On this date in 1793, in a revolutionary Paris where the machinery of the Terror was clattering to life, five tumbrils bore to the guillotine twenty former Girondist ministers to the National Convention — plus the corpse of their late colleague Dufriche de ValazĂ©, who had cheated the executioner by killing himself.
Named for the region of Aquitaine from which their leading lights hailed, the Girondists (or Girondins) had in the compressed history of the Revolution ascended from fringe democratic party to governing party even as the political facts shifted under their feet. Finding themselves the conservative party in an assembly increasingly dominated by radical Montagnards and the Paris mob, the Girondists’ tactlessness and stubborn refusal to deal with Georges Danton after his (still historically murky) involvement in the riotous slaughter of prisoners during the September Massacre eroded their position.
As the terrible year of 1793 unfolded, the Girondins discovered themselves successively overthrown, expelled from the Convention, proscribed, and hunted. Though many more — Girondists and others — were to follow in their steps, the trial of these 21 before the Revolutionary Tribunal and subsequent guillotining, the first notable mass-execution of the Revolution, raised the curtain on the Terror.
Decades later, the English historian Lord Acton remembered the faction’s doomed heroism.
[The Girondins] stood four months before their fall. During that memorable struggle, the question was whether France should be ruled by violence and blood, or by men who knew the passion for freedom. The Girondins at once raised the real issue by demanding inquiry into the massacres of September. It was a valid but a perilous weapon. There could be no doubt as to what those who had committed a thousand murders to obtain power would be capable of doing in their own defence.
…
Almost to the last moment Danton wished to avoid the conflict. Again and again they rejected his offers. Open war, said Vergniaud, is better than a hollow truce. Their rejection of the hand that bore the crimson stain is the cause of their ruin, but also of their renown. They were always impolitic, disunited, and undecided; but they rose, at times, to the level of honest men.
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They were easily beaten and mercilessly destroyed, and no man stirred to save them. At their fall liberty perished; but it had become a feeble remnant in their hands, and a spark almost extinguished. Although they were not only weak but bad, no nation ever suffered a greater misfortune than that which befell France in their defeat and destruction.
That Pierre Vergniaud who scorned the hollow truce was the last to mount the scaffold this day — a shining orator of the Revolution who captured the calamity engulfing his nation in another well-remembered aphorism, “the Revolution devours its own children.”
On this day..
- Triskaidekaphobia: Executed Today's 13th Annual Report
- 1904: Wang Weiqin, by lingchi
- 1929: Ilm Deen, blasphemy avenger
- Striking Midnight: Executed Today's 12th Annual Report
- Eleventh Hour: Executed Today's (cursory) 11th annual report
- 1926: Anteo Zamboni, Mussolini near-assassin, lynched
- Decimated: Executed Today's Tenth Annual Report
- 1860: Johannes Nathan, the last ordinary execution in the Netherlands
- 1862: Thomas Sanders, rapist
- Deathed Up to the Nines: Executed Today's Ninth Annual Report
- The Eight Pains: Executed Today's Eighth annual report
- 1460: Tiburzio di Maso, Roman brigand
- Seven-Out: Executed Today's Seventh Annual Report
- 1814: Private John McMillan, deserter
- Six Years Under: Executed Today's Sixth Annual Report
- 1698: The last Streltsy executed in October
- Executed Today's Fifth Annual Report: Hang Five
- 1907: Evstolia Ragozinnikova
- Executed Today's Fourth Annual Report: Wrung, Wan and Quartered
- 1893: Bertha Zillmann, completely prostrate