Law on Suspects

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The law on suspects. Print version from 1793

The law on suspects ( French loi des suspects ) of September 17, 1793 was a decree passed by the French National Convention under pressure from the September movement . It provided for the indefinite detention of people who were suspected of being against the French Revolution in any way . The law is one of the measures that institutionalized the reign of terror .

Emergence

In the summer of 1793, France found itself in a serious crisis. The war against Prussia , the Habsburg Monarchy , Great Britain and other states had not gone well. Although France had been able to stop the advance of the enemy on Paris in the cannonade of Valmy , foreign troops were still standing on French soil. The integration of the new revolutionary troops into the existing army did not progress. The revolutionary government was not yet considered legitimate everywhere in the country : in Brittany and the Vendée , royalist uprisings broke out, which were sparked by the ever new mass levies and the professional ban on priests who refused to take the oath to the constitution . Despite the good harvests of the previous year , the economic situation was poor: the assignats , the new paper money introduced in 1790 , rapidly lost value due to inflation , and there were hunger riots in various cities.

These problems were not widely attributed to personal weakness or an unintended consequence of personal choices. Rather, they were explained in conspiracy theory with the suspected evil intentions of those involved. The Histoire et dictionnaire de la Révolution Francaise speaks of a veritable hantise du complot , a "plot obsession " of the revolutionaries. In particular, members of the Parisian lower classes, the sans-culottes , saw the actions and omissions of those responsible as conspiracies of "aristocrats, moderates, agents of Pitts, etc." That hardly corresponded to reality, but provided scapegoats for anything undesirable. The uprising of the Parisian sans-culottes from May 31st to June 2nd, 1793 led to the arrest of the leading Girondists who represented the interests of the property bourgeoisie. They were accused of being in league with the renegade General Charles-François Dumouriez . The uprising gave the mountain party , in which the more radical members of the Jacobin Club and the Club des Cordeliers were represented, a majority in the convention. However, this deepened the social division: many Girondists now joined the enemies of the revolution and rose against the new rulers. The so-called “ federalist uprisings ” mainly affected the south-west and south of France: In Toulon , the rebels of the British fleet opened the port. On July 13, 1793, the popular journalist Jean Paul Marat , who belonged to the Club des Cordeliers, fell victim to an assassination attempt, which further increased the widespread fear of assassins, spies and saboteurs and the willingness to confront them with terreur .

The widespread suspicion was evident from March 1793 onwards in the posting of commissioners of the Convention with extraordinary powers, the Représentants en mission , who were supposed to supervise the actions of the military and other government representatives outside Paris. To monitor the government itself, the Welfare Committee was set up on April 5 and 6, 1793 , which over the summer combined more and more competencies, so that it increasingly developed into the de facto emergency government of France. In the same month, the convention decided to set up local surveillance committees (Comités de surveillance révolutionnaire) to monitor suspects and issue patriots “certificats de civisme”, citizenship certificates attesting to the holder that he had fulfilled his civic duties.

The sans-culottes tried to exert pressure on the mountain party, which was ideologically close to them , through the sections : They demanded price controls , measures against usury and speculation , an "armée révolutionnaire" to secure the food supply and the use of terreur against all who intrigued against the revolution. The mountain party wanted to give in to this pressure from below at least partially, but at the same time they had to bring it under control. That was their dilemma. Their hesitation and the high treason of the citizens of Toulon provoked the last of the great "journées" of the Paris sections: on September 5, 1793, representatives of the sections surrounded the Salle du Manège , where the convention was meeting, and occupied it without causing any violence came. They presented the demands of the sections to the MPs:

“It is time for equality to let its scythe go over everyone's head. It's time to terrify the conspirators . Well, your legislators, put terror on the agenda! "

