Jacobins

3 Key excerpts on "Jacobins"

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  eBook - ePub

  Encyclopedia of Political Theory

  • Mark Bevir(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  J    

  JACOBINISM

  The Jacobins were the most radical and egalitarian group involved in the French Revolution. They led the government from June 1793 to July 1794, the most politically radical year of the revolution and also the year of the Terror. During their time in power, they attempted to create a “republic of virtue”—that is, a republic that attempted to purify its citizens of moral corruption. The Jacobins fell from power with the overthrow of Maximilien Robespierre. They were never to achieve power in France again. But they left a long legacy, particularly within France itself, where there continued to be a tradition of Jacobin politics on the left, while on the right the memory of the Jacobin republic has been abhorred.

  The origins of the Jacobins lay in the Breton club, which was founded shortly after the outbreak of the revolution in 1789 by deputies to the new National Assembly. It became a focus for patriots (supporters of the revolution). The membership of the club rapidly widened, and it moved into the premises of a former Jacobin monastery in the Rue St. Honoré in Paris. It took the name Society of the Friends of the Constitution but soon became known as the Jacobin club. A network of affiliated clubs sprang up throughout France—as many as 1,544. They maintained connections through correspondence with the mother club in Paris and through the circulation of pamphlets and speeches. The Jacobins were mostly from the middle and professional classes, although a few former nobles were members in the early years.

  The Jacobins acted as a debating club and political pressure group rather than as a formal political party. The French revolutionaries were opposed to the idea of political parties, thinking that parties would be used to promote particular interests rather than the good of all. In the early years of the revolution, the Jacobin club was dominated by relative moderates such as Antoine Barnave, Adrien Duport, and Alexandre Lameth who were committed to a constitutional monarchy and a limited franchise. Following the attempted flight of Louis XVI in June 1791 and the gradual unraveling of the constitutional monarchy that followed, the moderates left the club. In late 1791, the club came under the domination of Jacques Pierre Brissot and the group later known as the Girondins, a group that spearheaded the drive to war over Robespierre’s objections.

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  eBook - ePub

  The History of Freedom, and Other Essays

  • Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  This system gave only an equality in civil rights, a political equality such as already subsisted in America; but it did not provide against the existence or the growth of those social inequalities by which the distribution of political power might be affected. But the theory of the natural equality of mankind understands equal rights as rights to equal things in the State, and requires not only an abstract equality of rights, but a positive equality of power. The varieties of condition caused by civilisation were so objectionable in the eyes of this school, that Rousseau wrote earnest vindications of natural society, and condemned the whole social fabric of Europe as artificial, unnatural, and monstrous. His followers laboured to destroy the work of history and the influence of the past, and to institute a natural, reasonable order of things which should dispose all men on an equal level, which no disparity of wealth or education should be permitted to disturb. There were, therefore, two opinions in the revolutionary party. Those who overthrew the monarchy, established the republic, and commenced the war, were content with having secured political and legal equality, and wished to leave the nation in the enjoyment of those advantages which fortune distributes unequally. But the consistent partisans of equality required that nothing should be allowed to raise one man above another. The Girondists wished to preserve liberty, education, and property; but the Jacobins, who held that an absolute equality should be maintained by the despotism of the government over the people, interpreted more justly the democratic principles which were common to both parties; and, fortunately for their country, they triumphed over their illogical and irresolute adversaries. "When the revolutionary movement was once established," says De Maistre, "nothing but Jacobinism could save France."

  Three weeks after the fall of the Gironde, the Constitution of 1793, by which a purely ideal democracy was instituted, was presented to the French people. Its adoption exactly coincides with the supremacy of Robespierre in the Committee of Public Safety, and with the inauguration of the Reign of Terror. The danger of invasion made the new tyranny possible, but the political doctrine of the Jacobins made it necessary. Robespierre explains the system in his report on the principles of political morality, presented to the Convention at the moment of his greatest power:—

  If the principle of a popular government in time of peace is virtue, its principle during revolution is virtue and terror combined: virtue, without which terror is pernicious; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but rapid, severe, inflexible justice; therefore a product of virtue. It is not so much a principle in itself, as a consequence of the universal principle of democracy in its application to the urgent necessities of the country.

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  The French Revolution in Russian Intellectual Life

  1865-1905

  • James O'Connor(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  ancien regime and expressed agreement with Michelet that the Jacobins were possessed by the noble idea of leading the French society toward a better future.

  Such good intentions did not, however, succeed in making their regime more enlightened in practice than their aristocratic predecessors. In fact, the reviewer said,

  it was more oppressive, since it did not derive from an egotistical appetite for gain, but was based on the intention to do good for the people . . . [Yet] collective pride prevented them from respecting the collective thought of the people, and led to the implementation of freedom by bureaucratic means.591

  The Jacobin’s utopianism cost them true empathy with the flesh-and-blood populace, who, unwilling to heed the revolutionary government, turned instead to the guillotine. Michelet declared that the majority of the victims of the Terror were not aristocrats or bourgeoisie, but representatives of the common people.592

  Michelet failed to understand, so the review went, that the Jacobins were equally harsh with the peasantry. Michelet regarded the uprising at Vandee as initiated by reactionary elements. Michelet wrote that the policies of the Jacobinic government were good for the peasantry, and it was only their ignorance that made them rise against their benefactors and follow the clergy and aristocracy. On that point, “Michelet repeated the same old story.”593

  According to the reviewer, the Jacobins, in dealing with the peasants, relied on the same unreal, preconceived theories they used to change the lives of the urban populace. Therein lay the cause for the peasant uprising in Vandee. Finally, the author of the review pointed out that the Jacobin dictatorship was replaced by the Napoleonic regime. Jacobinic terror and despotism was directly responsible for the military coup d’ etat. The same judgment of the Jacobins can be found in other works of Russian leftists as well as those translated into Russian.594

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