As a wartime measure, the Committee was given broad supervisory powers over military, judicial, and legislative efforts. A period of intense civil unrest ensued, during which the members of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security were forced to seek refuge in the Convention. In this capacity he led the festival of the Supreme Being (“Etre suprême") in the Tuileries Gardens on 20 Prairial (June 8), which was to provide his enemies with another weapon against him. [14], The ensuing period of upheaval, dubbed the Thermidorian Reaction, saw the repeal of many of the Terror's most unpopular laws and the reduction in power of the Committees of General Security and Public Safety. His social ideal consisted in reducing extreme inequalities of wealth, in increasing the number of small property owners, and in ensuring work and education for all. Henceforward his actions were to be inseparable from those of the government as a whole. A lively and informative new podcast for kids that the whole family will enjoy! In 1791, Robespierre became an outspoken advocate for the citizens without a political voice, for their unrestricted admission to the National Guard, to public offices, and for … Break down the politics of fear and how Robespierre used them to control France. [1], On 5 April 1793, the French military commander and former minister of war General Charles François Dumouriez defected to Austria following the publication of an incendiary letter in which he threatened to march his army on the city of Paris if the National Convention did not accede to his leadership. Members of the Committee of General Security resented the autocratic behavior of the Committee of Public Safety and particularly the encroachment of the General Police Bureau upon their own brief. The Committee—composed at first of nine and later of 12 members—assumed its role of protecting the newly established republic against foreign attacks and internal rebellion. On 27 July 1794, the three were substituted by, This page was last edited on 30 May 2020, at 07:55. Maximilien Robespierre at the guillotine, July 28, 1794. Isnard was supported in this effort by Georges Danton, who declared: "This Committee is precisely what we want, a hand to grasp the weapon of the Revolutionary Tribunal". Robespierre answered the demonstrators on September 5 by promising maximum prices for all foodstuffs and a Revolutionary militia for use in the interior against counterrevolutionaries and grain hoarders. As a wartime measure, the committee was given broad supervisory powers over the armed forces, judiciary and legislature. It was ratified by public referendum, but never put into force. In June 1794, Robespierre, who favored deism over atheism, recommended that the Convention acknowledge the existence of his god. The Committee of Public Safety succeeded the previous Committee of General Defence (established in January 1793) and assumed its role of protecting the new republic against foreign attacks and internal rebellion. As president of the Jacobin Club and then of the National Convention, he denounced the schemes of the Parisian radicals known as the Enragés, who were using the food shortage to stir up the Paris sections. After his death, his memory was relentlessly attacked, and a great many of his papers were destroyed. At the same time, he began to lose the support of the people, whose hardships continued despite the recent French victories. The role of the Committee of Public Safety included the governance of the war (including the appointment of generals), the appointing of judges and juries for the Revolutionary Tribunal,[5] the provisioning of the armies and the public, the maintenance of public order and oversight of the state bureaucracy. In June 1793, Paris sections took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone. [13] Barère, Vadier and Stanislas Fréron joined the accusations against Saint-Just and Robespierre. Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer and statesman who was one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. A Deist in the style of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robespierre disapproved of the anti-Christian movement and the “masquerades” of the cult of reason. In 1793 the Committee of Public Safety replaced many generals, reorganized headquarters and carried out military operations in secret. The power of the Committee peaked between August 1793 and July 1794 under the leadership of Robespierre. In order to bring about a mass conscription, economic dictatorship, and total war, he asked to intensify the Reign of Terror. As the committee tried to meet the dangers of a coalition of European nations and counter-revolutionary forces within the country, it became more and more powerful. He studied law through a scholarship and in 1789 was elected to be a representative of the Arras commoners in the Estates General. It was ratified by public referendum but never put into force. However, many more were murdered without formal sentences pronounced in a court of law. As a result of Robespierre’s insistence on associating terror with virtue, his efforts to make the republic a morally united patriotic community became equated with the endless bloodshed. . In December 1793, the convention formally conferred executive power upon the committee. 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Robespierre was taken to the Luxembourg prison, but the warden refused to jail him. Later he went to the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), where he could, doubtless, still have continued the struggle, for armed contingents from some of the sections of the city had been summoned by the Paris Commune and were awaiting his orders. He took a radical, democratic stance and was known as the Incorruptible for his dedication to civic morality. Author unknown; source: “La Guillotine en 1793” by Hector Fleischmann (1908). The Committee of Public Safety was by no means the first powerful committee of the French Revolution. The Committee’s powers were reduced piece by piece. [12] In a speech to the Jacobin Club that night, he attacked Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne, who had refused to allow the printing and distribution of his speech to the Convention. While some of his colleagues were away on missions and others were preoccupied with special assignments, he strove to prevent division among the revolutionaries by relying on the Jacobin societies and the vigilance committees. The Jacobins identified themselves with the popular movement and the sans-culottes, who in turn saw popular violence as a political right. The Hébertists, the Cordeliers, and the popular militants all called for more-radical measures and encouraged de-Christianization and the prosecution of food hoarders. Like other laws, it was indefinitely suspended and in October, it was announced that the government of France would be “revolutionary until the peace.”. Declared an outlaw by the National Convention, Robespierre severely wounded himself by a pistol shot in the jaw at the Hôtel de Ville, throwing his friends into confusion. DeAgostini Picture Library/age fotostock And Joseph Cambon, the minister of finance, detested him. Meanwhile, on June 24, the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, the French Constitution of 1793. Ultimately, faced with defeat and arrest, Le Bas committed suicide. However, Desmoulins quickly turned his pen against the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security, comparing their reign to that of the Roman tyrants chronicled by Tacitus and expounding the indulgent views of the Dantonist faction. Attempting to regain his hold on public opinion, Robespierre reappeared at the Committee of Public Safety on 5 Thermidor (July 23) and then, on 8 Thermidor (July 26), at the National Convention, to which he turned as his judge. The movement was driven chiefly by a growing fear of Robespierre. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. All three national legislatures established committees to deal with problems or issues – including security and potential threats. But he objected to pointless executions, protecting those deputies who had protested the arrest of the Girondins and of the king’s sister.

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