August 10, 1792: The "Second" French Revolution

The Declaration of Pillnitz, far from cowing the French, enraged them against all the crowned heads of Europe. It gave political advantage to the Jacobins, know as Girondins. These included the philosophe Condorcet, the humanitarian lawyer Brissot, and the civil servant Roland and his more famous wife, Mme. Roland, whose house became the headquarters for the group.  They attracted many foreigners: Thomas Paine and James Watt. The Girondins became the party of international revolution. They declared that the revolution in France could never be secure until it spread to the world. The revolutionary army of France should unite with revolutionaries worldwide.  In France, all who dreaded the return of the "Old Regime" listened to the Girondins.

April 20, 1792 the Assembly declared war on the Austrian monarchy.

The war intensified the existing unrest of the peasants and urban workers who felt that the the Legislative Assembly had served the interests of the propertied. They also were affected by economic inflation. The émigrés had taken gold out of France. The working class rallied to the Revolution but not to the government.

By the summer of 1792, Prussia had joined with Austria and both nations were poised to invade France. Austria and Prussia issued the Brunswick Manifesto of July 25th- declaring that if any harm befell the French king and queen, Austro-Prussian forces, upon arrival in Partis, would exact the most severe retribution upon the inhabitants of the city.

The masses of French people, guided by bourgeois Jacobin leaders, notably Robespierre, Danton, and the vitriolic journalist, Marat, burst out in patriotic excitement. They turned against the king because he was identified with the powers against them. Feelings ran high that summer. Recruits streamed into the city. On group brought a new marching song, The Marseillaise, a fierce call to war upon tyranny.

August 10, 1792

The working class quarters of the city rose in revolt, supported by recruits from Marseilles and elsewhere. They stormed the Tuileries against resistance from the Swiss Guard, many of whom were massacred. They seized and imprisoned the king and the royal family.

A revolutionary government, or "Commune" was set up in Paris. Usurping the powers of the Legislative Assembly, it forced the abrogation of the constitution, and the election, by universal male-hood suffrage, of a Constitutional Convention that was to govern France and prepare for a more democratic constitution, the same as they knew the Americans had done to form their government in 1787.

Meanwhile- hysteria, anarchy, and terror reigned in Paris. Some 1,100 counter-revolutionaries were dragged from their cells in city prisons and killed after mock trials. These are know as the "September Massacres."

1792-1795: The Terror

The National Convention meet on September 20, 1792; it was to sit for three years. It immediately proclaimed the Year One of the French Republic. Also on that day the French army won a victory that turned back the Prussian army from Paris. The French soon occupied the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and Savoy, which belonged to Austria, and other German towns along the left bank of the Rhine. Revolutionary sympathizers in these town asked for French help and the National Convention decreed assistance to, "all people wishing to recover their liberty.

The National Convention  ordered French General to confiscate, in these areas,  government and church property, abolish tithes, seigniorial rights and set up provisional governments.

The British and the Dutch prepared to resist. Prime Minister Pitt, declaring that the French could have any political regime they wished, said that England would not tolerate French occupation of Belgium. The British and Dutch began conversations with the Prussians and the Austrians. France declared war on the British and the Dutch.

In the National Convention all the members were Jacobins, but the Jacobins were again splintering. The Girondins were no longer the most advanced revolutionary group. A new group appeared, the Montagnards, the "Mountain". The "Mountain" were from districts within city of Paris and most owed their political strength to the most radical elements in the city. These popular revolutionists, outside the convention called themselves "sansculottes". They wore the working class men's long trousers, not the silk stockings and culottes of the upper class.

For two years their militancy had pushed the revolution forward. The "sansculottes" feared the National Convention  would be too moderate.  They demanded equality. They denounced the king for collusion with the Austrian enemy. They denounced the foreign powers that would presume to interfere in the revolution. They demanded direct control through their communes.

The Girondins in the National Convention began to dismiss the  "Mountain". as anarchists. 

December 1792 the National Convention put Louis XVI on trail for treason.

January 1793

Russia and Prussia came to an agreement, each appropriating a portion of Poland in the second partition.

January 1 the Convention pronounced Louis XVI guilty of treason, but on the next day, out of 721deputies present, only 361 voted for immediate execution, a majority of 1. Louis was taken immediately to the guillotine. The 361 deputies were henceforth branded as regicides; never could they allow, in safety to themselves, a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France.

All who still wanted more from the revolution looked to the Montagnards, the "Mountain" wing of the Jacobin party

April 1793

 General Dumouriez of the National Convention defected to Austria. From the Sansculottes the cry, "We are betrayed!" The denounced the bourgeoisie as profiteers and exploiters of the people. While the Girondins resisted the Montagnards, the "Mountain" sided with the Sansculottes as a maneuver to get rid of the Girondins.

May 31, 1793

The Paris Commune, under Sansculottes pressure, invaded the Convention and arrested the Girondins. Other Girondins fled to the provinces, including Condorcet, who, while hiding, and before his death, wrote his famous book on the progress of the Human Mind.

The Montagnards, the "Mountain" now ruled the Convention. They had little control outside Paris.  And ten more militant voices were now challenging for control of the Convention, they were the Enrages. Maximilien Robespierre was one of the leaders. Was he a blood thirty fanatic or an idealist? Historians do not agree.

1793-1794  The Program of the Convention: The Terror

To conduct the government, the Convention granted wide powers to a Committee of public Safety. Robespierre was an influential member. It was decided that the Convention would not yield to the Paris Commune and other agencies of direct revolutionary action. To suppress the "counterrevolution", the Convention and the Committee of public safety set up which is popularly known as The Reign of Terror.  Revolutionary Courts were instituted as an alternative to the lynch law of the September massacres. A Committee of General Security created a kind of supreme political police. The Terror struck those who were in league against the Republic, and at those who were merely suspected of hostile activities. Its victims ranged from Marie Antoinette and other royalists to the former revolutionary colleagues of the Mountain, the Girondin leaders; and before the year 1793-1794 was over, some of the old Jacobins of the Mountain who had helped to inaugurate the program also went to the guillotine.

About 40,000 people died in France at the height of the revolution. About 8% of its victims were nobles; 14% bourgeois, 6% clergy, while no less than 70% were peasants and labors.