Download C1: Revolution and Reaction in Europe, 1789-1848

A1: The French Revolution, 1780-94
Long Term Causes of the French Revolution
Louis XVI

Louis XVI became King of France in 1774. He was a kind, family man, who married
Marie Antoinette, an Austrian Princess.

Louis had very few of the qualities that would have him made a good king.

He was unintelligent, uninterested in politics, easily influenced and preferred to spend
his time hunting and looking after his collection of watches.

But he had become king at a time when France was becoming increasingly unstable.
Versailles

What made matters worse was that Louis lived for most of the time in the royal palace
at Versailles.

The French kings had created a court there at which most of the important nobles and
bishops spent most of their time.

This meant that Louis and his court were often cut off from the rest of the people of
France and did not understand the problems that they faced.

Versailles was also very expensive to run at a time when the government was in
trouble financially.
Seven Years War

During the Seven Years War (1756-63), France had lost most of its overseas empire to
Britain.

This had been a great blow to the monarchy and the French economy. There were also
criticisms of the way that France was governed.
Ancien Regime

Louis was an autocrat. That meant that he could do exactly as he liked. There was no
Parliament to pass laws and no opportunity for people to complain.

Louis simply appointed ministers and let them get on with running the country. When
conditions became too bad for people to put up with, there were riots or even
rebellions.
The Estates

Not only could people not take part in the government of France, but they also had to
bear an unfair burden of the taxation. France was divided into three Estates.
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
The First Estate was the Clergy. The Second Estate was the Nobility and the Third
Estate was everybody else.

The First and Second Estates did not pay taxes. The clergy provided a ‘don gratuit’
(free gift) on an annual basis, but the main burden fell on the Third Estate.

The First and Second Estates also had other privileges. They tended to get most of the
important posts and owned much of the land.

The Third Estate, although it was far bigger in numbers than the other two put together,
had very little influence or say in the way that France was governed.

The people who felt most angry were the bourgeoisie (the townspeople), lawyers,
merchants and businessmen, who were increasingly important to France.

They contributed many of the taxes to the government, but felt excluded from the
government.
Taxation

The great majority of the French people were peasants. They worked the land, but had
to pay dues to their landlords (seigneurs).

They often had to grind their corn in the landlord’s mill and use his oven to bake their
bread.

They also had to pay the Taille (a form of income tax) and various taxes on food, such
as the Gabelle on salt.

Life could be very hard, even in good years. But when there was a bad harvest life
could be very difficult.

This state of affairs had existed for centuries and was not very different from other
countries in Europe.

However, in the second half of the eighteenth century the situation began to change.
The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was a movement that developed in France during the eighteenth
century. Its proponents became known as the philosophes.

They put forward the idea that human reason should be a guiding force in society and
government.

They suggested that there should be a contract between the king and the people, along
the lines suggested by the English writer Thomas Hobbes in the early seventeenth
century.

They therefore opposed the ‘divine right of kings’ which French monarchs used to
justify their absolute power.
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
Consequently, the Enlightenment and the philosophes criticised the power of the
Church. They emphasised, instead, the need to improve the lives of people on earth.

This inevitably brought them into conflict with the state, which in France was more
interested in maintaining the status quo, especially under Louis XVI.

The leading philosophes were:

Voltaire, who was particularly critical of the influence of the Catholic Church and
maintained a lengthy correspondence with Catherine the Great of Russia;

Montesquieu, who argued in L’ Esprit des Lois that there should be a division of
powers in the government between the king, a legislature and the system of justice;

Diderot, who compiled the ‘Encyclopaedia’, a summary of enlightened ideas;

Rousseau, who was the most outspoken of the philosophes, opposing the
monarchy and supporting democracy.

The philosophes attracted some support in France towards the end of the eighteenth
century.

This was mostly in the Third Estate, which had most to gain. However, there were also
some nobles who objected to the king’s reliance on personal favourites.

Overall, however, influence was limited and would not have been effective without the
financial crisis that engulfed France in the 1780s.

Elsewhere in Europe, the Enlightenment took a much firmer hold. In addition to Russia,
there were also ‘enlightened despots’ (monarchs) in Prussia and the Holy Roman
Empire (Austria).
The American Revolution

In 1776, Britain’s American Colonies rebelled and in 1778 France declared war on
Britain in support of the rebels.

