The real criminals and murderers were sitting in the National Convention at that time, and immediately after the “September Massacre” they organized a trial of the king. It was not even a trial, but a premeditated and decided murder.
By the way, the death sentence of Louis XVI was imposed against the wishes of the majority of the members of the Convention, only because there were a lot of dummies among those who voted.
Moreover, the death of the king was decided by a majority of only 387 votes against 334 votes.
May God grant that my blood may be shed for the benefit of France!
Unfortunately, the terrible death of the king did not stop the French from going crazy. The terrorists continued their rampage: the revolutionary tribunal, free from the requirements of the law and guided only by the “revolutionary conscience,” worked tirelessly.
Execution of King Louis XVI. 19th century engraving
On October 16, 1793, after the king, Queen Marie Antoinette was sent to the guillotine, accused of counter-revolutionary conspiracy.
According to historian Willian Sloan, “the unbridled greed of the guillotine became increasingly indiscriminate in its choice of victims. First the heads of the aristocrats fell, then the royal couple and their supporters, then the hated rich, simply wealthy people, and in the end - everyone and everyone who did not grovel before the despotism of Robespierre."
Maximilian Robespierre, the leader of the Jacobins, who from 1793 actually headed the revolutionary government, was a real madman.
In those terrible days, everyone saved themselves as best they could.
As for citizen Sade, on April 13, 1793, he was appointed a juror of the revolutionary tribunal, and in July of the same year he was promoted to the post of chairman of the court. Working for the benefit of the Great French Revolution, in the same April 1793, he suddenly encountered his father-in-law, Mr. Cordier de Launay de Montreuil. They had not seen each other for many years, and now this 78-year-old man was desperately trying to portray a loyal Republican. But he didn't do a very good job. Now the former “arbiter of destinies” of the old regime and his family were the most suitable targets for denunciations and, as a result, the first candidates for the guillotine. As a result, the roles of the heroes of our book have now fundamentally changed: the old judge came to ask for protection from the new one.
Revolutionary Tribunal. The trial of Queen Marie Antoinette. 19th century engraving
And it must be said that Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade showed mercy, although the moment was clearly not chosen for this. Despite the "tireless work" of Robespierre and his henchmen, there was still a certain list of families that fell under the protection of the new regime, and to this list, at his own discretion, our hero bravely added members of the de Montreuil family. He did this on May 22, 1793, and apparently, it was this pardon that soon became the main reason for his conflict with the authorities.
But so far they haven't touched him. The creation of the Committee of Public Salvation in April 1793 and the concentration of all power in the hands of its members at first seemed like an attempt to control the rampant revolutionary anarchy. The emergence of such a body did not seem to foreshadow the bloody Sabbath that went down in history under the name “Jacobin terror.” But then came the murder of Jean-Paul Marat by noblewoman Charlotte Corday d'Armont.
To achieve this, this little woman resorted to deception. She wrote a note to Marat and took it to him herself. The note was as follows:
“I came from Caen. Given your love for the Fatherland, of course, you will be pleased to learn about the unfortunate events in this part of the republic. I will appear to you tomorrow at one o’clock: be kind enough to receive me and take a few minutes to explain. I will give you the opportunity to render important services to France service."
And then she showed up to the “friend of the people” at his house at 30 Rue Cordeliers. On the way, she bought a kitchen knife. Marat accepted it while sitting in the bath, and Charlotte Corday stabbed him in the heart. After that she didn’t even try to run away...
She was executed on the fourth day after the incident, July 17, 1793. The death of one of the Jacobin leaders made Maximilian Robespierre completely uncontrollable.
And then deputy Michel Le Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau was killed in broad daylight. He was quietly having breakfast in a restaurant in front of the Palais Royal, and then a man approached him and politely asked:
Excuse me, are you MP Le Pelletier?
Having received an affirmative answer, he asked again:
After this, the stranger pulled out a dagger and stabbed Le Pelletier in the stomach:
The villain! But you get a decent pay for this!
Le Pelletier died that same day.
These two events inspired the Garden Citizen's farewell speech, written on behalf of the Peak section. It was called “An Appeal to the Spirit of Marat and Le Pelletier” (Aux mânes de Marat et de Le Pelletier).
At the same time, while remaining at his post, our hero continued to save from death people who were under investigation on charges of assisting fugitive emigrants. For example, it is known that he personally handed over 300 livres and a passport to one of these people so that he could leave Paris without hindrance.
In one of his letters, he outlined his political credo:
“I am an anti-Jacobin, I hate them mortally. I adore the king, but I am disgusted by past offenses. I love an infinite number of paragraphs of the constitution, but other paragraphs outrage me; I want the nobility to return its shine, because the loss of this shine by the nobility is nothing does not serve any good; I want the king to be the leader of the nation; I am decisively against the National Assembly...”
Naturally, in 1793, a person with similar views could not remain free for long...
On May 31 – June 2, 1793, a massive popular uprising took place in Paris, which was organized by the Jacobin Club, the Cordeliers Club, and the Paris Commune. The Council of the Commune appointed the Jacobin Henriot as commander of the National Guard. On May 31, armed detachments of national guardsmen under his leadership approached the Convention; at their request, the “Commission of 12” was dissolved, but the Girondins remained in power. The next day it became known about the counter-revolutionary rebellion in Lyon and the executions of the Jacobins. This gave a new impetus to the uprising. On June 2, the National Guard and thousands of armed sans-culottes surrounded the Convention. Henriot gave the order to bring the guns into readiness and, under the threat of fire, the deputies of the Convention agreed to remove Brissot, Vergniaud, Petion and several dozen other Girondins from the meeting room. Soon almost all of them were arrested. Power in the country passed into the hands of the Jacobins.
As a result of the uprising of May 31 - June 2, the third period of the revolution began, called the Jacobin dictatorship. Just like other parties that had previously come to power, the Jacobins first of all took up the solution of the agrarian question in order to win over the peasant masses. At the beginning of June, the Convention adopted decrees on the sale of emigrant lands in small plots with long installment payments so that land-poor peasants could buy them, and on the return to peasants of communal lands seized by lords. Peasants were given the right to divide communal lands.
On July 17, 1793, the Convention adopted a decree abolishing all feudal duties of peasants without any ransom, even if the lords had written documents on them. Moreover, the same decree ordered that such documents be burned, and those who continued to keep them were supposed to be punished with imprisonment. As a result of the solution of the agrarian question “in the Jacobin way,” all peasants who had previously been in feudal dependence turned into free owners of their land. This ensured that the Jacobins had peasant support for their policies at this stage.
