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In my previous lecture, I outlined the magnitude of the crisis that
 was being faced by the New Republic by the middle of 1793.
 What I want to do today is to outline the emergency measures
 that the National Convention put in place to deal with that crisis.
 Remember, it's a crisis which has various dimensions.
 Above all, it's a military crisis,
 one of invasion and one of armed counter revolution
 in the west of France and in some of
 the major cities, provincial cities, of France as well.
 A massive military crisis, which is a political one too because France is
 profoundly divided between pro-Jacobin and anti-Jacobin forces of various types.
 It's an economic and social crisis because of inflation and food shortages.
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It's a period which is most closely identified with this
 man, Maximilien Robespierre, one of the Convention deputies who is
 elected to the Committee of Public Safety in July 1793
 and will be on it for the following 12 months.
 A Committee of Public Safety, which has been
 established in April to be an emergency wartime executive.
 Robespierre becomes one of its 12 members in
 late July 1793 and it's important, therefore, to
 stress from the outset that this Committee of
 Public Safety is not a group of dictators.
 They are people who are chosen from the personnel of the National Convention.
 They are highly esteemed deputies.
 The people who are most trusted as being those who just
 might, if they're given enough authority, be able to put in
 place the measures that might deal with this crisis and certainly,
 Robespierre is far from being some sort of an individual dictator.
 He's certainly the person who makes the most extensive strategic
 speeches but he's simply one of 12 members of that Committee of Public Safety.
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As they put it in the preamble to that decree: the young men shall go forth to
 battle, and all young men between the ages of 18 and 25 are conscripted; the
 married men shall forge arms and transport
 provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes
 and shall serve in the hospitals; the children
 shall turn old linen into lint for the rifles;
 the old men shall repair to the public places to stimulate the courage of
 the warriors, and to preach the unity of the Republic and the hatred for kings.
 4:00
The Convention also decides that its own deputies wearing their red,
 white, and blue regalia can be sent to the provinces as deputies
 on mission with sweeping powers to requisition supplies but also to supervise
 the conduct of the French troops and particularly, their officers.
 There is to be no retreat and the deputies that are sent out to the armies are given
 extraordinary authority, in terms of what's going on
 in the 13 armies that France puts together.
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The men of the Committee of Public Safety
 and the Convention, in general, know that the
 only way that they can hope to mobilize
 the whole country, the only way that they
 can hope that the conscription that's to affect
 every household can work, is if they make sure
 that the most pressing needs, the most pressing
 grievances, of ordinary people across the country are met.
 Remember that back in 1789, that feudalism is not completely abolished.
 It's decided, in particular, that harvest dues, which are the most
 onerous of the seigneurial or feudal dues are to be made redeemable.
 That's to say that, rural communities have to compensate their
 former lords by buying their way out of paying these feudal
 dues, normally 25 or 30 times the annual value, in
 one hit which, of course, rural communities cannot afford to do.
 There's been ongoing friction in the countryside, as
 rural communities have refused to pay outstanding feudal
 dues and their former lords have been trying to take them to court to exact those dues.
 Finally in July, 1793, the Convention, again, at the behest of
 the Committee of Public Safety, effectively says there are no more dues.
 All seigneurial dues are finally abolished without redemption.
 The feudal regime is finally dead.
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There is a political dimension to this, as well.
 Of course, the overthrow of the monarchy
 in 1792 had effectively overthrown the constitutional monarchy
 and in 1793, a new Republican constitution is put to the vote across the country,
 massively supported,
 very few no votes, but in October 1793, it is suspended until the peace.
 The Constitution itself is symbolically placed in an oak
 chest in the heart of the National Convention and
 the National Convention decides when it is safe, we
 will take that Constitution out of that oak chest and
 put it into effect at a time when we
 can live in peace and live in a democratic, liberal,
 constitutional state of affairs. But at the moment, we
 must suspend that until we have won this war because
 we must give our Committee of Public
 Safety the power to take those emergency measures.
 The crisis is responded to in a third way.
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are convinced that the battle in which they
 are now engaged, revolutionary France against old regime
 Europe, the virtues of the Republic against
 the vices of monarchy, as they sometimes put
 it, that this is a battle which is as much about the way people behave and
 believe, as much about daily culture, as it is about anything else.
 It's about the regeneration of humanity.
