Jacobins

The Society of the Friends of the Constitution (), renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality () after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club () or simply the Jacobins (; ), was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for "political crimes".

Initially founded in 1789 by anti-royalist deputies from Brittany, the club grew into a nationwide republican movement with a membership estimated at a half million or more. The Jacobin Club was heterogeneous and included both prominent parliamentary factions of the early 1790s: The Mountain and the Girondins. In 1792–93, the Girondins were more prominent in leading France when they declared war on Austria and on Prussia, overthrew King Louis XVI, and set up the French First Republic. In May 1793, the leaders of the Mountain faction, led by Maximilien Robespierre, succeeded in sidelining the Girondin faction and controlled the government until July 1794. Their time in government featured high levels of political violence, and for this reason the period of the Jacobin/Mountain government is identified as the Reign of Terror. In October 1793, 21 prominent Girondins were guillotined. The Mountain-dominated government executed 17,000 opponents nationwide as a way to suppress the Vendée insurrection and the Federalist revolts, and to deter recurrences. In July 1794, the National Convention pushed the administration of Robespierre and his allies out of power and had Robespierre and 21 associates executed. In November 1794, the Jacobin Club closed.

In the years and decades after the revolution, the term Jacobin was used in an extended sense to denote political positions perceived as similar to those of the historical Jacobins and the Mountain in the National Convention. It was popular among conservative publicists as a pejorative to deride progressive politics, and among Anglophone progressives likewise as a pejorative denoting the violent excesses of the revolution, whereas they associated its positive features and principles with the Girondins. In Britain, the term faintly echoed negative connotations of Jacobitism, the pro-Catholic, monarchist, rarely insurrectional political movement that faded out decades earlier tied to deposed King James II of England and his descendants. The term Jacobin reached obsolescence and supersedence before the Russian Revolution, when the terms Marxism, anarchism, socialism, and communism had overtaken it.

In modern France, the term Jacobin generally denotes a position of more equal formal rights, centralization, and moderate authoritarianism. It can be used to denote supporters of a role of the state in the transformation of society. It is, in particular, used as a self-identification by proponents of a state education system that strongly promotes and inculcates civic values. It is more controversially used by or for proponents of a strong nation-state capable of resisting undesirable foreign interference.

History

Foundation

When the Estates General of 1789 in France convened in May–June 1789 at the Palace of Versailles, the Jacobin club, originating as the Club Breton, comprised exclusively a group of Breton representatives attending those Estates General.

Transfer to Paris

By the March on Versailles in October 1789, the club, still entirely composed of deputies, reverted to being a provincial caucus for National Constituent Assembly deputies from Brittany. The club was re-founded in November 1789 as the Société de la Révolution, inspired in part by a letter sent from the Revolution Society of London to the Assembly congratulating the French on regaining their liberty.

To accommodate growing membership, the group rented for its meetings the refectory of the Dominican monastery of the "Jacobins" in the Rue Saint-Honoré, adjacent to the seat of the Assembly.

On 8 February 1790, the society became formally constituted on this broader basis by the adoption of the rules drawn up by Barnave, which were issued with the signature of the duc d'Aiguillon, the president.

As far as the central society in Paris was concerned, it was composed almost entirely of professional men (such as the lawyer Robespierre) and well-to-do bourgeoisie (like the brewer Santerre). From the start, however, other elements were also present. Besides the teenage son of the Duc d'Orléans, Louis Philippe, a future king of France, aristocrats such as the duc d'Aiguillon, the prince de Broglie, and the vicomte de Noailles, and the bourgeoisie formed the mass of the members. The club further included people like "père" Michel Gérard, a peasant proprietor from Tuel-en-Montgermont, in Brittany, whose rough common sense was admired as the oracle of popular wisdom, and whose countryman's waistcoat and plaited hair were later on to become the model for the Jacobin fashion.

The departure of the conservative members of the Jacobin Club to form their own Feuillants Club in July 1791 to some extent radicalized the Jacobin Club. In March 1792, in retaliation for their opposition to war with Austria the Feuillant ministers were forced out by the Girondins. The Assembly in April 1792 finally decided for war, thus following the 'Girondin' line on it, but Robespierre's place among the Jacobins had now become much more prominent.

The Legislative Assembly, governing France from October 1791 until September 1792, was dominated by men like Brissot, Isnard and Roland: Girondins. But after June 1792, Girondins visited less and less the Jacobin Club, where Robespierre, their fierce opponent, grew more and more dominant.

