Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western siev is episode five hundred,
Speaker 1: A whiff of grape shot. The night of nine Thermidor
Speaker 1: year two, which was actually July twenty seventh, seventeen ninety four,
Speaker 1: ended with the downfall of Maximilian Robespierre, the incorruptible architect
Speaker 1: of the terror, when the guillotine fell on his neck.
Speaker 1: In the next afternoon, the square erupted in cheers, but
Speaker 1: behind the relief lay fear. One Parisian wrote, the monster
Speaker 1: is dead, but what hydra will grow in its place?
Speaker 1: The French Republic has survived invasion and rebellion, but it
Speaker 1: was exhausted. The Convention that had once trembled before Robespierre,
Speaker 1: now scrambled to dismantle the machinery of terror he had built.
Speaker 1: And so on the twenty fourth of August seventeen ninety four,
Speaker 1: the Convention decided to reorganize the government, deliberately fracturing and
Speaker 1: spreading out power. Sixteen different committees would now replace the
Speaker 1: all powerful Committee of Public Safety, hopefully making it impossible
Speaker 1: for one person to dominate. It was, as the deputy
Speaker 1: boiset de Angelias explained, a republic of committees lest tyranny reappear.
Speaker 1: The next few weeks saw the steady erosion of Jacobin control.
Speaker 1: On August twenty ninth, a new group emerged in the streets,
Speaker 1: the Muskdins. They were young, fashionable, middle class Parisians, smelling
Speaker 1: of musk and armed with canes. Eager to avenge the terror,
Speaker 1: they prowled the cafes where Jacobins once gathered, shouting down
Speaker 1: with the drinkers of blood, as so often happens. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: with a revolution, when one party falls, the next simply
Speaker 1: steps up to take its place, behaving in the exact
Speaker 1: same way, but with an eye for retribution, and so
Speaker 1: the wheel of the French relution continued to span them. Now. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the French armies were suddenly on the frontier's triumphant. On
Speaker 1: August the thirtieth, General Pugeout retook Conde Lees Gate, and
Speaker 1: so for the first time since seventeen ninety two, there
Speaker 1: were no foreign troops on French soil. But victory again
Speaker 1: could not disguise the domestic collapse. If the reason for
Speaker 1: all the terror and for all the suspicion was fear
Speaker 1: of a monarchist plot within France, and because of these
Speaker 1: foreign armies that were perched everywhere around Paris. You would
Speaker 1: again think the expulsion of foreign troops would end those concerns,
Speaker 1: but they simply don't. And so on August the thirty first,
Speaker 1: Paris itself, for the first time was placed under direct
Speaker 1: federal government control. It's the first time that you don't
Speaker 1: just have a Parisian mayor in charge. This is an
Speaker 1: acknowledgment that revolutionary sections of citizens, once the beating heart
Speaker 1: of radical democracy, had suddenly become a liability to the
Speaker 1: survival of France. The people, it turned out, needed to
Speaker 1: be controlled. Maybe Louis was right about something. Oh I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: maybe citizen Cape had been right about something. In a
Speaker 1: faint spirit of preservation continued to stir among the deputies.
Speaker 1: On September the one, the Musee des Monuments Francais, was
Speaker 1: founded to save cathedrals, tombs and relics of the old
Speaker 1: monarchy from the mobs. Suddenly somebody realized, Hey, we might
Speaker 1: actually want all that stuff someday. Best not let it
Speaker 1: be tossed on an old Savonarola style pyre. This was
Speaker 1: an extraordinary reversal. Of course, the same revolution that had
Speaker 1: melted down bells and smashed the images of saints now
Speaker 1: began to regret its own vandalism. The Abbe Gregorie coined
Speaker 1: the word bandalisme on September the thirteenth, warning that to
Speaker 1: destroy is not to purify, to respect art, it's not
Speaker 1: to betray liberty. Religion, once a weapon of the terror,
Speaker 1: was now suppressed in a new and different way. Instead,
Speaker 1: on September the eighteenth, the state would simply stop paying
Speaker 1: constitutional priests and stop paying for the maintenance of church properties,
Speaker 1: the Deputies declaring no more salaries for superstition. So the
Speaker 1: Convention wasn't necessarily interested in restoring old Catholic faith. In
Speaker 1: restoring the old Church was actually just turning its back
Speaker 1: on religion in general, abandoning Catholicism and any form of
Speaker 1: Christianity or religion to that matter, to the private sphere.
