4.5 Emergency measures: the implementation of 'terror'

In my previous lecture, I outlined the magnitude of the crisis that

was being faced by the New Republic by the middle of 1793.

What I want to do today is to outline the emergency measures

that the National Convention put in place to deal with that crisis.

Remember, it's a crisis which has various dimensions.

Above all, it's a military crisis,

one of invasion and one of armed counter revolution

in the west of France and in some of

the major cities, provincial cities, of France as well.

A massive military crisis, which is a political one too because France is

profoundly divided between pro-Jacobin and anti-Jacobin forces of various types.

It's an economic and social crisis because of inflation and food shortages.

What the Convention does in the middle of 1793, as a way

of responding to that multiple crisis, ushers in what is the most

extraordinary and controversial period of the entire French Revolution.

It's a period which is most closely identified with this

man, Maximilien Robespierre, one of the Convention deputies who is

elected to the Committee of Public Safety in July 1793

and will be on it for the following 12 months.

A Committee of Public Safety, which has been

established in April to be an emergency wartime executive.

Robespierre becomes one of its 12 members in

late July 1793 and it's important, therefore, to

stress from the outset that this Committee of

Public Safety is not a group of dictators.

They are people who are chosen from the personnel of the National Convention.

They are highly esteemed deputies.

The people who are most trusted as being those who just

might, if they're given enough authority, be able to put in

place the measures that might deal with this crisis and certainly,

Robespierre is far from being some sort of an individual dictator.

He's certainly the person who makes the most extensive strategic

speeches but he's simply one of 12 members of that Committee of Public Safety.

So what do they do?

What's their response to this crisis in the middle of 1793?

The first and most important is military.

They have to do something about the military crisis, which

is impacting across the country, of invasion and counter revolution.

They effectively put the whole of France on a war footing.

In August, 1793, they decreed the Levée en masse or mass mobilization.

As they put it in the preamble to that decree: the young men shall go forth to

battle, and all young men between the ages of 18 and 25 are conscripted; the

married men shall forge arms and transport

provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes

and shall serve in the hospitals; the children

shall turn old linen into lint for the rifles;

the old men shall repair to the public places to stimulate the courage of

the warriors, and to preach the unity of the Republic and the hatred for kings.

The whole country is to be mobilized for the war effort.

Within six months, 750,000 young men are conscripted into French armies.

Captured into this series of paintings by

a contemporary name Lesueur who does a series of illustrations of the

French Revolution that are among the most valuable resources

we have of a visual type for this extraordinary period.

The Convention also decides that its own deputies wearing their red,

white, and blue regalia can be sent to the provinces as deputies

on mission with sweeping powers to requisition supplies but also to supervise

the conduct of the French troops and particularly, their officers.

There is to be no retreat and the deputies that are sent out to the armies are given

extraordinary authority, in terms of what's going on

in the 13 armies that France puts together.

This is to be a national mobilization for war, as

well, which is of equipment, which is of an economic kind.

The Convention issues extraordinary decrees at the

behest of the Committee of Public Safety,

effectively, nationalizing all sorts of manufactories for

the production of arms, uniforms and so on.

The whole country, the economy of France is

put effectively, at the disposal of the war effort.

So a first response is a military response.

A second one is, if you like, social and political.

The men of the Committee of Public Safety

and the Convention, in general, know that the

only way that they can hope to mobilize

the whole country, the only way that they

can hope that the conscription that's to affect

every household can work, is if they make sure

that the most pressing needs, the most pressing

grievances, of ordinary people across the country are met.

Remember that back in 1789, that feudalism is not completely abolished.

It's decided, in particular, that harvest dues, which are the most

onerous of the seigneurial or feudal dues are to be made redeemable.

That's to say that, rural communities have to compensate their

former lords by buying their way out of paying these feudal

dues, normally 25 or 30 times the annual value, in

one hit which, of course, rural communities cannot afford to do.

There's been ongoing friction in the countryside, as

rural communities have refused to pay outstanding feudal

dues and their former lords have been trying to take them to court to exact those dues.

Finally in July, 1793, the Convention, again, at the behest of

the Committee of Public Safety, effectively says there are no more dues.

All seigneurial dues are finally abolished without redemption.

The feudal regime is finally dead.

In September 1793, the grievances of urban people are addressed.

Already, we've seen that in May, there had been controls put on

the price and availability of bread, as the most important food stuff,

now, in September 1793, about 40 essentials

are effectively pegged in terms of their prices.

Wages to be paid in cities, such as Paris, are

also pegged but at a rather higher level than prices.

In other words, working people, wage-earners, are supposed to be a little

better off in 1793 than they'd been at the start of the Revolution.

There is a political dimension to this, as well.

Of course, the overthrow of the monarchy

in 1792 had effectively overthrown the constitutional monarchy

and in 1793, a new Republican constitution is put to the vote across the country,

massively supported,

very few no votes, but in October 1793, it is suspended until the peace.

The Constitution itself is symbolically placed in an oak

chest in the heart of the National Convention and

the National Convention decides when it is safe, we

will take that Constitution out of that oak chest and

put it into effect at a time when we

can live in peace and live in a democratic, liberal,

constitutional state of affairs. But at the moment, we

must suspend that until we have won this war because

we must give our Committee of Public

Safety the power to take those emergency measures.

The crisis is responded to in a third way.

