Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

While these measures, which did not take full effect for some months, were being debated, the Convention was torn by the opposition between the Girondins and the deputies of the Mountain. The details of the struggle are not important. The arguments used by the Girondins were that their enemies were responsible for the massacres of September in the prisons, that they were under the influence of the Commune of Paris, and that they encouraged anarchy. The Mountain, on their side, alleged that the Girondins were concealed royalists, because they had voted against the execution of Louis XVI., that they were federalists, who desired to destroy the unity of the Republic, and that they preferred a weak to a strong government. The struggle was mainly carried on in the tribune of the Convention; Robespierre attacked Brissot, Vergniaud, and Guadet, and these orators replied by attacking Robespierre and Danton. The latter for a time endeavoured to avoid breaking with the Girondins, but he was so violently impeached for his conduct while on mission in Belgium, and accused of being an accomplice of Dumouriez, that in self-defence he was forced to take up the gauntlet. He had been elected to the first Committee of Public Safety, and though his constitutional indolence prevented him from becoming its most important member, he shared with Cambon, the financier, the chief responsibility of the new method of government. Meanwhile, worse news kept coming from every frontier. It was felt to be both injudicious and unpatriotic for the Convention to be occupied in personal squabbles when the fate of France was in the balance. The Commune of Paris decided to intervene. The deputies who sat in the Plain, or Centre of the Convention, were more influenced by the eloquence of the Girondins than by the energy of the Mountain, and it was with regret that they felt obliged to yield to the Commune of Paris. On the 31st May 1793, regular troops and national guards, under the direction of Hanriot, the commander of the National Guard of Paris, surrounded the Tuileries, to which the Convention had removed on the 10th May, and the Commune demanded that the leading Girondins should be expelled from the Convention, and sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. The coup d’état was completed on the 2d June, when these demands were complied with, and from that date the Girondins as a political party in the Convention ceased to exist.

Second Campaign of 1793.

The desertion of Dumouriez left the way clear for the Austrians and English to invade France. They advanced slowly and did not attempt, like the Duke of Brunswick in the previous year, to mask the frontier fortresses and move straight upon Paris. On 24th May the French camp at Famars was stormed; on 12th July Condé, on 28th July Valenciennes, were taken after making an obstinate resistance, and the allies were thus firmly established in France. Then, fortunately for the Convention, the allied commanders-in-chief quarrelled. The Duke of York, acting under the orders of the English ministry, besieged Dunkirk, which port he desired to hold for the disembarkation of supplies. The Prince of Coburg, with the Austrians, refused to assist in the siege of Dunkirk, and invested Le Quesnoy. Further south the Prussians captured Mayence on the 22d of July, and a mixed army of Austrians and troops of the Empire under Würmser forced their way into Alsace. At both ends of the Pyrenees Spanish armies invaded the French Republic. In the eastern Pyrenees nearly the whole of Roussillon was conquered, and in the western Pyrenees the passage of the Bidassoa was forced. These repeated reverses in so many quarters did not destroy the courage of the Convention or of the French people, but they proved that hastily raised undisciplined masses can never be a match for trained soldiers. The successes of Dumouriez and Custine had been as much the result of accident and of the hearty reception given to them by the natives of the districts they invaded as of talent and bravery, but the first defeats showed how thoroughly the policy of the Constituent Assembly had sapped the discipline of the French army.

Civil war in France.

To add to the dangers which threatened France during the summer of 1793, civil war in many quarters redoubled the perils caused by the foreign invasion. The war in La Vendée increased in magnitude almost daily, and the soldiers of the Republic were frequently defeated by the hardy peasants who fought in guerilla fashion among their woods and marshes. Throughout Brittany and in the mountains of Auvergne similar movements took place, generally guided by priests and country gentlemen; but except in La Vendée there was no serious royalist manifestation. But the expulsion of the Girondins from the Convention had given rise to another movement of even greater importance. The insurrections in La Vendée and similar risings in country or mountain districts were the work of ignorant peasants; the movement in favour of the Girondins was headed by wealthy and intelligent cities. The news of the coup d’état of the 2d of June was received with consternation in most of the chief cities of France. Girondin journals had long preached the wickedness of the Commune of Paris, and that the leaders of the Mountain were either anarchists or ambitious men aiming at power. These words now had their effect. Several of the deputies proscribed on the 2d of June escaped into the provinces, and a group of them, collected at Caen in Normandy, endeavoured to organise an army against the Convention. Other cities followed the example. Marseilles arrested the representatives on mission; Bordeaux refused to receive the deputies sent to it; Lyons started a counter-revolution and executed Chalier, the leader of the local democratic party; and several cities agreed to send detachments of local troops to form a central army against the Convention at Bourges. For a few days matters looked most threatening for the victorious members of the Mountain, but they were well served by the deputies on mission. The Norman army was easily defeated at Pacy on the 13th of July; Bordeaux and Marseilles quickly submitted, and Lyons was invested. But the success of the Mountain was due to something more than the vigour of its representatives in the provinces. The general sentiment in France was that the conduct of the Girondins in causing civil war showed the very excess of want of patriotism; even if the Commune of Paris had done wrong in interfering with the Convention, the Girondins had behaved worse in attempting to rouse the provinces, and owing to this sentiment many departments and many cities speedily repented of the encouragement they had given to the Girondin designs, and withdrew their support to the proposed concentration of local troops at Bourges.

