Expulsion of the Girondins
On 2 June 1793, after weeks of escalating conflict, the Montagnard-dominated National Convention — surrounded by sans-culotte crowds and National Guard artillery commanded by François Hanriot — voted to arrest 29 leading Girondin deputies and two Girondin ministers. The conflict between the two republican factions had been building for months: the Girondins had put the radical journalist Marat on trial (he was triumphantly acquitted); they opposed price controls on grain demanded by Paris; they resented Montagnard reliance on popular street pressure to override Assembly votes. The expulsion gave the Montagnards undisputed control of the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, but at the cost of triggering federalist revolts across provincial France: Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Caen, and much of Normandy refused to recognise a Convention that had been coerced by Paris mobs into purging elected deputies. The Vendée uprising, already under way, drew strength from this broader federalist crisis. The emergency atmosphere these revolts created — combined with foreign invasion on multiple fronts — was the Montagnards' primary justification for the Terror. The Girondin leaders who had not been arrested fled to the provinces; most were captured and executed within months.
- Year: 1793 CE
- Category: Political