It was an attempt to get back at Britain for the losses during the Seven Years War.

The American colonists were able to gain their independence from Britain in 1781, but
at the end of the war in 1783, France had very little to show for its involvement.

All it did have was large debts, which the government then had to try to repay. Many
French soldiers also came back from America with ideas about change.

They had helped the Americans defeat the King of England, why should they put up
with a King of France who seemed to be behaving even worse.

Throughout the 1780s, Louis and his ministers struggled to repay the debts that had
been run up during the American War, but the situation grew worse.
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Necker

The situation was complicated by the Compte Rendu, which was published by Jacques
Necker in 1781.

He managed to make it appear that the royal accounts had a surplus of 10 million
livres.

He did this by omitting the cost of the War. This was to have significant consequences
later in the 1780s.

By the mid-1780s, half of government expenditure went on financing debt repayments.
Attempts to increase taxation (e.g. the vingtième) further alienated the Third Estate,
which had to bear the brunt.
 There was a run of poor harvests in the mid-1780s, which raised the price of bread and
added to popular discontent. This was to be a major factor in the events of the summer
of 1789.
 The French economy was hampered by the existence of internal customs and taxes.
Guilds controlled and restricted economic activity.
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Short-term causes of the Revolution

In 1785, the Paris Parlement refused to agree to any further loans to the government..
Calonne

In 1786, Calonne, the Controller-General of Finance (Finance Minister) made it clear
that the government was virtually bankrupt, with a deficit of 110 million livres.

The Eden Treaty (a free trade agreement with Britain in 1786) worked to France’s
disadvantage because Britain was far more economically developed.

Calonne proposed a land tax to be paid by all Estates, which would be largely borne by
landowners

Internal customs barriers would be removed to encourage free trade, particularly of
wheat. This would help to reduce the price of bread.

To gain agreement, Calonne planned to call an Assembly of Notables to approve the
changes. This met in February 1787.
The Assembly of Notables

When the Assembly (144 members of the First and Second Estates) met, Calonne’s
proposals were attacked and the king was eventually forced to dismiss him.
Brienne

Calonne was replaced by Loménie de Brienne who offered an amended version of
Calonne’s reforms. These were also rejected and the Assembly was dismissed in May
1787.

Louis XVI was now back where he had started and faced further criticism from the
Parlements.

To try to prevent it, he ordered the Paris Parlement to move to Troyes (150 km to the
south east) in August 1787. This had little effect except to increase opposition. It was
allowed to return in September.

Marie Antoinette also began to get a reputation for wasting money on clothes and
entertainment, just as everybody else was beginning to feel the pinch.

This was probably unjustified, but once a rumour starts it is difficult to stop it. There
was also a series of bad harvests which meant that the price of bread began to rise.
Harvests

This always caused trouble because bread was the basic food of the great majority of
the French people.
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
Attempts to raise loans failed, despite threatening the Paris Parlement with troops.
Louis was forced to agree to summon the Estates-General.

However, he still tried to avoid the consequences by arresting opponents and
attempting to prevent the Parlements opposing royal decrees.

These actions had the effects of increasing opposition, which became widespread, and
led to the Revolt of the Nobles.
The Revolt of the Nobles

Members of the Second Estate met all over France to plan support for the Parlements.
The First Estate voted to provide only 25% of its usual ‘don gratuit’.

Opposition came to a head when the Treasury stopped all payments on 16 th August
1788 and Brienne resigned and was replaced by Jacques Necker.

He announced that the Estates-General would meet in May 1789.

He announced that the Estates-General would meet in May 1789.

The failure of ministers to bring about any substantial change in the finances of the
monarchy was compounded by the reaction of Louis XVI to each failed attempt.

Louis either dismissed the failed minster, or accepted his resignation, and appointed
somebody new, who then tried much the same approach.

Louis consistently failed to support his ministers, all of whom had a reasonable grasp of
what was wrong and could have made a reasonable attempt to put matters right.

The proposals of Turgot, Necker and Calonne were broadly similar, but all lacked the
backing of Louis XVI.

