Club de Clichy
Clichy Club Club de Clichy | |
|---|---|
The Clichy Club (French: Club de Clichy) was a political group active during the French Revolution from 1794 to 1797.
History
During the French Revolution, the Clichy Club formed in 1794 following the fall of
Under the Directorate, the salons of Paris began cautiously to reconvene under the guidance of women whose fortunes had not been ruined during the Revolution's first decade—the private sphere became politicized "one of the few sanctuaries of free exchange" observes the historian of the salons as a political force as the public sphere was not free.[2] Within the span of political opinion, those members of the Clichy Club who figured among the Monarchiens signalled their party loyalties in the long black waistcoats they wore.[3] Madame de Staël attempted in her salon mixte to bridge the social and political differences between the Monarchiens of the Clichy Club and factions who were more securely associated with the new regime, such as those who congregated with Benjamin Constant at the Hôtel de Salm or in Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord's circle.
In a rearguard reaction to preserve the rapidly dissolving powers of the Directorate in the face of public opinion, after 205 of 216 conventionnels who ran for re-election in 1797 were rejected by the limited group of enfranchised voters (though two of the Clichyens were seated),[4] the extremists among the Clichy Club were intent on turning out the Directors and repealing Revolutionary legislation, especially that directed against the returned émigrés and the Catholic Church.
The Clichy Club seemed to be in a position to dominate the Council of Five Hundred through the newly elected deputies. Divisions among the group pitted about 80 intransigent partisans for the return of monarchy, headed by Jean-Louis Gibert des Molières, against moderates around Mathieu Dumas, who avoided confrontations with the five-man Directorate. The apex of the Clichyens' influence was in the election to the Directorate of François-Marie, marquis de Barthélemy.
In the history of slavery, the Clichyens's nucleus of French colonial planters coordinated a common voice against abolition as detrimental to the French colonies. Public statements of the Clichy Club generally appeared in the right-wing press, L'Éclair, Le Véridique, Le Messager du soir and Les nouvelles politiques.[8]
Electoral results
| Council of Five Hundred | |||||
| Election year | No. of overall votes |
% of overall vote |
No. of overall seats won |
+/– | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1795
|
Unknown (2nd) | 36 | 160 / 500
|
–
|
|
1797
|
Unknown (1st) | 59 | 387 / 657
|
 227 |
|
References
- ^ Robert Matteson Johnston, The French revolution: a short history p. 248.
- ^ Steven D. Kale, French Salons: High society and political sociability from the Ancien Régime to the revolution of 1848 (Johns Hopkins Press) 2004, p. 72.
- ^ Kale.
- ^ Huntley Dupre, Lazare Carnot, Republican Patriot (Mississippi Valley Press) 1940, p. 243.
- ^ Adolphe Thiers, Histoire de la révolution française vol. 9, p. 146.
- ^ A. Thiers suggests the deputé Roland-Gaspard Lemerer, a certain Mersan, Jacques Imbert-Colomès, Pichegru and perhaps Willot.
- ^ Kale, p. 73.
- ^ For general context see Jeremy D. Popkin, The Right-Wing Press in France, 1792-1800 (University of North Carolina Press) 1980.
