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revolution_fr2007-06-14 07:23 pm
estellacat.livejournal.com) wrote in revolution_fr2007-06-14 07:23 pm
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More translations!
Okay, so this one isn't by a historian or a contemporary, and probably doesn't say anything that most of you don't already know, but I found this old comment from the forums of the website of les Amis de Robespierre, and I thought it just so nicely summed up the position that I--and others of you as well, I'm sure--take on the events of the Revolution and Robespierre's relation to and involvement in them. Sorry, I don't remember who wrote it exactly and I can't find it at present, but just know that the credit goes to that person, whoever they may be and I am only the translator.
"To begin, it must be known or understood that the Terror was a regime of circumstance, adopted without enthusiasm by a Republic, newly proclaimed, obliged to defend itself against all sorts of enemies to survive. The circumstances, which imposed Republicans to have recourse to it, were: principally the exterior war which sustained problems which the Republic would have by then have been long past (treason, problems of civil provisioning, concentration of powers, popular discontent, etc.), or accentuated dangers which, in other circumstances, would have been suppressed less violently (corruption, counter-revolutionary opinions, etc.). The civil war that was directly at the origin of the inception of the Terror was but too, at heart, an indirect consequence of the state of war that multiplied the dangers by ten and radicalized the reactions.
If therefore one examines the causes of the Terror—I say indeed the causes and not the instigators—, one sees that Robespierre was perfectly foreign to them. During the entire Constituent, he had fought for democracy and the rights of the people. At the end of the Constituent, he believed that, by the parliamentary play and the pressure of public opinion (from where came the necessity for freedom of the press) alone, the laws would evolve toward democracy and Equality. But new men appeared on the political scene: the Girondins. Their principle preoccupation was to throw France into war, which Robespierre, foreseeing the inconveniences and disastrous results of a conflict, opposed with all his force, even succeeding in delaying the declaration of war for a few months. In doing this, he made powerful enemies of the irascible Girondins.
As Robespierre foresaw, the war, declared by a king who wanted to lose it, conducted by nobles for the most part ready to betray or desert, supported by badly armed and mutinous troops, turned quickly into a rout. The great treasons that the Girondins had called for in their vows to destroy the monarchy or force Louis XVI to obey the revolutionaries were realized, but they accomplished nothing, or near to it. Their principle reaction was to call 20,000 fédérés to form a camp outside the walls of the city, which Robespierre again opposed, fearing that these fédérés would be chosen from among the counter-revolutionaries. For his part, confiding in the forces of the nation, he wanted to muzzle the enemies of the interior who lent a helping hand to the foreign armies or the émigrés, starting with the king. When he saw that the fédérés were patriots, and not counter-revolutionaries, as he had rightly feared, he counted on them (and on the Parisian patriots) to overthrow Louis XVI (with whom the Girondins had negotiated), and did all he could toward this end. This was accomplished 10 August.
From 29 July 1792, he had called for the formation of a National Convention at the Jacobins Club. The 1st of August, he asked that its members not be chosen from "among those of the Constituent Assembly nor from the first legislature." It is he who, in 1791, had obtained that the Constituents not be eligible for the Legislative, which had thus closed the door to the Assembly for itself. It can be seen that, faithful to his principles, he supported them still in 1792. But the Girondins turned a blind ear. They wanted to be Caliphs in the place of the Caliph. They did not close the door to reelection and thus permitted Robespierre to be elected, the first elect of Paris.
Between 10 August and 21 September, the suspects were locked up in Paris and massacred in the prisons at the beginning of September. 30 July the news of the Brunswick Manifesto had arrived in Paris; Brunswick put his army on the march the same day. 19 August, Brunswick's army entered France. 26 August, Paris learned that the royalists delivered Longwy to the Prussians (the 23rd). 30 August, visits to houses began in Paris. (Out of the some 3,000 persons arrested, all were released except 90, who, added to the persons already detained, brought the number of prisoners to 2,600.) 2 September, Paris learned that Verdun was under siege (the city was delivered the same day to the Prussians). Organized or spontaneous, the massacres in the political prisons begin. They will result in between 1,100 and 1,300 victims. At the same time, 20,000 fédérés and Parisian volunteers marched against the enemy joining Dumouriez and Kellermann's 30,000 men. The 34,000 Prussians were stopped (or stopped themselves) at Valmy 21 September.
