Chapter 17 PART I DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 3 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 3

3 When an educated layperson thinks about the French Revolution, he has in mind primarily the events of 1789, and specifically the Jacobin Republic in the second year of the Republic.The images we see most clearly are Robespierre, the tall, flamboyant Danton, the calm and revolutionary grace of Saint-Just, the rugged Marat, the Committee of Public Safety, the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the guillotine.The moderate revolutionaries between Mirabeau and Lafayette in 1789 and the Jacobin leaders in 1793, whose names have faded from the memory of all non-historians.The Girondists are remembered only as a group, and probably because of politically insignificant but romantic ladies—such as Mme Roland or Charlotte Corday.Apart from specialist circles, few people even know Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, etc.!The image of conservative terror, dictatorship, and hysterical murder has long been haunted, although by 20th-century standards, and indeed by conservative persecution of social revolutions such as those after the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871. The Holocaust, compared with that carried out by the Jacobin dictatorship, was mild: it officially executed 17,000 people in 14 months.Revolutionaries, especially those in France, saw it as the first people's republic and the inspiration for all future uprisings.Although this is an era that cannot be measured by ordinary people's standards.

This is indeed true.But for the moderate French middle classes who supported the Reign of Terror, terror was neither perversion nor fanatical indulgence, but the only effective way to preserve their country.The Jacobin Republic has done this, and it has achieved more than anything else. In June 1793, 60 of the 80 provinces of France revolted against Paris; the armies of the German princes invaded France from the north and east; the British army attacked from the south and west, and the country was in a state of collapse and helplessness. Fourteen months later, all of France was firmly under control, the invaders had been driven out, and French troops had in turn occupied Belgium, beginning a period of almost continuous, easy military victories that would last for 20 years.What's more, by March 1794, an army tripled in size was spending only half of what it had spent in March 1793, and the French currency (more precisely, the currency that had replaced most of it) The value of the currency (assignat) has generally remained quite stable, which is in stark contrast to the past and the future.No wonder that Jeanbon St. Andre, a Jacobin member of the Committee of Public Safety, despite being a staunch republican and later becoming one of Napoleon's most able prefects, looked with contempt on the monarchy. France, as it vacillated in defeat in 1812-13.The Republic of the Second Year of the Republic dealt with a much worse crisis with fewer resources. (“Do you know what kind of government [the victorious government] is? . . . the government of the Convention. The government of the ardent Jacobins. They wear red caps, tweeds, and wooden shoes , live on simple bread and bad beer, and when they are too tired to keep their eyes open and think, they lay down on the floor of the conference hall. These are the men who saved France. Gentlemen, I am one of them One. And here, in the palace of the Emperor, where I am about to enter, I am proud of that fact." J. Savant, Les Prefets de Napoleon, 1958, pp. 111-2.)

For such people, as indeed for the Convention, which had regained control virtually of its entire heroic period, the choice at hand was obvious: the Reign of Terror, despite all its advantages from the point of view of the middle classes If there are disadvantages, we have to sit back and watch the revolution disintegrate, the nation disintegrate (isn’t Poland the evidence?) and the country disappear.Had it not been for the severe economic crisis in France, it is likely that most of them would have preferred a less draconian system and certainly a less tightly controlled economy.The downfall of Robespierre led to a runaway economy and the spread of corruption and fraud, which then culminated in rapid inflation and national bankruptcy in 1797.But even in the narrowest sense, the future of the French middle class rests on a unified, strongly centralized nation-state.After all, will the French Revolution, which actually coined the words "country" and "patriotism" in the modern sense, abandon its "great country"?

The first task of the Jacobin system was to mobilize the population against the disaffected elements of the Girondins and local aristocrats, and to sustain the mobilized popular support for the Sansculottes, which demanded certain things to fight the Revolutionary War— General conscription (the 'levee en masse', soldiers for all), terror against 'traitors' and general price controls ('price ceilings') - generally in line with Jacobin's ideas, although they The other requirements later proved to be a bit cumbersome.A new constitution, now somewhat radicalized and delayed by the Girondins, was promulgated.Under this solemn but customary document, the people were given universal suffrage, the right to rise, to work, or to be supported, and, most significantly, it formally declared that the welfare of the people as a whole was the goal of the government and that the Rights are not only attainable, but enforceable.It was the first democratic constitution promulgated by a modern state.More specifically, the Jacobins abolished without compensation all remaining feudal rights, improved the opportunities for small buyers to buy the confiscated lands of the exiles, and, a few months later, abolished slavery in the French colonies, whose The purpose is to encourage the blacks of San Domingo (San Domingo (now Haiti)) to fight for the republic and oppose the British.These measures had far-reaching consequences, and in the Americas they helped to create the first leaders of the independent revolution, like Toussaini-Louverture (1749-1803, leader of the slave revolt in Haiti). (The failure of Napoleonic France to recapture Haiti was one of the main reasons for France's decision to end the remnants of its American empire in its entirety, which were sold to the United States through the Louisiana Purchase [1803]. Thus, Jacob A further consequence of the spread of Binism to the Americas was to turn America into a great continental power.) In France they built impregnable fortresses for the small and middle peasants, small artisans and shopkeepers, economically backward , but passionately dedicated to the revolution and the republic.From then on, these people dominated village life.An important condition for accelerating economic development—the capitalization of agriculture and small business—slowed to a crawl, thus slowing down urbanization, expanding domestic markets, and the growth of the working class, which, by the way, also affected The subsequent development of the proletarian revolution.Big business and the labor movement were for a long time destined to be a French minority phenomenon, an island surrounded by a sea of ​​corner grocers, smallholders and café owners (see Chapter 9).