On June 24, 1793, the Convention adopted a constitution drafted by the Jacobins. In contrast to the “federalism” of the Girondins, she declared a “single indivisible” democratic republic in France. This constitution proclaimed the idea of the supremacy of the people and the equality of people in rights. The unicameral Legislative Body was to be elected by all men over 21 years of age. In addition to drafting bills and approving laws, its functions included electing the Executive Council from candidates nominated by departmental meetings. The most important bills were to be submitted to the primary assemblies for approval. This constitution did not provide for a clear separation of legislative and executive powers. Its authors, Robespierre and other Jacobins, were supporters of Rousseau's idea of direct democracy. The state of war with the coalition of European powers and the internal revolts that engulfed a large part of the country prompted the Jacobins to delay the entry into force of this constitution and the holding of new elections. The current situation required quick decisions and emergency measures, which the overthrown Girondins had once refused.
In the struggle for power, the Jacobins were ready to take the most decisive and harsh measures; they established a revolutionary dictatorship. The power apparatus of the Jacobin dictatorship, or as it was officially called “revolutionary government,” was created gradually and was fully formed by the fall of 1793. On October 10, a law was issued on the creation of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, which legally formalized the regime of the Jacobin dictatorship. The Jacobins began to pursue a policy of terror towards their opponents in the struggle for power, declaring them enemies of the revolution. The word "terror" means "fear, horror." The system of state terror on the part of the Jacobin authorities meant instilling fear and terror into political opponents by threatening their physical destruction. The use of a policy of terror by the Jacobins is usually explained by the fact that they came to power in extraordinary circumstances, when coalition troops again advanced into French territory, the Vendée, the north-west of the country, was engulfed in a peasant uprising, and in the south the Girondins rebelled against supporters of federalism. However, explaining the origins of the Jacobin terror only by these objective circumstances would not be complete enough.
At first, the Jacobins were adherents of humanistic ideas of freedom and personal integrity. Robespierre, for example, in the first years of the revolution persistently demanded the abolition of the death penalty. In addition to objective circumstances that required emergency measures, the Jacobins were led to the path of terror by some subjective factors, primarily their consciousness, beliefs, fanatical belief in the rightness of their cause and extreme intolerance towards opponents. They considered themselves spokesmen for the interests of the people and saw any dissenter as a criminal and enemy of the people. With such views, they naturally came to rely on terror as a way to resolve all conflicts. Introduced to combat the enemies of the revolution, terror gradually became a weapon in the struggle for power between the Jacobins, and many of them also became its victims.
The initiative to unleash the terror came not only from the Jacobins. The demands of terror came from below. The spontaneous terror of the crowd manifested itself from the very beginning of the revolution. Already the capture of the Bastille was accompanied by bloody massacres. The head of the commandant of the Delaunay fortress, mounted on a pike, was worn around Paris. In the first days of the revolution, the Comptroller General Foulon was torn to pieces by an angry crowd; other officials, whom the Parisians accused of high prices and high taxes, were also hanged from lanterns. A strong surge of popular terrorism occurred in September 1792, when lynching and massacres of prisoners in Parisian prisons were carried out; it manifested itself repeatedly throughout the revolution. The cruelty of the crowd was prepared by the policies pursued by royal power in previous centuries. Public barbaric executions continued in France in the 18th century. In the judicial system, legalized torture was abolished only in 1788. The policy of terror that the Jacobins resorted to, hoping with its help to solve the problems facing them, corresponded to the mood of the people, especially the sans-culottes, who saw the reason for their difficult situation in the machinations of the enemies of the revolution.
One of the reasons for unleashing the Jacobin terror was the murder on July 16, 1793 of Marat, the main ideologist of dictatorship and political terror. From the rostrum of the Convention and on the pages of his newspaper, Marat called for “passing the sickle of equality over the heads of the aristocrats.” By this time, he suffered from a severe skin disease and felt relief only in a hot bath, sitting in which he worked on his articles and even received visitors. One of his visitors, 26-year-old Charlotte Corday, the great-great-granddaughter of the playwright Corneille, a supporter of the Girondins, came to Paris from Brittany, obtained an audience with Marat under the pretext that she could inform him of a dangerous conspiracy against the republic, and stabbed him to death as he lay in the bathtub. with a dagger that she carried in the folds of her clothes. She was immediately arrested and sent to the guillotine.
The Convention commissioned the artist David to capture the features of the “friend of the people” for history. David, by that time a deputy of the Convention, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, carried out this assignment with enthusiasm. He depicted the moment of Marat's tragic death. The half-naked torso of the murdered Marat, like an ancient hero, protruded from the likeness of a sarcophagus, into which the artist turned the folds of the sheet covering the bathtub. The painting was solemnly installed in the conference hall of the Convention. A resolution was adopted to reproduce it in engraving and this contributed to the popularization of “Marat”. After the overthrow of the Jacobin dictatorship, Marat's ashes were thrown out of the Pantheon, the painting was returned to the artist, and a special ban was issued on publicly displaying images of revolutionary figures earlier than 10 years after their death.
Charlotte Corday hoped through her action and self-sacrifice to save France from the “bloodthirsty monster” that she imagined Marat to be. But the removal of the main ideologist of the dictatorship not only did not prevent, but on the contrary, contributed to its strengthening and served as a kind of justification for the terror unleashed since then.
The Convention, elected to develop a republican constitution, was supposed to terminate its powers after its approval on June 24, 1793. However, the deputies decided not to disperse, not to lose power from their hands, and turned the Convention into the highest body of the Jacobin dictatorship. The deputies of the Convention concentrated legislative, executive and judicial powers in their hands. They legislated laws, enforced them, and the Convention had the final say in judicial decisions. The Convention exercised its power through the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of Public Safety.
The Committee of Public Safety was created back in May 1793 from 12 people elected by the Convention. Now his functions have been expanded, and in fact he has been endowed with emergency powers. The Committee of Public Safety supervised diplomacy, military affairs, weapons production, the country's economy, gave orders for arrests, i.e., actually managed all internal and external affairs, appointed and removed all senior military and civilian officials. The functions of the former ministries were transferred to him. In July, the composition of the Committee of Public Safety was updated; Danton was no longer included in it; Robespierre began to play a leading role in the Committee of Public Safety and in general in the system of the Jacobin dictatorship.
Another supreme body of the Jacobin dictatorship with emergency powers was the Committee of Public Safety, which was entrusted with the leadership of the police and “revolutionary justice”. Subordinate to him was the Revolutionary Tribunal, which administered justice based not on laws, but on “revolutionary necessity” in the emergency conditions of war and the dictatorial power of the Convention. The system of bodies of the Jacobin dictatorship included commissars - deputies whom the Convention sent to the army and to the provinces with unlimited powers. When suppressing the Girondin uprisings, many commissioners of the Convention showed unjustified cruelty. Commissioner Carré in Nantes ordered hundreds of those arrested to be taken to the middle of the Loire and, tied up, thrown into the water. In Lyon, commissioners Collot d'Herbois, a former actor, and Fouché, a former priest, ordered groups of arrested persons to be shot from cannon.