22 September, the Convention, which officially opened its session the previous evening, but which assembled behind closed doors the 20th to form its (Girondin) bureau, proclaim the Republic. Thus begins the period of the Convention dominated until 2 June 1793 by the Girondins. These last, formerly masters of the Legislative, dispose of all the positions, of all the power of the State, control everything, manipulate everything. Their propaganda, their calumnies, brought its fruits in the departments. Most of those newly elected from the provinces arrive in Paris full of hate for the Parisians and for the Montagnards, of whom Robespierre is the unofficial leader. Besides this the Girondins call fédérés to Paris to defend the Convention (against the Parisians and the factions). But these "little people," once in Paris, do not take long to realize that the Girondins have duped them, and turn against them. For, in Paris, the past conduct of the Girondins is not a secret to anyone. Their present conduct surprises many of them. Promoters of war, they do not trust the People, who alone can sustain it; champions of the bourgeoisie and of [economic] liberalism, they watch and do nothing as the people die of hunger; great republicans, they do all they can to save the king; democrats, they paralyze the Convention with personal quarrels; Frenchmen, they set the provinces agains the capital; always claiming to be threatened, it is a Montagnard (Le Pelletier) who is the first to be assassinated, a Montagnard deputy (Marat) who is sent, first, by them to the Revolutionary Tribunal, etc. 2 June, the Montagnards, aided by the Paris Commune, succeed in ousting them from the Convention. But many among them, under house arrest, flee and go to raise the departments they long poisoned against Paris. The civil war (recuperated everywhere by the royalists or the English) breaks out threatens two thirds of the territory. 13 July, Charlotte Corday, who arrives from Caen, headquarters of the Girondins, assassinates Marat.
In the meanwhile, the Vendean peasants, disappointed by the Revolution which until this point has favored only the bourgeois (contrary to the politics advocated by Robespierre), refusing to go fight on the borders, manipulated by refractory priests, rose up in March. Despite all the efforts of the Republic, they will not disarm for a long time. The atrocities on one side are matched by the atrocities on the other. That's what a civil war is. There are no clean wars, but that's the dirtiest kind.
It is in this context that the Parisian revolutionaries, insulted, famished, betrayed, surrounded, and yet ready to support the war and the Revolution, go to press the Convention. They obtain the levy en masse (23 August) and the placing of the Terror on the order of the day (5 September). The Terror is: no more quarter for the enemies of the People and of the Republic. 25 December, Robespierre, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety of which he has been a member since 27 July, exposes to the Convention the principles of revolutionary government. He outlines a theory in fact of the Terror, four months after its establishment. "The aim of the constitutional government is to conserve the Republic; that of the revolutionary government is to found it. […] The constitutional government is occupied principally with civil liberty and the revolutionary government with public liberty. Under the constitutional regime, it almost suffices to protect individuals against the abuses of public power; under the revolutionary regime, the public power is itself obliged to protect itself against all the factions that attack it. The revolutionary government owes the entire national protection to good citizens; it owes nothing but death to the enemies of the people. […]
Robespierre was not at the origin of the Terror, he did not want it, but he was a partisan of it from the time it became necessary to save the Republic, plunged into a situation he had done everything to avoid. But the demonizing of Robespierre is not linked to his taking a position that was that of many others; it is linked to the fact that he was moderate and listened to. For Robespierre, the Terror had to be brief and just. It should only have stricken the true enemies of the people, the irreconcilable enemies of the Republic, and not weak or misled individuals. Also he did not pardon the excesses of the representatives on mission who showed themselves to be barbarous and unnecessarily violent. This rancor would have left the interested indifferent if Robespierre had just been some deputy. But he was Robespierre, the greatest revolutionary, the most prestigious man in France. He had no more power than any other of his colleagues, but the Convention, often recognizing the justness of his opinions, followed him frequently. All those who could have feared his reactions, suffered from his prestige or disapproved of his social ideas allied to defeat him. Their arm was calumny. Everything was done and said to make him pass, little by little, for a dictator, a tyrant, a bloodthirsty man, a royalist, etc. 9 Thermidor, furious, jealous, arrogant, bourgeois agreed and Robespierre was arrested, then executed, in the name of what he condemned itself: the abuse of power. Since then, it is the Robespierre whose image was painted by his enemies which is presented to us."
