Tag: Law of 22 Prairial
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The Directorial Terror
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. We left off last time with the coup of Fructidor, which created the Second Directory, and the Treaty of Campo Formio, which ended hostilities between France and Austria. Today, we will cover the fallout from these two watershed events. The Directory will spend the next six months trying to stabilize…
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The Coup of Fructidor
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So we left off last time with the Fall of Mantua in Italy in February, 1797. This week, I want to pick up right where we left off, push the Italian campaign through to the preliminaries at Leoben before hopping back to France to cover the elections of year V,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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.…
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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”…
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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…
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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…