The French Assembly of Notables had met in November 1788
and had agreed that all classes of society should be taxed,
but they had opposed doubling the representation of the
Third Estate in the Estates General called for 1789
nor did they agree to voting by persons.
Yet on December 27 the chief minister Jacques Necker
and the Council of State had accepted doubling the
Third Estate delegates, but the nobles refused to agree.
The number of pamphlets published increased from 217
in 1787 to 819 in 1788 and to 3,305 in 1789.
On the first of January 1789 women of the Third Estate
petitioned Louis XVI for the right
to be enlightened and have jobs.
This winter had steady snow for two months,
and food supplies were running out.
On the 24th election rules were proclaimed by uneven
judicial districts, and those ennobled only by personal titles
learned they were put in the Third Estate.
The cities of Bordeaux, Bourges, Lyons, Nimes, Rouen,
Tours, and Toulouse would have 16 delegates each,
and Paris would have 68.
Taxpayers over the age of 25 were allowed to vote in
the primary assemblies that chose two delegates for every
hundred households, and at another assembly
those delegates would elect the 1,200 deputies.
This was the largest democratic vote in European history
and would not be surpassed for nearly a century.
Peasants greatly outnumbered others at election meetings,
but the Third Estate elected 604 educated men
including 294 officials and 99 businessmen.
The poor parish priests elected 303 deputies
but only 46 of the 176 bishops.
The nobles had 278 deputies, and at least 220
had served in the army or navy.
The Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès published his
pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? that began
What is the Third Estate?
Everything.
What has it been until now
in the political order?
Nothing.
What does it ask?
To be something.
Soon 30,000 copies were sold, and more editions were printed.
Sieyès and his friends founded the Valois Club on 11 February.
Lawyer Joseph Mounier for months had been demanding
a constitution to protect the rights of the King and his subjects.
He published New Observations on the Estates General
of France, and he advocated the union of the three estates.
Class conflict broke out in Brittany and at Rennes
on 26 January 1789.
Constantin-François Volney’s The People’s Sentinel ha
criticized nobles and described bourgeois grievances,
and now they advocated the end of all privileges.
Violent protests also erupted in Poitou,
Franche-Comté, and Provence.
In northern France some hunters violated game laws on
aristocratic estates while others attacked grain transports.
Honoré-Gabriel Riquetti, Count of Mirabeau, had written
his Secret Story of the Berlin Court,
but on February 10 the Paris Parlement ordered it burned.
On 23 March electors of the Third Estate took over the Paris
government and appointed a patriot guard.
On the 27th Mirabeau mediated a conflict between
housewives and the Mayor with his troops
over the price of bread.
In March and April rioting occurred in Marseille, Cambrai,
Picardy, Valenciennes, Vannes,
Besançon, Alençon, and Orléans.
The price of bread had reached a century high, and in Paris
the wallpaper manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon and the
saltpeter maker Henriot suggested lowering the price so that
ow-wage workers could afford it; but this was taken as an
effort to lower wages,
and people destroyed their factories on 28 April.
Troops dispersing the crowd killed 25 people,
but Réveillon found refuge in the Bastille.
On 2 May at Versailles the deputies were presented to
King Louis XVI with nobles dressed in gold
and the clergy in red or violet capes, but the Third Estate
in black clothes had to wait three hours to bow to the King.
On 5 May Louis opened the assembly,
and Necker’s speech on finances lasted three hours.
To prevent famine he was spending 25 million livres
on foreign grain in the first half of the year.
The rest of May was taken up with verifying the credentials
of the delegates, and they formed 31 committees.
The Third Estate refused to consider themselves a separate
order, and on 3 June they elected the astronomer
Jean Sylvain Bailly their leader and called themselves
commons (communes).
The next day the King’s son, the Dauphin Louis Joseph, died.
On 10 June Sieyès persuaded the Third Estate to invite
the nobles to join them, but at first only parish priests did so.
A week later the Commons declared themselves the
“National Assembly” with the power to confirm taxes
and with Bailly as president.
On 19 June a majority of the clergy agreed
to combine the three orders.
The next day a royal session was postponed.
Finding the doors locked, the Commons decided to meet
in an indoor tennis court where they signed an oath
to stay united until a constitution was established.
As 10,000 people flowed into the Palais-Royal, the King
and his Council rejected Necker’s program;
but they granted the Estates General approval of taxes,
loans, and expenditures, and they accepted
freedom of speech and the press.
Yet King Louis still rejected equal rights.
He ordered the Three Estates to meet separately,
or he would dissolve them.
The Third Estate refused to leave, and Mirabeau declared
that they would not do so “unless forced by bayonets.”
This persuaded 47 nobles to join them, and on 27 June
the King ordered the three orders to assemble together.
These successes aroused the people in Paris who needed
bread,which cost the poor at least half their income.
French Guards began fraternizing with the people.
After fourteen were arrested for mutiny, the people demanded
their release with 4,000 storming the Abbaye prison on 30 June.
The next day the number of troops in Paris
was greatly increased to more than 20,000.
One week later Mirabeau persuaded the National Assembly
to petition the King to withdraw the soldiers,
but Louis said they were to preserve order.
Those who did not wear court breeches (culottes) had been
called “sansculottes,” a derogatory term, but in the revolution
many people dressed like the poor
and were proud to be sansculottes.
After debating the grain trade for four days, on 7 July
the Assembly set up a committee to draft a constitution,
and they became the Constituent Assembly.
On the 11th the King dismissed and banished Necker,
replacing him with the Baron of Breteuil for five days.
The Marquis de Lafayette suggested a declaration of rights.
The next day was a Sunday, and people gathered.
The cavalry tried to disperse the crowd in the
Place Louis XV, but the French Guards defended the people.
On the 13th the reformed General Assembly met at the
Hotel de Ville and authorized a bourgeois militia of
48,000 men while people put up barricades
and plundered the stores of gunsmiths.
On the morning of 14 July they took 3,000 rifles from the
military hospital of Les Invalides, and about 8,000 Parisians
went to the Bastille fortress looking for more,
filling the evacuated outer courts.
The Bastille had held political prisoners,
but now only seven remained
with 80 war invalids and 30 Swiss guards.
The governor, Bernard de Jourdan, Marquis de Launey,
ordered soldiers to fire, and about a hundred people
were killed with only one garrison soldier wounded.
French people and National Guards arrived
with five cannons they used to attack the gate.
De Launey surrendered, and people rushed across
the drawbridge, killing three officers and three soldiers.
De Launey was killed while being taken away,
and the merchants’ provost, Jacques de Fleselles,
was shot dead on the steps of city hall;
their heads were carried on pikes.
Electors made Bailly mayor, and Lafayette agreed
to take command of the National Guard.
He also proposed white, red, and blue
as the colors of the new France.
On 15 July Louis XVI yielded to the Assembly
and withdrew his troops from Paris.
He recalled Necker the next day, and on the 17th the King
went to Paris and displayed the tricolor cockade.
The next day Camille Desmoulins published the revolutionary
manifesto, La France Libre; but the King’s brother the
Count of Artois, his two cousins,
and some aristocrats left France.
Eventually about 150,000 people would emigrate.
Forty of the 54 customs houses around Paris
were damaged or destroyed by the 17th.
The newspaper, Révolutions de Paris, edited by Louis-Marie
Prudhomme, began on the 18th, and on the 28th
Jacques Pierre Brissot resumed publishing Le Patriote français.
The Assembly appointed a committee of investigation.
The fleeing Paris intendant Bertier de Sauvigny and his
father-in-law Foullon de Doué were arrested
for conspiring to starve the people.
They were executed on 22 July,
and their heads were also paraded.
Necker arrived on the 30th to save the Baron de Besenval
who commanded the Swiss Guards.
Democratic revolutions occurred in many French towns,
and militias were formed.
One deputy called it “the war of the poor against the rich!”
Mobs attacked the abbeys of Cluny, Macon, and Tournus,
and they hanged 27 men.
They pillaged Jewish homes in Alsace.
In Dijon people arrested the governor,
and they confined nobles and priests to their residences.
At Rennes the garrison deserted,
and the military commander fled.
The King visited Paris,
and people demanded a lower price of bread.
Central authority gave way to municipal power.
Sieyès wrote his Préliminaire de la Constitution française.
Starting in August towns formed pacts of mutual assistance
in a federation of communes.
They cancelled the salt tax, excise taxes, and municipal tolls,
and they banned grain exchanges.
As wheat ripened, riots broke out over grain.
Large towns expelled vagabonds and beggars.
The Great Fear (la grand peur) began on 20 July
as disorders erupted in Poitou, Beauvais, Champagne,
Normandy, Aquitane, and Franche-Comté.
On 4 August the National Assembly abolished feudal
privileges, and two days later the disturbances ceased.
Also on the 4th the Assembly began
working on a declaration of rights.
That evening they approved equal taxation and redemption
of most manorial rights, and they abolished serfdom
without indemnification, hunting monopolies,
and seigniorial jurisdictions.
Legal punishments were to be equal,
and anyone could obtain a public office.
After debating for a week the National Assembly decreed
the end of the entire feudal regime except primogeniture
and honorific prerogatives, though they held
open indemnity for manorial fees.
On the 13th Louise Felicité de Kéralio
began the Journal d’Etat et du Citoyen.
Thomas Jefferson influenced Lafayette’s draft of human rights
but the Assembly voted to debate Mirabeau’s draft
from 20 August to the 26th when they approved the
following Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen:
The representatives of the French people,
organized as a National Assembly, believing that
the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man
are the sole cause of public calamities
and of the corruption of governments,
have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration
the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man,
in order that this declaration,
being constantly before all the members of the Social body,
shall remind them continually of their rights and duties;
in order that the acts of the legislative power,
as well as those of the executive power,
may be compared at any moment
with the objects and purposes of all political institutions
and may thus be more respected,
and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens,
based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles,
shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution
and redound to the happiness of all.
Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims,
in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being,
the following rights of man and of the citizen:
Article I. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.
Article II. The goal of any political association is the
conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.
These rights are liberty, property, safety
and resistance against oppression.
Article III. The principle of any sovereignty
resides essentially in the Nation.
No body, no individual can exert authority
which does not emanate expressly from it.
Article IV. Liberty consists of doing anything
which does not harm others:
thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man
has only those borders which assure other members
of the society the enjoyment of these same rights.
These borders can be determined only by the law.
Article V. The law has the right
to forbid only actions harmful to society.
Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded,
and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.
Article VI. The law is the expression of the general will.
All the citizens have the right of contributing personally
or through their representatives to its formation.
It must be the same for all,
either that it protects, or that it punishes.
All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally
admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments,
according to their capacity and without distinction
other than that of their virtues and of their talents.
Article VII. No man can be accused, arrested nor detained
but in the cases determined by the law,
and according to the forms which it has prescribed.
Those who solicit, dispatch, carry out
or cause to be carried out arbitrary orders, must be punished;
but any citizen called or seized under the terms of the law
must obey at once; he renders himself culpable by resistance.
Article VIII. The law should establish only penalties
that are strictly and evidently necessary,
and no one can be punished but under a law established
and promulgated before the offense and legally applied.
Article IX. Any man being presumed innocent
until he is declared culpable
if it is judged indispensable to arrest him,
any rigor which would not be necessary for the securing
of his person must be severely reprimanded by the law.
Article X. No one may be disturbed for his opinions,
even religious ones, provided that their manifestation
does not trouble the public order established by the law.
Article XI. The free communication of thoughts and of
opinions is one of the most precious rights of man:
any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely,
except to respond to the abuse of this liberty,
in the cases determined by the law.
Article XII. The guarantee of the rights of man
and of the citizen necessitates a public force:
this force is thus instituted for the advantage of all
and not for the particular utility of those in whom it is trusted.
Article XIII. For the maintenance of the public force
and for the expenditures of administration,
a common contribution is indispensable;
it must be equally distributed to all the citizens,
according to their ability to pay.
Article XIV. Each citizen has the right to ascertain, by himself
or through his representatives, the need for a public tax,
to consent to it freely, to know the uses to which it is put,
and of determining the proportion,
basis, collection, and duration.
Article XV. The society has the right of requesting
an account from any public agent of its administration.
Article XVI. Any society in which the guarantee of rights
is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined,
has no Constitution.
Article XVII. Property being an inviolable and sacred right,
no one can be deprived of private usage,
if it is not when the public necessity,
legally noted, evidently requires it,
and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.1
These rights apparently did not include women and slaves.
On 10 September the Assembly rejected having a second
chamber 849-89, but they voted 673-352 to approve
Mirabeau’s unpopular bill allowing the King’s suspensive
veto that could delay legislation for up to four years.
