Revolt of Lyon against the National Convention
The revolt of Lyon against the National Convention was a counter-revolutionary movement in the city of Lyon during the time of the French Revolution. It was a revolt of moderates against the more radical National Convention, the third government during the French Revolution. It broke out in June 1793[1] and was put down in October of the same year, after government forces had besieged the city.
The city confronts economic crisis
In 1789
These social conflicts bound together the interests of the
Political opposition, 1790–1793
During September 1790 the city's
At this time each department was governed under a local version of the national directoral structure, and the departmental directory of Rhône-et-Loire, which since 1790 had been the department centred on Lyon, was dominated by constitutional royalists. The Rolandin Louis Vitet became mayor of Lyon in 1790. The "Central Club", headed up by Chalier, was strongly opposed to the approach taken by the local regime.[4]
In the summer of 1792, the troop of
In November 1792, the girondin
Matters came to a head in February 1793 when Chalier's "Central Club" called for the creation of a
To try to defuse the crisis, Mayor Nivière-Chol now resigned and was re-elected. Meanwhile, allies and opponents of Chalier argued in the various "Peoples' Associations" which were now finding themselves opposing the "Central Club". Mayor Nivière-Chol resigned again, and was replaced by the moderate
A series of radical enactments followed, starting on 14 March 1793 with the establishment of a municipal bakery. Taxation was imposed on food (which disappeared from the shops) and a volunteer force was recruited. A seven-man Lyon Committee of Public Safety (taking its name and inspiration from the national institution of that name established under Robespierre a few weeks earlier in Paris) was set up on 8 April 1793. Urging further progress down the revolutionary path, on 4 May the "Central Club" proposed the guillotine become a permanent fixture, together with the "Popular Associations" and called again for the creation of a Revolutionary Tribunal. They also called for a Committee of Revolutionary Surveillance and of an "Armée Révolutionnaire" (Revolutionary Army) to replace the National Guard which had itself been established only in 1789 as a force for stability. A few days later, on 14 May 1793, the city council duly voted to create a Sans-culottes army and a 6 million franc fund, to be created from taxing the rich, to pay for it all.[6]
They also voted for a joint meeting, every day, for representatives from the department, the district and the commune. This last measure triggered a counter-offensive. During the days that followed a growing proportion, and ultimately a majority, of delegates at these meetings opposed the municipal law of 14 May. Meanwhile, in Paris, the
Chalier's fall
On 29 May, a meeting at the Arsenal building of the various sectional delegates decided to replace the radical municipal government, which in military terms was only lightly defended. Gauthier and Nioche, two of the high-level representatives from the
Meanwhile, events in the capital were moving fast, and the violent events of
The National Convention sent Robert Lindet to negotiate with the leaders in Lyon, but he found the local representatives in the Arsenal Building in an uncompromising mood: intransigence was stiffened by the presence at Lyon of Jean Bonaventure Birotteau, one of the girondist deputies whom the government had so recently expelled from their own National Convention. On 30 June 1793, 207 delegates representing nearby cantons, the department and the urban districts appointed a "Popular Republican Commission for the Public Safety of Rhône-et-Loire", which published an "Address from the authorities duly constituted at Lyon to the armies, the citizens and all the departments in the republic". The National Convention, its orders having been ignored by the leaders in Lyon, now promulgated a series of decrees on 12 and 14 July 1793. They declared Birotteau an outlaw, dismissed the Lyon leaders, confiscating their assets; and they ordered the Revolutionary Army of the Alps to re-establish in Lyon the Laws of the Republic.[7]
It was in this context of exacerbated conflict that
Siege of Lyon
The
On 3 October 1793, Couthon called upon the Lyonnais to surrender, and a truce was observed until 7 October. The various representatives leading the city held a succession of group discussions, and on 8 October they sent a team to negotiate with the government representatives, albeit in the face of the opposition of Précy. At the same time two more of the defenders' forts fell, at Saint-Irénée and Saint-Just.[7]
The next day, at dawn, Précy escaped via a district in the north-west of Lyon called Vaise, and went into hiding, turning up shortly afterwards in Switzerland. The city's civil authorities surrendered to the central government representatives at midday.[7]
On 11 October, the government delegates decided on the destruction of the city walls. On 12 October
Retribution
Moving quickly, on 9 October, the government representatives had created both a "Military Commission", charged with judging people who had taken up arms, and a "Commission of Peoples' Justice" which was to judge the other "rebels". Three days later the National Convention itself decided to create a five-member "Extraordinary Commission" which they tasked with imposing "immediate military punishment" on the "criminal counter-revolutionaries of Lyon".[8]
The "Military Commission" began work on 11 October and ordered the shooting of 106 people who had served the rebels' military leader, Précy. The "Commission of Peoples' Justice" got off to a slower start, beginning its work only on 21 October: it ordered the guillotining of 79 people including three of the moderates who had replaced Chalier back at the end of May, Bénami, Coindre and Judge Ampère. Both of these commissions disappeared on 9 December, by which time the centrally mandated "Extraordinary Commission" had taken over the application of retributive justice in Lyon.[citation needed]
The "Extraordinary Commission" sat between 30 November 1793 and 6 April 1794. It was presided over by
These massacres have been blamed both on Commission Chairman Parein and on the government representatives
Aftermath
The aftermath of the revolt was highlighted by three major results: the devastated silk trade, the lower wages of the people of Lyon, and the rift that was perpetuated between the people of Lyon and the National Convention.[citation needed]