The Constitution of 1793.

The work of the first Committee of Public Safety.

The deputies of the Mountain met the unparalleled dangers of foreign and civil war with undaunted courage. Their first measure was to draw up with extreme rapidity a republican constitution, which is known as the Constitution of 1793. As it never came into effect, the details of this proposed system of government need not be described. But the fact that it was drawn up, promulgated, and sent before the primary assemblies of the people, deprived the Girondin insurgents of one of their chief weapons. They had asserted that the Mountain admired anarchy and wished to retain power for the Convention and themselves. To these allegations the issue of the Constitution of 1793 was an adequate reply. But it was quite impossible, according to the leaders of the Mountain, for the Convention to abandon the reins of power. A general election at such a time would but increase the difficulty of the situation. So, while declaring the existence of the new Constitution, it deferred putting it into effect, and strengthened the authority of its new executive, the Committee of Public Safety. The advantages to be derived from the concentration of authority in a few hands became quite clear to the Convention after the expulsion of the Girondins. It may be doubted whether the distinguished orators who directed Girondin opinion, from their constant apprehension of the dangers of a strong executive to individual liberty, would ever have perceived them. The existence of the Committee made it possible for representatives on mission and other agents of government to have a central authority on which to rely. It was the Committee which directed the short campaign in Normandy which overthrew the most promising movement of the escaped Girondin deputies; it was the prudence of a member of the Committee, Robert Lindet, which pacified Normandy, after the victory had been won, by ruthlessly tracking down the ringleaders and generously sparing those who had been led away; it was the Committee which first attempted to re-establish discipline in the armies and to supply them with provisions and munitions of war; and it was on the motion of the most important member of the first Committee, Danton, that the fatal decree of the 19th of November, which consecrated the revolutionary propaganda, and gave good reason for the continued opposition of foreign powers, was repealed. This good work in all directions showed the members of the Convention that they were acting in the right direction.

The Great Committee of Public Safety.

On 10th July 1793 the first Committee was dissolved on the motion of Camille Desmoulins, but a new Committee with similar powers was at once elected. This Committee, which may be called the Great Committee of Public Safety, remained in power for more than a year. Danton was not a member of it, partly because he believed he could do better work outside, partly because of his dislike of continued labour; Cambon also was not re-elected, preferring to confine himself to the charge of the finances of the Republic as the principal member of the Financial Committee. The nine members originally elected in July were Barère, who acted as reporter throughout its tenure of office, and was therefore in some respects the most important of them all; Jean Bon Saint-André, who took charge of naval matters; Prieur of the Marne and Robert Lindet, whose main duties were to provide for the feeding of the armies; Hérault de Séchelles, the chief author of the Constitution of 1793, who busied himself with foreign affairs; Couthon, Saint-Just, Gasparin, and Thuriot. Robespierre entered the Committee in the place of Gasparin on the 27th of July; Carnot and Prieur of the Côte-d’Or were added on the 14th of August to superintend the military operations on the frontiers; Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d’Herbois were added on September the 6th to establish the Reign of Terror; and on the 20th of September Thuriot retired. The steps in the growth of the supremacy of this second Committee of Public Safety are significant. On the 1st of August 1793 Barère read his first report to the Convention. In it he proposed the most energetic, not to say sanguinary, measures. The war was to be carried on with the utmost energy; La Vendée was to be destroyed; and Marie Antoinette was to be sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. On the same day Danton proposed that the Committee should be formally recognised as a provisional government, and that the ministers should be directed to act as its subordinates. This motion was not carried, but the entire control over the resources of France, and the lives of Frenchmen, which Danton contemplated, was secured without the passing of a formal decree. The Convention seems to have been very glad to rid itself of the work of government. It accepted without a murmur every measure proposed by the Committee of Public Safety; it re-elected the members month after month; it threw all responsibility upon them and registered all the decrees they proposed. As has been said, it definitely gave them the charge of the military operations by the election of Carnot and Prieur of the Côte-d’Or, and it established the unity of their internal administration by the election of Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d’Herbois.