National Convention

Unfortunately for several people in Paris, it involves cannon fire.

In October 1795, a major royalist uprising threatened the government of the National Convention.

Thousands of armed royalists were advancing through Paris, and the revolutionary government needed somebody who could stop them.

Paul Barras, one of the political leaders involved in defending the Convention, turned to Napoleon.

[upbeat drum music] On March 10th, 1793, Georges Danton stood up in the National Convention and asked it for a new court, a special tribunal to try the enemies of the revolution.

If the deputies did not do the frightening things themselves, he argued, the crowds in the street would do it for them.

In his words, "Let us be terrible so the people will not have to be." The deputies gave him his court, and by the end of the year, the Republic's armies had begun to win again.

Did that concentration of authority allow the choices that led to the terror easier to make, or was the decisive cause the war and the civil war inside France?

Oh, uh, the, the, the decisive, uh, cause of what we, what we call the terror, uh, is, in my, my view, the force of circumstance, is the extraordinary military situation that, uh, France found itself in by the middle of 1793, uh, being invaded on all sides by European powers, but also having to confront, um, armed counter-revolution inside France as well.

Uh, we need to remember that the two emergency committees you referred to are both responsible to the National Convention, to the Nat- to the Assembly, to Parliament, uh, and they have to present, uh, a report monthly on what they've been doing with their emergency powers.

Uh, and the National Convention decides whether to extend those powers for another month.

So it's, these committees aren't, um, aren't dictatorial in the sense that they have, um, powers that cannot be revoked.

So that's a brilliant speech.

Maximilien Robespierre addressing the National Convention on 26th of July, 1794.

He's combating crime.

He's defending the revolution.

But he's not actually gonna do any of the work himself.

This is what a lot of the people on the Committee of Public Safety start to think.

And of course, what, to the public, it looks as though Robespierre is setting himself against the government of which he is a part, that basically he's an individual separate from the Convention and the committees, which is a very, very dangerous role, I think, to try to play.

Anyway, do you know who this reminds me of, actually? Tony Benn in the 1970s.

On the 23rd of August, 1793, a man rose in the National Convention in Paris and read out a decree on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety.

Its first article went like this, "From the moment until that in which the enemy shall have been driven from the territory of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the service of the armies." All Frenchmen.

And then he told each of them what it would be doing.

He talks about why Rousseau sold better after the revolution than before it.

He talks about the trial of a king and counts the dead, including something near two hundred thousand in a peasant rising in the west of France.

That rising began in March of 1793, a few weeks after the National Convention ordered three hundred thousand men raised to be chosen by lot in each commune.

The villagers who came down on the recruiters had a phrase for what they were refusing.

It was two words long, "No enlistments." What was said at one of those villages has come down to us in a longer form and is the whole of tonight's episode in a sentence.

Um, he had gone to inordinate efforts to make it a success, and he had invested a lot of his political capital in putting it on because, um, there was a fair degree of skepticism around it, it has to be said.

Um, so not only had he had himself elected president of the National Convention, so basically the official government of France, four days before this festival is staged, so that he can play the kind of the constitutionally appointed central role in the whole proceedings.

But he has also very thoughtfully had the guillotine moved from the Place de la Révolution, which is kind of just across the road, so that the, [chuckles] the sound of the blade slicing and the spurting of blood and the cheers of the crowd won't detract from the solemnity of this, um, great event that he's planned.

So very thoughtful.

Absolutely.

Um, so there is no question the Constitution is in, um, is in a state of animated, um, suspension.

In fact, it's in a state of literal suspension because on the suggestion of David, the Constitution still in, you know, the Ark of the Covenant had been, um, hung above the speaker's bar in the National Convention.

So whenever anyone goes up to talk, there is the Ark of the Covenant with this Constitution kind of hanging above them.

So then we go on toward the more radical events that you have no doubt covered in the summer of 1792.

The Legislative Assembly and the King are overthrown in the Journée of the 10th of August, 1792, and we get to the National Convention that you would like to talk about next.

Yes?

Absolutely.

Obviously, in the National Convention, we have Brousseau and many other leading members of the Girondins with abolitionist sympathies are in that convention.

You also have the return of many leading Jacobins of Montagnards.

So, Robespierre obviously returns as well.

You also see Danton and other key figures elected.

The final wording of the Convention's decree of 4 February 1794 is as follows.

The National Convention declares the slavery of black people abolished in all the colonies.

Consequently, it decrees that all men, without distinction of colour, domiciled in the colonies, are French citizens and shall enjoy all the rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

The importance of this decree is hard to overstate.