On the 13th in Orléans guardsmen fired on people
complaining about food supplies, killing 90 including
the protest leader who was hanged.
The next day Louis XVI recalled a disciplined regiment
from Flanders, and the thousand soldiers
arrived at Versailles on the 23rd.
On the 18th the King refused to ratify the end
of feudalism or the Declaration of Rights.
Jean-Paul Marat began publishing the daily
Friend of the People.
Necker’s attempt to get loans had failed,
and on the 29th he called for a 25% income tax.
On 1 October the National Assembly urged Louis XVI
to agree to the Declaration of Rights and the constitutional
articles passed so far, and he prevaricated by “acceding.”
The 31-year-old lawyer Maximilian Robespierre
criticized him for placing his will above the rights of the nation.
Many people complained about a royal banquet two days later,
and a rumor spread that when she was told
the people have no bread,
Queen Marie-Antoinette had said, “Let them eat cake.”
On the 5th a crowd with many women gathered
at the Hotel de Ville, and they marched to Versailles
arriving with 7,000 people.
Lafayette came later in the rain with 20,000 guardsmen
and persuaded Louis to accept the Declaration
and to return to Paris the next day.
In the morning demonstrators shot
at the royal guards, killing two.
The royal family was accompanied by about 60,000 people in
a procession led by the National Guard that took seven hours.
Lafayette believed he had rescued the King and Queen,
and he became their mentor.
He managed to get Duke Philippe of Orléans sent to London,
but Mirabeau refused to go to Istanbul.
Mirabeau on 24 October proposed that the King select
his ministers from the Assembly; but patriots opposed this,
and the Assembly prohibited it on 24 November.
The philosopher Condorcet had been a member
of the National Assembly since 17 June
and then of the Constituent Assembly.
On 21 October the Assembly authorized the National Guard
to enforce the Martial Law against Tumults,
and on the 29th they established the right to vote for all men
over the age of 25 who paid taxes of at least the pay
for three days of unskilled work.
In November the Assembly decreed that the social orders
no longer existed, and on the 14th they abolished the royal
intendants who had been administering the provinces.
The Breton Club met in Paris at a Dominican monastery,
and they became known as the Jacobins.
The popular young orator Desmoulins began publishing
Les Révolutions de France et de Brabant.
In December the Assembly issued paper bonds at 5% interest,
and a law mandated elections for mayors, officers,
and councilors for the communes.
On the 14th they gave municipalities the authority to levy duties
and maintain order with the National Guard.
On the 22 December each department was given a general
council and a directory, and districts got councils.
In the last week of December they gave Protestants
civic rights including holding public office.
The next month the same was granted to Jews in the south,
but Jews in eastern France
had to wait until September 27, 1791.
Young republican Marie-Joseph Chénier wrote the play
Charles IX about the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacres
of 1572 that vilified the Church.
On 19 August demonstrators interrupted the
Comédie-Française to demand its staging,
and they changed their name to Théatre de la Nation
and produced it on November 4
with Georges Danton leading the applause.
Thomas de Mahy, Marquis de Favras, led a conspiracy to
rescue King Louis XVI financed by the Count of Provence
to use 30,000 royalist troops and assassinate Bailly, Necker,
and Lafayette and make himself regent.
The plot was exposed by a leaflet on 23 December 1789,
and Favras was arrested and tried.
On 26 January 1790 an attempt to free him
was overcome by Lafayette’s guards,
and Favras was hanged on 19 February.
In January the radical Cordeliers Club led by Danton
protected Jean-Paul Marat from prosecution.
The political club Cercle social was founded
based on Rousseau’s writings.
In northern Brittany rioting destroyed 22 châteaux,
and on the 24 January dragoons killed 16 peasants
trying to burn a castle at Yvignac.
The next day Robespierre demanded repeal of the law
requiring a silver marc to vote, but his speech was booed.
On 4 February Louis XVI was led to the
Constituent Assembly and swore to follow the constitution.
On the 8th the Jacobin Club adopted a constitution
and began forming branches all over France.
Bishop Talleyrand of Autun had proposed that church lands
be held at the disposal of the nation and be sold to
underwrite salaries for clergy on 10 October 1789.
On 13 February 1790 the Assembly dissolved monasteries
and convents not involved in educational or charitable work,
and three days later they elected Talleyrand their president.
The French administration was reorganized into 83 departments
with 44,000 communes that elected their councils.
The Assembly canceled the salt tax.
On 8 March the Assembly decreed self-governing assemblies
in French colonies, but only Europeans (whites)
could vote or be elected.
On 15 March the Assembly abolished seigneurial rights
and the mortmain that had prohibited serfs from inheriting
or willing property, but they confirmed
the redemption of manorial fees.
They also decreed that inheritances were to be shared
by all heirs, ending primogeniture.
That day the Assembly elected the Protestant pastor
Rabaut Saint-Etienne their president.
On 7 April the King’s Red Book exposed secret payments
totaling 228 million francs in his reign.
The Marquis de Sade had been released from prison
on 2 April; but on 9 June he and his wife
were declared separated, and her dowry was returned.
In April the Assembly refused to proclaim Catholicis
the national religion, and this led to violent conflicts.
The Count of Artois at Turin and his allies tried to instigate
civil war with the Languedoc Plan that led to bloody battles
at Montauban on 10 May and with Protestants at Nîmes
13-16 June in which some 300 Catholics
were killed but only a few Protestants.
In May 1790 Mirabeau, Sieyès, Talleyrand, Condorcet,
and Lafayette founded the Société de 1789 to reconcile
liberal monarchists with democratic republicans,
but this influential club dissolved into the
Monarchical Club by the end of the year.
On 15 May the Assembly decreed that citizens
would elect judges, and on the 21st they reorganized
the municipal government of Paris with 48 sections
electing 144 men to the Council.
Spain asked France to support them in a colonial conflict
against Britain, and the National Assembly took control
over foreign policy in deciding on wars
and ratifying peace treaties.
On 22 May they declared that they would not go to war
for conquest or against the liberty of any people,
but this promise would not last long.
On 19 June they canceled inherited ranks of nobility.
More than a million men in France were elected to work
in local government, the judiciary, and the National Guard.
Jean-Antoine Houdon’s sculpture of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
was installed in the Assembly Hall.
The Assembly’s constitutional committee had decided
that the legislature would have 745 deputies
with elections every two years, and the first municipal
elections were held in early summer.
Paris had 48 sections, Lyon and Marseille 32 each,
Bordeaux 28, and Toulouse 15.
On 12 July the Civil Constitution of the Clergy brought
major reforms with priests and bishops being elected.
Priests had their stipends increased;
but those of bishops were reduced,
and they had to reside in their dioceses.
Despite its condemnation by Pope Pius VI,
King Louis XVI accepted it on 24 August,
and the royal family was allowed to move to Saint-Cloud.
Louis rejected the advice of Mirabeau
that he should fight a civil war to restore his power.
Federations had been organizing for months, and on July 14
they formed the National Federation.
On that day about 300,000 people celebrated in front of the
Constituent Assembly as the King led the taking of oaths.
The judiciary with a justice of peace in each commune
was organized by August.
That month Lafayette ordered rebels
in the Nancy garrison arrested.
His cousin, the Marquia of Bouillé, carried out the order
on the 31st, and more than 300 people were killed;
33 Swiss were executed,
and 41 were condemned to the galleys.
In response on 2 September about 40,000 people
demonstrated at the Tuileries palace in Paris.
The National Assembly appropriated 25 million livres for
King Louis XVI and 4 million for the Queen,
and his ministers were accountable to the Assembly.
Revenues from indirect taxes had been 52 million livres in 1788,
but in 1790 they were less than 14 million.
The short-term debt that had been 707 million livres
in November 1789 had ballooned to nearly
two billion by the summer of 1790.
Necker opposed the plan to issue 800 million livres
in paper money (assignats), and he resigned on
3 September and had to be protected by police.
On the 12th the Assembly created the National Archives
for the public statutes and laws.
On 27 October the Assembly adopted a decimal scale
for measurements that became the metric system.
On 1 November Edmund Burke published his conservative
Reflections on the French Revolution,
and the French translation appeared on the 29th.
On 2 November 1790 the Assembly
approved 510 to 346 the selling of church land.
Church property was about 8% of France’s wealth,
and it was sold by auction to 700,000 people.
France’s new land tax went into effect on 23 November
with a revenue of 240 million livres compared to
60 million on commerce and industry.
On the 27th priests were required to take an oath to France’s
constitution and the new Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Only 99 of the 250 clerical deputies took the oath,
and about 28,000 of the 54,000 lower clergy refused
and were called “refractory” or “non-juror” priests.
On 6 December at the Jacobin Club young Robespierre
criticized the new system of recruiting the National Guard
that accepted only those paying taxes.
Talleyrand took the civil oath on the 28th and resigned
as Bishop of Autun on 13 January 1791,
and four days later he was elected administrator
for the Department of the Seine.
On 3 December Louis XVI had written to Friedrich Wilhelm II
of Prussia asking him to organize a European Congress
to help restore his power.
In February 1791 the King’s two elderly aunts left
for a pilgrimage to Rome,
but officials had them brought back on the 19th.
The Assembly decided they had not broken a law,
and they were allowed to go.
On 6 March a petition signed by 300 warned that
“a violent shock is coming,”
and they asked that women be armed.
That month the Assembly abolished corporations,
and this affected the guilds.
On 14 June associations of employers
and employees were banned.
Inflation from the paper money was causing
economic hardship with food shortages.
Foreign trade declined because they demanded gold or silver.
In April more than a hundred attacks on castles
in Gard were reported.
Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin suggested a machine that
was named after him but had been invented by the
German T. Schmitt and the surgeon Antoine Louis.
The guillotine could provide a quick execution,
and it was first used on 25 April to execute
Nicolas Pelletier for armed robbery.
On 15 May 1791 the Assembly made mulattoes citizens,
but the colonies refused to put the decree into effect.
The next day Robespierre persuaded the Assembly
to decree that none of the deputies would be qualified
to be candidates in the first election
under the new constitution.
On the 18th all foreigners in Paris were put under surveillance,
and on the 29th the King’s special bodyguard of 1,800 men
was disbanded and replaced by National Guardsmen.
Marat and others warned that King Louis XVI would flee,
and Louis was prevented from going to Saint Cloud on 18 April.
He announced that he was informing European monarchs
that he approved the Revolution, but he sent a secret message
advising them to ignore that circular.
The King ordered the eastern commander Bouillé
to prepare six regiments of cavalry to aid his escape.
On the night of 20-21 June Louis and his family fled
in disguises in a large carriage on the road to Chalons
headed for Montmédy near Luxembourg.
They stopped at Varennes and were identified.
The postmaster Drouet rode ahead and had a bridge barricaded.
Louis admitted he was King, and bells alarmed the peasants.
In the morning Lafayette’s messengers from the Assembly
ordered them to return to Paris.
Their carriage was surrounded by crowds and traveled slowly.
When the Count of Dampierre came to greet the King,
peasants killed him.
The King’s brother, the Count of Provence, had left
the same day and escaped to the Austrian Netherlands.
Foreign invasion was feared; garrisons were prepared,
and on 21 June the Assembly mobilized 169 infantry
regiments from the National Guard.
The Cordeliers called for the Assembly to proclaim a republic.
The National Assembly was afraid that a democracy would
ignite a peasant rebellion and more strikes.
Antoine Barnave declared that the constitution was their guard.
The Assembly described the King’s flight as an “abduction,”
and they postponed the elections.
Bouillé fled to Luxembourg and wrote to the National Assembly
that he was responsible for the King’s flight.
By the end of the year about 6,000 officers would emigrate.
On 1 July Le Républican began publishing edited by
Condorcet and Thomas Paine
who had fled from England in April.
On 15 July the Assembly blamed Bouillé for the “abduction”
and exonerated the sovereigns.
That evening a crowd led by Cordeliers persuaded the
Jacobins to sign a petition asking the Assembly to replace
Louis, and Brissot added “by constitutional means”
in the bill the next day.
The Cordeliers protested this at the Champ-de-Mars park,
and they created a new petition on their Altar of the Fatherland.
Two men found under the altar were killed.
Bailly and Lafayette declared martial laws.
The National Guard fired on the 50,000 demonstrators,
killing fifty and wounding hundreds,
and they arrested some for conspiracy.
Republican publications were banned.
On the 16th Barnave, Lafayette, the Lameth brothers, Bailly,
and about 200 followers left the Jacobin Club
and started the Feuillants, urging the right to revise the
constitution to strengthen the monarchy
and raise electoral qualifications.
