Jacobins

The Society of the Friends of the Constitution (Société des amis de la Constitution), in what became commonly known as the Jacobin Club (Club des Jacobins) started out as the Club Breton.  It was initially a group of Breton representatives who attended the Estates Generals who met at Versailles.  Soon enough representatives from across France joined the group and the geographical tag was dropped.  When the now Assembly moved to Paris the Club followed it and moved into a Dominican convent on Rue St Jacques (Jacobus being the Latin version).

In Paris the club rapidly expanded as it allowed membership outside of the elected representatives.  The Jacobin Club became known as the place to go to hear the political issues of the day debated.  Its reasonably high subscriptions meant that it was the haunt of the middle classes with a fair amount of men from the legal profession in attendance.  The Jacobins regarded the upholding of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as central and they wrote into their constitution those who opposed this would be removed.

The club maintained a reasonably moderate approach in Republican France.  This changed when the more conservative elements of the club left to form the very short lived Feuillants Club in July 1791.  Those who were elected to the Convention sat in the very highest of the seats amongst the assembled delegates and for that reason became known as “the Mountain”.  Their power rose as France went to war against Austria and Prussia (a war which many Jacobins initially opposed).  The war created fear amongst the French public and many people worried that counter revolutionaries were exploiting the chaos to  profit from scarce food and were plotting to overthrow the government and bring back the monarchy.  The Mountain would tap into this mood and more and more counter revolutionaries would be disposed of.  Rallying the Jacobins to this cause would be Maximilien Robespierre. The Jacobin cause would stretch across France with many clubs forming across the country these would help organise the spread of “the virtues” of the Republic.  They would help oppose the federalists who strove for a less centralised revolution.

There was increasing tension between the Jacobins and the Girondins who had initially backed the war.  The Girondins believed that the King should be spared execution after his trial and the people should decide his fate.  This was rejected by the Convention and the increasingly radicalised sans-culottes of Paris.  Eventually the Girondins would be forcibly removed from the Convention by National Guardsmen and the sans-culottes.  The Jacobins would become central to the Terror as they would control the Committee of Public Safety.  The Convention would descend into fratricide as the more radical elements the Hebertists would be purged first and then the Indulgents those who sought to end the Terror would be purged.  Both sections would include members of the Jacobins.

When Robespierre would continue to rail against supposed counter revolutionaries he was overthrown in the events of Thermidor on the 27th July 1794. Some Jacobins would accuse him and some Jacobins would die alongside him.  The Jacobin Club would be shut down soon after.  Although the ghost of the Jacobin Club would occasionally struggle to rise the authorities would disperse any attempts to revive it.

Social composition of the Jacobin Club from 1789 to 1795.  Taken from The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, Colin Jones, Longman, Harlow (1988) p186

Barère on the creation of the Jacobin Club.  Taken from Memoirs of Bertrand Barère Volume 1, H. S. Nichols, London (1896) p247

A short time after the National Assembly became settled in Paris, a club was formed, which became so influential, so celebrated, and so exclusive under the name of the Jacobin Club. This name was given it because it was held in the church of the old Jacobin monks in the Rue St. Honore, towards the close of 1789. What was generally unknown was that the club already existed under another name, and with a less deliberative procedure, under the name of the Breton Club.

The Breton Club was founded at Versailles after the royal session of the 23rd of June. At first its members were the numerous and energetic deputies of the province of Brittany ; afterwards, its members elected MM. Sieyes, the brothers de Lameth, Charles de Noailles, the Duke d'Aiguillon, Adrien Duport, and several other deputies. I was never elected to the Breton Club ; it was only in Paris, a long time after it had been settled at the Jacobins', that my colleagues suggested I should be added to the deputies already there. There were then only the deputies and very few outsiders. Some months after, towards September, 1790, several deputies began to discover the club was becoming too large, too tumultuous, while increasing in power and influence; so some of its more distinguished members determined not to make a split, but to establish another club. This was to share the political influence of the Jacobins and guide public opinion by that spirit of opposition that does not destroy, but discusses ; which does not burn down, but enlightens.

Gouverneur Morris on the Jacobins in November 1790.  Taken from Witnesses to the Revolution American and British Commentators in France 1788-1794, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London (1989) p127

The Enragés, long since known by the name of the Jacobins, have lost much in the public opinion, so that they are less powerful in the Assembly than they were; but the committees of correspondence spread all over the kingdom, have given them a deep and strong hold over the people.

The Marquis de Bouille’s opinions on the Duke D’Orleans and his supposed leadership of the Jacobins in early 1791.  Taken from Memoirs Relating to the French Revolution by the Marquis de Bouille, Cadell and Davies, London (1797) p299-300

The duke of Orleans had. leaders and secret agents dispersed over every part of France. The Jacobin club at Paris, whose operations he directed, kept up a correspondence with all the rest in the kingdom; there was not a town in France, however small, which did not contain these societies, presided over or led by men of the boldest and most enterprising characters, consummate in crime and villainy. Jacobinism was a monster whose head was at Paris, and whose arms extended over all France; the means its partisans made use of to effect their destructive purposes were alternately force and artifice. They pretended favourable dispositions towards the constitutionalists, whilst meditating the ruin of La Fayette, their chief, whom they pursued rather to gratify the personal vengeance of the duke of Orleans, than from any apprehensions of his power they associated themselves with the friends of the constitution, made the constitution itself subservient to their views, and at the same time waited only till the royal authority should be completely annihilated, to destroy it. If ever there was a conspiracy of greater extent than this, none was ever conducted with more method and ability, nor ever displayed more boldness and energy in its operations.