Girondins

   During the revolution of 1789, the Girondins were a political group, many of whose leaders were deputies to the National Assembly from the Gironde region near Bordeaux (hence the name). The best-known were charles barbaroux, jacques brissot (the Girondins were also called "Brissotins"), François buzot, the marquis of condorcet, armand gensonné, marguerite élie guadet, maximin isnard, jean-baptiste louvet de couvray, roland de la platière and his wife, mme roland, and pierre vergniaud. The Girondins were not a party or the spokespersons for a particular social class but a group of individuals, often journalists, lawyers, or merchants, who held especially to the idea of federalism. They were usually members of the jacobin club until September 1792 and sat to the left in the Legislative Assembly, where they were in opposition to the constitutional monarchists (the feuillants) and where they voted for the declaration of war on Austria (April 1792). August 10, 1792 (the fall of the monarchy), the Girondins would dominate the National Convention, where they sat on the right and where they never ceased to strongly oppose the montagnards, early on. The Girondins insisted that the Revolution had achieved its objectives (the end of despotism and the monarchy) and believed that it should be prevented from going further. The trial of King louis XVI, which the Girondins tried to stop, the generalization of the war with aristocratic Europe, the defeats of the Revolutionary armies, the threat of counterrevolution, and the nation's economic and social problems increased the conflict between the Montagnards and the Girondins and led to the fall of the latter under the pressure of the sans-culottes led by the Hébertists and the enragés (May 31-June 2, 1793). Certain Girondin leaders who, because they feared a popular Parisian dictatorship (most of the Montagnard deputies [the Mountain] were elected from Paris), appealed to local administrations and tried in particular provinces to direct a federalist insurrection against the Mountain, but without success. Twenty-one of them were condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined (late october 1793).

   See also dumouriez, charles-françois du périer; hébert, jacques-rené.