Locally, the Jacobin policies were implemented by local municipalities, but to monitor them, revolutionary committees were created from the most revolutionary-minded local citizens, mainly sans-culottes. The numerous popular societies that emerged had an influence on the policies of local authorities, with Jacobin clubs playing a leading role. The Paris Commune, created in 1792 as a self-government body of the capital, received great power. Soon she began to exert her influence on decision-making affecting not only Paris, but the entire country. The leaders of 48 sections of the capital put pressure on her. Section employees received 40 sous per day. Among them were many radical sans-culottes, especially in the outskirts of the city, inhabited by the Parisian poor, where plebeian agitators found the largest number of supporters of their revolutionary calls.
On September 4-5, 1793, sans-culottes took to the streets of Paris with weapons in their hands, demanding that the Convention “put terror on the order of the day” and “instill terror in all conspirators.” On September 17, 1793, the Convention adopted the “Decree on Suspects,” i.e., on the arrest and trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal of all persons suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. According to this decree, the Jacobins sent to the guillotine Queen Marie Antoinette, officials of the old regime, members of the families of emigrants who remained in France, a number of figures of the first stage of the revolution, among them Philippe d'Orléans-Egalité, Bailly, Barnave, Le Chapelier, known for being accepted by the Constituent Assembly in 1791 according to his proposal, a law prohibiting workers' organizations and strikes. This law outlived its author for a long time, remained in force under all subsequent regimes and was repealed only in the 60s. XIX century.
Soon many Girondins and their leaders Brissot, Vergniaud and others were executed. Together with them, the wife of the former Minister of the Interior, Jeanne Roland, who influenced the Convention when the Girondins were in power, was sent to the guillotine. Beautiful, intelligent and educated Madame Roland was the soul of their party; in her house the Girondins gathered to discuss their plans and actions. The husband, having learned about her execution, he was in Rouen at that time, stabbed himself with a dagger. A prominent Girondist, the author of the federalization project, Barbara, who was close to the Rolands, also committed suicide. The body of Petion, the former mayor of the capital, who fled from Paris from arrest, was found in a cave in Saint-Emilion, gnawed by dogs.
But executions in themselves could not improve the situation of the poor. The sans-culottes demanded the introduction of maximum prices and an intensified fight against speculation. On July 27, the Convention adopted a decree on the death penalty for speculation, but it was not implemented, as well as the May 4 law on maximum grain prices. In Paris and other large cities, food shortages began to be felt more and more, and high prices grew, from which the poor population suffered. This intensified the activity of rabid, plebeian agitators. The Jacobins arrested and put to death their leaders, including the most popular among them, Jacques Roux, but were still forced to meet the sans-culottes halfway and fulfill their demands. Under pressure from the frenzied, on September 29, the Convention adopted a decree on a general maximum price. Fixed prices for food and basic necessities were set at the level of pre-war prices with a slight increase. For violation of the maximum, speculation, buying up food, and profiteering, severe penalties were provided for, including the death penalty. At the same time, in the interests of entrepreneurs, along with the maximum prices, a maximum wage was also established.
At the request of the sans-culottes, supported by the Paris Commune, in September the Convention created a revolutionary army “to carry out, wherever necessary, the revolutionary laws and measures of public salvation decreed by the Convention.” She was entrusted with the responsibility of suppressing internal rebellions, carrying out requisitions to supply the army, Paris and other cities with food, and combating profiteering. This army of six thousand, commanded by the former writer-playwright Ronsen, moved around the country with a portable guillotine, carrying out requisitions, arrests, and executions. Its task also included carrying out a policy of de-Christianization directed against religion and the church, which the Jacobin dictatorship began in the fall of 1793.
During the implementation of this policy, churches were closed in cities and rural areas, bells were removed and sent for melting down to make cannons. Silver church utensils were sent to the impoverished Mint, and bullets were cast from pewter. Propaganda of religion was prohibited. Priests, on their own initiative, or more often under coercion, renounced their priesthood. They were persecuted, arrested, executed. Notre Dame Cathedral was turned into the “Temple of Freedom,” and festivities were held in church buildings in honor of the “cult of Reason.” This policy caused deep discontent among the masses of believers, which created a danger for the Jacobin authorities. In December 1793, the Convention, based on Robespierre's report, adopted a decree on freedom of worship.
In May 1794, Robespierre came up with a proposal to create the cult of the “Supreme Being of Nature”, in fact a new state religion, which was based on rationalism and republican ideas. The cult of the “Supreme Being” was the basis of the ideology of the Freemasons, to which Robespierre belonged. He called on all French to unite on the basis of a new cult that glorified civic virtues and republican virtues. Robespierre hoped that the new religion, based on republican morality, would strengthen the political unity of the nation. The convention decreed his proposal. On June 8, 1794, the worship of the new deity was organized in Paris, a grand celebration in honor of the Supreme Being. Robespierre himself played his role. In a blue suit specially tailored for this purpose with a bouquet of flowers and ears of corn in his hands, he walked at the head of the deputies of the Convention to a special dais on which cardboard symbols of religion and atheism were stacked, and set them on fire with a torch in front of numerous spectators. From under the ashes emerged a statue of Wisdom, personifying the new religion, majestic, although slightly grimy, as eyewitnesses noted. The new religion did not find adherents among the population and caused ridicule from many deputies of the Convention towards Robespierre.
In line with de-Christianization during the Jacobin dictatorship, a new revolutionary calendar was introduced. It was adopted by the Convention back in 1792 after the proclamation of the republic, but put into effect in December 1793. The new calculation of time was associated with the end of royal power, and the months were given names based on the state of nature in the corresponding period. The year was divided into 12 months of 30 days each, five additional days were called sansculottes, i.e. days of the poor. The day of the proclamation of the republic, September 22, 1793, was taken as the beginning of chronology and became in the new calendar the first day of the first month, called Vendémières (grape harvest). It was followed by the month of Brumaire (fog) from October 22. The following months were named sequentially: frimer (frost), nivoz (snow), pluviose (rain), vantose (wind), germinal (germination), floreal (flowers), prairie (meadows), messidor (harvest), thermidor (heat), fructidor (fruit). Each month was divided into three decades; The days of the decade were designated by the names of plants, vegetables, and animals. The new revolutionary calendar became binding. It operated from December 1793 to October 31, 1805.
The Jacobins sought to change the entire social life of the country, its way of life, and morals in accordance with their ideals. In the name of establishing equality of citizens, the Convention officially decreed the replacement of the address “you” with the address “you”. Instead of the French addressing each other as "Monsieur" and "Madame", everyone had to call each other "citizen" and "citizen". When there was a shortage of food in Paris, “bread of equality” was baked from flour with various additives, distributed for sale equally throughout both poor and rich quarters of the city. “Equality meals” were held, when neighbors had to bring all the food they had to common tables. Frivolous, frivolous motives were expelled from theatre, literature, painting, and music; they were replaced by the theme of civic virtue and duty. The Royal Louvre Palace has been turned into a museum, open to everyone who wants to see its art collections.
