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GIRONDISTS (Fr. Girondins)

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 51 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GIRONDISTS (Fr. Girondins) , the name given to a See also:political party in the Legislative See also:Assembly and See also:National See also:Convention during the See also:French Revolution (1791-1793). The Girondists were, indeed, rather a See also:group of, individuals holding certain opinions and principles in See also:common than an organized political party, and the name was at first somewhat loosely applied to them owing to the fact that the most brilliant exponents of their point of view were deputies from the See also:Gironde. These deputies were twelve in number, six of whom—the lawyers See also:Vergniaud,49 See also:Guadet, See also:Gensonne, Grangeneuve and See also:Jay, and the tradesman See also:Jean See also:Francois See also:Ducos—sat both in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. In the Legislative Assembly these represented a compact See also:body of See also:opinion which, though not as yet definitely republican, was considerably more advanced than the moderate royalism of the See also:majority of the Parisian deputies. Associated with these views was a group of deputies from other parts of See also:France, of whom the most notable were See also:Condorcet, See also:Fauchet, Lasource, See also:Isnard, See also:Kersaint, See also:Henri Lariviere, and, above all, Jacques See also:Pierre See also:Brissot, See also:Roland and Petion, elected See also:mayor of See also:Paris in See also:succession to See also:Bailly on the 16th of See also:November 179 1. On the spirit and policy of the Girondists Madame Roland, whose See also:salon became their gathering-See also:place, exercised a powerful See also:influence (see ROLAND); but such party cohesion as they possessed they owed to the See also:energy of Brissot (q.v.), who came to be regarded as their See also:mouthpiece in the Assembly and the Jacobin See also:Club. Hence the name Brissotins, coined by Camille See also:Desmoulins, which was sometimes substituted for that of Girondins, sometimes closely coupled with it. As strictly party designations these first came into use after the assembling of the National Convention (See also:September loth, 1792), to which a large proportion of the deputies from the Gironde who had sat in the Legislative Assembly were returned. Both were used as terms of opprobrium by the orators of the Jacobin Club, who freely denounced " the Royalists, the Federalists, the Brissotins, the Girondins and all the enemies of the See also:democracy " (F. See also:Aulard, See also:Soc. See also:des See also:Jacobins, vi. 531).

In the Legislative Assembly the Girondists represented the principle of democratic revolution within and of patriotic See also:

defiance to the See also:European See also:powers without. They were all-powerful in the Jacobin Club (see JACOBINS), where Brissot's influence had not yet been ousted by See also:Robespierre, and they did not hesitate to use this See also:advantage to stir up popular See also:passion and intimidate those who sought to stay the progress of the Revolution. They compelled the See also:king in 1792 to choose a See also:ministry composed of their partisans—among them Roland, See also:Dumouriez, Claviere and See also:Servan; and it was they who forced the See also:declaration of See also:war against See also:Austria. In all this there was no apparent See also:line of cleavage between " La Gironde " and the See also:Mountain. Montagnards and Girondists alike were fundamentally opposed to the See also:monarchy; both were democrats as well as republicans; both were prepared to See also:appeal to force in See also:order to realize their ideals; in spite of the See also:accusation of " federalism " freely brought against them, the Girondists desired as little as the Montagnards to break up the unity of France. Yet from the first the leaders of the two parties stood in avowed opposition, in the Jacobin Club as in the Assembly. It was largely a question of temperament. The Girondists were idealists, See also:doctrinaires and theorists rather than men of See also:action; they encouraged, it is true, the " armed petitions " which resulted, to their dismay, in the emeute of the 2oth of See also:June; but Roland, turning the ministry of the interior into a See also:publishing See also:office for tracts on the civic virtues, while in the provinces riotous mobs were burning the chateaux unchecked, is more typical of their spirit. With the ferocious fanaticism or the ruthless opportunism of the future organizers of the Terror they had nothing in common. As the Revolution See also:developed they trembled at the anarchic forces they had helped to unchain, and tried in vain to curb them. The overthrow of the monarchy on the loth of See also:August and the massacres of September were not their See also:work, though they claimed See also:credit for the results achieved. The crisis of their See also:fate was not slow in coming.

