Thank you for listening to The Rest is History.
For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much -loved chat community, go to therestishistory .com and join the club.
That is therestishistory .com.
Today at T -Mobile, I'm joined by a special co -anchor.
What up, everybody?
It's your boy, Big Snoop Deal Double Cheat.
Snoop, where can people go to find great deals?
Head to T -Mobile .com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us.
Plus four lines for 25 bucks.
That's quite a deal, Snoop.
And when you switch to T -Mobile, you can save versus the other big guys comparable plans plus streaming.
Respect. Only up out of here.
See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T -Mobile .com slash switch.
Apple Intelligence requires iOS 8 .1 or later.
I'm ready for my life to change.
ABC Tonight. American Idol returns.
Give it your all good luck.
Come out with a golden ticket.
Let's hear it. This is a man's word.
I've never seen anything like it.
And a new chapter begins.
We're going to Hollywood!
Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan, and Ryan Seacrest on American Idol.
Season premiere tonight, 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
This episode is brought to you by Shopify.
Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet.
Shop Pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer cards going abandoned and more sales going cha -ching.
So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are.
Visit Shopify .com to upgrade your selling today.
Citizens, the National Convention trusting in your courage Hereby accepts your oaths of loyalty The liberty of your homeland will be the reward for your efforts And while you defend your liberty with the force of your arms The National Convention will defend it by the force of the laws.
The monarchy is hereby abolished.
So that Dominic was yet another person shouting loudly, one of many in our ongoing history of the French Revolution.
and it was specifically jérôme pétion who was president of the national convention on the 21st of september 1792 and obviously the abolition of the french monarchy after centuries and centuries and centuries i mean this is a seismic moment isn't it in the uh in the history of france but also of europe it's a massive moment tom and i think the only uh voice that really is appropriate it to the moment is the one you did there I mean because I detected more than a hint of our old friend Jeremy Corbyn is that right yes because I think that um Jeremy Corbyn he would definitely be on the side of abolishing
the monarchy had he been in the French Revolution I think he probably regrets that he wasn't part of the French Revolution I imagine that is well he's always got cable streets hasn't he so yes this is a massive moment in French and European history isn't it because the French monarchy I guess one of the oldest in Europe if you take it back to clavings who we talked about just before christmas didn't we so yeah i mean that's the end of that story yes it is so it's um it sends shockwaves across europe we will be talking about what it means and of course we'll be talking about what it means for louis the 16th
um and we'll get to his story in our final episode nothing good nothing good but before we get to the moment when they actually do abolish the monarchy we should set the scene a little bit tom we love setting the scene on this podcast well we did in the previous episode we set it in the context of they're all women didn't we but shall we we go back to the lads what are the lads up to let's set it in the context of prussians and cannons oh prussians so um the situation in paris people will remember from the last episode but one paris is preparing for an attack there are church bells ringing there
are cannons on the river seine that are calling people to prepare for war the streets are packed with volunteers who are streaming towards the gates of the city to the front people are pulling down the grills of churches they're digging up their coffins to use as lead for musket shots there are everyday contingents of troops marching through the National Assembly singing patriotic songs and shouting slogans and stuff so it's all excitement Jeremy Corbyn would actually have loved it but it's not a Sandbrook vibe is it not really a Sandbrook vibe I would say although slightly more Sandbrookian somewhere out
there Yes, the doer, defenders of reaction.
Yes, the woods and valleys to the east.
My people are the Prussians, the Duke of Brunswick, the real hero of this story.
So on the 20th of September, so that's the day before the reading that you began with, the new National Convention meets for the first time.
Now, some listeners, if they've made it all the way through the series, maybe like I've lost track of all the different assemblies and whatnot.
So if you remember, there had been the stormy of the Tuileries in August, and since then France has been in political limbo, and they have basically summoned yet another semi -constituent assembly.
This one has unlimited powers to remake the nation, and it is by far the most democratic yet.
So all men over the age of 21, except for servants, can vote.
Because we talked about that last time, and you said that you weren't in favor of it.
Yeah, I don't agree with this at all.
I'm with the Duke of Brunswick on this, I think it's a dangerous innovation.
Failed experiment. Yes, exactly.
So it's a very complicated electoral system, a series of electors, and kind of almost like an electoral college, and then they choose the 749 deputies.
But as you said, Tom, the turnout is really poor.