The main task of the Jacobin dictatorship remained the organization of victory over the external enemy. By the summer of 1793, the forces of the anti-French coalition had grown many times over. The industry and finances of England, its navy, and the armies of European countries were used against republican France. In July, the Austrian army advanced into French territory, Spanish troops crossed the Pyrenees border and invaded France. The country found itself surrounded by fronts. The convention announced general mobilization, and in a short time 14 armies were created, equipped and sent to the front out of 500 thousand mobilized soldiers, and their number was constantly growing. The general management of the actions of all armies was carried out by the Committee of Public Safety. A member of this committee, the talented military leader Lazare Carnot created the first semblance of a general staff in history. The Jacobins took a number of measures to organize the accelerated production of cannons, rifles, and gunpowder. Forges were set up in the open air to produce weapons. In Paris alone, 140 such forges were built; they even worked in the Luxembourg Gardens. Mass production of saltpeter was established by washing the soil from old cellars. In conditions of general mobilization, all men fit for service were sent to the front, women sewed uniforms and tents, children plucked lint, old people had to sit on the streets and raise the patriotic spirit of the population with their speeches.
The Jacobins attracted the greatest scientists to the creation of the military industry. Gaspard Monge, a mathematician, creator of descriptive geometry, headed all military production in the country, established the production of saltpeter, steel, guns, and then trained scientific, engineering, and military personnel. Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), the author of the famous “Analytical Mechanics,” who arrived in Paris on the eve of the revolution, was recruited by the Jacobins to carry out calculations on the theory of ballistics. But Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94), one of the founders of modern chemistry and thermochemistry, who before the revolution received income from the sale of salt, tobacco, and alcohol, among other farmers, was sent to the guillotine by the court of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Since the spring of 1793, an amalgam of the army was carried out, that is, the unification of regular army soldiers and federated volunteers in the same military units. This achieved the strengthening of military discipline and training among the volunteers, and thanks to their patriotic enthusiasm, revolutionary ideas spread among the soldiers and officers of the old army. In case of failure in battles, generals were sent to the guillotine. Simultaneously with the amalgam, a purge of the army command staff was carried out. Almost all of the high-ranking noble officers were removed from their positions. People from various segments of the population capable of military affairs were appointed to the positions of officers, including senior commanders. Gauche, the son of a groom, who received this title at the age of 24, Jourdan, the son of a shopkeeper, and many others became generals. At the armies there were commissioners of the Convention with emergency powers. An example of their activity is the order of Saint-Just, who ordered “to take off all Strasbourg aristocrats in one night and send 10 thousand pairs of shoes to the army by morning.” The Jacobin armies were not burdened with large convoys, since they were supplied through requisitions from the population, especially outside France. The slogan “Peace to huts - war to palaces” remained in force and was supposed to attract sympathy for the French army from the population of the occupied countries.
The measures taken soon yielded results. By the end of 1793, the royalist rebellion in the Vendee was localized, in no small part due to the fact that the republican army of thousands was advancing against the rebels, moving the guillotine in the front ranks. The uprisings in Lyon, Nantes and other cities, raised by the Girondist leaders who fled from Paris, were suppressed with great cruelty, and Toulon was liberated from the English troops that had captured it. During the liberation of Toulon, the young artillery captain Napoleon Bonaparte distinguished himself, to whom the Commissar of the Convention in this army, Robespierre's brother, entrusted command of the operation. For its successful implementation, Bonaparte at the age of 24 was promoted to general by the Convention. By the beginning of 1794, the coalition troops, under pressure from the French army, retreated on all fronts. The entire territory of France was liberated.
Thus, the Jacobin dictatorship fulfilled its main tasks. She consolidated the elimination of feudal relations in the countryside, suppressed counter-revolutionary uprisings, and defended the republic from external enemies. Despite this, its leaders did not intend to move from a dictatorial regime to constitutional rule. The Jacobin terror, carried out on a large scale, did not decrease, but even expanded and began to be increasingly used not so much to fight against the enemies of the republic and the revolution, but as a means of struggle for power between Jacobin leaders.
In the winter and spring of 1794, the struggle within the ruling circles of the Jacobin dictatorship intensified. The Jacobins were not a homogeneous group. In Soviet historiography, the point of view was established that they represented a bloc of forces that were different in class terms, reflecting the interests of the middle and petty bourgeoisie, the urban plebeians and the majority of the peasantry. The 19th-century French historian Hippolyte Taine wrote that a Jacobin is not a representative of any political party or social class, but a “special psychological type” of a person who is cruel, angry, dissatisfied with everything, and capable only of destruction. Indeed, among the French Jacobins there were people from all levels of French society, from nobles and priests to sans-culottes. A large, if not decisive, role in the actions of each of them was played by personal ambitions, the desire for power, wealth, envy, intrigue, etc. Nevertheless, in the Jacobin bloc there are groups that differ in their political and social demands, which are conventionally called right , left and center. Contradictions in the Jacobin bloc had occurred before, but during the period of military failures and the struggle with the Girondins, the Jacobins were united against a common enemy. At the beginning of 1794, when the main threats to the republic were eliminated, contradictions between the Jacobin leaders in their understanding of the further development of the revolution began to appear with particular force.
Danton, the leader of the right - “lenient”, moderate, or as they later came to be called, Dantonists, sought the start of peace negotiations with the coalition and an end to the war in order to make the dictatorship unnecessary, stop the terror, and declare amnesty suspicious. By this time there were 12 prisons in Paris, 44 thousand throughout France, and they were all overcrowded. Fear, mutual suspicion, and the spread of slanderous denunciations became a characteristic feature of the life of the French at this time. Danton said: “What makes our cause weak is the severity of our principles, which frightens many people.” The closest of his like-minded people, Desmoulins, in his newspaper “Old Cordelier,” criticized the position of those Jacobins who took a course towards intensifying terror, and accused their leader Robespierre of striving for a personal dictatorship.
The left, or extreme, led by the journalist Hébert, were irreconcilable opponents of the lenient. Hébert, who published the newspaper “Père Duchesne,” on behalf of a rude stove-maker who used common vocabulary, gave a sharply critical assessment of their actions and calls. The Ebertists, as historians later began to call them, opposed concluding peace with the coalition, demanded increased terror against speculators, the strictest implementation of maximum prices, demanded the division of property of the suspicious, i.e., in their program they were close to the rabid. They were supported by the Paris Commune and its leader Chaumette, as well as numerous section leaders who joined them.
