The French Revolution:  A Brief Summary
Part 3:  The Second Revolution and the Committee of Public Safety

I. The Beginning of the Revolutionary Wars, April 1792

The most influential faction within the Legislative Assembly were the Jacobins, members of a political club named for the former convent in Paris where they met. The Jacobins supported starting a war against the counter-revolutionary powers of Europe, both in order to defend the Revolution at home and to export revolutionary principles to the oppressed peoples of Europe. They also hoped that fighting a foreign war would unite the people of France behind them. Accordingly, the Legislative Assembly declared was on Austria (the most powerful of the counter-revolutionary countries) in April, 1792.

II. The “Second Revolution,” 10 August 1792

The war succeeded in uniting the French behind the Revolution, but it also contributed to the fall of the Constitution of 1791. The government suffered from several weaknesses. The constitutional monarchy wasn’t very stable, since it was known that the monarch himself didn’t support it; Louis XVI was suspected of supporting the émigrés and the counter-revolutionary enemies of France. Both the peasants and the working classes were dissatisfied with the government, resenting the property qualification that kept many of them from voting. They were afraid of the restoration of the Old Regime, so they enthusiastically supported the war, but they did not support the government in power.

In the summer of 1792, the war was going badly for the French. The radical leaders of the Jacobins whipped up military enthusiasm and republican, anti-monarchical fervor. The situation came to a climax on 10 August 1792, when the working classes of Paris, supported by soldiers from the provinces , stormed the Tuileries, the royal residence in Paris, and imprisoned the royal family. They declared the Legislative Assembly to be overthrown and called for a new body to be elected by universal male suffrage. These events are known as the Second Revolution.

III. Jacobins and Sans-Culottes: From Monarchy to Republic

Beginning in September, 1792, a Constitutional Convention met to draw up a new constitution and to govern the country in the meantime. Their first act was to declare France to be a Republic—no longer a monarchy, either absolute or constitutional. Louis XVI was now Louis Capet, an ordinary citizen.

The Convention was dominated by the Jacobins, but now the Jacobins began to divide into factions. The more moderate group was known as the Gironde (after the départment in western France where many of them were from). The more radical faction was nicknamed the Mountain (because they sat up in the balcony in the hall where the Convention met). Their leaders were Maximilien Robespierre and Jacques Danton. They were allied with the radical members of the Paris working class, known as the Sans-culottes.

A. The Fall of Louis XVI, Jan. 1793

Members of the Mountain faction succeeded in trying Louis XVI for treason in December 1792. They pronounced him guilty on 15 January 1793; on the next day the Convention voted on his sentence. Louis XVI was condemned to death by a margin of only one vote (he was executed on 21 Jan.). This vote caused a fatal split among the Jacobins. Members of the Mountain faction, who had voted for execution, therefore couldn’t allow the Revolution to fail—if the monarchy were to be restored, they would be condemned as regicides. On the other hand, they viewed the Gironde, who had voted against execution, as the equivalent of counter-revolutionaries—unwilling to put their own lives on the line for the Revolution.

B. Pressure on the Jacobins from Left and Right

In addition to their internal divisions, the Jacobins also faced external opposition, from both left and right.

1. Right: Foreign War, the Vendée

Their opponents on the right (counter-revolutionaries) included almost all of the other European powers, with whom they were still at war. Supported by the émigrés, these governments wished to preserve the Old Regime in their own countries and restore the monarchy in France. At home, the Jacobins also had to deal with a counter-revolutionary rebellion at home, when in the spring of 1793, in the western départment of the Vendée, peasants revolted against military conscription.

2. Left: Enragés

At the same time, the Jacobins were also attacked from the left. Even to the left of the sans-culottes were a group known as the Enragés. The Enragés supported the ideals of the revolution, but objected to economic conditions (such as food shortages and high prices) that the poor had to endure. As their name implies (“the angry ones”), they had no patience with parliamentary methods. Instead, they formed unofficial revolutionary armies in the countryside and took direct action (like commandeering food).

IV. The Committee of Public Safety, 1793-94

The Convention therefore had to steer a course between left and right—neither succumb to counter-revolutionary forces at home or abroad, nor disintegrate into anarchy. To meet the emergency, in March 1793 the Convention designated a smaller body to run the government, the Committee of Public Safety. This committee was made up of twelve men, led by Robespierre and Danton, to be re-elected every month as long as the state of emergency lasted. They saw their job as protecting the Revolution from its enemies, both inside and outside France, by whatever means necessary.

A. The Expulsion of the Gironde, 2 June 1793

When the war started going badly again and the economy continued to be in bad shape, the sans-culottes searched for a scapegoat and found it in the Gironde. In June 1793, the Girondin leaders were arrested and the remainder fled to the provinces, leaving the Mountain in unchallenged control of the Committee and the Convention.

B. 22 June 1793: Constitution Suspended; revolutionary government for the duration

On 22 June 1793, the Committee proposed a new constitution, known as the Constitution of 1793, that was adopted by the Convention. This Constitution was both republican (because there was no king) and democratic (because voting was to be by universal male suffrage). However, even though the Constitution was approved, it did not go into effect immediately, because of the war. Instead, the Constitution was suspended and the government was declared to be “revolutionary until the peace”—in other words, giving the Committee emergency powers to govern outside the Constitution.

C. Levée en Masse, Aug. 1793

Under these powers, the Committee in August 1793 instituted the levée en masse, a mass mobilization of the French people, both civilian and military, to work for victory. The committee also instituted economic controls to satisfy the enragés and stabilize the economy. These included wage and price controls and a food distribution system to supply both the army and the civilian population.

D. The Calendar

Another change made by the Committee shows the strength of their commitment to ending all vestiges of the Old Regime: the revolutionary calendar. The new calendar had months named after the cycles of nature (for example, Thermidor, “the hot month,” for the month in the middle of the summer). The dating system, instead of counting from the birth of Christ, would now begin with Sept. 1792 (the birth of the French Republic), which became the Year I.

E. The Reign of Terror, 1793-94

What the Committee of Public Safety is most remembered for is the Reign of Terror, the actions taken by the revolutionary government to protect against a counter-revolution. About 400,000 people were executed and about 18,000 went to the guillotine. The Reign of Terror’s victims included Marie Antoinette (she had not been executed when her husband was), other royalists (including Olympe de Gouges), leaders of the Gironde faction, counter-revolutionaries from the Vendée, and, generally, anyone the Committee deemed to be an enemy of the Revolution. Even members of the Committee itself were not safe if Robespierre decided they were insufficiently zealous—such as Jacques Danton. All this was justified by Robespierre as necessary emergency measures in time of war.

When the French army in 1794 seemed to be winning the war, it was felt that there was no more need for the Terror and the government fell. Robespierre, as leader of the Committee of Public Safety, was its final victim—he was guillotined on 9 Thermidor of the Year II (if you’re not up on your revolutionary calendar, that would be 27 July 1794). The month in which it happened gave its name to the event. Thermidor was the end of Robespierre, and the end of the Committee of Public Safety, and the end of the Reign of Terror—but it wasn’t the end of the revolution.

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