The Mountain

There was inevitably going to be a backlash, and when it came, Robespierre fell." But actually, in this case, it becomes very clear this is not about a backlash against the Terror, or at least if there is a backlash against the Terror, it's not the sole cause.

There was a nice line I thought from a Montagnard deputy called Marc-Antoine Baudou, which probably sums the whole thing up.

Baudou said, "The struggle of the 9th of Thermidor," which is the date attributed to this, "was not a matter of principles.

It was a matter of killing." And we will see how true that is.

Now, Robespierre going away for six weeks, what makes this so dangerous is that he does have enemies in the Convention.

So just on the Convention, Convention in theory has 749 members, but it's been purged, and a lot of them have gone away as deputies on mission, so it's often half empty.

Of the members, 200 of them are Montagnard.

They're the kind of governing faction.

This is a festival in honor of the supreme being.

Now, who is the supreme being? So back in November, um, people may remember Robespierre goes to the Jacobin Club, and he publicly confronts the atheist trend that's been catching fire among the, uh, the Montagnard.

And he opposed this by saying that even if God didn't exist, um, it would be necessary to invent him, kind of echoing the famous aphorism of Voltaire.

But Robespierre definitely thinks that there is a God, um, and this is the God that he calls the supreme deity, and he denies that he has invented this God.

Once it's been ratified, it gets ceremonially placed in a model of the Ark of the Covenant that David has kind of rustled up specially for it.

And so the iconography of this is very obvious, I think, and deliberate, that what the God of the Bible had been to the Israelites, so he, God gives the, you know, the tablets of stone, the law to Moses, and these tablets are then placed in the Ark of the Covenant.

The Supreme Being is to the Jacobin, is to the Montagnard, is to the, the revolution as a whole.

The Constitution is something that is descended from the Supreme Being and therefore is literally, dare one say, sacral.

So, Charlotte Corday, uh, date 1793.

[laughs] So, on the 9th of July 1793, in the midst of the French Revolution, while France is simultaneously engaged in half a dozen wars against foreign powers, and also an internal power struggle between the Girondins, a group of the Jacobins, and the Montagnards, another group of the Jacobins, which I will not be pronouncing.

Like, no, I will be, because everyone's gonna suffer with me.

So, 9th of July, youngest woman, Charlotte Corday, uh, she's living in a place called Cayenne, which is a home of sort of these, uh, Jacobins that got kicked out, right? So the Girondins, which a little bit ago had been kind of exiled from the Jacobin French convention.

So her father sends her to a convent to go and study.

Now, 1791, convents are dissolved, so she's still living in Cayenne, this time with, uh, an elderly aunt.

But in the 2nd of June 1793, this is when the, uh, the Girondins get arrested by the Montagnards and just get absolutely decimated.

So they're all running away.

He's ruthless, all of this.

Over time, though, he falls out with the Girondins a bit, and so he moves closer to the Montagnard faction.

So that's Robespierre, Marat, and Co.

And by, let's say, 1793...

Macron-Antoinette has been executed and the Girondins have been executed.

And by now, the reign of terror is well institutionalized and is well underway, which brings us to the big picture.

So to remind people, the Montagnards have been running the roost since the summer and their power is embodied now in these two committees.

So you have the Committee of Public Safety, which directs policy, and the Committee of General Security, which controls the police and the Revolutionary Tribunal.