The Revolutionary Tribunal
Episode 26: The Pressure Cooker of Politics
Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon
Dr Suzanne M Desan
Film Review
In late 1792, France once again faced an inflation-driven economic crisis. Shortages of food, candles and firewood led to massive price increases, while the National Convention covered their war debts with mass printing of revolutionary currency (assignats).
More extreme than the Sans-culottes, the Paris Enragés believed scarcity was artificial and blamed counterrevolutionaries for hoarding. Addressing the Convention from the galleries, Parisian women demanded bread and soap and called for speculators to be put to death. Mobs of women invaded Parisian shops, stripping them of basic necessities, which they sold on the streets (at more affordable prices), returning to the proceeds to the merchants they had robbed. Founding the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, they also demanded the Convention subsidize the cost of bread. .
When the more conservative Girondin deputies demanded the Jacobins join in crushing the anarchy in Paris, the Enragés demanded the Convention expel it Girondins.
By March 1793, counterrevolutionary uprisings in Normandy and Burgundy had been forced underground, but the Vendée (see 1793: The French Revolution Faces Counterrevolution) had exploded into full rebellion. With France about to be invaded on three fronts, Girondin supporter General Dumaurier mutinied and tried to get his troops to to march on Paris and crush the revolution.
With 35 of 48 Paris sections calling for a purge of the Girondins, the Convention passed emergency measures creating a revolutionary tribunal that could condemn revolutionaries to death without appeal. Georges Danton (who later turned out to be a British spy*) argued forcefully in favor of these emergency measures, asserting that decisive Convention action would minimize the need for mob violence. The Convention also called on the communes to set up surveillance tribunals and ordered confiscation of emigré land.
The Girondins were the first use the Revolutionary Tribunal against Marat, a former Jacobin journalist elected as a Convention deputy (who also turned out to be a British spy**). In April 1973, the Convention impeached him for sedition and referred him to the Revolutionary Tribunal for trial. As spectators wildly cheered him throughout the hearing, the Girondins lost the the support of more moderate deputies and had no choice but to acquit him.
In May 1793 the Jacobins tried to enact price controls on essential commodities, while the Sans-culottes began organizing militias. Surrounding the Convention with 20,000 men and 50 canon, on May 31, the Sans-culottes invaded the Convention to purge it of Girondin members. Belatedly the Jacobin deputies agreed to sentence 29 Girondin members to house arrest, with nine escaping to the provinces.
This move led to armed uprisings (egged on by expelled Girondin deputies) against Jacobin clubs in Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseilles and Caen. Collectively the uprisings came to be know as the “Federalist Revolt.” The Jacobins, in turn, called for the Girondins to be tried at the Revolutionary Tribunal.
*Following his execution by guillotine, Danton was discovered to be a paid agent of the British Foreign Office with a number of other agents under his control.
**Marat, also discovered to be a paid British agent, uncannily predicted Lafayette’s desertion, Mirabeau’s collaboration of Louis XVI, the king’s attempt to flee and the treason of General Dumaurier.
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