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ÉMIGRÉ Those people who chose to or were forced to live outside France between 1789 and 1814. The fall of the Bastille prompted the first wave, led by the King’s brother, the Count of Artois. Over 150,000 nobles, clergy, and commoners became émigrés during the revolutionary era. The King’s brothers established a royalist center at Coblentz, just across the German border, and set up a military force commanded by the Prince of Condé that existed until 1801 with British, Austrian, and Russian support. However, the émigrés spread far and wide in Europe and the Americas. Upon Louis XVI’s execution, the Count of Provence recognized Louis XVI’s son as Louis XVII with himself as regent. When Louis XVII died in 1795, Provence proclaimed himself King as Louis XVIII with financial support from other European powers. The existence of the émigrés was a major cause of the war that began in the spring of 1792. The property of the émigrés was seized and later sold. Under the Directory, a huge number of émigrés returned to France. Bonaparte promulgated a partial amnesty in October 1800, and in April 1802 all but a thousand émigrés were allowed to return. Later, under the Restoration, Louis XVIII paid compensation of 1 billion francs to émigrés who lost property. ABBÉ Literally translated, the word means abbot and in fact, abbé can refer to this church official. However, the title abbé was also given to those who completed the ecclesiastical curriculum in the lycée. For example, for the famous revolutionary abbé Sieyès, the title was merely a distinction as he was definitely not an abbot. ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES An old regime advisory body that met twice (February–May 1787 and November–December 1788) for the purpose of approving royal reforms. The King created it to get around the obstreperous parlements. Composed of some of the highest-ranking nobles, clergy, and public officials, the first Assembly refused to endorse many reforms and, with the backing of public opinion, forced the monarchy to call for the Estates-General. This move precipitated the outbreak of the Revolution. ASSIGNAT Paper money based on the confiscation of church lands to liquidate the national debt. Originally not legal tender, the assignats were supposed to carry interest, but far too many assignats were issued, thereby undermining the currency, jump- starting inflation, and encouraging the hoarding of specie. Only in May 1797 were the assignats withdrawn from circulation in the hopes of returning to metallic currency and greater economic stability. BAILLIAGE Old regime law court for civil and criminal cases as well as the jurisdiction under its control. In most of the south, the equivalent institution was called the sénéchaussée. These jurisdictions elected deputies to the Estates-General. BASTILLE A medieval fortress-prison in eastern Paris. Frequently used for the subjects/victims of arbitrary royal authority, it held only seven prisoners in 1789. Yet, the Bastille remained a potent symbol of royal power. It was seized by the Paris crowd on 14 July 1789; this event marked the end of the absolute monarchy and the beginning of a new era. The date of the fall of the Bastille is a French national holiday. BOURBON The Bourbon dynasty governed France from 1589 to 1793 and from 1814 to 1830, creating an absolute monarchy that reached its zenith under Louis XIV and was overthrown during the reign of Louis XVI. Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, and Charles X all served as constitutional monarchs. It was Charles X’s attempt to institute a more absolutist monarchy that led to the fall of the Bourbons and their replacement by the House of Orléans. BOURGEOIS/BOURGEOISIE Term with many meanings that must be determined from context. Under the old regime, anyone who lived in an urban area was a bourgeois or member of the bourgeoisie, but the term was usually applied only to wealthier people who did no manual labor. Bourgeois were also those who lived from their invested income or property, thus “living nobly” and constituting a distinct social category that had its own representation in municipal politics. In addition, the bourgeoisie often enjoyed certain privileges that were called the “rights of the city.” After the Revolution, the term “bourgeoisie” became associated with the concept of a capitalist social class. In the nineteenth century, most notably in the work of Karl Marx and other socialist writers, the French Revolution was described as a bourgeois revolution in which a capitalist bourgeoisie overthrew the feudal aristocracy in order to remake society according to capitalist interests and values, thereby paving the way for the Industrial Revolution. Thus, when many nineteenth and twentieth century commentators write about the bourgeoisie, they mean something quite different from what contemporaries meant in the eighteenth century. Careful attention to the proper definition in use is essential. CAHIER DE DOLÉANCES List of grievances written by each order (estate) for every bailliage and sénéchaussée (as well as a few other institutions) in France as part of the electoral process of the spring of 1789. The cahiers were intended to inform and instruct the deputies of local views and authorize reform. Cahiers of the third estate were written at the parish level, then consolidated at the bailliage/sénéchaussée level by order, providing a superb source for those