Girondins

Girondins
La Gironde
Leader Jacques Pierre Brissot
Founded September 6, 1792 (1792-09-06)
Dissolved October 24, 1793 (1793-10-24)
Headquarters Tuileries Palace, Paris
Newspaper Patriote français
Le Courrier de Provence
La chronique de Paris
Political club Jacobin Club
Ideology Liberalism (French)
Internal factions:
 • Laissez-faire
 • Abolitionism
 • Federalism
Political position Centre-left[1]
Politics of France
Political parties
Elections

The Girondins or Girondists were members of the Gironde, a political group operating in France from 1791 to 1795 during the French Revolution. The Girondins were active within the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. They were part of the Jacobin movement, though not every Girondin was a member of the Jacobin Club.

The Girondins campaigned for the end of the monarchy but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution. They came into conflict with The Mountain (Montagnards), a radical faction within the Jacobin Club. This conflict eventually led to the fall of the Girondins and their mass execution, the beginning of the Reign of Terror. The Girondins comprised a group of loosely affiliated individuals rather than an organized political party, and the name was at first informally applied because the most prominent exponents of their point of view were deputies to the Legislative Assembly from the department of Gironde in southwest France. The term became standard with Lamartine's history in 1847.[2]

Girondin leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot proposed an ambitious military plan to spread the Revolution—one that Napoleon later achieved. He called on the Convention to dominate Western Europe by conquering the Rhineland, Poland, and Holland, with a goal of creating a protective ring of satellite republics in Britain, Spain and Italy by 1795. The Girondins were thus the war party in 1792–93. Other prominent Girondins included Jean Marie Roland and his wife Madame Roland. They had an ally in the English-born, sometime American, activist Thomas Paine. Brissot and Madame Roland were executed and Jean Roland (who had gone into hiding) committed suicide when he learned what had transpired. Paine was arrested and imprisoned but narrowly escaped execution. The famous painting Death of Marat depicts the killing of the fiery radical journalist (and denouncer of the Girondins) Jean-Paul Marat by the Girondin sympathizer Charlotte Corday, who was executed.

History

Rise

Madame Roland.

Twelve deputies represented the départment of the Gironde; six men sat in both the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention for this départment. These were five lawyers: Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud, Marguerite Élie Guadet, Armand Gensonné, Jean Antoine Laffargue de Grangeneuve and Jean Jay (also a Protestant pastor), and one tradesman Jean François Ducos. In the Legislative Assembly, they represented a compact body of opinion which, though not as yet definitely republican (i.e. against the monarchy), was considerably more "advanced" than the moderate royalism of the majority of the Parisian deputies.

A group of deputies from elsewhere became associated with these views, most notably the Marquis de Condorcet, Claude Fauchet, Marc David Lasource, Maximin Isnard, the Comte de Kersaint, Henri Larivière, and, above all, Jacques Pierre Brissot, Jean Marie Roland and Jérôme Pétion, elected mayor of Paris in succession to Jean Sylvain Bailly on 16 November 1791.

Madame Roland, whose salon became their gathering-place, had a powerful influence on the spirit and policy of the Girondins. The party cohesion they possessed was connected to the energy of Brissot, who came to be regarded as their mouthpiece in the Assembly and in the Jacobin Club; hence the name "Brissotins". The group was identified by its enemies at the start of the National Convention (20 September 1792). "Brissotins" and "Girondins" were terms of opprobrium used by their enemies in a separate faction of the Jacobin Club, who freely denounced them as enemies of democracy.

Foreign policy

In the Legislative Assembly, the Girondins represented the principle of democratic revolution within and of patriotic defiance to the European powers. They supported an aggressive foreign policy. Brissot proposed an ambitious military plan to spread the Revolution—one that Napoleon later achieved.[3] He called on the Convention to dominate Western Europe by conquering the Rhineland, Poland, and Holland, with a goal of creating a protective ring of satellite republics in Britain, Spain and Italy by 1795. The Girondins called for war against Austria, arguing it would rally patriots around the Revolution, liberate oppressed peoples from despotism, and test the loyalty of King Louis XVI. The Girondins were thus the war party in 1792-93.[4]

Montagnards versus Girondins

The Girondins in the La Force Prison after their arrest. Woodcut from 1845.

