The French Revolution as two revolutions: 1789 and 1792
The film is set in revolutionary Paris during the reign of terror, the spring 1794 (the revolutionary year II).The Revolution had begun in 1789 and, under the pressures of war in Europe and internal unrest, become increasingly radicalized.
Historians therefore speak of the liberal revolution of 1789 and the radical revolution of 1792.
The liberal revolution and the constitutional monarchy, 1789-1792
The liberal revolution developed out of the work of the National Assembly, which reconstructed France's legal system on the basis of the principle of equality before the law.Its crowning achievement was the drafting of France's first written constitution, the Constitution of 1791.The Assembly established a constitutional monarchy, reformed the judicial system, nationalized the church, and created an administrative system based upon some 85 departments, which provided regional government.The liberal revolution served the interests of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the nobility, which lost all of its legal privileges.But this juridical revolution was made possible by the support of the peasants of the countryside and the ordinary people of the cities, who came to be identified politically as the sans culottes.The sans culottes provided the cadres for the famous popular insurrections, such as the storming of the Bastille (a royal fortress in the heart of Paris) on 14 July 1789.Their leaders, and some of the more radical bourgeois members of the National Assembly, wanted a more democratic and egalitarian government.They were called Jacobins and they began to publicize the advantages of a republic.
The radical revolution and the First Republic, 1792-99
In August 1792, these radical groups succeeded in fomenting a Parisian insurrection that toppled the constitutional monarchy.Herein Georges Danton, a lawyer, journalist, and popular tribune played an inspiring role.This popular insurrection was sustained by the mutual sympathies between a radical element of the bourgeoisie active in the political clubs of Paris (especially the Jacobin Club and the Cordeliers Club) and the sans culottes of Paris, who had come to dominate local (ward-level) politics. Leaders of the insurrection, Danton among them, arrested the king (Louis XVI) and queen (Marie-Antoinette), abolished the constitutional monarchy, proclaimed a republic, and issued a call for an election for a Convention to draft still another new constitution.
Delegates to the Convention were elected from throughout France by universal male suffrage in September 1792.The delegates elected were like their predecessors well-educated bourgeois, but they were solidly republican.The Republic, though, was a new political invention and there were differences of opinion about what its nature should be.Nor were most of the delegates nearly as radical as the popular leaders in Paris, some of whom wanted to establish an even more egalitarian regime --- a social republic that tended toward communism. (Neither Danton nor Robespierre subscribed to this view, though both temporized with this more radical position to further their own political goals.)
Late in 1792, the king and queen were tried by the Convention for treason, condemned, and executed in January 1993.All the while, France was at war with the major powers of Europe, all of which remained monarchies whose leaders were fearful of the democratic direction France was taking.
While the primary task of the Convention was to draft a constitution, the body was obliged to deal with ordinary governmental matters, and so effectively operated as a legislature.There were many problems demanding immediate attention --- an economy in chaos, a countryside loyal to counter-revolutionary forces, and a war abroad that in 1792-93 did not go well.
The Convention establishes a Committee of Public Safety
To coordinate its efforts the Convention established a number of emergency executive committees.The most important of these was the Committee of Public Safety, which was responsible for coordinating the war effort at home and abroad.France prosecuted the war on an unprecedented scale.Universal conscription was instituted, and much of the economy was managed to serve the war effort.Also important was the Committee of General Security, which dealt with matters of internal subversion.These two committees worked in close concert and they acquired enormous power.The work of government, which was supposed to have devolved upon the departments, was increasingly concentrated in these committees in Paris.Paradoxically, the move toward democracy had become a move toward authoritarian rule.
By the spring of 1794 (the time in which the film is set), the government sensed itself to be in crisis and the revolution in jeopardy.The French armies were largely victorious and they were expanding France's frontiers to the north.But the war effort was complex, expensive, and difficult to manage, and it was exhausting resources and morale.These "counter-revolutionary" revolts enjoyed the support of most of the clergy, the nobility, and even many erstwhile revolutionaries, who were disillusioned with the radical course the revolution had taken.With the war an ongoing problem abroad and internal subversion a threat at home, only Paris was solidly supportive of the revolutionary government.Still, the people of Paris were restless, having suffered economic privation for several years.Under the strain of these tensions, differences among the leaders of the Revolution crystallized, and these differences were epitomized in the conflict between Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre.
Danton and Robespierre: two visions of the Republic
The drama of the film turns on the struggle between Danton, portrayed as a lovable populist, and Robespierre, cast as a tormented visionary.Their struggle, when examined, reveals different conceptions of the nature of the ideal republic.
In terms of political ideals, Robespierre and Danton were quite similar.Both were well-educated bourgeois radicalized by the revolution.Both were republicans, committed to political democracy.But they had quite different personalities, and these differences reflected different conceptions of what the revolution should be.