Louis XVI now said he accepted the constitution.
On 20 August Emperor Leopold II announced that
the European nations recognized this constitution.
A week later he met Friedrich Wilhelm II at Pillnitz,
and they and other monarchs were concerned
for the King of France.
Yet their Declaration of Pillnitz stated they would not intervene
without approval of other powers,
and Britain had declared neutrality.
The Assembly called for volunteers, and about 100,000
young men joined the army in blue uniforms.
Condorcet had been urging the Assembly to legislate rights
for women since January 1790.
On 6 January 1791 Cailly published La necessité du divorce,
but most of the legislature opposed legalizing divorce.
Former courtesan and dramatist Olympe de Gouges published
the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Citizen
in September, opposing perpetual male tyranny, asserting that
“women are born and remain free and equal to men,”
and demanding the rights of liberty, property, security, to resist
oppression, and access to “all honors, positions,
and public offices according to their abilities.”2
She argued that the boundaries of perpetual male tyranny
blocking them can be reformed
by the laws of nature and reason.
Marriage laws would be reformed,
and civil divorce was passed on 20 September 1792.
On 3 September 1791 the Assembly adopted the revised
Constitution that was to guarantee liberty and monarchy,
and on the 14th Louis XVI was formally restored as King.
That day Avignon became a part of France.
On the 27th they granted citizenship to Jews.
Finally on the 30th the Constituent Assembly granted
a general amnesty to those who had been
sentenced for rioting since 1788.
Then they adjourned, and they would be replaced
by the National Legislative Assembly.
The next day Robespierre moved in with the Duplay family.
Mayor Bailly resigned as did Commander Lafayette,
hoping to be elected Mayor;
but the radical Jérome Pétion defeated him 6,728 to 3,126.
Enthusiasm for the Revolution was low as
only about ten percent of those eligible voted.
About 4.3 million active citizens who paid taxes of about
3 livres could vote in the first round,
but women and servants were excluded.
In the second round electors had to have paid
nearly 10 livres in tax, and in this election they could elect
only men who had paid the silver marc worth 50 livres.
The latter requirement was abolished in the new constitution,
but the electors had to have paid about 20 livres.
The newly elected Legislative Assembly met on 1 October
without any former deputies.
They were all young with 264 Feuillants on the right,
136 Jacobins on the left, and 345 independent
constitutionalists in the middle.
After Mayor Lescuyer was murdered in Avignon
on 16 October, patriots avenged his death by executing
61 right-wing suspects held in the Popes’ tower of the Glacière.
Deputies led by the Parisian Brissot
came to be known as the Gironde.
They condemned the counts of Artois and Provence
and other aristocratic émigrés, and on the 31st
and 9 November they passed two decrees
that if they did not disperse and return to France,
they would be sentenced to death
and have their property confiscated.
Louis XVI used his veto to delay these,
as he did another decree on the 29th that
required priests to take the oath or lose
their pensions and be imprisoned for two years.
From November 1791 to March 1793 Condorcet
reported government business in the Chronique de Paris
which supported Lafayette.
The Girondins met at Madame de Staël’s salon,
and on 9 December her lover, the Count of Narbonne,
was appointed Minister of War.
Capitalists in Marseille, Nantes, and Bordeaux
backed the Girondin party and favored war
to protect their trade.
By this time more than half of the army’s
noble officers had emigrated.
Narbonne mobilized three armies
with 150,000 men on the eastern frontier.
On the 18th Robespierre spoke to the Jacobins
in opposition to war, saying
It is in war that the executive power deploys
the most fearful energy and exercises a sort of
dictatorship which can only frighten our emerging
liberties; it is in war that the people forget those
principles which are most directly concerned
with civil and political rights
and think only of events abroad….
It is during war that a habit of passive obedience,
and an all too natural enthusiasm for
successful military leaders,
transforms the soldiers of the nation
into the soldiers of the King or of his generals.3
On the first day of 1792 the Legislative Assembly declared
the émigré princes traitors who forfeited their titles and lands.
The next day Robespierre warned against claims that by war
their revolution would liberate others in Europe, arguing that
force of arms will not make foreigners adopt their laws
and constitution because “nobody loves armed missionaries.”
The Assembly charged émigré princes with treason,
and they criticized the King for plotting with other monarchs.
In February a mob pillaged food warehouses in Dunkirk,
and the conflict killed 14 and wounded 60.
In March châteaux were ransacked in Cantal, Lot,
Dordogne, Corrèze, and Gard.
From June 1791 to March 1792 the livre on foreign exchanges
fell 20%, and the assignats in Paris had fallen from 82%
of their value to 63% in the previous two months.
People were suffering from this inflation,
and the price of gold rose 200%.
On 3 March food rioters killed Mayor Simoneau of Étampes.
Slave rebellions in the West Indies disrupted the supply
of sugar and coffee, and in the spring
people attacked grocery stores.
A decree enacted on 4 April recognized the equality
of natural rights for mulattos and free blacks,
and an army of 6,000 men was sent
to the West Indies to enforce the decree.
War against European monarchies was often debated.
Foreign Minister Jean-Marie de Lessart was trying to
keep the peace, but on 10 March the
Assembly accused him of treason.
The King dismissed three ministers and appointed Brisson’s
friends who favored war—Roland, Clavière,
and Charles-François Dumouriez.
On the 25th the Legislative Assembly sent Austria
an ultimatum, and on 20 April with only seven dissenting
they voted for war against “Bohemia and Hungary”
which meant Austria but not the Empire.
Louis XVI was there and read aloud the declaration of war.
Dumouriez and Brissot hoped that revolutionary ideas
would persuade Belgians, Liégois, Germans, Dutch,
and Savoyards to fight for France.
They called for 100,000 volunteers from the National Guard
but got only 33,000.
Many French volunteers preferred the National Guard
so that they could stay at home.
In May emigrating officers took three regiments
over to the enemies of France.
General Théobald Dillon and commander Armand Louis,
Duke of Biron, ordered a retreat on 29 April,
and soldiers accused Dillon of treason and killed him at Lille.
Lafayette and Carle were reluctant to engage the enemy,
but French forces suffered much heavier casualties than
the Austrians they defeated while taking
Swiss Porentruy on the 28th.
The Gironde ordered Dillon’s killers prosecuted along with
Marat for urging soldiers to remove their generals.
The leaders of the army met at Valenciennes on 18 May,
but they decided that an offensive was not possible
and advised Louis XVI to make peace.
Marshal Luckner’s army took Courtrai but soon departed.
Rouget de Lisle composed the “War Song for the Rhine Army”
which became the anthem of the Republic as the “Marseillaise.”
Aristocrats in various places prepared to aid the invaders,
and a revolt occurred in Yssingeaux;
but the Jacobins of Marseille
crushed rebellions in Avignon and Arles.
Girondins introduced the red cap of liberty that was proudly
worn by sansculottes, and passive (non-voting) citizens
were armed with pikes.
The rich were forced to pay for the volunteers.
In Paris three prominent Cordeliers were arrested on 18 May,
and five days later Brissot and Pierre Vergniaud
denounced the Austrian Committee.
On the 27th the Assembly decreed that refractory priests
were to be deported, and on June 6 they ordered 20,000
National Guard to attend the Federation ceremony and camp
outside Paris; but Louis vetoed both decrees.
A week later Interior Minister Jean-Marie Roland,
Finance Minister Clavière, and War Minister Joseph Servan
were dismissed, and Feuillants formed a new ministry.
On the 15th Dumouriez was afraid he would
be indicted and resigned to join the army.
On the 18th Lafayette urged the Assembly to disperse
the democrats, but on that day they finally voted
to abolish all feudal rights without compensation.
On 20 June about 15,000 demonstrators marched before
the Assembly and entered the Tuileries to talk to the King.
They made him wear a red cap and drink to the health
of the “true sovereign, the people.”
After many hours Mayor Pétion persuaded them to leave.
Louis refused to cancel his vetoes or recall the Girondins,
and he suspended Pétion and the Commune executive Manuel.
On 28 June Lafayette failed to persuade the Assembly
to dissolve the Jacobin clubs or to punish the intruders.
On 1 July the Assembly declared that the meetings of official
institutions would be open to the public.
Vergniaud accused the King of treason on the 3rd,
and Brissot did so on the 9th.
The ministry resigned the next day, and on the 11th the
Assembly proclaimed that the country is in danger.
Vergniaud, Marguerite-Élie Guadet, and Armand Gensonné
secretly communicated with the royal family.
On the 26th Brissot threatened republicans
and said he opposed removing the King.
The Mauconseil section no longer recognized Louis XVI,
but Vergniaud annulled that on 4 August.
Marseille sent 500 victorious soldiers marching to Paris
singing the “Marseillaise,” and the municipality
was the first to demand a republic.
On 30 July the Assembly allowed passive citizens
into the National Guard.
The sections of Paris were meeting every day,
and one by one they advocated deposing the King.
Robespierre suggested that first they needed to dissolve
the Assembly and elect a Convention with universal suffrage.
On 1 August they learned of a manifesto from the Prussian
Duke of Brunswick threatening to destroy Paris
if they harmed the royal family.
Two days later 47 of the 48 Sections of the Paris Commune
voted to depose the King, and Pétion
led their delegation to the Assembly.
On the night of the 9th the Commune met, and the National
Guard commander Mandat was arrested and killed,
cancelling his orders to protect the King.
Cordeliers began ringing a great bell, and they set up an
Insurrectionary Commune and detained Pétion.
On 10 August 1792 about 20,000 demonstrators joined
with 2,000 National Guard at the Tuileries palace
and overcame the Swiss Guards, killing 600 of them
while about 300 republicans died.
They also demolished the equestrian statue of Louis XIV.
The Legislative Assembly blamed the trouble on the
“executive power” of the King who pretended
to uphold the Constitution but did not.
Louis was to be detained as long as
European powers were fighting for him.
They recognized the Commune and suspended the King
whom the Commune had arrested with his family
and enclosed in the Temple by the 12th.
Also on the 10th they sent three deputies to each of the
four armies to assert the authority of the new government.
The Assembly sent 18 representatives to the departments
of France while the Council of Ministers
sent 12 selected by Danton.
On the 11th the Assembly appointed Antoine Santerre
commander of the National Guard.
Robespierre joined the Paris Commune which elected
him President of the Extraordinary Tribunal to judge
the Swiss defenders of the Tuileries palace.
The next day the Paris Commune suppressed
six royalist journals, and they transferred their
printing presses to Marat and other leftists.
Also on 11 August the Assembly authorized municipalities
to arrest suspects, and they closed the rest of the monasteries.
Four days later they dissolved the orders of teaching
and charity, and they made effective the law against
refractory priests that the King had vetoed.
The Assembly canceled court pensions, and they reduced
the royal family’s maintenance to 100,000 francs a month.
They extended the vote to all male citizens over the age of 21.
On the 14th they decreed a new oath of allegiance
to “Liberty and Equality.”
The next day the Lameth brothers were arrested
for criticizing the insurrection.
On the 18th they prohibited the wearing
of religious vestments in public.
Those priests who had refused to take the oath to the
Civil Constitution were to be deported to Guiana,
and all priests were required to take the new oath.
On 19 August Lafayette went to Austria
and was made a prisoner.
Two days later royalist rebels in the Vendée took over Châtillon.
Arnaud de La Porte had distributed the King’s secret funds,
and he was condemned and executed on the 23rd.
That day the Assembly gave non-juror priests
seven days to leave France.
In Paris priests who did not take the new oath were imprisoned.
On the 25th the Assembly ended seigneurial privileges,
and the next day they granted citizenship to 18 foreigners
including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton,
George Washington, Tom Paine, William Wilberforce,
Jeremy Bentham, Joseph Priestley, Tadeusz Kosciuszko,
Anacharsis Cloots, Joachim Campe, Johann Pestalozzi,
and Friedrich Schiller.
On the 28th a decree made those reaching
the age of 21 independent of their fathers.
On 1 September Robespierre denounced Brissot
to the Commune as a “destroyer of liberty.”
Primary elections for the Convention began on 26 August
with the secondary elections on 2 September.
Candidates only had to be over 25.
Any self-supporting man over 21 who was not a servant
could vote, doubling the electorate to about seven million
people, and the turnout increased from 10% to 12%.
Robespierre and Danton were the first to be elected.
The citizens re-elected 190 deputies, and 96 were
returned from the previous Constituent Assembly.
Robespierre persuaded the electors in Paris
to reject Brissot’s candidates.
Paine, Cloots, and Priestley were elected,
but Priestley declined.
