Jacques Pierre Brissot

That's a good recommendation.

What about the others? I must consult Petion, Brissot, Condorcet.

The Girondists, in short.

Yes, sire.

That's a good recommendation.

What about the others? I must consult Petion, Brissot, Condorcet.

The Girondists, in short Yes, sire Let the Gironde pass.

We shall see if they will get us out of the ditch better than the other parties We have still to learn if the four dispatches will suit We might learn that this evening.

But he doesn't see it that way, does he? And he has this long charge sheet that, as he sees it, leaves no room for doubt that they have actually been plotting to undermine France and its people from the very beginning.

Yeah, and I think this charge sheet does matter to the sense of Robespierre as someone who's personally virtuous, because even though he has broken bread with a lot of the Girondins, he has also been pursuing a venomous personal feud with the leader of the Girondins, Brissot, the anti-slavery campaigner, who's often seen as their leader.

And so it is important to Robespierre that he lays out the charge sheet so that people won't say he's just engaged in a faction battle.

So the charge sheet is that they had foisted this disastrous war on France.

And that therefore only one punishment could possibly suffice for this abominable behavior.

And Robespierre is determined to see it enforced.

And I think that even though Robespierre does have this kind of personal feud with Brissot and some of the other Girondins, he genuinely does not see himself as governed by selfish emotions.

He genuinely sees himself as Cicero foiling the conspiracy of Catiline.

When the assembly agreed that King Louis XVI should retain his throne, if he agreed to the new constitution, uproar ensued.

The Jacobins led the protest against this proposal on the 17th of July at the Champ de Mars, where a crowd had gathered to sign a petition drawn up by Jacques-Pierre Brissot calling for the deposing of the king.

The gathered mob became violent and then, Under the orders of the Marquis de Lafayette, the National Guard attempted to disperse the crowd by firing warning shots.

When these were ignored, the guards started firing on them, leading to the Champ de Mars massacre, in which between 12 and 50 demonstrators lost their lives.

So on the one hand, you have a faction called the Girondin, and they really have had the upper hand for the last year or so, and they are led...

I mean, let's just reduce them to, very simplistically, to two people: a former anti-slavery journalist called Jacques Pierre Brissot, and there's a woman called Madame Roland presiding at a literary salon.

And by and large, massive generalization, but by and large, their power base are the kind of high-minded, bien pensant upper middle classes of the big provincial cities like Bordeaux, Marseille.

And particularly Bordeaux, right? Because the name Giron- Girondin comes from the Gironde, and Bordeaux is just downriver from the Gironde Estuary.

But the Republican party, now in fear of a reaction, was increasing rapidly.

Its leaders were at this time the Girondists, bent on the suppression of royalty, and headed by Brissot, who agitated France by his writings in favor of a republic, while Madame Roland opened her salons for intrigues and cabals, a bright woman who dreamed of Spartan severity, Roman virtue, and Plutarch heroes.

The National Assembly dissolved itself in September and appealed to the country for the election of a national convention.

For the king, having been formally suspended August 10th, there was no government.

They are lines addressed to the Merrimack River by an American poet, whether a major or minor I do not know, having forgotten his name.

In one stanza, he mentions the fact that young Brissot looked upon this stream in its bright flow, "And bore its image o'er the deep to soothe a martyr's sadness, and fresco in his troubled sleep his prison walls with gladness." Brissot is not generally looked upon as a martyr on this side of the Atlantic, nor was he allowed to enjoy his troubled sleep too long after his fellow citizens, especially the great and sea green incorruptible, had begun in their fraternal fashion to thirst for his blood.

But we can easily believe that during those dark days in the Bastille, the image and vision of the beautiful river thousands of miles away was more to him than all his varied stores of knowledge, all his schemes for the benefit of suffering humanity, and perhaps even a better consolation than his philosophy.

It is indeed this gladness of all sunshine stored within us if we had the habit of seeing beauty everywhere and of viewing all beautiful things with appreciation.

Here is a man, said he, who dares to publish the truth.

I have just heard from a person named Jacques-Pierre Brissot.

Together with another writer, he has issued a book called The Importance of the American Revolution to the Good of France.

Brissot writes me that in it he has often praised my efforts for economic progress and liberty.

Ah, Canon Dominique helped himself to rabbit pie with a lordly air.

One of those radical upstarts, I suppose, this Brissot.

Praise from him is praise indeed.

With an indignant glance at the speaker, Marie said to her husband, I hope M. Brissot sends the book.