Speaker 1: A week later, the ashes of the murdered Jacobin journalist
Speaker 1: Jean Paul Morant were carried into the Pantheon, which was
Speaker 1: the final sort of echo of revolutionary canonization. Unfortunately, within months,
Speaker 1: those exact same ashes would once again be taken out
Speaker 1: for Paul Maraut just wanted to rest in peace. I'm guessing.
Speaker 1: By October the atmosphere had become once again thick with
Speaker 1: words of retribution and recommation. Paris sections once the voices
Speaker 1: of the san Culos were now riven by shouting matches
Speaker 1: between those who had supported the terror or at least
Speaker 1: acknowledged it, and those who now wanted to punish those
Speaker 1: who they felt had been complicit in it. The Convention, however,
Speaker 1: wasn't having it this time, and struck first, and so
Speaker 1: on October the third, the leaders of armed san Culos
Speaker 1: bands who were demanding punishment for the terror were simply
Speaker 1: all rounded up and arrested. The theory that if you
Speaker 1: just cut all the heads off all the snakes, maybe
Speaker 1: you could put the genie back in its box. Probably not,
Speaker 1: And while France's internal conflicts deepened, its armies actually continued
Speaker 1: to do shockingly well. Fell On October the sixth and
Speaker 1: on October the twenty seconds, the Convention created a school
Speaker 1: to train engineers and artillery officers, and it would soon
Speaker 1: produce the very men who would serve under Napoleon. You see,
Speaker 1: France had actually hit on something pretty powerful with the
Speaker 1: leve am Moss. What it turned out was that we
Speaker 1: were entering into an age where sheer manpower counted for
Speaker 1: a lot. We weren't in the age of knights and
Speaker 1: professional fighting men anymore. Yes, of course it helped to
Speaker 1: have professional officers, but it turned out with a little
Speaker 1: rudimentary training and drill, most people could learn how to
Speaker 1: fire a rifle, and since we were in an age
Speaker 1: where that was the main way of fighting, if you
Speaker 1: could enroll more men into your army than other countries,
Speaker 1: you did have a dramatic advantage. France, by pure accident,
Speaker 1: figured that out during the Revolution, and now what we
Speaker 1: see happening militarily are the creation of these academies to
Speaker 1: train the officers who can actually effectively use that machine.
Speaker 1: It's that machine. It's going to be used by Napoleon.
Speaker 1: But Napoleon would not have existed were it not for
Speaker 1: the levee en mass, which really just changed the dynamics
Speaker 1: of military fighting, and that's going to carry through all
Speaker 1: the way through the world wars. Now, the Jacobin Club
Speaker 1: was still kicking around at this point, but by November
Speaker 1: it was pretty clear the writing was on the wall.
Speaker 1: On November the ninth and the eleventh, citizens in Paris
Speaker 1: physically began attacking the Jacobin Club smashing its benches and
Speaker 1: destroying its chandeliers. One newspaper observed coldly, quote the club
Speaker 1: that once ruled France has been routed by Dandy's and Styx.
Speaker 1: And so on November the twelfth, the Convention suspended the
Speaker 1: Jacobin Club itself. Its closure quite frankly, symbolized what was
Speaker 1: real the death of revolutionary radicalism. Really, the radicalism of
Speaker 1: the French Revolution was now a thing of the past.
