The Mountain

The Montagnards ( French La Montagne ), whose members were called Montagnards, during the French Revolution was a political grouping in the National Convention. The term was indeed first used during the sessions of the Legislative Assembly for the deputies to the highest rows of seats, but only came into general use in 1793. The Montagnards were mainly from the Jacobin Club, founded in 1789, and the politically like-minded Cordeliers.

At the opening of the Convention the Montagnard group comprised men with very different views, and the coherence that resulted in the sequence, was rather to the opposition of its leaders against the leaders of the Girondists as for deeper political unity of the two groups. This comparison group was due to their seating position indicated in the lower ranks Marais. The main difference was that the Girondists mainly theorists and thinkers included, while the party of the Mountain consisted almost exclusively of men of action. The deputies of the Gironde also advocated a more moderate, bourgeois- republican policy that their goals - had already achieved - such as the legal equality of all citizens. In the Mountain party, however much more radical views and aims were represented, in whose interest it was to further advance the revolution. The aim was for example a social and political equality, the securities used in the first constitutional concessions to the " fourth estate " went far.

During their confrontation with the Girondists, the Montagnards gained the upper hand in the Jacobin Club. For some time Jacobins and Montagnards were synonymous terms. The mountain party was successively under the influence of such men as Marat, Danton and Robespierre.

With the convening of the National Convention in 1793, the Mountain Party, however, was already beginning to decay; 1790, the radical Cordeliers had already been formed under the leadership of Marat, Danton and Desmoulins as a sub- fraction. 1793 split these further on in the ultra-left enragés, from which later emerged the Hébertists, and the Indulgenten, the increasingly to moderation and termination of Terror under Danton and Desmoulins calling. After the political elimination of the Girondins and the execution of many of its leaders, the fragile unity of the Mountain broke up for good. With support Danton, Robespierre brought the ultra-left Hébertists in March 1794 to the scaffold, a few days later, he turned against the more moderate Dantonists and arresting Danton and his closest confidant on March 30, 1794 and executed on April 5, 1794.

Long but not Robespierre led the Mountain Party. After his execution (28 July 1794) the remains of the mountain party lost power in the Convention. The remaining Montagnards ( the so-called " summit " ) were arrested as a result of the uprisings of Germinal and Prairial 1795, executed in part. The entry into force of the directorial marked the end of that political group.