ABSTRACT
May Convention decrees Maximum price of bread; Hébert and Varlet arrested
2 June Convention sortie; arrest of Girondins; provincial revolt; major cities as well as Vendée now; Republican Constitution suspended
July Robespierre voted on to Committee of Public Safety
Aug. Mainz taken by Prussian army Oct. Lyon recaptured; to be subjected
to ‘exemplary justice’; Convention decrees a new calendar and passes decree of revolutionary government (19 Vendémiaire); official Terror beginning
Dec. Vendée revolt suppressed by Carrier Law of 14 Frimaire increases authority of committees
1794 March Purge of the Hébertists; ‘Great Terror’ beginning; Laws of Ventose authorise the confiscation of property of suspects
April Purge of the Indulgents, Danton and his followers
8 June Festival of the Supreme Being 10 June Law of 22 Prairial removes right
of defence before Revolutionary Tribunal
23 June Maximum on wages 26 June French victory at Fleurus 27 July 9 Thermidor; Robespierre arrested 28 July 10 Thermidor; Robespierre cap-
tured and guillotined
Aug. Revolutionary Tribunal purged, committees’ powers cut
14 Nov. Jacobin Club closed Dec. Carrier guillotined; Girondin
deputies reinstated; Maximum price controls abolished
1795 1 April Germinal Rising of hungry Parisians collapses
April Peace signed with Prussia and Holland
21 May Prairial Rising; Deputy Feraud murdered; repression followed
Aug. Constitution of Year III (the Directory)
Oct. Vendémiaire Rising of Royalist sympathisers protesting the Law of two-thirds defeated
1796 March Babeuf’s Conspiracy of the Equals betrayed
1797 June Bonaparte creates Cisalpine Republic in Italy
Sept. Coup of 18 Fructidor; Royalists purged from legislative Councils; Treaty of Campo Formio with Austria
1798 May Coup of Floréal; Jacobins purged from legislative Councils
1 Aug. Battle of the Nile; Nelson destroys Bonaparte’s fleet
1799 March War of the Second Coalition begins against France
Nov. Coup of Brumaire; Bonaparte and Sieyès abolish Directory and become Consuls with Ducos
Between the storming of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792 and ‘Thermidor’, the fall of Robespierre and the Jacobins, in July 1794, the centre of political activity moved to the left with great speed. The Jacobins, who represented the more radical and hard-line Republicans, dominated the government through their control of Paris. Their
ruthlessness built a centralised system of gouvernement révolutionnaire which waged war with vigour against foreign enemies and the rebellious provinces, while managing the war economy and changing many aspects of life. They even invented a new religion. The desperate energy of this period could not be sustained beyond a certain point. When the most pressing war emergencies passed the Jacobin dictatorship became a victim of the plots, suspicions and violence which it had earlier been able to manage to its advantage.