If therefore one examines the causes of the Terror—I say indeed the causes and not the instigators—, one sees that Robespierre was perfectly foreign to them. During the entire Constituent, he had fought for democracy and the rights of the people. At the end of the Constituent, he believed that, by the parliamentary play and the pressure of public opinion (from where came the necessity for freedom of the press) alone, the laws would evolve toward democracy and Equality. But new men appeared on the political scene: the Girondins. Their principle preoccupation was to throw France into war, which Robespierre, foreseeing the inconveniences and disastrous results of a conflict, opposed with all his force, even succeeding in delaying the declaration of war for a few months. In doing this, he made powerful enemies of the irascible Girondins.
As Robespierre foresaw, the war, declared by a king who wanted to lose it, conducted by nobles for the most part ready to betray or desert, supported by badly armed and mutinous troops, turned quickly into a rout. The great treasons that the Girondins had called for in their vows to destroy the monarchy or force Louis XVI to obey the revolutionaries were realized, but they accomplished nothing, or near to it. Their principle reaction was to call 20,000 fédérés to form a camp outside the walls of the city, which Robespierre again opposed, fearing that these fédérés would be chosen from among the counter-revolutionaries. For his part, confiding in the forces of the nation, he wanted to muzzle the enemies of the interior who lent a helping hand to the foreign armies or the émigrés, starting with the king. When he saw that the fédérés were patriots, and not counter-revolutionaries, as he had rightly feared, he counted on them (and on the Parisian patriots) to overthrow Louis XVI (with whom the Girondins had negotiated), and did all he could toward this end. This was accomplished 10 August.
From 29 July 1792, he had called for the formation of a National Convention at the Jacobins Club. The 1st of August, he asked that its members not be chosen from "among those of the Constituent Assembly nor from the first legislature." It is he who, in 1791, had obtained that the Constituents not be eligible for the Legislative, which had thus closed the door to the Assembly for itself. It can be seen that, faithful to his principles, he supported them still in 1792. But the Girondins turned a blind ear. They wanted to be Caliphs in the place of the Caliph. They did not close the door to reelection and thus permitted Robespierre to be elected, the first elect of Paris.
Between 10 August and 21 September, the suspects were locked up in Paris and massacred in the prisons at the beginning of September. 30 July the news of the Brunswick Manifesto had arrived in Paris; Brunswick put his army on the march the same day. 19 August, Brunswick's army entered France. 26 August, Paris learned that the royalists delivered Longwy to the Prussians (the 23rd). 30 August, visits to houses began in Paris. (Out of the some 3,000 persons arrested, all were released except 90, who, added to the persons already detained, brought the number of prisoners to 2,600.) 2 September, Paris learned that Verdun was under siege (the city was delivered the same day to the Prussians). Organized or spontaneous, the massacres in the political prisons begin. They will result in between 1,100 and 1,300 victims. At the same time, 20,000 fédérés and Parisian volunteers marched against the enemy joining Dumouriez and Kellermann's 30,000 men. The 34,000 Prussians were stopped (or stopped themselves) at Valmy 21 September.