Under the influence of the left, at the end of February 1794, or Vantose according to the revolutionary calendar, the Convention adopted decrees on the free division of the property of executed suspects among indigent patriots. In each municipality, lists of rich suspects and poor patriots were to be compiled in order to divide the property of the suspects between them after their execution. The Ventose decrees stimulated the poorest urban and rural populations to search for new suspects, to increase the flow of slanderous denunciations, and to the unbridled expansion of terror. This became dangerous not only for the nouveau riche, but also for local authorities, and for those deputies of the Convention who became rich during the revolution. Therefore, the Ventoise decrees were not implemented.
All power during this period was concentrated in the hands of Robespierre and his supporters. They were the core of the Jacobin bloc and occupied a centrist position between the Dantonists and the Hébertists. Robespierre was a supporter of the republic in the spirit of Rousseau's teachings, without the extremes of wealth and poverty. He was ready to support the measures aimed at expanding the circle of owners from the poorest strata, which were proposed by the Hebertists, but he was still opposed to the violation of private property rights that they could lead to. Robespierre considered the Dantonists' calls for peace with the coalition to be unpatriotic. He and his supporters wanted to bring the war to complete victory. The continuation of the war justified the terror, but Robespierre was against ending it.
A fierce struggle was waged, first of all, between moderate and extreme Jacobins. In the press and in clubs they subjected each other to mutual accusations. At the same time, they expressed dissatisfaction with the policies of the Robespierrists who were in power. On February 22, Hébert spoke at the Cordeliers Club calling for an uprising. Leaflets issued by the Hébertists also called for an uprising. Through an uprising, they intended to achieve the renewal of the Committee of Public Safety, the purge of the Convention from Dantonists, and the removal of the Robespierrists from power. Having taken power into their own hands, they intended to intensify the terror and ensure the full implementation of the Ventoise decrees and other demands of the sans-culottes.
In response to the Hebertists' preparations for an uprising, the Committee of Public Safety ordered their arrest. On March 24, Hébert and more than ten of his supporters were executed. They were accused of plotting against the revolutionary government. The commander of the revolutionary army, Ronsen, the hero of the Bastille, who arrested the commandant of the Meillard fortress, was brought in for the Hébert case and guillotined together with him. Along with Hebert was executed the foreigner Kloots, a citizen of the world, or speaker of humanity, as he called himself, famous for his calls for waging war until the liberation of all Europe from tyrants. Following the revolutionary fashion of calling himself after famous people of Ancient Greece, he took the name of Anacharsis, the legendary Scythian who visited Athens in search of wisdom. He was declared a foreign spy and guillotined. The Paris Commune and its leader Chaumette did not support Hébert's call for an uprising, but they were also sent to the guillotine. The prosecutor of the Paris Commune, former paramedic Jean Pierre Chaumette, who took the name Anaxagoras, was one of the most active proponents of the policy of de-Christianization and arrests of suspicious persons. He said that he “could distinguish a suspicious person by his face,” and now he himself was one of them.
The elimination of the extreme Hébertists strengthened the position of the moderate Dantonists. Robespierre saw this as a danger to his power, since Danton enjoyed great influence among the deputies of the swamp in the Convention. A week after the execution of the Hébertists, the Committee of Public Safety, at the insistence of Robespierre, decided to arrest Danton, Desmoulins and their supporters. They were accused of conspiring in favor of the monarchy, seeking to overthrow the republic and destroy the Convention. Danton’s friends, having learned about this, suggested that he flee, but he responded with a phrase that later became popular: “Is it possible to carry away the Fatherland on the sole of your shoes?” He hoped that, given his great services to the revolution, “they would not dare.” Georges Danton was born in the south of France into a wealthy farming family. A lawyer by profession, shortly before the revolution he opened his own law office in Paris. During the elections to the Estates General, Danton was president of the Cordeliers constituency in Paris. He becomes an active member of the Cordeliers Club and a popular speaker there. As historians note, Danton was a master of revolutionary strategy; he was able to most correctly assess the situation and offer the right solution to problems that arose. He saved France from the troops of the Duke of Brunswick in September 1792. At a time when the Girondins in power intended to leave Paris, take the government and the Convention to the south, fleeing the advancing Prussian army, Danton used all his strength and energy to organize resistance to the interventionists. Occupying the post of Minister of Justice at that time, Danton actually took the defense of the capital into his own hands, and he managed to prevent the interventionist invasion of Paris.
But the Revolutionary Tribunal still sent the leaders of the right wing of the Jacobins, led by Danton and Desmoulins, to the guillotine. They were combined with arrested fraudsters and stock speculators in one trial. The trial lasted three days from April 2 to 4, 1794. Danton refuted all the charges brought against him and demanded that the members of the Committee of Public Safety, who decided to arrest him, themselves act as witnesses and accusers, and then he would “cover them with dishonor.” His performance in court began to evoke sympathy among the audience, the matter could take an unpredictable turn, and the Committee of Public Safety made a hasty decision, by virtue of which persons who insult judges “may be excluded from the debate.” Danton was deprived of his word. The day after the verdict was pronounced, April 5, 1794, the defendant Dantonists were sent to the guillotine. Before his execution, Danton told his friends: “At this time, twelve months ago, I proposed the establishment of this Revolutionary Tribunal. Now I ask God and people to forgive me for this. They are all Cain's brothers: Brissot wanted me to be guillotined, just as Robespierre wants it now. Robespierre will follow me, I will carry Robespierre away." This prediction soon came true.
His closest associate, Camille Desmoulins, who was executed along with him, was known even before the revolution as a young talented journalist. Desmoulins is credited with the first call to arms and the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Coming from the third estate, he could not hope that the aristocratic parents of his bride would allow her to marry him. The revolution changed the situation, and now they considered it an honor to become related to him. Desmoulins became a prominent figure in the revolution, popular in democratic circles. He called himself the first republican in France. But Desmoulins did not approve of the expansion of terror during the period of the Jacobin dictatorship and wrote in his newspaper: “shouldn’t there be a “committee of mercy” among so many arresting and punishing committees? He made quips about the law on suspicious persons. Desmoulins' last article, dated February 3, 1794, ended with Montezuma's words: "The gods are thirsty." Obviously, he came to understand that the revolution constantly requires new sacrifices in the form of human lives, just as the Gods of the ancient Indians demanded sacrifices. Robespierre was a personal friend of Desmoulins and even the best man at his wedding, but he just as mercilessly sent him to execution, like his other close friends, as soon as they showed disagreement with his actions. Moreover, ten days later, Lucille, Desmoulins' widow, was sent to the guillotine along with Hébert's widow. They were accused of plotting an escape from their husbands' prison.