The convention gave in to the pressure of the street: without consulting the welfare committee, the political demands of the squatters, namely the arrest of all suspects, the purge of the revolutionary committees, the establishment of a revolutionary army and diets for the meetings of the sections, were decided. The economic demands, however, remained unfulfilled for the time being. As a result, the Welfare Committee skilfully maneuvered between the further raised demands of the sections and the Convention, the majority of which was still reluctant to face economic control, and thereby acquired de facto dictatorial powers. When, in mid-September, at the instigation of the sections, the Revolutionary Committees made the first arrests of suspects and rumors circulated that there would soon be another massacre like the one in September 1792 , the MP Philippe-Antoine Merlin , in order to avoid abusive implementation of the resolution of September 5, In the Legislative Committee before a draft law on the suspects, which the Convention passed on September 17, 1793.

content

The law is divided into ten articles. Article 1 orders the arrest of all suspects who are on the territory of the republic. Article 2 provides a very broad definition of who is to be regarded as suspect:

  • Persons who, because of their behavior, their statements or their personal relationships, would have turned out to be “partisans of the tyrants , of federalism” (meaning the Girondins) “or as enemies of freedom”,
  • People who could not prove the origin of their income or the fulfillment of their civic duties - speculators were meant,
  • Persons who have been refused the citizenship certificate,
  • suspended or dismissed officials of the Ancien Régime ,
  • former nobles , unless they "have not constantly demonstrated their attachment to the revolution",
  • returned emigrants.

In Article 3, monitoring committees are instructed to issue arrest warrants for the named persons, which the military commanders had to carry out on punishment for their dismissal. Article 4 stipulates that the committees could only decide on arrests with a majority of at least seven members present. According to Article 5, the arrested had to be taken to a detention center first. If there wasn't enough space, they were instead placed under house arrest. Article 6 stipulates that after a week at the latest they had to be taken to one of the prisons that the department administrations had to set up. According to Article 7, they were allowed to take their own furniture there with them. The peace treaty was set as the end of the prison term, the date of which no one knew. Article 8 states that the detainees had to bear the costs of their detention themselves in equal parts. Article 9 obliges the monitoring committees to report to the security committee on all arrests. Article 10 empowers the civil and criminal courts to send persons who have not been charged with a crime or who have been acquitted as suspects to the new prisons.

consequences

Who was to be arrested as a suspect was so vaguely defined in the law that the door was wide open to denouncing . On September 29, 1793, with the general maximum , which set maximum prices for wages and goods, a further requirement of the sans-culottes was met: Those who violated this would also find themselves on the increasingly long list of suspects and soon afterwards in prison.

The total number of people who lost their freedom on the basis of this law cannot be determined with certainty. The German political scientist Gilbert Ziebura assumes there will be 300,000 to 800,000 people, i.e. 1–4% of the population of France. According to the British historian William Doyle, a number between 70,000 and one million prisoners is assumed today. Details are only known about Paris: 9,249 people were imprisoned there, which corresponds to around 2% of the city's population. The average length of detention was eight months.

In the case of many of those affected, it was not just imprisonment: They were interrogated by the revolutionary tribunals that had been set up in March 1793 to punish political crimes. This was exacerbated by the Prairial Act of June 10, 1794, which made the death penalty binding against all " enemies of the people ". With the Ventôse decrees on February 26, 1794, the convention decided to tighten the rules further : From then on, the property of all suspects was confiscated , and their descendants were effectively disinherited. This was Louis Antoine de Saint-Just as in his capacity en Représentant mission already on 11 February 1794 a suspect in Doullens made, then still without a legal basis.

With the law on suspects, terror, which had been practiced repeatedly from below since 1792, became official government policy. The British historians Barry Coward and Julian Swann therefore refer to the law as “one of the foundation stones of the terror”. Ernst Schulin dates the beginning of the Terreur on September 17, 1793, when the law was passed.

After the fall of Maximilien de Robespierre and the end of the reign of terror on 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), the "revolutionary paranoia " subsided . The suspect law was repealed, the surviving detainees were released en masse and their confiscated property returned.

