AQA AS ESSAY, UNIT 1

How far were the sans-culottes responsible for the development of the

Terror in France in the years 1793 – 1794?

While the sans-culottes occupied a highly visible position in the establishment

of the Reign of Terror, they did not constitute its essential cause. Rather, the driving

force behind the Terror was the Jacobins’ aim of enforcing its revolutionary ideology

throughout France. The sans-culottes’ primary contribution was in their power in

numbers to effectuate political journées, particularly the expulsion of the Girondins;

nevertheless this proved effective only in-so-far as it supported the aims of the

Jacobins. Robespierre, as such, aided in carrying the Terror to the climax of its

Jacobin vision. This radical vision, in connection with evolving events such as military

defeat, economic crisis and counter-revolutionary uprisings, polarised political views

that then birthed the machinery of the Terror.

The organised violence that defined the revolution in 1793 was an

actualisation of the Jacobins’ vision of the revolution. Amongst its members were

radicals such as Marat, Desmoulins and Robespierre committed to Rousseau’s theory

that ‘each places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the

general will’. While the Girondins eventually supported the establishment of the

republic, their Jacobin counterparts did not believe the revolution complete. The

Edict of Fraternity in November 1792 clearly indicated the heart of their goal: to

establish the revolution ideologically throughout France if not Europe. The

Committee of General Security (CGS) was thus established to direct the police and

root out counter-revolutionaries; in principle, this was the ministry of the Terror

designed to safeguard the revolution. The Jacobins subsequently harnessed the

coercive capacity of the sans-culottes and sent them as representative-on-missions

to, as Danton put it, ‘embody the terror’.

The sans-culottes most powerful feature was their sheer mass and willingness

to ‘shed blood to the last drop to save the Republic’. Capable of violent political
journées, they established a revolutionary Commune and killed 600 Swiss Guards in

the attack on the Tuileries. The following month, in the September Massacres, they

exterminated half of the 2600 people in Paris jails. Nonetheless Soboul correctly

argues that whilst expressions of rage, these journées have no clearly defined link

with the actual establishment of The Terror: the sans-culottes demanded economic

controls but these could only be adopted through legislation by a central authority.

This, in turn, required that the Jacobins be in power. Realising this, on 2 June 1793, a

mob of 80 000 positioned a canon facing the Convention and effectuated the

expulsion of the Girondins form the Assembly. The Girondins were already divided

however with some members defecting to the Jacobins or to foreign enemies. Highly

unpopular after Lafayette and Dumouriez committed treason, it is unlikely that the

Girondins would eventually have maintained power over France even without the

sans-culottes’ radical journée.

An important limitation to the sans-culottes’ power was their lack of a

legitimate mechanism that could transfer their collective desires into legislation. The

sans-culottes’ actions thus succeeded with this proviso: that they received Jacobin

backing. Although the Jacobins relied on the sans-culottes, Lefebvre correctly notes

that they soon ‘found themselves unable to keep up with events. Even those who

condoned the massacres did not favour anarchy in the streets’. Subsequently the

Jacobins reacted by trying to control the anarchic violence: the Terror was brought

under central bureaucratic control. In September 1793, when the sans-culottes

demanded economic concessions in return for their loyalty, the Law of General

Maximum was passed but the government removed it within five months so as not to

lose support from the wealthy peasantry. This decision reflects the revolutionary

government’s opportune use of the sans-culottes in order to achieve their goals

rather than of the sans-culottes’ ability to control the government. By the end of

1893, the influence of the sans-culottes waned; as external war was won, the

Jacobins deemed the sans-culottes to have served their purpose and -dismantling

the provincial instruments of terror - severed their links with the popular movement.

Robespierre’s role in the development of The Terror is interconnected with the

Jacobin club of which he was a prominent member. Elected to the Committee of

Public Safety in July 1793, Robespierre’s tactical skills led him to ally with the sans-
culottes and to call for people to ‘place themselves in the insurrection against the

corrupt’. He expanded the traditional list of the enemies of the revolution to include

moderates and as a member of the CPS, transacted a vast amount of domestic and

military dealings. By Spring 1794, he would be a virtual de facto dictator who called

for anyone who did not put ‘vertu’ first to be sacrificed. While Robespierre was aided

by the sans-culottes in instigating the Terror, he would prove to be their undoing. In

1794, he executed Danton who urged the slowing down of the Terror as well as the

more extreme sans-culottes leaders such as Roux and Herbert. The sans-culottes

had lost the ability to impose their will and were, by this point, no longer responsible

for developments in the Terror.

The fears that had skewed Jacobin political opinions were partly shaped by the

war that began in April 1792. The exigencies of war coupled with fears of invasion by

French émigrés and key powers including Austria, Prussia, Britain and Spain, led to

demands for a war economy, the recruitment of troops, and requisitioning of

supplies. It also encouraged suspicions of citizens being covert counter-

revolutionaries. By 1793, France was suffering the defection of Girondin French

generals such as Lafayette and Dumouriez. Rumours that Dumouriez planned to

march on Paris, dissolve the Convention and restore the monarchy caused support to

swing towards the Jacobins, leading to the expulsion of the Girondins. After assuming

power, the Jacobins’ levée en masse that declared all Frenchmen to be in a state of

‘permanent requisition for the army’ elicited a massive uprising in Vendée where

Catholic discontent from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had already been

present. War further plummeted the unstable economy and the peasantry, who

believed the revolution would alleviate economic woes, were disenchanted. Some

now returned to support their natural leaders, often monarchist nobles.

Consequently, fears that the revolution was being reversed tightened governmental

control over the populace. The Terror came to be because ‘a country cannot be

governed in war as it is in peacetime’.

In a final assessment of the contribution of the sans-culottes to the

development of The Reign of Terror, it is fair to afford them the position of having

sped up the process of its development and, if one is generous, to claim them as an
initial trigger; but the sans-culottes were a mere subsidiary element to the birth of

the Terror, not its root nor driving force. This role belongs to the Jacobins, without

whose ideological vision and passionate pursuit of a totalitarian democracy, the new

kind of militarised state embodied as the Terror would not to have been. Conversely,

without the Sans-Culottes a form of this militarised state could well have been forced

into existence due to the increasingly radical political opinions championed by the

Jacobins. The Jacobins merely needed an opportunity to gain a political edge above

the moderates in order to start the process of enforcing the legislation necessary for

furthering their extreme ideological ideas. In time protracted, war, a failing economy

and counter-revolutionary uprisings would have been sufficient to create this chance,

even without the actions of the sans-culottes. Where then do the sans-culottes, in

their defiant red cockades, stand? Perhaps their enduring identity is best described

in terms of what they represented: the heart and essence of their age, whose

individual wills and cohesive actions were both a product and agent of the historical

struggle- the dialectical interplay of violence and emancipation; hope and fear- that

secures the French Revolution its legacy.