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REVIVAL OF THE MOUNTAIN
The Directory’s constitution had ensured the rights of assembly, free speech, and a limited suffrage; for former Jacobins now deprived of their clubs and of their power in the legislature, these constitutional liberties offered the potential to rebuild a democratic movement.
RISE OF THE RIGHT LEADING TO THE COUP OF 18 FRUCTIDOR: PROCLAMATION OF 9 SEPTEMBER 1797
The Directorial legislatures were formed in 1795 primarily of holdovers from the Convention, so the elections in the fall of 1797 were the first open legislative elections since 1792. The result, to the consternation of the executive council of the Directory, which had hoped to consolidate the gains of the Revolution, was a majority of right–wing and even openly royalist deputies.
LOUIS XVIII TO CHARETTE
The "Central Committee" organizing royalist efforts in 1795 was led by François–Athanése de Charette de la Contrie, a former nobleman. He had participated in the Vendéan uprising in 1793, with the goal of restoring to the throne the nearest living relative to the executed Louis XVI—his brother the Count of Provence who had already taken the name Louis XVIII.
PUISAYE TO THE CENTRAL CATHOLIC COMMITTEE
The fall of Robespierre and the Mountain in the summer of 1794 also reinvigorated counterrevolutionary forces, especially those hoping to restore royal authority in the person of the son of the "martyr" Louis XVI. We see evidence of efforts to coordinate royalist military action against the Republic in the letter below, by the Chouan leader Puisaye to the "Catholic Central Committee."
PUISAYE TO THE CENTRAL CATHOLIC COMMITTEE
The fall of Robespierre and the Mountain in the summer of 1794 also reinvigorated counterrevolutionary forces, especially those hoping to restore royal authority in the person of the son of the "martyr" Louis XVI. We see evidence of efforts to coordinate royalist military action against the Republic in the letter below, by the Chouan leader Puisaye to the "Catholic Central Committee."
THE GILDED YOUTH
Across France, the period of the Directory witnessed revenge against those who had carried out revolutionary justice during the Terror. Opponents of the Jacobins forced them from office and sought to prevent them from participating in politics.
DOCTRINE OF BABEUF
Despite the radical nature of such measures taken by the National Assembly as the abolition of nobility and the civil constitution of the clergy, social conflicts continued to manifest themselves after the National Assembly completed its work in 1791.
BONAPARTE SAVES THE DAY
In the waning days of the Convention in the fall of 1795, royalist–influenced sections in Paris revolted to prevent a new constitution that protected the position of the radicals. Bonaparte was delegated to put down the uprising of 5 October 1795 (13 Vendémiaire Year IV).
CONSTITUTION OF THE YEAR III (1795)
By mid–1795, dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, particularly the extra–constitutional nature of the government, had become widespread.
THE CONVENTION IS WEAK
The coup of Thermidor did not lead immediately to the dissolution of the Committee of Public Safety (CPS), although much of its power was quickly transferred to other committees, especially the Committee of General Security, and back to the Convention as a whole.
DISMANTLING THE TERROR: PARLIAMENTARIANISM REASSERTED
In condemning Robespierre on 9 Thermidor, the Convention deputies did not necessarily intend to end the Terror as much as prevent Robespierre and his followers from turning it on them. Yet in the weeks and months that followed, it became clear that Thermidor had been a turning point away from "revolutionary government" and toward a revival of procedural, parliamentary politics.
EXECUTION OF ROBESPIERRE
Having carried the day in the Jacobin Club, Robespierre rose to speak the next day in the Convention, where he attacked members of the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security, until now his closest collaborators, for their extreme use of the Terror. He also hinted that such "terrorists" should be purged from the Convention.
DEBATE ON THE LAW OF 22 PRAIRIAL
Many in the Convention, including some on the Committee of Public Safety, opposed the proposed law, which they feared concentrated too much power in too few hands and would only further destabilize the Republic.
THE LAW OF 22 PRAIRIAL YEAR II (10 JUNE 1794)
Although the most immediate threats to the security of the Republic—foreign invasion, the civil war in the Vendée, the Federalist uprisings, the grain shortage in Paris, and hyperinflation—had abated by June 1794, Robespierre and his allies on the Committee of Public Safety argued all the more strenuously that virtue needed to be enforced through terror.
RELIGION: THE CULT OF THE SUPREME BEING
Adapting the established strategy of staging public pageantry to win support for a political cause, Robespierre organized a "Festival of the Supreme Being" in the summer of 1794. Having recently eliminated his adversaries Hébert and Danton, Robespierre delivered the keynote speech.
THE CALENDAR
A reformed calendar was a goal of the revolutionaries who sought to remake not only the political system and the social order, but also the very experience of life. To rid the calendar of the malign influence of Christianity as a bulwark of tradition, in the fall of 1793 the Convention set up a committee to draft a new secular, rational calendar.
REVOLUTIONARY ARMIES IN THE PROVINCES: TOULOUSE (SEPTEMBER 1793)
At the demand of patriots in Paris and the provinces, the National Convention sent irregular units to the countryside and to cities where resistance to the Revolution had appeared.
THE PÈRE DUCHESNE SUPPORTS THE TERROR
The radical journalist Jacques–René Hébert here calls on the sans–culottes of Paris to rise against their enemies in the capital, that is, those who block the work of the sections and revolutionary committees. Afterward, they should march against the forces of counterrevolution in the west.
REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS OWN—LE VIEUX CORDELIER
Despite the consolidation of power in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety and the creation of Revolutionary Tribunals across France to eliminate traitors to the Republic, the Convention continued to worry about conspiracies even among its political allies.
THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL’S USE OF THE GUILLOTINE
This description of the proceedings of the revolutionary tribunal, and of the physical setting of the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood, by an unsympathetic English observer gives the flavor of the workings of revolutionary justice.