Web links

Wikisource: Décret du 17 septembre 1793 relatif aux gens suspects  - (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gilbert Ziebura : France from the Great Revolution to the fall of Napoleon III 1789-1870 . In: Walter Bußmann : Handbook of European History , Vol. 5: Europe from the French Revolution to the nation-state movements of the 19th century . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981, p. 212 ff .; Albert Soboul : The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799). 4th edition of the reviewed German edition, special edition. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1983, pp. 257-268.
  2. ^ A b c Jean Tulard , Jean-François Fayard and Alfred Fierro: Histoire et dictionnaire de la Révolution Francaise . Editions Robert Laffont, Paris 1987, p. 1105.
  3. ↑ Gerd van den Heuvel : Terreur, Terrorist, Terrorisme. In: Handbook of basic political and social terms in France. 1680-1820. Booklet 3 = Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolution. Volume 10. Oldenbourg, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-486-52731-2 , p. 21 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  4. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799). 4th edition of the reviewed German edition, special edition. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1983, pp. 274-277.
  5. ↑ Gerd van den Heuvel: Terreur, Terrorist, Terrorisme. In: Handbook of basic political and social terms in France. 1680-1820. Booklet 3 = Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolution. Volume 10. Oldenbourg, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-486-52731-2 , pp. 19 and 21 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  6. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799). 4th edition of the reviewed German edition, special edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 269 f.
  7. ^ RR Palmer : The Age of the Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 . Updated new edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton / Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-691-16128-0 , p. 452 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  8. ↑ Gerd van den Heuvel: Terreur, Terrorist, Terrorisme. In: Handbook of basic political and social terms in France. 1680-1820. Booklet 3 = Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolution. Volume 10. Oldenbourg, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-486-52731-2 , p. 18 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  9. ^ RR Palmer: The Age of the Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 . Updated new edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton / Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-691-16128-0 , p. 412 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  10. ^ William Doyle: Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2009, p. 288.
  11. ↑ Gerd van den Heuvel: Terreur, Terrorist, Terrorisme. In: Handbook of basic political and social terms in France. 1680-1820. Booklet 3 = Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolution. Volume 10. Oldenbourg, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-486-52731-2 , p. 18 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  12. ^ “II est temps que l'égalité promène sa faux sur toutes les têtes. Il est temps d'épouvanter tous les conspirateurs. Eh bien, legislateurs, placez la terreur à l'ordre du jour! " Quoted from Gerd van den Heuvel: Terreur, Terroriste, Terrorisme. In: Handbook of basic political and social terms in France. 1680-1820. Booklet 3 = Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolution. Volume 10. Oldenbourg, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-486-52731-2 , p. 20 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  13. ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799). 4th edition of the reviewed German edition, special edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 300.
  14. ^ Jean Tulard, Jean-François Fayard and Alfred Fierro: Histoire et dictionnaire de la Révolution Francaise . Editions Robert Laffont, Paris 1987, p. 982.
  15. ↑ Décret du 17 septembre 1793 relatif aux gens suspects on Wikisource , accessed November 21, 2020; Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. An outline of their history (1789–1799). 4th edition of the reviewed German edition, special edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 302.
  16. ^ A b c William Doyle: Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2009, p. 289.
  17. ^ A b Gilbert Ziebura: France from the Great Revolution to the fall of Napoleon III 1789-1870 . In: Walter Bußmann: Handbook of European History , Vol. 5: Europe from the French Revolution to the nation-state movements of the 19th century . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981, p. 217.
  18. ^ William Doyle: Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2009, pp. 289 and 291.
  19. ^ A b William Doyle: Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2009, p. 293.
  20. ^ Jörg Monar: Saint-Just: son, thinker and protagonist of the revolution. Bouvier, Bonn 1993, p. 528.
  21. ^ Barry Coward and Julian Swann: Introduction . In: the same (ed.): Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe. From the Waldensians to the French Revolution . Routledge, London / New York 2017, p. 8.
  22. ^ Ernst Schulin: The French Revolution . CH Beck, Munich 2004, p. 297.