The most noticeable effect was primarily the devastation of the
Another result of the revolt of Lyon was the dramatic decrease in wages after the suppression of the revolt and the introduction of larger-scale industry into the process of silk production.[12] The decrease of specialization of labor in the silk industry greatly lowered the wage rates themselves. With the process of industrialization that occurred, anyone could become a master silk weaver. In some circles, the decrease in wages was seen as a public injustice. As silk production in Lyon was being rebuilt, the emphasis was placed more and more on centralized industrial production and less on the traditional artisan system.[12]
Finally, as well as disrupting the silk trade, the revolt caused a lasting rift between the people of Lyon and the radical government of Paris.[13] A sense of resentment and outrage against Paris was especially prevalent in Lyon due to the extreme actions taken during this suppression. While Lyon did not organize another revolt, a general sense of distrust against Paris continued to permeate the population of Lyon, especially among the families of those who had been executed.[14] This anti-Parisian, federalist sentiment which had existed before the revolt, and its subsequent violent suppression, persisted in the city, as many in Lyon continued to see Paris as too radically revolutionary. There is evidence that few citizens of Lyon moved away in the aftermath, likely due to the fact that most of the architecture of Lyon did remain intact, contrary to the rhetoric of the leaders of the suppression, which suggested that it should be completely destroyed.[15] Those who did move tended to migrate further south, towards Marseille and away from Paris, in an attempt to further distance themselves from Paris.[15]
Although revolutionary intervention was meant as a way to increase fervor for the new republic and its politics, it only succeeded in creating a more strongly polarized environment through the violent suppression of the revolt. It did not do well in quelling counterrevolutionary thought, rather prompting these thoughts and giving direction to their complaints against the republic. If anything, the violence soured relations. By December 1794, some 2,000 people had been executed in Lyon.[14] Politically speaking, a commission of citizens from Lyon travelled to Paris to petition the National Convention, asking to be reconciled with the Republic. Jean-Marie Collot also returned to Paris to block Lyon's petition, and when the Convention turned it over to the Committee of Public Safety, Collot and the other committee members did not act on it.[14]
Commemoration
A list of the victims of Parein's commission is kept in a Carthusian Chapel of Penitence erected on the site of the mass shootings. It was compiled using the commission's own records.
The bones of the 209 Lyonnais shot dead on 3 December 1793 at Brotteaux have been conserved in the crypt of the Chapel of Brotteaux in the sixth arrondissement, in the north-eastern part of central Lyon since the Bourbon restoration.[note 1]
In 1989, France celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, and two organisations named Lyon 89 and Lyon 93[16] brought together descendants of the victims of the siege and of the ensuing repression. A third organisation, called Rhône 89, though overtly republican and secularist, also placed a greater priority on historical understanding of the events.[17]
The siege of Lyon also inspired several popular songs.
Notes
- ^ At the end of the nineteenth century the chapel was destroyed and rebuilt twenty meters along the road.
References
Citations
- ^ Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 54". The Great French Revolution, 1789–1793. Translated by N. F. Dryhurst. New York: Vanguard Printings.
- ^ a b c Jean-René Suratteau, "Lyon", in Albert Soboul, Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française, 2005, p. 689.
- ^ Jean-René Suratteau, "Lyon", in Albert Soboul, Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française, 2005, pp. 689–690.
- ^ a b c d e Jean-René Suratteau, "Lyon", in Albert Soboul, Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française, 2005, p. 690.
- ^ Baron Thugut and Austria's Response to the French Revolution“FRUSTRATIONS, 1795". 1987. FRUSTRATIONS, 1795. In Baron Thugut and Austria's Response to the French Revolution, 170–200. Princeton University Press.
- ^ Jean-René Suratteau, "Lyon", in Albert Soboul, Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française, 2005, pp. 690–691.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Jean-René Suratteau, "Lyon ", in Albert Soboul, Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française, 2005, p. 691.
- ^ a b Jean-René Suratteau, "Lyon", in Albert Soboul, Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française .....[chargée de] "punir militairement et sans délai les criminels contre-révolutionnaires de Lyon, 2005, p. 693.
- ^ Louis-Auguste Rougier (1839). Eloge historique de Claude-Antoine Bouchet, ancien chirurgien-major de l'Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon: lu à la Société de médecine de Lyon, le 30 décembre 1839, par... Rougier. Impr. Louis Perrin. Retrieved 22 April 2013.
- Germinal
- ^ Jean-René Suratteau, "Lyon", in Albert Soboul, Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française, 2005, pp. 693–694.
- ^ a b William Sewell. Work and revolution in France: The language of labor from the Old Regime to 1848, 1980, p.156-161.
- ^ Thomas Chantal and David F. Bell. Terror in Lyon, 1998.
- ^ a b c Robert Palmer. "Chapter VII Doom at Lyons." Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution, 2005, p. 153-176.
- ^ a b Richard Cobb. Reactions to the French Revolution, 1972. p. 52.
- ^ L'Association Lyon 93 a été fondée par l'ingénieur Jacques Tournier en 190 ans après les événements. Voir Daniel Bideau, Lyon sera détruite, Lyon, La Taillanderie, 1988, 143 pages, p. 132.
- ISBN 2738474659.
Sources
- Albert Soboul, Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française, Quadrige/PUF, 1989, pp. 688–696, entrée "Lyon" de Jean-René Suratteau.
Further reading
- Edmonds, W. D. Jacobinism and the Revolt of Lyon, 1789–1793. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990. Print.
- Kafker et al. The French Revolution: Conflicting Interpretations. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company, 2002. Print.
- Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2005. Print.