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Home , The Mountain

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commitment to the Revolution with its "con- entered on the Austrian side. Thousands of stitutional" church. The revolutionarSr gorr French aristocrats, including two-thirds of ernrnent lost many supporters by passing the army officer corps, had already emi- laws against the clergy who refused the oath grated, including both the king's brothers, and by forcing them into exile, deporting and they were gathering along 's east- them forcibly, or executing lJrem as traitors. ern border in expectation ofjoining a counter- Riots and demonstrations led by women army. greeted many of t-he oath-taking priests who When fighting broke out in 1792, all the showed up to replace those who refused. powers expected a brief and relatively con- tained war-. Instead, it would continue despite brief intermptions for the nexl twenty-three The End of Monarchy years. War had an immediate radicalizing The reorganization of the Catholic church effect on French politics. When the Frrench offended l,ouis XVI, who was reluctant to armies proved woefully unprepared for battle, recognize the new limits on his powers. On the authority of the Legislative Assembly June 20, 179 1, the royal family escaped in came under fire. In June 1792, an angry crowd disguise from the in invaded the hall of the Assembly in Paris and fled to the eastern border of France, and threatened the royal famiìy. In response, where they hoped to gather support from Lafayette left his command on the eastern Austrian emperor Leopold II, the brother of front and came to Paris to insist on punish- Marie-Antoinette. The plans went awry when ing the demonstlators. His appearance only a postmaster recognized the king from his fueled distrust of the army commanders, portrait on the new French money, and the which increased to a fever pitch when the royal family was arrested at Varennes, forty Prussians crossed the border and advanced miles from the Austrian Netherlands border. on Pa¡is. The Pmssian commander, the duke The NationalAssembly tried to depict this in- of Brunswick, issued a manifesto-the Bmns- cident as a kidnapping, but the "flight to wick Manifesto-announcing that Paris worild Varennes" touched off demonstrations in be totally destroyed if ihe royal family suffered Paris against the roya-l family, whom some any violence. now regarded as traitors. Cartoons circu- lated depicting the royal family as animals The Second Revolution of August 10, being returned "to the stable." L792. The ordinary people of Paris did not passively await their fate. Known as sans- lVar with Austria and Prussia. The Con- culottes (literally, "without breeches")- stitution, ftnatly completed in 1791, provided because men who worked with their hands for the immediate election of the new [,eg- wore long trousers rather than the knee islative Assembly. In a rare act of self-denial, breeches of ihe upper classes-they had fol- the deputies of the National Assembly de- lowed every twist and turn in revolutionary clared themselves ineiigible for the new As- fortunes. Political clubs had multiplied since sembly. Those who had experienced the ttre founding in 1789 of the first and most in- Revolution firsthand now departed from fluential of them, the Club, named 1he scene, opening the door to men with Little after the former monastery in Paris where the previous experience in national politics. The club first met. The Jacobin Club soon be- status of the king might have remained came part of a national political network uncertain if wa¡ had not intervened, but by linking all the major towns and cities. The early 1792 everyone seemed intent on war sans-culottes had lheir own clubs to express with Austria. Louis and Marie-Antoinette their own political interests. Every local dis- hoped that war would lead to the definitive trict in Paris had its clut¡, where men and defeat of the Revolution, whereas the deputies women listened to the news of the day and who favored a republic believed that war discussed their options. would reveal the king's treachery and lead Faced with the threat of military retalia- to his downfall. On April 21, 1792, Louis de- tion and frustrated with the inaction of the clared war on Austria. Pmssia immediately Legislative Assembly, on August LO, 1792, ij7-,6;i¡¿..;ij!,ürnâ',.',iu.t.'Ç¡i¡c*,r',..ô¡+-â.1úii:ory 1 789-1 800

one of the queen's favorites, was hacked to pieces and her muti- lated body displayed beneath the windows where the royal family was kept under guard. These "" showed the da¡k side of popular revolution, in which the com- mon people demanded instant revenge on supposed enemies and conspirators.

