An adage ensures that any revolutionary always finds more revolutionary than him to remove him from power. In the case of the French Revolution, the example of the Girondins perfectly illustrates the definition.
In the Legislative Assembly, which sat for the first time on October 1, 1791, the right was represented by the Feuillants or constitutional royalists. The center brings together the independent deputies who vote sometimes with the right, sometimes with the left. Derisively, they are nicknamed the "belly" or the "swamp" or even the "slaves of fear", because of their frequent hesitations. The left is represented by the Girondins, so called because their most brilliant speakers are from the South-West or representatives of the Gironde department, such as Vergniaud, their inspiration.
At the start of the work of the Assembly, there was no distinction within the Girondins group, any more than with the Jacobin Club, where Robespierre was already prominent. The adversary, for the moment, is above all the Feuillant ministry that Louis XVI called to power in December 1791. But when a diplomatic incident led to the resignation of this ministry, on March 10, 1792, under the attacks of Vergniaud, the he hour of the Girondins strikes. Power falls to them on March 24. The impetus was given by the Minister of the Interior Roland and by Dumouriez, in charge of Foreign Affairs. Brissot, Condorcet, Isnard, bring them resolute support. All want freedoms to be maintained and the assertion of a power that respects regional entities.
This is certainly a program full of pitfalls in a feverish Parisian agglomeration, quick to be enthusiastic as well as to react with passion, with violence even at the slightest annoyance. A first example of this is the day of June 20, which saw crowds from the suburbs invade the Tuileries to force the king to respect his constitutional obligations. This was confirmed by the insurrection of August 10, during which the far left of the Assembly affirmed its growing strength within the Paris Commune. The September massacres followed.
The Girondins then began to feel somewhat overwhelmed by events. In fact, there are soon only two real powers left:the Assembly and the Commune, that is to say the Gironde majority of the Assembly and the very active fraction of the Parisian districts to which the sympathy of the Montagnards goes*. . These are strengthening their grip thanks to the designation of the members of the Convention who will sit from 21 September. The Girondins are a little over a hundred members including Brissot, Condorcet, Barbaroux, Isnard, Pétion, Roland. These sit opposite the Montagnards, playing the role of a resistance party.
From now on, everything will oppose these two tendencies. Supported by popular Paris, the Montagnards affirm the political pre-eminence of the capital and desire a centralizing power. The Girondins, on the contrary, are in favor of administrative decentralization. Economic designs reveal a similar flaw. The former want recourse to the requisitioning of foodstuffs and the organization of distribution markets to curb the high cost of living. The latter advocate the free play of natural exchanges and competition, requisitions and forced sales constituting, from their point of view, characteristic attacks on freedom. Divide them again and above all their conceptions of man and existence. Literate for the most part, many jurists, enlightened bourgeois inspired by Rousseau and the encyclopaedists, the Girondins dreaded the reactions of the street. In their opinion, public affairs should be worked out in the salons and debated in the Assembly. Brissot summarizes this point of view in an Appeal to all Republicans of France, in which he represents the Montagnards as "disorganizers who want to level everything, property, wealth, the price of foodstuffs ... even talents, knowledge and virtues”.
The Montagnards find their inspiration in the lively sessions of the Club des jacobins. The Girondins, who disdain tumult and violence, prefer more academic debates. Quite paradoxically, however, these Girondins, opponents of the use of force, wanted war with Austria and Prussia, because they believed that the Revolution could only assert itself through success against Europe. Kings. The Montagnards, Robespierre in the lead, fear this confrontation which will weaken the country, weary the people and could finally lead to a military dictatorship.
The fate to be reserved for the king is, of course, reason for news discrepancies. While declaring the sovereign guilty of treason against the nation, the Girondins wanted to spare him the supreme punishment and .. tended towards indulgence. Vergniaud solicits an appeal to the people, but, on the intervention of Barère, the motion is rejected on January 16, 1793 by 423 votes against 281.
This moderating attitude exasperated the Parisian population which, for three years, had never appointed a single Girondin to represent it in the various assemblies. The war on the borders, the reluctance of the provinces towards the Parisian claim to political supremacy, the betrayal of Dumouriez, in April, heightened passions. Marat, in L'Ami du Peuple, writes:Citizens, let's arm ourselves The counter-revolution is in the government; it is within the bosom of the Convention. Citizens, let's go! let's walk ! »
Faced with such an attack, the Girondins voted on April 13 for a motion impeaching the Friend of the People by 220 votes to 92. But the Revolutionary Tribunal absolved the accused on April 24, who returned to the Convention the forehead encircled with a crown of oak.
On the 15th, Pache, the mayor of Paris, summoned the Convention, in the name of the neighborhood sections and the General Council, to "purify the national representation" by expelling the deputies from the Gironde. The Girondins respond by having the principle of the inviolability of deputies voted for. In this momentum, a commission of twelve deputies is responsible for verifying the acts of the Paris Commune. As such, she had Hébert, editor of Père Duchesne, arrested.
A threat of a riot freed him. But the showdown seemed inevitable between the moderate representatives and the Commune. Danton realizes the danger and tries to intervene. In vain. Legalists, the Girondins do not suspect that their audience is coming to an end. On May 30, an insurrectionary committee sat in the bishopric, reinforced by delegates from neighborhood sections. The next day, Hanriot took command of the National Guard. The Convention is invited to abolish the Commission of Twelve and to decree the arrest of 21 Girondins. The vote is acquired after a vehement intervention by Robespierre.
Emboldened by this success, Marat felt victory was near. On June 1, the Insurrectional Committee became the Sections' Public Safety Committee. On the 2nd, Hanriot surrounds the Convention. Marat demands and obtains the arrest of 29 other Girondins, which calls this day the "August 10 of the Convention".
It is all over for the Gironde, because the members who can leave Paris are trying to raise certain regions of the provinces, Normandy, the South-West and the Rhone Valley, in particular. All of these enterprises fail and ultimately harm the cause of their authors. Some disperse, others surrender or are arrested. Some commit suicide. This will be the case of Condorcet and Roland, while the Revolutionary Tribunal condemns the 22 incarcerated to death, during its session of October 30.
The calm of these men in the face of death makes numer versions, including that of a final banquet in the cell, from which the painter Paul Delaroche would later draw inspiration. In his drama, Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, performed in 1847, Alexandre Dumas makes the condemned sing a refrain that ends with:To die for the Fatherland It is the most beautiful fate,
The most enviable
The aggressiveness of Fouquier-Tinville is such that the corpse of Valazé, which has pierced its heart with a dagger, is transported in a cart behind that of the condemned and decapitated in turn. On November 10, Madame Roland climbed the scaffold, dressed all in white. Bowing to the passage in front of a statue representing Liberty, she would have said, according to the chronicle:“O Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name! »
The few deputies to escape this repression, such as Isnard, Louvet, Lanjuinais, Rouyer, would return to the Convention in 1795 or sit on the Council of Five Hundred like Bergoeing and Deleyre. Lamartine, in 1847, will pay a final tribute to these men of measure, respectful of legality, by writing their history, a work of rehabilitation.