Speaker 1: Everyone was ready for some return to normalcy and for
Speaker 1: affairs to start to balance them out. And of course
Speaker 1: they're going to. They're going to, just in a way
Speaker 1: that no one in the French Revolution could have recognized
Speaker 1: at that specific moment. Now, internationally, problems did start to
Speaker 1: crop up for France. The Treaty of London, which was
Speaker 1: signed on November the nineteenth, bound Britain and the United States,
Speaker 1: who we're going to get back to here pretty soon
Speaker 1: to suppress French privateers. This essentially ed British control over
Speaker 1: the seas and continued to isolate France from its colonies.
Speaker 1: The winter of seventeen ninety four seventeen ninety five was
Speaker 1: one of exhaustion politically and hunger physically. The maximum the
Speaker 1: law of fixing price ceilings on grain was actually repealed
Speaker 1: on December the twenty fourth, Merry Christmas. Everyone one deputy said,
Speaker 1: let liberty govern the markets. Kind of sounds like Scrooge,
Speaker 1: doesn't he But liberty was cold comfort. Bread prices doubled overnight,
Speaker 1: and the Asignan, the paper currency of France, simply collapsed.
Speaker 1: The Convention tried its best to patch its legitimacy together.
Speaker 1: On December the eighth, seventy three of the surviving Girondins,
Speaker 1: those moderates who had been purged by the Jacobins in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety three, were invited back. It was a symbolic healing,
Speaker 1: but one that enraged the radicals, and the reckoning didn't
Speaker 1: wait too much longer. Jean Baptiste Carrier, the monstrous representative
Speaker 1: who had drowned thousands in knods during the Terror, was
Speaker 1: tried and executed on December the sixteenth, and so the
Speaker 1: Revolution at last had begun to eat its executioners. By
Speaker 1: early seventeen ninety five, France had simply replaced one terror
Speaker 1: with another. This is now the so called White Terror.
Speaker 1: If you're reading history books, The first White Terror began
Speaker 1: as former Jacobins were hunted by royalists and moderates. Murders
Speaker 1: flared up cross France from Lyon, Nimes and the Run Valley.
Speaker 1: Then the Convention's tone changed. On February the fifth, The Monitor,
Speaker 1: one of those key newspapers and pamphlet producers in Paris,
Speaker 1: condemned the incitement to blood of Marat and his allies,
Speaker 1: And so days later, about I'd say two and a
Speaker 1: half months after they went in, Marat's remains were once
Speaker 1: again removed from the pantheon. At the same time, France's
Speaker 1: oldest wound, its war against Catholic peasants in the Vendet,
Speaker 1: was finally being healed. On February seventeenth, the Convention declared
Speaker 1: a general amnesty and freedom of religion was restored. The
Speaker 1: hope was to just patch France together so that it
Speaker 1: could ideally defend itself against its external enemies. One representative,
Speaker 1: speaking a few days later, declared, let us be just
Speaker 1: and tolerant, let each man worship in peace. It was
Speaker 1: the first official proclamation of la cite, the secular principle
Speaker 1: that will later come to define France. But peace in
Speaker 1: the countryside didn't fill stomachs in Paris, the Asignant had
Speaker 1: fallen to eighty percent of its value. By March nineteen,
Speaker 1: food riots broke out in Paris, one observer noting people
Speaker 1: gnaw bones like dogs. The Convention lashed out. On March
Speaker 1: the twenty first. It passed a death penalty for anyone
Speaker 1: leading uprisings. The old Jacobin prosecutors Beret Colo eBay. They
Speaker 1: were all arrested and later deported to French Guinea. In April,
Speaker 1: the misery boiled over. On April, the first Sansculos invaded
Speaker 1: the Convention demanding bread, demanding some way to feed their family.
Speaker 1: It was a ghost of what had happened back in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety two, but this time was different. This time,
Speaker 1: the National Guard did not join the radicals. Instead, they
Speaker 1: turned on the insurrection and crushed it. Paris placed under
Speaker 1: siege and the radicals sent into exile, now abroad. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: diplomacy triumph for armies couldn't. On April the fifth, France
Speaker 1: signed a peace treaty with Prussia at Basil, securing the
Speaker 1: left bank of the Rhyme. While that was going on,
Speaker 1: the Convention restored the rights of those that had rents
Speaker 1: branded as outlaws, an effort to just kind of put
Speaker 1: the wounds back together. The same month, the last Jacobin prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Fouco team Mel, faced his own tribunal. His defense, familiar
Speaker 1: to any of those who followed the Nuremberg Trials, that
Speaker 1: he had only followed orders, fell on deaf ears. He
Speaker 1: was guillotined on May the seventh, along with his jurors.