The German Cloots supported the Girondins
in their revolutionary war in Europe.
The Convention had about 200 leftists who sat in high seats
and were called “Montagnards,”
160 Girondins on the right, and 389 moderates in the middle.
Most of the Montagnards were from Paris.
Brissot’s Girondins included Roland and Clavière.
The Paris Commune had 526 delegates which
a few days later was reduced to 144.
They were led by Pétion and the Executive Manuel,
and his deputy Danton was Minister of Justice.
They arrested people for opposing the Revolution.
They proclaimed a state of emergency
and a general curfew for 29-31 August.
On the 30th news reached Cambrai that the Longwy fortress
had been captured, and angry people demanded
that imprisoned priests be executed.
Danton persuaded the Assembly to call for 30,000 more
soldiers, and about 20,000 volunteered.
Brunswick’s Prince Charles William Ferdinand led
60,000 Prussians who attacked about 4,000 French soldiers
at Verdun which surrendered on 2 September.
That day Danton called for boldness to save France.
A crowd with pikes killed 24 prisoners being moved to the
Abbaye prison, and they went into the prison and murdered
more than fifty prisoners including Swiss Guards
who had defended the Tuileries.
Another band of sansculottes who had rifles and sabres
slaughtered 188 priests and three bishops.
That night the Commune told commander Santerre to order
the National Guard to stop the massacres,
but the guardsmen refused to interfere.
On the 3rd all citizens were required to take the loyalty oath.
The prison massacres continued at the Conciergerie that day,
and at the Châtelet, Saint-Firmin, and La Salpêtrière on the 4th.
Tribunals were set up at these and other prisons,
and they carried out about 1,250 summary executions
which was more than 40% of the prison population.
The Commune used as a pretext the fear that the Prussians
would invade and release prisoners to kill their families.
The Paris Commune authorized many committees of
surveillance, and communes throughout France created
about 20,000 vigilance committees.
Marat was put on the vigilance committee and printed a
circular urging other communes to slaughter political prisoners.
In the next few days about 3,000 suspects
were imprisoned in Paris.
On the 4th the Executive Council authorized 12 million livres
to import wheat for Paris.
On 9 September a mob attacked 50 prisoners being
transferred from Orléans to Paris,
and 44 heads were displayed on the
gates around the royal palace at Versailles.
That day an Austrian army besieged Lille.
A week later in Orléans a grain merchant was killed
for refusing to lower the price.
Then people sacked merchants’ houses until
they reduced the price of a 9-pound loaf by 4 sous.
The Paris Commune had the unemployed work
on the city’s fortifications.
The Commune and the Assembly called up 30,000 men
from Paris and moved them to the border.
About 20,000 men were sent to Champagne.
On the 17th burglars stole the crown jewels,
and on the 19th the Assembly declared
the Louvre palace a museum.
The royal library became a repository
and the national public library.
On 20 September some 32,000 French defeated
34,000 Prussians at Valmy.
The next day the National Convention assembled,
and they replaced the Legislative Assembly
and established their rules.
At the end of the day they voted to abolish the monarchy.
On the 22nd they decreed the beginning of
“Year One of the Republic.”
They gave secular authorities the registry of all births,
marriages, and deaths, and they authorized divorce.
Priests could no longer refuse to marry divorcés
or even other priests.
Bells and silver were confiscated from churches,
and their precious cloth was sold.
After the victory at Valmy the French forces advanced.
Forces led by General Montesquiou captured Savoy’s capital
at Chambéry on 24 September, and on the 29th
General Jacques Bernard d’Anselme’s army took Nice away
from Savoy and installed a Jacobin government.
The Swiss canton of Basel
was proclaimed
a republic on 3 October.
General Custine led the invasion of Germany and took Speyer
on 25 September, Worms on 5 October, and on the 21st
Mainz where he organized a club;
two days later the French entered Frankfurt.
The Convention ordered royalist statues taken down,
and at Rouen those of Henri IV and Louis XV
were destroyed on 5 October.
Three days later the Austrians abandoned the siege of Lille.
On the 10th the Jacobins Club expelled Brissot.
The Convention set up a committee to draft a new
constitution that included Danton,
Louis-Charles of Lavicomterie, Pétion, Brissot, Vergniaud,
Gensonné, Condorcet, and Paine.
On the 18th Brissot asked Danton to explain a deficit
of 200,000 livres in the accounts of his ministry.
The next day the Jacobins set up an auxiliary constitutional
committee with Robespierre, Georges Couthon, Danton,
Collot d’Herbois, François Chabot, and Billaud Varenne.
On the 9th the Convention had decreed the death penalty
for émigrés with weapons, and two weeks later
nine émigrés were caught and executed.
On 1 November they authorized the state to confiscate
the property of émigrés and absent citizens.
The next day citizen Sade’s speech,
L’idée sur le Mode de la Sanction des Lois, was so
impressive that the Pique sector had it printed and sent
to the other sectors.
He argued that legislators must have the people’s assent.
The former marquis was a commissioner investigating hospitals.
On the 8th the Rouen council declared
martial law to stop food riots.
The next day General de Montesquiou escaped to
Switzerland after being charged for refusing to attack Geneva.
On November 15 the Convention elected 352-246
the Jacobin Grégoire speaker of the Assembly.
Also in November they declared in the Edict of Fraternity
that “all people are our friends.”
Dumouriez led an army of 40,000 into the Austrian
Netherlands on 3 November and defeated
a smaller Austrian force at Jemappes on the 6th.
They retreated, and the French took over Mons
and Brussels, conquering Belgium.
He announced that Belgians were free to have their
own laws as long as they were not under a despot.
Pierre Lebrun explained that France needed Belgium
for its tax revenues and large army.
Brissot wanted France’s border to be the Rhine River,
and on 16 November the Executive Council opened
the Scheldt estuary to shipping in violation
of the Westphalia treaties of 1648.
On the 19th the Convention offered friendship
to all peoples who want freedom.
Pierre Joseph Cambon advised the Convention to sell
Belgium’s religious and feudal property to pay for the war,
and they exchanged their paper money
for Belgian coins of gold and silver.
Danton accepted the policy of incorporating Belgium.
On the 20th Interior Minister Roland revealed what
was in the strong-box he had discovered in the royal palace
showing how the King had aided counter-revolutionaries
and tried to bribe deputies, notably Mirabeau.
On 27 November France annexed Savoy.
The next day the army of Dumouriez entered Liège.
On the 29th General Miranda led French troops into Antwerp.
That day the Girondists persuaded the Convention
to dissolve the emergency criminal tribunal.
Judicial procedures returned to normal, and some deported
priests and émigrés were permitted to return.
Pétion had been elected to the Convention,
and the Girondist Nicolas Chambon was
elected Mayor of Paris on the 30th.
Prussians took back Frankfurt on 2 December.
That day General Valence’s forces captured Namur,
but Dumouriez decided to halt the offensive.
On the 4th the Convention rejected Belgium’s independence
and three days later suppressed those demonstrating for it.
Dumouriez blamed “greedy speculators supported
by the offices of the War Ministry.”
War Minister Pache ordered the suppliers
of the Belgian army arrested.
Roland opposed price controls on grain
and restored free trade on 8 December.
On the 13th Martinique’s Governor-general de Béhagne
persuaded the colonial assembly to declare war
on the French Republic.
The next day France issued 300 million new assignats.
On 7 November 1792 the Convention had decided to judge
Louis XVI themselves, and on the 13th 25-year-old
Louis Saint-Just dramatically called him an enemy
who must be executed as a criminal
for waging war against his own people.
On 3 December Robespierre agreed that a nation giving itself
a king is a crime and that he should be condemned to death.
On the 10th a long indictment of Louis Capet was read,
and the next day he was summoned to face the charges
from the Temple where he had been detained for 120 days.
On the first day of 1793 the Convention set up the Committee
of General Defense dominated by Girondins with deputies
from the seven committees of War, Navy, Colonies, Finance,
Trade, Diplomacy, and Constitution.
The lower classes were trying to survive and demanded price
controls, grain requisitions, aid to the poor and families of
soldiers, and a revolutionary army paid for by taxing the rich.
On the 11th the Paris Commune banned performances of
L’Ami des Lois by Jean Louis Laya that satirized Robespierre
and Marat, but three days later actors read it aloud in public.
On January 15 the 707 deputies voted unanimously that the
former King Louis XVI was guilty and then 424-287 that
he should not be allowed to appeal to the people.
On the third question 366 voted for death without any
qualification with 319 voting for imprisonment, and finally
a vote to give him a reprieve was lost 310-380.
On January 21 about 90,000 people gathered
at the Place de la Révolution to see
Louis XVI beheaded by the guillotine.
The people shouted, “Vive la Nation!”
and “Vive la République!”
Robespierrre’s accusations against Interior Minister Roland
persuaded him to resign on the 22nd.
On the 24th the British warned French ambassador Chauvelin
he had a week to leave England.
Nice was annexed on 31 January, and by then Cambon
claimed that 30 French commissioners had extracted
64 million livres from Belgium.
French generals, arms suppliers, speculators, a few politicians
and others were getting rich off the revolutionary war.
Also on the 31st Danton suggested that the limits of France
should be the Atlantic Ocean, the Rhine River,
and the mountain ranges of the Alps and the Pyrenees.
He proposed incorporating Belgium into France, though much
territory south of the Rhine was part of the Dutch Republic.
On the first of February the Convention declared war against
Britain and the United Netherlands, and three days later
General Beurnonville replaced Pache as War Minister.
Pache joined the Montagnards
and was elected Mayor of Paris on the 14th.
On the next two days Condorcet presented to the Convention
his Declaration of human, natural, civil, and political rights
and a constitution approved by the Girondists.
This republican constitution limited powers
but did not separate them as Montesquieu advised.
Including 368 articles and much philosophy it ran 85 pages.
The primary assemblies would be open to all French men
over 21 and to non-national men
who had resided in France for one year.
The right to security included
financial assistance to those in need.
To avoid a “Cromwell” the executive was to be changed
every fifteen days, and Robespierre denounced the draft.
The French had only 230,000 men in the army, and on the 24th
the Convention called up 300,000 bachelors and widowers
between the ages of 20 and 40 for more soldiers.
Each department was required to raise
a specified number of men.
If volunteers were not enough,
then the communes had to provide the rest.
This made recruiting political,
and less than 200,000 were raised.
Also on the 24th Parisian women took over two boats
and sold their cargo of soap at low prices.
In the next three days women and men threatened bakers
and grocers to lower their prices or face lynching.
Some seized goods and left behind fair payment
while others pillaged barges and shops.
On the 25th Jefferson persuaded President Washington
to pay back gradually the American debt to France.
In February the assignats declined to 50% of their nominal value,
and they would continue to fall for the next nine months.
In 1789 about one-tenth of the French were indigent
and needed help in a crisis; but now in Paris
the indigent were about one-fifth of the population.
The Girondins’ free-market policies were not working
for the poor, and radicals in Paris
called for price controls with a maximum.
Dumouriez’s army invaded Holland on March 1 and soon
occupied Liège; but four days later Austrian forces
regained Liège, and the French army retreated.
On the 7th France declared war on Spain.
The next day the Convention sent off 41 pairs of deputies
to the departments, and that night teams of deputies went
to inform the 48 sections of Paris that the country was in
danger and that they needed volunteers.
On the 9th mobs destroyed the printing presses of Brissot’s
Patriote français and Gorsas’
Courrier des 83 départements.
The next day the Convention set up a criminal court
with five judges, a public prosecutor, and twelve jurors.
Danton proposed a committee with executive power;
but the Girondins called it “dictatorship” and defeated it.
On the 18th they decreed the death penalty for émigrés
and outlawed priests and the next day
for those who instigated rebellion.
Watch committees were to be established
in each commune and sector.
Meanwhile in France people reacted against the military
recruiting far from the capital in Franche Comté,
western Languedoc, and Normandy.
In the west on 3 March hundreds protested in Cholet.
People in the Vendée rose up, and on the 11th about 1,500
took control of Machecoul and killed at least 162 people
in the next six weeks.
On that day nobles and former officers took over Cholet.
The next day the veteran Nicolas Stofflet with 10,000 Bretons
overwhelmed the national troops at Saint-Florent-le-Vieil.
On April 4 rebel leaders set up a council for the Catholic
and royalist armies that 45,000 insurgents joined.
They occupied Thouars on May 5 and Fontenay on the 25th.
The Rhineland had agreed to union with France on March 17,
1793 and the Convention approved the annexation.
