H-France Review Vol. 4 (April 2004), No. 47
Paul R. Hanson, The Jacobin Republic under Fire: The Federalist Revolt in the French Revolution. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. x + 262 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $49.95 (cl). ISBN 0-271-02281-7.
Review by James Livesey, Trinity College, Dublin.
This useful book allows scholars and students to approach the fragmentary and ambiguous moment of the federalist revolt of the summer of 1793 as a single process. The book is built on, and amply acknowledges, the work of the British historians of the Revolution in the provinces (especially Alan Forrest, W.D. Edmonds, and M.J. Sydenham), that of the French historians of provincial ideology (citing most often Jacques Guilhaumou and Raymonde Monnier), as well as his own archival research. Hanson attempts to construct a comprehensive understanding of the nature and dynamic of the federalist moment upon this extensive base. The scholarly mansion that results has many chambers in which the social content of the provincial Revolution, its underlying ideological energies, and the nature of urban experience, amongst others, are debated. Despite the variety of materials that he has on hand Hanson tries to comprehend them within one design. The architectural principle that brings unity to the whole edifice is a baroque contrast of the principles of national and popular sovereignty.
Hanson argues that the federalist revolt was animated, and ultimately hamstrung, by uncertainty about the location of sovereignty. Was the Convention sovereign, and were departmental administrations and citizens obliged to submit themselves to its authority, no matter how unpalatable some of its actions? Or did sovereignty ultimately rest in the hands of the citizenry, who then found themselves unrepresented and freed from any obligation when their delegates had been proscribed? Hanson argues that the federalist cities (Caen, Bordeaux, Marseille and Lyon) were those where politically dominant elites embraced the second option and so put themselves in opposition to the Convention. While the ambiguity allowed opposition to the Convention to be articulated in something like principled terms, it was too weak a rallying claim to sustain the movement. By 2 August the Popular Commission in Bordeaux, for example, simply collapsed after its risible failure to raise a military force to march on Paris had amounted to 400 men who never left the department. As Hanson neatly comprises the problem faced by the federalists, the ambiguity of revolting against the central authority in the name of the “one and indivisible” Republic was only too apparent. The point is reinforced by the fact that the one city that did mount significant resistance to the central authorities, Lyon, came under increasingly royalist control. Republican opposition was not sustainable.
Hanson’s goal is to show how specific configurations of local politics interacted with national themes to provoke the revolts. The book moves from the national to the local level, passing through ideology to explain the connection. Hanson’s problem, as he frames it, is to explain why local authorities (the revolts were all led by departmental administrations) identified with the Girondin deputies proscribed between 31 May and 2 June 1793 to the extent that they would resort to arms. Hanson lays out a coherent account of the developing struggle between the Girondins and the Jacobins. Without getting bogged down in the difficult issue of the definition of the Gironde as party, theoretical commitment, or lethal slur, he describes the running fight between the friends of Brissot and, successively, the commune de Paris, the Montagne and the Paris sections. One of his most effective devices is a sustained contrast between the rhetoric of Vergniaud and that of Robespierre. He uses this to establish how tactical differences between republicans concerning the place of the Paris people in the Revolution grew into a principled difference on the authority of the state. His account makes clear how, especially under the pressure of a collapsing economy, the men left holding the hot potato of responsibility for the executive got their hands burnt.
Hanson’s subsequent account of the outbreak of revolt in the federalist cities (in one case, Lyon, preceding the expulsion of the Girondins from the Convention) is also very secure. He has a very precise indicator of federalist enthusiasm. In all four federalist cities local social elites had been challenged for political power in the year preceding the revolts and had overcome that challenge (p. 160). In Caen and Bordeaux local elites co-opted the instrument of popular challenge to their rule, the Jacobin club. In Lyon and Marseille the sections became the institutional basis for elites to remove Jacobins from municipal power. The Parisian victories of the Montagne and their allies threatened these local political outcomes. The interest politics that drove the resistance to the events in Paris is well analysed. However, that analysis is not easily reconciled to the over-arching narrative about confusions over sovereignty. In the end, the account of municipal federalism that Hanson presents relies on something very much like class, rather than political culture, for its coherence: “The Girondins, convinced of the inability of the educated masses to govern themselves, favored government by a propertied and educated elite, and they were joined in this view by their supporters in the provinces, the federalist rebels of 1793” (pp. 241-42).
One of the strongest features of the book is the manner in which it represents the uncertainty and confusion that followed the journées of May and June 1793. The Convention, the Committee of Public Safety, and the représentants-en-mission in the provinces allowed wavering departments considerable ground for manoeuvre in their responses to the events in Paris throughout June and early July. Lindet and Dubois-Crancé debated the utility and legitimacy of bringing Lyon to heel through military force during this period, and there were hopes that all the insurrectionary departments could be persuaded back into the fold. Hanson argues that this ground eroded between July 13 and July 17. On July 13 Marat was assassinated, and the small force created at Caen was defeated. On July 17 the Jacobin ex-Mayor of Lyon, Chalier, was executed. These events, and the approval of the Constitution in the primary assemblies during July, all eliminated the sense that there might be genuine confusion over legitimate authority. On the 17th the department of the Doubs, for instance, accepted the Constitution and simultaneously closed all communication with departments in a state of insurrection. From that point the contingencies of politics closed, and the only decision left to the federalists was the manner of their surrender. This feature of the book best illustrates his contention, quoting Lynn Hunt, that politics matter.
Hanson extends this dictum to the most sensitive of issues, the Terror. For Hanson, the Terror developed differently in Lyon, Marseille and the other cities because of their differing politics. The social configuration of revolutionary mobilization, the success or failure of local elites in constraining political competition within legal forms, the choices of political alliances in Paris made by local forces as well as the character of representatives sent by the central power, all contributed to the nature of the Terror in specific locations. Terror becomes an emergent phenomenon, conditioned by political competition. In Lyon, for instance, the origins of the severity of the Terror “lay both in the multiple instances of local violence, extending back to 1790, and in the wilfulness of the city’s resistance to national authority, as manifested both in the siege itself and earlier in the execution of Joseph Chalier” (p. 221). This notion of a Terror in some sense shaped by the real opposition to the Convention is an important idea.
Hanson’s account of federalism makes a good case for politics and a better case for narrative. While there are problems with the argument, the description of the federalist revolt as a dynamic affair full of complexity and confusion is very compelling. Just why this incident, like so many others during the Revolution, was so complex, confused, and uncontrollable deserves further reflection.
James Livesey
Trinity College, Dublin
jlivesey@tcd.ie
Copyright © 2004 by the Society for French Historical Studies, all rights reserved. The Society for French Historical Studies permits the electronic distribution for nonprofit educational purposes, provided that full and accurate credit is given to the author, the date of publication, and its location on the H-France website. No republication or distribution by print media will be permitted without permission. For any other proposed uses, contact the Editor-in-Chief of H-France.
H-France Review Vol. 4 (April 2004), No. 47
ISSN 1553-9172
