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Glossary of French Terms

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Glossary of French Terms Ancien Rkgime. The term is most com- Philippeaux), all of whom formed the ers and associates of Jacques-Rent5 * monly applied to the way of life and opposition from the right in the fac- Hebert, editor of Le Pkre Duchesne. By , government in France which the 1789 tional crisis of the spring of 1793. (See extension, Hkbertism came to be: Revolution destroyed. alsso Factions). applied to all groups taking part in Armie rivolutionnaire. A citizen army of Dicade. The 10-day periods into which the left opposition to the sans-culottes (see below), raised in var- the Republican 30-day month was Revolutionary Government in the ious regions in the autumn of 1793 divided. autumn of 1793 and the spring of and primarily intended to ensure the De-christianization. The attack on 1794. (See also Dantonists and grain-supply of Paris and other cities. Christian clergy and religion (both 'Factions '). Bourgeois, bourgeoisie. A generic term Catholic and Protestant) mounted by Jacobins, Jacobin Club. Name assumed by more or less synonymous with urban Hebert and his supporters (see the members of the former Breton middle classes - bankers, stock- HCbertists) in the autumn of 1793. It Club when they established them- brokers, merchants, large manufactur- took the form of closing churches, selves in the former Couvent des ers, and professional men of every stripping clergy of their vestments Jacobins in Paris in October, 1789. The kind. and offices and of promoting the cult club went through a series of trans- Brissotins. Followers of Jacques-Pierre of the Goddess of Reason. The 'de- mutations - through the secession of Brissot, journalist and deputy for christianizers' came under govern- the Feuillants (June 1791) and the suc- Eure-et-Loire, at the time of the ment censure after Robespierre's cessive purges of Girondins, Legislative Assembly. (See also speech denouncing them on 21 Dantonists and HCbertists - and Girondins). November, 1793. ended up in the summer of 1794 as Chouans. royalist insurgents who took Ernigris. Nobles, clergy and others who the group within the original Jacobin their name from four brothers named emigrated from France from July, 1789 Club who remained devoted to Cottereau, known more often as onwards. Robespierre. The Club was dissolved Chouan, a corruption of chat-huant, Enragis. extremist revolutionaries, led by by the Thermidorians in November, screech-owl, because they imitated Jacques Roux and Jean Vart, who 1794. (See also Mountain). that bird's cry in order to recognize became a powerful force in Paris in Journe'e (or journie rivolutionnaire). A day each other in the woods sat night. 1793. They were particularly antago- of revolutionary struggle in which Three of the four brothers were killed nistic to those suspected of hoarding crowds, generally composed of sans- in battle. Chouans were active in La or speculating. culottes, participated, e.g. capture of VendCe, Brittany and Normandy. Estates General (Etats Ge'niraux). The Bastille, overthrow of monarchy, Comitb rkvolutionnaires, or 'revolutionary' French national assembly, consisting expulsion of Girondin leaders from (or 'vigilance') committees. The local of representatives of the three orders Convention. committees attached to the Sections or estates. These estates elected their Levie en masse. Law of 23 August, 1793, (see below) created in April, 1793, and deputies and drew up their mobilizing the whole French nation made responsible for police and inter- grievances separately. They also for war. nal security. debated separately after the Estates Liwe (or franc). In 1789, roughly equiva- Committee of General Security. One of the General had assembled. The last lent to Is. 8d. sterling. There were 20 two main government committees of meeting of the Estates General before sous to the livre. the Year I1 (see below), specifically 1789 was in 1614. Marseilla~s,La. First called the 'Ckant de charged with responsibility for police Factions. The term applied, in particular, guerre pour l 'armie du Rhin' when pub- and internal security. to the two opposing factions of lished at Strasbourg, becoming Committee of Public Safety. The more Dantonists (the right) and Hebertists known by its present title when popu- important of the two leading govern- (the left) in the political crisis that larized by the Marseilles fidiris in ment committees of the Year 11. reached its climax in March-April, Paris. It was banned for a time by Generally responsible for the conduct 1793. Napoleon and after the Restoration. of both internal and external affairs, Faubourgs. Literally 'suburbs', originally, Maximum. There were two laws of the its powers overlapped with those of as in Paris, lying outside the old city Maximum: that of May, 1793, impos- the Committee of General Security in walls but gradually enclosed within ing a limit on the price of grain only; police and judicial matters. the modern city as it grew. In the and that of