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Summary The Influence of the Sans-culottes
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Notes on the influence of the Sans-culottes during the French Revolution
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The Influence of the Sans-culottesThe influence of the sans-culottes:
The convention and CPS yielded to a lot of popular pressure during the early months of the
Terror; as well as helping to bring about the Law of the Maximum + Law of Suspects, sans-
culotte enthusiasm was directed towards a dechristianisation campaign
Encouraged by agitators Hebert + Chaumette, the sans-culottes supported a move to close
churches and destroy all religious signs + symbol
- The campaign was principally centred on Paris, but it could be carried to the provinces
through the répresentants + armées revolutionnaires
- Fouché the r-e-m in Nievre waged a continuous campaign of religious terror in region
from Sept 1793
October: the Paris Commune made dechristianisation an official policy
- Religious statues, street crosses + other ornamentation were removed or vandalised
- Figures on front of Notre Dame beheaded
- Busts of Marat were popular replacements for religious objects
- Church property such as vestments was stolen to use in ‘mock ceremonies’ while bells
and plate were melted down to use for coins or weapons
- Street names w religious references changed
- Some frenzied attacks on remaining religious buildings culminated in an order to close all
the remaining churches in November
The royal tombs at Saint-Denis were desecrated, royal bones thrown into a common grave +
sacred oil of Clovis used to anoint kings smashed
Peoples’ names were changed from Christian to classical heroes
- Chaumette changed his name from Pierre-Gaspard to Anaxagoras
7th November: Jean-Baptise-Joseph Gobel, elected Archbishop of Paris under Civil
Constitution, sported a bonnet rouge + resigned from his position out of ‘love for the
people’; other Paris clergymen followed suit
The culmination of all this activity was the transformation of the Notre Dame into the
‘Temple of Reason’
- In November a ‘Festival of Reason’ organised by the Paris Commune + Hebert was held
- The festival wasn’t authorised by the NC who actual refused to visit it as a body,
although their decision to adopt the new non-religious calendar helped encourage such
sentiments
- Robespierre was particularly fearful of such excesses which ran the risk of earning the
revolution more enemies
o He believed that faith could be a valuable ally in the maintenance of order +
control; this was a different stance from that of Fouché + Hébert who wanted a
secular society
o Following a minor revolt in Brie in December, when peasants attacked the local
Jacobin club, he persuaded the NC to prohibit violent attacks on religion
o By the decree on the ‘liberty of cults’ religious toleration was reaffirmed; this
came too late for the 20,000 priests whod been forced to renounce their
positions
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