National Convention
The National Convention was the constituent assembly of the Kingdom of France for one day and of the French First Republic for its first three years during the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly. The National Convention was created after the insurrection of 10 August 1792. It was the first French government organized as a republic, abandoning the monarchy altogether. The Convention sat as a single-chamber assembly from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795.
The Convention came about when the Legislative Assembly decreed the provisional suspension of King Louis XVI and the convocation of a National Convention to draw up a new constitution with no monarchy. The other major innovation was to decree that deputies to that Convention should be elected by all Frenchmen 21 years old or more, domiciled for a year and living by the product of their labor. The National Convention was, therefore, the first French assembly elected by a suffrage without distinctions of class.
Although the Convention lasted until 1795, power was effectively delegated by the Convention and concentrated in the small Committee of Public Safety from April 1793. The eight months from the fall of 1793 to the spring of 1794, when Maximilien Robespierre and his allies dominated the Committee of Public Safety, represent the most radical and bloodiest phase of the French Revolution, known as the Reign of Terror. After the fall of Robespierre, the Convention lasted for another year until a new constitution was written, ushering in the French Directory.
Elections
The indirect election took place from 2 to 10 September 1792 after the election of the electoral colleges by primary assemblies on 26 August. Despite the introduction of universal male suffrage, the turn-out was low, though there was an increase in comparison to the 1791 elections—in 1792 11.9% of a greatly increased electorate votes, compared to 10.2% of a much smaller electorate in the 1791.The low turn-out was partly due to a fear of victimization; in Paris, Maximilien Robespierre presided over the elections and, in concert with the radical press, managed to exclude any candidate of royalist sympathies. In the whole of France, only eleven primary assemblies wanted to retain the monarchy. The electoral assemblies all tacitly voted for a "republic", though only Paris used that word.
On 20 September the Convention held its first session in the "Salle des Cent-Suisses;" the next day it moved to the Salle du Manège, which had little room for the public and bad acoustics. From 10 May 1793 it met in the Salle des Machines, an immense hall in which the deputies were loosely scattered. The Salle des Machines had galleries for the public who often influenced the debates with interruptions or applause.
The members of the Convention came from all classes of society, but the most numerous were lawyers. 75 members had sat in the National Constituent Assembly, 183 in the Legislative Assembly. The full number of deputies was 749, not counting 33 from the French colonies, of whom only some arrived in Paris in time. Thomas Paine and Anacharsis Cloots were appointed in the Convention by Girondins. Besides these, however, the newly formed département in France annexed to France from 1782 to 1789 were allowed to send deputations.
According to its own ruling, the Convention elected its president every fortnight, and the outgoing president was eligible for re-election after the lapse of a fortnight. Ordinarily, the sessions were held in the morning, but evening sessions also occurred frequently, often extending late into the night. Sometimes in exceptional circumstances, the Convention declared itself in permanent session and sat for several days without interruption. For both legislative and administrative purposes the Convention used committees, with powers more or less widely extended and regulated by successive laws. The most famous of these committees included the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security.
Political breakdown
The National Convention was made up of three major factions: The Montagnards, the Marais and the Girondins, also called Brissotins. Historians are divided on the makeup of the Convention, but the current consensus is that the Mountain was the biggest faction with around 302–309 deputies. The Girondins were represented by 178–227 deputies, and the Plain was represented by 153–250 deputies. Of the three groups the Mountain was the most cohesive, and the Plain was the least cohesive. Over 94% of the Mountain voted similarly on core issues; comparatively the Girondins and the Plain were much more divided with only 70% of Girondins voting similarly on the same issues and only 58% of the Plain voting similarly on the same issues.Girondin Convention
Girondins and Montagnards
The Girondins were more conservative than the Montagnards, although they were still democrats. The Girondins drew their name from the Gironde, a region of France from which many of the deputies of this faction were elected and were also known as the Brissotins after their most prominent speaker, Jacques Pierre Brissot. The Montagnards drew their support from the Paris Commune and the popular societies such as the Jacobin Club and the Cordeliers; they got their name from the high bleachers on which they sat while the Convention was in session.The Plain
The Plain was a third faction during the Convention. It derived its name from their place on the floor of the Convention. During the start of the Convention, they sided with the Girondins, however, as it progressed and the Montagnards began to push for the execution of Louis XVI, The Plain began to side with them.Trial and execution of the king
The Convention's unanimous declaration of a French Republic on 21 September 1792 left open the fate of the former king. A commission was therefore established to examine the evidence against him while the Convention's Legislation Committee considered legal aspects of any future trial. Most Montagnards favoured judgment and execution, but the Girondins were divided concerning Louis's fate, with some arguing for royal inviolability, others supporting clemency and still others advocating lesser punishment or banishment. On 13 November Robespierre stated that a constitution which Louis had violated, despite declaring his inviolability, could not be used in his defence. Robespierre had been taken ill and had done little other than support Montagnard leader Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, who gave his first major speech, in his argument against the king's inviolability. On 20 November, opinion turned sharply against Louis following the discovery of a secret cache of 726 documents consisting of Louis's personal communications with bankers and ministers. At his trial, he claimed not to recognise documents that had been clearly signed by him.Crisis and fall of Girondins
Military setbacks from the First Coalition, Charles François Dumouriez's defection to the enemy, and the War in the Vendée were all used as arguments by Montagnards and sans-culottes to portray Girondins as soft. The Montagnards proposed measures, but the Girondins were reluctant to take such measures. The Girondins were forced to accept the Montagnards' creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal and a Committee of Public Safety. Social and economic difficulties exacerbated the tensions between the groups.The final showdown, the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, was precipitated by Jean-Paul Marat's trial and the arrest of sectional activists. On 25 May, the Paris Commune marched to the Convention to demand the release of the activists.
Montagnard Convention
Revolutionary government
On 5 September, Parisians tried to repeat the revolt of 2 June. Armed sections again encircled the Convention to demand the setting up of an internal revolutionary army, the arrest of suspects and a purge of the committees. It was probably the key day in the formation of the revolutionary government: the convention yielded, but kept control of events. It put Terror on the agenda on 5 September, on the 6th elected Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne to the Committee of Public Safety, on the 9th created the revolutionary army, on the 11th decreed the Maximum for grain and fodder, on the 14th reorganized the Revolutionary Tribunal, on the 17th voted in the law on suspects, and on the 20th gave the local revolutionary committees the task of drawing up lists of them.Fall of factions
As late as September 1793, there were two distinct wings among the revolutionaries. Firstly, those who were later called Hébertists although Jacques Hébert himself was never the official leader of a party that advocated war to the death and adopted the program of the enragés, ostensibly because the sans-culottes approved it. The Hébertists preferred to side with the Montagnards so long as they could hope to control the Convention through them. They dominated the Cordeliers Club, filled Bouchotte's offices, and could generally carry the Commune with them. The other wing was the Dantonists, which formed in response to the increasing centralization of the Revolutionary Government and the dictatorship of the Committees. The Dantonists were led predominately by deputies of the Convention, including Danton, Delacroix, and Desmoulins.Ultimately, the Committee had undermined its own support by eliminating the Dantonists and Hébertists, both of which had backed the Committee. By compelling the Convention to allow the arrests of the Girondins and Dantonists, the Committee believed that it had destroyed its major opposition. However, the trials demonstrated the Committee's lack of respect for members of the Convention, several of whom had been executed. Many Convention members who had sided with the Committee by mid-1794 no longer supported it. The Committee had acted as mediator between the Convention and the sans-culottes from which they both had acquired their strength. By executing the Hébertists and alienating the sans-culottes, the Committee became unnecessary to the Assembly.