National Convention

In France, the national Convention is the name given to the assembly which officially succeeds the legislative Assemblée and which lasted of the September 20th 1792 with the October 26th 1795. Convention ensured the Executive power First French Republic after the deposition of Louis XVI and the abolition of Monarchy.

Genesis of Convention

National Convention was created in an extremely tended context: The August 10th took place the insurrectionary Commune of Paris and the catch of the Tuileries. The legislative Assemblée voted a decree requiring the election of the Vote for all (male) of a national Convention which would decide new institutions of France. A provisional Executive council was also formed to ensure the continuity of the government. It was composed of six ministers chosen out of the legislative Assemblée.

The vote for all corresponded to the ideals of Jacobins. They thought that the people and not the Nation were to exert sovereignty directly either, or if it were impossible via representatives. These sights were not those of the elites to the capacities. Indeed, they feared that the peasants do not vote naturally for their lord.

The election S took place in September whereas the Prussians in war against France since April 1792 advanced in great step towards Paris. The principle was that of the Vote for all with two degrees. In fact, only men of more than 21 years had to vote. Neither the servants nor the people without known incomes were authorized to take part by the vote. The conditions of votes were the following ones: 1st degree: to be 21 years old, to be domiciled since 1 year and to live of its incomes; 2nd degree: to be 25 years old, to be domiciled since 1 year and to live of its incomes. On a total of 7 million voters (male, old of more than 21 years), there was: 630000 voters, is close to 90 % of abstention. As in 1789, the poll with two turns caused to eliminate the popular classes from the national representation. The elected officials all were almost resulting from the middle-class. A third came from the trades of justice.

Forces in presence with Convention

The Of Gironde, almost all young people, resulted mainly from the provincial middle-class of the large coasting harbors. Brissotins, Rolandins or Of Gironde are wary of the Parisian people. Their supports are in province and among the rich person middle-class of the trade and manufactures. They are very attached to individual freedoms and economic of 1789 and feel reluctant to take emergency regulations to save the young republic to which they are however attached. They are directed by Brissot, Vergniaud, Pétion and Roland. They rather quickly leave the club of the Jacobins. Called at the time Brissotins or Rolandins, name the Of Gironde ones is less old and was popularized only at the beginning of the XIXe century, in particular by Lamartine in his Histoire of Of Gironde the .

Mountain because they sat on the highest benches of the Parliament. Its members, for the majority registered with the Club of the Jacobins, were regarded as most radical of the assembly, with the deputies of Paris, were taken along by Robespierre. They are more sensitive to the difficulties of the people. They are ready to be combined to the people, in particular to the sans-culottes of the commune of Paris and to take emergency regulations to save the republic. Their chiefs are, inter alia, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Saint-Just. For the Jacobins, the separation of the capacities was not justified in a democratic regime. The most perfect shape of government was a mode of assembly with only one room elected by the vote for all which concentrated the three capacities. Convention such as they directed it between 1793 and 1794, filled these criteria.

In the center a majority of deputies sits, called the Plaine or the Marais, which supports the two other tendencies in turn.

Convention of Gironde

Convention of Gironde (September 21st, 1792 - June 2nd, 1793) is the first period of the history of the national Convention dominated by the moderate of Gironde ones. She proclaimed the République the September 22nd 1792. She was marked by the violent competition between the mountain Girondins and . The Of Gironde ones tried to avoid the lawsuit of the king fearing that this one did not revive the Contre-révolution and the hostility of European monarchies does not reinforce. But, the discovery of " the cupboard of fer" with Tileries on November 30th, 1792 made the lawsuit inevitable. The documents found in this secret trunk proved without possible dispute the treason of Louis XVI. The lawsuit began on December 10th. At the conclusion of the debates, the king was recognized guilty with one crushing majority, 693 votes against 28. He was condemned to died by a narrower majority, 366 votes against 334. The deferment and the call to the people required by the Of Gironde ones were pushed back. The king Louis XVI was guillotine the January 21st 1793 place of the Revolution.