Here was the fundamental weakness of France. The King was absolute, but was faced
with barriers to change that he was unable to tackle.

The First and Second Estates and the Parlements had privileges that stood in the way
of reform and which only the King could remove. Louis XVI was unwilling to take that
course of action.
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The events of 1789

The representatives of the three estates met at Versailles on 5 May 1789. There were
300 representatives of the clergy, 291 of the nobility and 610 of the Third Estate.

But almost immediately the meeting ran into trouble. After the opening, the three
estates met in separate chambers and traditionally voted by estates. That meant that
any two could out vote the other.

The representatives of the Third Estate came with lists of complaints and asked the
First and Second Estates to join them in making changes to the way that France was
governed.

The other two estates refused and began to block any proposals. This led to deadlock.

The Third Estate now believed that it had the right to act and on 17 June declared that
it was the National Assembly.

In effect it was saying that as it represented the great majority of the people it could act
in their name.

Three days later the Third Estate, along with some representatives from the other two
estates, met in a tennis court and swore the Tennis Court Oath.

They declared that they would not disperse until changes were made. King Louis was
taken by surprise and after a week gave way to the demands of the Third Estate.

On 27 June he agreed that all three estates should meet and vote as one. From 9 July
the National Assembly became known as the Constituent Assembly and was in effect
the French Parliament.

Before any further progress could be made, however, violence broke out in Paris.

Rumours began to circulate that Louis was having second thoughts and that he was
planning to use forces to crush the Assembly. These were not true.

The 1788 harvest was disastrous and by the summer of 1789 bread prices were at
record levels.

A fall in sales led to unemployment, which was already high as a result of the Eden
Treaty.

At the same time the price of bread reached its highest level in Paris for the entire
century.

There were queues outside every bread shop and fighting broke out when supplies
broke down.

Soon there were armed people out on the streets, mobs appeared and law and order
broke down.
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Why was Paris so important?

The city had about 600,000 inhabitants; far more than the next largest city.

The city was near to Versailles and therefore the king was at arm’s length. He could
easily try to overawe Parisians; they usually knew what he was up to at court and were
within reach of royal forces.

The city was largely cut off from other parts of France. Customs posts controlled
supplies of food and restricted the movement of workers.

Inflation and unemployment were usually much more serious in Paris than anywhere
else.

Alone, the city had a sizeable middle class and a large working class. These were to be
the main factors in the revolution from 1789 to 1795.

Paris was therefore a microcosm; the only part of France with a reasonably developed
social make-up.

It felt economic changes more severely and had the popular forces to take instant and
effective action.
The effects on Paris

The moves sparked widespread unrest in Paris, partly because the city was cut off
from the surrounding area by customs posts. Consequently, fears of food shortages
tended to be more extreme.

Soldiers had been ordered into position around Paris through out the month of June.

26 June: Nearly 5,000 extra soldiers were brought up

27 June: Louis gave way and ordered the estates to meet together and vote by head.

1 July: Another 12,000 soldiers were ordered to Paris. It appeared that Louis was about
to crush the Estates General by military might.

11 July: Louis dismissed Necker, who had been popular with the Third Estate. Unrest
grew worse and Parisians began to arm themselves in case they were attacked by the
army.

12 July: Some troops deserted and joined the demonstrators. It appeared that the king
was losing control of Paris.

13 July: The Paris Commune and the National Guard were formed by bourgeois
members of the Third Estate in Paris to protect their property.

The focus of attention shifted to the Bastille, a large mediaeval fortress in the east of
Paris.
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The Storming of the Bastille

The Bastille was a royal castle that was used as a prison. Many people believed that
there were large numbers of political prisoners hidden away inside.

Above all, it was a symbol of royal power looming over the centre of Paris.

On 14 July a mob of about 700 people gathered outside the Bastille and attacked it.
They broke through the outer gateway and entered the inner courtyard.

Some detachments of soldiers arrived to support them and trained cannon on the
fortress.

The governor decided to surrender to avoid loss of life, but as he left he was seized
and murdered.

The crowd ransacked the fortress and found seven prisoners, but also 30,000 muskets
and 1,000,000 musket balls.