Speaker 1: The Zankulos rose up one last time between May twentieth
Speaker 1: and twenty fourth, seventeen ninety five. Armed with pikes and
Speaker 1: the old tricolor banners, they stormed the Convention one last
Speaker 1: time for fun, you guys. They murdered the deputy Ferraud
Speaker 1: and paraded his severed head on a pike all the
Speaker 1: way through the streets. His head was famously saluted in silence,
Speaker 1: a stoic gexture of defiance that would become iconic. Over
Speaker 1: the next four days, the army, under the command of
Speaker 1: General Maneux, retook Paris street by street. Hundreds of san
Speaker 1: Culo resurgence were executed or simply deported. On May thirty first,
Speaker 1: the revolutionary tribunal itself was finally abolished, and the revolution's
Speaker 1: radical phase was finally and truly dead. On June eighth,
Speaker 1: the ten year old Louis the seventeenth died in the
Speaker 1: Temple prison, likely of tuberculosis, where he had been held
Speaker 1: since the death of his father. His uncle in exile,
Speaker 1: the Comte de Provence, now proclaimed himself Louis the eighteenth,
Speaker 1: to the name I want to remember. The following weeks
Speaker 1: after the death of Louis the seventeenth saw renewed Royalist insurrections.
Speaker 1: The Vende, upon getting news of his death, once again
Speaker 1: rose in June, joined by Emmigrey's landed by the British
Speaker 1: on the Normandy coast. This lasted all the way from
Speaker 1: June twenty sixth through July the twenty first. Eventually, French
Speaker 1: generals crushed them, executing seven hundred and forty eight emigres
Speaker 1: by firing squad With that Notwithstanding peace was slowly spreading,
Speaker 1: Spain made peace at Basil on July the twenty second,
Speaker 1: seating all of saant demand to France. Only Austria and
Speaker 1: England remained hostile. By August, the Convention had moved on
Speaker 1: to constitutional reform. The Constitution of Year three, adopted on
Speaker 1: August the twenty second, established the Directory and for those
Speaker 1: who know your French Revolution history, You know we have
Speaker 1: now come on to our penultimate scene, the final scene,
Speaker 1: of course, being Napoleon. The Directory was a cautious five
Speaker 1: man executive board by a bicameral legislature. It would be,
Speaker 1: for all practical purposes ineffective. On September the twenty third, though,
Speaker 1: a national referendum approved the Directory, and it came into
Speaker 1: existence even as the ink dried on the new constitution.
Speaker 1: Though danger returned. Royalists, furious that two thirds of the
Speaker 1: new legislature would be drawn from the old Convention rose
Speaker 1: in Paris on October the fifth, seventeen ninety five. Paul Barross,
Speaker 1: charged with the defense of the Convention, turned to a
Speaker 1: young general recently released from suspicion, Napoleon Bonaparte, a man
Speaker 1: we now should definitely take a moment to introduce. Somewhere.
Speaker 1: On a warm August morning in seventeen sixty nine, in
Speaker 1: a small town on Corsica called Isaacio, a baby cried
Speaker 1: out into a world at war. The French had actually
Speaker 1: only conquered Corsica months earlier, extinguishing its brief independence under
Speaker 1: the patriot Pascual Payole. The child's name was Napoleon de Bonaparte,
Speaker 1: the son of Carlo Bonaparte, a minor loyal of noble lineage,
Speaker 1: and Letitia Romonio, a strong, austere woman whose will would
Speaker 1: mirror that of her son, Napoleon. She would later say,
Speaker 1: was born when the Canon thundered, and indeed the island's
Speaker 1: mountains still echoed with gunfire when the future emperor entered
Speaker 1: the world. Napoleon's earliest loyalties were not to France but
Speaker 1: to Corsica. He grew up in a stone house overlooking
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Ayachio, speaking Corsican an Italian much more
Speaker 1: fluently than French. His father, Carlo, ambitious and pragmatic, had
Speaker 1: switched allegiance to the new French rulers to preserve the
Speaker 1: family's fortunes. This act earned him a small pension and
Speaker 1: the opportunity to send his sons to France for education.
