In my previous lecture, I outlined some of the cultural and ideological dimensions of the Jacobin - Sans-culottes alliance, which was so important, during this year 1793, 1794. And I want to do in today's lecture is to focus a little more closely on two particular elements of the Jacobin Sans-culottes alliance, an alliance of patriotic Republican, middle class people with urban and rural revolutionary supporters, sans-culottes, that achieved so much in terms of revolutionary victories across 1793, 1794. The first particular dimension that I want to focus on, and which is a matter of both unity between these two groups, but tension as well, has to do with political life, because central to the ideology of the Jacobin Sans-culottes alliance, is the idea that popular participation, popular sovereignty at work, is of crucial importance. As is the assumption that this crisis, this military crisis, this crisis of counter-Revolution, the survival of the Republic itself, can only be won by massive civic sacrifice, by volunteering into the armies or agreeing to be conscripted - that, that is the clearest sign of your Revolutionary virtue - being prepared to fight and to die for the republic itself. Every community, across the whole country is expected to have a surveillance committee where Sans-culottes and Jacobins effectively examine the public behavior, the civic virtue, of people in their communities and are prepared to denounce as suspect those who in fact, cannot give sufficient proof of this civic virtue, of their committment to the Republic. But underpinning this political agenda of the Jacobin Sans-culottes alliance of the people in arms, of the people vigilant, of the people participating permanently in the work of the Revolution - underpinning that is a certain tension, because in June 1793 when the 22 leading Girondins had forcibly been expelled from the National Convention by intimidation, by the force of a huge Sans-culottes insurrection in Paris, Jacobins within the National Convention, although they're pleased to have their Girondin opponents out of the way, are profoundly uncomfortable at the thought that Parisians are able to intimidate the government of the whole country into acquiescing with its demands. And in December, 1793, the National Convention passes a law on government, which effectively says that the location of authority is within the National Convention and its committees, not within the political clubs and neighborhood meetings of the Sans-culottes. There is a political tension. Is the republic to be run by its elected government and its committees, or is it to be the people of Paris, who are able to act on behalf of the whole nation, as they had in 1789, in 1792 with the overthrow of the monarchy, and in 1793 with the purge of those leading Girondins? One of the casualties by the way, of the convention reasserting it's political authority, has to do with the clubs that had been set up by radical women. This is one of the posters that is very popular in the streets of Paris in 1793, calling for women to have the same rights as men to enter the armies, to enter administration, to be equal citizenesses, as they said. There's a very powerful radical, women's club in Paris, the Society of Revolutionary Republican Citizenesses, and maybe about 30 women's clubs across the country as a whole. When the Paris women's club sides with the most militant of the Sans-culottes in fact the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, decide to move against them in the same way that they move against the most radical of the san-culottes in general. And in October in 1793, women's clubs are effectively closed down. But it's a significant demonstration of the way in which, during this period of the French Revolution, there are extraordinary developments, in the whole conception of popular democracy, and what that might mean. We have for the first time, large scale political gatherings of Women of the People which we might loosely call feminists, even though that's not a term which is used until the 1830's, but effectively there is an emergence of a radical women's politics. The second dimension that I want to say something of, a second dimension of this Jacobin-Sans-culottes alliance, which has an inherent tension, has to do with religion. We've seen the way in which the Jacobin-Sans-culottes ideology was one which put an emphasis on rebirth, the regeneration of France, the idea that the struggle in which the Revolution was now engaged, was a fight to the death for a whole new world order, and one in which the place of the old Catholic Church was called into question. We've seen how earlier in the Revolution the clerical oath, that's imposed on parish priest's in 1791, shows a real division between the North and West of the country, and parts of the South on the one hand, and much of the rest of country, the area around Paris, and the area in the southeast. Similarly in 1793, 1794, as the Revolution becomes more radical, there is pressure on parish priests who've taken the oath, to give up their functions. Such is the visceral hatred, of the role of the church in the counter-Revolution, that it becomes a measure of priestly commitment, to the Revolution to effectively abdicate one's calling. Not surprisingly, it's in the area around Paris, and again down here in the southeast where huge numbers, virtually all of the remaining parish clergy decide that they will abdicate their functions. Many of them also marry as a statement of their commitment to the new order. They give up their, their priestly vows. Often, popular anti clericalism, even popular hostility to Christianity per say, goes to extremes. In a number of country towns, even today, as you enter into cathedrals, such as here in Provins near Paris, you notice that many of the religious statues of the saints that are accessible outside the doors to the church, have been defaced. And much of that defacing happens during this period 1793, 1794. A hostility to the Catholic Church, which goes as far as De-Christianization, as people call it at the time - here on the Cathedral of Chartres, or here the Cathedral of Auxerre. All area's across a belt just south of Paris, where support for the Revolution was very strong, but also where there were massive abdications of priests, and a deep hostility, to the old role of the Catholic Church, and to the way in which the Pope and Catholic exiles, are now supporting counter-Revolutionary armies invading France. A de-Christianization movement sweeps much of the country in late 1793 and it's actually captured in this painting of a De-Christianization ceremony in a parish church where local Sans-culottes are effectively mocking the church, purging it of its religious ornaments. A prominent local Sans-culottes would be dressed in the priest vestments, probably on a donkey as a symbol of contempt, a symbol of mockery. The church would be purged, of its Christian dimensions before being turned into a political club or a temple of reason. By Easter, 1794, there are probably only about 140 parish churches out of 40,000 which celebrate Easter Mass. That the year 1793, 1794 is a year when the church bells are silent, and, where the church is effectively empty of priests. Priests have either abdicated their functions, or in the west of the country, have gone into exile, or have simply melted back into local society - a de-Christianizing time. It bothers many prominent Jacobins and Robespierre in particular, who argue that there is nothing wrong, per say, in religious belief. There is no reason why a good Christian, cannot also be a good Republican. Robespierre and many of others in the National Convention decide that the De-Christianization movement is needlessly divisive, that it's an affront to the freedom to worship. Remember that speech of Robespierre’s in February 1794, where he talked about the need for people to, be virtuous and the need for a government to use both virtue and terror. Well, in June 1794 Robespierre is a key person with Jacques-Louis David in promulgating and organizing the Festival of the Supreme Being, as it's called, where massive numbers of people, hundreds of thousands of people, gather to celebrate on the Champ de Mars in central Paris, on a fake mountain, symbolising the role of the Jacobins - they gather to celebrate the idea of the Supreme Being - Robespierre effectively saying, whether you are a non-believer, a catholic, a protestant, a Jew, whatever your attitude to religion, can we not agree, that there is a supreme being which represents the highest aspirations of humanity, the highest qualities, of the natural world, those things which represent what we know in our consciences, in our hearts, about the virtues. And this is to be a way of inculcating virtue in the French people. Massively popular, by the way this Cult of the Supreme Being in June 1794. There is even today, in a small town just to the west of Paris, a small town called Houdan, there is still a church in France today, which has above it's doorway, a statement which comes directly from the Cult of the Supreme Being of 1794, which is painted above it's doorway then, and is still legible today. The French people recognise the immortality of the soul and the existence of the supreme being. An attempt by Robespierre and his supporters among the Jacobins, to create a Republican cult, which would exemplify and celebrate the virtues of the regenerated society that they are in the process of creating.
