Girondin

Girondin

https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/1091/

1091

A political faction of the Legislative Assembly and National Convention. The Girondins’ name derived from the fact that many prominent deputies in the faction came from the region around Bordeaux, which was the department of the Gironde. However, the term was not commonly used by contemporaries, who denoted this group by the various leaders, most of whom supported liberal economics and representative democracy, not the direct democracy favored by the Paris sections and the Mountain (see Montagnard and Mountain). Some have questioned the coherence of this group, but current scholarship supports the notion of a loose collaboration. The Girondins championed war against Austria in the fall of 1791. As France moved toward war in April 1792, the journalist-deputy Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a prominent Girondin, became the most powerful figure in the Legislative Assembly, and his faction dominated the ministries. After the declaration of the republic, the Girondins slowly fell out of favor in Paris, particularly during the trial of the King in the late fall of 1792. They also lost control of the Convention to the growing “Montagnard” faction. In the spring the Paris sections provoked a crisis in which they forced the National Convention to expel twenty-nine Girondins between 31 May and 2 June 1793, and to destroy the movement politically. During the Terror many more were guillotined, and the faction was suppressed. Many Girondins returned to the Convention after 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) and contributed to the vindictive divisions of the republicans that ultimately allowed Bonaparte to seize power.