The Committee of Public Safety and the elimination of the Girondins

What the specification asks for

“the work of the Committee of Public Safety, the elimination of the Girondins” — examined through causation and consequence. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The position in the spring of 1793

By April 1793 the Republic was at war with Austria, Prussia, Britain, the Dutch Republic, Spain and Sardinia; the Vendée had risen against conscription and the Civil Constitution; Dumouriez, the commander in the north, had defected to the Austrians; the assignat was collapsing; and grain was short. Federalist revolts followed in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Toulon, and Toulon handed itself and the Mediterranean fleet to the British.

The Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 as an executive committee of the Convention, renewed monthly, with twelve members from July. It was not a dictatorship in law: it reported to the Convention, which could have removed it at any time and eventually did.

The purge of the Girondins

The Girondins had opposed the price controls the sections demanded, had tried and failed to prosecute Marat, and had attacked Paris repeatedly as a city dictating to the nation. On 31 May and 2 June 1793 armed sections and National Guard units surrounded the Convention and demanded the expulsion of twenty-nine Girondin deputies. The Convention complied.

The consequence was immediate and double-edged. It gave the Montagnards a Convention they could work with, and it converted the federalist discontent in the provinces into open revolt, because the departments could now say — accurately — that the national assembly was under the control of one city.

What the Committee actually did

The record is remarkable and it is not usually the part candidates write about. In August 1793 the levée en masse conscripted the unmarried men of the Republic and directed the whole population to the war effort; it raised something like 300,000 men initially and produced armies approaching three quarters of a million by 1794, the largest force Europe had seen. Carnot, the member responsible for the war, reorganised the armies by amalgamating volunteers with regulars and promoting on merit.

The General Maximum of September 1793 fixed prices on grain and other necessities and wages as well, which was the price of the sections' support. Requisitioning fed the armies and the cities. Representatives on mission were sent to the departments with plenary powers to enforce the Convention's authority. Manufacture of gunpowder and weapons was organised centrally on a scale never previously attempted.

By the summer of 1794 the frontiers had been cleared, the Vendée had been suppressed with great brutality, Lyon and Toulon had been retaken, and the Republic was invading its neighbours. Whatever else is said about the Committee, it did the thing it was created to do — and that success is precisely what removed the emergency justification for its own methods.

Two things made this possible that no previous French government had possessed. The first is the principle of the career open to talent: officers were promoted for winning and dismissed or worse for losing, which produced commanders in their twenties and a rate of turnover no royal army would have tolerated. The second is the claim of the nation in arms, which allowed conscription on a scale a monarchy could not have imposed. The armies that beat the coalition were larger, younger and worse trained than their opponents, and they were replaceable in a way professional armies were not.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

April 1793

The Committee of Public Safety is created; Dumouriez defects. Why this date: It dates the creation of the emergency executive and the crisis of confidence in the army's commanders that made it seem necessary.

2 June 1793

Twenty-nine Girondin deputies are purged after an armed rising of the Paris sections. Why this date: It gives the Montagnards control of the Convention and provokes the federalist revolts in the departments.

August 1793

The levée en masse. Why this date: It is the first mass conscription of a whole nation in European history and it is what wins the war.

September 1793

The General Maximum fixes prices and wages. Why this date: It is the price paid to the sections for the support that had produced the purge in June.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 12 — The number of members of the Committee of Public Safety from July 1793.
• About 300,000 — Men raised by the initial levy of August 1793. (Army strengths in this period are reconstructed from incomplete returns; totals of around three quarters of a million by 1794 are estimates.)
• 29 — Girondin deputies purged on 2 June 1793.

The people to place

• Lazare Carnot — Member of the Committee responsible for the war; reorganised the armies and directed the campaigns.
• Maximilien Robespierre — Joined the Committee in July 1793 and became its most prominent member.
• Georges Danton — Dominant in the first Committee of April 1793; excluded in July and executed in April 1794.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'circumstances' reading: The Committee's methods followed from an emergency no government could have survived otherwise: invasion on every frontier, revolt in a third of the departments, and a currency in collapse. Contested by The reading that the emergency explains the existence of extraordinary powers and not their particular content, and that the choice to define virtue and to punish its absence came from the men rather than from the situation..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The Committee of Public Safety was a dictatorship that had abolished the Convention.

This: It was renewed monthly by the Convention, reported to it, and was destroyed by it in July 1794. Its authority was real and it was delegated.

Not this: The Committee's main activity was the Terror.

This: Its main activity was fighting a war on six frontiers and a civil war at home, and it succeeded. The Terror is one of its instruments and not its programme.

Two things students merge

Blurred: The Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security.

The distinction: The first was the executive committee directing the war and general policy; the second was responsible for police and internal security. They were rivals, and the conflict between them is part of the reason for Robespierre's fall.

Blurred: The purge of the Girondins and their execution.

The distinction: Twenty-nine were expelled from the Convention on 2 June 1793; twenty-one were tried and executed in October. Between those dates lies the federalist revolt, which the purge helped to cause.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer notices that the Committee's success destroyed it. Every extraordinary power had been justified by the emergency, the emergency was over by the summer of 1794 with the frontiers cleared and Toulon retaken, and a government whose only argument for its methods is a danger that has passed has run out of argument — which is what Thermidor is.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (a) (6 marks — “What impression does the author give about …? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.”); Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The levée en masse with its date and scale, used as evidence that the Committee's central achievement was military. It is the fact that separates an answer about the Terror from an answer about the government.

The cap that bites here: The 16-mark question needs three aspects; the war, the economy and the repression are the natural three.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. What impression does the author give about the Committee of Public Safety? [6 marks · Paper 1 (a)]
2. Explain two effects of the levée en masse of August 1793. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Explain two effects of the purge of the Girondins in June 1793. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'The Committee of Public Safety saved the French Republic.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'The Committee of Public Safety governed by consent as much as by fear.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: Did the Terror come from the circumstances, or from the ideas?.

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: The National Convention and the execution of Louis XVI
• Next lesson: Robespierre and the reasons for and impact of the Terror
• Key topic 4 · Convention and Terror, 1792–94 · The French Revolution, c1780–99 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of The French Revolution: The origins of the Revolution, c1780–87 · Short-term causes of the Revolution: from Assembly of Notables to Estates General, 1787–89 · Developments 1789–92 · Directory and First Consul – the fall of Robespierre to the rise of Napoleon, 1794–99