Jacobins
The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for "political crimes".
Initially founded in 1789 by anti-royalist deputies from Brittany, the club grew into a nationwide republican movement with a membership estimated at a half million or more. The Jacobin Club was heterogeneous and included both prominent parliamentary factions of the early 1790s: The Mountain and the Girondins. In 1792–93, the Girondins were more prominent in leading France when they declared war on Austria and on Prussia, overthrew King Louis XVI, and set up the French First Republic. In May 1793, the leaders of the Mountain faction, led by Maximilien Robespierre, succeeded in sidelining the Girondin faction and controlled the government until July 1794. Their time in government featured high levels of political violence, and for this reason the period of the Jacobin/Mountain government is identified as the Reign of Terror. In October 1793, 21 prominent Girondins were guillotined. The Mountain-dominated government executed 17,000 opponents nationwide as a way to suppress the Vendée insurrection and the Federalist revolts, and to deter recurrences. In July 1794, the National Convention pushed the administration of Robespierre and his allies out of power and had Robespierre and 21 associates executed. In November 1794, the Jacobin Club closed.
In the years and decades after the revolution, the term Jacobin was used in an extended sense to denote political positions perceived as similar to those of the historical Jacobins and the Mountain in the National Convention. It was popular among conservative publicists as a pejorative to deride progressive politics, and among Anglophone progressives likewise as a pejorative denoting the violent excesses of the revolution, whereas they associated its positive features and principles with the Girondins. In Britain, the term faintly echoed negative connotations of Jacobitism, the pro-Catholic, monarchist, rarely insurrectional political movement that faded out decades earlier tied to deposed King James II of England and his descendants. The term Jacobin reached obsolescence and supersedence before the Russian Revolution, when the terms Marxism, anarchism, socialism, and communism had overtaken it.
In modern France, the term Jacobin generally denotes a position of more equal formal rights, centralization, and moderate authoritarianism. It can be used to denote supporters of a role of the state in the transformation of society. It is, in particular, used as a self-identification by proponents of a state education system that strongly promotes and inculcates civic values. It is more controversially used by or for proponents of a strong nation-state capable of resisting undesirable foreign interference.
History
Foundation
When the Estates General of 1789 in France convened in May–June 1789 at the Palace of Versailles, the Jacobin club, originating as the Club Breton, comprised exclusively a group of Breton representatives attending those Estates General. Deputies from other regions throughout France soon joined. Early members included the dominating comte de Mirabeau, Parisian deputy Abbé Sieyès, Dauphiné deputy Antoine Barnave, Jérôme Pétion, the Abbé Grégoire, Charles Lameth, Alexandre Lameth, Artois deputy Robespierre, the duc d'Aiguillon, and La Revellière-Lépeaux. At this time meetings occurred in secret, and few traces remain concerning what took place or where the meetings convened.Transfer to Paris
By the March on Versailles in October 1789, the club, still entirely composed of deputies, reverted to being a provincial caucus for National Constituent Assembly deputies from Brittany. The club was re-founded in November 1789 as the Société de la Révolution, inspired in part by a letter sent from the Revolution Society of London to the Assembly congratulating the French on regaining their liberty.To accommodate growing membership, the group rented for its meetings the refectory of the Dominican monastery of the "Jacobins" in the Rue Saint-Honoré, adjacent to the seat of the Assembly. They changed their name to Société des amis de la Constitution in late January, though by this time, their opponents had already concisely dubbed them "Jacobins", a nickname originally given to French Dominicans because their first house in Paris was in the Rue Saint-Jacques.
Growth
Once in Paris, the club soon extended its membership to others besides deputies. All citizens were allowed to enter, and even foreigners were welcomed: the English writer Arthur Young joined the club in this manner on 18 January 1790. Jacobin Club meetings soon became a place for radical and rousing oratory that pushed for republicanism, widespread education, universal suffrage, separation of church and state, and other reforms.On 8 February 1790, the society became formally constituted on this broader basis by the adoption of the rules drawn up by Barnave, which were issued with the signature of the duc d'Aiguillon, the president. The club's objectives were defined as such:
- To discuss in advance questions to be decided by the National Assembly.
- To work for the establishment and strengthening of the constitution in accordance with the spirit of the preamble.
- To correspond with other societies of the same kind which should be formed in the realm.
By the 7th article the club decided to admit as associates similar societies in other parts of France and to maintain with them a regular correspondence. By 10 August 1790 there were already one hundred and fifty-two affiliated clubs; the attempts at counter-revolution led to a great increase of their number in the spring of 1791, and by the close of the year the Jacobins had a network of branches all over France. At the peak there were at least 7,000 chapters throughout France, with a membership estimated at a half-million or more. It was this widespread yet highly centralized organization that gave to the Jacobin Club great power.
Character
By early 1791, clubs like the Jacobins, the Club des Cordeliers and the Cercle Social were increasingly dominating French political life. Numbers of men were members of two or more of such clubs. Women were not accepted as members of the Jacobin Club, but they were allowed to follow the discussions from the balconies. The rather high subscription of the Jacobin Club confined its membership to well-off men. The Jacobins claimed to speak on behalf of the people but were themselves not of 'the people': contemporaries saw the Jacobins as a club of the bourgeoisie.As far as the central society in Paris was concerned, it was composed almost entirely of professional men and well-to-do bourgeoisie. From the start, however, other elements were also present. Besides the teenage son of the Duc d'Orléans, Louis Philippe, a future king of France, aristocrats such as the duc d'Aiguillon, the prince de Broglie, and the vicomte de Noailles, and the bourgeoisie formed the mass of the members. The club further included people like "père" Michel Gérard, a peasant proprietor from Tuel-en-Montgermont, in Brittany, whose rough common sense was admired as the oracle of popular wisdom, and whose countryman's waistcoat and plaited hair were later on to become the model for the Jacobin fashion.
The Jacobin Club supported the monarchy up until the very Eve of the Republic. They did not support the petition of 17 July 1791 for the king's dethronement, but instead published their own petition calling for replacement of King Louis XVI.
The departure of the conservative members of the Jacobin Club to form their own Feuillants Club in July 1791 to some extent radicalized the Jacobin Club.
Polarization between Robespierrists and Girondins
Late 1791, a group of Jacobins in the Legislative Assembly advocated war with Prussia and Austria. Most prominent among them was Brissot, other members were Pierre Vergniaud, Fauchet, Maximin Isnard, Jean-Marie Roland.Maximilien Robespierre, also a Jacobin, strongly pleaded against war with Prussia and Austria – but in the Jacobin Club, not in the Assembly where he was not seated. Disdainfully, Robespierre addressed those Jacobin war promoters as 'the faction from the Gironde'; some, not all of them, were indeed from department Gironde. The Jacobins finally rid itself of Feuillants in its midst; the number of clubs increased considerably, convening became a nationwide fad. In March 1792, in retaliation for their opposition to war with Austria the Feuillant ministers were forced out by the Girondins. The Assembly in April 1792 finally decided for war, thus following the 'Girondin' line on it, but Robespierre's place among the Jacobins had now become much more prominent.
From then on, a polarization process started among the members of the Jacobin Club, between a group around Robespierre – after September 1792 called 'Montagnards' or 'Montagne', in English 'the Mountain' – and the Girondins. These groups never had any official status, nor official memberships. The Mountain was not even very homogenous in their political views: what united them was their aversion to the Girondins.
The Legislative Assembly, governing France from October 1791 until September 1792, was dominated by men like Brissot, Isnard and Roland: Girondins. But after June 1792, Girondins visited less and less the Jacobin Club, where Robespierre, their fierce opponent, grew more and more dominant.