interested in public opinion in the spring of 1789. Nobles and clergy began on the bailliage/sénéchaussée level. CHAMP DE MARS A military parade ground in southwestern Paris. Many large revolutionary festivals were held there, and in July 1791 one such demonstration sponsored by the Cordeliers Club resulted in the death of several republicans at the hands of the National Guard. This “massacre” pushed a further wedge between the more conservative constitutional monarchists and democratic republicans and split many of the clubs down the middle, but they emerged more united and more radical. CHAMPART A seigneurial tax levied on cultivated land and any other income-producing property. Paid with a fraction of what the land produced, this tax has been likened to a tithe of the Roman Catholic Church. COMMISSAIRE Agent of the central government to local administrations. Each municipality, district, and department had a locally elected agent who was to represent and report to the central state. Under the Directory (see Council of Five Hundred and Directory), these agents were named by the central state rather than locally. COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY This provisional group was created by the Legislative Assembly after the fall of the monarchy on 15 August 1792. Composed of government ministers, this council was given executive power. After the start of the war in April 1792 and the initial series of reverses, a Committee of General Defense was created on 1 January 1793, to coordinate military matters. In March 1793 this committee formalized the older committee, the Committee of Public Safety, which was dominated by moderates and Girondins named by the National Convention. From 10 July 1793 to 27 July 1794, the Committee of Public Safety had a stable membership of twelve deputies and was delegated the authority to conduct the war and govern France. Working together and sharing responsibility, the so-called Great Committee initiated a number of radical measures to ensure France’s survival ranging from the institution of “Maximums” on wages and prices to a systematic use of Terror to cow opponents. The most notable members of the committee were Maximillien Robespierre, Georges Couthon, Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, and Lazare Carnot, the “organizer of victory.” Ultimately, fears of the continuing Terror, and of Robespierre’s personal power, led to a coup on 9 Thermidor (27 July), which broke the power of the Great Committee. The institution lasted another seventeen months until November 1795, but its powers were restricted to war and diplomacy. COMMUNE Most famously, that of Paris, but “commune” was the name given to every municipal government under French control after 14 July. Although new municipal governments arose throughout France in the summer of 1789, the law establishing the new municipalities was not passed until 14 December 1789. Elected through the forty-eight sections (see section), the Paris Commune emerged as a center of radical thought and action. In command of the National Guard of the city, the Commune came to be dominated by the sans-culottes. The Commune precipitated most of the revolutionary journées (days), most notably 10 August 1792, which overthrew the monarchy, and 31 May–2 June 1793, which led to the expulsion of the Girondins from the National Convention. The Paris Commune was a major factor in pushing the central government toward a policy of Terror. Brought under the control of the Committee of Public Safety in December 1793, it throttled back the popular movement. After the Terror, the Paris Commune was stripped of its political role and disappeared completely under Napoleon Bonaparte. CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY The National Assembly took this name on 9 July 1789, to reflect its self-appointed mission to write a constitution for France. The Constituent faced numerous crises until it disbanded at the end of September 1791. Not only did the King attempt to undermine the government, he even sought to flee the country for which he was suspended and eventually reinstated. This body also wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the Constitution of 1791 and tried to face up to the fiscal crisis by issuing new legal tender, the assignats. The results of these important efforts were quite mixed, but the Constituent Assembly was the first real legislature in French history. CONSUL In the aftermath of the coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November), the Constitution of the Year VIII (1799) gave executive power to three “consuls” who also exercised almost all legislative authority. Provisionally, the first consul was Napoléon Bonaparte; the second, Roger Ducos; and the third, Emannuel- Joseph Sieyès. Later, Ducos and Sieyès were replaced by Jean-Jacques-Réné Cambacérès and CharlesFrançois Lebrun, who did much of the legislative work of government under the Consulate. The Consulate was replaced by the Empire in 1804. CONTROLLER GENERAL OF FINANCES This post had control over the royal budget, tax collection, and many other aspects of administration. In the eighteenth century, the Controller- General of Finances was almost a prime minister. Under Louis XVI, many reform efforts emanated from this office. CORDELIER CLUB A Paris political society that had a more popular orientation than the Jacobins. Officially named the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and Citizen, it met in a former