458 Chapter XIX
million men faced the foreign enemy. It was the first mass or “democratic” army, or
at least the first above the level of casual militia, possessed of a modern kind of
national consciousness, with its morale heightened by political attitudes in the
common soldiers, its higher ranks filled with men promoted from the ranks on
grounds of “merit,” and prepared to act, by its training, equipment, and discipline,
in a great war among the old military powers of Europe. Eight marshals of Napo-
leon’s empire, in addition to Bonaparte himself, were promoted to the rank of gen-
eral officer at this time.
By the spring of 1794 the French armies resumed the offensive. In June they
won the battle of Fleurus, and the Austrians abandoned Belgium. In the Dutch
cities the potential revolutionaries took hope again. The Poles, with Kosciuszko,
again attempted revolution. Its outcome was uncertain. But in France it was clear,
by mid- 1794, that the Republic had survived.
It survived at a certain cost, or on certain terms. Much happened in France dur-
ing the climactic Year Two of the republican calendar. Within the larger frame-
work of the general eighteenth century revolution, and indeed of the subsequent
history of modern times, it is illuminating to see two of these developments in
some detail. First, the Revolutionary Government reacted strongly against popular
and international revolution, exhibiting what, in the jargon, might be called “bour-
geois” and “nationalist” inclinations. Second, in the extreme emotional stimulation,
the Revolution, as understood by Robespierre, became the means to call a new
world into being, and turned into something like a religion.
Reaction against Popular and International Revolutionism
The Revolutionary Government, representing re- established authority, turned at
once against the self- generating dynamism of the popular democrats. Events now
in truth followed the lines of a classical tragedy, as seen so clearly by Albert So-
boul. The Revolutionary Government crushed the very spirit which had brought it
into being. The popular democrats, or sans- culottes, “had demanded a government
strong enough to crush the aristocracy; they did not realize that this government,
if it was to conquer, would have to force them to obey.”^15
The Paris sections had met en permanence since July 25, 1792. In September
1793 they were limited by the Committee of Public Safety to two meetings a
week. They had originally elected their own committees, which concerned them-
selves with searches, arrests, identity cards, ration cards, patrols, and political agita-
tion in their neighborhoods. By the spring of 1794 the ruling Committee ap-
pointed the members of these committees. The committee members, originally
unpaid, began to receive five francs a day for their services; they developed increas-
ingly the mentality of small public job- holders, dutifully carrying out instructions
15 Soboul, Sans- culottes parisiens, 1026. The following pages draw heavily on this book; see also
Soboul’s “Robespierre et la formation du gouvernement révolutionnaire, 27 juillet–10 octobre, 1793”
in Revue d ’ histoire moderne et contemporaine V (Oct–Dec. 1958), 283–94.