Girondins at first dominated the Jacobin Club, where Brissot's influence had not yet been ousted by Robespierre, and they did not hesitate to use this advantage to stir up popular passion and intimidate those who sought to stay the progress of the Revolution. They compelled the king in 1792 to choose a ministry composed of their partisans—among them Roland, Charles François Dumouriez,[4] Étienne Clavière and Joseph Marie Servan de Gerbey; and they forced the declaration of war against Habsburg Austria. In all this there was no apparent line of cleavage between La Gironde and The Mountain. Montagnards and Girondins alike were fundamentally opposed to the monarchy; both were democrats as well as republicans; both were prepared to appeal to force in order to realise their ideals. Despite being accused of wanting to weaken the central government ("federalism"), the Girondins desired as little as the Montagnards to break up the unity of France.[5] From the first the leaders of the two parties stood in avowed opposition, in the Jacobin Club as in the Assembly.

Temperament largely accounts for the party dividing line. The Girondins were doctrinaires and theorists rather than men of action. They initially encouraged the armed petitions but then were dismayed when this led to the émeute (riot) of June 20. Jean Marie Roland is typical of their spirit, turning the Ministry of the Exterior into a publishing office for tracts on the civic virtues, while in the provinces riotous mobs were burning the châteaux unchecked. Girondins did not share the ferocious fanaticism or the ruthless opportunism of the future Montagnard organisers of the Reign of Terror. As the Revolution developed, the Girondins often found themselves opposing its results; the overthrow of the monarchy on 10 August 1792 and the September Massacres of 1792 occurred while they still nominally controlled the government, but the Girondins tried to distance themselves from the results of the September massacre.

With the advent of the National Convention (22 September 1792), the core of like-minded deputies from the Gironde expanded, as Boyer-Fonfrède, Lacaze, and Bergoeing joined five of the six stalwarts of the Legislative Assembly (Jean Jay, the Protestant pastor, having drifted to the Montagnard faction). Their numbers were increased by the return to national politics by former National Constituent Assembly deputies such as Rabaut Saint-Étienne, Pétion, and Kervélégan, as well as some newcomers as the writer Thomas Paine, and popular journalist Jean Louis Carra.

Decline and fall

The Girondins proposed suspending the king and summoning of the National Convention; but they had agreed not to overthrow the monarchy until Louis XVI had become impervious to their counsels. Once the republic was established, they were anxious to stop the revolutionary movement which they had helped to set in motion. Girondins and historian Pierre Claude François Daunou argues in his Mémoires that the Girondins were too cultivated and too polished to retain their popularity for long in times of disturbance, and so they were the more inclined to work for the establishment of order, which would mean the guarantee of their own power. The Girondins, who had been the radicals of the Legislative Assembly (1791–1792), became the conservatives of the Convention (1792–1795).[6]

The revolution had failed to deliver the immediate gains that had been promised, and this made it difficult for the Girondins to easily draw it to a close in the minds of the public. Moreover, the Septembriseurs (who had called for blood in the September Massacres, such as Robespierre, Danton, Marat and their lesser allies) realised that not only their influence but their safety depended on keeping the Revolution alive. Robespierre, who hated the Girondins, had proposed to include them in the proscription lists of September 1792; The Mountain Club to a man desired their overthrow.

A group including some Girondins prepared a draft constitution, known as the Girondin constitutional project, which was presented to the National Convention in early 1793. Thomas Paine was one of the signers of this proposal.

The crisis came in March 1793. The Girondins, who had a majority in the Convention, controlled the executive council and filled the ministries, believed themselves invincible. Their orators had no serious rivals in the hostile camp; their system was established in the purest reason. But the Montagnards made up by their fanatical, or desperate, energy and boldness for what they lacked in talent or in numbers. This was especially fruitful because while the largest groups in the convention were the Jacobins and Brissotins, uncommitted delegates accounted for almost half the total number. The more radical Jacobins' rhetoric had behind them the revolutionary Commune, the Sections (mass assemblies in districts) and the National Guard of Paris, and they had gained control of the Jacobin club, where Brissot, absorbed in departmental work, had been superseded by Robespierre. At the trial of Louis XVI, most Girondins had voted for the "appeal to the people", and so laid themselves open to the charge of "royalism"; they denounced the domination of Paris and summoned provincial levies to their aid, and so fell under suspicion of "federalism." They strengthened the revolutionary Commune by first decreeing its abolition but withdrawing the decree at the first sign of popular opposition.