It was they who proposed the suspension of the king and the summoning of the National Convention; but they had only consented to overthrow the kingship when they found that See also:

Louis XVI. was impervious to their counsels, and, the See also:republic once established, they were anxious to See also:arrest the revolutionary See also:movement which they had helped to set in See also:motion. As See also:Daunou shrewdly observes in his M1 moires, they were too cultivated and too polished to retain their popularity See also:long in times of disturbance, and were therefore the more inclined to work for the See also:establishment of order, which would mean the See also:guarantee of their own See also:power.' Thus the Girondists, who had been the Radicals of the Legislative Assembly, became the Conservatives of the Convention. But they were soon to have See also:practical experience of the fate that overtakes those who See also:attempt to arrest in See also:mid-career a revolution they themselves have set in motion. The ignorant populace, for whom the promised social See also:millennium had by no means dawned, saw in an attitude seemingly so inconsistent obvious See also:proof of corrupt motives, and there were plenty of prophets of See also:misrule to encourage the delusion—orators of the clubs and the See also:street corners, for whom the restoration of order would have meant well-deserved obscurity. Moreover, the Septembriseurs—Robespierre, See also:Danton, See also:Marat and their lesser satellites—realized that not only their influence but their safety depended on keeping the Revolution alive. Robespierre, who hated the Girondists, whose lustre had so long obscured his own, had proposed to include:them in the proscription lists of September; the Mountain to a See also:man desired their overthrow. The crisis came in See also:March 1793. The Girondists, who had a majority in the Convention, controlled the executive See also:council and filled the ministry, believed themselves invincible. Their orators had no serious rivals in the hostile See also:camp; their See also:system was established in the purest See also:reason. But the Montagnards made up by their fanatical, or desperate, energy and boldness for what they lacked in See also:talent or in See also:numbers. They had behind them the revolutionary See also:Commune, the Sections and the National Guard of Paris, and they had gained See also:control of the Jacobin club, where Brissot, absorbed in departmental work, had been superseded by Robespierre. And as the See also:motive power of this formidable mechanism of force they could rely on the native suspiciousness of the Parisian populace, exaggerated now into madness by See also:famine and the menace of See also:foreign invasion.

The Girondists played into their hands. At the trial of Louis XVI. the bulk of them had voted for the " appeal to the See also:

people," and so laid themselves open to the See also:charge of " royalism "; they denounced the domination of'Paris and summoned provincial levies to their aid, and so See also:fell under suspicion of " federalism," though they rejected See also:Buzot's proposal to See also:transfer the Convention to See also:Versailles. They strengthened the revolutionary Commune by decreeing its abolition, and then withdrawing the See also:decree at the first sign of popular opposition; they increased the See also:prestige of Marat by prosecuting him before the Revolutionary Tribunal, where his acquittal was a foregone conclusion. In the suspicious See also:temper of the times this vacillating policy was doubly fatal. Marat never ceased his denunciations of the " See also:faction des hommes d'Etat," by which France was being betrayed to her ruin, and his See also:parrot cry of ," Nous sommes trahis l" was re-echoed from group to group in the streets of Paris. The Girondists, for all their See also:fine phrases, were sold to the enemy, as See also:Lafayette, Dumouriez and a See also:hundred others—once popular favourites—had been sold. The hostility of Paris to the Girondists received a fateful See also:advertisement by the See also:election, on the 15th of See also:February 1793, of the ex-Girondist Jean See also:Nicolas See also:Pache (1746-1823) to the mayoralty. Pache had twice been See also:minister of war in the Girondist See also:government; but his incompetence had laid him open to strong See also:criticism, and on the 4th of February he had been superseded by a See also:vote of the Convention. This was enough to secure him the suffrages of the Paris See also:electors ten days later, and the Mountain was strengthened by the See also:accession of an ally whose one See also:idea was to use his new power to revenge himself on his former colleagues. Pache, with See also:Chaumette, procureur of the Commune, and See also:Hebert, See also:deputy procureur, controlled the armed organization of the Paris Sections; and prepared to turn this against the Convention. The abortive emeute of the loth of March warned the Girondists of their danger, but the See also:Commission of Twelve appointed on the 18th of May, the arrest of Marat and Hebert, and other precautionary See also:measures, were defeated by the popular risings of the 27th and 31st of May, and, finally, on the 2nd of June, See also:Hanriot with the National 1 Daunou, " Memoires pour servir a 1'hist. de la Convention Nationale," p. 409, vol. xii. of M.