Austrian troops had returned to Belgium with Dutch allies, and
they defeated Dumouriez’s army at Neerwinden on the 18th.
Three days later Dumouriez agreed to an armistice
with the Austrians, and he decided to march on Paris.
On the 23rd France annexed Basel.
Prussians defeated Custine’s forces,
and he withdrew them across the Rhine to Landau.
About 20,000 French left in Mainz
were besieged by the Prussians.
After suffering 7,000 casualties at Mainz
the French would capitulate on July 23.
On March 30 the Defense Committee summoned Dumouriez
and sent four members to him; but he turned them
and War Minister Beurnonville over to the enemy,
and they were imprisoned for two years.
The envoys he had not arrested persuaded
the soldiers not to follow him.
Dumouriez escaped to Austria on April 5.
By then most German and Italian states had
allied with Austria and Prussia against France.
On April 1 the Convention ended the
deputies immunity from prosecution.
Danton demanded a Committee of Public Safety
(Comité de sûreté générale) (CSG), and the Convention
passed it on April 6 and put him in charge with Bertrand Barère
and Cambon who had joined the Montagnards.
The nine members were to be renewed each month.
On the 9th the Convention sent out
more than fifty envoys to the French armies.
This reduced the Montagnards at the Convention,
but they made more contacts outside Paris.
The next day Robespierre accused the Duke of Orléans,
Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Guadet.
On the 11th they met an Enragé demand by setting
the rate for the assignats and prohibiting
double
pricing and trafficking in currency.
On the 13th the Convention cancelled its decree that
France would not interfere in the affairs of other countries.
That day Girondins arraigned Marat before the
Revolutionary Tribunal, but he was acquitted on the 24th.
Pétion published his Lettre aux Parisiens accusing the
Montagnards of “stirring up a war between those who have
and those who have not,” but on April 15 he conveyed the
Paris sector’s demand that 22 Girondin deputies be dismissed.
Robespierre challenged the “sacred” right of property
and argued that the general interest is more important.
On April 22 the United States announced that it was neutral
in this European war; Jefferson was the only leader
who favored intervening for the Revolution.
Two days later Saint-Just proposed an alternative
constitution with more centralization of the general will.
A new constitution committee was appointed,
but Robespierre still had only one advocate.
Billaud-Varenne wrote Elements of Republicanism blaming
capitalists for exploiting workers and pillaging the public purse,
and he suggested remedies to wealth inequality.
On the 30th the Convention dismissed
all the women from the army.
On May 1 in Rouen the National Guard suppressed a riot
over the price of bread, and in Paris sansculottes
marched for enforcement of the maximum price,
a tax on the rich, and abolition of leases.
Three days later the Convention
decreed a national price on grain.
General Dampierre had replaced Dumouriez as commander;
but he was mortally wounded when the allies
defeated the French at Raismes on May 8, 1793.
The next day the Convention decreed that neutral ships
following British orders were lawful prizes.
Radicals led by Claire Lacombe and Pauline Léon formed
the “Society of Revolutionary Republican Women”
to support the demands of the Enragés on the 10th,
and Condorcet
warned the Convention of the dangers
to a republic without a constitution.
On the 15th conservative Joseph de Maistre published
his Letters of a Royalist of Savoy to his Fellow Citizens.
Barère persuaded the Convention to appoint
a Committee of Twelve.
On the 24th they arrested the journalist Jacques Hébert
and the Enragé leader Jean-François Varlet,
but pressure got them released three days later.
Hébert’s Le Pere Duchesne was the most popular
newspaper with a circulation of 50,000, and War Minister
Bouchotte distributed 12,000 to the armies.
During his term of office he circulated more than
seven million copies of radical newspapers.
On May 26 Marat at the Jacobins Club urged
an uprising against the Girondists.
The next day he proposed the Committee of Twelve
be abolished, and the Girondists walked out.
On the 29th at Lyons insurrectionists
attacked the Jacobin commune.
The next day section commissioners
took over the Paris Commune.
Jacobin leader François Hanriot was now
in command of 80,000 National Guards,
and he ordered suspects arrested or disarmed.
On May 31 the radicals took over the Commune,
and Sections had their 14 demands read to the Convention
which included a “Revolutionary army of sansculottes,
bread at 3 sous per pound, arrest of Clavière
and Lebrun-Tondu, voting rights only for sansculottes,
and a forced loan of one billion livres from the rich.
The next day the Insurrection Committee ordered the arrest
of Clavière and Roland; they escaped,
but Madame Roland was taken.
On June 2 the Committee of Public Safety
let the National Guard surround the Tuileries,
blocking the Convention members from leaving.
They went back inside and ordered the arrest of 29 deputies
along with Clavière and Lebrun-Tondu.
Most of them fled, but 75 deputies
protested in the next two weeks.
The Montagnards had won.
On June 3 the Convention decreed that illegitimate children
have the right to inherit, and on the 8th they replaced the
insurrectionary commune with the
Paris Committee of Public Safety.
They raised the salaries of public officials and exempted from
the forced loan married couples with an annual income of
less than 10,000 livres and bachelors with less than 6,000.
On the 11th they passed a law that restored land taken
from the communes since 1669 and divided it
among the inhabitants “regardless of age or sex.”
Louis Marie Lhuillier, the executive of the Paris department,
wrote a manifesto that declared,
“The right of property cannot be the right
to starve one’s fellow citizens,” and he made demands
on the grain trade and the price of wheat.
The radical priest Jacque Roux was another Enragé
leader who advocated a more equal economy
and a purified Convention.
The amended constitution based on Condorcet’s draft was
debated for two more weeks and was approved on June 24,
but it would never go into effect.
Robespierre influenced the acceptance of an Assembly
committee selecting the executive council.
Citizenship was open to all men over 21 including foreigners
who had been working in France for one year
or had married a French woman.
The Constitution in the first article proclaimed that the
“purpose of society is general happiness,”
and it included the following:
Article 21. Public aid is a sacred debt.
Society owes subsistence to unfortunate citizens,
either by obtaining work for them
or by providing means of existence
to those who are unable to work.
Article 22. Instruction is a necessity for all.
Society must further the progress of
public reason with all its power,
and make instruction available to all citizens.
During the month of June some sixty departments
out of 83 rebelled against the Paris regime.
On 13 June leaders of the resistance met at Caen,
and the Cherbourg commander Félix Wimpffen
with two regiments joined the insurrection.
At Toulouse royalists were released from prison,
and Jacobins were jailed as they were in Nîmes.
The Vendée royalist army captured Doué on June 7,
Saumur on the 9th, and Angers on the 18th,
but they were eventually defeated at Nantes on June 29.
Rebels in Normandy and Bordeaux were soon overthrown.
On the 20th Roux led Enragé protests against lack of food
and hoarding, and five days later he tried to shame the
Convention into action by accusing the deputies
of making laws by the rich for the rich;
but Robespierre, Marat and others denounced him.
The Commune administrator Antoine Momoro persuaded
Mayor Pache to order the slogan
“Liberty, equality, and fraternity”
inscribed on all public monuments in Paris.
Commodities were hoarded, and prices rose,
provoking riots in Paris over soap.
The death penalty was decreed against hoarders;
the Paris stock exchange had closed on June 27;
and joint-stock companies were suppressed.
As capital fled abroad, the value of
the assignat fell below 30%
in July to a low of 22% of its nominal value in August,
but it would rebound to 48% by the end of 1793.
On 8 July all those who had fled were
declared traitors who could be executed.
On the 10th Danton was not re-elected to the Committee
of Public Safety, but Robespierre was added on July 27.
On the 13th he had presented a plan to reform education
requiring all children from age 5 to 12 to attend school.
Young Charlotte Corday had stabbed Marat to death
in his bath on the 13th, and four days later she was guillotined.
On that day the Convention finally
abolished all remaining feudal rights.
On the 19th a new law required publishers to have
permission from the author to print a book.
On the 26th the Convention ordered
engineer Chappe to set up optical telegraphs.
The next day the Abbot Henri Grégoire persuaded
the Convention to abolish the government
subsidy of the slave trade.
On the 28th of July Austrian forces took over
Valenciennes and established a government.
On the first of August 1793 the Convention adopted
the decimal system of weights and measures,
and they banned the export of capital.
The next day they ordered theatres to perform three times
a week plays such as Brutus, William Tell,
and Caius Gracchus that depicted heroic republican events.
On the 3rd foreign nationals were given eight days
to leave France except for proven patriots
and those working in factories.
Voters approved the new Constitution by a referendum
with 1,714,266 in favor and only 11,610 opposed.
On the 8th Abbot Grégoire persuaded the Convention
to abolish academies and literary societies.
On 10 August delegates from thousands of cantons
attended the secular Festival of the Unity
and Indivisibility of the Republic in Paris.
The next day the communes were ordered
to take a census of their populations.
The city of Lyon with its silk industry had prospered;
but with the decline of the aristocrats, their unemployment
rate reached 50%, and the royalists guillotined
the Jacobin leader Joseph Chalier on July 16.
On August 14 a republican army of 10,000 men besieged Lyon.
On the 22nd the Convention elected Robespierre their president.
The next day they conscripted all males aged 18-25,
raising about 300,000 soldiers.
Married men worked forging weapons
or transporting provisions,
and women made tents and uniforms.
They suppressed the Discount Bank, the East India Company,
and all stock companies.
On August 25 a republican army prevented Marseille
from being turned over to the British.
Hébert accused General Custine of spying for the Prussians,
and on the 28th Custine was sentenced and sent to the guillotine.
That day the Convention and the 48 Sections agreed
to dismiss all nobles from public positions.
On 4 September about 2,000 sansculottes gathered
by the Hotel de Ville and shouted for bread.
The next day many more gathered with petitions
as some entered the Convention.
One from the Jacobins stated,
It is time that equality bore its scythe above all heads.
It is time to horrify all the conspirators.
So legislators, place Terror on the order of the day!
Let us be in revolution, because everywhere
counter-revolution is being woven by our enemies.4
They called for a revolutionary army, an expanded the
Revolutionary Tribunal, and another forced loan from the rich.
In the next three days the Convention arrested and confiscated
the property of those from nations they were fighting.
On September 8 in the north a French army of 40,000 men
defeated British and German allies at Hondschoote.
The next day in the south Admiral Trogoff was declared
a traitor for having given his fleet at Toulon to the British.
On the 17th the Law of Suspects authorized
the detention of the unpatriotic.
On that day a French army defeated Spaniards
at Peyrestortes north of Perpignan.
On the 21st Barère persuaded the Convention to decree
that all imports must arrive on French ships,
and anyone walking the streets was required
to wear the tricolor cockade.
On 29 September the Convention passed the
General Maximum to fix the highest price
for most goods and maximum wages.
Prices were not to rise more than a third since 1790
and wages not more than 50%.
To accomplish these goals
much of the French economy was nationalized.
Despite Robespierre’s offer to resign from the Committee
of Public Safety, its twelve members would not change for
the next ten months, and in October they were given
executive and governmental authority.
Their closed meetings twice a day were kept completely secret.
Most of the 46 deputies charged on 3 October were Girondists.
The next day they banned prostitution and pornography.
On October 6 the new calendar went into effect
as 15 Vendémaire Year 2.
Fabre d’Eglantine devised the revolutionary calendar
based on the four seasons with each 30-day month
named after nature:
in autumn: vine harvest, mist, and frost;
in winter: snow, rain, and wind;
in spring: germination, flower, and meadow:
and in summer: harvest, heat, and fruit.
Every day had a different name with five or six days at the
end of the year around the autumnal equinox for festivals.
On October 7 the Girondist Gorsas
was arrested, tried, and executed.
On the 9th the city of Lyon surrendered,
and on the 12th the Convention ordered the city
destroyed which began on the 26th.
On October 10 Saint-Just persuaded the Convention
to suspend the Constitution making the government
revolutionary until peace was obtained.
Church ceremonies were confined to the church buildings,
and funerals and cemeteries were secularized.
They dismissed Danton on the 11th, and he went home.
In the northeast on the 13th Austrian and German allies
defeated a larger French army at Wissembourg.
Two days later Strasbourg authorities ordered the churches
closed, and the next day a French army of 45,000 men
were victorious over the Austrians at Wattignies near Mauberge.
That day Austrian Marie Antoinette after a two-day trial
was executed by guillotine in Paris.
A smaller republican army defeated about 40,000 Vendéans
at Cholet on October 17.
The next day the royalist army of about 25,000 men crossed
the Loire hoping to find support in Brittany and Maine.
On the 20th the Committee of Public Safety eliminated radical
organizations including the Revolutionary Republican Women.
