The Jacobins

An Essay in the New History

Karl Renner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351480543
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Jacobins were the most famous of the political clubs that fomented the French Revolution. Initially moderate, they are remembered mainly for instituting the Reign of Terror. Crane Brinton's The Jacobins was written in the 1930s, itself a decade of the violent centralization of unchecked political power.

Brinton offers not an account of the actions of major figures, but an anatomy of Jacobinism, its membership, beliefs and political platform, the relations between the central Paris club and the regional groups, and how it evolved from moderation to tyranny. Brinton argues that when one considers the material facts about the Jacobins— their social environment, occupations, and wealth—one finds evidence of their prosperity to justify predicting for them quiet, uneventful, conservative, thoroughly normal lives. But when one studies the records of their proceedings, one finds them violent, cruel, and intolerant. The Jacobins present a paradox. Their political being seems inconsistent with their actual intentions.

The Jacobins presented for a brief time the spectacle of men acting without apparent regard for their material interests. As the brilliant new introduction by Howard G. Schneiderman indicates, this contradiction defines the Jacobins, and perhaps most other revolutionary movements.

NOTES

NOTES

Chapter I

¹ Limoges, p. 206. (For references in this form see Appendix I, p. 281.)

² See Chapter III.

³ The best are those which reproduce the minutes and member-ship lists of a club in extenso, with data on the leaders, relations with governing authorities, correspondence, and publications. Particularly good are the monographs on the clubs of Colmar, Bergerac, Rodez, Limoges, Tulle and Lons-le-Saunier (see Appendix I, under the above place-names). Aulard’s great collection on the Paris Jacobins, though it must be used with caution, shows how much can be learned about a club even when its minutes have entirely disappeared. For a recent synthesis of Jacobin history see de Cardenal, L., La Revolution en province: Histoire des clubs jacobins (1929).

Chapter II

¹ Les Sociétés de pensée et la démocratie: Etudes d’histoire révolutionnaire (1921).

² Crépin-Leblond, M., and Renaud, C, Ephémérides moulinoises (Moulins, 1926), p. 58 note.

³ Castres, p. 393. (For references in this form see Appendix I, p. 281.) These social activities were often carried over into the Jacobin clubs. As late as 1791 the Jacobins of Perpignan voted not to allow bets of more than one sou per tableau at lotto played in the club rooms. Arch mun. Perpignan I 348. (For references in this form see Appendix I, p. 281.)

⁴ Les Sociétés de pensée et la Révolution en Bretagne (1925), 2 vols.

⁵ p. 449. (For references in this form see Appendix I, p. 281.) Tabagie is literally a “smoking club.”

⁶ Journal des Amis de la Constitution (Paris), no. 7, 11 Jan. 1791 (hereafter Jour. A.-C.)

⁷ III, p. 359.

⁸ p. 11.

⁹ p. 53.

¹⁰ p. 330.

¹¹ I, p. 435.

¹² p. 5.

¹³ Auch I, p. 158.

¹⁴ p. 27.

¹⁵ Arch. Haute Garonne L 740.

¹⁶ Auch I, p. 159. And at Noyers “even outside the meetings the brothers will love one another like good and true friends.” Arch Yonne L 1142.

¹⁷ Epinal, p. 199.

¹⁸ La franc-maçonnerie française et la préparation de la Révolution (1926).

¹⁹ As for example in Montauban, i, p. 132.

²⁰ Indre-et-Loire, p. 367.

²¹ Babeau, A., Histoire de Troyes pendant la Révolution (1873), i, p. 433.

²² xx, p. 24.

²³ Arch. Haute Garonne L 740.

²⁴ See Funck-Brentano, F., The Old Régime in France (New York and London, 1929) pp. 11-72.

²⁵ For the Club Breton in general see Paris I, i, Introduction, and Paris IV.

²⁶ Paris IV, p. 28.

²⁷ The réglement of the Paris club is printed in full in Paris I, i, pp. xxviii-xxxiii. For an example of its imitation by a provincial club see Montauban, x, p. 7. As the larger clubs...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction To The Transaction Edition
• I. Introduction
• II. Organization
• III. Membership
• IV. Tactics
• V. Platform
• VI. Ritual
• VII. Faith
• VIII. Conclusion
• Notes
• Appendices
• I. Bibliography and Key to Notes
• Index