Franciscan monastery on the rue des Cordeliers. Although expelled from the building, the club kept the nickname. The Cordeliers section, led by Georges-Jacques Danton, Jean- Paul Marat, and Camille Desmoulins, spearheaded democratic agitation in Paris in 1789–90. When the sections were created, the club soon dominated them. Women played a prominent role in the club. In the summer of 1791, the Cordeliers again championed democratization, this time of the new French constitution. Delegates met with a crowd on 17 July 1791, on the Champ de Mars, but the crowd was dispersed by the National Guard. Subsequent repression focused on the club. Restored to prominence by the summer of 1792, the Cordeliers were at the heart of the movement that overthrew the monarchy on 10 August, called for the election of the National Convention and the widening of the suffrage to include all men. The Cordeliers also played an important role in the expulsion of the Girondins from the National Convention in May–June 1793 as they came under the influence of first the Enragés and then Jacques-Réné Hébert. In Ventôse, Year II (March 1794), the club was purged and the Hébertistes sent to the guillotine. The club then submitted to the Jacobins, and a few members continued to meet until the spring of 1795, but by this point the club had little influence. CORVÉE Old regime unpaid labor service. The royal corvée was levied for the construction and upkeep of royal roads and the seigneurial corvée was for local labor needs. The former was newer and heavier than the latter, which almost never averaged more than four days a year. Both were primary targets of the cahiers de doléance, written in the spring of 1789 as part of the election to the Estates-General, and were abolished that summer. COUNCIL OF ELDERS The upper house of the legislature established by the Constitution of 1795. The Council of Five Hundred was the lower house. Deputies were elected (indirectly) to three-year terms. There was a major shift in the political views of the deputies selected in each election. Royalists did well in the Year V (1797), and the Jacobins recovered in the Year VI (1798). Each time the executive, known as the Directory, moved to arrest or exclude significant numbers of deputies. The councils staged their own coup in June 1799. Dissatisfied, a group led by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in turn planned their own coup, which took place on 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (9 November 1799) that put Napoleon Bonaparte in power. COUNCIL OF FIVE HUNDRED The lower house of the legislature established by the Constitution of 1795. The Council of Elders was the upper house. Deputies were elected (indirectly) to three-year terms. There was a major shift in the political views of the deputies selected in each election. Royalists did well in the Year V (1797), and the Jacobins recovered in the Year VI (1798). Each time, the executive, known as the Directory, moved to arrest or exclude significant numbers of deputies. The councils staged their own coup in June 1799. Dissatisfied, a group led by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, in turn planned their own coup, which took place on 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (9 November 1799) that put Napoleon Bonaparte in power. COUNT OF ARTOIS Charles-Philippe, the youngest brother of Louis XVI who later reigned as Charles X (1824–30). A prominent spendthrift and playboy, Artois helped undermine reform efforts in the years before 1789. Artois was the first member of the royal family to emigrate to foreign lands. He sought to convince the crowned heads of Europe to restore Louis XVI’s authority. Intransigent and hotheaded, Artois joined his brother Provence at Coblentz and participated in various royalist conspiracies and military adventures. Upon his brother’s assumption of power in 1814, Artois headed the ultraroyalist faction, and, when he became king, his policies were so extreme that they led to the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty. COUNT OF PROVENCE Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, younger brother of Louis XVI, later ruled as Louis XVIII (1814–24). More liberal than his brothers, Provence was no friend to reform before 1789. He left the country in June 1791, establishing a royalist center at Coblentz. He fomented conspiracies in and outside of France against the revolutionary government and slowly gathered a military force of émigrés. When Louis XVI was executed, Provence declared the dauphin Louis-Charles King as Louis XVII, assuming the post of regent. When the imprisoned Louis XVII died in 1795, Provence declared himself Louis XVIII. Perpetually in exile, he moved from Italy to Poland to England to Germany. In January 1814, he declared himself willing to accept some of the revolution’s changes, paving the way for the Charter of 1814 and the Restoration of the Bourbons. CREOLE A person born in a European colony of either European or African parentage. The term was used to distinguish those born in the colonies from both aboriginal peoples and those who came directly from Europe or Africa. The word was also used to refer to languages developed in the New World out of a mixture of European and African roots. DAUPHIN Heir of the body to the King of France. Successively in this period: Louis-Auguste (1769–74), grandson of Louis XV who became Louis XVI; and Louis-Charles (1785–95), declared King as Louis XVII in