In Defence of the Terror (14 page)

33
For this definition of vengeance as a foundational institution, see Pierre Bonte and Michel Izard (eds),
Dictionnaire de l'ethnologie et de l'anthropologie
, Paris: PUF, 1992, p. 738. As opposed to Arno Mayer in
The Furies
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), I do not disassociate analysis of vengeance and the sacred, and take seriously the idea of vengeance as a public institution rather than an individual passion. This notion of vengeance is therefore not analyzed as a vicious circle, but rather as the possibility of a virtuous institution. On Mayer's book, see
French Historical Studies
, vol. 24, no. 4 (2001), which was devoted to it, and where, among other contributions, there are interesting points of view from Tim Tackett and David Bell.

34
A rigorous description of this declaratory turn has been conducted by Jacques Guilhaumou in his article ‘La terreur à l'ordre du jour (juillet 1793–mars 1794)',
Dictionnaire des usages sociopolitiques (1770–1815). Fascicule 2: Notions, concepts
, Paris: Klincksieck Inalf, 1987, pp. 127–60.

35
Mona Ozouf, ‘Guerre et Terreur dans le discours révolutionnaire',
L'École de la France
, Paris: Gallimard, 1984, pp. 109–27. We might very well just use the term used repeatedly by the revolutionaries of a terror-vengeance, since we know that vengeance often includes a demand for reparatory equality, adding however that this demand may also be more absolute when the question is to avenge the dead or the integrity and dignity of man as this is instituted by a particular culture.

36
This is the expression found in the documentary record.

1
Jacques Guilhaumou,
La Mort de Marat
, Brussels: Complexe, 1989.

2
On aesthetics and politics, compare the works of Jacques Guilhaumou that relate Kantian aesthetics and the revolutionary process. For an analysis of the death of Marat in this light, see the very clear presentation ‘Fragment d'une esthétique de l'événement révolutionnaire', in Gilles Suron, Andrej Turowski and Sophie Wahnich (eds),
L'Art et le discours face à la Révolution
, Dijon: EUD, 1997; as well as ‘Un changement du souveraineté et de sensibilité', in
L'avènement des porte-parole de la république, 1789–1792
, Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1998, pp. 249–53. Also Jacques Rancière,
Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy
, trans. Julie Rose, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999; and
The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible
, trans. Gabriel Rockhill, London: Continuum, 2004.

3
On this question of natural right, see Florence Gauthier,
Triomphe et mort du droit naturel en Révolution
, Paris: PUF, 1992.

4
Arch. Nat., série C, carton 118, Creuse.

5
L.A. de Saint-Just, ‘Esprit de la Révolution et de la Constitution, 1791', in
Œuvres complètes
, ed.
Michèle Duval,
Paris: Champ Libre, 1984, pp. 338–9.

6
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 45, p. 352 (19 June 1792).

7
The emphasis is mine. On the function of this statement, see S. Wahnich, ‘De l'émotion souveraine à l'acte de discours souverain, la patrie en danger', in
Mélanges offerts à Michel Vovelle
, Paris: Société des études Robespierristes, 1997. See also Jacques Comaille, Laurence Dumoulin and Cécile Robert, ‘Produire les normes en Révolution',
Droit et société
7: La juridicisation du politique
, Paris: Maison des Science de l'Homme et Réseau Européen Droit et Société, 2000.

8
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 17, pp. 387–8; reprinted Paris: Plon, 1947.

9
This revolutionary army should not be confused with the regular armies: accompanied by a ‘holy' guillotine, it was to give force to the law, struggle against embezzlers and supply the armies.

10
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 17, p. 526.

11
Guéniffey,
La politique de la Terreur
, p. 197.

12
The description of this tendency is often taken from Hegel: ‘The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water.' See
Phenomenology of Spirit
, trans. A. V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, para. 590.

13
These were the decree on refractory priests, and the decree of the encampment of 20,000 men to defend Paris.

14
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 45, p. 417 (20 June 1792).

15
This is indeed Hegel's expression; see
Phenomenology of Spirit
, para. 589.

16
Société des Jacobins, 19 June 1792. Alphonse Aulard (ed.),
La Société des Jacobins. Receuil de documents pour l'étude de la Société des Jacobins
, vol. 4, Paris: Librairie Jouaust, Librairie Noblet & Maison Quantin, 1892, p. 19.

17
Ibid.

18
Arch. Nat., série C150, L253, p. 2.

19
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 45, p. 397.

20
Ibid., p. 417.

21
Ibid., p. 397 (19 June 1792).

22
Ibid., p. 417.

23
Ibid., p. 435 (21 June 1792).

24
Under the 1791 constitution, ‘passive' citizens were those who paid less than three livres in tax, along with women and children. Putting an end to passive citizenship meant essentially ending any regime based on assets, and opening the National Guard to young people and the popular classes. Women and girls could still not join this new National Guard.

25
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 45, p. 707.

26
Ibid.

27
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 17, pp. 387–8 (12 August 1793).

1
Jean de Bry.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 45, p. 707.

2
Petition from Le Havre.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 46, p. 163 (6 July 1792).

3
Robespierre.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 48, p. 180 (15 August 1792).

4
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 13, p. 443 (17 August 1792).

