French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
. It was a revolt of moderates against the more radical
National Convention
The National Convention (french: link=no, Convention nationale) was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year Nationa ...
, the third government during the French Revolution. It broke out in June 1793 and was put down in October of the same year, after government forces had besieged the city.
was the only city in France other than Paris with a population above 100,000. The city was a regional focus for banking, commerce and manufacturing. In terms of employment its leading industry was
silk weaving
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the coc ...
Albert Soboul
Albert Marius Soboul (27 April 1914 – 11 September 1982) was a historian of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. A professor at the Sorbonne, he was chair of the History of the French Revolution and author of numerous influential ...
Tax
A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...
riots broke out in June 1789 and again in July 1790. Citizens hoped that the
Estates-General of 1789
The Estates General of 1789 was a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and the commoners (Third Estate). It was the last of the Estates General of the Kingdom o ...
would cancel the taxation privileges of the city's merchant oligarchs whereby the burden of taxation fell on those least able to pay, by means of the
octroi
Octroi (; fro, octroyer, to grant, authorize; Lat. ''auctor'') is a local tax collected on various articles brought into a district for consumption.
Antiquity
The word itself is of French origin. Octroi taxes have a respectable antiquity, bein ...
, a tax on basic necessities. City elections returned a local government that retained the octroi, triggering a new riot in the city. Continuing mutual intransigence over the taxation issue led to fresh riots accompanied by the ransacking of several of the houses belonging to Lyon's richest citizens along with a continuation of the taxation on necessities.
These social conflicts bound together the interests of the old royalist elite under the leadership of Jacques Imbert-Colomès with those of the revolutionary patriots surrounding the local industrialist turned politician
Jean-Marie Roland
Jean-Marie is both a given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include:
* Jean-Marie Abgrall (born 1950), a French psychiatrist, criminologist, specialist in forensic medicine, cult expert, and graduate in criminal law
* Jean-Marie C ...
. Lower down the social scale, small-scale employers were opposed to taxation that increased living costs of employees whose salaries could therefore not be further cut, and the affected employees thereby felt closer affinity with their bosses and with the manufacturing interest in the city than with the desperate plight of the large numbers of unemployed.
Political opposition 1790–1793
During September 1790 the city's working class activists established 32 revolutionary societies to which they gave the name "Peoples' associations of friends of the
evolutionary
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
revolution
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
. A central committee, which quickly became known as the "Central Club" ''("Club central")'', provided a meeting point for delegates from the city's many sectional revolutionary societies. The "Central Club" was initially controlled by the Rolandin faction, but quickly came under the direction of the more dynamic elements around
Joseph Chalier
Joseph Chalier (1747 – 1793) was a French lawyer and revolutionary politician who was active in Lyon.
Chalier was born in Beaulard, Susa Valley, Piedmont. As a young man, Chalier's family hoped he would take a career in the church. But instead ...
Albert Soboul
Albert Marius Soboul (27 April 1914 – 11 September 1982) was a historian of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. A professor at the Sorbonne, he was chair of the History of the French Revolution and author of numerous influential ...
. The mayor was not in favour of this idea and set about mobilising troops. which provoked a popular insurrection. As more time went on the hostility between the upper and lower classes only increased.
Joseph Chalier
Joseph Chalier (1747 – 1793) was a French lawyer and revolutionary politician who was active in Lyon.
Chalier was born in Beaulard, Susa Valley, Piedmont. As a young man, Chalier's family hoped he would take a career in the church. But instead ...
started to become known as a fanatic and having too radical of policies towards the upper class in the city of Lyons. Most famously he was known for saying that towards any that opposed that he was "prepared to exterminate all that goes by the name of aristocrat, moderate, royalist."Baron Thugut and Austria's Response to the French Revolution“FRUSTRATIONS, 1795". 1987 FRUSTRATIONS, 1795 In Baron Thugut and Austria's Response to the French Revolution, 170–200. Princeton University Press. The combination of Joseph Chalier's extreme radicalism and the confused environment of Lyons contributed towards the general Jacobin population losing control over city affairs.