Fr. Barriere, Bibl. des mem. rel a Phis'. de la France, &c. (Paris, 1863). See also:

Guards purged the Convention of the Girondists. Isnard's See also:threat, uttered on the 25th of May, to march France upon Paris had been met by Paris marching upon the Convention. The See also:list See also:drawn up by Hanriot, and endorsed by a decree of the intimidated Convention, included twenty-two Girondist deputies and ten members of the Commission of Twelve, who were ordered to be detained at their lodgings " under the safe-guard of the people." Some submitted, among them Gensonne, Guadet, Vergniaud, Petion, Birotteau and See also:Boyer-Fonfrede. Others, including Brissot, Louvet, Buzot, Lasource, Grangeneuve, Lariviere and Bergoing, escaped from Paris and, joined later by Guadet, Petion and Birotteau, set to work to organize a movement of the provinces against the See also:capital. This attempt to stir up See also:civil war determined the wavering and frightened Convention. On the 13th of June it voted that the See also:city of Paris had deserved well of the See also:country, and ordered the imprisonment of the detained deputies, the filling up of their places in the Assembly by their suppleants, and the See also:initiation of vigorous measures against the movement in the provinces. The excuse for the Terror that followed was the imminent peril of France, menaced on the See also:east by the advance of the armies of the See also:Coalition, on the See also:west by the Royalist insurrection of La See also:Vendee, and the need for preventing at all See also:costs the outbreak of another civil war. The assassination of Marat by See also:Charlotte See also:Corday (q.v.) only served to increase the unpopularity of the Girondists and to See also:seal their fate. On the 28th of See also:July a decree of the Convention proscribed, as traitors and enemies of their country, twenty-one deputies, the final list of those sent for trial comprising the names of Antiboul, Boilleau the younger, Boyer-Fonfrede, Brissot, Carra, Duchastel, the younger Ducos, Dufriche de Valaze, Duprat, Fauchet, Gardien, Gensonne, Lacaze, Lasource, Lauze-Deperret, Lehardi, Lesterpt-See also:Beauvais, the See also:elder Minvielle, Sillery, Vergniaud and Viger, of whom five were deputies from the Gironde.

The names of See also:

thirty-nine others were included in the final acte d'accusation, accepted by the Convention on the 24th of See also:October, which stated the crimes for which they were to be tried as their perfidious ambition, their hatred of Paris, their " federalism " and, above all, their responsibility for the attempt of their escaped colleagues to provoke civil war. The trial of the twenty-one, which began before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 24th of October, was a See also:mere See also:farce, the See also:verdict a foregone conclusion. On the 31st they were See also:borne to the See also:guillotine in five tumbrils, the See also:corpse of Dufriche de Valaze—who had killed himself—being carried with them. They met See also:death with See also:great courage, singing the refrain " Plutot la mort que l'esclavage l " Of those who escaped to the provinces the greater number, after wandering about singly or in See also:groups, were either captured and executed or committed See also:suicide, among them See also:Barbaroux, Buzot, Condorcet, Grangeneuve, Guadet, Kersaint, Petion, See also:Rabaut de See also:Saint-See also:Etienne and Rebecqui. Roland had killed himself at See also:Rouen on the 15th of November, a See also:week after the See also:execution of his wife. Among the very few who finally escaped was Jean See also:Baptiste Louvet, whose Memoires give a thrilling picture of the sufferings of the fugitives. Incidentally they prove, too, that the sentiment of France was for the See also:time against the Girondists, who were proscribed even in their See also:chief centre, the city of See also:Bordeaux. The survivors of the party made an effort to re-enter the Convention after the fall of Robespierre, but it was not until the 5th of March 1795 that they were formally reinstated. On the 3rd of October of the same See also:year (11 Vendemiaire, year III.) a See also:solemn fete in See also:honour of the Girondist " martyrs of See also:liberty " was celebrated in the Convention. See also the See also:article FRENCH REVOLUTION and See also:separate See also:biographies. Of the See also:special See also:works on the Girondists Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins (2 vols., Paris, 1847, new ed. 1902, in 6 vols.) is See also:rhetoric rather than See also:history and is untrustworthy ; the Histoire des Girondins, by A.

Gramier de See also:

Cassagnac (Paris, 186o) led to the publicaton of a Protestation by J. Guadet, a See also:nephew of the Girondist orator, which was followed by his See also:Les Girondins, leur See also:vie privee, leur vie publique, leur proscription et leur most (2 vols., Paris, 1861, new ed. I89o); with which cf.

End of Article: GIRONDISTS (Fr. Girondins)

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