In the suspicious temper of the times, this vacillating policy was doubly fatal. Marat never ceased his denunciations of the faction by which France was being betrayed to her ruin, and his cry of Nous sommes trahis! ("We are betrayed!") was re-echoed from group to group in the streets of Paris.[7]

The growing hostility of Paris to the Girondins received a fateful demonstration by the election, on 15 February 1793, of the bitter ex-GirondinJean-Nicolas Pache to the mayoralty. Pache had twice been minister of war in the Girondins government; but his incompetence had laid him open to strong criticism, and on 4 February 1793 he had been replaced as minister of war by a vote of the Convention. This was enough to secure him the votes of the Paris electors when he was elected mayor ten days later. The Mountain was strengthened by the accession of a significant ally whose one idea was to use his new power to avenge himself on his former colleagues. Mayor Pache, with procureur of the Commune Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, and deputy procurer Jacques René Hébert, controlled the armed militias of the 48 revolutionary Sections of Paris, and prepared to turn this weapon against the Convention.[8] The abortive émeute of 10 March warned the Girondins of their danger, and they responded with defensive moves including the appointment of the Commission of Twelve on 18 May, the arrest of Marat and Hébert, and other precautionary measures.[9] They unintentionally increased the prestige of their most vocal and bitter critic, Marat, by prosecuting him before the Revolutionary Tribunal, where his acquittal was a foregone conclusion (April, 1793). The ominous threat by Girondin leader Maximin Isnard, uttered on 25 May, to "march France upon Paris" was instead met by Paris marching hastily upon the Convention. The Girondins role in the government was undermined by the popular uprisings of 27 and 31 May, and, finally, on 2 June 1793, François Hanriot, head of the Paris National Guards, purged the Convention of the Girondins. (see Days of 31 May and 2 June 1793).

Reign of Terror

The list drawn up by Commandant-General of the Parisian National Guard, François Hanriot (with help from Marat), and endorsed by a decree of the intimidated Convention, included 22 Girondins deputies and 10 of the 12 members of the Commission of Twelve, who were ordered to be detained at their lodgings "under the safeguard of the people". Some submitted, among them Gensonné, Guadet, Vergniaud, Pétion, Birotteau and Boyer-Fonfrède. Others, including Brissot, Louvet, Buzot, Lasource, Grangeneuve, Larivière and Bergoeing, escaped from Paris and, joined later by Guadet, Pétion and Birotteau, set to work to organise a movement of the provinces against the capital. This attempt to stir up civil war determined the wavering and frightened Convention. On 13 June 1793, it voted that the city of Paris had deserved well of the country, and ordered the imprisonment of the detained deputies, the filling up of their places in the Assembly by their suppleants, and the initiation of vigorous measures against the movement in the provinces. The assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday (13 July 1793) only served to increase the unpopularity of the Girondins and to seal their fate.[10]

The excuse for the Terror that followed was the imminent peril of France, menaced on the east by the advance of the armies of the First Coalition (Austria, Prussia and Great Britain), on the west by the Royalist insurrection of La Vendée, and the need for preventing at all costs the outbreak of another civil war. On 28 July 1793, a decree of the Convention proscribed 21 deputies as traitors and enemies of their country. They were Antiboul, Boilleau the younger, Boyer-Fonfrêde, Brissot, Carra, Duchastel, the younger Ducos, Dufriche de Valazé, Duprat, Fauchet, Gardien, Gensonné, Lacaze, Lasource, Lauze-Deperret, Lehardi, Lesterpt-Beauvais, the elder Minvielle, Sillery, Vergniaud and Viger, of whom five were deputies from the Gironde. Those were sent to trial. Another 39 were included in the final acte d'accusation, accepted by the Convention on 24 October 1793, which stated the crimes for which they were to be tried as their perfidious ambition, their hatred of Paris, their "federalism" and, above all, their responsibility for the attempt of their escaped colleagues to provoke civil war.[11][12]

Trial of Girondins (1793)

Execution of the Girondins, woodcut from 1862

The trial of the 21, began before the Revolutionary Tribunal on 24 October 1793. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. On 31 October, they were borne to the guillotine. It took 36 minutes to cut off 22 heads.[13]

Of those who escaped to the provinces, after wandering about singly or in groups, most were either captured and executed or committed suicide. They included Barbaroux, Buzot, Condorcet, Grangeneuve, Guadet, Kersaint, Pétion, Rabaut de Saint-Etienne and Rebecqui. Roland had killed himself at Rouen on 15 November 1793, a week after the execution of his wife. A very few escaped, including Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai, whose Mémoires give a detailed picture of the sufferings of the fugitives.[14]