The storming of the Bastille was a very significant event in the progress of the
Revolution because it was the first real sign of opposition to royal power.

Until then the Third Estate, which was mostly made up of wealthy middle class
merchants and lawyers, had had no intention of deposing the king. They only wanted
peaceful change.

The events of 14 July showed that there were people in France who were prepared to
use violence to achieve their ends and that they had no great love for the king.

Even more important was the evidence that the Paris mob was going to be a major
influence on events in France in the next five years.

Revolutions almost always take place in cities and large towns. The French Revolution
was to be no exception.

News of the events in Paris soon reached the countryside. Peasants attacked the
homes of their landlords and destroyed the documents that recorded their dues and
taxes.

July to August 1789: The ‘Great Fear’ – peasant uprisings across France; ransacking
the property of nobles and destroying tithe barns
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Developments 1789-92

4 August: The Constituent Assembly abolished all feudal dues and rights and
announced that all Frenchmen had the same legal rights. Taxation would in future be
fair.

26 August: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen reinforced the ‘August
Decrees’.

Freedom of speech, religion, opinion was guaranteed, along with fair trials, careers
open to the talents and the right to have an elected Assembly.

The Constituent Assembly proposed that the Assembly would have the right to pass
laws and approve taxes, but that the King would appoint ministers and be responsible
for enforcing the law.

Louis did not approve any of these changes and stayed at Versailles out of the reach of
the people of Paris.

In October, high bread prices led to unrest in Paris and about 6,000 women attacked
the Commune and then marched to Versailles along with a large detachment of the
National Guard.

The king was forced to accept the August changes and returned to Paris.

This was not only a defeat for the king, but also revealed the threat posed to the
Commune and the assembly. Once again the Parisian crowd had taken matters into its
own hands.

A division was beginning to appear between the militant working class (later to be
called the Sans Culottes) and the more conservative bourgeoisie.

When the Constituent Assembly abolished all dues, the violence died down.

Free from the control of their landlords, the peasants went back to farming their land.
The Constituent Assembly began the work of changing France.

The financial crisis was tackled by taking over all of the lands and wealth of the Church.
A new paper currency called Assignats was introduced.

The Intendants, the local officials who had been appointed by the king, were dismissed.
Instead eighty-three departments were created.

Each would be run by an elected officer. Judges would also be elected. 4,500,000 men
were given the right to vote.

They were ‘active’ citizens who paid taxes. The voters would elect a Legislative
Assembly, which would make laws.

The king would have to obey the law. The Constituent Assembly produced the final
constitution in 1791.
10

It was then dissolved and elections took place for the Legislative Assembly, which
began work on 1 October 1791.

The new constitution granted the vote to about 60% of Frenchmen, who were
considered to be ‘active citizens’, i.e. they were over 25, had lived in one place for 12
months and paid taxes worth three days’ work.

But elections were in two stages and to be a deputy it was necessary to pay taxes
worth 50 days’ work

The National Assembly was given the right to pass laws and approve taxes.

The king would appoint ministers but could not veto laws relating to finance. He was
given a four-year veto in other issues.

Foreign policy and war would be under the control of the Assembly.

France was divided into 83 departments and districts and communes. Each had
elected councils.
The economy

The economy was freed from many of the restrictions of the Ancien Régime. All guilds,
internal customs were abolished.

Most of the Ancien Regime taxes were abolished in 1790. The gabelle disappeared in
March and was followed by most other indirect taxes, except for customs duties on
foreign goods.

Free trade on all goods and produce throughout France was introduced.

Some taxes were retained, but were replaced with a Land Tax in 1791.

Church lands and those of any nobles who had fled France were seized and sold.

Paper money (Assignats) was printed to increase the money supply, which had been
based on silver.
The Legal system

Justice was to be free fair and all were to be equal before the law.

There was to be one system of laws throughout France; each department would have
its own courts.

Justices would deal with most minor cases, but could refer them to district courts if
necessary.

Each department would have a tribunal to hear appeals, which could also go to a
higher Court of Appeal in Paris.
11

All justices and judges would be elected by active citizens from panels.

Torture and hanging were banned; capital punishment would be by decapitation

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy provided for state salaries to Catholic priests and
bishops. Every department was given one bishop.