The military failures inflicted by the first coalition of Europe monarchist involved the vote, on February 24th, 1793 of the lifting of 300.000 men. This lifting was to be done by drawing lot, which annoyingly pointed out the practices of the Old Mode. The advertisement of this lifting caused the rural risings repressed at once by the force. But Convention had meanwhile voted a law which set up a true logic of terror; very rebel taken the weapons with the hand was to be carried out in the 24 hours without lawsuit. The " War of the Vendée " who begins in March 1793 was used as argument to the Mountain dwellers and with the Sans-culotte to stigmatize mollesse with the Girondins and to claim emergency regulations to which the latter felt reluctant. The Girondins are obliged to accept the creation of the Comité of Public Hello and of the revolutionary Tribunal. The social difficulties and economic exacerbated the tensions between Girondins and Mountain. The latter, with the assistance of the sans-culottes, obtained the first measurements of public Salut. The mountain dwellers, resting on the Parisian Sans-culottes insurrectionary Commune of Paris, proscribed the of Gironde ones after the insurrections of the May 31st and June 2nd, 1793.

Mountain Convention

In France, the mountain Convention , June 2nd 1793 at Thermidor 9 year II (July 27th 1794), is the second period of the history of the national Convention dominated by the Montagnards after the ousting of the Girondins.

Convention voted in July 1793, a very democratic and decentralized constitution, ratified by referendum. The Constitution of year I sought to establish a true popular sovereignty thanks to frequent elections by the vote for all, the mandatory instruction and the possibility for the citizens of intervening in the legislative process. All the capacities were allotted to a legislative body elected for one year. An executive council of 24 members was charged to make apply the decisions of the Parliament. He was named by her and under his narrow dependence. But this Constitution was never applied. August 10th 1793, Convention issued that the application of the Constitution was suspended until peace. Saint-Just explained que : " In the circumstances where the Republic is, the constitution cannot be established, one even immolerait it by it. It would become the guarantee of the attacks against freedom, because it would miss will necessary to repress them. Indeed, the mountain deputies were to face dramatic circumstances - federalistic Insurrections, Guerre of the Vendée, failures military, aggravation of the economic situation. They thus decided to found a true revolutionary dictatorship exerted in reality by the Comité of public hello and the Comité of general security. The decree of December 10th, 1793 said que : " the government will be revolutionist until the paix." National Convention assumed in theory all the capacities. According to the law of the 14 frimaire year II (December 4th 1793), Convention was the “single center of the impulse of the Government”.

The principal body of government resulting from the Parliament was for this period the Comité of public hello. It had been creates in April 1793 and dominated by Danton until its elimination on July 10th. The " large committee of the year II" counted 12 re-elected members every month by Convention. It had the initiative of the laws, the executive power and appointed the officials. It was him which centralized the capacity during one particularly critical time. It was dominated by the personality of Robespierre. Each member was specialized in a particular field like Carnot with the armies.

The Conventional ones had been very marked by the brutality of the summary executions of the massacres of September. To overcome the enemies of the Revolution and to avoid a return to the popular fury, they organized the legal Terreur. They voted in September 1793 the law of the suspects. The list of the suspects was very broad. The noble ones, the refractory emigrants, priests, the federalists, the speculators and their families were included in this category. They were to be imprisoned until peace. The popular companies, controlled by the sans-culottes, accepted capacities of monitoring and police force. The Terreur was put at the day order. Interventionists economic measures were decided in order to stop the crisis (law on the monopolization, Loi of the general maximum, price control of the grains). The levy in masse, the mobilization of all energies in favor of a true saving in war (the research of salpetre for the powder, the mobilization of the scientists, the replacement of the generals inefficient, treacherous or recalcitrant to adopt the offensive strategy of the Comité of public hello, replaced by young officers resulting from the rows and clearly republicans, among which Notch, Jourdan, Marceau, but also Pichegru or Bonaparte) ensured of the decisive victories the republicans. But the dissensions between the Mountain dwellers were not long in appearing.