So in some places it might be a fifth, but generally it's probably one in 10.
and the reason for that i think is there's a war on so it's you know uh people have got other things in their mind but it's also harvest time um so in the countryside people have definitely got other prices and they actually a lot of people are now completely confused they're probably even more confused than listeners to the podcast they have no idea what's going on they they don't know anybody is yeah well yes exactly and also on top of that um there's quite a lot of intimidation isn't there there is that's another aspect to it of course remember we did that episode about mad elections in britain where you
know people people being carried on chairs and whatnot and like lots of throwing of cats well similarly in france for the national convention the voting is public and it is oral you vote you know you say who you want to vote for so you if you want to vote in favor of a royalist party you're basically standing up and saying i am a reactionary traitor to La Patrie in front of all your fellow villagers.
I mean, it's not who are like holding clubs and stuff.
Dead cats at the ready.
Yeah. Leering at you in a sinister way.
So clearly a lot of people just don't want to turn out.
So in Paris, the voting has coincided with the September massacres.
That's what we began this little kind of mini series with.
So the atmosphere is very grim because as people are voting, there is the kind of.
Stepping over corpses.
Right. The dull sound of hacking coming from inside the walls of the converted convent just down the road.
So what is worse, the second round of voting is held at the Jacobin Club.
So if you are a royalist or reactionary, this is not the ideal place to go and to sort of pin your colours to the mast.
And that round of voting, the Jacobin Club, they've got a lot of kind of electors, but they start by agreeing that they'll purge all electors who are fouillants, who are moderates, or who are royalists so 200 electors are kicked out there's 800 left and they vote for 24 deputies and of those deputies a lot of those are very big revolutionary names so the top of the list number one their top choice for paris is rob spear and then you've got people at donton desmoulins sonterre the butcher the sans -culotte who'd led the attack on the tuileries marat for the first time, this firebrand radical journalist,
he is going to have a seat in the convention.
So there will be a place for the most extreme, the most violent, the most paranoid revolutionary sentiments.
And there's a place, isn't there, for the worst man in the entire history of the French Revolution, the erstwhile Duke of Orléans, the cousin of Louis XVI, Philip Egalité.
I mean, we've talked about this before.
This is Prince Harry calling himself Harry Diversity or something, renaming himself.
just and actually and no harry equity harry equity yeah while living in his palace yeah that's what he'd call himself yeah harry anyway so they everybody goes to the twillery on the 20th of september to register and they do so in an atmosphere of apocalyptic dread because they know that 140 miles away the prussians are there and that their troops their francis troops have basically caught up with the prussians and the duke of brunswick just to remind people, has said that he is going to inflict a biblical fate on Paris.
He has, yeah. A vengeance which will be forever remembered, or words to that effect.
So yes. Now of these guys who've turned up to register, about half of them are lawyers.
We've got a lot of lawyers who are members of Arrested History Club, so they will love all this.
They will say this is a very good sign.
There's also loads of doctors, loads of civil servants, loads of actors, journalists they're very young by and large about half of them are under 40 about a quarter of them are under 35 the younger they are the more committed and more militant they are by and large so you know these aren't a lot of them have got experience in kind of local governments and stuff but these aren't incredibly seasoned people they are excited and excitable i think it's fair to say kind of quite a student union vibe definitely i mean this is the birth of the student union really isn't it?
I think it probably is.
Motions, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, they love it.
And they're there all night, you know, just endlessly arguing and showing off in the student union.
And drinking. Exactly.
Next day, 21st of September, they assemble at the riding school.
France, a land of contrasts.
Anyway, the earth is literally trembling.
Goethe can't believe it.
What scenes. This goes on for hours and hours and hours.
Then the Russians eventually say, okay enough we've definitely softened the french up now and bronzer extends his infantry advancing in these kind of long lines blue uniforms they're advancing up the hill they're convinced that the french are about to collapse but no general kellerman takes off his hat with his tricolor cockade and he lifts it up on his sword and he shouts vive la nation and then the french will start singing the satirah one of their revolutionary songs but interestingly not the marseillais which apparently there's no evidence that they say that no so that may be another uh pointer
to the fact that these are not uh they're kind of the radicals the uh the cutting edge revolutionaries as yet right exactly i think the revolutions would love to rewrite this this is some color singing the marseillaise and indeed they do in subsequent years but that's not true at all so they're blasting away the prussians keep coming the prussians can't believe the french are so full of vim and vigor and then basically the prussians waver and brunswick says call them back on you know enough and the french against all the odds and all expectations because they performed so abysmally at the beginning
of the war they have actually they haven't quite won but they have survived to fight another day so it's kind of scraping a result in the final match of a group round in the world cup kind of a bit like that uh i think it is a bit like that but after you've It's the draw that you need that keeps you alive in the group, I think is what it is.