22 September, the Convention, which officially opened its session the previous evening, but which assembled behind closed doors the 20th to form its (Girondin) bureau, proclaim the Republic. Thus begins the period of the Convention dominated until 2 June 1793 by the Girondins. These last, formerly masters of the Legislative, dispose of all the positions, of all the power of the State, control everything, manipulate everything. Their propaganda, their calumnies, brought its fruits in the departments. Most of those newly elected from the provinces arrive in Paris full of hate for the Parisians and for the Montagnards, of whom Robespierre is the unofficial leader. Besides this the Girondins call fédérés to Paris to defend the Convention (against the Parisians and the factions). But these "little people," once in Paris, do not take long to realize that the Girondins have duped them, and turn against them. For, in Paris, the past conduct of the Girondins is not a secret to anyone. Their present conduct surprises many of them. Promoters of war, they do not trust the People, who alone can sustain it; champions of the bourgeoisie and of [economic] liberalism, they watch and do nothing as the people die of hunger; great republicans, they do all they can to save the king; democrats, they paralyze the Convention with personal quarrels; Frenchmen, they set the provinces agains the capital; always claiming to be threatened, it is a Montagnard (Le Pelletier) who is the first to be assassinated, a Montagnard deputy (Marat) who is sent, first, by them to the Revolutionary Tribunal, etc. 2 June, the Montagnards, aided by the Paris Commune, succeed in ousting them from the Convention. But many among them, under house arrest, flee and go to raise the departments they long poisoned against Paris. The civil war (recuperated everywhere by the royalists or the English) breaks out threatens two thirds of the territory. 13 July, Charlotte Corday, who arrives from Caen, headquarters of the Girondins, assassinates Marat.
In the meanwhile, the Vendean peasants, disappointed by the Revolution which until this point has favored only the bourgeois (contrary to the politics advocated by Robespierre), refusing to go fight on the borders, manipulated by refractory priests, rose up in March. Despite all the efforts of the Republic, they will not disarm for a long time. The atrocities on one side are matched by the atrocities on the other. That's what a civil war is. There are no clean wars, but that's the dirtiest kind.
It is in this context that the Parisian revolutionaries, insulted, famished, betrayed, surrounded, and yet ready to support the war and the Revolution, go to press the Convention. They obtain the levy en masse (23 August) and the placing of the Terror on the order of the day (5 September). The Terror is: no more quarter for the enemies of the People and of the Republic. 25 December, Robespierre, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety of which he has been a member since 27 July, exposes to the Convention the principles of revolutionary government. He outlines a theory in fact of the Terror, four months after its establishment. "The aim of the constitutional government is to conserve the Republic; that of the revolutionary government is to found it. […] The constitutional government is occupied principally with civil liberty and the revolutionary government with public liberty. Under the constitutional regime, it almost suffices to protect individuals against the abuses of public power; under the revolutionary regime, the public power is itself obliged to protect itself against all the factions that attack it. The revolutionary government owes the entire national protection to good citizens; it owes nothing but death to the enemies of the people. […]
Robespierre was not at the origin of the Terror, he did not want it, but he was a partisan of it from the time it became necessary to save the Republic, plunged into a situation he had done everything to avoid. But the demonizing of Robespierre is not linked to his taking a position that was that of many others; it is linked to the fact that he was moderate and listened to. For Robespierre, the Terror had to be brief and just. It should only have stricken the true enemies of the people, the irreconcilable enemies of the Republic, and not weak or misled individuals. Also he did not pardon the excesses of the representatives on mission who showed themselves to be barbarous and unnecessarily violent. This rancor would have left the interested indifferent if Robespierre had just been some deputy. But he was Robespierre, the greatest revolutionary, the most prestigious man in France. He had no more power than any other of his colleagues, but the Convention, often recognizing the justness of his opinions, followed him frequently. All those who could have feared his reactions, suffered from his prestige or disapproved of his social ideas allied to defeat him. Their arm was calumny. Everything was done and said to make him pass, little by little, for a dictator, a tyrant, a bloodthirsty man, a royalist, etc. 9 Thermidor, furious, jealous, arrogant, bourgeois agreed and Robespierre was arrested, then executed, in the name of what he condemned itself: the abuse of power. Since then, it is the Robespierre whose image was painted by his enemies which is presented to us."