A way in which we might call cultural because the men of the National Convention

are convinced that the battle in which they

are now engaged, revolutionary France against old regime

Europe, the virtues of the Republic against

the vices of monarchy, as they sometimes put

it, that this is a battle which is as much about the way people behave and

believe, as much about daily culture, as it is about anything else.

It's about the regeneration of humanity.

It's about a whole new world, a new way of doing things and perhaps, the most

radical manifestation of that is in September 1793,

when on the first anniversary of the proclamation

of the Republic, it is decided to introduce

a revolutionary calendar, which will effectively start the

French era or the era of liberty and

equality at the year one back in September 1792.

In other words, the 21st of September 1793, the first anniversary

of the Republic, will be the start of the year two.

This will be a rational and secular calendar.

France is also at war with the Papacy,

which is calling the authority of the

Church and its Gregorian calendar of saints' days into question.

What they do, is to introduce a calendar, which is to have months of 30 days.

It's to be rational, it's to be decimal.

Of course, there's a problem, there can't be 10 months, there have to be 12 but

there are to be 12 months of 30 days and they are to be named after the natural

world, rather than the classical world and the world of religious saints days.

So that the months pertaining, for example, to autumn,

the months of Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, soft

evocative words about autumn, the months that sound

rather less evocative in English of wind and ice and cold -

there are to be months that evoke the seasons and every day is to have the name

not of a saint but of a virtue or of a useful implement.

The five days that are left over to make up 365 days, will be the sans-culottes

days, which will recognize some of the most

important virtues that sans-culottes are said to embody.

It's a critical point because, from the outset, it is clear

that the objectives that the Committee of Public Safety

and their supporters in the Convention have in mind are

not just to make the republic safe in military terms.

They're also to recognize the world historical

importance of what is being fought over.

That this is a war to create and make safe a new Republican

France, a republic of the virtues. But side by side with the

creation of a virtuous society, goes the punishment of those who are its enemies.

In September 1793, just a few days before the introduction of

that Revolutionary calendar, the Convention passes a law on suspects, which

effectively, means that every one of France's 40,000 parishes, former

parishes, now communes or neighbourhoods in cities will have a watch committee,

a surveillance committee whose task it is to watch carefully to see whether there

is counter revolutionary or suspect activity going

on in the neighborhood or in the rural

commune and as this contemporary illustration shows,

to bring suspect people before a watch

committee that's to be established in every

one of those communities to check whether their

papers are in order but also to

check whether there are proofs of their civic behaviour,

or are they people whose good faith, who's attitude to the

Revolution is such that they need to be effectively detained as

suspects in prisons and even if the need arises, there's the

evidence there, to put them on trial through the Revolutionary Tribunal.

There is to be surveillance and if necessary, punishment.

The following month, Marie Antoinette, also found guilty

of treason like her husband, goes to the guillotine.

Sketched here rapidly by Jacques-Louis David, as she's on her way to

the guillotine, itself a harrowing portrait of the former queen.

She's not the only one.

Leading Girondins, such as Brissot, people who have been expelled from the

Convention in the middle of 1793 are also put on trial, found guilty and executed.

Manon Roland, one of the key Girondin organizers similarly,

put on trial and found guilty of undermining the unity, the

purpose of the Republic by her incessant attacks on the

Jacobins who are passing the laws inside the National Convention.

Bailly is also put on trial and found guilty.

He's the man, you might remember, who had administered the oath

of the National Assembly at the Tennis Court in June 1789.

By now, he's regarded as a counter-revolutionary, one of the reasons

why Jacques-Louis David never completes that painting of the Tennis Court Oath.

Barnave, a prominent Revolutionary in the early years, who

in July of 1791, had called for the troops to

be sent to the Champ de Mars, where people are

signing a petition for the abdication of Louis the XVI.

Barnave is seen to be the person who has

blood on his hands over that episode, as well.

He too is tried and sent to the guillotine.

This is to be a regime which is uncompromising, therefore, in the

measures it takes to deal with the military crisis, the economic crisis, the

political crisis but also uncompromising in the way that it deals with those who

would overthrow the Revolution, who are effectively in league with the enemy.

It's a remarkable period, the second half of 1793, as some of the measures that are

being taken by the Committee of Public Safety

in the National Convention, start to bear fruit.

There are a series of very significant military

victories, across the last few months of 1793.

Up here, in the Northeast, the battle of

Wattignies effectively halts the advance of Austrian troops.

They're still on French soil but their advance has been halted.

Just as down in the South, The Battle of Peyrestortes,

near Perpignan, does the same with the advance of Spanish troops.

Over in the West of France, the great city of Nantes holds firm against

the great rural insurrection against the authority of the National Convention.

The onward march of Vendean rebels is checked

on the banks of the River Loire at Nantes.

Toulon, the great naval port on the Mediterranean, which had been surrendered

to Britain by its officers, mainly aristocrats, in August 1793,

is recaptured at the end of the year by the

French army, headed by a young artillery lieutenant named Napoleon Bonaparte.

Some victories are occurring on France's

borders. And it raises the fundamental question,

what is the point at which it could be

said that the measures, the sweeping measures, the draconian

measures, that had been taken by the Committee of

Public Safety and the National Convention, have achieved their aim?

At what point, might it be safe to open up that oak chest and to

take out the Constitution of 1793 and

for France to return to peacetime constitutional government?

At what point, could it be said that the Committee of

Public Safety had done its work and was no longer necessary?

In my next lecture, I'll explore the answers to those questions.

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