January 1793. DENIER Unit of copper money during the old regime and equal to 1/240th of a livre. Twelve deniers made up a sou and 20 sous made up a livre. Prior to the Revolution, journeymen outside of Paris might make around 200 livres annually while provincial attorneys earned around 2,000 livres. DIRECTORY This five-member group functioned as the executive for the governmental system created by the Constitution of 1795. As its most visible component, the Directory gave its name to the entire government. It existed from October 1795 to November 1799, when it was overthrown by Napoléon Bonaparte with the assistance of one of the directors, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès. The directors staged a series of coups in Fructidor Year V (August-September 1797) and Floréal Year VI (April-May 1798) to overturn electoral results that they did not like, and the legislature purged the directors in Prairial Year VII. The Directory consolidated many of the gains of the first years of the Revolution and prosecuted the war successfully with the help of its brilliant young general Napoléon Bonaparte, but proved incapable of protecting the republic. ESTATES-GENERAL An old regime representative body that last met in 1614, which grouped together the three orders or estates of the kingdom: clergy, nobility, and everybody else. This “Third Estate” made up 95 percent of the population. Each order had one vote. The powers of the body were vague, but contemporaries believed they had the right to deny new tax appropriations. When the monarchy’s fiscal problems left it with almost no other choices, Louis XVI called for the convening of the Estates-General in May 1789. He also asked that each order meet at the parish level and draw up cahiers [notebooks] that would express their grievances. This request to consult public opinion and the protracted electoral process were crucial to politicization. At the same time, as the parlements inveighed for the “forms of 1614,” the Third Estate would always be outvoted by the two privileged orders that paid few taxes. Reformers called for both the “doubling of the third,” meaning that this group would comprise half the assembly and for “voting by head.” The King granted the former but not the latter, which deadlocked the EstatesGeneral in May and June until a group of deputies declared themselves the “National Assembly” on 17 June 1789, in the belief that this was where sovereignty truly lay. FEUILLANT A political club founded in the summer of 1791, officially known as the Society of the Friends of the Constitution and sitting at the Feuillant (convent). After the Champ de Mars “massacre” of 17 July 1791, those deputies who had been members of the Jacobins withdrew and formed their own club, the Feuillants, which dominated political affairs in Paris that summer. Slowly the rump of the Jacobins recovered the initiative by developing their popular appeal. By the spring of 1792, the club had dwindled into insignificance. FREE BLACK A non-white person who was free and not slave in legal status. The categories of free black and mulatto overlapped but were not identical. Mulatto referred to racial background; free black referred to legal status. Included among free blacks were all those with any African blood who were free. Thus free mulattos would be counted among free blacks but slave mulattos would not. Some free blacks were not mulattos but rather the offspring of two African parents who had gained their freedom. FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY CALENDAR A method of dating set up by the Jacobin government in October 1793 to give France a time system reflective of the new political realities. The Jacobins retrospectively set the first day of the first year as 22 September 1792, the day the French national government abolished the monarchy. Each year thus began in September, and the calendar endured into the Napoleonic era before it was abandoned.Revolutionary Calendar years were divided into 12 months of 30 days, followed by five or six additional days. The additional days at the end of the year (sans culottides) were Virtue Day, Genius Day, Labor Day, Reason Day, Rewards Day, and Revolution Day (the leap day). Leap years (with a sixth additional day) occurred on years III, VII, and XI.Vendémiaire, the month of vintage, mid-September through mid- October Brumaire, the month of fog, mid-October through mid- November Frimaire, the month of frost, mid-November through mid- December Nivôse, the month of snow, mid-December through mid-January Pluviôse, the month of rain, mid-January through mid-February Ventôse, the month of wind, mid-February through mid-March Germinal, the month of budding, mid-March through mid-April Floréal, the month of flowers, mid-April through mid-May Prairial, the month of meadows, mid-May through mid-June Messidor, the month of harvest, mid-June through mid-July Thermidor, the month of heat, mid-July through mid-August Fructidor, the month of fruit, mid-August through mid- September, Year I (1792), Year II (1793-94), Year III (1794-95), Year IV (1795-96), Year V (1796-97), Year VI (1797-98), Year VII (1798- 99), Year VIII (17991800), Year IX (1800-01), Year X (1801-02), Year XI (1802-03), Year XII (1803-04), Year XIII (1804-05), Year XIV (1805) GIRONDIN A political faction of the Legislative Assembly and National Convention. The Girondins’ name derived from the fact that many prominent deputies in the faction came from the region around