-
The Fall of Mantua
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So, welcome to the final stretch drive of the French Revolution. Mrs. Revolutions is getting more and more pregnant by the day, so I have eight weeks to get to the Coup of 18 Brumaire. So no sense wasting time. Let’s get right into it. To start today, we need […]
-
The War Feeds Itself
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Since the Thermidorians came to power, we’ve seen them beat down an insurrection from the Left, then an insurrection from the Right, and then just last week, another insurrection from the Left. We’ve seen them disband the National Guard in Paris, set up a new police legion, only to disband […]
-
The Conspiracy of Equals
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. The National Convention had convened on September 21, 1792, in the midst of a great national crisis. The insurrection of August 10 had violently overthrown a 1,000 year old monarchy. A combined Austrian and Prussian army was practically at the gates of Paris. Fear of that army had just led […]
-
The Whiff of Grapeshot
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Last time the Thermidorian Convention beat the pulp out of the left wing of the French Revolution. The attempted insurrections of 12 Germinal and 1 Prairial effectively ended the sans-culottes as an independent political force. Out in the departments, the White Terror was suppressing all the old Jacobin municipal leaders. […]
-
Bread and the Constitution of 1793
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. As the Spring of 1795 approached, the French Revolution headed towards yet another major crisis. The winter had been unimaginably brutal. Food and fuel were both in fatally short supply, the domestic economy was about to collapse, and in Paris, the people were frozen and starving and getting mighty restless. […]
-
The Frozen Rivers
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. As we discussed three episodes back, probably the biggest reason the French finally started to pull back from the Reign of Terror was the run of military successes in the first half of 1794. It was hard to convince everyone that all this emergency murder was necessary, because “emergency, emergency” […]
-
The Death of the Jacobins
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Last week, the fever finally broke. Robespierre’s uncompromising and murderous pursuit of virtue finally lined up too many of the unvirtuous against him. The incorruptible had succeeded in never being corrupted, but it had cost him his life. But as we discussed last time, it’s not like the men who […]
-
Thermidor
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So this week we will mark a major milestone in the history of the French Revolution. It is, in fact, such a major milestone that you could make a strong argument that the Thermidorian Reaction marks the end of the French Revolution. It certainly marks the end of the French […]
-
The Republic of Virtue
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So, last time, the Revolution ate some of her most famous children, gobbling them up at the behest of her friends on the Committee of Public Safety. According to Robespierre, their factional partisanship threatened to lead France off the narrow path to the virtuous promised land he clearly believed it […]
-
The Liquidation Process
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So Last week it was a bit of a grab bag of topics to bring everything up to speed so that we could spend today talking about the great factional battle between the Danton-led Indulgents and the Jacques Hébert-led Ultras in the first few months of 1794. As we established […]