Clergy were forbidden from holding more than one office and had to live in their
department.

All clergy, including bishops were elected by active citizens.

The Pope last the power to approve the appointment of bishops.

Monasteries that did not carry out any charitable or educational work were closed.

Toleration was given to Protestants and Jews.
Why did the National Assembly run into trouble?

The new paper currency, the Assignat, soon began to lose its value because
shopkeepers began to hoard supplies of food. This forced prices up and people began
to panic.

The new Assembly was quite different from the Constituent Assembly.

A new radical group appeared, the Jacobins, who wanted to set up a republic. Louis
XVI had also made the situation worse.
Convention and the Terror

Radical Clubs had been formed in Paris since 1789 to discuss events and try to
influence the Assembly. The most prominent was the Jacobins.

The Cordeliers Club was the most radical, with leaders such as Marat, Desmoulins and
Danton.

The leaders were all demagogues with substantial followings in Paris; their newspapers
and speeches won them support amongst the urban working classes.

The Cordeliers attracted working-class support because it opposed the distinction
between active and passive citizens, which discriminated against ordinary workers.
In what ways were the Jacobin and Cordeliers Clubs different?

The Jacobin Club had originally been formed in Versailles in 1789. It had supported
the monarchy and most members had been from the wealthy bourgeoisie.

Its original name was the Society of Friends of the Constitution

Its members were all deputies in the Estates-General and included several nobles and
Robespierre, who had been elected a Deputy of the Third Estate.
12

Robespierre eventually gained a reputation as an extreme left-wing member of the
Club; he was described as one of the ‘thirty voices’ by Mirabeau

In October 1789, the Jacobins moved to Paris and rented the refectory of the Jacobins,
hence the name.

In Paris, the Club quickly changed; in January 1790, associate members were admitted
and in February a formal constitution was established. Its aims were:

to discuss in advance questions to be decided by the National Assembly

to work for the establishment and strengthening of the constitution in accordance
with the spirit of the preamble (that is, of respect for legally constituted authority and
the ‘Rights of Man’)

to correspond with other societies of the same kind which should be formed in the
realm.

By August 1790, there were 152 affiliated clubs and the Jacobins established a
network of branches across France. It was this which gave the Jacobins their great
influence.

The Jacobins were mostly moderate, but there was a radical element led by
Robespierre.

In 1791, after the ‘Flight to Varennes’, the moderates broke away to form the Feuillant
Club leaving Robespierre in command.

Eventually, Robespierre was able to use the network of branches to create a
centralised dictatorship based on Paris.

The Cordeliers Club was founded in May 1790 in the Cordeliers area of Paris. It was a
populist organisation, which kept its ‘eye’ on the government and agitated for
revolutionary reform.

It was largely responsible for encouraging the slogan ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ in
May 1791.

Members were mostly Parisian and included, Marat, Danton, Desmoulins, Hebert and
Brissot.

They specialised in representing the Parisian working class and were closely
associated with the Sans Culottes. They encouraged the attack on the monarchy in the
summer of 1792.

By the end of 1792, however, there seems to have been a split in the Club and the
more moderate members, including Danton and Desmoulins, left.

The Club then fell into the hands of the ‘enragés such as Hebert, who were the most
enthusiastic supporters of the terror.
13
The flight to Varennes and the Outbreak of War

In June 1791, Louis tried to escape from France, but was caught at Varennes. He then
appealed to the Austrian Emperor for help.

The Emperor and the King of Prussia announced that they would help Louis if
necessary.

In April 1792 the National Assembly declared war on Austria and in July the Prussian
army invaded France.

To fight the Prussians, the National Assembly called for volunteers for the National
Guard, but Louis tried to stop it.

This made the king very unpopular in Paris. There were riots in Paris and on 10 August
the King and his family were attacked and forced to hide.

The National Assembly decided to solve the problem created by Louis by rewriting the
constitution.

In the meantime, the position of the king was suspended and new elections were called
for September 1792.
14
Convention and Terror

The elections were held as France appeared to be in chaos. The Prussians were
advancing and there were riots and massacres of people in Paris.