Opposition between Montagnards and Girondins in the National Convention

On 21 September 1792, after the fall of the monarchy the title assumed by the Jacobin Club after the promulgation of the constitution of 1791 (Société des amis de la constitution séants aux Jacobins à Paris) was changed to Société des Jacobins, amis de la liberté et de l'égalité which can be confusing because not all Montagnards were Jacobin and their primal enemies, the Girondins, were originally also Jacobins. By September 1792, Robespierre indeed had also become the dominant voice in the Jacobin Club.

Montagnard rule and civil war

Around June 1793, Maximilien Robespierre and some of his associates (Montagnards) gained greater power in France. Many of them, like Robespierre himself, were Jacobin: Fouché, Collot d'Herbois, Marat, Saint-Just. Three other powerful Montagnards Hébert and Couthon. In 'culture wars' and history writing after 1793 however, the group around Robespierre dominating French politics in June 1793–July 1794 was often designated as 'Jacobins'. and Saint-Just had entered the Committee in May, Robespierre entered it in July, in September and Billaud-Varenne Meanwhile, the Montagnard-dominated government resorted also to harsh measures to repress what they considered counter-revolution, conspiracy

In late June 1794, three colleagues on the Committee of Public Prosperity/Safety – Billaud-Varenne, Collot d'Herbois and Carnot – called Robespierre a dictator. On 10 Thermidor, Year II (28 July 1794), at some time in the evening, Louis Legendre was sent out with troops to arrest leading members of the Montagnards at the Hôtel de Ville and the Jacobin Club itself where members had been gathering every Saturday evening. Robespierre and 21 associates including the Jacobin Saint-Just and the Montagnard Couthon were sentenced to death by the National Convention and guillotined.

Closure

thumb|Engraving "Closing of the Jacobin Club, during the night of 27–28 July 1794, or 9–10 Thermidor, year 2 of the Republic"

With the execution of Robespierre and other leading Montagnards and Jacobins, began the Thermidorian Reaction. The Jacobins became targets of Thermidorian and anti-Jacobin papers, with Jacobins lamenting counterrevolutionary pamphlets "poisoning public opinion". The Jacobins disavowed the support they gave Robespierre on 9 Thermidor, yet supported an unpopular return to the Terror. Meanwhile, the society's finances fell into disarray and membership dipped to 600. Further, they were linked to ongoing trials of prominent members of the Terror involved in atrocities in Nantes, especially Jean-Baptiste Carrier.

Organized gangs formed, the jeunesse doree or Muscadins, who harassed and attacked Jacobin members, even assailing the Jacobin Club hall in Paris. Within a year 93% of the Jacobin clubs were closed throughout the country.

Reunion of Jacobin adherents

An attempt to reorganize Jacobin adherents was the foundation of the Réunion d'amis de l'égalité et de la liberté, in July 1799, which had its headquarters in the Salle du Manège of the Tuileries, and was thus known as the Club du Manège. It was patronized by Barras, and some two hundred and fifty members of the two councils of the legislature were enrolled as members, including many notable ex-Jacobins. It published a newspaper called the Journal des Libres, proclaimed the apotheosis of Robespierre and Babeuf, and attacked the Directory as a royauté pentarchique. But public opinion was now preponderantly moderate or royalist, and the club was violently attacked in the press and in the streets. The suspicions of the government were aroused; it had to change its meeting-place from the Tuileries to the church of the Jacobins (Temple of Peace) in the Rue du Bac, and in August it was suppressed, after barely a month's existence. Its members avenged themselves on the Directory by supporting Napoleon Bonaparte.

Influence

Political influence

The Jacobin movement encouraged sentiments of patriotism and liberty amongst the populace. The movement's contemporaries, such as the King Louis XVI, located the effectiveness of the revolutionary movement not "in the force and 1789

bayonets of soldiers, guns, cannons and shells but by the marks of political power". Ultimately, the Jacobins were to control several key political bodies, in particular the Committee of Public Safety and, through it, the National Convention, which was not only a legislature but also took upon itself executive and judicial functions. The Jacobins as a political force were seen as "less selfish, more patriotic, and more sympathetic to the Paris Populace."

The Jacobin Club developed into a bureau for French republicanism and revolution, rejecting its original laissez-faire economic policy and economic liberal approach in favour of economic interventionism. In power, they completed the abolition of feudalism in France that had been formally decided 4 August 1789 but had been held in check by a clause requiring compensation for the abrogation of the feudal privileges.