After these executions, a group of Jacobins led by Robespierre remained in power. By this time, without holding any higher position than other members of the Committee of Public Safety, he was in fact at the head of the Jacobin dictatorship. They listened to him and supported him in the Jacobin Club. In the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety his word was law. The trial and execution of the Dantonists temporarily strengthened the position of the Robespierrists, but could not prevent the further weakening and split of the Jacobin bloc. Hidden opposition in the Convention against Robespierre and the regime of the Jacobin dictatorship intensified. Among the swamp of the Convention, representatives of the new rich, close in their views to the Dantonists, predominated. In April 1794, they did not dare to support Danton, because complete victory over the coalition had not yet been achieved and the threat of the restoration of the old order remained, and with it the loss of their wealth acquired during the revolution. They viewed the regime of the Jacobin dictatorship as forced. However, already in May significant victories were won. The main forces of the Austrians were defeated in Belgium at the battle of the village of Fleurus on June 26, 1794.
The need for a dictatorial regime caused by the military threat was no longer necessary. Specific goals have been achieved. The interventionists were expelled from France, and feudal relations in the village were ended. Many members of the Convention, as well as the Committee of Public Safety, received from the Jacobin dictatorship everything that it could give them. Now Robespierre's group, which included Saint-Just, Couthon, Lebas, Robespierre's brother Augustin and other supporters of increasing terror, began to arouse the hostility of many members of the Convention, who did not want to continue to lead a Puritan lifestyle, so as not to be accused of lacking republican virtues and be persecuted among the suspicious. However, Robespierre, Saint-Just and their supporters were not going to give up dictatorial power and intensified the terror. Daily executions in squares became a mass spectacle. But this did not improve the socio-economic situation in the country.
The situation of workers and the poorest artisans during the war constantly worsened. Taxation of prices did not give much results. Merchants did not want to sell their goods at low prices. Supervision over compliance with maximum prices weakened. Food shortages grew. Parisians had been queuing for bread at bakeries since the evening. The Jacobin dictatorship was losing its support not only among the new rich, but also among peasants dissatisfied with requisitions, mass recruitment into the army, as well as the urban lower classes, whose situation it did not improve. In the last months of its reign, the Jacobin dictatorship lost ground.
The leader of the Jacobin dictatorship, Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94), was born into a noble family in the north of France in Arras, and became a lawyer. He was an admirer of Rousseau's ideas, was elected to the Constituent Assembly, then to the Convention, and became a member of the Committee of Public Safety. He received the well-deserved nickname “Incorruptible” because he did not use power for personal enrichment, like many other leaders of the revolution. His patriotic words “not enough has been done for the Fatherland if everything has not been done” became popular. At the same time, Robespierre mercilessly sent to the guillotine those people who, from his point of view, did not have such high virtues and “republican virtue” as he did. He eliminated not only enemies, but also recent friends, suspecting them of apostasy or intrigue against him personally. Robespierre and his closest supporter Saint-Just insisted on the adoption by the Convention on June 10, 1794 of a law to simplify legal proceedings and abolish defense in cases subject to the jurisdiction of the Revolutionary Tribunal. This law gave the government the means to intensify its terror against the new rich and against the extreme Jacobins. The number of arrests and executions increased sharply. According to this decree, not only those who were listed in the previous decree of September 17, 1793, but also people who were simply caught for allegedly “not showing revolutionary enthusiasm” were declared suspicious. This expansion of terror made it unpredictable and dangerous for everyone.
A conspiracy arose against Robespierre in the depths of the Convention. It was attended by members of the Committee of Public Safety, including Carnot, who led the armies. Among the organizers of the conspiracy were supporters of both right-wing and left-wing Jacobins who escaped arrest. Barras, Freron and other right-wing conspirators got rich during the revolution through speculation, embezzlement, and bribery. Continuation of the terror threatened them with the guillotine. The left-wing Jacobins, who took part in organizing the conspiracy, were unhappy with the execution of Hébert and Chaumette and feared for their fate. Tallien feared arrest for the crimes he committed in Bordeaux during the suppression of the Girondin rebellion there. The left-wing Jacobin, the former abbot Fouche, who justified his cruelties in Lyon by the fact that “the republic must go to freedom over corpses,” having seen Robespierre’s hostile attitude toward himself, became one of the most active conspirators. The removal of Robespierre from power for the left, who themselves were involved in unlimited terror, was necessary to save their lives.
On 8 Thermidor, Robespierre spoke at the Convention with denunciations of the “new enemies of the republic,” but did not name his name. The next day, 9 Thermidor according to the revolutionary calendar, or July 27, 1794, Robespierre rose to the podium of the Convention to continue his accusations, but the conspirators did not give him the opportunity to speak. Shouts came from the audience: “tyrant, dictator, murderer.” Tallien threatened that if the Convention did not dare to overthrow the tyrant, he would do it himself with the help of the dagger he was holding in his hands. Robespierre tried to speak, but the President of the Convention, Thurio, drowned him out with the ringing of his bell. Robespierre lost his voice. In the hall, the words of one of the deputies began to be heard: “Danton’s blood is choking him.” Then loud shouts began to be heard demanding his immediate arrest. The Chairman put the matter to a vote and the motion passed. Maximilien Robespierre is arrested in the Convention building. Augustin Robespierre declares that he wants to share the fate of his brother. He, and with him Couthon, Saint-Just, Lebas, who supported Robespierre, were also arrested and taken from the hall. They were taken to the Luxembourg prison, but its chief, seeing Robespierre among the accused, refused to accept them and they headed to the town hall.
The commander of the national guard, the Jacobin Henriot, a supporter of Robespierre, led the battalions subordinate to him to the Place de Greve to the town hall. Robespierre could have given the order to Henriot's national guards to march on the Convention and disperse it. But he didn't. Meanwhile, one of the most determined conspirators, Barras, a former officer, gathered the remaining National Guardsmen loyal to the Convention and also led them to the town hall. Here he announced the resolution of the Convention: “Robespierre and all rebels are outlawed!” This shook the resolve of the defenders of the town hall. Having not received an order to move to the Convention, they were forced to disperse, especially since heavy rain began to pour in at that time. When the conspiratorial troops burst into the town hall, Henriot jumped out of the window, Augustin Robespierre did the same, Couthon tried to kill himself, but was unsuccessful, Lebas shot himself, Saint-Just calmly waited for arrest. The conspirators who burst into the building saw Maximilian Robespierre lying on the floor with a crushed jaw. It is believed that he tried to shoot himself, but one of the Meda conspirators who burst into the town hall, who later became a general and baron, insisted that it was he who shot at Robespierre.
There is still no clear answer to this question, just as there is no consensus on the question of why Robespierre did not give the order to the National Guardsmen loyal to him to march to the Convention and arrest the conspirators. According to the French writer Romain Rolland, Robespierre did not want to confirm the accusations against him that he was striving for a personal dictatorship. The Soviet historian A. Z. Manfred, who idealized Robespierre, was sure that within the framework of the bourgeois revolution he had taken revolutionary-democratic transformations to the limit and did not know where to move next, he did not have a program of action if he had won over the conspirators. Another Soviet historian N.N. Molchanov wrote that Robespierre was simply a coward, he personally did not take part in any of the uprisings during the revolution and only through intrigue and unscrupulousness in means reached the pinnacle of power.