To try to defuse the crisis, Mayor Nivière-Chol now resigned and was re-elected. Meanwhile, allies and opponents of Chalier argued in the various "Peoples' Associations" which were now finding themselves opposing the "Central Club". Mayor Nivière-Chol resigned again, and was replaced by the moderate
Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert
Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert (21 June 1741, in Lyon – 2 September 1814, in Lyon) was a French politician, botanist, freemason, medical doctor and member of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts of Lyon
__NOTOC__
The Academy of Sciences, Hum ...
who was elected in a contest against an ally of Chalier's named Antoine-Marie Bertrand. As news came through of the treason (in Jacobin eyes) of Dumouriez, Gilibert's position became unsustainable and he was succeeded as mayor on 9 March 1793 by Bertrand: this ushered in a period of 80 days during which the city hall operated under the control of Chalier's faction.
A series of radical enactments followed, starting on 14 March 1793 with the establishment of a municipal bakery. Taxation was imposed on food (which disappeared from the shops) and a volunteer force was recruited. A seven-man Lyon Committee of Public Safety (taking its name and inspiration from the national institution of that name established under Robespierre a few weeks earlier in Paris) was set up on 8 April 1793. Urging further progress down the revolutionary path, on 4 May the "Central Club" proposed the
guillotine
A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with stocks at t ...
become a permanent fixture, together with the "Popular Associations" and called again for the creation of a
National Guard
National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards.
Nat ...
which had itself been established only in 1789 as a force for stability. A few days later, on 14 May 1793, the city council duly voted to create a
Sans-culottes
The (, 'without breeches') were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th-century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the . T ...
army and a 6 million franc fund, to be created from taxing the rich, to pay for it all.
They also voted for a joint meeting, every day, for representatives from the department, the district and the commune. This last measure triggered a counter-offensive. During the days that followed a growing proportion, and ultimately a majority, of delegates at these meetings opposed the municipal law of 14 May. Meanwhile, in Paris, the
Girondist
The Girondins ( , ), or Girondists, were members of a loosely knit political faction during the French Revolution. From 1791 to 1793, the Girondins were active in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. Together with the Montagnard ...
Gauthier Gauthier () is a French name of Germanic origin, corresponding to the English given name Walter.
People with the given name
* Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède
* Gauthier de Brienne, Counts Walter III of Brienne, Walter IV of Brienne, ...
Albert Soboul
Albert Marius Soboul (27 April 1914 – 11 September 1982) was a historian of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. A professor at the Sorbonne, he was chair of the History of the French Revolution and author of numerous influential ...
Joseph Chalier
Joseph Chalier (1747 – 1793) was a French lawyer and revolutionary politician who was active in Lyon.
Chalier was born in Beaulard, Susa Valley, Piedmont. As a young man, Chalier's family hoped he would take a career in the church. But instead ...
and his friends.
Meanwhile, events in the capital were moving fast, and the violent events of 31 May – 2 June 1793 saw the
girondist
The Girondins ( , ), or Girondists, were members of a loosely knit political faction during the French Revolution. From 1791 to 1793, the Girondins were active in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. Together with the Montagnard ...
s ejected from the national government, under pressure from Paris-based extremists. The newly extremist national government saw the events in Lyon as part of a more widespread Girondist revolt threatening the authority of central government: Such concerns proved well justified a couple of weeks later, as during June 1793, the municipal leaders in Lyon were linking up both with neighbouring departments and with other "insurgent cities" in the French south,
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fra ...
Bordeaux
Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefect ...
Stanislas Marie Adelaide, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre Stanislav and variants may refer to:
People
*Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.)
Places
* Stanislav, a coastal village in Kherson, Ukraine
* Stanislaus County, Cali ...
,
Virieu
Virieu (), also Virieu-sur-Bourbre (, literally ''Virieu on Bourbre''), is a former commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune Val-de-Virieu.
The
National Convention
The National Convention (french: link=no, Convention nationale) was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year Nationa ...
sent Robert Lindet to negotiate with the leaders in Lyon, but he found the local representatives in the Arsenal Building in an uncompromising mood: intransigence was stiffened by the presence at Lyon of
, one of the girondist deputies whom the government had so recently expelled from their own National Convention. On 30 June 1793, 207 delegates representing nearby cantons, the department and the urban districts appointed a "Popular Republican Commission for the Public Safety of Rhône-et-Loire", which published an "Address from the authorities duly constituted at Lyon to the armies, the citizens and all the departments in the republic". The National Convention, its orders having been ignored by the leaders in Lyon, now promulgated a series of decrees on 12 and 14 July 1793. They declared Birotteau an outlaw, dismissed the Lyon leaders, confiscating their assets; and they ordered the Revolutionary
to re-establish in Lyon the Laws of the Republic.
