Prairial

It's a week after the Festival of the Supreme Being and the Reign of Terror is at its height.

So if you listened to the last episode, you will recall Tom describing the Law of Prairial, which was passed five days ago on the 10th of June.

And Prairial created this new category of enemies of the people, so these are if you mislead the people, if you spread false news, you deprave public morals, you speak ill of the Republic, all of this.

And these political criminals will be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal with no legal representation, no witnesses, no, and there's no need for evidence.

The jurors can rely on their consciences and their love of the fatherland, and if the verdict is guilty, then the only possible sentence is death.

One prosecutor says at the time, "With this new law, we will purge the prisons in a single blow and rid the soil of liberty of this garbage, these dregs of humanity." And so in the seven weeks after the 10th of June, so that's between the 10th of June and the 27th of July, and that's basically the period of today's episode, about 1,400 people are guillotined.

So that's more than in the whole of the previous 14 months.

So the Law of Prairial, if you're Robespierre, is really working.

Spring, it germinates with a month that is called Germinal.

It flowers in a month called Floréal, and it spreads through the ripening fields in Prairial.

So prairie is a kind of meadow, isn't it?

Hence the name prairie.

Yeah.

That's what it would be.

And also, you know, the speech he gives to the convention announcing the festival of, um, of the Supreme Being, he gives the date not in the, the traditional calendar, so not on the eighth of June 1794, but he says it's going to be the twentieth of Prairial, year two.

Um, and it's sad that by this point Églantine has been guillotined, so he, he's not around to enjoy the, the spectacle of his calendar [laughs] being garnished with this great festival.

The poet, Philippe Fabre d'Églantine, named the, the months after the weather and the farming year around Gay Paris.

So Vendémiaire, which means grape harvest, from Latin vindemia; Brumaire, which m- means mist; Frimaire, frost; Nivôse, snow; Pluvôse, rain; Ventôse, wind; Germinal, seedtime; Floréal, blossom, oh, Floréal Paris; uh, Prairial, meadow; Messidor, harvest; Thermidor, heat; and Fructidor, fruit.

Uh, he was guillo- uh, the poet was guillotined in April 1794-

That rhymes