The next day the Vendéan army led by La Rochejaquelein
captured Château-Gontier and massacred civilians.
They joined Chouans who followed Jean Chouan from
Brittany and Maine, and they captured Laval on the 22nd.
On October 24 the trial of the Girondins began before
1,200 spectators, and one week later twenty men
and Brissot were delivered to the guillotine.
On the 27th the Committee of Public Safety
took control of supplying provisions.
The Jacobin Alexis Thuriot called for the suppressio
of Christianity, and on the 28th the Convention decreed
that no church person could become a teacher.
On the 31st Saint-Just imposed a tax
of nine million livres on the rich in Strasbourg.
Meanwhile in August the cities of Bordeaux and Marseille
had asserted their independence from the Paris revolution,
but a French army led by General Carteaux on the 25th
regained Marseille where 289 were put to death.
Toulon had declared independence on the 12th.
As two revolutionary armies approached the town,
on August 28 they surrendered the French fleet
at the port to British Admiral Samuel Hood.
Carteaux’s army besieged Toulon which did not
capitulate to Convention forces until December 19.
The Republican siege of Lyon lasted two months
until the surrender on October 9.
In the next six months deputies Joseph Fouché and
Collot d'Herbois supervised the execution of
1,867 suspected rebels in Lyon, and about
1,600 stone houses of the rich were destroyed.
At Nantes suspects increased
the prison population to about 6,000.
The Convention sent Jean-Baptiste Carrier to Nantes
in December, and by February 1794 about 5,000 people
had been executed, mostly by drowning.
During the civil war about 30,000 men in the
Revolutionary Army were in 56 provinces.
All together the French had about
a million men in twelve armies.
In the last three months of 1793 the Convention
accused 395 people and executed 177.
On 31 October in 36 minutes
they sliced off the heads of 22 Girondins.
Others beheaded in November and December included
Olympe de Gouges, Philippe of Orléans, Madame Roland,
Bailly, Barnave, Lebrun-Tondu, and Biron.
The number of prisoners increased in the last five months
from 1,417 to 4,525.
Many were kept in prison without charges until they were
released after the fall of Robespierre in July 1794.
The government had about 20,000 police communes.
On 22 November Danton asked
the Convention to spare men’s blood.
On November 7 every deputy who was a clergyman
except Abbot Grégoire, renounced their faith, and the
Convention ordered Bishop Gobel of Paris to resign.
Three days later the Paris Commune took over Notre Dame
cathedral renamed the Temple of Reason to celebrate the
triumph of philosophy over fanaticism
with an actress depicting Liberty.
On November 23 the Commune closed the churches in Paris.
Some considered this a political mistake,
and the Convention refused to stop the salaries of priests.
Robespierre considered atheism a doctrine of the rich
that was alien to the people, and Danton said,
“We did not seek to wipe out the reign of superstition
in order to establish the reign of atheism.”
They opposed the dechristianization and persuaded the
Convention to affirm freedom of religion on December 6.
In Year 2 (1793) of the Revolution
about 5,000 priests got married.
A decree “constituting Revolutionary Government” passed
on 4 December increased the centralization of power.
The next day Desmoulins with Danton’s support began
publishing Le vieux Cordelier, which was stopped after
six editions but circulated 100,000 newspapers.
The first urged repeal of the Law of Suspects
and formation of a Committee of Clemency.
In the third issue on December 17 they attacked the
Revolutionary Tribunal including the War Office’s
secretary-general François-Nicolas Vincent,
and they advocated restoring the constitution
and freedom of the press.
Five days later women urged the Convention
to release prisoners accused unjustly.
Robespierre set up a committee to review arrests,
and they repealed the death penalty for hoarding.
On the 19th the Bouquier Law decreed free education
obligatory for all children from the age of 6 to 13,
and priests were not excluded from teaching.
On the 21st the troops were forbidden to petition collectively.
A memorandum issued on December 24
warned of the dangers of violence.
Also on 19 December Le vieux Cordelier
advocated releasing 200,000 suspects.
Two days later Robespierre proposed a justice committee
to make sure that arrests were justified,
but Billaud Varenne persuaded the Convention to reject it.
On the 25th Robespierre issued his
“Report on the Principles of Revolutionary Government”
arguing for an authoritarian government
rather than a constitutional one.
That day they excluded the only foreigners, Tom Paine and
Anacharsis Cloots, and they were jailed three days later.
That day the Convention decreed that courts must decide
divorce cases within one month.
In a series of battles over four days at Wissembourg
a French army forced the Austrian and German allies
to retreat across the Rhine by December 29.
A poor harvest in 1793 led to a severe economic crisis
in the winter with lack of food.
From October 1793 to August 1794 about a
half million people were arrested under the Law of Suspects.
Most were kept in prison without charges,
and about 35,000 were killed.
During the Reign of Terror the Revolutionary Tribunals
officially executed 16,594 people.
On 4 January 1794 the Committee of Public Safety
ordered the production of bayonets to replace pikes.
Two days later the Convention decreed the destruction
of churches in Marseille that had been used
for federalists’ meetings.
On the 10th Robespierre persuaded the Jacobin Club
to expel Desmoulins for criticizing the Terror,
and on January 13th Fabre d’Eglantine was arrested for
embezzling money in the Company of the Indies liquidation.
The French armies fighting foreign enemies
went into winter quarters in January.
On the 17th General Turreau ordered enforcement of the
previous decree for rebels to leave Vendée by having twelve
“infernal columns” of soldiers comb the land and kill all men,
women, and children having weapons or suspected,
and by September the army massacred nearly 250,000 people
or about one-fifth of the population.
He also ordered villages, towns, and crops burned.
On March 27 a column discovered a hospital in the Vezins
forest with more than a thousand wounded soldiers
from Stofflet’s army, and they killed them all.
Danton protested that accused deputies should be heard,
and Billaud-Varenne threatened Danton.
On January 23 the Convention recalled terrorist deputies
(Carrier, Tallien, Javogues, Barras, and Fréron)
from missions in the provinces.
On February 1 the Convention provided ten million livres for
food relief, and on the 26th Saint-Just persuaded them to
distribute the confiscated wealth of about 300,000 suspects
and émigrés to those in need.
On February 4 the Convention abolished slavery
in French colonies mostly affecting
Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, and Guiana.
The next day Robespierre presented his “Report on the
Moral Principles that Must guide the Convention”
in which he argued that terror without virtue is fatal
but that virtue without terror is powerless.
He said, “Terror is nothing but prompt,
severe, inflexible justice.”5
On the 8th Saint-Just persuaded the Convention to sequester
the goods of the Revolution’s enemies, and on March 3
watch committees were ordered to list their property
so that it could be distributed to “indigent patriots.”
On February 10 the Convention authorized
manufacturer Claude Périer to produce rifles.
On the 19th the Small Arms Agency appropriated
churches’ lead roofs to make bullets.
On March 1 the Convention elected Saint-Just their president.
On the 4th Hébert threatened Robespierre, and an attempt
to reconcile Jacobins and Cordeliers failed.
Vincent urged the Cordeliers to use all terror.
On the 6th Barère speaking for the Committee of Public Safety
warned that foreign conspiracies threatened the Republic.
On the 13th the Convention arrested for conspiracy Hébert,
Vincent, Charles-Philippe Ronsin, Momoro,
and other Cordeliers and foreigners including Cloots.
After a trial with more than 200 witnesses the eighteen
were found guilty and guillotined on the 24th.
On March 27 the Convention ordered
the Revolutionary Army disbanded.
That day philosopher Condorcet was arrested,
and he was found dead two days later.
On the 28th the Commission on Provisions took over
supplying Paris with bread and meat.
Also in March after hearing about priests aiding desertions,
French troops deported thousands of Basques
from their homes in the Pyrenees.
On March 22 Danton tried to reconcile his differences with
Robespierre who complained that with Danton’s principles
and morals no one would ever punish criminals.
Danton asked for 73 deputies to be released, but Robespierre
replied that the only way to establish liberty
was to cut off the heads of criminals.
Danton predicted that the Terror could not last long
because it was against the French temperament.
On March 30 the Committee of Public Safety arrested
Danton, Desmoulins, and others for corruption.
This crime was so widespread that Robespierre was
considered a notable exception
and was called “the Incorruptible.”
He demanded conformity to the Revolution
and punished dissenters.
He called his campaign a “war against the factions.”
Danton and his followers were called “Indulgents” because
they called for an end to the terror and the foreign wars.
Danton was suspected of using funds for himself
when he was Minister of Justice
and while meeting with French officers in Belgium.
Jean-François Delacroix, Chabot, and Barras
faced similar charges.
Fabre, Chabot, and Joseph Delauney were involved
in the scandal during the liquidation of the Indies Company.
On April 1 Saint-Just read the charges,
and the next day was about the Company of the Indies.
On the 3rd Danton defended himself vehemently for most
of the day and complained that they had not presented
any documents or witnesses.
The next day Saint-Just got a decree to prohibit the
pleading of anyone accused of insulting “national justice,”
and the jury convicted them.
On April 5 the 16 including 9 deputies were guillotined.
On 1 April the Convention had replaced the Council
of Ministers with twelve executive committees
under the Committee of Public Safety.
On the 13th the Revolutionary Tribunal executed 19
for a “prison conspiracy” including the radical philosopher
Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, Bishop Gobel, and the widows
of Desmoulins and Hébert.
Two days later Saint-Just made his last major speech
describing the conspiracies that
had tried to destroy the Revolution.
The next day the Convention decreed the termination
of the revolutionary tribunals in the provinces,
and nobles and foreigners were expelled
from Paris and fortified towns.
The deputy Fouché had been recalled from his mission
on March 27, and 21 others were summoned on Apri 19.
On the 22nd the Revolutionary Tribunal executed the
constitutional lawyers Thouret and Le Chapelet
and the liberal Malesherbes who had defended Louis XVI.
On May 7, 1794 Robespierre persuaded the Convention
to decree, “The French people recognize the existence
of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul,”
and they proclaimed the duties
to detest bad faith and tyranny,
to punish tyrants and traitors,
to aid the unfortunate, respect the weak,
defend the oppressed,
do unto others all the good one can,
and to be unjust to no one.6
They also instituted festivals to celebrate
the principles of the Revolution.
The next day they executed former tax collectors
including the renowned chemist Lavoisier.
Mayor Pache was arrested on May 10.
The next day they nationalized relief by providing free
medical care at home, aid to mothers of large families,
and pensions for the elderly.
The Cordeliers and other political clubs
dissolved themselves that spring.
Only the Jacobins continued to flourish with many clubs
in the provinces having a total membership of about one million.
That spring bread rations were reduced by eight ounces
per day to 16 for men and to 8 for those unemployed, women,
and children, and in June to only four ounces for children.
On 1 June the School for Mars was founded
for 3,000 teenage boys.
Robespierre presided over the Convention for 15 days in June.
On the 8th he led the Festival of the Supreme Being
that was arranged by the painter Jacques-Louis David.
The guillotine was moved to the eastern fringe of Paris,
and 2,400 Parisians sang in a chorus at the
Place of the Revolution.
The number of new songs increased year by year
from 116 in 1789 to 701 in 1794.
On June 10 Couthon’s law that streamlined judicial trials was
passed, suppressing preliminary questioning, letting the court
limit witnesses, and abolishing the right to a defense.
Jurors were to use moral judgment rather than evidence.
The Revolutionary Court had only two choices—
the penalty of death or acquittal.
One week later about sixty people were executed for an
alleged conspiracy in an attempt
to assassinate Robespierre on May 24.
This began the period called the “Great Terror” which took
1,376 lives in the next seven weeks compared to
1,251 in Paris in the previous 15 months.
In June and July more prisoners were
to be charged
with conspiracy.
In France the number of executions from May 1793
through July 1794 averaged about 1,350 per month,
but in August 1794 there were only 86.
In Year 2 (1793) of the Revolution the army was used to take
resources from occupied nations and to send to France
what they did not use.
They had exploited the Palatinate in the winter.
Austrians defeated the French near Le Cateau
on March 29, 1794 and with Dutch allies
they captured Landrecies on April 30.
The Prince of Saxe-Coburg led the allies to Lille,
but on May 18 the French army of the North
with 70,000 men defeated them at Tourcoing.
French forces had invaded Catalonia on 1 May.
That month the Committee organized an evacuation agency
for each army, and by July the operations were systematic.
In the Spanish Pyrenees the foundries not used were destroyed.
On June 14 a convoy of 150 ships from America managed
to elude the powerful British navy to bring grain to the port
of Brest and avert a famine in France.
