National Convention - Revolutionary Government

Revolutionary Government

The Convention lasted for three years and came after the National Assembly and Legislative Assembly. The country was at war, and it seemed best to postpone the implementation of the new constitution until peace should be concluded. At the same time, as the Convention prolonged its powers, it extended them considerably in order to meet the pressing dangers which menaced the Republic.

Although it was a legislative assembly, it took over the executive power, entrusting it to its own members. This "confusion of powers", contrary to the philosophical theories – those of Montesquieu especially – which had inspired the Revolution at first, was one of the essential characteristics of the Convention. The series of exceptional measures by which that confusion of powers was created constitutes the "Revolutionary government" in the strict sense of the word, a government which was principally in vigour during the Reign of Terror. There is thus a distinction to be made, discussing the Convention, between these temporary expedients and those measures intended to be permanent.

The first years of the Convention were the height of the importance of the revolutionary political clubs such as the Jacobins and Cordeliers; the informally constituted Girondists, although past the peak of their power, were also an important factor. By the end of the Convention, most prominent members of all of these groups were dead, the bulk of them victims either of the Terror or of the Thermidorian Reaction that brought the Terror to an end.