Other Events

Question 1

Champ de Mars p.t. 1

Answer 1

• Response to the Flight of Varennes
• July 15 1791; NCA decrees the King was abducted, note forged
• July 16 1791; Jacobin petition against royal family
• Splits Jacobin club; Feuillant club forms

Question 2

Champ de Mars p.t. 2

Answer 2

• July 17 1791; people of Paris gather to sign the petitions at the Champ de Mars; 25,000 to 50,000 gathered
• The Paris Commune (led by Bailly), fearful of violence, decreed martial law, NG stepped in
• Bailly and Lafayette led - NG to Champ de Mars
  NG, after being pelted with stones, open fire into crowd; example of revolution violence used on the people
• 30-50 killed, dozens injured
• Significance; turned people against the NCA, Bailly and Lafayette seen as enemies of the people, traitors to the revolution
• NCA blames ‘radicals’ like Marat, Demsoulins, Danton; people do not buy it

Question 3

September Massacre

Answer 3

• Sept 2-6 1792
• Response to the failing war effort
• Prisons in rural France held many suspected counter-revolutionaries (nobles, refractory priests)
• Vigilante groups responded to the perceived threats; approx 1200 people killed (many beaten to death)

Question 4

September Massacre snapshots

Answer 4

• Abbaye Prison; 19 priests hacked to death (under guidance from a local butcher)
• Princesse de Lambelle (friend to Marie Antoinette) arrested after the Tuileries Invasion on Aug 10. Beaten, tortured and mutilated; head cut off, put on a pike and waved outside M.A’s prison window

Question 5

September Massacre significance

Answer 5

• Example of brutality of revolution
• Further radicalisation
• Inaction of legislative assembly shows weakness against popular action (sans-culottes, no longer Bourgeois)
• Increased resistance by foreign powers
• The September Massacres were no more than ‘the custom of those days’ (Caron)

Question 6

Battle of Valmy

Answer 6

• 20 Sept 1792
• Turning point in the rev
• Austrian army hit with disease that allowed France’s armies to make big gains in reclaiming territory

Question 7

1st Tuileries Palace Invasion

Answer 7

• 20 June 1792
• Sans-culottes storm the Tuileries
• Anger over the king’s use of the suspensive veto and early war losses
• King placated crown by listening to their complaint and toasting to the nation
• Seen as an embarrassment for the family

Question 8

2nd Tuileries Palace Invasion

Answer 8

• 10 Aug 1792
• 650 Swiss guard killed, 250 captured
• End of LA, French Monarchy and Const. 1791
• Helps increase divides
• Led directly to NC and indirectly to Terror
• “It had been the willingness of politicians to exploit either the threat of the fact of violence” (Schama)
• “It was the bloodiest day of the revolution so far, but also one of the most decisive” (Doyle)

Question 9

Terror!

Answer 9

• The use of extreme measures, government sanctioned, in order to stabilise the revolution and eradicate external and internal threats
• Military; War Against First Coalition
• Economic; Law of Maximum and General Maxmium
• Local; Noyades at Nantes
• Factional; Expulsion of Girondins
• The Great Terror (June-July 1794)

Question 10

Committee of General Security

Answer 10

• Oct 1792
• To protect from internal enemies
• Send counter revolutionary suspects to the Revolutionary Tribunal
• Revolution tribunal; extra legal tribunal, 3 days trial

Question 11

Committee of Public Safety

Answer 11

• 6 April 1793
• To protect France from external enemies
• 12 men, newly elected each month
• Robespierre argued France needed centralised leadership, not popular violence
• Law of Frimaire (Dec 1793) gave the CPS full executive power; counter-rev is major threat (external enemies)

Question 12

The Great Terror

Answer 12

• Final stage of the terror
• Happens despite counter-rev easing
• 22 Prairial to the 10th Thermidor
• An escalation in the number of deaths
• 1376 deaths in Paris in six weeks (McPhee)

Question 13

Law of 22 Prairial

Answer 13

• 10 June 1794
• Proposed by Couthon, supported by Robespierre
• Any accused of counter-rev to the tribunal
• No defence allowed, only evidence poving guilt needed
• Only sentence is death
• Deputies in NC not exempt
• Led to the end of the Girondins, Herbertists, Dantonists, Robespierre and most radical Jacobins

Question 14

Journee of 12 Germinal

Answer 14

• 12 Germinal III
• Protests by sans-culottes women with no leadership
• Convention called the National Guard
• 4000 arrested, 26 Montagnards as well

Question 15

Journee of 1 Prairial

Answer 15

• 1 Prarial III
• Market women, and workers, invaded the tuileries where the NC was
• National Guard called and protests end
• Rude estimates 10,000 exiled from France