Coup of 9–10 Thermidor | |||||||
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Part of the French Revolution | |||||||
Fall of Robespierre in the Convention by Max Adamo | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Thermidorians | Jacobins
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
Unknown | c. 3,000 loyalists | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Unknown | Various people were executed:
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Maximilien Robespierre addressed the National Convention on 8 Thermidor Year II (26 July 1794), was arrested the next day, and executed on 10 Thermidor (28 July). In the speech of 8 Thermidor, Robespierre spoke of the existence of internal enemies, conspirators, and calumniators, within the Convention and the governing Committees. He refused to name them, which alarmed the deputies who feared Robespierre was preparing another purge of the Convention, similar to previous ones during the Reign of Terror. [1]
On the following day, this tension in the Convention allowed Jean-Lambert Tallien, one of the conspirators whom Robespierre had in mind in his denunciation, to turn the Convention against Robespierre and decree his arrest. [2] [3] By the end of the next day, Robespierre was executed in the Place de la Révolution, where King Louis XVI had been executed a year earlier. He was executed by guillotine, like the others. [4] Robespierre's fall led to more moderate policies being implemented during the subsequent Thermidorian Reaction.
On 27 July 1793, Robespierre was elected to the Committee of Public Safety, and would remain a member until his death. [5] During the months between September 1793 and July 1794, the Committee's power increased dramatically due to several measures instated during the Terror, such as the Law of Suspects, and the later Law of 14th Frimaire, becoming the de facto executive branch of the Revolutionary Government, under the supervision of the National Convention. [6] [7]
During this time, two different factions rose in opposition to the restructured Revolutionary Government: the left-wing ultra-revolutionaries and the moderate right-wing citra-revolutionaries. [8] The Ultras (also known as Hébertists or Exagérés) gathered around Jacques Hébert, as well as leaders of the Paris Commune and the exagérés of the Cordeliers Club. [9] They pushed for stronger repression measures than those already in place during the Terror, and campaigned for de-Christianization. [10] [8]
The Citras (also known as Dantonists or Indulgents ), formed around Georges Danton as well as the indulgents members of the Cordeliers Club, including Camille Desmoulins. They were strongly opposed to the machinery of the Terror and policies of the Committee of Public Safety. [11] Both these factions were charged as conspirators against the Revolutionary Government and sentenced to the guillotine: the Hébertists on 24 March (4 Germinal) and the Dantonists on 5 April (16 Germinal). [12]
With these purges, the power of the Committee was reaffirmed. The death of Danton and Desmoulins, both formerly friends of Robespierre, left a deep toll on him. This, combined with the increasing demands of both the Committee on Public Safety and the National Convention washed away Robespierre's mental and physical health to the point he was forced to reduce his presence in the Jacobin Club and the National Convention. [13]
Robespierre did not reappear in the National Convention until 7 May (18 Floréal). For this day he had planned a speech addressing the relationship between religion, morality, and the republican principles; and to establish the Cult of the Supreme Being in place of the Cult of Reason promoted by de-Christianizers like the Hébertists. [14] On 21 May 1794 the revolutionary government decided that the Terror would be centralised, with almost all the tribunals in the provinces closed and all the trials held in Paris. [15]
Robespierre led the processions during the Festival in Honor of the Supreme Being celebrated on 8 June (20 Prairial). Although the festival was well accepted by the crowds, Robespierre's prominent position in it was suspicious in the eyes of some deputies, and muttering began about Robespierre's fanaticism and desire for power. [16] Two days after the Festival, Robespierre pushed the National Convention to pass the Law of 22 Prairial drafted by him and Georges Couthon, which accelerated the trial process and extended the death penalty to include a new set of "enemies of the people"; this included those seeking to reestablish the monarchy, interfering with food provisions, discrediting the National Convention, and communicating with foreigners, among others. [17] [18] The fear of assassination drove Robespierre to take this measure: two assassination attempts against Robespierre and Collot d'Herbois had taken place on 23 and 24 May (4–5 Prairial), and the memory of Lepeletier's and Marat's murder still roused feelings in the Convention. [19] The law was not universally accepted in the Convention, and critics of Robespierre and Saint-Just would use it against them during the events of 9 Thermidor. [20]