After having tried a policy of balance between the factions, the Committee of public Hello, dominated by the figure of Maximilien de Robespierre, very popular among the people, decided the elimination of the Hébertistes (ultra-revolutionary), then Indulgents (moderate directed by Georges Danton), which threatened the revolutionary government. Taking again little by little the control of the country, after the chaos which had prevailed at the time of the civil war of 1793 and had supported the development of an uncontrolled violence, the revolutionary government tried to sit the Republic by founding a class of small holders (law on the division of communal, decrees of ventôse…) and a republican morals (civil institutions, projects of education of the people).

Mountain Convention created by the decree of the 21 ventôse year II (March 11th 1794) a charged commission to create the Central École of Public works, future Polytechnic school. Gaspard Monge, Lazare Carnot (called the large organizer of the victory) and Prieur of the Gold Coast was the principal members.

However, the lassitude of the moderate deputies of Convention eager to give up the revolutionary dictatorship and Terror to return to a constitutional mode and a liberal economic policy (the victory of Fleurus drawing aside the threat of an invasion of France and not justifying more, in their eyes, the maintenance of Terror) and the conflict between the Committee of general security and the Committee of Public Hello brought the falls of Maximilien de Robespierre and its friends the Thermidor 9 year II (July 27th 1794)

Convention thermidorienne

The Convention thermidorienne is the name given to the third period of the history of the national Convention energy of the July 27th 1794 with the October 26th 1795.

After the Fall of Robespierre, a fight opposes, within the national Convention, the Montagnards of year III, around Barère, Billaud-Game preserve or Collot d' Herbois, in favor of the maintenance of the revolutionary government, of economic state intervention, with the maximum and the price control of the grains, and the Terreur, on the one hand, and the moderate majority of the assembly, gathering the mountain dwellers dantonists around Tallien or Fréron and the deputies of the Marais, around Sieyès, Cambacérès, Daunou or Boissy d' Anglas, holding of a return to the economic liberalism and the constitutional government. March 8th, 1795, Marie-Joseph Chénier obtains the return of the 22 chiefs of Gironde proscribed after the days of May 31st and of June 2nd, 1793 and the federalistic Insurrections (of which Louvet de Couvray) and of the 73 deputies (of which Louis-Sebastien Mercier) which had been imprisoned after having protested against the arrest of the 22, reinforcing thus clearly the moderate camp.

The revolutionary government is gradually dismantled, with the establishment of the renewal per quarter every month of the members of the Comité of public hello and the reduction in its attributions after Thermidor, then its disappearance in 1795, the suppression of the maximum on December 24th, 1794 or the final re-establishment of the Bourse de Paris on October 10th, 1795 (which supports the development of the Spéculation).

The winter 1794-95 is particularly hard, the price of the bread increases, and populates it of Paris knows a low register Disette, that the liberal policy of Convention does not make it possible to stop. Also, anger thunders among the popular sections. The more so as France undergoes a Economic crisis at that time and financial and that the Assignat, that the revolutionary government had more or less succeeded in stabilizing in 1793, undergoes a vertiginous fall.

In parallel, after Thermidor, a great part of the suspects imprisoned under Terror - royalists, federalists, monopolizers - are widened, while many revolutionary militants are stopped and the civils servant suspected of “complicity” with the “tyrant” (Robespierre) revoked. In the same way, the excesses made within the framework of the civil war which opposed the republicans to the federalists and to the royalists into 1793 are revealed, and certain representatives on mission is considered and carried out (Carrier with Nantes or Joseph Lebon in Cambrai), as well as the revolutionary Tribunal of Paris and the popular Orange commission, with the encouragement of families of the victims and suspects freed, supporting near the opinion the image of a violent and sanguinary Terror.