But because it's come unexpectedly… It's fated as a great victory.
It's fated as a great victory.
Exactly. That's exactly what it is.
The Prussians actually have killed more Frenchmen than the French have killed Prussians.
But for the first time, the Prussians have been stopped.
They haven't been able to dislodge the French.
And the reactions of the two sides could not be more different.
So the Prussians are absolutely gutted.
They can't believe it.
doesn't Goethe he makes a famous comment uh in a very grandiloquent way saying that this is what is it something like gentlemen you have witnessed the the dawning of a new age I felt you were gearing up to do him as Jeremy Corbyn there which would have been a shame so Goethe says there's a wonderful scene it's the great vanity of great writers he says they all sat alone around this fire they're already miserable they couldn't meet each other's eye and he says everybody asked me what i thought about the events of the day as and i quote my little sayings had often interested or amused our little
company and i think what an insufferable bore he must bring to all the other soldiers so he said to everybody from this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world's history and you can all say you are present at its birth now so i'll tell you something i don't believe he did say that i think that's far too good to be true and he writes this a considerable time afterwards so i'm suspicious of goethe here i think he's playing fast and loose with the uh the facts it's too good that's what writers do dominic it is it is what they do anyway for the french this is massive so that there's
a peasant soldier who writes to his father and he says um been electrified with a new courage that'll make despots tremble oh liberty oh equality oh my country what a wonderful transformation is like this and to theo i mean if peasants are writing like that after the battle then maybe goethe is saying that kind of thing maybe tom i mean maybe they're all you know massive effusions they all feel that this is titanic i don't know i just yeah no fair that's fair so lots of people say gosh this is a tremendous victory for the for the new republic for our revolutionary virtue and when And of course,
when the news reaches the convention, they're all waving their hats in the air and delighted.
And they say, absolutely brilliant.
History has begun again.
It is a new chapter in the story of the human race.
I've got a question, which is that the news reaches Paris after the monarchy has been abolished.
Is there a feeling that this victory has been won because France is now a republic?
Do you think there's something like that?
Yeah, we've got rid of the king and the traitors.
And immediately we start winning.
Yeah, as soon as we took those blokes into the courtyards of various prisons and dispensed summary justice, as soon as we locked the king up in the temple fortress, surprise, surprise, we start winning battles.
Quadrat demonstrandum, the king was a traitor and was undermining the war effort.
And that is what happened with the first democracy when Athens establishes its democracy, having thrown out its tyrants.
They immediately start winning battles and presumably people would have been aware of this.
Maybe this is an ironclad law of history, Tom, or maybe it's just a coincidence anyway.
Well, it is because they actually win the battle before the Proclamation of the Republic, right?
Yeah, what I'm saying, they don't really win the battle, it's just a draw.
So you would think that this would fill them all with great, you know, bonhomie, sense of harmony, come on, let's bury that ideological hatchet and work together for the common good, you would be wrong.
Because actually, from the beginning, I know you wouldn't be wrong, Tom, I know you know that what's going to happen.
The convention is riven by the most unbelievable faction fighting.
So basically, there are three blocks, and maybe we don't need to spend an eternity discussing them, but a little bit of context.
First of all, you have Briso, And the Gironde.
So if you remember, these are not really a Parisian party.
They're a party of the kind of big provincial cities like Bordeaux.
Because that's where Gironde comes from, isn't it?
It's the Northern Bank.
Exactly. They're all hanging around having dinner with Madame Roland in her apartment and swapping witty aphorisms.
And they've basically got about 150 deputies in the convention that will always support them.
And they can call on some independence to give them a majority.
Then you have the great mass of people who are kind of in the middle.
they are called the they're either called the marsh which seems to very you know it's not very i wouldn't want to be part of the marsh the per centrist was that centrist ads the cent oh right okay very good yeah well they're not really centrist ads are they because everybody's now on the left but um they are the marsh or the the plane people call them uh because they sit in the middle of the hall and they basically you know they can lean one way or the other but at this point they are generally swayed by the girondin and then you have the radicals on the far left they're called the mountain the montagna and they
sit high up in the left of the hall hence the mountain there's about 200 of them 150 to 200 they're very parisian robespierre danton marat all the famous guys the ones that people have heard of um they dominate the jacobin club now because the girondin don't bother turning up to it and they also appeal to two groups very young deputies are much more likely to be Montagnar.
They're likely to be kind of more impatient, more ambitious, more radical.
And this is the first manifestation of a sense that runs right the way up to the present day, that the young are...
