In my previous lecture, I noted how a new National Convention, elected by universal manhood suffrage, proclaimed the French Republic in September, 1792. This national convention was composed of 750 deputies, elected across the country. These men, are all Republicans. The vote to proclaim France a republic is taken unanimously. They’re Democrats, they support the idea that the National Convention was elected by all adult males. They’re people who are committed to the defense of the revolution, to the defense France itself. And yet very quickly after the members of the national convention, the new deputies convene in Paris, they start to divide. And they start to divide on a number of key issues that I'm going to outline in this lecture. There are three key groupings that start to emerge. They're not called political parties. Indeed the term political party is seen to be equivalent to faction, which in itself is seen to be dubious. All people are meant to have the interests of all the French people at heart. To be part of a faction or a party is seen to have sectional interests it's an accusation that people, don't accept. But certainly political tendencies emerged. On the one hand are the followers of Brissot, formerly called the Brissotins, now often called the Girondins because some of their leading members, come from the region around Bordeaux, in the southwest, and it's department of the Gironde, named after the great river. I've put the letter S behind Roland, because the minister of the interior, Jean-Marie Roland his wife Manon is politically, a most significant figure at the same time. The opposition to them are the hardline Jacobins, people such as Robespierre, Marat, Danton, Desmoulins, Saint-Just, the latter a very young man who's elected in 1792. But Robespierre, Danton, Desmoulins are probably the three most popular politicians in Paris and it's true to say that even though there are Jacobins elected from all over the country, their headquarters seem to be in Paris because 23 of the 24 Paris deputies are Jacobins, supporters of Robespierre, Denton, Desmoulins. Robespierre is the first elected on that list of 24. In the middle are a grouping who are referred to variously as the plain, people who sit on the floor between these two political tendencies. Some very well known figures such as Gregoire, Sieyes, Barere. These three groupings are roughly similar in size, probably the Jacobins are the largest. Within the national convention they're often referred to as The Mountain. Because they preferred to sit up on the high left hand benches behind the speakers, and they're called the mountain. And it's by this time by the way, also that people start referring to, left and right, and the Jacobins are those who sit on the left within the National Convention. But they start to divide over three key issues. The first of them has to do with the fate of Louis XVI, a man who has perjured himself, in 1791 by attempting to flee. What is to be his fate? There are a very few people such as Robespierre who say, look, Louis the XVI is being judged by the people, they overthrew him. Even though I'm opposed to capital punishment, he said, the people of Paris acting on behalf of the people of France have judged him as guilty, as a traitor, which is a capital offense under our constitution, and he must simply be put to death. Most Jacobins however regard him as a citizen who has to be put on trial for treachery, like anybody else. And they start finding incriminating documents about Louis XVI’s engagement with the crown heads of Europe - has he been releasing military secrets? The Girondins on the other hand, fall back on the Constitution of 1791, in which it was stated the person of the King is inviolable and sacred. If the King does not, by formal statement, oppose any armed undertaking carried on in his name, he shall be deemed to have abdicated the throne. In other words, if there is a suggestion that Louis XVI was a traitor, that he'd somehow been aligned with the forces that are invading France, then the punishment seems to have been abdication. For Jacobins however, in overthrowing Louis the 16th in August 1792, the people of Paris had also overthrown that constitution, it was no longer operable. It results in an extraordinarily brilliant debate in December and January 1793. There's almost universal agreement, that Louis XVI is guilty of treason, but the issue becomes, what should be his punishment, and who should decide? The Girondin think there should be a referendum, a public referendum, which the Jacobins say, you cannot have at a time when France is being overrun by foreign troops, we have to take responsibility. In the end, the Girondon say, well okay, Louis XVI is guilty, but we move that he be reprieved, a mercy vote. Again, the Jacobins win that vote - very narrowly. In the end when the figures, are done, it could be argued that Louis XVI is found guilty and will not be pardoned by just one vote among the 721 deputies who finally do cast a vote. And on the 21st of January 1793 he goes to the Guillotine as Citizen Capet. He apparently goes to the Guillotine with great dignity and bravery, and seeks to pardon those who put him to death in the hope that this will be the last of the bloodshed. That's one issue that divides the Republicans in the National Convention. A second one has to do with the war. And remember that Brissot and his supporters were those who in 1792 had argued that the war would be successful, limited, and brief, and yet, that's far from the case. That even though the Republican troops have won that great battle at Valmy, that's only really a short term success. The Austrian and Prussian troops continued to advance. And with the execution of Louis XVI, the war has expanded, because now Spain and England and Russia, outraged by what's been done to Louis XVI, enter the war as well. There's now Spanish troops on French soil in the south, the English have put a naval blockade around the coastlines. In April 1793, Dumouriez who's a great supporter of the Girondins, who'd been one of the generals at Valmy, in 1792, in April, 1793 Dumouriez actually deserts to the enemy. A terrible embarrassment to the Girondins. Then, in March 1793, as the convention decides to impose conscription, a levy of 300,000 troops across the nation, there is a massive peasant based insurrection in the west of France centred on the region of the Vendee, which absorbs a lot of the new republics man power in terms of suppressing that insurrection. In other words, it looks as though the Girondins have started a war, that they have not been able to bring to a successful conclusion, and just when things are at their most critical, a politically connected general decides to defect to the enemy. That's another issue that divides them - how to win this war, how to bring it to a successful conclusion. The third issue that divides them is connected, and that is the issue of the role of Paris and the people of Paris who successfully have made the French Revolution, who are at the forefront of it, and who yet seem to be those who are exerting a great influence, perhaps too great an influence, over the direction that the revolution is taking. And here there is a bitter division between the Jacobins on the one hand, and the Girondins, on the other. To people like Robespierre for example. Here, pictured at the rostrum inside the National Convention, the most fundamental of all rights, is the right of existence. The most fundamental law of society is, therefore, that which guarantees the means of existence to every person, every other law is subordinate to this. Saint-Just, his young colleague agrees. In a single instant, he says in the convention, you can give the French people a real homeland, by battling or halting the ravages of inflation, by assuring the supply of food, and intimately linking their welfare and their freedom. The Girondins on the other hand, perhaps reflecting their provincial connections, particularly in the important trading port of Bordeaux, see things rather differently. This is how Brissot writes about the so called hydra of anarchy, referring to Paris: The Jacobins he says and their sans-culottes allies are disorganizers who wish to level everything: property, leisure, the price of provisions, the various services to be rendered to society. And his colleague Isnard goes ever further than that: I'll tell you, he says, in the name of France, that if these perpetually recurring insurrections ever lead to harm to the Parliament chosen by the nation, Paris will be annihilated, and men will search the banks of the Seine in vain for traces of the city. Isnard's speech in particular causes outrage, because it evokes the memory, of what Brunswick, at the head of the Prussian and Austrian armies, had threatened back in July 1792. Is Isnard in 1793, warning the sans-culottes that if they keep putting pressure on the National Convention, invading the National Convention, then in the name of France, he warns them that Paris will be annihilated. It causes rage that is going to find its own way of expressing itself in the months ahead.
