The overthrown and execution of Robespierre and his allies on the tenth of Thermidor of the year two, gives the majority of people left in the national convention an opportunity now that the republic is safe from invasion and counter revolution, gives them the opportunity to try and stabilise the revolution. And there are a number of immediate reactions to the end of this period of the terror, as it's now called. One is the huge numbers of people who have been held in prison as suspects, people who are waiting to go on trial. In front of the revolutionary tribunal, a huge number of them are released from prison. Among them is this woman Josephine de Beauharnais whose husband is executed towards the end of the terror. She herself self narrowly escapes. She's the daughter of a plantation owner, a slave owner in the French West Indies and she will shortly thereafter meet a young military left tenet. A brilliant young soldier named Napoleon Bonaparte and become his spouse. There are people who escaped the Guillotine just by a matter of days. But one of the other immediate reactions is the scapegoating of Robespierre and his allies. This is a very common type of image that's generated after July 1794. Piles of heads and under the heading the government of Robespierre, there is the illustration of Robespierre guillotining himself because there was no one else in France to do it for him. He'd effectively killed the French people. Even though as I pointed out, there are about 30,000 people who lose their lives, because of the actions of the revolution tribunal, in a population of 28 million. It becomes convenient to develop a whole demonology of Robespierre, and the regime that he lead. The extraordinary cultural revolution that I described during the year 1793-1794 is over as well. That was a period of time where sans-culotte sought to exercise their political power. Sought to have a real say in the direction that the country was taking. Exemplified in this illustration from that period of sans-culotte man handling, a bourgeois, in the streets of Paris and forcing him to take off his top hat, to don a liberty cap. To get rid of his fancy knee-breeches. To wear simple trousers and all the rest of it. That cultural revolution of the year too, where it was not the done thing to display one's wealth. To mark one's self off by the clothes one wore. That is now over. There is if you like, a cultural reaction. A clothing reaction. Against all of those constraints on the right way to behave that had been imposed in 1793, 1794. There is the emergence on the streets of, of Paris of the Jeunesse dorée or gilded youth, we would call it. The well to do sons and daughters of the very wealthy, people who during the year of privation, the year of sacrifice, the year of repression of 1793, 1794 had had to hide their wealth. That anybody on the streets of Paris during the year two, who was caught wearing lace would immediately have been suspect during the year two as a counter-revolutionary. That's what the aristocracy had warned during the bad old days of the old regime. But now it becomes the, the dumb thing for young men, Muscadin as they called themselves, and the women, Merveilleues, the marvelous young things to almost, to parade their wealth, to parade their finery on the streets of Paris. Because they know now that they can get away with it. And there's a punitive edge to the way in which they want to parade their wealth, to flaunt it in public, in a way that they haven't been able to. It becomes fashionable to wear high neck scarves. As a way of symbolising, how close she'd come to the guillotine. Perhaps, the scarf is even hiding, a scar, where the guillotine had almost decapitated you. Young men in particular, of the of the gilded youth, take to parading the streets of Paris with stout clubs. And enjoy the opportunity to thump, to beat up, someone who's obviously a sans-culotte, or a form Jacobin. A period of cultural, social, political reaction, therefore, against all of the restraints of the year two. At the end of that year, the majority in the national convention former Jacobins, former [INAUDIBLE], members of the plain, and so on. Decide to close down the Jacobin club, such as the mood of political reaction. These, this is now a convention that's saying alright we've, defeated our military enemies, but we must make sure above all that we never go through another period of such privation, of such repression as we went through during the year two. Part of their political reaction is to close down the Jacobin club. It's a period of social and economic reaction too. They take away all of the limits on prices of essentials that have been imposed by the Jacobins in September 1793. The general maximum of prices and wages is abolished. Run away inflation is launched. Finally at the end of the year they decide to reorganise the Revolutionary Tribunal. From now on it is only to judge people who've been caught with weapons in their hands fighting against the Republic. That people who express political disagreement with the government are free to go about their business. In fact in May 1795 the Revolutionary Tribunal itself is closed. And fittingly, the last person to be executed is this man, Fouquier-Tinville who had been the public prosecutor, effectively the head of the Revolutionary Tribunal during the year of the terror. The general maximum is abolished in 1794 just as it becomes apparent that the harvest of 1794 is going to be one of the worst of the century. And the winter of 1794-1795 is extraordinarily severe. The River Seine freezes over. There are reports of people dying of hunger in the streets of Paris. The reports of wolves been seen eating cadavers in the streets of Paris. It's a desperately difficult time for walking people. And in April, and then again in May of the following year, 1795, there are attempts by the sans-culottes to invade the convention and effectively push the revolution back to the days of the Jacobins. The days of the terror, the days of the