Girondins
The Girondins (US: /(d)ʒɪˈrɒndɪnz/ ji-RON-dinz, zhi-,[3] French: [ʒiʁɔ̃dɛ̃] ), or Girondists, were a political group during the French Revolution. From 1791 to 1793, the Girondins were active in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. Together with the Montagnards, they initially were part of the Jacobin movement. They campaigned for the end of the monarchy, but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution, which caused a conflict with the more radical Montagnards. They dominated the movement until their fall in the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, which resulted in the domination of the Montagnards and the purge and eventual mass execution of the Girondins. This event is considered to mark the beginning of the Reign of Terror.
Girondins
1791
1793
Patriote français
Le Courrier de Provence
La chronique de Paris
The Girondins were a group of loosely affiliated individuals rather than an organized political party and the name was at first informally applied because the most prominent exponents of their point of view were deputies to the Legislative Assembly from the département of Gironde in southwest France.[4] Girondin leader Jacques Pierre Brissot proposed an ambitious military plan to spread the Revolution internationally, therefore the Girondins were the war party in 1792–1793. Other prominent Girondins included Jean Marie Roland and his wife Madame Roland. They also had an ally in the English-born American activist Thomas Paine.
Brissot and Madame Roland were executed and Jean Roland (who had gone into hiding) committed suicide when he learned about the execution. Paine was imprisoned, but he narrowly escaped execution. The famous painting The Death of Marat depicts the fiery radical journalist and denouncer of the Girondins Jean-Paul Marat after being stabbed to death in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer. Corday did not attempt to flee and was arrested and executed.
Identity[edit]
The collective name "Girondins" is used to describe "a loosely knit group of French deputies who contested the Montagnards for control of the National Convention".[5]
They were never an official organization or political party.[6][7] The name itself was bestowed not by any of its alleged members but by the Montagnards, "who claimed as early as April 1792 that a counterrevolutionary faction had coalesced around deputies of the department of the Gironde".[5][8] Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Jean Marie Roland and François Buzot were among the most prominent of such deputies and contemporaries called their supporters Brissotins, Rolandins, or Buzotins, depending on which politician was being blamed for their leadership.[5] Other names were employed at the time too, but "Girondins" ultimately became the term favored by historians.[5] The term became standard with Alphonse de Lamartine's History of the Girondins in 1847.[9]