More opposition came from the Committee of General Security, which had not been consulted over the contents of the Law. The Committee of General Security already felt threatened by the Committee of Public Safety's new ability to issue arrest warrants, as well as by the new Police Bureau, which was created by Saint-Just and was being run by Robespierre in his absence, and whose functions overlapped with that of the Committee of General Security. [21] As payment, they presented a report on the ties between the English enemy and the self-proclaimed "Mother of God", Catherine Théot, who had prophesied that Robespierre was a new Messiah. This was done both with the intention of diminishing Robespierre, and to mock his religious positions and the Cult of The Supreme Being. [22]
On 28 June (10 Messidor), Saint-Just returned from the northern front bearing news: the Revolutionary Army had defeated the Austrian army in Belgium at the Battle of Fleurus, securing the road to Paris. This victory signaled the end of the war against the Austrians, and with it, the end of the Terror government. Robespierre, wishing to get rid of both internal and external enemies, objected to the disbandment of the war government. [23] The following day, in a joint meeting of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, Lazare Carnot allegedly shouted at Saint-Just that both he and Robespierre were "ridiculous dictators". Following this event, Robespierre stopped participating directly in the deliberations of the Committee of Public Safety. [24]
Having abandoned both the Committee and the National Convention, which he stopped frequenting after his presidency ended on 18 June (30 Prairial), [25] Robespierre's absence allowed the breach between him and other members of the revolutionary government to widen. He did not reappear until 23 July (5 Thermidor), when he sat for another joint convention of the two Committees put forward in a failed attempt to resolve their mutual differences. [26]
During his absence from both the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety through the months of June and July (Messidor), Robespierre prepared a speech to be delivered on 26 July (8 Thermidor). [26] He delivered the speech first to the National Convention, and later that same day at the Jacobin Club. [27] In it, he attempted both to defend himself from the rumors and attacks on his person that had been spreading since the start of the Reign of Terror; and to bring light to an anti-revolutionary conspiracy that he believed reached into the Convention and the Governing Committees. [28]
Although he only accused three deputies by name (Pierre-Joseph Cambon, François René Mallarmé, and Dominique-Vincent Ramel-Nogaret), his speech seemed to also incriminate several others. [1] Moreover, it was precisely because he failed to name the condemned that terror spread through the Convention as the deputies started thinking that Robespierre was planning yet another purge like that of the Dantonists and Hébertists. [27]
Later the same day he presented the speech at the Jacobin Club, where it was received with overwhelming support despite some initial opposition. [29] Both Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne and Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, who opposed the printing of the speech, were driven out of the Jacobin Club. [30]
On Sunday 27 July, the weather was stormy. [31] The workers of Paris organized a demonstration against the Maximum on wages. [32] [33] [34] At noon Louis Antoine de Saint-Just started addressing the Convention without having shown his speech to the two Committees. [35] He was interrupted by Tallien, who complained that both Robespierre and Saint-Just had broken with the Committees and now spoke only for themselves; and then by Billaud-Varenne, who related how he and Collot had been driven out of the Jacobin Club the previous day, and who accused Robespierre of conspiracy against the Convention. [36] Robespierre attempted to defend himself, but was silenced by the commotion within the Convention and by the screaming deputies condemning him as a tyrant and conspirator. [37]
The Convention then voted to arrest five deputies – Robespierre, his brother, Couthon, Saint-Just and Le Bas – as well as François Hanriot, and other Robespierrist officials. [38] [36] They were taken before the Committee of General Security and sent to different prisons. [38] None of the city prisons wanted to arrest the deputies and officials, and once a deputation from the Paris Commune, which had risen in support of Robespierre, arrived to the city prisons demanding they refuse to take in the arrested, the prison officials complied. [39] A little after midnight, about fifty people, the five rebellious deputies, Dumas and Hanriot consulted on the first floor of the Hôtel de Ville. [39]
Upon receiving news that Robespierre and his allies had not been imprisoned, the National Convention, which was in permanent session, declared that Robespierre, Saint-Just, and the other deputies were outlaws, and commanded armed forces to enter the Hôtel de Ville. By 2:30 a.m., they had entered the Hôtel de Ville and made the arrest. [40]
There are two conflicting accounts of how Robespierre was wounded: the first one puts forward that Robespierre had tried to kill himself with a pistol, [40] and the second one is that he was shot by Charles-André Meda, one of the officers occupying the Hôtel de Ville. [41] Robespierre was taken out of the Hôtel de Ville with a broken jaw and spent the remainder of the night at the antechamber of the Committee of General Security.
