In my previous lecture, I outlined the magnitude of the crisis that was being faced by the New Republic by the middle of 1793. What I want to do today is to outline the emergency measures that the National Convention put in place to deal with that crisis. Remember, it's a crisis which has various dimensions. Above all, it's a military crisis, one of invasion and one of armed counter revolution in the west of France and in some of the major cities, provincial cities, of France as well. A massive military crisis, which is a political one too because France is profoundly divided between pro-Jacobin and anti-Jacobin forces of various types. It's an economic and social crisis because of inflation and food shortages. What the Convention does in the middle of 1793, as a way of responding to that multiple crisis, ushers in what is the most extraordinary and controversial period of the entire French Revolution. It's a period which is most closely identified with this man, Maximilien Robespierre, one of the Convention deputies who is elected to the Committee of Public Safety in July 1793 and will be on it for the following 12 months. A Committee of Public Safety, which has been established in April to be an emergency wartime executive. Robespierre becomes one of its 12 members in late July 1793 and it's important, therefore, to stress from the outset that this Committee of Public Safety is not a group of dictators. They are people who are chosen from the personnel of the National Convention. They are highly esteemed deputies. The people who are most trusted as being those who just might, if they're given enough authority, be able to put in place the measures that might deal with this crisis and certainly, Robespierre is far from being some sort of an individual dictator. He's certainly the person who makes the most extensive strategic speeches but he's simply one of 12 members of that Committee of Public Safety. So what do they do? What's their response to this crisis in the middle of 1793? The first and most important is military. They have to do something about the military crisis, which is impacting across the country, of invasion and counter revolution. They effectively put the whole of France on a war footing. In August, 1793, they decreed the Levée en masse or mass mobilization. As they put it in the preamble to that decree: the young men shall go forth to battle, and all young men between the ages of 18 and 25 are conscripted; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old linen into lint for the rifles; the old men shall repair to the public places to stimulate the courage of the warriors, and to preach the unity of the Republic and the hatred for kings. The whole country is to be mobilized for the war effort. Within six months, 750,000 young men are conscripted into French armies. Captured into this series of paintings by a contemporary name Lesueur who does a series of illustrations of the French Revolution that are among the most valuable resources we have of a visual type for this extraordinary period. The Convention also decides that its own deputies wearing their red, white, and blue regalia can be sent to the provinces as deputies on mission with sweeping powers to requisition supplies but also to supervise the conduct of the French troops and particularly, their officers. There is to be no retreat and the deputies that are sent out to the armies are given extraordinary authority, in terms of what's going on in the 13 armies that France puts together. This is to be a national mobilization for war, as well, which is of equipment, which is of an economic kind. The Convention issues extraordinary decrees at the behest of the Committee of Public Safety, effectively, nationalizing all sorts of manufactories for the production of arms, uniforms and so on. The whole country, the economy of France is put effectively, at the disposal of the war effort. So a first response is a military response. A second one is, if you like, social and political. The men of the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention, in general, know that the only way that they can hope to mobilize the whole country, the only way that they can hope that the conscription that's to affect every household can work, is if they make sure that the most pressing needs, the most pressing grievances, of ordinary people across the country are met. Remember that back in 1789, that feudalism is not completely abolished. It's decided, in particular, that harvest dues, which are the most onerous of the seigneurial or feudal dues are to be made redeemable. That's to say that, rural communities have to compensate their former lords by buying their way out of paying these feudal dues, normally 25 or 30 times the annual value, in one hit which, of course, rural communities cannot afford to do. There's been ongoing friction in the countryside, as rural communities have refused to pay outstanding feudal dues and their former lords have been trying to take them to court to exact those dues. Finally in July, 1793, the Convention, again, at the behest of the Committee of Public Safety, effectively says there are no more dues. All seigneurial dues are finally abolished without redemption. The feudal regime is finally dead. In September 1793, the grievances of urban people are addressed. Already, we've seen that in May, there had been controls put on the price and availability of bread, as the most important food stuff, now, in September 1793, about 40 essentials are effectively pegged in terms of their prices. Wages to be paid in cities, such as Paris, are also pegged but at a rather higher level than prices. In other words, working people, wage-earners, are supposed to be a little better off in 1793 than they'd been at the start of the Revolution. There is a political dimension to this, as well. Of course, the overthrow of the monarchy in 1792 had effectively overthrown the constitutional monarchy and in 1793, a new Republican constitution is put to the vote across the country, massively supported, very few no votes, but in October 1793, it is suspended until the peace. The Constitution itself is symbolically placed in an oak chest in the heart of the National Convention and the National Convention decides when it is safe, we will take that Constitution out of that oak chest and put it into effect at a time when we can live in peace and live in a democratic, liberal, constitutional state of affairs. But at the moment, we must suspend that until we have won this war because we must give our Committee of Public Safety the power to take those emergency measures. The crisis is responded to in a third way. A way in which we might call cultural because the men of the National Convention are convinced that the battle in which they are now