called the "National Razor") became the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions: King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans), and Madame Roland, and others such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade. During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies. Within France, the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The Roman Catholic Church opposed the revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). In addition, the French First Republic was engaged in a series of wars with neighboring powers intent on crushing the revolution to prevent its spread.
The extension of civil war and the advance of foreign armies on national territory produced a political crisis and increased the already present rivalry between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins. The latter were eventually grouped in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and they had the support of the Parisian population. The French government established the Committee of Public Safety, which took its final form on 6 September 1793, in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise additional French military forces.
Through the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's leaders exercised broad powers and used them to eliminate the internal and external enemies of the republic. The repression accelerated in June and July 1794, a period called la Grande Terreur (the Great Terror), and ended in the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), leading to the Thermidorian Reaction, in which several instigators of the Reign of Terror were executed, including Saint-Just and Robespierre.
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[hide]Origins and causes[edit]
After the resolution of the foreign wars during 1791–93, the violence associated with the Reign of Terror increased significantly: only roughly 4% of executions had occurred before November 1793 (Brumaire, Year I), thus signalling to many that the Reign of Terror might have had additional causes.[4] These could have included inherent issues with revolutionary ideology,[5] and/or the need of a weapon for political repression in a time of significant foreign and civil upheaval,[4] leading to many different interpretations by historians.
Many historians have debated the reasons the French Revolution took such a radical turn during the Reign of Terror of 1793–94. The public was frustrated that the social equality and anti-poverty measures that the revolution originally promised were not materializing. Jacques Roux's Manifesto of the Enraged in 25 June 1793, describes the extent to which, four years into the revolution, these goals were largely unattained by the common people.[6] The foundation of the Terror is centered on the April 1793 creation of the Committee of Public Safety and its militant Jacobin delegates. The National Convention believed that the committee needed to rule with "near dictatorial power" and the committee was delegated new and expansive political powers[7]to quickly respond to popular demands.[8]
Those in power believed the Committee of Public Safety was an unfortunate, but necessary and temporary, reaction to the pressures of foreign and civil war.[9] Historian Albert Mathiez argues that the authority of the Committee of Public Safety was based on the necessities of war, as those in power realized that deviating from the will of the people was a temporary emergency response measure in order to secure the ideals of the republic. According to Mathiez, they "touched only with trepidation and reluctance the regime established by the Constituent Assembly" so as not to interfere with the early accomplishments of the revolution.[10]
Similar to Mathiez, Richard Cobb introduced competing circumstances of revolt and re-education within France as an explanation for the Terror. Counter-revolutionary rebellions taking place in Lyon, Brittany, Vendée, Nantes, and Marseille were threatening the revolution with royalist ideas.[11] Cobb writes, "the revolutionaries themselves, living as if in combat… were easily persuaded that only terror and repressive force saved them from the blows of their enemies."[12]
Terror was used in these rebellions both to execute inciters and to provide a very visible example to those who might be considering rebellion. Cobb agrees with Mathiez that the Terror was simply a response to circumstances, a necessary evil and natural defence, rather than a manifestation of violent temperaments or excessive fervour. At the same time, Cobb rejects Mathiez's Marxist interpretation that elites controlled the Reign of Terror to the significant benefit to the bourgeoisie. Instead, Cobb argues that social struggles between the classes were seldom the reason for revolutionary actions and sentiments.[13]
Francois Furet, however, argues that circumstances could not have been the sole cause of the Reign of Terror because "the risks for the revolution were greatest" in the middle of 1793 but at that time "the activity of the Revolutionary Tribunal was relatively minimal."[14] Widespread terror and a consequent rise in executions came after external and internal threats were vastly reduced. Therefore Furet suggests that ideology played the crucial role in the rise of the Reign of Terror because "man's regeneration" became a central theme for the Committee of Public Safety as they were trying to instill ideals of free will and enlightened government in the public.[15] As this ideology became more and more pervasive, violence became a significant method for dealing with counter-revolutionaries and the opposition because, for fear of being labelled a counter-revolutionary themselves, "the moderate men would have to accept, endorse and even glorify the acts of the more violent."[16]
The Terror[edit]
On 2 June 1793, Paris sections – encouraged by the enragés Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert – 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. With the backing of the national guard, they persuaded the convention to arrest 29 Girondist leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot.[17] On 13 July the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat – a Jacobin leader and journalist known for his violent rhetoric – by Charlotte Corday resulted in a further increase in Jacobin political influence.