Robespierre entered the political arena at the very beginning of the Revolution, having been elected to represent Artois at the Estates General. Robespierre was viewed as the quintessential political force of the Jacobin Movement, thrusting ever deeper the dagger of liberty within the despotism of the Monarchy. As a disciple of Rousseau, Robespierre's political views were rooted in Rousseau's notion of the social contract, which promoted "the rights of man". Robespierre particularly favored the rights of the broader population to eat, for example, over the rights of individual merchants. "I denounce the assassins of the people to you and you respond, 'let them act as they will.' In such a system, all is against society; all favors the grain merchants." Robespierre famously elaborated this conception in his speech on 2 December 1792: "What is the first goal of society? To maintain the imprescribable rights of man. What is the first of these rights? The right to exist."

The ultimate political vehicle for the Jacobin movement was the Reign of Terror overseen by the Committee of Public Safety, who were given executive powers to purify and unify the Republic. The Committee instituted requisitioning, rationing, and conscription to consolidate new citizen armies. They instituted the Terror as a means of combating those they perceived as enemies within: Robespierre declared, "the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror."

Georges Valois, founder of the first non-Italian fascist party Faisceau, claimed the roots of fascism stemmed from the Jacobin movement.

Left-wing politics

The political rhetoric and populist ideas espoused by the Jacobins would lead to the development of the modern leftist movements throughout the 19th and 20th century, with Jacobinism being the political foundation of almost all leftist schools of thought including anarchism, communism and socialism. The Paris Commune was seen as the revolutionary successor to the Jacobins. The undercurrent of radical and populist tendencies espoused and enacted by the Jacobins would create a complete cultural and societal shock within the traditional and conservative governments of Europe, leading to new political ideas of society emerging. Jacobin rhetoric would lead to increasing secularization and skepticism towards the governments of Europe throughout the 1800s. This complex and complete revolution in political, societal and cultural structure, caused in part by the Jacobins, had lasting impact throughout Europe, with such societal revolutions throughout the 1800s culminating in the Revolutions of 1848.

Jacobin populism and complete structural destruction of the old order led to an increasingly revolutionary spirit throughout Europe and such changes would contribute to new political foundations. Leftist organizations would take different elements from Jacobin's core foundation. Anarchists took influence from the Jacobins use of mass movements, direct democracy and left-wing populism. The Jacobin philosophy of a complete dismantling of an old system, with completely radical and new structures, is historically seen as one of the most revolutionary and important movements throughout modern history.

The Jacobins saw themselves as constitutionalists, dedicated to the Rights of Man and in particular, to the declaration's principle of "preservation of the natural rights of liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression" (Article II of the Declaration). The constitution reassured the protection of personal freedom and social progress within French society. The cultural influence of the Jacobin movement was effective in reinforcing these rudiments, developing a milieu for revolution. The Constitution was admired by most Jacobins as the foundation of the emerging republic and of the rise of citizenship.

The Jacobins rejected both the church and atheism. They set up new religious cults, the Cult of Reason and later Cult of the Supreme Being, to replace Catholicism. They advocated deliberate government-organized religion as a substitute for both the rule of law and a replacement of mob violence as inheritors of a war that at the time of their rise to power threatened the very existence of the Revolution. Once in power, the Jacobins completed the overthrow of the Ancien Régime and successfully defended the Revolution from military defeat. They consolidated republicanism in France and contributed greatly to the secularism and the sense of nationhood that have marked all French republican regimes to this day. However, their ruthless and unjudicial methods discredited the Revolution in the eyes of many. The resulting Thermidorian Reaction shuttered all of the Jacobin clubs, removed all Jacobins from power and condemned many, well beyond the ranks of the Mountain, to death or exile.

List of presidents of the Jacobin Club

In the beginning every two months, later every two weeks a new president was chosen:

1791 – Pierre-Antoine Antonelle;
1792 – Jean-Paul Marat
1793 – Antoine Barnave, 3 June-23 July; Maximilien Robespierre, 7–28 August 1793
1794 – Joseph Fouché, 11 July; Nicolas Francois Vivier, 27 July; abolished in November

Electoral results

{|class=wikitable

!Election year

!No. of<br />overall votes

!% of<br />overall vote

!No. of<br />overall seats won

!+/–

!Leader

!1791

|774,000 (3rd)

|18.3

|colspan=6|National Convention

!1792

|907,200 (2nd)

|26.7

|colspan=6|Legislative Body

!1795

|Did not participate

References

Bibliography

Shusterman, Noah (2014). The French Revolution. Faith, Desire, and Politics. Routledge: London/New York.

External links

The Jacobins – Mount Holyoke college course site. .