engaged, revolutionary France against old regime Europe, the virtues of the Republic against the vices of monarchy, as they sometimes put it, that this is a battle which is as much about the way people behave and believe, as much about daily culture, as it is about anything else. It's about the regeneration of humanity. It's about a whole new world, a new way of doing things and perhaps, the most radical manifestation of that is in September 1793, when on the first anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic, it is decided to introduce a revolutionary calendar, which will effectively start the French era or the era of liberty and equality at the year one back in September 1792. In other words, the 21st of September 1793, the first anniversary of the Republic, will be the start of the year two. This will be a rational and secular calendar. France is also at war with the Papacy, which is calling the authority of the Church and its Gregorian calendar of saints' days into question. What they do, is to introduce a calendar, which is to have months of 30 days. It's to be rational, it's to be decimal. Of course, there's a problem, there can't be 10 months, there have to be 12 but there are to be 12 months of 30 days and they are to be named after the natural world, rather than the classical world and the world of religious saints days. So that the months pertaining, for example, to autumn, the months of Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, soft evocative words about autumn, the months that sound rather less evocative in English of wind and ice and cold - there are to be months that evoke the seasons and every day is to have the name not of a saint but of a virtue or of a useful implement. The five days that are left over to make up 365 days, will be the sans-culottes days, which will recognize some of the most important virtues that sans-culottes are said to embody. It's a critical point because, from the outset, it is clear that the objectives that the Committee of Public Safety and their supporters in the Convention have in mind are not just to make the republic safe in military terms. They're also to recognize the world historical importance of what is being fought over. That this is a war to create and make safe a new Republican France, a republic of the virtues. But side by side with the creation of a virtuous society, goes the punishment of those who are its enemies. In September 1793, just a few days before the introduction of that Revolutionary calendar, the Convention passes a law on suspects, which effectively, means that every one of France's 40,000 parishes, former parishes, now communes or neighbourhoods in cities will have a watch committee, a surveillance committee whose task it is to watch carefully to see whether there is counter revolutionary or suspect activity going on in the neighborhood or in the rural commune and as this contemporary illustration shows, to bring suspect people before a watch committee that's to be established in every one of those communities to check whether their papers are in order but also to check whether there are proofs of their civic behaviour, or are they people whose good faith, who's attitude to the Revolution is such that they need to be effectively detained as suspects in prisons and even if the need arises, there's the evidence there, to put them on trial through the Revolutionary Tribunal. There is to be surveillance and if necessary, punishment. The following month, Marie Antoinette, also found guilty of treason like her husband, goes to the guillotine. Sketched here rapidly by Jacques-Louis David, as she's on her way to the guillotine, itself a harrowing portrait of the former queen. She's not the only one. Leading Girondins, such as Brissot, people who have been expelled from the Convention in the middle of 1793 are also put on trial, found guilty and executed. Manon Roland, one of the key Girondin organizers similarly, put on trial and found guilty of undermining the unity, the purpose of the Republic by her incessant attacks on the Jacobins who are passing the laws inside the National Convention. Bailly is also put on trial and found guilty. He's the man, you might remember, who had administered the oath of the National Assembly at the Tennis Court in June 1789. By now, he's regarded as a counter-revolutionary, one of the reasons why Jacques-Louis David never completes that painting of the Tennis Court Oath. Barnave, a prominent Revolutionary in the early years, who in July of 1791, had called for the troops to be sent to the Champ de Mars, where people are signing a petition for the abdication of Louis the XVI. Barnave is seen to be the person who has blood on his hands over that episode, as well. He too is tried and sent to the guillotine. This is to be a regime which is uncompromising, therefore, in the measures it takes to deal with the military crisis, the economic crisis, the political crisis but also uncompromising in the way that it deals with those who would overthrow the Revolution, who are effectively in league with the enemy. It's a remarkable period, the second half of 1793, as some of the measures that are being taken by the Committee of Public Safety in the National Convention, start to bear fruit. There are a series of very significant military victories, across the last few months of 1793. Up here, in the Northeast, the battle of Wattignies effectively halts the advance of Austrian troops. They're still on French soil but their advance has been halted. Just as down in the South, The Battle of Peyrestortes, near Perpignan, does the same with the advance of Spanish troops. Over in the West of France, the great city of Nantes holds firm against the great rural insurrection against the authority of the National Convention. The onward march of Vendean rebels is checked on the banks of the River Loire at Nantes. Toulon, the great naval port on the Mediterranean, which had been surrendered to Britain by its officers, mainly aristocrats, in August 1793, is recaptured at the end of the year by the French army, headed by a young artillery lieutenant named Napoleon Bonaparte. Some victories are occurring on France's borders. And it raises the fundamental question, what is the point at which it could be said that the measures, the sweeping measures, the draconian measures, that had been taken by the Committee of Public Safety and the National Convention, have achieved their aim? At what point, might it be safe to open up that oak chest and to take out the Constitution of 1793 and for France to return to peacetime constitutional government? At what point, could it be said that the Committee of Public Safety had done its work and was no longer necessary? In my next lecture, I'll explore the answers to those questions.