When the new assembly, the Convention, met on 21 September it abolished the
monarchy and set up a republic.

The Convention was faced with a series of difficulties. In addition to the Prussian
invasion, there were also rebellions in support of the king in the west of France.

In November 1792, it issued the Edict of Fraternity, which was in effect an attempt to
export revolution. It said ‘All governments are our enemies, all people our friends’.
The execution of the King and the establishment of the Terror

The Convention was solidly republican. Most royalists were prevented from standing.
On 21 September, it abolished the monarchy.

The Jacobins, led by Robespierre, won all the seats in Paris. The Girondins dominated
most of the provinces.

The Jacobins occupied the seats at the back of the Convention on the left. The
Girondins sat on the right. Both sides tried to win the support of the deputies in the
middle, ‘the plain’.

Jacobins wanted a centralised government controlled by Paris to fight the war.
Girondins wanted decentralisation in the departments.

This accentuated the division between Paris and the provinces and set the Jacobins
and Girondins on a collision course.

The most important clash was over what was to be done with the king. The Jacobins
wanted to put him on trial and execute him. The Girondins did not want execution.

The Girondins were forced to give way and hold a trial when secret papers were
discovered that proved the king had been in contact with the Austrians.

The trial of the king was held in December and he was found guilty by a large majority
of deputies.

A narrower majority voted for execution. An attempt by the Girondins to save him was
defeated. He was guillotined on 21 January 1793.

The Jacobins were now convinced that the Girondins wanted some sort of
compromise.

Control of France was centralised in Paris by the creation of several committees: Public
Safety and General Security.
15

A Revolutionary Tribunal was set up in Paris. Local committees were set up to search
for rebels

The army was brought under the control of the Convention.

Wages and prices were controlled by the Law of Maximum. Rationing was introduced.
What were the effects of these changes?

The Girondins tried to limit the control exercised by Paris.

2 June: Sans Culottes and National Guards demanded the expulsion of the Girondins
from the Convention and some were arrested.

Attacks on and arrests of suspected royalists took place all over France

13 July: Marat was murdered by the Charlotte Corday, a Girondin.

Under pressure from the Sans Culottes, the Convention passed a law guaranteeing the
right to work, benefits and education.

There were risings against the Jacobins in many parts of France, including Lyon,
Marseilles, Bordeaux and Toulon.

August: the levee en masse was an attempt to unite France for total war.

4-5 September: Sans Culottes surrounded the Convention and forced it to agree to
‘terror’.

17 September: The Law of Suspects stated that anyone suspected of being a threat to
the Revolution could be arrested and held without trial.

October: Marie Antoinette, some nobles and Girondins were executed. Mass
executions followed in Nantes, Lyon and Toulon. The total eventually reached bout
50,000.
Robespierre

Maximilien Robespierre was born in Arras and qualified as a lawyer. He was a deputy
in the Estates-General and a regular speaker in the Constituent Assembly.

He became an outspoken critic of the monarchy although he claimed to be ‘neither
monarchist nor republican’.

From 1791, he was in virtual control of the Jacobins and he used their network of
branches to good effect.

In November 1791, he was appointed Public Prosecutor of Paris.

In February 1792, he opposed the Girondins over the issue of the declaration of war.
He suspected that this would benefit counter-revolutionaries.
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
He became increasingly suspicious of Brissot, partly over the issue of war, but also
because he wanted a strong, centralised administration to defeat counter-revolution.

Brissot and the Girondins wanted stronger provinces, a federal France and less
dictation from Paris.

Robespierre was a powerful speaker and he became a virtual spokesman for the Paris
Commune.

This increased his standing in the city and in the Convention elections he was elected
First Deputy for Paris.

In the Convention, he attacked Brissot and demanded the execution of the king.

The ascendancy of Paris placed power increasingly in the hands of Robespierre.

He became known as the ‘incorruptible’. He appeared to place the interests of the
Revolution before everything else.

In April 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was set up and Robespierre was elected
one of the nine members.

In December the Committees of Public Safety and General Security took control of
foreign policy and local government.
Why did Robespierre eliminate so many rivals?

He believed that anyone who opposed him was an enemy of the Revolution.