Speaker 1: So inten seventeen seventy nine, at just ten years old,
Speaker 1: Napoleon left Corsica for the mainland. He would never feel
Speaker 1: entirely at home there. In fact, Napoleon would later write,
Speaker 1: I was a foreigner, and I was made to feel it.
Speaker 1: His schoolmates at Brienne a royal military academy, mocked his
Speaker 1: accent and provincial manners. Yet the boy absorbed knowledge like
Speaker 1: a sponge. Reserved, solitary, and fiercely intelligent. He spent hours
Speaker 1: reading Plutarch's lives, memorizing the campaigns of Alexander and Caesar.
Speaker 1: He once wrote in a school essay that he longed
Speaker 1: to be quote the sword and mind of a free people.
Speaker 1: At Brienne, his teachers saw flashes of greatness. One described
Speaker 1: him as a silent and thoughtful youth who seeks to
Speaker 1: understand rather than to please. In seventeen eighty four, at fifteen,
Speaker 1: Napoleon won admission to the Ecole Militaire in Paris, one
Speaker 1: of France's most prestigious academies. There the transformation from Bonaparte
Speaker 1: to Bonaparte began. He studied artillery, the branch of the
Speaker 1: army most open to talent rather than birth, and graduated
Speaker 1: in just one year, qualifying as a second lieutenant. He
Speaker 1: was seventeen, small and dark, with a thick Corsican accent
Speaker 1: and an iron sense of purpose. Nothing probably would have
Speaker 1: come of him other than moving up the ranks steadily.
Speaker 1: But then came the Revolution, when the French revolution erupted
Speaker 1: in seventeen eighty nine. Napoleon was twenty years old. His
Speaker 1: letters from the time show a mix of idealism and calculation.
Speaker 1: He wrote to his brother Joseph, the people are awakening,
Speaker 1: if only Corsica had such men. Returning to the island,
Speaker 1: he found Corsica once again in revolt, this time against France.
Speaker 1: The old patriot Paoli, once Napoleon's hero, now led the rebellion.
Speaker 1: Torn between island and empire, Napoleon sided with the revolution
Speaker 1: and against Paoli. It was a choice that would define
Speaker 1: his life. He would abandon local loyalties for the dream
Speaker 1: that was France. In seventeen ninety three, that decision turned fatal.
Speaker 1: Paoli's followers expelled the Buonapartes from Corsica. Napoleon's brother would
Speaker 1: later recall, we were hunted like beasts. The family fled
Speaker 1: to the French mainland, destitute refugees. Yet, in that very
Speaker 1: same year, seventeen ninety three, fate offered Napoleon a dramatic
Speaker 1: chance to rise. Now, France was at war in that
Speaker 1: year with just about every monarchy in Europe. The southern
Speaker 1: port of Toulon had fallen into Royalist hands and welcomed
Speaker 1: the British fleet. The Revolutionary army besieged the city, but
Speaker 1: it lacked skilled officers. Enter stage left one in Bonaparte,
Speaker 1: arriving with his artillery company. He quickly transformed with the siege.
Speaker 1: He surveyed the terrain, identified key positions, and proposed a
Speaker 1: daring plan. Sea is the forts commanding the harbor, and
Speaker 1: the British should be forced to withdraw. His superiors hesitated,
Speaker 1: but his energy was irresistible. Under his direction, cannon batteries
Speaker 1: pounded the enemy. He shouted to his men over and
Speaker 1: over again, fire faster and aim at the masts. The
Speaker 1: sea is our enemy's road. On December seventeenth, seventeen ninety three,
Speaker 1: the French army stormed Toulon. Bonaparte was wounded in the
Speaker 1: thigh by a bayonet, but he refused to leave the field.