The next day, according the French Revolutionary Calendar a day of rest and festivities, he was brought to the Revolutionary Tribunal around 2 p.m. together with twenty-one Robespierrists (including Hanriot) and condemned to death. [42] In the early evening the convicts, whose average age was 34, were taken in three carts to the Place de la Révolution. A mob screaming curses accompanied the procession. His face still swollen, Robespierre kept his eyes closed. He was the tenth called to the platform and ascended the steps of the scaffold unassisted. [43] When clearing Robespierre's neck, executioner Charles-Henri Sanson tore off the bandage that was holding his shattered jaw in place, causing him to produce an agonised scream until his death. [44] He was guillotined at the same place where King Louis XVI, Danton and Desmoulins had been executed. [42]
Robespierre is one of the few revolutionaries not to have a street named for him in the center of Paris. At the Liberation of Paris, the municipal council (elected on 29 April 1945 with 27 communists, 12 socialists and 4 radicals out of 48 members), decided on 13 April 1946, to rename the Place du Marché-Saint-Honoré "Place Robespierre", a decision approved at the prefectorial level on 8 June. However, in the wake of political changes in 1947, it reverted to its original name on 6 November 1950. Streets in the so-called "Red belt" bear his name, e.g., at Montreuil. There is also a Metro station "Robespierre" on Line 9 (Mairie de Montreuil – Pont de Sèvres), in the commune of Montreuil, named during the era of the Popular Front. There are, however, numerous streets, roads, and squares named for him elsewhere in France.
During the Soviet era, the Russians built two statues of him, one in Leningrad and another in Moscow (the Robespierre Monument). The monument was commissioned by Vladimir Lenin, who referred to Robespierre as a Bolshevik before his time. [45] Due to the poor construction of the monument (it was made of tubes and common concrete), it crumbled within three days of its unveiling and was never replaced. [46] The Robespierre Embankment in Saint-Petersburg across Kresty prison returned to its original name Voskresenskaya Embankment in 2014. [47]
In the Second World War, several French Resistance groups took his name: the Robespierre Company in Pau, commanded by Lieutenant Aurin, alias Maréchal; the Robespierre Battalion in the Rhône, under Captain Laplace; and a maquis formed by Marcel Claeys in the Ain.
The Reign of Terror was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety. While terror was never formally instituted as a legal policy by the Convention, it was more often employed as a concept.
Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac was a French politician, freemason, journalist, and one of the most prominent members of the National Convention, representing the Plain during the French Revolution. The Plain was dominated by the radical Montagnards and Barère as one of their leaders supported the foundation of the Committee of Public Safety in April and of a sans-culottes army in September 1793. According to Francois Buzot, Barère was responsible for the Reign of Terror, like Robespierre and Louis de Saint-Just. In spring 1794 and after the Festival of the Supreme Being, he became an opponent of Maximilien Robespierre and joined the coup, leading to his downfall.
The Committee of Public Safety was a committee of the National Convention which formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the Reign of Terror, a violent phase of the French Revolution. Supplementing the Committee of General Defence, created early January 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was created on 6 April 1793 by the National Convention. It was charged with protecting the new republic against its foreign and domestic enemies, fighting the First Coalition and the Vendée revolt. As a wartime measure, the committee was given broad supervisory and administrative powers over the armed forces, judiciary and legislature, as well as the executive bodies and ministers of the convention.
The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for political crimes.
Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville, also called Fouquier-Tinville and nicknamed posthumously the Provider of the Guillotine was a French lawyer and accusateur public of the Revolutionary Tribunal during the French Revolution and Reign of Terror.
The National Convention was the constituent assembly of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for its first three years during the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly. Created after the great insurrection of 10 August 1792, it was the first French government organized as a republic, abandoning the monarchy altogether. The Convention sat as a single-chamber assembly from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795.
The Mountain was a political group during the French Revolution. Its members, called the Montagnards, sat on the highest benches in the National Convention. The term, first used during a session of the Legislative Assembly, came into general use in 1793. By the summer of 1793, that pair of opposed minority groups divided the National Convention. That year, the Montagnards were influential in what is commonly known as the Reign of Terror.
