I The Debate about saving the Revolution.
 

A. The king's attempt to escape forced the Legislative Assembly to ask political questions: What is to be done about priests who are disloyal, the émigrés who won't come home, and kings who hate the Constitution?
 

1. The Feuillants sat on the right of the assembly. They wanted to give Louis more power. They were willing to give churchmen and aristocrats more prestige if they would join the nation.
 

2. The Girondins wanted a preventive war. They thought that the officer corps was reliable and that foreign countries would not fight to free Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. They wanted the National Guard volunteers to fight the Austrians and Prussians. They argued that once Louis XVI saw that he could get no help from the outside, he would be a good king and support the Constitution. They sat in the middle of the assembly.
 

3. The Jacobins, already led by Robespierre, did not want to fight. They did not trust generals like Lafayette. They thought the army unreliable. They thought that the Austrians and the Prussians would win in a war because so many citizens hated the Constitution. They wanted to write a more popular Constitution that would make the passive citizens active and strip the émigrés of their property. They sat on the left of the assembly.
 

4. Louis and Marie-Antoinette wanted war because they thought that France would lose and that they would be free from the Constitution.
 

II Stage VI: The Girondin War.
 

A. The Girondins won the political debate. On 20 April 1792, France declared war on Austria.
 

B. Louis XVI, commander of the army, wanted France to lose.
 

C. Marie-Antoinette alerted the Austrians to the overall French strategy.
 

D. The War went badly as the Prussian and Austrian armies made their way to France.
 

E. Supplies were short, the National Guards were untrained, and Louis vetoed laws that would have unified the nation.
 

F. Throughout the country volunteers began to join the National Guard and to make their way to Paris. The cities of France rose to the challenge and sent men to protect the Revolution. In Marseilles, the city leaders denounced hereditary monarchy and demanded that Louis be deposed. Throughout the country, the "fourth sorts of people" demanded an end to monarchy, a new constitution, and patriotic war. The volunteers who made their way from Marseilles invented the national anthem as they made their way to Paris: "French liberty is in danger. The free men of the South are rising to defend France. The day of the people has arrived."
 

G. 3 August 1792: The Duke of Brunswick swore that if the National Guard fought they would be punished as rebels to the king. He declared Paris collectively responsible for the safety of the royal family.
 

H. 10 August 1792: The most bloody day of the Revolution to this point. The crowd attacked the king in the Tuileries demanding a new constitution and the end of monarchy. Louis ordered his Swiss Guard to fire. They did. The crowd reassembled and rushed the Swiss soldiers. The crowd massacred 600 Swiss. The Swiss killed 300 Parisians. Louis, Marie-Antoinette, and their children rushed into the Assembly for safety.
 

I. The Assembly agreed to deport refractory priests, to write a more democratic constitution, and to suspend the monarchy.
 

J. Generals, such as Lafayette, tried to raise an army to protect the king. He could not and so he fled to Belgium and joined the émigrés.
 

K. The Prussian and Austrian armies crossed the border into France and made their way toward Paris.
 

L. The National Guards of the cities became the Army of France and prepared to meet the chivalry of Europe. Before they did, however, they used terror against their enemies. Fear of foreign invasion, fear of the disloyalty of their generals, fear of losing led the defenders to punish the disloyal before going to battle. Slaughter of refractory priests, supporters of the monarchy, and enemies of the Revolution began in late August and continued until 21 September. Eleven to fifteen hundred people perished in Paris alone.
 

M. 21 August 1792: The Legislative Assembly abolished the monarchy, declared France a Republic, and ordered a National Convention to write a new constitution.
 

N. 21 August 1792: The National Guard won the first battle of the Revolution at Valmy.
 

O. 22 September 1792: The first day of the year one of the French Republic.
 

P. 6 November 1792: The new French generals won victories.
 

Q. 19 November 1792: The Constitutional Convention offered French assistance to all people who wished to overthrow their governments outside French borders. The Revolution widened to include all Europeans.
 

R. December: The Nation put Louis XVI on trial, found him guilty, and executed him as Louis Capet on 21 January 1793.
 
 
 

III. The Failure of the Girondin War
 

A. The Girondins won the first battles of the War but the Émigrés and their allies regrouped. By February 1793, England, Holland, and Spain joined Austria and Prussia.
 

B. Royalists, refractory priests, and peasants in the Vendée revolted against the Constituent Assembly. These conservative forces wanted to restore the monarchy and end the revolution.
 

C. The leaders of the Girondin party tried to negotiate with Austria and Prussia but they could get no peace treaty.
 

D. From February until June 1793 the Girondins refused to vote for the new constitution. The Austrian armies invaded France and the rebellions in the West became worse. It seemed certain that the Grand Alliance of European powers would defeat France.
 

E. Robespierre and the Jacobins called for the ouster of the Girondins from the assembly, the adoption of a new constitution, and all out revolutionary war against the enemies of France.
 

F. On 2 June 1793, the people of Paris forced the Constitutional Convention to arrest the 31 leaders of the Girondin party. The Jacobins took charge.
 

IV. Stage VII: The Jacobin War
 

A. When the Jacobins took over the Revolution was in danger from multiple forces.
 

1. France faced rebellions in 60 of 80 departments

2. The Prussians invaded from the North.

3. The Austrians invaded from the East.

4. The English invaded from West and the South.

5. France was almost bankrupt.

6. France faced famine, unemployment, and defeat.
 

B. Fourteen months later those dangers had disappeared and the French Republic had accomplished many wonders.
 

1. By 1794, the French expelled all invaders.

2. France occupied Belgium and was on the verge of 20 years of almost unbroken military success.

3. France had the most democratic constitution ever written.

4. The new government abolished slavery in the French colonies.

5. The new government stabilized the currency, ran the army economically, and controlled wages and prices.
 

C. How did the Jacobins save the Revolution?
 

1. The bourgeois Assembly set up a Committee of Public Safety. The committee used terror against the enemies of the nation. Thirty to forty thousand individuals perished as the National Guardsmen in the cities went after enemies of the Revolution. The Jacobins ordered Girondin leaders and refractory priests guillotined.
 

2. The bourgeois Assembly made all men citizens. It armed the sans-culottes, the peasants, and the petty bourgeoisie to fight for its cause. For the first time in French history, the ruling class armed the masses. "Henceforth, until the enemies of France have been driven from the territory of the Republic, the French people are in permanent requisition for army service." The Jacobins invented total war.
 

a. The young men went to battle.

b. The married men forged arms.

c. The women served in hospitals and made clothes.

d. The children made bandages from rags.

e. The old men repaired the public places.

f. Public buildings became armament workshops.

g. Price and wage control became law.

h. The Catholic Church lost its monopoly.

i. Liberty, fraternity, and equality became revolutionary slogans.

j. The worship of the Supreme Being replaced the worship of God.
 

3. Jacobin war was successful and frightening.
 

a. The people armed cleared France of rebellion.

b. The people armed cleared France of invaders.

c. The army crossed the Rhine and invaded Belgium.

d. French armies abolished serfdom, collected tribute, and threw nobles and churchmen out of defeated states.

e. Titles ceased to exist in France.

f. The Committee of Public Safety executed Marie-Antoinette.

f. The Committee of Public Safety sold émigré land to richer peasants.

g. City workers began to demand social as well as political justice.

h. The Jacobins continued to execute all enemies.

i. The Assembly became terrified of the executions and the leftward drift of the Revolution.

J. The Assembly ordered Robespierre, St. Juste, and other members of the Committee of Public Safety guillotined.