Organizations that were pivotal in the salvation of the French new republic.
However, the deteriorating war-time situation and volatile political activity on the street, meant that the Convention and the Committee was menaced by sans-culottes from the Commune who threatened repeated insurrections if their demands were not met. A popular slogan among them was "Make Terror the order of the day." These demands included price ceilings for bread, executions of traitors and counter-revolutionaries and a vigorous defense of the Republic to meet the external and internal threats. Not wanting to suffer the fate of the Girondins by seeming weak towards "the enemies of the nation" and undergo an insurrection against them, the Convention agreed to undertake emergency laws and formed various Committees to administer it. At the same time wanted to claim "monopoly of violence" by shutting down the insurrections as well as minimizing the likelihood of incidents such as the September Massacres. As Danton stated, "Let us be terrible so that the people don't have to be." The Terror had several objectives - winning the war, ending civil war, consolidating the young nation and the Revolution and an assertion of state power over popular sovereignty. The Committee's members were all appointed by the National Convention and its membership and status was renewed every month by the mandate of the convention. The Convention also voted for the expansion of its powers owing to the efficiency and competence with which the Committee functioned. As such, while the Committee had dictature over state apparatus, officially it functioned under the aegis of the Convention and was answerable to it, a crude method of "check-and-balance" but ultimately successful in the Thermidor Crisis.
The members of the Committee were also not a voice of a single group - it included moderates (people who sat in Le Marais, the moderate section of the National Convention) radicals, extremists and technocrats (who were not political but had important administrative functions).
- 1st Committee (April to July 1793):
- Barère (secretary),
- Bréard (navy),
- Cambon (finances),
- Danton (diplomacy),
- Delacroix (colonies),
- Delmas (war),
- Guyton-Morveau (sciences),
- Thuriot,
- Treilhard (policy).
- 2nd Committee (September 1793 to July 1794) or Great Committee:
- Barère (secretary, rapporteur, diplomacy, education, arts),
- Billaud-Varenne (representatives in mission),
- Carnot (war),
- Lindet (finances, food supplies, transports),
- Collot d'Herbois (representatives in mission),
- Couthon (Justice),
- Hérault de Séchelles (diplomacy, constitution),
- Prieur de la Marne (navy),
- Prieur de la Côte d'Or (weapons & munitions),
- Robespierre (policy, relationships with the Convention),
- Jeanbon Saint-André (navy),
- Saint-Just (war, constitution)
European War in the 18th Century before the Revolution was a war of aristocrats, officer's balls and an army of professional soldiers loyal to the King or Church. Rankings were based entirely on class, and soldiers would learn dancing as part of their training and function. Tactics likewise was based more on out-maneouvering opponents and submitting them to attrition. By and large, officers and generals being aristocrats had more in common with generals and officers on the opposing sides than with their own soldiers, sometimes they were even family relations. War, while bloody and ruthless, was still separate from civilian life, affecting it largely in terms of economy or lack of food supplies. The Revolution changed the rules.
From the very beginning, a vital question for the people and the major leaders is Who exactly is the Army loyal to? Is it loyal to the King or to the French people? Indeed, the revolt of the Bastille was sparked by rumors that the King intended to move his soldiers towards Paris. Even if these were just rumors, it made people realize that the King could do that at any time and they would not have any means with which to defend themselves. Robespierre, who consistently argued for the restructuring of the army, stated that, "Any nation which sees in its midst a large and disciplined army under the orders of a monarch, and which think itself free, is insane." When the Girondins declared war in 1792, the officers and generals ranks were still aristocratic and royalist, as were the many emigres that defected to the invading enemy. There was still an issue of whether the Republic's generals would fight members of their own class when their former master, King Louis XVI, was deposed. After the initial triumph of Valmy, where a Republican Army defeated the Army of an Empire, there were a series of reversals and defections, the most shocking of which being that of General Dumouriez, the Hero of Valmy. Faced with invasion, the Committee of Public Safety, under the Jacobins, instituted a series of reforms to redirect the war effort, chief aong these was the Levee en messe devised by Lazare Carnot.
Carnot introduced Conscription by which every able man was sent into the army, where mixed units of old regime professionals would work with green recruits, while women were sent to work as nurses and fulfill other supporting functions. Thus was born total war, by which a nation's entire resources were directed to the military effort, using industrial, administrative and economic structures to direct the war effort. For the Committee, the military had to be strictly regulated, because the likes of Robespierre dreaded the possibility of military dictatorship. Indeed, that was the main reason why he opposed war in 1792, where he said that France had as much to fear from victory as defeat since putting a nation on a war footing at a time when the Republic was barely consolidated opened the doors for ambitious generals to take political power. The irony of history is that it was neither Lafayette or Dumouriez, royalist and noble officers who the Incorruptible (and Marat) accused of dictatorial ambitions, that achieved what they feared. It was ultimately the beneficiary of their own system of army reforms that achieved their fears, Captain Napoleon Bonaparte - a Corsican refugee who courageously opposed Paoli's royalist defection at home and chose to defend the Republic when it was at a weak stage, arriving in France with his large family, with his home burned and looted by rioters.