5
For an analysis of this expression see Michel Poizat,
Vox populi, vox dei. La voix en politique
, Paris: Métaillié, 2000.

6
According to the recorded expression, as Jacques Guilhaumou has shown in
La langue politique et la Révolution française
, Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck, 1989.

7
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 14, p. 428.

8
According to the charge sheet of 20 Vendémaire year III (AD Seine et Oise, 42 L 58), cited by Bernard Conein,
Langage politique et mode d'affrontement. Le jacobinisme et les massacres de Septembre
, PhD thesis, Paris: EHESS, 1978.

9
Robespierre,
Pour le Bonheur et pour la Liberté
, p. 277.

10
Raymond Verdier (ed.),
La vengeance. Études d'ethnologie, d'histoire et de philosophie
, vol. 1, Paris: Éditions Cujas, 1980, p. 24.

11
Ibid., p. 16.

12
Ibid., p. 19.

13
As against the standpoint initially developed by Jules Michelet, and reprised under this concept of ‘a priori vengeance' by Antoine de Baecque,
La gloire et l'effroi. Sept morts sous la terreur
, Paris: Grasset, 1997, p. 86.

14
Cited after Pierre Caron,
Les Massacres de Septembre
, Paris, 1935.

15
Ibid., p. 131.

16
Ibid., p. 132.

17
Cited after Caron,
Les Massacres de Septembre
, p. 132.

18
According to Pierre Serna, there cannot be just the exercise of executive power, even an ‘executive power of execution'. Serna maintains that ‘the representatives were afraid of popular violence. The executive power of execution, if this expression is permissible, was seized by the population of Paris, and demanded that the men of Versailles should restore public order'; in Joël Cornette (ed.),
La monarchie entre renaissance et révolution, 1515–1792
, Paris: Seuil, 2000, p. 400. When the three powers are fused, the notion of executive power is no longer apposite; what we have here is indeed a sovereign power, in this case that of popular sovereignty.

19
Cited after Caron,
Les Massacres de Septembre
, p. 124.

20
Ibid., p. 127.

21
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 14.

22
Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence', trans. E. Jephcott, in
Selected Writings, vol. 1: 1913–26
, ed. M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings,
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996, p. 86.

23
Ibid., p. 87.

24
Agamben,
Homo Sacer
, pp. 83-4.

25
Journal de la République française
, 25 October 1792.

26
Le Défenseur de la Constitution
, 20 September 1792.

27
Saint-Just,
Œuvres complètes
, p. 714.

28
National Convention, 5 November 1792, in reply to the accusation of Jean-Baptiste Louvet.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 52, p. 162.

29
Cited from Lucas, ‘Revolutionary Violence, the People and the Terror', pp. 69, 73.

30
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 45, p. 417 (20 June 1792).

31
Robespierre.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 3, p. 62 (28 September 1792).

32
D. Vidal, ‘Vengeance', in
Dictionnaire de l'ethnologie et de l'anthropologie
, p. 738.

33
Robespierre.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 56, p. 16 (28 December 1792).

34
Albert Soboul,
Le procès de Louis XVI
, Paris: Archives Juillard, 1966, pp. 139, 148.

35
I have drawn here from my
L'Impossible citoyen. L'étranger dans le discours de la revolution française
, Paris: Albin Michel, 1997; and especially from the third section, ‘Fraternité et exclusion'.

36
A. Aulard,
La société des Jacobins
, vol. 5, p. 633.

37
Claude Lefort, ‘La Terreur révolutionnaire',
Passé/Présent
2 (1983), p. 25.

38
Sarah Maza,
Vies privées, affaires publiques
, Paris: Fayard, 1997.

39
Le Vieux Cordelier
, Paris: Belin, 1989, p. 90.

40
Ibid., p. 75.

41
This expression, coined by the Physiocrats, was commonly used by Sieyès, and is analyzed by Jacques Guilhaumou in
Sieyès et l'ordre de la langue? L'invention de la politique moderne
, Paris: Kimé, 2002.

1
On the question of a periodization of the Terror, see Bronislaw Baczko, ‘The Terror Before the Terror'.

2
Verdier,
La vengeance
, p. 16.

3
Ibid.

4
Bentabole,
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 60, p. 2.

5
Jean Bon Saint-André and Jacques-Louis David.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 60, p. 3.

6
Saint-Just, 26 Germinal year II.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 88, p. 615.

7
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 60, p. 62.

8
Ibid, p. 59.

9
Ibid, p. 61.

10
Ibid, p. 62.

11
Vidal, ‘Vengeance', p. 738.

12
I have used here the distinction proposed by Paolo Viola between political violence and irrational violence, which maintains that the points of extreme violence in a revolution are those ‘of an irrational, not a political violence, which the revolution does not require, which are not beneficial to it, which it is horrified by, which it ends up repressing as far as possible, but which it has itself triggered because it has touched the unconscious and fragile equilibriums that govern the relationship to the sacred'. See Paolo Viola, ‘Violence révolutionnaire ou violence du peuple en révolution',
Recherches sur la Révolution
, Paris: La Découverte/IHRF, 1991, pp. 95–102; and on vengeance as a punitive practice, see also his
Il trono vuoto. La transizione della sovranità nella rivoluzione francese
, Turin: Einaudi, 1989.