But be that as it may, the next day Robespierre and those who were next to him, both dead and survivors, were all sent to the guillotine, 22 people in total. There was no trial of them, because they had already been declared outlaws. The Chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Fouquier-Tinville, only formally verified their identities. In the following days, the executions of the Robespierrists continued. On the 11th of Thermidor, 70 members of the Paris Commune were executed. On 9 Thermidor or July 27, 1794, the Jacobin dictatorship was overthrown.
The year 1794 went down in history as the year of the fall of one of the most brutal dictatorships of modern times - Jacobin dictatorship. Perhaps for the first time on a large scale Jacobin terror was unleashed in the name of the declared “national good.”
Formation of the Jacobin Club
During the Great French Revolution, power in the country was seized by a political group belonging to Jacobin Club. Since the founding of the club (1789-1790), its members gathered in the Parisian Dominican (Jacobin) monastery of St. James. Political opponents, mocking the club members, gave them the crude nickname Jacobins. The word stuck and acquired a terrible meaning.
Beginning of the Jacobin dictatorship
The main composition of the Jacobin Club was shaken by splits and unrest, the moderates left it, and soon the remaining radicals succumbed to entropy and collapsed into the Girondins and the left wing of the “Mountain”. A new round of radicalization occurred in 1792, when Louis XVI, who failed to fulfill the duties of a constitutional monarch, was deposed, and the Jacobin-Montagnards, led by Robespierre and Danton, launched a fierce struggle for power with the Girondins.
Initially, the struggle was predominantly political, but as the “Mountain” gained more and more control over the levers of power, there was less and less ceremony: on June 2, 1793, a crowd stormed the Convention, throwing out the Girondins, many of whom were later executed.
Big Jacobin terror gained strength, almost forty thousand people became its victims; the search for enemies became the modus operandi, and the guillotine became an ersatz law. Political opponents of the Jacobins lost their heads, as well as the royal family and thousands of those who acquired the status of “unreliable”; Entire cities were subjected to repression, for example, Lyon.
The Jacobin terror reached the Jacobins themselves
As a result, the top of the Jacobin Club also came under the knife, and it began to “devour” itself. Internal squabbles sent both Danton's supporters and himself to execution. However, he managed to shout from the scaffold to Robespierre: “ Maximilian, I'm waiting for you! - and he turned out to be right; after the coup of 9 Thermidor, the leader of the Jacobins found himself “outside the law.”
Literally and figuratively, the beheaded Jacobin Club agonized for another five years, however, on the outskirts of the political life of France, and in 1799 it sank into oblivion.
After the fall of the Gironde, the power of France in a tense situation found itself in the hands of the Jacobins. The Jacobins took a leading position in the Convention and relied on the support of the Paris Commune.
The main body of the Jacobin dictatorship was the Committee of Public Safety, which included the most radical Jacobins led by Robespierre.
The Jacobins destroyed all remnants of the “Old Order” in the village. At the same time, decisive measures were taken to suppress the uprising in the Vendée, where “hellish columns” of revolutionary troops were sent from Paris. The decree adopted by the Jacobin Convention declared speculation a criminal offense, punishable by death and confiscation of the property of speculators.
To repel the external threat, general mobilization began in August 1793. The military reform carried out by the Jacobins led to the creation of the first mass national army in history, which outnumbered the mercenary troops of other states. Talented commanders were promoted to command positions in the army.
The Jacobin dictatorship went down in history thanks not so much to its transformations as to terror, which became the main means of solving political problems. By decision of the Convention, a special Revolutionary Army was created and a decree was adopted, according to which all suspicious persons were subject to immediate arrest “until the conclusion of peace.”
People who “by their behavior or connections, speeches or writings showed themselves to be supporters of tyranny, feudalism and enemies of freedom” were declared “suspicious”; all those who could not certify “the sources of their existence and the fact of fulfilling their civil duties,” and many others. The list of “suspicious” ones was also supplemented by violators of the soon-adopted decrees establishing maximum prices and wages. The establishment of a maximum led to the almost complete disappearance of goods from sale and to the flourishing of underground trade. The revolutionary army began its bloody campaign across the country. Commissars of the Convention with emergency powers were sent to the departments, who became conductors of the policy of terror on the ground. One of the most terrible crimes of the era of terror was the destruction of the largest economic center of France, the city of Lyon, and the mass executions of its population. In Nantes, on the orders of the Commissioner of the Convention, several thousand people were drowned in the Loire.
Against Robespierre's policy, i.e. The so-called “lenient” spoke out against the Jacobin dictatorship. Their leader Danton successfully combined revolutionary activity with personal enrichment, using the ample opportunities provided for this by the revolution. Danton spoke out against the excesses of revolutionary dictatorship and for the renunciation of terror. On the other hand, the radical Jacobins demanded tougher measures against the nouveau riche and speculators. In the spring of 1794, a new wave of terror swept both of these groups out of the political arena, and after that the destruction machine began to work at an even more frantic pace. The Decree on the Revolutionary Tribunal introduced such a broad concept of “enemy of the people” that almost the entire population of France could be brought under it. As a result, the logic of “revolutionary necessity” and the merciless “war for freedom” led Robespierre’s group to complete isolation and the collapse of the Jacobin regime.
Jacobin dictatorship: politics of terror (1793-1794)
For two centuries now, historians have been arguing about the phenomenon of Terror in the French Revolution. But no matter what interpretations are offered, they invariably contain three dominant motives. Some believed that the Robespierrists' policy met the interests of the poor ("social motive"), others believed that it was utopian and contrary to any real interests in general ("utopian motive"), others sought to present terror as a product of the "fatal force of things" ("motive circumstances") It is curious that none of the authors we examined then referred to wartime circumstances as the cause of the Terror.
The creators of Robespierre’s “black legend” attributed boundless ambition, bloodthirstiness, misanthropy and other disgusting qualities to the overthrown “tyrants,” actually reducing the causes of the Terror to the psychological characteristics of a few individuals in power. But from the beginning of 1795, the idea was voiced that the actions of the Robespierrists were based on a certain complete system of ideas about the ultimate goal of the revolution, although different points of view were expressed regarding the content of this ideal.
"Social motive"
In the famous pamphlet of Gracchus Babeuf “On the system of extermination of the population,” which was published in 1796, it was argued that Robespierre and his “party” followed a carefully developed plan for the redistribution of property in favor of the poor, for which they were engaged in the mass extermination of large owners. He also put forward a completely fantastic hypothesis about the intention of the Robespierrists to destroy some of the poor themselves in order to get rid of the surplus population. In his opinion, the Incorruptible and his entourage, pursuing the policy of Terror, were guided by concern for the poor part of society and sought to establish “true equality.”
