Gendarme Charles-André Merda shooting at Robespierre during the night of the Thermidor
The Thermidorian Reaction was a revolt in the French Revolution against the excesses of the Reign of Terror. It was triggered by a vote of the National Convention to execute Maximilien Robespierre, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, and several other leading members of the Terror. This ended the most radical phase of the French Revolution.
The name Thermidorian refers to 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), the date according to the French Revolutionary Calendar when Robespierre and other radical revolutionaries came under concerted attack in the National Convention. Thermidorian Reaction also refers to the remaining period until the National Convention was superseded by the Directory; this is also sometimes called the era of the Thermidorian Convention. Prominent figures of Thermidor include Paul Barras, Jean-Lambert Tallien, and Joseph Fouché.
Background
Thermidor represents the final throes of the Reign of Terror. With Robespierre the sole remaining strong-man of the Revolution following the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat (13 July 1793), and the executions of Jacques Hébert (24 March 1794) and Georges Danton
(5 April 1794), his apparently total grasp on power became in fact
increasingly illusory, especially insofar as he seemed to have support
from factions to his right. His only real political power at this time lay in the Jacobin Club, which had extended itself beyond the borders of Paris and into the country as a network of "Popular Societies".
His tight personal control of the military and his distrust of
military might and of banks, along with his opposition to corrupt
individuals in government, made Robespierre the subject of a number of
conspiracies. The conspiracies came together on 9 Thermidor (27 July)
when members of the national bodies of the revolutionary government
arrested Robespierre as well as the leaders of the Paris city
government.
Conspiratorial groups
Not all of the conspiratorial groupings were ideological in
motivation; many who conspired against Robespierre did so for strong
practical and personal reasons, most notably self-preservation. The
surviving Dantonists, such as Merlin de Thionville for example, wanted revenge for the death of Danton and, more importantly, to protect their own heads.
The Left were opposed to Robespierre on the grounds that he rejected atheism and was not sufficiently radical.
The prime mover, however, for the events of 9 Thermidor (27 July) was a Montagnard conspiracy, led by Jean-Lambert Tallien and Bourdon de l'Oise,
which was gradually coalescing, and was to come to pass at the time
when the Montagnards had finally swayed the deputies of the Right over
to their side. (Robespierre and Saint-Just were themselves Montagnards.)
Some authors argue that the then leftist Joseph Fouché
played a large role in the conspiracy. Fouché was likely to be
convicted and executed for treason and atheism, since Robespierre
himself was about to denounce him in a speech to the Convention, which
would have been delivered the day after the coup d'état (28 July).
Dwelling in the shadows, he made great efforts to convince the main
surviving leftists
and moderates that they were meant to be the next victims of
Robespierre's dictatorship, thus uniting them against Robespierre, and
by those means saving his own life.
In the end, it was Robespierre himself who united all his enemies. On
8 Thermidor (26 July) he gave a speech to the Convention in which he
railed against enemies and conspiracies, some within the powerful
committees, as he did not give the names of these traitors, all
in the Convention had reason to fear that they were the targets. Later
he went and enlisted the support of the Jacobin Club, where he denounced
Collot and Billaud. These men then spent the night planning the
following day’s coup with other members of the convention.
On 9 Thermidor (27 July), in the Hall of Liberty in Paris,
Saint-Just was in the midst of reading a report to the Committee of
Public Safety when he was interrupted by Tallien, who impugned
Saint-Just and then went on to denounce the tyranny of Robespierre. The
attack was taken up by Billaud-Varenne,
and Saint-Just's typical eloquence fled him, leaving him subject to a
withering verbal assault until Robespierre leapt to the defense of
Saint-Just and himself. Cries went up of 'Down with the tyrant! Arrest
him!' Robespierre then made his appeal to the deputies of the Right,
"Deputies of the Right, men of honour, men of virtue, give me the floor,
since the assassins will not." However, the Right was unmoved, and an
order was made to arrest Robespierre and his followers.
Troops from the Paris Commune arrived to liberate the prisoners. The Commune troops, under General Coffinhal, then marched against the Convention itself. The Convention responded by ordering troops of its own under Paul Barras to be called out. When the Commune's troops heard the news of this, order began to break down, and Hanriot ordered his remaining troops to withdraw to the Hôtel de Ville. Robespierre and his supporters also gathered at the Hôtel de Ville.
The Convention declared them to be outlaws, meaning that upon
verification the fugitives could be executed within 24 hours without a
trial. As the night went on the Commune forces at the Hôtel de Ville
deserted until none of them remained. The Convention troops under Barras
approached the Hôtel around 2:00 am on 28 July. As they came,
Robespierre's brother Augustin leapt out of a window in an escape attempt, broke his legs, and was arrested. Le Bas committed suicide. Couthon, who was paralysed from the waist down, was found lying at the bottom of a staircase.
Robespierre was shot in the face, and his jaw was shattered. There
are two accounts of how he received the wound. One states that,
anticipating his own downfall and wanting to have the death of a hero,
Robespierre attempted to kill himself and shattered his own jaw with a
shot. The contrary view is that he was shot by one of the Convention's troops. At the time, a gendarme named Charles-André Merda claimed to have pulled the trigger.
Saint-Just made no attempt at suicide or concealment. Hanriot tried to
hide in the Hôtel de Ville's yard, by some sources after being thrown
out a window into a stack of latrine and hay,
but the Convention troops quickly discovered him and assaulted him
badly, allegedly gouging one of his eyes out so that it hung from its
socket.
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