Bordeaux, which was the department of the Gironde. However, the term was not commonly used by contemporaries, who denoted this group by the various leaders, most of whom supported liberal economics and representative democracy, not the direct democracy favored by the Paris sections and the Mountain (see Montagnard and Mountain). Some have questioned the coherence of this group, but current scholarship supports the notion of a loose collaboration. The Girondins championed war against Austria in the fall of 1791. As France moved toward war in April 1792, the journalist-deputy Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a prominent Girondin, became the most powerful figure in the Legislative Assembly, and his faction dominated the ministries. After the declaration of the republic, the Girondins slowly fell out of favor in Paris, particularly during the trial of the King in the late fall of 1792. They also lost control of the Convention to the growing “Montagnard” faction. In the spring the Paris sections provoked a crisis in which they forced the National Convention to expel twenty-nine Girondins between 31 May and 2 June 1793, and to destroy the movement politically. During the Terror many more were guillotined, and the faction was suppressed. Many Girondins returned to the Convention after 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) and contributed to the vindictive divisions of the republicans that ultimately allowed Bonaparte to seize power. HABSBURG The Habsburg dynasty was the royal family of Austria and its dependencies. The head of the family was also the customary emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a grouping of several hundred principalities in central Europe. Marie Antoinette married Louis-Auguste, the dauphin (heir) of France in 1770 and became Queen in 1775. Her brothers reigned as Emperor and fought a series of five wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France between 1792 and 1815. INTENDANT Chief local representative of the crown administering a généralité which was either a province or a part of a province. Beginning in the 1640s, they oversaw all aspects of royal authority. There were thirty-four in 1789, many of whom were active reformers. Their power was undermined in 1787, paving the way for the provincial unrest and uprisings of 1789. JACOBIN CLUB The most influential of the political clubs that emerged during the French Revolution. Originally known as the Breton Club, which grouped “patriot” deputies, and renamed “Society of the Friends of the Constitution,” it met at a former convent of the Jacobins on the rue Saint-Honoré that gave them their name. Affiliated clubs sprung up all over France. Initially, the Jacobins had a mostly middle-class membership, but as the Revolution radicalized, the membership reached further down the social scale to include many artisans and shopkeepers. During the trial of the King, moderates who opposed violence were excluded from the Paris club, which became a staunch supporter of the use of terror in defense of the revolutionary government. Despite this embrace of very advanced notions, this association with the government came to distance the club from the popular movement. Increasingly isolated from the sections and the sans-culottes, and even from the National Convention, the Jacobin Club suffered from the fate that befell Robespierre, one of its leading lights on 9 Thermidor (27 July). Public opinion blamed the Jacobins for the Terror, and the club was suppressed on 22 Brumaire Year III (12 November 1794). The meeting place was even abolished and a “White Terror” against former Jacobins emerged in many places. However, the spirit of the Jacobins and Jacobinism survived. A Jacobin movement reemerged under the Directory in defense of the republic and did well in the elections of the Year VI (1798), but this movement was a shadow of its former self and soon faced renewed proscription, first under the Directory and then definitively under Bonaparte. Still today the term “Jacobinism” has meaning as a political commitment to small-propertied ownership of farms and shops. JANSENISM A sect within Roman Catholicism named after Cornelius Jansenius, bishop of Ypres in the early seventeenth century. Jansenius advocated predestination based on the ideas of Saint Augustine and strict adherence to moral standards. During the reign of Louis XIV, Jansenism also came to include Gallican ideas, which advocated independence from the primacy of decisions made in Rome. Jansenism challenged that primacy and Roman control over the French church, as well as the strict authority of hierarchical subordination of parish to higher clergy. Jansenists also came to support the constitutional ideas of the judges of the parlements who tried to protect them from the “despotism” of the high clergy and ministers who wanted to stamp out any resistance to the absolute authority of King and altar. Jansenism provided religious justifications for criticism of the monarchy and was used by many who opposed the King or wanted to limit his authority. Thus was undermined part of the consensus that helped maintain the stability of the old regime. LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY This body met from 1 October 1791 to 20 September 1792. The deputies were chosen via indirect election and had to face continuing popular unrest and the fact that the executive—Louis XVI—could not be trusted. Since the King appointed ministers and exercised