The sans-culottes were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th-century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime. The word sans-culotte, which is opposed to "aristocrat", seems to have been used for the first time on 28 February 1791 by Jean-Bernard Gauthier de Murnan in a derogatory sense, speaking about a "sans-culottes army". The word came into vogue during the demonstration of 20 June 1792.
Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, also known as Jean Nicolas or by his nicknames, the Righteous Patriot or the Tiger, was a French lawyer and a major figure in the French Revolution. A close associate of Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre, he was one of the most militant members of the Committee of Public Safety, and is often considered a key architect of the Reign of Terror.
In the historiography of the French Revolution, the Thermidorian Reaction is the common term for the period between the ousting of Maximilien Robespierre on 9 Thermidor II, or 27 July 1794, and the inauguration of the French Directory on 2 November 1795.
The Paris Commune during the French Revolution was the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795. Established in the Hôtel de Ville just after the storming of the Bastille, it consisted of 144 delegates elected by the 60 divisions of the city. Before its formal establishment, there had been much popular discontent on the streets of Paris over who represented the true Commune, and who had the right to rule the Parisian people. The first mayor was Jean Sylvain Bailly, a relatively moderate Feuillant who supported constitutional monarchy. He was succeeded in November 1791 by Pétion de Villeneuve after Bailly's unpopular use of the National Guard to disperse a riotous assembly in the Champ de Mars.
Georges Auguste Couthon was a French politician and lawyer known for his service as a deputy in the Legislative Assembly during the French Revolution. Couthon was elected to the Committee of Public Safety on 30 May 1793. Along with his close associate Louis Antoine de Saint-Just and Maximilien Robespierre, he formed an unofficial triumvirate within the committee which wielded power during the Reign of Terror until the three were arrested and executed in 1794 during the Thermidorian Reaction. A Freemason, Couthon played an important role in the development of the Law of 22 Prairial, which was responsible for a sharp increase in the number of executions of accused counter-revolutionaries.
Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, sometimes nicknamed the Archangel of Terror, was a French revolutionary, political philosopher, member and president of the French National Convention, a Jacobin club leader, and a major figure of the French Revolution. As the youngest member elected to the National Convention, Saint-Just belonged to the Mountain faction. A steadfast supporter and close friend of Robespierre, he was swept away in his downfall on 9 Thermidor, Year II.
François Hanriot was a French Sans-culotte leader, street orator, and commander of the National Guard during the French Revolution. He played a vital role in the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 and subsequently the fall of the Girondins. On 27 July 1794 he tried to release Maximilien Robespierre, who was arrested by the Convention. He was executed on the next day – together with Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon – by the rules of the law of 22 Prairial, only verifying his identity at the trial.
Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre, known as Robespierre the Younger, was a French lawyer, politician and the younger brother of French Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre. His political views were similar to his brother's. When his brother was arrested on 9 Thermidor, Robespierre volunteered to be arrested as well, and he was executed by the guillotine along with Maximilien and 20 of his supporters.
The Hébertists, or Exaggerators, were a radical revolutionary political group associated with the populist journalist Jacques Hébert, a member of the Cordeliers club. They came to power during the Reign of Terror and played a significant role in the French Revolution.
The Revolutionary Tribunal was a court instituted by the National Convention during the French Revolution for the trial of political offenders. In October 1793, it became one of the most powerful engines of the period often called the Reign of Terror.
Le Vieux Cordelier was a French journal published by Camille Desmoulins between 5 December 1793 and 3 February 1794 at the instigation of Georges Danton and warned not to exaggerate the revolution. Desmoulins argued that the French Revolution should return to its original ideas en vogue around 10 August 1792.
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer and statesman, widely recognised as one of the most influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution. Robespierre fervently campaigned for the voting rights of all men and their unimpeded admission to the National Guard. Additionally, he advocated the right to petition, the right to bear arms in self-defence, and the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. He was a radical Jacobin leader who came to prominence as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, an administrative body of the First French Republic. His legacy has been heavily influenced by his actual or perceived participation in repression of the Revolution's opponents, but is notable for his progressive views for the time.
According to David P. Jordan: "Any comprehensive bibliography would be virtually impossible. In 1936 Gérard Walter drew up a list of over 10,000 works on Robespierre, and much has been done since." [52]