September, 1793, extend- Commune. Title given to the Paris local Revolution, the term is more particu- ing price-control to most articles of government that emerged at the City larly applied to the great popular prime necessity, including labour Hall (HBtel de Ville) after the fall of 'faubourgs' of Saint-Antoine and Saint- (maximum des salaires). the Bastille. It was to be followed by Marcel. Mountain. Name acquired by the Jacobin other communes in the nineteenth General Wills. Rousseau's term for the col- deputies for Paris, led by Robespierre, century. lective will of the community at large. who, after their election to the Cordeliers Club. The more plebeian, and Girondins. Name originally given, as an National Convention in September, generally the more radical, of the two alternative to Brissotins (see above), to 1792, sat in the upper seats of the major clubs of the Revolution in Paris. a group of left-wing deputies in the Chamber. By extension, term later The best-known of its leaders were (at Legislative Assembly, who supported applied to similarly-minded deputies various times) Marat, Danton, Hbbert, Brissot's policy of a 'revolutionary from all over France. Vincent and Ronsin. war' in the autumn and winter of 1791 National Assembly. The term is here used Dantonists. Basically, the friends of and several of whom came from the for each of the successive parliaments Danton (e.g. Desmoulins, Legendre, south-western region of the Gironde. of the Revolution: Constituent Merlin de Thionville, Fabre Later applied to a wider group, ema- Assembly (June, 1789 - September, dlEglantine); but, by extension, the nating from the first, who shared a -791); Legislative Assembly (October, term 'Dantonist' was also applied to more-or-less common political and 1731 - August, 1792); National the Indulgents, or opponents of the social programme in opposition to Convention (September, 1792 - Terror (e.g. ~ourdok'de 180ise, that of the main body of Jacobins. October, 1795). Delacroix, Thuriot), and certain busi- Hebertists. A convenient but imprecise National Guard, citizens' army, or militia, ness-operators (Fabre, Basire, term originally applied to the follow- originally raised by the Paris districts (see SgetionsJ hJuly, 1789. adopted by the Convention in the law 1792 on. Several 'suspects' were of 14th Frimaire (4 December, 1793). rounded up and gaoled at this time Revolutionary Tribunal. High court of jus- but there was no general Law of tice created in March, 1793, to try all Suspects, entitling such persons to be offences against the State by new and arrested and brought before the 'revolutionary' procedures. Revolutionary Tribunal; until 5 Sans-culottes. An omnibus term (literally, September, 1793. It marked the official those who wore trousers and not opening of the Terror an4 filled the knee-breeches), sometimes applied to prisons in the months that followed. all the poorer classes of town and Taille. The principal direct tax @id by all countryside; but, more particularly to commoners (roturiers) before the urban craftsmen, small shopkeepers, Revolution, usually levied on person- petty traders, journeymen, labourers al income (taille personnelle), more and city poor. By extension, attached rarely on land (taille reeleile). 1400 (noblesse chevaleresque) or to 1500 as a political label to the more militant Taxation populaire. Reduction of food (noblesse d'ancienne extraction) for revolutionaries of 1792-5 regardless of prices by riot (examples here given: id which no royal grant could be social origins. the Orleanais in November-December proved. Sections. The 48 units into which Paris 1792; in Paris in February, 1793). Even from the purely legal point of became divided for electoral (and Terror. Here used in two senses: 'terror' view, however, there were awkward general political) purposes, in succes- (with a small 't') as a mode of compul- cases: for example, the people who sion to the 60 districts created in April sion, either official or 'popular' (such held offices conferring nobility that 1789, by a municipal law of May-June, as in September Massacres, 1792); and remained personal as distinct from 1790. 'Terror' which generally applies to a hereditary until certain conditions Seigneurie, Seigneur. The seigneurie (or, to period rather than to a method: the were fulfilled (e.g., until the office had give the nearest English equivalent, period September, 1793, to July, 1794, been held for twenty-five years). In the manor) normally consisted of two when the Jacobin (or Revolutionary) 1789 nobles in this category were not different kinds of property of which Government imposed its authority by allowed to vote with the order of the the second was its distinguishing fea- varying means of compulsion - mili- nobility in the elections to the Estates ture. In the terminology of the Ancien tary, judicial and economic. Hence, General. Regime, these two kinds of property also, the 'Great Terror' of June-July, From every point of view other than were the domaine proche or direct, and 1794.
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