BLUNDERS OF THE MODERATE

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHISTS
November 1789: The confiscation of Church lands causes
many hospitals and orphanages to close.
July 1790: The Civil Constitution of the Clergy imposes
democratic election of priests on the Catholic Church.
1790/91: Mismanagement of the new system of paper
money results in massive inflation.
June 1791: The Flight to Varennes harsh treatment of
King Louis XVI provokes him to attempt to flee to Austria.
September 1791: The new constitution designates the
poorer half of the male populace as passive citizens.
April 1792: The Legislative Assembly declares war on
Austria, seeking to compel Louis XVI to choose sides.

Last Procession for the Burial of the Civic Oath (1790/91):

A hostile portrait of the clergy who accepted the Civil Constitution

The Death of Lescuyer in the Cordeliers Church in Avignon,

October 15, 1791: A royalist mob, blessed by the priests,
murders a local leader of the revolutionary government

The Great Dinner of the Modern Gargantua & His Family

The Arrest of the King & Queen in Varennes (June 1791)

Louis XVI, the pig who has gone astray

Firing at the Champ de Mars, July 17, 1791:

The Marquis de Lafayette orders the dispersal of protesters

La Fayette
Janus
(1791/92):
Man of the
People or
Man of the
Royal Court?

The Capture of the Tuileries Palace, 10 August 1792

(painted in 1793)

The Battle of Valmy, September 20, 1792

THE REIGN OF TERROR

Convention split between the Mountain (led by
Sep-Dec 1792
the Jacobins) and the Plain (led by the Girondins)
January 1793

Convention votes narrowly to execute the king

March 1793

Revolutionary Tribunal created

April 1793

Convention delegates authority to the 12-man

Committee of Public Safety

May/June
1793

Purge of the Girondin faction; revolts break out in

Toulon, Marseille, Lyons, & the Vende

Fall 1793

The Republic defeats enemies at home & abroad

Spring 1794

Purge of indulgents & ultra-revolutionaries

July 1794

Thermidor: Robespierre executed

1795-99

The Directory seeks to restore the rule of law

Marianne (=Liberty, the Republic)

RIGHT: The Republic, by
Antoine Gros (1794)
BELOW: The Great Seal of
the First French Republic

The Singer
Chenard
(October 1792):
The typical
sans-culottes
depicted on stage

The Mountain vs. the Plain in the Convention:

Robespierre (1758-1794) and Condorcet (1743-94)

Martin Drolling, Louis XVI Bidding Farewell to His Family

before His Execution (1793)

Matter for
Reflection for All the
Crowned Jugglers:
Thus Impure Blood
Will Fertilize Our
Fields

Pierre-Etienne le Sueur, The Execution of the Tyrant,

21 January 1793 (1793)

James Gillray, The

Blood of the
Murdered crying
for Vengeance
(England, 1793)

THE
REORGANIZATION
OF TIME:
The revolutionary
calendar with twelve
30-month days,
introduced in 1793

CounterRevolutionary
Uprisings and
Foreign
Invasions,
1793/94

Jean-Baptiste
Regnault,
Liberty or
Death!
(1794/95)

Anonymous,
Robespierre,
guillotining the
executioner after
having guillotined
all the French
(1794)

Duplessi-Bertaux, Robespierre Wounded,

in City Hall on the morning of July 28, 1794

THE REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS CHILDREN:

Danton riding to the scaffold, April 1794; Robespierre, July 1794