Within the framework of this reaction thermidorienne, the moderate and royalist press breaks out against the “terrorists”, treaties of “tyrants” and “drinkers of blood”. Fréron, representative of Convention in the South with Barras in 1793, where it had been characterized by its violence and its plunders, makes reappear starting from September 11th, 1794, the Speaker of the People , of which it makes the body of the propaganda reactionary and where it shows a virulent antijacobinism. In the same way, the royalist Méhée of the Key publishes the lampoon the Tail of Robespierre , and Ange Pitou spreads in the streets of the royalist refrains. In addition, verbal violences and physics against all those which resemble closely or by far a “Jacobin” multiply. Fréron and Tallien organize bands of muscadins, which run up against the Jacobins, in particular on September 19th, 1794, with the Palate-Equality (the Palais Royal). The brawls multiply between the young jet set and the republicans, in particular the soldiers. Benefitting from these violences, the authorities close the Club of the Jacobins in November 1794. In 1794-95, bands from 2.000 to 3.000 “black Collets”, organized by Tallien and Fréron and taken along by the Marquis de Saint-Huruge (1750-1810), around the figures of the singer and type-setter Pierre Garat, of Pitou, François Elleviou and Langlois, and composed of suspects left prisons, unsubmissive people, journalists, artists, clerks, brokers, small shopkeeper - vêtus of a dress skimped “color of droppings” to the black velvet collar, the Basque cut in cod tail and the breeches tightened under the knee -, rossent the passers by having bad figure (Jacobins). Even of Gironde Louvet de Couvray, which denounces the royalists as well as the Jacobins in his newspaper, the Sentinel , is taken with part by royalist youth in its bookstore-printing works of the Palais Royal, in October 1795.

The Jacobins, confronted with the double hostility of the moderate republicans and the royalists, push the popular sections with the revolt. However, the insurrections of the germinal 12 and the 1 {{er}} meadow year III (April and May 1795) fail, and the authorities order the disarmament of the “terrorists”. They are the last popular insurrections before the Révolution of 1830.

Benefitting from the weakening of the Jacobins, movements of spontaneous revenge on the royalists, victims' families of Terror and catholics fanatic develop during the year 1795, in the South-east of France, more particularly the valley of the Rhone, against the “terrorists”. The Companies of Jéhu to Lyon and of the Sun, pursue and massacre Jacobins, republicans, priest constitutional, Protestant, political prisoners of the prisons, with Lons-the-Salt maker, Bourg, Lyon, Saint-Etienne, Aix, Marseilles, Toulon, Tarascon, etc, generally with the complicity of the municipal authorities and secondary roads, when they are not representatives on mission, who are pressed on the royalists in their fight against the Jacobins.

However, the unloading missed of the emigrants with Quiberon in June - July 1795, and the royalist Insurrection of the 13 vendémiaire year IV (October 5th, 1795) makes become aware with the Convention of the threat represented by the royalists and, during a few months, at the autumn and the winter 1795-96, tries to restore the union between the republicans against their common enemy. Fréron is sent to Marseilles at the end of 1795, to repress white Terror (he will be recalled as of January 1796); the officers relieved Jacobins are reinstated in the army (Jean Antoine Rossignol, Napoleon Bonaparte…) ; the continuations against the Mountain dwellers are stopped, by the decree of October 13rd; a general amnesty “for the facts properly relating to the Revolution” (from which the emigrants are excluded, the deportees, defendants of Vendémiaire, as well as the forgers) is voted on October 26th, 1795. The Club of the Pantheon, composed former terrorists and Jacobins, all resulting from the lower middle class, opens its doors on November 6th.

The September 28th 1794, it votes the law which constitutes the constitutive instrument of the Central École of Public works, which will take the name of Polytechnic school.

Inspired by the deputies of the Plain, Convention thermidorienne thus put an end to the government revolutionary and marked the return to the capacity of a liberal and moderated middle-class republic. It provided the foundations of the Directoire by the drafting of the Constitution of year III establishing the Suffrage censitaire.

The Composition of Convention

In 1792, Convention was officially made up of 782 deputies; in practice, there was not seldom more than 350 sitting during the meetings.

Institutions founded by Convention

Convention founded institutions now famous:

the National university
the Polytechnic school (March 11th, 1794)
the Technical school
the Metric system
the Conservatory of music
the Natural history museum of natural history
the special School of the Eastern Languages (March 30th, 1795)

National Convention removed all the universities on September 15th, 1793.

It grouped under the name of Institut old the Académie S (which it had beforehand dissolved at the summer 1793 pennies the influence of Marat, which showed them to be dens of aristocrats) and those that it founded itself.

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