Georges Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the king, was removed from the committee. On 27 JulyMaximilien Robespierre, known in Republican circles as "the Incorruptible" for his ascetic dedication to his ideals, made his entrance, quickly becoming the most influential member of the committee as it moved to take radical measures against the revolution's domestic and foreign enemies.[citation needed]
The Jacobins identified themselves with the popular movement and the sans-culottes, who in turn saw popular violence as a political right. The most notorious instance of the crowd's rough justice was the prison massacres of September 1792, when around 2,000 people, including priests and nuns, were dragged from their prison cells and subjected to summary 'justice'. The Convention was determined to avoid a repeat of these brutal scenes, but that meant taking violence into their own hands as an instrument of government.[18]
Meanwhile, on 24 June, the convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, the French Constitution of 1793. It was ratified by public referendum, but never put into force; like other laws, it was indefinitely suspended by the decree of October that the government of France would be "revolutionary until the peace".[citation needed]
On 25 December 1793, Robespierre stated:
On 5 February 1794, Robespierre stated, more succinctly, that, "Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible."[20]
| “ | The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. | ” |
— Maximilien Robespierre, 1794[21]
|
Robespierre, a French lawyer, did not abandon his libertarian convictions, but he was coming to the conclusion that the ends justified the means, and that in order to defend the Revolution against those who would destroy it, the shedding of blood was justified. The enigmatic figure of Robespierre takes us to the heart of the Revolution and throws light on both its ideals and the violence that indelibly scarred it. Robespierre stated,
In June 1793, 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. Thus Robespierre came to power on the back of popular street violence.[18] Led by Robespierre, the National Convention, in an attempt to make their stance known to the world over, released a statement of French Foreign policy. The first point addressed stated,
The following six points acted to further highlight the convention’s fear of enemies of the Revolution. Because of this fear, several other legislations passed which furthered the Jacobin domination of the Revolution. This led to the consolidation, extension, and application of emergency government devices in order to maintain what the Revolution considered ‘control’.[22]
The result of this was policy through which the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the government. Under control of the effectively dictatorial committee, the convention quickly enacted more legislation. On 9 September, the convention established sans-culottes paramilitary forces, the "revolutionary armies", to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On 17 September, the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined "crimes against liberty". On 29 September, the convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods, and also fixed wages. The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Marie Antoinette, the Girondists, Philippe Égalité, Madame Roland and many others lost their lives under its blade.[citation needed]
With the passing of the Law of Suspects, political terror was stepped up to a much higher level of cruelty. Anyone who ‘by their conduct, relations, words or writings show themselves to be supporters of tyranny and federalism and enemies of freedom’ was targeted and suspected of treason. This created a mass overflow in the prison systems. As a result, the prison population of Paris increased from 1,417 to 4,525 people over a course of 3 months. This overpopulation problem caused the execution rates to rise enormously. From March to September of 1789 sixty-six people had been guillotined. By the end of the year, that number had risen to 177.[23]
Though 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 number of death sentences in Paris was 2,639, while the total number during the Terror in the whole of France (including Paris) was 16,594. The Jacobins were meticulous in maintaining a legal structure for the Terror so clear records exist for official death sentences. However, many more people were murdered without formal sentences proposed in a court of law. [18]
The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the 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 some others had a stake in getting rid of them.[citation needed]
Among people who were condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 8% were aristocrats, 6% clergy, 14% middle class, and 72% were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion, or rebellion.[24] Maximilien Robespierre, "frustrated with the progress of the revolution,"[25] saw politics through a populist lens because "any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil."[26]
Another anti-clerical uprising was also made possible by the enactment of the Revolutionary Calendar on the 24th of October. Hébert's and Chaumette's atheistmovement initiated an anti-religious campaign in order to dechristianise society. The program of dechristianisation waged against Catholicism, and also eventually against all forms of Christianity, included the deportation or execution of clergymen and women; the closing of churches; the rise of cults and the institution of a civic religion; the large scale destruction of religious monuments; the outlawing of public and private worship and religious education; the forced abjuration of priests of their vows and forced marriages of the clergy; the word "saint" being removed from street names; and the War in the Vendée.[27]
The enactment of a law on 21 October 1793 made all suspected priests and all persons who harbored them liable to summary execution.[27] The climax was reached with the celebration of the goddess Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November. Because dissent was now regarded as counter-revolutionary, extremist enragéssuch as Hébert and moderate Montagnard indulgents such as Danton were guillotined in the spring of 1794. On 7 June, Robespierre, who favored deism over Hébert's 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. Compared with Hébert's somewhat popular festivals, this austere new religion of Virtue was received with signs of hostility by the Parisian public.[citation needed]
Fall of Robespierre[edit]
Main article: Thermidorian Reaction
The repression brought thousands of suspects before the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal, whose work was expedited by the Law of 22 Prairial (10 June 1794). As a result of Robespierre's insistence on associating Terror with Virtue, his efforts to make the republic a morally united patriotic community became equated with the endless bloodshed. Finally, after 26 June's decisive military victory over Austria at the Battle of Fleurus, Robespierre was overthrown on 9 Thermidor (27 July).
One of the last groups to be executed during the terror were the Carmelite Nuns of Compiègne. The nuns were sentenced to death for refusing to give up their monastic vows. They were sent to the guillotine on 17 July 1794. The manner in which they approached their death, going freely up to the scaffold while singing the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, had a great impact on the public mood in Paris and helped to turn it against the terror.[28]
The fall of Robespierre was brought about by a combination of those who wanted more power for the Committee of Public Safety, and a more radical policy than he was willing to allow, with the moderates who opposed the revolutionary government altogether. They had, between them, made the Law of 22 Prairial one of the charges against him, and after his fall, advocating terror would mean adopting the policy of a convicted enemy of the republic, endangering the advocate's own head. Robespierre tried to commit suicide before his execution by shooting himself, although the bullet only shattered his jaw. He was guillotined the next day.[29]
The reign of the standing Committee of Public Safety was ended. New members were appointed the day after Robespierre's execution, and term limits were imposed (a quarter of the committee retired every three months); its powers were reduced piece by piece.
This was not an entirely or immediately conservative period; no government of the Republic envisaged a Restoration, and Marat was reburied in the Panthéon in September.[30]