It was in this context of exacerbated conflict that Chalier found himself condemned to death on 16 July 1793. He was guillotined the next day, followed on 31 July 1793 by Ryard, the man who had commanded the commune troops on 31 May 1793. A partisan of Chatelier's called Higgins killed himself in prison, and another of the local montagnard leaders was cut down in the street. At the same time within the city leadership moderate republicans were being progressively replaced by royalists.
, under the command of Kellermann, was engaged in a campaign in Savoy against the
Piedmontese
Piedmontese (; autonym: or , in it, piemontese) is a language spoken by some 2,000,000 people mostly in Piedmont, northwestern region of Italy. Although considered by most linguists a separate language, in Italy it is often mistakenly reg ...
when it received the assignment to head west in order to re-establish central government authority in
, and was able to turn its attention to its new mission only a month later, on 10 August 1793. Two days after that, on 12 August 1793, the rebellious department was split into two, creating on the western side of the river the department of
Feurs
Feurs (; frp, Fuèrs) is a commune in the department of Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France.
History
Antiquity
The city was founded by the Romans. The name Feurs is a contraction of ''Segusiavorum Forum''. With a forum the Gallo-Roman era, c ...
and, on the eastern side, the department of
Rhône
The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...
revolutionary army
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
, and went into hiding, turning up shortly afterwards in Switzerland. The city's civil authorities surrendered to the central government representatives at midday.
On 11 October, the government delegates decided on the destruction of the city walls. On 12 October Barère, a leading member of the government, put a decree through the convention that Lyon was to lose its name, and would instead be known as Ville-Affranchie ''(Liberated City)'' and would be destroyed. All the properties occupied by rich people would be demolished, leaving just the houses of the poor and the homes of duped or banished patriots, buildings specially dedicated to industry and monuments dedicated to humanity and public instruction. On the ruins of Lyon would be erected a commemorative column which would testify to posterity the crimes committed and the punishment received by the city's royalists, with the inscription "Lyon made war on liberty: Lyon is no more!" In the event, of 600 houses scheduled for demolition, only about fifty were actually destroyed.
Retribution
Moving quickly, on 9 October, the government representatives had created both a "Military Commission", charged with judging people who had taken up arms, and a "Commission of Peoples' Justice" which was to judge the other "rebels". Three days later the
National Convention
The National Convention (french: link=no, Convention nationale) was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year Nationa ...
Albert Soboul
Albert Marius Soboul (27 April 1914 – 11 September 1982) was a historian of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. A professor at the Sorbonne, he was chair of the History of the French Revolution and author of numerous influential ...
grape shot
Grapeshot is a type of artillery round invented by a British Officer during the Napoleonic Wars. It was used mainly as an anti infantry round, but had other uses in naval combat.
In artillery, a grapeshot is a type of ammunition that consists of ...
, and a further 208 or 209 were killed in the same way the next day. The killings ordered by the Commission took place on open ground in the Les Brotteaux quarter, near to the granary at
. This method of killing was abandoned on 17 December 1793.
These massacres have been blamed both on Commission Chairman Parein and on the government representatives
Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois
Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois (; 19 June 1749 – 8 June 1796) was a French actor, dramatist, essayist, and revolutionary. He was a member of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror and, while he saved Madame Tussaud from the ...
the department
''The Department'' is a satirical comedy on BBC Radio 4 about a secret organisation with the power to influence every aspect of your life.
Chris Addison, John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman star as Research Team 32, an eccentric three-man think-t ...
Pierre Bouchet
Pierre Bouchet (6 January 1752 – 6 January 1794) was a French physician born in Lyon.
Biography
He was trained in medicine in Paris as Pierre-Joseph Desault pupil then came home in Lyon Hôtel-Dieu where he became Head Surgeon.
He was the fir ...
,Feuillants, Rolandins, priests and other members of religious orders, merchants and manufacturers along with other aristocrats and commoners. The list also includes counter-revolutionaries sent to the Commission at Lyon from
Feurs
Feurs (; frp, Fuèrs) is a commune in the department of Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France.
History
Antiquity
The city was founded by the Romans. The name Feurs is a contraction of ''Segusiavorum Forum''. With a forum the Gallo-Roman era, c ...
Ain
Ain (, ; frp, En) is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Eastern France. Named after the Ain river, it is bordered by the Saône and Rhône rivers. Ain is located on the country's eastern edge, on the Swiss border, where ...