While General Pichegru’s forces were besieging Ypres
for 18 days in June, Jean-Baptiste Jourdan’s French army
of 90,000 men battled the Imperial Coalition for Charleroi
and finally won a strategic victory at Fleurus on the 26th.
The armies of Jourdan and Pichegru pursued
the allies to Liège and Antwerp in July.
The Committee of General Security was in charge of police
and came to resent the Committee of Public Safety and
Robespierre for creating their own police.
The recalled envoys also resented and feared Robespierre.
He was supported by Couthon and Saint-Just but was
opposed now by Lazare Carnot, Billaud-Varenne and
Collot d’Herbois who was complicit with Fouché at Lyons.
On July 14 Robespierre persuaded the Jacobins Club
to expel his bitter enemy Fouché.
Robespierre’s declining health made him irritable,
and he stopped attending Committee meetings,
and for
twenty days in July he did not appear at the Convention.
Sixteen sisters from the Carmelite convent of Compiègne
had withdrawn their oaths to liberty and equality
and had corresponded with émigrés,
and they were executed in Paris on July 17.
On 26 July Robespierre came to the Convention and read
a long speech denouncing his critics
but mentioning only Cambon.
When asked to name the others, he refused.
This increased resentment and fear, and that night the envoys
fearing punishment met with the moderates
who wanted to end the terror.
The next day the deputies did not allow Saint-Just
or Robespierre to speak by shouting “Tyrant!”
The committees dismissed the National Guard
commander Hanriot.
They arrested the Revolutionary Tribunal president
René François Dumas and indicted Robespierre.
His brother Augustin, Saint-Just, Couthon,
and Philippe François Lebas asked to join
Robespierre and were also arrested.
The Paris Commune declared an insurrection,
and that evening 3,000 men gathered
with thirty cannons at the Place de Grève.
The attempted insurrection failed that night.
Lebas committed suicide; Robespierre was shot in the jaw
by himself or an invading guard; Augustin jumped out a window
and broke his leg; and Couthon was injured
as his wheelchair fell down stone stairs.
On July 28 Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, Dumas,
and 18 others were guillotined.
In the next three days 87 of the 140 members
of the Paris Commune met the same fate.
On 29 July the Convention reduced the authority of the
Committee of Public Safety, and a quarter of its members
were to be changed each month.
They removed Robespierre’s followers from this committee
and the General Security Committee.
On 1 August 1794 the Convention repealed the draconian law
on trials passed on June 10, and they reduced the jurisdiction
of the Revolutionary Tribunal to charging those
who took up arms against the Republic.
Because of his support for Robespierre the painter David
was arrested on the 2nd.
General Napoleon Bonaparte had returned to Nice on July 29
and was arrested on August 9; but General Pierre Jadart
Dumerbion released him on the 20th,
and ten days later he returned to his duties.
They also removed Robespierre’s followers from the
Committee of Public Safety, and on the 24th the committee
was limited to war and foreign affairs.
That day the Convention’s Committee on Legislation
took over the supervision of the executive commissions,
and the watch committees in Paris were reduced from 48 to 12.
During August they released about 3,500 suspects
from the prisons of Paris.
The Grenelle gunpowder factory in Paris blew up
on August 31, causing about 400 casualties.
The Jacobins blamed counter-revolutionaries,
and the Thermidorians (who had executed Robespierre during
the month of Thermidor) accused the Jacobins;
but it was probably an accident.
Thermidorians sang Le reveil du peuple
(The Revival of the People).
During August 732,000 men were conscripted into the army.
On September 7 the Jacobins managed to get
price and wage maximums extended.
On the 13th the 94 people from Nantes accused of
being Federalists were acquitted in Paris.
On October 13 Merlin de Thionville reported on the crimes
perpetrated at Nantes by Carrier who was accused of
having more than 2,400 people executed.
Merlin was supported by the newly arisen Gilded Youth
and urged that the Terror be put on trial.
About 2,500 Gilded Youth were fops derisively
called Muscadins after a perfume.
On the 16th the Convention banned collective petitioning,
and clubs were not allowed to affiliate
or correspond with each other.
On November 3 the new American minister James Monroe
was able to get Tom Paine released from prison.
On the 9th the Gilded Youth attacked the Jacobins Club,
smashing windows and beating men and women.
Hundreds came back two days later,
and on the 12th the Convention ordered the Club closed.
To show they were still republicans on the 15th they voted
to affirm the sanctions against the aristocratic émigrés,
and that day they repealed the Navigation Act in order to
allow free sea trade with neutral countries.
On December 8 the Convention reinstated the 73 deputies
who had been expelled and arrested on 2 June 1793
and released in August 1794.
Carrier and two others, who had been governing Nantes,
were tried and executed on November 16, but thirty others
who were complicit in the atrocities were acquitted.
On December 24 the economic maximums were abolished.
On 2 January 1795 the Convention ended
all restrictions on foreign trade.
On the 18th the Dutch proclaimed the Batavian Republic.
The next day General Pichegru’s army entered Amsterdam,
and on the 23rd his cavalry captured the ice-bound Dutch fleet.
On February 2 the White Terror began in Lyon
with a massacre of Jacobins and other revolutionaries.
La Jaunaye was pacified by the 17th, and the Convention
granted amnesty and reimbursed for bonds issued by the rebels.
Four days later they declared freedom of worship and the
separation of church and state, though ringing bells
and clerical clothes were still prohibited.
On the 24th Joseph Lakanal persuaded the Convention
to establish a central school in each province.
On March 3 Napoleon sailed with 16,900 men on 15 ships
to take Corsica away from the British, but a British squadron
of 15 ships defeated the expedition
by capturing two French ships.
That day the Paris Bourse (stock exchange) was reopened,
and on the 8th the Convention recalled outlawed Girondists.
The winter of 1795 was extremely cold, and hunger riots
in March culminated in a march of about 10,000 people
on the Convention on April 1 that was dispersed by
National Guards from prosperous neighborhoods.
That night they ordered the deportation of Billaud-Varenne,
Collot d’Herbois, Barère,
and Marc-Guillaume Vadier to Guiana.
On the 10th they ordered revolutionary terrorists disarmed,
and six days later they appointed
eleven members to draft a constitution.
On the 21st they offered religious freedom and amnesty
for deserters and Chouans in the west
if they recognized the Republic.
On 5 April Prussia had ceded the left bank of the Rhine
to France in the treaty of Basel,
and the Convention ratified it on the 14th.
On the 26th they realized the extreme inflation of the
paper money (assignats) and allowed trading of gold and silver.
Napoleon was reinstated as a brigadier general and was sent
to command the artillery of the Western Army in Brittany.
About 283,000 French troops occupied Belgium,
and in a treaty on 16 May the Dutch Batavian Republic
ceded Flanders, Maastricht, and Venlo to France
and paid an indemnity of 100 million florins.
On 2 May Bishop Grégoire had begun publishing the
Christian Philosophy Society’s weekly Annales de la religion.
On May 1 the Convention decreed that anyone
defaming deputies could be exiled for life.
On the 4th about 30,000 white “anti-terrorists” murdered
about 110 prisoners in Lyon, and about 40 were killed
in Aix-en-Provence on the 11th.
On the 7th Fouquier-Tinville and 14 jurors of the
Revolutionary Tribunal were guillotined.
On the 10th the daily bread ration was down to 60 grams.
On the 21st a crowd of 20,000 gathered.
Some of the National Guard joined them, and they entered
the Convention shouting for bread and the 1793 constitution.
The deputy Jean-Bertrand Féraud tried to speak to the crowd;
but a woman shot him.
The sansculottes killed him and put his head on a pike
while they discussed issues with the Convention.
The next day the Convention spoke of fraternity;
but on the 23rd an army of 20,000 soldiers and 3,000 cavalry
attacked the Faubourg St.-Antoine neighborhood
which surrendered.
More than 3,000 people were detained,
but most were soon released.
The Military Commission tried 132 rebels and executed 36,
imprisoned 34, and deported 18.
The Convention expelled 61 Montagnard deputies.
This was followed by the arrest of 4,000 suspected Jacobins
and sansculottes, and 1,700 lost their civil rights.
In the west the Chouan royalists took up arms again.
Jacobins were persecuted, deprived of offices,
molested, and many fled.
A military commission passed thirty death sentences,
and the Convention had twelve deputies arrested.
Jacobins took over Toulon on the 23rd,
but six days later they were defeated attacking Marseilles.
In many provinces the Jacobins were imprisoned or massacred.
The Convention restored the property
of the Revolution’s victims,
pardoned the Federalists,
and suppressed the Revolutionary Tribunal.
On 30 May they returned churches to their worshippers.
On 5 June young men in Marseilles slaughtered about
700 Jacobin prisoners in the Saint-Jean fort.
On the 17th the Military Committee condemned
six Montagnards to death in Paris.
On the 27th counter-revolutionaries killed the members
of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Orange in Avignon.
After killing about 30,000 people, the Convention
ended the White Terror by the end of the summer.
Wearing the clothes of poor sansculottes became
unfashionable as they could be arrested.
On June 7 the French army took over the Duchy of
Luxembourg from the Austrians
who had governed there for 82 years.
The next day royalists were disappointed
when 10-year-old Louis XVII died.
Madame Germaine de Staël reopened her salon in Paris.
On the 24th Louis XVI’s brother, the Count of Provence,
in Verona declared himself Louis XVIII
and issued a manifesto promising to restore the old order.
On June 21 the Convention recognized that the assignats
had fallen to 8% of their nominal value.
One week later the British landed 8,000 soldiers at Quiberon
in Brittany; but on July 5 about 13,000 Republican troops
defeated 5,000 Chouan forces and arrested hundreds.
The next week another 6,000 Chouans arrived
and were joined by 2,000 émigré soldiers.
General Lazare Hoche’s republicans attacked at night
on July 20, and the next day 6,332 royalists surrendered;
but the promise not to execute any was not kept,
and a firing squad killed 750 émigrés
in British uniforms including 430 nobles.
On the 24th Marie Joseph Chénier in the Convention
criticized the White Terror ravaging Lyons and southern France.
On 2 August the royalist François de Charette took revenge
for the slaughter of the émigrés
by killing 300 republican prisoners at Belleville.
On 4 July 1795 the painter David was tried and released,
and the National Convention began debating a new constitution
drafted by Pierre Daunou and other Girondists.
On the 7th Tom Paine urged universal suffrage to no avail.
A week later they proclaimed the “Marseillaise”
the national anthem.
On the 17th General Moncey’s French army conquered Vittoria,
and two days later they captured Bilbao,
driving the Spaniards across the Ebro River.
On the 22nd France made a treaty with Spain.
On August 22 the Convention approved the new Constitution
and the new National Institute of Science.
The 750 legislators elected were to be in the Council of
500 Deputies that made the laws that were to be approved
or rejected by the 250 in the Council of Elders
which was chosen by lots from the married and widowed
deputies in the 500 over 40 years of age who had lived
in France for the past 15 years.
The Constitution had 377 articles and included nine
“Duties of a Man and Citizen.”
The second principle was:
Do not do unto others
what you would not have them to unto you.
Always do unto others
what you would like to receive.
Citizens could only exercise their political rights
through the primary or municipal assemblies.
Individuals could petition but not collectively,
and any armed gathering was to be dispersed by force.
Most men could vote for electors who had to own property
worth 100 days labor, making about
30,000 people eligible to be electors.
Deputies could be re-elected every three years,
and no government minister could be in the councils.
The Treasury was to be run
by six commissioners elected by the Elders.
They were also to elect the five Directors from ten nominees
for each position named by the Five Hundred.
Each year one director would be replaced,
and one-third of the deputies would be elected.
The new constitution was designed to protect the Republic
against the extremes of populism and royalism as a
representative democracy with free expression, legal equality,
and human rights with little religious authority.
On September 1 the Convention restored the right to vote
in the revolutionary sectors in order to counter the royalists.
On the 4th Madame de Staël persuaded the Convention
to remove Talleyrand from the list of émigrés.
They put the Constitution to a vote along with their proviso
that in the first election the Convention would elect two-thirds
of the deputies from among themselves.
On 6 September voters approved the Constitution
916,334 to 41,892, but the vote for the Two-thirds Decree
was only 205,498 to 108,754.
The new legislature and the Directorate of Paul Barras,
Abbé Sieyès, Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux,
Jean-François Reubell, and Étienne-François Letourneur
began on the 25th.
That day at Saint Cyr a republican army defeated
a royalist force of 8,000 men led by Charette.
On the 29th the Convention declared the separation
of church and state, and on October 1
they approved the annexation of Belgium.
A royalist insurrection in nearby Dreux that had begun on
September 13 had to be dispersed with violence on October 3.
