By the Northern summer of 1793,

June, July, 1793,

the French Revolution and the new republic faces its greatest crisis.

It's a crisis that has multiple faces.

The most important of them is military.

And I've explained the way in which,

by the middle of 1793, the new republic is

facing, what seemed to be insuperable odds, to it's survival -

with foreign troops on French soil along the borders,

with an English naval blockade

and a massive counter revolutionary insurrection

in the west of France that is absorbing much of the French armed forces.

A counter revolutionary crisis, a military crisis, that seems to

be one that the new republic cannot hope to win.

In fact, there are many people who by the middle of 1793,

are counting

the chance of survival of the French

Republic, of The Revolution itself in terms of weeks.

The odds seem so great.

So, the first dimension of this great crisis of 1793 is military.

But, a second crisis that adds enormously to that is political.

You recall that early in 1793 some of the

leading Girondins inside the National Convention, had decided that the

major problem that The Revolution was facing, was in fact

the radicalism or what they called the anarchism, the extremism,

of the sans-culotte and the Jacobin deputies with their demands for

greater social equality, for attacks on counter revolutionaries and so on.

There is great rage in the streets of Paris at

the ways in which leading Girondin deputies are scapegoating

the very people who made The Revolution of 1799, who made the

revolution of 1792. And in the spring and summers of 1793,

there is great rage in the popular neighbourhoods of Paris

up here in the Northern suburbs, then down here in the

in the Eastern suburbs, against the Girondin deputies meeting in the

National Convention over here in the grounds of the Tuileries palace.

Lists are drawn up, by the Paris commune, by the Paris

municipal government of those leading Girondin who are effectively accused of

being counter revolutionaries, that even

though they call themselves Republicans, the

way that they're scapegoating Parisians is seen to be taking

away from the war effort, is undermining the zeal, the unity

of the Republic in its great critical battle with counter revolutionary Europe.

At the end of May,

the National Convention is surrounded, by anything

between 80 and a 100 thousand Parisian sans-culottes

and finally on the 2nd of June,

leading Girondins are expelled from the National Convention.

The convention is intimidated into expelling some of it's representatives.

No one, within the convention is comfortable about that, of course.

It's seen to be an outrage to the dignity

of the National Convention, as the people's parliament.

And yet the sans-culottes leave the Convention with very little choice,

surrounding it with a huge armed contingent,

that these leading Girondins need to be arrested

and put on trial, as effectively being counter-revolutionaries who

are undermining the war effort, sapping

the confidence of the people of France,

in the government and in it's troops.

Not surprisingly, in many parts of the country, there

is outrage at the removal of a small group of

elected Girondin Deputies, and in a number of cities,

many cities across the country there is effectively a

type of administrative rebellion that escalates into armed rebellion

against the authority of the National Convention in Paris.

In Caen, in Bordeaux, in Lyon, in Marseille, what are called

federalist groups who, often are mixing with

royalist, counter revolutionary groups, federalist groups effectively seize power.

Allied with the Girondins in Paris, but effectively

saying, Paris is exceeding its powers, its rights,

the National Convention is a national body,

and Paris has no right to dictate whether deputies can sit within it or not.

Of course, from the point of the sans-culottes of Paris, they're saying

unless we have a government, and a National Convention which

is united in the military effort against the counter revolution

and the invading forces then we're all dead, we're

all done for. But it results in a new political

dimension to the military crisis that I outlined and

that is in some of the key cities of the country,

the three major cities of the south in particular,

there is a new military challenge, to the authority of

the National Convention, to the authority of the Republic itself.

The military threat of the middle of 1793

reaches into the heart of the Convention itself.

Because, in July 1793, a woman from Caen,

who is a Girondin sympathiser, arrives in the

capital and finds a way into the apartment, the rooms

that are rented by one of the great firebrands

of the Jacobin Revolution,

and that's Jean-Paul Marat.

A man who, because of his bloodthirsty

rhetoric, and his bloodthirsty journalism, is seen

by many people as somehow representing the

most militant excesses of the Parisian revolution.

And in July of 1793, Charlotte Corday

enters his rooms where Marat is bathing himself,

he suffers from a terrible skin allergy and the only way he can achieve relief

from it is by bathing, and she stabs him to death in in his bath.

This is the home in which Charlotte Corday grew up, on

the outskirts of small hamlet of near Caen, where she's educated.

She comes from a minor noble family.

You can see it's not a very opulent manor house that she lives in, but she's

someone who is for The Revolution but very

opposed to Paris, the Jacobins, and the sans-culottes.

She, by killing Marat,

puts fear into the hearts of everybody in Paris that the

counter revolution is that close, to the heart of The Revolution, itself.

Jacques-Louis David, the great painter of the age uses that moment

of the, assassination of Jean-Paul Marat to produce what, to many people,

is the greatest propaganda painting ever done, of Jean-Paul Marat,

dead in his bath almost with a Christ like aura about him.

David who gives him a piece of paper on which he

is writing his thoughts about the revolution, sending money to the

the suffering families of good patriots, and all the rest.

And on the floor, the dagger and then on the little

desk by the bath, to Marat in homage, from David.

The counter-revolution, the strength of the counter-revolution seems

to be reaching, into the heart of Paris itself.

Marat becomes, one of the great

revolutionary republican matyrs, of a new cult of The Revolution.

There are three great matyrs who are

effectively lionised at this time, who are admired

for the sacrifices they have made to establish the republic in the new France.

A second one is this man Joseph Chalier,

who's the leader of the militant Jacobins in the city of Lyon,

and when federalists and royalists, seize control of France's second city

in June, 1793, they put Chalier on trial, it's a political

trial, and he's executed along with some of his accomplices.

The third member of this revolutionary triumvirate if you like of matyrs

is this man,

Michel Lepeletier,

a man who had been born into one of

the most prominent wealthy, powerful

aristocratic families of old regime France,

but who had supported The Revolution and who

had effectively become a Jacobin.

He was a deputy in the National Convention, and he is

one of the Jacobins who votes for the death of the King.

After that final vote is taken to send Louis to the guillotine, Lepeletier

is stabbed to death in a Paris cafe that very evening by a royalist.

The only depiction we have of that moment

is this extraordinary sketch that's done by David,

once again,

of the sword of Damocles hovering over the body of Lepeletier.

When the canvas itself is completed much later it's finally put on sale and bought

by a royalist who destroys it, so that we only have this particular canvas.

But Lepeletier like Chalier and Marat,

becomes one of the martyrs, of the French Revolution,

people whose deaths show just how serious, how present,

how menacing is the counter-revolutionary threat in 1793.

So, the crisis is a military one, it's a political

one which adds to the urgency of the military crisis,

and finally, it's also an economic one and a social one.

Remember that in 1790, the French Revolutionary

government, had issued revolutionary bank notes or assignats,

that have as their backing the sale of church land,

but that they have very rapidly become devalued, because of inflation.

That's worsened at a time of war, when so

much money is being spent on the war effort.

And, by the middle of 1793, by June 1793, the assignat

is only worth 36% of it's face value, compared with 1790.

In other words, for all of those people who were dependent on money,

in terms of payments, such as wage labourers in town and country,

things are very tough.

Because they're confronting constant increases in

inflation and how much of the assignats

that they pay with, will be necessary to buy the crucial subsistence requirements.

A crisis therefore, confronting the National Convention,

which is military, which is political, which is economic.

The issue for the Convention, and its

new Committee of Public Safety, it's new executive,

is how on earth to deal with a crisis

of this magnitude, and that's what I'll turn to next.

4.4 The crisis of 1793

The French Revolution

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