Jacobin Club

The Jacobin Club, the most famous of the political clubs of the French Revolution, had its origin in the Club Breton, which formed at Versailles shortly after the opening of the Estates General in 1789.

Fall from power

The Jacobin Club was closed after the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor of the year III (July 29, 1794) and some of its members were executed. An attempt was made to re-open the club, which was joined by many of the enemies of the Thermidorians, but on 21 Brumaire, year III (November 11, 1794), it was definitively closed. Its members and their sympathizers were scattered among the cafés, where a ruthless war of sticks and chairs was waged against them by the young "aristocrats" known as the jeunesse dorée. Nevertheless the Jacobins survived, in a somewhat subterranean fashion, emerging again in the club of the Panthéon, founded on November 25, 1795, and suppressed in the following February (see Babeuf).

Related Topics:
9 Thermidor - July 29 - 1794 - November 11 - Jeunesse dorée - November 25 - 1795 - Babeuf

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The last attempt to reorganise Jacobin adherents was the foundation of the Réunion d'amis de l'égalité et de la liberté, in July 1799, which had its headquarters in the Salle du Manège of the Tuileries, and was thus known as the Club du Manège. It was patronized by Barras, and some two hundred and fifty members of the two councils of the legislature were enrolled as members, including many notable ex-Jacobins. It published a newspaper called the Journal des Libres, proclaimed the apotheosis of Robespierre and Babeuf, and attacked the Directory as a royauté pentarchique. But public opinion was now preponderatingly moderate or royalist, and the club was violently attacked in the press and in the streets, the suspicions of the government were aroused; it had to change its meeting-place from the Tuileries to the church of the Jacobins (Temple of Peace) in the Rue du Bac, and in August it was suppressed, after barely a month?s existence. Its members revenged themselves on the Directory by supporting Napoleon Bonaparte.

Related Topics:
Salle du Manège - Tuileries - Barras - Babeuf - Napoleon Bonaparte

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The judgement of a later generation of Parisians can be seen in a Latin quatrain composed in the 19th century for a market situated near the club house:

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:Impia Tortorum longas hic turba furores,

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:sanguinis innocui, non satiata aluit.

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:Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,

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:mors ubi dira vita salusque patent.

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:(Here the impious clamor of the torturers,

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:insatiate, fed its rage for innocent blood.

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:Now happy is the land, destroyed the pit of horror;

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:and where grim death stalked, life and health are revealed)

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