The next day a crowd gathered in Paris to protest the election
with its two-thirds rule,
and they demanded revenge against terrorists.
On the 5th about 25,000 insurgents with National Guards
from seven sections marched against the new government,
and the new commander Barras assisted by Napoleon
opposed them with a force of 4,000 soldiers.
Artillery began the battle that lasted seven hours into the night.
About 1,400 were killed, and afterward the army
disbanded the National Guard.
A court condemned 49 populists, but only two were executed.
On the 10th the legislature abolished section assemblies
and sectional control of National Guard units.
In the elections on October 12 at first only 379 deputies
were elected by about 15% of the eligible voters,
mostly rightists or suspected royalists,
but the Convention completed the 750 with their deputies.
Since August Napoleon Bonaparte had been working for
the Committee of Pubic Safety in the Topographical Bureau,
and on October 16 he was promoted to major general.
Barras resigned as the Interior Army’s commande
and was replaced by Napoleon on the 25th.
That day the Convention decreed that pupils’ fees would pay
teachers with one school in each canton and separate schools
for girls who were to be taught useful skills.
On the same day they banned relatives
of émigrés from holding office.
On the 26th they granted a general amnesty of revolutionary
actions excluding émigrés, deportees,
those in the 4-6 October rebellion, and forgers.
Yet more than 35,000 people lost their civic rights.
The Convention established five more annual festivals
to celebrate Youth, Old Age, Spouses,
Thanksgiving, and Agriculture.
Sieyès declined to serve as a director, and the Elders
replaced him by electing Lazare Carnot on November 5.
The next day Fréron arrived in Marseilles to stop royalist
terror and removed municipal officials.
On the 24th the French army of 25,000 men defeated
18,000 Austrians at Loano near Genoa.
On December 3, 1795 the Directory established the
Bureau for Examination of Public Papers to monitor
public opinion and the Private Office for Surveillance
to investigate secretly the police.
Three days later the police reported that
the new Pantheon Club now had about 3,000 Jacobins.
Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-94) had been advocating the
abolition of slavery for many years, but on 24 September 1789
the Constituent Assembly conceded to colonial assemblies
the authority related to the civil status of slaves.
On December 15 he published a long article in the
Journal de Paris strongly condemning the slave trade.
Also in 1789 he published his Life of Voltaire
that described his opposition to religious fanaticism.
On 3 July 1790 Condorcet published an article advocating
citizenship for women including the right to vote,
and he often spoke for educating all the people.
He asked if they were not violating the principle
of equality by denying it to half the human race.
He argued that women deserve natural rights because
they are as capable as men to exercise them,
and depriving them is tyranny.
He noted that women are superior to men
in the gentle and domestic virtues.
The main differences between the sexes
are because of education and social status.
The dependence of wives on their husbands
has also been imposed by tyrannical laws.
Women may have responsibilities in the home,
but that is also true of men who
work on farms and in workshops.
Condorcet argued that granting women equality would
improve domestic relations and decrease corruption.
Condorcet wrote five articles on public education in 1791,
and in April he was allowed to present his ideas
to the Legislative Assembly.
He argued that society has the responsibility to provide people
with pubic instruction in order to make equal rights a reality.
Inequality should not be allowed because it brings dependency.
Inequality can be reduced by developing moral sentiments
and useful knowledge for living, occupations, and the arts.
Wider education will promote social progress.
All people deserve the opportunity to develop their abilities.
Education enables the culture of preceding generations
to be passed on, and in the modern age
nations need more education to adjust to rapid changes.
Children and adults require differing instruction
which should be divided into levels.
Those with specialized occupations also need general education.
Condorcet warned that public authority has no right to teach
opinions as truths nor to limit ethics to what religion teaches.
Education for women should be the same as for men,
and women should have the equal right to be teachers.
Condorcet’s plan for educating all boys and girls
was approved on 20 December 1790.
In July 1793 Condorcet retreated into hiding during the Terror
and worked on his Historical Picture of the Progress of the
Human Mind, and after his death in prison in March 1794
the introduction to that work was published as The Sketch for
a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind.
He began by noting that humans are born with the ability to
perceive sensations and distinguish them, remember them,
combine them as ideas, compare the ideas, and form new ones.
Sensations are pleasant and painful,
and humans can observe these in others.
Humans form ideas of interest and duty.
The human mind progresses by developing mental faculties
according to general laws.
Thus over centuries humans make progress toward truth
and happiness, and there is no limit to human perfectibility.
Condorcet described the following ten stages of civilization:
hunting and fishing,
domesticating animals and agriculture,
developing alphabetical writing,
dividing sciences in Greece,
scientific progress and decline,
rebirth of learning during the Crusades,
revival of learning and the invention of printing,
philosophy and science rebelling against authority,
advance of philosophy and science from Descartes
to the French Revolution,
and the future progress of humanity.
Prejudices can harm the progress of truth,
and only by meditation can one combine ideas
and discover general truths.
He noted that humanity was then in a great revolution.
Humans are capable of reasoning and acquiring moral ideas
to preserve rights and distribute them
with equality to people.
He believed that the will of the majority can be
accepted by all without losing equality.
He observed that the ideas of Locke were given
“greater precision, breadth, and energy” by Rousseau.
Coins or money can be used for trading articles of value,
and the public authority can acquire funds for the security
of the state and protect individual rights.
After the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 Europeans enjoyed peace
and a period of intellectual development,
and they improved the methods of the physical sciences.
People challenged tyranny and barbarism
with “reason, tolerance, and humanity.”
The printing press had multiplied
the number of books spreading knowledge.
The desire for freedom of thought, writing, trade, and industry,
alleviated human suffering and led to
understanding the natural human rights.
Philosophers of different nations worked together
against errors and tyranny.
While some greedy men exploited people in Africa, Asia,
and America, a few English and French philosophers became
friends of the dark races
whom tyrants refused to consider as humans.
Beccaria denounced barbaric French laws.
Turgot, Price, and Priestley argued for human perfectibility.
English men in America refused to pay taxes imposed
without their consent, and they set up thirteen republican
constitutions based on natural rights.
In France the revolution was more violent because they
had to overcome feudal tyrannies, hereditary privileges,
religious intolerance, and economic inequality.
Science advanced by improving mathematical analysis
and understanding electricity.
The sciences of anatomy and experimental chemistry
led to the arts of surgery and pharmacy.
Abuses in politics and morals derive from philosophical errors.
Prejudices and Machiavellian principles
have opposed human progress.
Condorcet believed that by understanding the laws
of phenomena one can predict future progress.
He hoped for a future that would abolish inequality between
nations and within each nation, and that would perfect humanity.
He diagnosed that the destruction of freedom in ancient
republics was caused by inequality in wealth, inequality in
status based on hereditary privilege versus the working class,
and inequality in education.
In his own time he observed that those who live on land
revenue or interest on capital are nearly free of work,
and this inequality threatened the most numerous class.
He believed that equality in education is the greatest remedy
for removing inequality in industry and wealth.
He suggested that advances in mineralogy, botany, zoology,
and meteorology will develop better agricultural production
for an increasing population, and people will have
less work to do and will live much longer.
He acknowledged that many problems regarding social
relations need to be solved to establish the rights of all.
Most important is progress in the practice and science
of morality in order to assure the general welfare.
People need to learn how to identify their happiness
with that of others.
The path of virtue will be less arduous
when the temptations are fewer.
When legislation is based on the truths of political science
humanity will move toward benevolence and justice.
One of the most important ways to achieve
general happiness is to remove the prejudices
that have caused the inequality of rights between the sexes.
War is the most dreadful scourge and the worst crime.
He predicted,
Nations will learn that they cannot conquer
other nations without losing their own liberty;
that permanent confederations are their only
means of preserving their independence;
and that they should seek not power but security.7
Mercantile prejudices will fade away, and commercial interests
will not cause bloodshed and ruin nations.
When nations agree on the principles of politics and morality,
in their own better interests
they will share equally all the benefits.
Then national conflicts will disappear.
Scientific progress improves education
which advances the sciences.
Preventive medicine and healthy food and housing will help
remove the causes of deterioration—
misery and excessive wealth.
As people make progress in reason and defense of liberty,
they will no longer be tormented
and corrupted by greed, fear, or envy.
François-Noël Babeuf was born on 23 November 1760
near Saint-Quentin.
In 1789 he wrote a cahier for the electors of Roye
urging the abolition of feudal privileges,
and he started writing pamphlets in 1790.
His song “Dying of hunger, dying of cold”
was popular in Parisian cafés.
In September 1794 he began publishing the
Journal of Press Freedom (Tribune of the People)
using the pen-name Caius Gracchus.
In February 1795 Babeuf was forced to stop publishing his
Tribune of the People, and six days later he was arrested.
On November 6 he was released
and resumed the People’s Tribune.
On the 30th Babeuf released his Plebeian Manifesto
that called for communism with equal property.
On 28 February 1796 Napoleon implemented the
Directory’s order to close the Pantheon Club
for defending Babeuf who was arrested again.
On 30 March Babeuf and Philippe Buonarroti formed
an insurrectional committee called the “conspiracy of equals,”
and they were arrested on May 10.
On 20 February 1797 the trial of the communist Babeuf
and 54 other Equals began at Vendôme.
On May 27 Babeuf and one other were executed
as other Equals were sentenced to prison.
Sylvain Maréchal (1750-1803) put Babeuf’s ideas together
in the Manifesto of the Equals in 1796
and published it again in 1801.
The document begins,
“Real Equality—The Last End of the Social Art.”
—Condorcet, Picture of the Human Mind.
People of France!—
During fifteen ages you have lived slaves,
and consequently unhappy.
During six years you breathe with difficulty in the expectation
of independence, of prosperity, and of equality.
Equality!—first vow of nature, first want of man,
and chief bond of all legitimate association!...
From time immemorial we have been hypocritically told—
men are equal; and from time immemorial
does the most degrading and monstrous inequality
insolently oppress the human race.
Equality has never been other than
a beautiful and barren fiction of law.
Even now, when it is claimed with a stronger voice,
we are answered, “Be silent, miserables!—
absolute equality is but a chimaera;
be content with conditional equality;
you are all equal before the law….
We aim at something more sublime, and more equitable;
we look to common property, or the community of goods!
No more individual property in lands.
The earth belongs to no one.
We claim—we demand—
we will the communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth;
the fruits belong to all….
Let there be no longer any other differences
in mankind than those of age and sex.
Since all have the same wants, and the same faculties,
let all have accordingly the same education—
the same nourishment….
Let everything revert to order, and resume its proper place.
At the voice of equality,
let the elements of justice and felicity be organized.
The moment has come to found the Republic of Equals—
the grand asylum open to all human kind.8
Babeuf probably wrote “Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf,”
and here are the first eleven articles:
1) Nature has given to each individual an equal right
to the enjoyment of all the goods of life.
2) The end of society is to defend this equality,
often assailed by the strong and wicked in the state of nature;
and to augment, by the co-operation of all,
the common enjoyments of all.
3) Nature has imposed on each person the obligation to work;
nobody could, without crime,
evade his share of the common labor.
4) Labor and enjoyments ought to be common.
5) There is oppression wherever one part of society
is exhausted by labor, and in want of everything,
while the other part wallows in abundance,
without doing any work at all.
6) Nobody could, without crime, exclusively appropriate
to himself the goods of the earth or of industry.
7) In a veritable society there ought to be
neither rich nor poor.
8) The rich, who are not willing to renounce their superfluities
in favor of the indigent, are the enemies of the people.
9) No one can, by accumulating to himself all the means,
deprive another of the instruction necessary for his happiness.
Instruction ought to be common to all.
10). The end of the French Revolution is to destroy inequality,
and to re-establish general prosperity.
11) The Revolution is not terminated,
because the rich absorb all valuable productions,
and command exclusively; while the poor toil like real slaves,
pine in misery, and count for nothing in the State.9
1. The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History tr. Lynn Hunt.
2. Quoted in The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution by Timothy Tackett, p. 89.
3. Quoted in The French Revolution from Enlightenment to Tyranny by Ian Davidson, p. 83.
4. Witness to the Revolution by Burley, p. 155
quoted in The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France by David Andress, p. 179.
5. Quoted in Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life by Peter McPhee, p. 186.
6. Documents ed. Roberts and Hardmann, p. 244 quoted in
The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France by David Andress, p. 303-304.
7. Selected Writings by Condorcet ed. Keith Michael Baker, p. 275.
8. French Utopias: An Anthology of Ideal Societies
tr. Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, p. 247-249.
9. Ibid., p. 250-257.
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