Thermidorian Reaction

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Closing of the Jacobin Club by Louis Legendre, in the early morning of 28 July 1794. Four days later it was reopened by him.[1]

In the historiography of the French Revolution, the Thermidorian Reaction (French: Réaction thermidorienne or Convention thermidorienne, "Thermidorian Convention") is the common term for the period between the ousting of Maximilien Robespierre on 9 Thermidor II, or 27 July 1794, and the inauguration of the French Directory on 2 November 1795.

The "Thermidorian Reaction" was named after

Jacobin Club, the dispersal of the sans-culottes
, and the renunciation of the Montagnard ideology.

Etymology and definitions

The name Thermidorian originated with 9

Paul Barras, Jean-Lambert Tallien, and Joseph Fouché
.

Background

Main article: Fall of Maximilien Robespierre
Gendarme Charles-André Merda shooting at Maximilien Robespierre

Conspiracies against

Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne. Cries went up of "Down with the tyrant! Arrest him!"[4] Robespierre then made his appeal to the deputies of the Right, yet failed. An order was made to arrest Robespierre and his followers.[citation needed
]

Troops from the

Paris Commune, who were loyal to Robespierre, arrived to liberate him and the other prisoners. The Convention responded by ordering troops of its own under Paul Barras to counteract. The Robespierrists barricaded at the Hôtel de Ville.[5] The Convention declared them to be outlaws, meaning that they could be executed within 24 hours without a trial. The Commune forces at the Hôtel de Ville deserted. The Convention troops under Barras approached the Hôtel around 2 a.m. on 28 July.[5]
Robespierre, his jaw broken by a possibly self-inflicted shot, was taken with most of his supporters.

The execution of Robespierre on 28 July 1794 marked the end of the Reign of Terror

On that very day, Robespierre was executed with twenty-one of his closest associates, including[6] François Hanriot, ex-commander of the Parisian National Guard; Jean-Baptiste Fleuriot-Lescot, mayor of Paris; Georges Couthon, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just and René-François Dumas, ex-president of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

The Reaction

The events of 9 Thermidor proved a watershed in the revolutionary process. The Thermidorian regime that followed proved to be an unpopular one, facing many rebellions after its execution of Robespierre and his allies, along with seventy members of the Paris Commune, the largest mass execution to have ever taken place in Paris.[7] This led to a very fragile situation in France.[8]

The hostility toward Robespierre did not just vanish with his execution. Instead, the people decided to blame those who were involved with Robespierre in any way, namely the many members of the Jacobin Club, their supporters, and individuals suspected of being past revolutionaries. The massacre of these groups became known as the White Terror, and was partially carried out by the Muscadin, a group of dandyish street fighters organized by the new government.[8]

Often, members of these targeted groups were the victims of prison massacres or put on trial without due process, which were overall similar conditions to those provided to the counter-revolutionaries during the Reign of Terror. At the same time, its economic policies paved the way for rampant inflation. Ultimately, power devolved to the hands of the Directory, an executive of five men who assumed power in France in November 1795 (in year III of the French Revolutionary calendar).[9][page needed]

The Thermidorian regime excluded the remaining Montagnards from power, even those who had joined in conspiring against Robespierre and Saint-Just. The White Terror of 1795 resulted in numerous imprisonments and several hundred executions, almost exclusively of people on the political left. These numbers, while significant, were considerably smaller than those associated with the previous Reign of Terror, which killed over 40,000. Many executions took place without a trial.[10][page needed]

On July 29 the victors of the 9th Thermidor condemned seventy members of the

Paris Commune to death; thereafter the Commune was subject to the convention.[7]

As part of the reorganization of French politics, practitioners of the terror were called to defend their records; some such as

assignats.[citation needed
]

In April and May 1795, protests and riots in support of the radicals broke out culminating in an invasion of the convention by an insurrectionist mob on 20 May. On 22 May the Convention struck back, having troops under

Faubourg St-Antoine and force the capitulation of the armed rebels. In May and June 1795, a "White Terror" raged in which Jacobins were victims and the judges were bourgeois "Moderates".[11] Throughout France the events of the September Massacres
were repeated; however this time the victims were imprisoned officials of the Terror. In Paris, Royalist sentiments were openly tolerated.

Meanwhile, French armies overran the

Napoleon Bonaparte with "a whiff of grapeshot". On 25 October the Convention declared itself dissolved and was replaced by the Directory on 2 November 1795.[citation needed
]

Other uses of the term

For historians of revolutionary movements, the term Thermidor has come to mean the phase in some revolutions when power slips from the hands of the original revolutionary leadership and a radical regime is replaced by a more conservative regime, sometimes to the point where the political pendulum may swing back towards something resembling a pre-revolutionary state.[12]

About the Russian Revolution

In his book The Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky alleges that the rise of Joseph Stalin to power was a Soviet Thermidor for not restoring capitalism, yet still being a counterrevolutionary regression within the regime of the USSR, just like the Thermidor in France did not restore the monarchy but did, in his opinion, reverse revolutionary gains.[13]

Some Marxist-Leninists argue that Nikita Khruschev's rise to power in Russia, and his economic policies were a kind of Thermidor within the Soviet Union.[14] A CIA document considers Khruschev's denunciation of Stalin may have marked the "Thermidor" of the Russian Revolution.[15]

References

  1. ^ After Robespierre THE THERMIDORIAN REACTION By ALBERT MATHIEZ, p. 23 Translated from the French by Catherine Alison Phillips
  2. Harper & Brothers
    . p. 379.
  3. ISBN 9781118316399.; Andress, David, ed. (2015). The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press. pp. 522–523.; Mona Ozouf, François Furet (ed.), A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution. Harvard University Press
    (1989). p. 400.
  4. ^ de Maillane, Durand; Lanjuinais, Jean-Denis (1825). Histoire de la Convention Nationale (in French). Paris: Baudouin Freres. p. 200.
  5. ^
    ISBN 0-393-92495-5
    .
  6. ^ Beauchesne, Alcide; Dupanloup, Félix (1868). Louis XVII, sa vie, son agonie, sa mort: captivité de la famille royale au Temple. H. Plon. pp. 218–9.
  7. ^ a b Durant & Durant 1975, p. 83.
  8. ^
    ISBN 9781118316399
    .
  9. ^ Sutherland 2003, ch. 8.
  10. ^ Brown 2010.
  11. ^ Durant & Durant 1975, p. 84.
  12. ^ "Definition of THERMIDOR". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 1 May 2021.
  13. ^ Trotsky, Leon (2004) [1937]. "The Soviet Thermidor: Why Stalin Triumphed". The Revolution Betrayed. Translated by Eastman, Max (Dover ed.). Doubleday, Doran & Co. pp. 66–87. A secondary figure before the masses and in the events of the revolution, Stalin revealed himself as the indubitable leader of the Thermidorian bureaucracy, as first in its midst.
  14. ^ Buttafava, Ubaldo (1997). Khrushchev's Thermidor - A contribution to the critical analysis concerning the USSR's return to capitalism (PDF).
  15. ^ Anonymous CIA agent. "Latest developments of the "anti-Stalin" trend in international Communism, interpretation and possible exploitation" (PDF). CIA.

Works cited

Further reading
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