F. Buonarroti called the supporters of the Incorruptible “friends of equality” and argued that their doctrine assumed the establishment of a “fair” social system through the redistribution of property in favor of the poor: “The establishment of warehouses where stocks were stored, laws against speculative purchases, the proclamation of the principle by virtue of which the people became the owner of basic necessities, laws on the abolition of beggary, on the distribution of state aid, as well as the community that then prevailed among the majority of the French, were one of the preconditions for the new order. According to Buonarroti, Terror was primarily a means of implementing the socio-economic program of the revolutionary government. : “The wisdom with which it prepared a new procedure for the distribution of property and responsibilities cannot escape the eyes of sensible people... They will see in the confiscation of the property of convicted counter-revolutionaries not a fiscal measure, but an extensive plan of a reformer.”
P.T. Durand de Mayan considered Robespierre “a popular dictator, who gradually rose to prominence thanks to the affection of the mob.” According to this author, Robespierre and his Montagnard supporters wanted “the punishment of the rich enemies of the revolution to turn out to be a benefit for the poor patriots.” He had an extremely negative attitude towards such aspirations.
"Motif of Utopia"
It was most clearly represented in 1795 by the prominent political figure E.B. Courtois. According to the author of the report, the tragedy of the Terror was the result of a gross violation of the natural course of things, according to which the revolution had developed up to that time: “The universal reason, ... which sets the worlds in motion and ensures their harmony, was replaced by the reason of one party ... The revolution, which was considered a more or less gradual transition from evil to good, was henceforth likened only to a lightning strike. The author of the report saw the reason for such a fatal development of events in the desire of the Robespierrists to implement, through the most severe state coercion, their speculative plan of social structure, which did not take into account the real one. state of affairs. In their desire to realize such a utopia, Robespierre's supporters showed the tenacity of religious fanatics, stopping at nothing to achieve their goal. This attempt to force real social life into an abstract scheme had the most tragic consequences: Robespierre's policy led to the destruction of trade, entrepreneurship, arts and crafts,” noted the author of the report.
The English thinker Burke emphasized that the uniqueness of French events lay precisely in the leading role played in them by the ideology of a break with the past - in the absolute rejection by the revolutionaries of the social realities that existed before it: “The French revolutionaries are dissatisfied with everything; they refuse to reform anything ; they leave nothing unchanged, yes, nothing at all." He also came to the conclusion that during the reign of the Jacobins, the gulf between reality and the abstract ideal to which they tried to lead the nation was wider than ever. In 1796, he gave the following description of the Jacobins: “These philosophers are fanatics, not connected with any real interests, they carry out reckless experiments with such stupid frenzy that they are ready to sacrifice all of humanity for the sake of the success of even the most insignificant of their experiments.” .
A similar explanation for the phenomenon of Terror was proposed by A.L.Zh. de Staël, an active participant in revolutionary events and the author of one of the first historical works about them. The Age of Terror, she argued, was marked by an unprecedented reign of political fanaticism. The machine of terror, which developed largely spontaneously, during the Jacobin period was driven by the spring of ideology. Most politicians (with the exception of Incorruptible) had virtually no influence on the course of events: “Political dogmas reigned at that time, but certainly not people.”
Montagnard Levasseur noted in his memoirs that the policy of this “party” was built in accordance with theoretical principles that were hardly feasible in practice. Moreover, the Robespierrists’ loyalty to their doctrine reached, according to Levasseur, to the point of fanaticism: “Robespierre and Saint-Just stopped at nothing in applying their theories; to challenge their ideas meant declaring oneself their personal enemy, and this could only end in death.” He characterized Robespierre and Saint-Just as “unyielding people, guided by principles and sincerely wanting a republic, although they were capable of using bloody methods to win it.”
"Motive of Circumstances"
After the Bourbon restoration, royalist journalism brought down the most severe criticism on the revolution, actually identifying it with the Terror. It was then that the “motive of circumstances” began to sound in the memories of former revolutionaries and people who sympathized with them. For example, the famous writer C. Nodier described it as follows: “Events are much stronger than characters and... if some people crushed nations on their way, it was because they were pushed by a force as irresistible as that which awakens volcanoes and overthrows waterfalls". Levasseur also has the same “motive”: “No one thought of establishing a system of terror. It was created by the force of circumstances...”. According to him, the repressions of 1793-1794. were caused by the need to combat intervention and internal counter-revolution.
The “motive of circumstances” prevailed among B. Barer and L. Carnot. “Events showed,” Barère wrote, “that there was no other way to save France and freedom and that the Convention had chosen the only way to ensure national defense.” Terror was a necessary means of defense, a response with blow to blow, as Carnot believed.
J. Fouché referred to the fact that the external and internal situation of France left no room for choice. The “executioner of Lyon” wrote about himself that “he was forced to adapt to the language of the era and pay tribute to the fatal force of circumstances.”
Former Montagnard A. Thibodeau also wrote in his memoirs about the spontaneous nature of the emergence and spread of the Terror. “Nothing was as far from systematic as terror...” he argued. “It was the resistance of the external and internal enemies of the revolution that little by little brought matters to terror.”
Results of terror.
The dreams of re-creating the French people according to the moral and cultural type invented by the followers of Rousseau and Mably did not come true. T. did not lead to the equalization of fortunes, but only to their forcible transfer into the hands of speculators, businessmen and accomplices of T. The peasants did not gain anything from the era of T., and many of them suffered.
The coercive measures of the government of T.'s time paralyzed industry and trade so much that it could only with the greatest efforts and sacrifices maintain the previous price of bread in Paris, which was so scarce.
Its moral result: it did not recreate the French people in the sense that Robespierre and Saint-Just had hoped, but produced a revolution in the mood and way of thinking of the French: “T. crushed all minds, put pressure on all hearts; he constituted the strength of the government, and she was such that the numerous inhabitants of the vast territory seemed to have lost all the qualities that distinguished man from cattle. It seemed that there was only as much life left in them as the government wished to provide them. The human self no longer existed; returned, thought, or stopped thinking, according to how he was pushed or inspired by the general tyranny.”
This moral revolution was accompanied by a political revolution. The terrorists introduced into war and politics the same spirit of violence and despotism that permeated their internal government. Their wars were a manifestation of pride and lust for power. The reign of the terrorists served as a transition from democracy in the sense of freedom, from which the revolution proceeded, to power over the people, with which it ended.
Was the Terror necessary?
Some argue that the Terror was necessary to save France. Quinet, a passionate admirer of the revolution, objected to this: “The stubborn illusion of the terrorists is that they appeal to success in order to justify themselves before posterity. In fact, only success could justify them. But where is it, this success? The terrorists were absorbed in the scaffold they built; the republic not only perished, but became hated, the counter-revolution was victorious, despotism took the place of freedom, for which an entire people swore to die. How many times will they repeat the nonsense that the guillotine was necessary to save the revolution? which was not saved?
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