a suspensive veto regularly, the government was often deadlocked, swinging hazardously between dismissed ministers and vetoed initiatives, a fact that added an important impetus to the club movement. The assembly and the King ultimately shared only a desire to go to war with Austria and Prussia, although for different reasons. The assembly wanted to punish monarchs for their support of counterrevolutionaries. Louis XVI was hoping for a war that would enhance his position, either by destroying the Revolution or by showing his skill as commander in chief. War was declaredin March 1792. The continuing obstructions of the King led to the insurrection of 10 August and the overthrow of the monarchy. The Legislative Assembly then called for new elections and voted to disband, leaving a rump of newly appointed ministers to run the war and the government. LIVRE The old regime French pound, roughly equivalent to the franc, divided into 20 sous. See denier. MAÎTRE DES REQUÊTES Magistrates holding a venal office responsible for dealing with correspondence and complaints addressed to the King. The maîtres des requêtes were frequently used as recruiting grounds for higher office by the King and his ministers. MONTAGNARD Name of a political faction during the Terror. See Mountain. MOUNTAIN Name of a political faction during the Terror. The Mountain, or Montagnards, competed during the Terror against the Girondins, with both trying to attract the Plain. The Mountain was a group of deputies from Paris to the National Convention who sat together on the high benches to the left of the chair’s podium. During the fall of 1792 and particularly during the trial of the King, this group emerged as a faction allied with the Commune of Paris and the popular movement that demanded radical measures, among them the death of the King. The Montagnards fought the Girondins for power in Paris and in the Convention. In between the two factions in the meeting hall of the Convention sat the uncommitted “Plain,” who comprised the majority of deputies. During the trial of the King in which the Mountain led the fight to put the King to death, the Montagnards slowly won influence from the Girondins, and over the course of the spring of 1793, they became the dominant group in the Convention. The term has since been applied to anyone willing to use political terror in the name of a revolutionary cause. MULATTO A person born of mixed race parentage, usually a white European father and a black African mother. Mulattos could be either slave or free in status, and if free could themselves own slaves. NATIONAL ASSEMBLY This body came into being on 17 June 1789, with the renaming of the Estates-General on the motion of the abbé Sieyès. The renaming was effectively a claim that this new body was now sovereign. Initially, it comprised the members of the Third Estate and a few liberal nobles and clergy. When Louis XVI rejected the use of violence and ordered recalcitrant deputies to meet with the National Assembly on 27 June, the National Assembly became legal without resorting to violence. However, just a fortnight later the people of Paris had to rally to save it, ending with the 14 July assault on the Bastille. This body was to function as the legislative branch of government until the end of September 1791 and charged itself with writing a constitution. To reflect that mission, it called itself the National Constituent Assembly. NATIONAL CONVENTION Elected in September 1792 to write a constitution that would not include the King, this body held power until 5 Brumaire Year IV (27 October 1795). Elected via universal manhood suffrage, this assembly functioned as both the executive and legislative branches of government. It tried the King, executed him after a lengthy and divisive trial, prosecuted a war with most of Europe, faced enormous fiscal problems and two internal rebellions. In addition, a constitution written and submitted to the public in 1793 was suspended “until the peace.” The depth of these crises led it to resort to a systematic use of Terror as a method of facing the situation. The Convention also delegated much of its power to a twelve-member Committee of Public Safety headed by Maximillien Robespierre for nearly a year in 1793–94, until after the coup of 9 Thermidor (27 July). It took more than a year after the end of the Reign of Terror for the Convention to submit once again to the will of the voters, but it tried to limit continuing factionalism by promulgating a new constitution—that of 1795—and requiring that two-thirds of the deputies to the new legislature be current members of the Convention. Despite concrete achievements, the Convention failed to dampen factional violence and place the republic on secure footing. NATIONAL GUARD This organization of citizen-soldiers was created in early July 1789 on the suggestion of the electors of the city of Paris. They wanted to replace the traditional bourgeois militia with an organization that would allow them to resist the massing of regular troops by the King. After 14 July, the Marquis de Lafayette was named the organization’s commander. In July and August, cities and towns throughout France imitated Paris, setting up their troops of the National Guard. The guard chose to “federate” and through an invitation of the Paris Commune, representatives of the regular army and municipal National Guards met in Paris on 14 July 1790. This festival of the federation was one of the high points of the early