GIRONDIN

also called Brissotin, member of the moderate republicans, many of them originally from the dpartement of Gironde, who controlled the Legislative Assembly from October 1791 to September 1792 during the French Revolution. Young lawyers who were basically idealists, the Girondins soon attracted a large following of businessmen, merchants, industrialists, and financiers. They were initially known as Brissotins, as followers of Jacques-Pierre Brissot (q.v.). The Girondins first emerged as harsh critics of the court. Through the oratory of Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud and Brissot, the Girondins inspired the measures taken against the migrs and anti-Revolutionary priests in October and November of 1791. From the end of 1791, under the leadership of Brissot, they supported foreign war as a means to unite the people behind the cause of the Revolution. The Girondins reached the height of their power and popularity in the spring of 1792. On April 20, 1792, the war that they urged was declared against Austria. Earlier, on March 23, two of the group entered the government under King Louis XVI: tienne Clavire as finance minister and Jean-Marie Roland as interior minister. Roland's wife, Mme Jeanne-Marie Roland, held a salon that was an important meeting place for the Girondins. But throughout the summer they vacillated in their position toward the existing constitutional monarchy, which was coming under serious attack. The storming of the Tuileries Palace on Aug. 10, 1792, which overthrew the monarchy, took place without their participation and marks the beginning of their decline, as more radical groups (the Paris Commune, the Parisian working class, and the Jacobins under Robespierre) came to direct the course of the Revolution. From the opening of the National Convention in September 1792, the Girondins united in opposition to the Montagnards (deputies of the left, mainly newly elected from Paris, who headed the Jacobin dictatorship of 179394). The antagonism between the two groups was partly caused by bitter personal hatreds but also by opposing social interests. The Girondins were linked to Parisian and provincial businessmen and to local government officials, while the Montagnards depended on the artisan and working class of Paris. In the ensuing struggles the Girondins were characterized by moderate political views that stopped short of economic and social equality, by economic liberalism that rejected government control of trade or prices, and, most clearly, by their reliance on the dpartements as a counterbalance to Paris. Their efforts to reduce the influence of the capital led the Montagnards to brand them as advocates of federalism who sought to destroy the unity of the newly formed republic. The trial of Louis XVI (December 1792January 1793) left the Girondins, some of whom opposed the king's execution, open to the charge of royalism. The Girondins were held responsible for defeats suffered by the army in the spring of 1793 and were made more unpopular by their refusal to provide for the economic demands of the Parisian workers. A popular rising against them in Paris, beginning on May 31, ended when the Convention, surrounded by armed insurgents, ordered the arrest of 29 Girondin deputies on June 2. The fall of the Girondins was caused by their reluctance to adopt emergency measures for the defense of the Revolution and to provide for the economic demands of the Parisian workers, policies that the Montagnards carried out. Many of the Girondins escaped to the provinces in the summer of 1793 to organize federalist uprisings against the Convention. These failed largely for lack of popular support. When the ruling Montagnards instituted the Reign of Terror, 21 of the arrested Girondins were tried, beginning on Oct. 24, 1793, and were guillotined on October 31. After the fall of the Montagnards in 1794, a number of Girondins who escaped the purge returned to the Convention and were rehabilitated.