, Saône-et-Loire, Isère and Allier. This variety makes an objective quantification of the executions difficult. At its final sitting on 6 April 1794 the "Extraordinary Commission" itself reported that it had ordered the execution of 1,684 and the detention of a further 162: 1,682 were reported as having been acquitted.
Aftermath
The aftermath of the revolt was highlighted by three major results: the devastated silk trade, the lower wages of the people of
, and the rift that was perpetuated between the people of Lyon and the
National Convention
The National Convention (french: link=no, Convention nationale) was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year Nationa ...
.
The most noticeable effect was primarily the devastation of the
silk trade
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and rel ...
. Prior to the revolt, it had been mainly an artisanal industry with Lyon being one of the largest pre-Industrial Revolution centers of production in France. Although Lyon continued to lead France in industry after the unsuccessful attempt to quell federalist sentiments, the silk trade was certainly affected, and local artisans needed to rebuild. This disruption had lasting effects on the silk industry in the city that continued for years before normal business was again established.
Another result of the revolt of Lyon was the dramatic decrease in wages after the suppression of the revolt and the introduction of larger-scale industry into the process of silk production.William Sewell. ''Work and revolution in France: The language of labor from the Old Regime to 1848'', 1980, p.156-161. The decrease of specialization of labor in the silk industry greatly lowered the wage rates themselves. With the process of industrialization that occurred, anyone could become a master silk weaver. In some circles, the decrease in wages was seen as a public injustice. As silk production in Lyon was being rebuilt, the emphasis was placed more and more on centralized industrial production and less on the traditional artisan system.
Finally, as well as disrupting the silk trade, the revolt caused a lasting rift between the people of Lyon and the radical government of Paris. A sense of resentment and outrage against Paris was especially prevalent in Lyon due to the extreme actions taken during this suppression. While Lyon did not organize another revolt, a general sense of distrust against Paris continued to permeate the population of Lyon, especially among the families of those who had been executed.Robert Palmer. "Chapter VII Doom at Lyons." ''Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution'', 2005, p. 153-176. This anti-Parisian, federalist sentiment which had existed before the revolt, and its subsequent violent suppression, persisted in the city, as many in Lyon continued to see Paris as too radically revolutionary. There is evidence that few citizens of Lyon moved away in the aftermath, likely due to the fact that most of the architecture of Lyon did remain intact, contrary to the rhetoric of the leaders of the suppression, which suggested that it should be completely destroyed.Richard Cobb. ''Reactions to the French Revolution'', 1972. p. 52. Those who did move tended to migrate further south, towards Marseille and away from Paris, in an attempt to further distance themselves from Paris.
Although revolutionary intervention was meant as a way to increase fervor for the new republic and its politics, it only succeeded in creating a more strongly polarized environment through the violent suppression of the revolt. It did not do well in quelling counterrevolutionary thought, rather prompting these thoughts and giving direction to their complaints against the republic. If anything, the violence soured relations. By December 1794, some 2,000 people had been executed in Lyon. Politically speaking, a commission of citizens from Lyon travelled to Paris to petition the National Convention, asking to be reconciled with the Republic. Jean-Marie Collot also returned to Paris to block Lyon's petition, and when the Convention turned it over to the Committee of Public Safety, Collot and the other committee members did not act on it.
Commemoration
A list of the victims of Parein's commission is kept in a Carthusian Chapel of Penitence erected on the site of the mass shootings. It was compiled using the commission's own records.
The bones of the 209 Lyonnais shot dead on 3 December 1793 at Brotteaux have been conserved in the crypt of the Chapel of Brotteaux in the sixth arrondissement, in the north-eastern part of central Lyon since the Bourbon restoration.
In 1989, France celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of the
French revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
Albert Soboul
Albert Marius Soboul (27 April 1914 – 11 September 1982) was a historian of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. A professor at the Sorbonne, he was chair of the History of the French Revolution and author of numerous influential ...
* Edmonds, W. D. ''Jacobinism and the Revolt of Lyon, 1789–1793''. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990. Print.
* Kafker et al. ''The French Revolution: Conflicting Interpretations''. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company, 2002. Print.
* Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: ''The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution''. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2005. Print.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Revolt of Lyon Against The National Convention
1793 events of the French Revolution18th century in LyonConflicts in 1793Revolts