Speaker 1: When the smoke cleared, the tricolor flew over the city
Speaker 1: and the British had fled. That just twenty four Napoleon
Speaker 1: was promoted to brigadier general. One observer wrote he had
Speaker 1: the head of a caesar and the eyes of a fanatic.
Speaker 1: For a brief moment, Napoleon was a rising star of
Speaker 1: the revolution, he was sent to organize the defense of
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean coast and drafted plans for a campaign into Italy,
Speaker 1: but the political tide soon turned. In July seventeen ninety four,
Speaker 1: Robespierre fell from power. Napoleon, who had associated with the
Speaker 1: Jacobin government, suddenly found himself suspect. I have seen men
Speaker 1: fall like trees in a storm, he wrote, bitterly. Arrested
Speaker 1: for a short time, he was released but left without command.
Speaker 1: In early seventeen ninety five, he languished in Paris, poor, unemployed, restless.
Speaker 1: He lived in a small apartment on the Rue de Capone,
Speaker 1: spending hours in cafes arguing politics and military strategy. In
Speaker 1: a letter later on, he would confess, I have no place,
Speaker 1: no resources, no prospects, and I shall end my days
Speaker 1: in obscure, no glory. But he petitioned the war ministry
Speaker 1: for an Italian command, citing his previous plans for an offensive.
Speaker 1: The army went unanswered. In the meantime, he was offered
Speaker 1: a post in the Army of the West, fighting Royalist
Speaker 1: insurgents in the Vende. He refused it, calling it quote
Speaker 1: a war against Frenchmen, not enemies. That refusal might have
Speaker 1: ended Napoleon's career had not. History intervened again. On the
Speaker 1: twenty sixth of October, there was a major royalist uprising
Speaker 1: within Paris itself called into action really unexpectedly the afternoon
Speaker 1: of October the twenty sixth, on the Rue Saint Honore,
Speaker 1: Napoleon immediately loaded the canon that he had with grape
Speaker 1: shot and fired directly into the charging royalist mob. A
Speaker 1: whiff of grape shot, as Tom Carlisle later called it,
Speaker 1: saved the republic. Napoleon's cool brutality earned him the title
Speaker 1: Commander of the Army of the Interior. And just like that, Napoleon,
Speaker 1: who had been on the outside looking in, was back baby.
Speaker 1: And we'll see the consequences now. After Napoleon put down
Speaker 1: the uprising, elections followed on October the thirty first. The
Speaker 1: first five directors took office. It was a cautious oligarchy,
Speaker 1: weary of direct democracy and wary of kings. Didn't really
Speaker 1: change anything, though. The crisis of the economy continued. The
Speaker 1: Asignat collapsed to three percent of its nominal value. A
Speaker 1: forced loan of six hundred million francs was decreed on
Speaker 1: December the tenth, for the first time in year, France
Speaker 1: had a stable government, but the people remained cynical. Now
Speaker 1: December the thirty first, seventeen ninety five, an armistice was
Speaker 1: signed on the Rhine with Austria and Great Britain, making
Speaker 1: the guns fall silent for the first time. Released in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety three, in this fragile piece, though one figure
Speaker 1: continued to prepare for war. Napoleon Bonaparte, now twenty six,
Speaker 1: restless and brilliant, spent the winter mapping a campaign into
Speaker 1: northern Italy, a theater that had been neglected by older generals.
Speaker 1: The Republic is like a volcano, he wrote to one
Speaker 1: of the five Directors, But I will ride its fire.
Speaker 1: As we will see next time. In the spring of
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety six, Napoleon will be in command of the
Speaker 1: Army of Italy, and he will lead the nation finally
Speaker 1: out of the French Revolution, an inn to empire