Republican Rivals and the Exe- cution of the King. The Na- tional Convention faced a dire situation. It needed to write a new constitution for the republic while fighting awarwül orternal enemies and confronting in- creasing resistance at home. The The Execution of King Louis XVI Revolution had divided the popu- Louis )0/l was executed by order of the on January 21, 1793. lation: for some, it had not gone ln this print, the executioner shows the severed head to the crowd, which stands in orderly silence around the scaffold. Note the empty pedestal on the right. lt had held far enough toward providing a statue of Louis XV after whom the square was named. The renamed food, land, and retribution against it the Square of the Revolution and later put a statue of Liberty on the pedestal. rhe enemies; for others, it had gone Art Arch ive/M u sée Co rn avalet, Po ris/D a g I i O rti. too far by dismantJing the church and the monarchy. The French people had never known any the sals-culottes organized an insurrection government other tha¡r monarchy. Only half and atbacked theTujleries palace, the residence the population could read and write at even of the king. The king ald his family had to a basic level. In this situation, slrmbolic ac- seek refuge in the meeting room of the tÆgis- tions became very important. Any public lativeAssembly, where the füghtened deputies sign of monarchy was at risk, and revolu- ordered new elections. They abolished the prop- tionaries soon pulled down statues of kings erty qualifications for voting required by the and burned reminders of the former regime. constitution of 179 1; the voters chose the Na- The fate of Louis XVI and the future di- tiona-l Convention by universal male suffrage. rection of the republic divided the deputies When it met, the National Convention elected to the National Convention. Most of abolished the monarchy and on September the deputies were middle-class lawyers and 22, 1792, established the first republic in professionals who had developed their a¡dent French history. The republic would answer republican beliefs in the network of Jacobin only to the people, not to any royal author- Clubs. After the fall of the monarchy inAugust iLy. I-afayette and other liberal aristocrats 1792, however, the divided into who had supported the constitutional two factions. The Girondinst (named after a monarchy fled into exile. Violence soon ex- department in southwestern France, the ploded again when early in September 1792 Gironde, which provided some of its leading the Prussians approached Paris. Hastily orators) met regularly at the salon of Jeanne gathered mobs stormed the overflowing pris- Roland, the wife of a minister. They resented ons to seek out traitors who might help the the growing power of Parisian militants and enemy. In an atmosphere of near hysteria, tried to appeal to the departments outside of eleven hundred inmates were killed, in- Paris. (so called because its cluding many ordinary and completely in- nocent people. The princess of Lamballe, ': juh RAHN dihns tfi.# lliÍi$s:îi,liiìii ,,¡iti 1 789-l 800

deputies sat in the highest seats of the Na- creased divisions, which ultimately led to tional Convention), in contrast, was closely Robespierre's fall from power and to a dis- allied with the Pa¡is militants. mantling of government by terror. The first showdown between the Giron- dins and the Mountain occurred during the Robespierre and trial of the king in December 1792. Although the Girondins agreed that the kingwas guilty the Committee of Public Safety of treason, many of them argued for clemency, The conflict between the Girondins and the exile, or a popular referendum on his fate. Af- Mountain did not end with the execution of ter a long and diffìcult debate, the Nationa_l Louis XVI. Militants in Paris agitated for the Convention supported the Mountain and removal of the deputies who had proposed a voted by a very narrow majority to execute referendum on the king, and in retaliation the king. touis )il/I went to the guillotinet on the Girondins engineered the arrest of Jean- Jarruary 2L , 1793, sharing the fate of Charles I Paul Marat, a deputywho had urged violent of Englald in 1649. "We have just convinced measures in his newspaper The Friend ourselves that a king is only a man," wrote oJ the PeopLe. When Marat was acquitted, one newspaper, "ald that no man is above the Girondins set up a the law." special commission to

The Guillotine Before l7B9 only nobles were decapitated if condemned to death; commoners were {" Terror and Resistance usually hanged. Equalization of the death penalty was first proposed by J. l. Guillotin, The execution of t'l'e king did not end the new a professor of anatomy and a deputyfor regime's problems. The continuing war re- the Third Estate ín the National Assembly. quired even more men and money, and the He also suggested that a mechanical device introduction of a national draft provoked be constructed for decapítation, leading to massive resistance in some parts of France. the instrument's association with his name. In response to growing pressures, the Na- The Assembly decreed decapitation as the tional Convention named the Committee of death penalty in June l79l and another Public Safety to supenrise food distribution, physician, A. Louis, actually invented the direct the war effort, and root out counter- guillotine. The executioner pulled up the revolutionaries. The leader of the committee, blade by a cord and then released it. Use ,. wanted to go be- of the guillotine began in April tz92 and yond these stopgap measr-rres and create did not end until l98l, when the French a "republic of virtue," in which the govern- government abolished the death ment would teach, or force, citizens to penalty. The guillotine fascinated as much as it repelled. Reproduced in become vifuous republicans through a mas.- miniature, painted onto snuffboxes sive program of political reeducation. Thus and china, worn as jewelry and began the Terror, in which the guillotine even serving as a toy, the guillotine became the most terrifying instrument be- came a part of popular culture. of a government that suppressed How could the guillotine be almost every form of dissent (see simultaneously celebrated as The Guillotine, shown the people's avenger by sup- here). These policies only in- porters of the Revolution and vil- ified as the preeminent symbol of the Terror by op- 'guillotine: GIH luh teen ponents? Musée Cornavo rRobespierre: let/ roh behs pyEFIR Photo Bulloz.