years of the Revolution. ORDER Old regime France has frequently been described as a society of orders in which individuals and families had certain status in a hierarchy of social categories. Although used interchangeably here and elsewhere with the three estates— clergy, noble, and Third—orders also referred to divisions within the estates. Further, social strata often transcended all these categories, in part because of blurred boundaries between them, making a strict classification by “order” or “estate” difficult. By insisting on electing deputies by estates in the calling of the Estates-General, the government highlighted the tensions between the legal definitions and the actual situation. PÈRE DÛCHESNE A newspaper published most notably by Jacques- René Hébert from 1790 to March 1794, when he was executed. The paper was named after Père Dûchesne, a fictional character who claimed to speak for the sansculottes of Paris and the popular movement more generally. The paper died with its author, but the figure lived on in French popular culture. PARLEMENT The thirteen parlements functioned as the supreme courts of appeal. The Parlement of Paris had by far the largest area of competency, with one-third of the territory and perhaps two-thirds of France’s 26 million in 1789, but each of the provinces added to France since the fifteenth century had one. The judges owned their offices, which by the eighteenth century also conferred nobility upon the holder. This ownership, or “venality,” made them very difficult to dismiss. Throughout the eighteenth century, the judges of the parlements sought to limit or overturn those initiatives of the monarchy that they thought impinged upon the system of privileges characteristic of the old regime. Their main weapon in this battle was the remonstrance by which the parlements could refuse to register a royal edict and explain why they refused to do so. Ultimately the King could force registration in a lit de justice, but this was particularly costly. PLAIN Name of a political grouping of uncommitted deputies. See Mountain. The Mountain, or Montagnards, competed during the Terror against the Girondins, with both trying to attract the Plain. The Mountain was a group of deputies from Paris to the National Convention who sat together on the high benches to the left of the chair’s podium. During the fall of 1792 and particularly during the trial of the King, this group emerged as a faction allied with the Commune of Paris and the popular movement that demanded radical measures, among them the death of the King. The Montagnards fought the Girondins for power in Paris and in the Convention. In between the two factions in the meeting hall of the Convention sat the “Plain” who comprised the majority of deputies. During the trial of the King in which the Mountain led the fight to put the King to death, the Montagnards slowly won influence from the Girondins, and over the course of the spring of 1793, they became the dominant group in the Convention. The term has since been applied to anyone willing to use political terror in the name of a revolutionary cause. PREFECT Representative of the central government in each department. Created by the law of 28 Pluviôse, Year VIII (17 February 1800), the prefects exercised nearly despotic power in almost every aspect of administration; as an institution, they remain in existence to this day. REMONSTRANCE The parlements’ complaints about a royal edict that explained why they refused to register it. Remonstrances were an important means of publicizing the judges’ resistance to the monarchy and a method of delaying the implementation of measures they opposed. SÉNÉCHAUSSÉE Old regime law court for civil and criminal cases in southern France as well as the jurisdiction under its control. In northern France, the equivalent institution was called the bailliage. These jurisdictions elected deputies to the Estates- General. SACRAMENT The sacraments of Christianity, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, were very much at issue during the 1750s, when the Archbishop of Paris Christophe de Beaumont ordered the clergy not to administer the sacraments to Jansenists. The “refusal of sacraments” controversy between the King and clergy on the one hand and the more popular parlements on the other was instrumental in undermining the theoretical foundations of the absolute monarchy and augmenting the willingness of French elites to resist the demands of crown and altar. SANS-CULOTTES A social designation for a political position. Based primarily in the working class areas of Paris, the sansculottes, composed of a wide range of artisans from masters to journeymen, opposed themselves to the educated, well-to-do. Their name, literally without breeches, indicates the commitment to trousers worn by the lower classes. Beyond this oppositional stance, these groups opted for controlled bread prices, small business, and revolutionary justice if necessary. By 1792 they were a powerful force on the Parisian scene and politicians required their support. Eventually they were kingmakers, thrusting the Jacobins into office in 1793. But as the latter exercised power over the next year, they abandoned the sans-culottes, eventually repressing them. Thus they were not available when Robespierre, their closest ally, needed their help as he was being overthrown in 1794. Though weakened, the sans-culottes, reemerged and played a role in the Directory and, as a social ideal, well