He accused the Girondins of encouraging a monarchist revival through the declaration
of war.

He also opposed their federal policies, which would have weakened the influence of
Paris and hence of the Revolution.

He regarded Hébert and others as too extreme. Violence for its own sake, he would not
allow. Violence had to be allied to virtue.

He also disliked their atheism. Robespierre was a follower of Rousseau and therefore
believed in a Supreme Being.

From February to March 1794, he absented himself from the Convention and came to
the conclusion that all forms of moderation were anathema.

Danton and Desmoulins were executed because they were too moderate. They
believed that the revolution had achieved its purpose.

Robespierre believed that it was only the beginning of a new social order.

After he had engineered the execution of Danton in April 1794, he took almost personal
control of the Terror from May.
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
All trials now took place in Paris, which increased his influence and led to the Great
Terror from May to July 1794.

In June, under the Law of 22 Prairial, the tribunal became a court where enemies of the
state were simply condemned without any witnesses or semblance of a trial.

This was justified, in Robespierre’s eyes because ‘slowness of judgments is equal to
impunity’.
The fall of Robespierre

From July 1793 to July 1794 Robespierre ruled France, even executing some of his
closest colleagues.

He was able to save France from invasion by calling up all men aged eighteen to
twenty-five and creating an army of 1,000,000.

The revolts in western France were crushed. But at the same time Robespierre had
made enemies.

Suspects were arrested and then tried by revolutionary committees. They were
sentenced to death without any legal representation.

In the Convention there was opposition to his methods. Robespierre also tried to stop
wage rises in an effort to control inflation.

But as food prices continued to rise, the Paris mob turned against him.

While he was prepared to make use of the Sans Culottes, he was a middle class
intellectual who rarely appeared in public.

He had lost much support of the Sans Culottes by the executions of Hébert and
Danton. They were both very popular in Paris.

He appeared to be trying to set up a personal dictatorship when he created a police
force that reported to him personally.

His attempt to create the Cult of the Supreme Being in May 1794 was unpopular.

He was always aloof and had few close friends. His ascetic life-style was untypical of
the other Parisian leaders.

By mid-July he appeared to be ill and disappeared for more than a week. This gave his
enemies an opportunity to prepare to attack him.

On 26 July he made a long speech in the Convention, in which he implied that there
were enemies of the revolution everywhere.

This was taken to mean that a purge of the Convention was about to take place.

The following day he was shouted down in the Convention; arrested and executed on
28 July.
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The Thermidorian Reaction

From July 1794 to May 1795, the laws and controls of the Convention were dismantled
or abolished.

In particular, the Paris Commune was abolished; the Law of Maximum was repealed;
the Jacobin Club and the Revolutionary Tribunal were closed.

These changes had important consequences.

The influence of the Sans Culottes was significantly weakened and the authority of
Paris was undermined.
 The authority of local government was reinforced and moderates assumed power in
many areas; the number of executions fell dramatically.
 All did not go completely peacefully: there was a bad harvest in 1794 and Assignats
lost almost all of their value.
 High prices in Paris in the spring of 1795 led to protests in April (Germinal) and May
(Prairial).
 The Convention survived because the Sans Culottes no longer had the focal point of
the Paris Commune.
 In addition, the French were getting tired of the revolution being run by Parisian
workers.
 The White Terror began in 1795 and lasted sporadically until 1797. This was more an
opportunity to settle old scores than an attempted restoration of the monarchy.
 5 October 1795: Vendémiaire was crushed by Napoleon with a ‘whiff of grapeshot’.

The Convention now rewrote the constitution yet again and set up the Directory. There
were to be five Directors, who would govern with a Council of Ancients (250) and the
Council of 500. They would be elected by voters who paid taxes.
Achievements of the Revolution in France 1789-94

In five years, the Ancien Regime was swept away and for the first time a republic was
set up in a major European country.

The principle of equality before the law was established. The privileges of the First and
Second Estates were abolished.

The first written constitution for a major European country was produced.

Central and local government throughout France were completely restructured.

The authority of the Church was severely weakened.
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
A new sense of national identity was created by resistance to foreign invasion and the
levee en masse.

Nationalism was exported through the Edict of Fraternity.
20