French Revolution

It's "Girondins", not "Jerondins". For a start, read the entries about them on Wikipedia, here:
Girondins
Jacobins

It's "Girondins", not "Jerondins". For a start, read the entries about them on Wikipedia, here:
Girondins
Jacobins

Your question implies that there were two groups only in the National Assembly. Nothing could be further from the truth. Also see Mirabeau, Danton (and Dantoniste), Marat, Robespierre, Hebertiste . . . you decieve yourself if you think you will come up with any simple statements about that revolution . . .

New French Revolution Topic and Divine right of kings
I'm not much for religion but from time to time wonder what Robespierre's "Religion of the Sun" was about.

I don't speak French and when I search <"Religion of the Sun" and Robespierre> I get zip, but searching <Robespierre> I get "Cult of the Supreme Being" and several descriptions of a holiday and festival by that name. One site says the religion lacked ritual (and history, and tradition) but it seems to me to have had ritual in Robespierre's endless instructions for forming ranks of equal length for male and female and adolescents or whatever and marching around on its holiday.

I think Robespierre's idea in the religion was to start to transition people from their old cultural assumptions to new, since "divine right of kings" connected church and state up to that point. Also, people may not have felt motivated to behave themselves for society's good at that point.

That segues into my second comment. People talk about separation of church and state today but I don't think they get the historical connection that there had to be a church around to sanction monarchs charged by gods to rule and protect. So the church sanctioned the state therefore the state upheld the religion that sanctioned it. I don't think ending church-sanctioned monarchy (divine right of kings) precludes national religions (although I would not care for that). I suspect what the writers of the Constitution had in mind is on record in the Constitutional convention debate somewhere but distorted today.

Comments?

Sally

Part of the "settlement" of the revolution was to deprive the Chruch of its property. Although only a small part of the population, the clergy controlled more than 20% of the land in the nation, and most of what they held was prime real estate. More than that, a small percentage of the clery controlled most of that property. When chruch land was seized, the National Assembly thought to finance the government with assignats, which were basically scrip based on the value of the church property. But it was a circular system, because the value of the land would be calculated in assignats, and the old metallic basis (gold and silver) upon which financial speculation was based no longer applied. Speculators bought up large quantities of assignats with gold and silver, and their value rapidly inflated beyond the real value of the property it represented. Those boys were simply operating without a clue when it came to economics.

At the same time, the clergy were obliged to swear loyalty to the government, and were to recieve a salary from the government. Many members of the clergy, and at the lowest levels, refused to swear. In French, the term for "to swear" is jurer. Those preist who refused to take the loyalty oath were called non-juring priests, and, theoretically, at least, were not allowed to celebrate the mass, nor receive an income from a parish. Many portions of the nation were already suspicious of the government, believing it to be (quite reasonably) in the hands of the Paris mob. Counterrevolution prospered, and was encouraged and often lead by members of the aristocracy. The issue was not settled until many years after Napoleon forced the Concordat on the Pope.

The execution of the King, followed by the execution of the Queen, lead Austria and Prussia (in the form of the Duke of Brunswick and his German Brunswickers) to invade France. Robespierre had risen to prominence after the execution of Danton at first as a member of and then the leader of the Comité de salut publique, the Committee for Public Safety. He and the committee proclaimed la patrie in danger, the fatherland in danger, and began the process of large-scale levies of peasants to form armies, which would lead to the wars of the revolution. The French were largely successful in these wars, because prior to the revolution, the Minister of War, St. Germaine, along with Marshall de Broglie, had reformed the army's doctrines, and revolutionized tactical doctrine, the use of artillery and had created a uniform hierarchical structure of units along with a hierarchical staff system for units of the army. That did not help, though, with the counterrevolutionary insurrections, which continued for many years. For the most dangerous and long-lasting of the counterrevolutionary insurrections, see La Vendée. For a good idea of how the French eventually settled the religious issue, look for "Napoleon+Concordat."

Thanks to the perception of public emergency, the Committee for Public Safety was able to seize nearly absolute power. One of Robespierre's initiatives was to eliminate religion altogether. He had signs posted on the walls of cemetaries in Paris which read: "Here is only eternal sleep." He outlawed all but private religious ceremonies. He soon became aware, however, that people resented the prohibition on religion, so he instituted the Festival of the Supreme Being. It was very popular, simply as a holiday and a public spectacle. But it drew, more and more, ridicule down upon Robespierre. Eventually, for political reasons, Robespierre fell from power, and was executed. Before that occured, however, Jacques Hébert, a rabble-rouser par excellence who was a leading member of the Cordelliers political club, had promoted the atheistical Cult of Reason, and then challenged Robespierre thinking he had the Paris mob at his back. He was arrested, and with the use of his own Law of Suspects, was condemned and executed. Robespierre therefore had discredited his own Cult of the Supreme Being, and sacrificed any support he still had in the Paris mob. When an "anti-Robespierre" political clique formed, and came for him, he no longer had any defenders upon whom he could call.

For the best "thumbnail" description of the revolution and its principle players, i suggest The Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert. Another excellent modern study of the revolution is Simon Schama's Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. The best work on the Revolution in my never humble opinion is Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution: A History. Carlyle published his work in 1835, and began researching it in the late 1820s, which means that he had access to a wealth of materials, and he did his work thoroughly. A fine work on the conditions in France before the revolution, and how they lead to the revolution, is Alexandre de Tocqueville's L'Ancien régime et la révolution, available in English as The Old Regime and the Revolution (in French, ancien can simply mean former--"old regime" is not a bad translation, though).

Thanks, Setanta. I always enjoy your comments. However, in this case, I have general background on the French Revolution and was specifically commenting and interested in comments on two things, neither of which you addressed:

1. Religion of the Sun (as we were taught in college French revolutionary history was the name of the religion sponsoring the "festival") and

2. Separation of church and state as a Western principle beyond France. I believe it to be rooted in opposition to divine right of kings and not aimed at mere interconnection between church and state. You did point to interconnections in France, but really I should have posted the church and state elsewhere, since I was going beyond the scope of France here.

By the way, I found your comments about basing the new French economy on impounded property really interesting. Since real estate value is only "realized" when it changes hands, it would be rather like basing an economy on Winnebago stock to use collateral that can't be bought and sold on frequent markets. Not a good idea. Winnebago stock owners were paper millionaires until the bottom fell out of their market.

Cheers,

Sal