Robespierre was aloof and ascetic.He lived quietly and alone in a modest room.His conception of the revolution tended toward an abstract vision of a republic of virtue, derived from his reading of Rousseau's Social Contract.He believed that as people were socialized to citizenship, they would become more virtuous.He had been a prominent member of the National Assembly in 1789 and a frequent speaker at the Jacobin Club, then a favorite haunt of the revolutionary bourgeoisie..Many revolutionaries admired Robespierre for his personal integrity and his insight into the course the revolution should follow in pursuit of the democratic ideal.
Danton was warm and gregarious.He loved life's pleasures, particularly as they related to women, food, and wine.He gained his reputation as a journalist and as a speaker at the Cordeliers Club, which was accessible to the sans culottes.His conception of the revolution favored a popular democracy, but he had no expectation that such a society could or should transform human nature.The people of Paris loved Danton for his passionate oratory, and one might say his humanity.Disturbed by the self-righteous course that the revolution was taking in 1793 under the direction of the Committee of Public Safety, he got married and went on an extended honeymoon.It was to be his political undoing, as it enabled Robespierre to consolidate opposition to him.
The Power of the Committee of Public Safety, 1792-94
The tension between Robespierre and Danton personifies the larger political conflict between the Committee of Public Safety and the Convention for the power to direct the course of the revolution. Robespierre had the preponderant influence among the 12 members of the Committee.The Committee had acquired enormous power by virtue of its responsibilities to coordinate the war effort.By 1793, it had escaped the control of the Convention.The Committee did have emergency tasks with which to deal.But it exercised them in an increasingly dictatorial direction.Its members were uncomfortable with public criticism, and began to label its critics enemies of the revolution.It rounded up its opponents in a "reign of terror" and prosecuted them in revolutionary tribunals.Those sympathetic to the work of the Committee justified its action on the basis of the present emergency. They argued that the future of the revolution was in danger.Those opposed countered that the Committee had created a new kind of despotism in the name of revolution.
The struggle between Danton and Robespierre, spring 1794
Danton upon his return in the winter of 1994 was still quite influential because of his reputation as a popular tribune and his network of friends in the Convention and in the revolutionary press of Paris.Danton feared the arbitrary actions of the Committees and wanted to restore the political authority of the Convention.In this effort, he enjoyed much support among the press, notably from Camille Desmoulins, one of the most famous journalists of the Revolution.Desmoulins was also personally close to Robespierre.The film explores the way Desmoulins was torn between his allegiances to each.
In sum, one might diagram the conflict between Robespierre and Danton as they are portrayed in the film this way:
RobespierreDanton
republicanrepublican
asceticsensual
austeresociable
stridentpassionate
civic virtuepopulism
c/ of Public SafetyConvention
authoritarian democracypopular democracy
The film focuses the drama of the power struggle between the two.Robespierre emerged victorious.He had Danton, Desmoulins, and their allies arrested, tried by the revolutionary tribunal, and executed.But the struggle confirmed how narrow the range of tolerable political opinion had come to be by the spring of 1994 and how the radical revolutionaries, having eliminated or driven away the moderates, came to destroy one another in factional quarrels.Robespierre himself was arrested and executed only a few months later (the "Thermidorian reaction").With his death, the experiment in radical democracy came to an end.
Some leitmotif to note in the film
1) the setting of the Convention --- radicals on the Left; moderates on the Right.The investment of these terms with political meaning --- left as radical, right as reactionary ---begins in the Revolution.
2) the setting of the Committee of Public Safety. A committee of 12 that deliberated as equals.All went on mission periodically to monitor the strategies of the generals on the battlefields, to oversee the measures for wartime production in the hinterlands, or to counter opposition movements anywhere in France.Even within the Committee of Public Safety there were factions.Robespierre surrounded himself with Louis St. Just, Georges Couthon, Jacques Billaud-Varenne.
3) the setting of the Revolutionary tribunal.Note the arguments employed by the prosecutor, Antoine Fouquier-Tinville and the defendants, Danton and Desmoulins.
4) the atelier of the painter Jacques Louis David, who was a member of the Committee of General Security
5) the costumes of the revolutionaries --- wigs vs. natural hair; the red uniforms of the revolutionary guards vs the tricolor of the National Guard
6) the youthfulness of nearly all of the revolutionary leaders
7) the women of the revolution -- their attitudes and their loyalties
8) Danton's apology at his trial --- intimations of Socrates?
9) The film, produced circa 1981, is a joint Polish-French venture.Polish reformers, led by Lech Walesa, were at the time trying to liberate their country from a stultifying communist regime.So the issues raised in the film were of poignant interest.