Year II when they said we may have had repression, we may have had executions, but we also had bread and we didn't have the spectacle of the gilded youth threatening us in the streets for our republican loyalties. In May 1795, sans-culottes and sans-joupon sans-culottes women, invade the national convention. At the end of the this pike staff, you can make out a head. They've decapitated the Paris food commissioner, the man they hold responsible for starvation rations. People are being given no more than a small bread roll a day to eat in Paris, in May 1795. And they're thrusting that head into the face of the President of the National Convention. And yelling out slogans, we want the constitution of 1793, we want the release of the Jacobins, we want the the gilded youth to be punished but above all we want bread, we want subsistence supplies. As a result of the repression of that insurrection, thousands of sans-culottes are imprisoned they lose their political rights. Their leaders are actually sentenced to deportation to the French penal colony of Guiana in South America, known as the dry guillotine because it's conditions were so horrible you might as well have been sentenced to death. In other parts of the country particularly the south where there are deep political divisions, there are organisations such as the Companies of Jesus of the Sun openly royalist bands who who use this period of reaction of oppression to launch what's called a white terror. To take revenge for all of the miseries that they've experienced during the years 1793 to 1794. Those people who've got relatives who'd had to immigrate, relatives who'd been imprisoned as suspects or even guillotined as counter-revolutionaries. All of those who've lost because of the controls that were put in place during the year two. Now are able to take their revenge. And there are thousands of people across the south of France, particularly the southeast, who are effectively put to death by bands of Royalists who are exacting revenge for all of the suffering that their families and they themselves have been through. The war itself, now changes purpose too. That from a defensive war, to defend the revolution and the republic against the invasion of counter revolutionary royalist forces from outside France, now that the war has been won, there's a new emphasis put on expanding the war into neighbouring countries. Treaties are made with with with Prussia and Austrians, and Spain, but the overall intention of foreign policy after 1794 becomes the expansion of the sphere of influence in Europe, of the French republic with the creation of sister republics around the border as a buffer zone against any further threat to the safety of France. This man Booissy d'Anglas was the President of the National Convention the day that the Saint Coulotte invaded the convention for the last time in May 1795. And he's the man who had that hid on the end of a park frost in his face. He's a key figure in the national revolution after the fall of Robespierre. And it's he who articulates better than anyone else I think just what it is that the convention now tries to do to stabilise the revolution, to end the revolution, so settle it down and what he says is this, in a speech of June of 1795. As people in the convention are drawing up a new constitution, the constitution of the year three. Boissy d'Anglas says this; ‘We should be governed by the best among us; the best are the most highly educated and those in with the greatest interest in upholding the laws; save for the rarest exceptions, you will only find such men among those who, by reason of their owning property are devoted to the land in which it is situated… If you were to grant unlimited political rights to men without property, (the sans-culottes) and if they were ever to take their place in the legislative assembly, they would provoke disturbances or cause them to be provoked, without fear of the consequences; they would levy or permit the levying of taxes fatal to trade and agriculture…’ Boissay d'Anglas says if we are to win the revolution, if we are to create stability, we need to go back almost to the days of active and passive citizens. We need to make sure that those who are active in politics, who run the country are those with a stake in society. Because what went wrong in 1793, 1794, is the powers in the hands of Jacobin and sans-culottes, often men who didn't own property, who didn't have sufficient stake in society and therefore took unnecessary risks. They imposed unnecessary restraints on people's freedoms. Boissy d'Anglas is one of the key architects of the Constitution of the Year III. Constitution that's drawn up in August 1795. Which is an attempt to end the revolution, to stabilise it. It's characterised for example by the reintroduction of a property qualification, for being a member of the new legislative body, the council of 500. But it also introduces restrictions on political life which mean that political life is now effectively the act of voting. The new constitution makes demonstrations effectively illegal. It also requires that people who are to enter politics have to be of a certain age and marital status. From now on the men of the convention who were dominant are saying, we're not going to have someone like Robespierre or Saint-Just, men who were unmarried without families young and therefore without sufficient stake in society. And just to make sure that we stabilize and end this revolution. They pass a two-thirds decree a little later, which effectively means that two thirds of the members of the new legislative the council of 500, have to be drawn from the convention itself. This is an attempt at continuity, at stability. What I'm going to be doing in my, final group of lectures next week, in the final week of the course. Is outlining the extent to which they're successful and ending the revolution, and examining the ways in which France has changed, or not changed as a result of these extraordinary years. I'll see you next week.