into the future. SECTION The section was the basic unit of municipal government in France. The forty-eight sections of Paris were the subunits of the Commune and were known for their militancy. The general assemblies of the sections were the strongholds of the sans-culottes and the club movement. They went into permanent session in July 1792 as a result of the war crisis and met more or less continuously until September 1793, when the number of meetings was limited to two every ten days. It was through the sections that most of the revolutionary journées (days) were organized and executed. SEIGNEUR Owner of a property or legal right with certain other rights attached to it, divided into useful rights: notably the right to command days of labor from those living on the land, to levy taxes or payments in kind, or to have exclusive access to a hunting ground, and honorific rights. Seigneurs did not have to be nobles. The seigneur could be a member of the clergy or a commoner without any change in the rights that went with the land. SENATE Set up by the Constitution of the Year VIII (1800), and serving for life, the Senate chose the members of the Legislative Body and Tribunate. In 1802 Bonaparte set up “senatorships” that came with land and a manorial house. The Senate was Bonaparte’s favored organ of government because it was agreeable to his demands. For example, it promulgated the decrees that established first the Consulate for Life and then the Empire. SOU(S) An old regime copper coin. It was divided into twelve deniers and twenty sous made a livre. See denier. SUSPENSIVE VETO Under the constitution of 1791, Louis XVI could refuse to sign a decree passed by the legislature. If the measure passed the two consecutive subsequent legislatures, it would automatically become a law. The issue of what kind of veto power the King would have in the constitution—absolute or suspensive—had been divisive, but the King’s use of the veto in defense of refractory clergy and émigrés helped undermine his popular support and greatly facilitated the fall of the monarchy on 10 August 1792. TITHE A fraction of the harvest paid (before all other taxes) to the Roman Catholic Church for the maintenance of the clergy, poor relief, and to support services. In existence for almost a millennium, the weight of tithe varied, but generally it was between one-fifteenth and one-tenth. Often paid to higher and nonresident clergy, the tithe was an important subject of the cahiers de doléances, which often called for its revision or abolition. TREATY OF CAMPO-FORMIO Signed 27 October 1797, between France and Austria after Napoleon Bonaparte’s Italian campaign. Following a truce agreed on in March and a preliminary agreement with the Habsburgs signed at Leoben, this treaty went against the Directory’s wishes for gains in Belgium and along the Rhine in exchange for Italy. Leoben gave Belgium to France and recognized the republican governments set up by France in Italy, giving compensation to Austria at Venice’s expense. Bonaparte seized Venice to make the treaty possible. The Directory accepted the treaty to avoid giving a fresh impetus to royalism, which played on French war-weariness. This treaty was little more than an armed truce, though, since Austria was only awaiting a more favorable moment to resume its war against France. TRIBUNATE Was set up by the Constitution of the Year VIII (1800) to debate legislation proposed by other institutions, notably the Council of State and the Legislative Body that proposed bills. Members of the Legislative Body and Tribunate were chosen by the Senate. The site of a small liberal opposition to Bonaparte, the Tribunate unsuccessfully fought some of his innovations. As a result, the Tribunate was purged of its more vocal members in 1802 and then abolished in 1804. TUILERIES In October 1789 the French royal family took up residence at this palace with extensive gardens located in central Paris, next to the Louvre. Despite one escape attempt, they remained there as virtual hostages until 10 August 1792, when the Paris masses stormed the palace and overthrew the monarchy. The remaining defenders were massacred. UNIGENITUS A papal proclamation of 1713 solicited by Louis XIV, which condemned many of the central ideas of the Jansenists. It touched off a serious conflict between the judges of the parlements who resented the interference of the pope, preferring to assert “Gallican liberties,” meaning that the French church did not have to submit to papal requirements. By adopting the Jansenist cause, the judges set the stage for a century-long conflict with the royal and ecclesiastical hierarchy. VENALITY Ownership and heritability of an office. Sold by the state to raise money, these offices, mostly in the judicial apparatus and the administration, were retained in exchange for an annual tax of one-sixtieth of the value (the Paulette). These offices provided access to power and opportunities for profit. The more important offices, and thus the most expensive, also conferred personal noble status on the holder that became hereditary, generally after three generations. Through venality of office many bourgeoisie could hope for eventual noble status, which provided an important avenue of social mobility; yet as a governmental system it was inefficient because it made it very difficult to administer government policy consistently. Venal officeholders, treating their posts as property, could better resist general directives.