The core of the new government, as it did, represented an alliance of Jacobins and sans-culottes, and thus turned sharply to the left.This was reflected in the reestablished Committee of Public Safety, which soon became France's de facto war cabinet.It lost Danton, a powerful, dissolute, perhaps corrupt, but brilliantly gifted, much milder revolutionary than he appeared (he was minister in the last king's government), but kept Robespierre , the latter becoming the most influential member of the committee.Few historians can remain indifferent to this dandy, bloodless, slightly dogmatic fanatical lawyer who still embodies the dreadful and glorious Second Year of the Republic, an era in which no one is impartial.Robespierre was not a pleasant man, and even those who thought he was right are now inclined to the exactness and harshness exuded by the young Saint-Just.Robespierre was not a great man, and he often appeared narrow-minded.But he was the only adored individual (other than Napoleon) produced by the Revolution.This is because for him, as for history, the Jacobin republic is not a strategy for winning wars, but an ideal: a government of justice and morality, dignified and fearful, in which all good people stand before the state. Equality, traitors are punished by the people.Jean Jacques Rousseau and his pure faith in justice empowered him.He had no formal dictatorial powers or even office, since he was merely a member of the Committee of Public Safety, which was only a subcommittee of the Convention, the most powerful, though never a plenipotentiary, subcommittee.His power was that of the people, of the people of Paris; his terror was theirs.When they abandoned him, there was nothing but downfall for him.

The tragedy shared by Robespierre and the Jacobins was that they themselves were forced to alienate such support.The Jacobin regime was an alliance of the middle class and the working masses, but for the Jacobins of the middle class, the concessions to the sans-culottes were tolerable only because they kept the attachment of the masses to the system within The bourgeoisie would not be threatened; and within the coalition, the Jacobins of the middle class played a decisive role.The urgency of war compelled any government to centralize power and strengthen law and order, and this must be done at the expense of local direct democracy with the freedom of clubs and sections, and free contested elections where temporary voluntary militias and sansculottes thrive.Such a process strengthened Jacobins such as Saint-Just at the expense of sans-culottes such as Hébert; and the same process strengthened the Communists during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 at the expense of Sansculottes such as Hébert. At the expense of the anarchists.By 1794, the government and polity were solid and functioning through the Central Committee of Public Safety or the National Convention (through envoys), and locally through large groups of Jacobin officers, bureaucrats, and local party organizations.In the end, the economic needs of the war lost popular support.In the towns, price controls and rationing benefited the masses; in the country, the systematic collection of food (which was first defended by the urban sansculottes) alienated the peasantry.

Consequently, the masses regressed into a disaffected, bewildered, complaining passivity, especially after the trial and execution of the Hébertists, the most outspoken spokesmen of the sans-culottes.At the same time, the more moderate supporters were shocked by the right-wing opposition led by Danton.This faction provides refuge for a large number of swindlers, speculators, black-market speculators, and others who accumulate capital through malpractice, and Danton himself embodies the immoral, Falstaffian (one of Shakespeare's plays). Fat, jovial, funny characters) casually loving, casually spending characters.This phenomenon is always the first to emerge in social revolutions, and will not stop until strict Puritanism prevails.The historical Dantons were always beaten by the Robespierres (or by those who pretended to act like Robespierres), because of their extreme narrow devotion, they always succeeded where the bohemian couldn't win.However, if Robespierre wins over moderates in eliminating corruption, which is good for war after all, but in further restricting freedom and restricting making money, it will cause more businessmen to panic.In the end, not many people liked the somewhat absurd ideological excursions of the period - organized secessionist movements (due to sans-culotte fanaticism), and Robespierre's new civil religion of worshiping a Supreme Being, which had a whole Rituals, intended to combat atheists and implement the teachings of the theologian Jean-Jacques.

By April 1794, both left and right had been guillotined, and Robespierre was politically isolated.Only the wartime crisis remained to sustain him in power. At the end of June 1794, when the new army of the Republic proved its steadfastness by defeating the Austrian army at Fleurus and occupying Belgium, the end of Robespierre was at hand.On 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794), the National Convention overthrew Robespierre.He, Saint-Just, and Couthon were executed the next day, and a few days later 87 members of the Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety were also executed.