Girondins as martyrs

The survivors of the party made an effort to re-enter the Convention after the fall of Robespierre on 27 July 1794, but it was not until 5 March 1795 that they were formally reinstated. On October 3 of the same year (11 Vendémiaire, year IV) a solemn fête in honour of the Girondins "martyrs of liberty" was celebrated in the Convention.[15]

In her autobiography, Madame Roland reshapes her historical image by stressing the popular connection between sacrifice and female virtue. Her Mémoires de Madame Roland (1795) was written from prison where she was held as a Girondin sympathizer. It covers her work for the Girondins while her husband Jean-Marie Roland was Interior Minister. The book echoes such popular novels as Rousseau's Julie or the New Héloise by linking her feminine virtue and motherhood to her sacrifice in a cycle of suffering and consolation. Roland says her mother's death was the impetus for her "odyssey from virtuous daughter to revolutionary heroine" as it introduced her to death and sacrifice - with the ultimate sacrifice of her own life for her political beliefs. She helped her husband escape, but she was executed on 8 November 1793. A week later he committed suicide.[16]

Ideology

The Gironde was the expression of the lesser nobility, landowners and the bourgeoisie. Because its members were mainly from Bordeaux, in the Gironde, the group had a federalist inspiration.

Influenced by liberalism (and the concept of liberal democracy, human rights and Montesquieu's separation of powers), the Girondins initially supported the constitutional monarchy. But after the "Flight to Varennes", when Louis XVI tried to flee Paris in order to start a counter-revolution, the Girondins became mostly republicans, with a royalist minority.

In its early times of government, the Gironde supported a free market and aggressive foreign policies, as well as Napoleone Bonaparte's wars. The Gironde was also one of first supporters of abolitionism in France.

On the political spectrum, the Girondins can be placed in the centre-left because there were no right-wing groups during the French First Republic, but because of their position in the National Convention, they are usually identified as right-wing.

Prominent members

Electoral results

Legislative Assembly
Election year # of
overall votes		 % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 +/– Leader
1791 unknown (#3) unknown
136 / 745
–
Jacques Pierre Brissot
National Convention
Election year # of
overall votes		 % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 +/– Leader
1792 unknown (#3) unknown
160 / 749
–
Jacques Pierre Brissot

References

  1. ↑ Like the moderate group in the National Convention, the Girondins are described as "rightist", but in fact the rightists were the royalist, out from the Convention.
  2. ↑ J. F. Bosher, The French Revolution (1989) pp 185-91
  3. ↑ Thomas Lalevée, « National Pride and Republican grandezza: Brissot’s New Language for International Politics in the French Revolution », French History and Civilisation (Vol. 6), 2015, pp. 66-82.
  4. 1 2 Brace, Richard Munthe (April 1951). "General Dumouriez and the Girondins 1792–1793". The American Historical Review 56 (3): 493–509. doi:10.2307/1848434.
  5. ↑ Bill Edmonds, "'Federalism' and Urban Revolt in France in 1793," Journal of Modern History (1983) 55#1 pp 22-53,
  6. ↑ Robert J. Alderson (2008). This Bright Era of Happy Revolutions: French Consul Michel-Ange-Bernard Mangourit and International Republicanism in Charleston, 1792–1794. U. of South Carolina Press. p. 9.
  7. ↑ Jack Fruchtman, Jr. (1996). Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom. p. 303.
  8. ↑ Bette W. Oliver (2009). Orphans on the Earth: Girondin Fugitives from the Terror, 1793-94. Lexington Books. pp. 55–56.
  9. ↑ "History of the Girondists" Page 27, 1848
  10. ↑ Marisa Linton (2013). Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution. Oxford U.P. pp. 174–75.
  11. ↑ D.M.G. Sutherland, France 1789–1815. Revolution and Counter-Revolution (2nd ed. 2003) ch 5
  12. ↑ Simon Schama, Citizens (1989) ch 18
  13. ↑ Simon Schama, Citizens (1989) pp 803-5
  14. ↑ Oliver, Orphans on the Earth: Girondin Fugitives from the Terror, 1793-94
  15. ↑ Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (2005). Recollections of a Provincial Past. Oxford UP. p. 274.
  16. ↑ Lesley H. Walker, "Sweet and Consoling Virtue: The Memoirs of Madame Roland," Eighteenth-Century Studies (2001) 34#3 pp 403-19

Sources

External links

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See also

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