Tell me about the Thermidorians, /his/

>>2310476
a strange lot. they claimed to stop the terror but they then went about guillotining all the jacobins and sans culotte and the poor that supported them. but the terror if anything made all of them extremely jaded and cynical. In the spirit of opposition to anything jacobin, they became what can be said "decadent." whereas before all festivities or cheerfulness or social gatherings and soirees had been banished out of the streets out of hatred for anything aristocratic, they made a triumphant return. people drank with abandon, lavish balls and social gatherings were held. fashions now changed with dizzying pace, one person trying to outdo the next in extravagance. But whereas before, such things really were the thing of aristocratic life, they were occupied by the upper and upper middle classes. the from poor got erased from the picture. The Winter of 1794 was brutal. The temperatures were harsh and the harvest very poor. But whereas the Jacobins established a maximum price on grain and had punished alleged hoarders and price gougers, the Thermidoreans deregulated the grain market and so prices rose catastrophically high out of reach of the poor. Thousands starved and in the following Spring a final rousing protest and show of force by sans culottes and jacobins got crushed mercilessly.

This was not only the Thermidorean's way of saying "fuck you" to the Parisian artisans and poor for their radical behavior, but also as a consequence of a new liberal ethos emerging. As the thinking went, the poor were poor because they chose to be. The rich were rich from hard work. The poor needed to be disciplined by economic forces, the well off needed to control and exploit those forces. So this spirit of liberalism. (cont.)

>>2310837
So this spirit of liberalism bred a new hierarchical spirit among the wealthy. With the aristocrats out of the frame, they thought, it could be argued now that they were men of ability and initiative, the so-called "active citizenry" which the first years of the revolution (what is called the liberal revolution) granted the sole right to vote. After all, didn't the first revolutionaries promise to "throw all occupations open to talent." As they saw it, this had been achieved, and so the revolution could be said to be over as economic liberty took precedence over equality and fraternity.

The well to do, as i mentioned, were now the ones to rule the streets. Before, the poor and the sans culotte had done so, and used their numbers to bring to bear much pressure on the revolutionary assemblies to take their interests into account. It also helped that they had champions in these assemblies like Robespierre and other montagnards who recognized their suffering. The journalists desmoulin and marat were also vigorous advocates for them. Now they were all gone, though. Terror and Thermidor wiped the "far left" out of politics. As for the politics of the street, that had been decimated by the winter of 1794/95 and the protests that followed. This April protest really demonstrates the balance of power. The protests were huge and stormed the national assembly. But they were leaderless, they didn't know what to do with their force. Any remaining Jacobins who spoke out in their favor got guillotined. The national guard massacred protestors. And to top it off we see the emergence of a band of middle class youths, dressed elegantly in the latest fashions. These were jeunesse doree who ruthlessly aided the militia, beating the poor with their clubs and who would seize the streets. In effect, they pushed the poor back into their tenements and demolished the sans culotte who represented the popular politics so important to the events of the previous years.

>>2310903
The streets so cleared, the thermidoreans and their supporters could flaunt their new grip on the republic. Cafe life bloomed, the upper and middle classes began to feel safe again and for the first time we see a fixation on promenading so popular throughout the nineteenth century. The latest fashions could be flaunted, the poor could be frightened with refinement and manners, the latter of which came back with a vengeance. Previously, the earthy tones of the parisians had been the tone adopted by street protestors and politicians trying to woo them or who feared them. But there was also a genuinely egalitarian sentiment in those optimistic years of the early revolution. The aristocratic order had been overturned, and society, for a moment, seem to have been leveled. No longer did men address their superiors with the formal "vous" but adopted the informal "tu;" no longer were men of some status to be addressed as "monsieurs;" all were now "citoyens." After Thermidor, this stopped. Order and hierarchy, the reasoning went among the higher ups, needed to be restored. And so it was that "vous" and "monsieur" made their appearance again; to recognize the new ascendance of the bourgeois in the social order.

>>2310476
France is gay

Thanks anon. I think I know everything about the Thermidorians now.

>>2310990
happy to help. it was fun trying to remember my readings on the period. the thermidoreans were basically the rullers for the next five years. but i should also mention that the Directory, as the new government was called, was also perceived (though in reality exaggerated) as corrupt, and this was as i see it again the product of the cynicism that arose from the horrors of the terror. not only was the utopian optimism and the aspiration toward republican austerity and virtue of the former years dashed, but the terror created a sense of anxiety, a feeling that one's position could be lost at any second, that one could be denounced and executed on the fall of a hat. this bred a feeling of self-preservation and narcissism among politicians. and unsurprisingly the threat of death led many to revel in the moment, and spend one's wealth on fleeting desires.
another aspect of the directory was the return of royalists, some of whom would join the Directory and attempt to undermine it from the inside. Indeed, they launched several failed coups in these years, stopped by thermidorean politicians and the likes of Napoleon in the last instance. I can't also fail to mention that jacobinism did survive in a new almost proto-communist form. These elements, too, made several attempts to grab the government. Combine this with royalist landings in Brittany, and the menacing and actual threat of war with the rest of Europe, and you can see that the Thermidorean's hope for a return for order turned out to be anything but.