 It's about a whole new world, a new way of doing things and perhaps, the most
 radical manifestation of that is in September 1793,
 when on the first anniversary of the proclamation
 of the Republic, it is decided to introduce
 a revolutionary calendar, which will effectively start the
 French era or the era of liberty and
 equality at the year one back in September 1792.
 In other words, the 21st of September 1793, the first anniversary
 of the Republic, will be the start of the year two.
 This will be a rational and secular calendar.
 France is also at war with the Papacy,
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Of course, there's a problem, there can't be 10 months, there have to be 12 but
 there are to be 12 months of 30 days and they are to be named after the natural
 world, rather than the classical world and the world of religious saints days.
 So that the months pertaining, for example, to autumn,
 the months of Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, soft
 evocative words about autumn, the months that sound
 rather less evocative in English of wind and ice and cold -
 there are to be months that evoke the seasons and every day is to have the name
 not of a saint but of a virtue or of a useful implement.
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The five days that are left over to make up 365 days, will be the sans-culottes
 days, which will recognize some of the most
 important virtues that sans-culottes are said to embody.
 It's a critical point because, from the outset, it is clear
 that the objectives that the Committee of Public Safety
 and their supporters in the Convention have in mind are
 not just to make the republic safe in military terms.
 11:52
In September 1793, just a few days before the introduction of
 that Revolutionary calendar, the Convention passes a law on suspects, which
 effectively, means that every one of France's 40,000 parishes, former
 parishes, now communes or neighbourhoods in cities will have a watch committee,
 a surveillance committee whose task it is to watch carefully to see whether there
 is counter revolutionary or suspect activity going
 on in the neighborhood or in the rural
 commune and as this contemporary illustration shows,
 to bring suspect people before a watch
 committee that's to be established in every
 one of those communities to check whether their
 papers are in order but also to
 check whether there are proofs of their civic behaviour,
 or are they people whose good faith, who's attitude to the
 Revolution is such that they need to be effectively detained as
 suspects in prisons and even if the need arises, there's the
 evidence there, to put them on trial through the Revolutionary Tribunal.
 There is to be surveillance and if necessary, punishment.
 The following month, Marie Antoinette, also found guilty
 of treason like her husband, goes to the guillotine.
 Sketched here rapidly by Jacques-Louis David, as she's on her way to
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the guillotine, itself a harrowing portrait of the former queen.
 She's not the only one.
 Leading Girondins, such as Brissot, people who have been expelled from the
 Convention in the middle of 1793 are also put on trial, found guilty and executed.
 Manon Roland, one of the key Girondin organizers similarly,
 put on trial and found guilty of undermining the unity, the
 purpose of the Republic by her incessant attacks on the
 Jacobins who are passing the laws inside the National Convention.
 Bailly is also put on trial and found guilty.
 He's the man, you might remember, who had administered the oath
 of the National Assembly at the Tennis Court in June 1789.
 By now, he's regarded as a counter-revolutionary, one of the reasons
 why Jacques-Louis David never completes that painting of the Tennis Court Oath.
 Barnave, a prominent Revolutionary in the early years, who
 in July of 1791, had called for the troops to
 be sent to the Champ de Mars, where people are
 signing a petition for the abdication of Louis the XVI.
 Barnave is seen to be the person who has
 blood on his hands over that episode, as well.
 He too is tried and sent to the guillotine.
 This is to be a regime which is uncompromising, therefore, in the
 measures it takes to deal with the military crisis, the economic crisis, the
 political crisis but also uncompromising in the way that it deals with those who
 would overthrow the Revolution, who are effectively in league with the enemy.
 It's a remarkable period, the second half of 1793, as some of the measures that are
 being taken by the Committee of Public Safety
 in the National Convention, start to bear fruit.
 There are a series of very significant military
 victories, across the last few months of 1793.
 Up here, in the Northeast, the battle of
 Wattignies effectively halts the advance of Austrian troops.
 They're still on French soil but their advance has been halted.
 Just as down in the South, The Battle of Peyrestortes,
 near Perpignan, does the same with the advance of Spanish troops.
 Over in the West of France, the great city of Nantes holds firm against
 the great rural insurrection against the authority of the National Convention.
 The onward march of Vendean rebels is checked
 on the banks of the River Loire at Nantes.
 Toulon, the great naval port on the Mediterranean, which had been surrendered
 to Britain by its officers, mainly aristocrats, in August 1793,
 is recaptured at the end of the year by the
 French army, headed by a young artillery lieutenant named Napoleon Bonaparte.
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