In many parts of the country, local and departmental governments were still dominated by the same notable families who had run them before the Revolution, and they often held Girondist, or even royalist, political views.

[2]: 154 This led to violent confrontations, exacerbated by underlying social conflicts, in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nantes and Rouen,[5][3] towns where each faction had a strong social base—part of the middle classes and the urban poor supported the Jacobins, while Girondin support was strong among the more prosperous bourgeoisie[6]: 181  and those elements of the urban poor affected by unemployment or hostile to the anticlerical measures of the Convention.

Meanwhile, several of the Girondin députés escaped house arrest and fled to join the armed groups which most Norman and Breton départements had begun to assemble in order to raise a revolt against the Convention.

Meanwhile, Jacques Pierre Brissot went to Moulins, Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne to Nîmes, François Trophime Rebecqui to Marseille, and Jean-Baptiste Birotteau and Charles Antoine Chasset [fr] to Lyon.

However, they lacked the numbers in the smaller towns to break to hegemony of the radical political clubs that wanted to remain loyal to the Convention, heeding appeals for the unity of patriots against counter-revolution and invasion, and welcoming the popular new Constitution of Year I.

On 9 June, the two représantants en mission from the Convention in Normandy, Gilbert Romme and Prieur de la Côte d'Or, were arrested in Caen by Federalists and held hostage for the duration of the rebellion against the safety of the proscribed Girondin leaders.

[3] On 13 June, led by Buzot and Gorsas, Eure gave the signal for insurrection, declaring that the Convention was no longer a free body, calling for the muster of 4,000 men to march on Paris and sending commissioners out to neighbouring départements to encourage them to rise, too.

In Caen, now the headquarters of the Federalist revolt in the West, Buzot, Guadet, Pétion, Barbaroux, Louvet, Salle and other Girondins formed a central assembly for resistance to oppression, swearing hatred of anarchists and promising to maintain equality, unity, and the indivisibility of the Republic.

They appointed General Georges Félix de Wimpffen, who had successfully defended Thionville against the Duke of Brunswick the year before, as commander of their départemental militias.

On 29 July, Gilbert Romme and Prieur de la Côte d'Or were freed unharmed, and Caen opened its gates to the Convention army on 2 August, effectively bringing the revolt to an end there.

[12] Romme and Prieur de la Côte d'Or ensured that the local clubs were not suppressed[13]—indeed, during the Reign of Terror, there were no executions at all in Caen.

[15] In Brittany, the fleeing Girondin leaders arrived at Quimper on 8 August[16] but found little support for their insurrection, even among a peasantry with strong monarchist tendencies and a hatred of the levée en masse.

There were no executions under his command, although counter-revolutionaries were locked up in various local prisons—the most "dangerous" being confined to Mont Saint Michel for maximum security—and others sent to Paris for trial.

As in Marseilles, most of the sections supported the Girondins, but a small and determined group of Jacobins was intent on taking power in the city under their charismatic but divisive leader, Joseph Chalier.

[21] In the days following the arrest of the Girondin deputés in Paris, the Convention saw developments in Lyon as part of a more widespread revolt threatening the authority of central government.

Indeed, within the month the municipal leaders in Lyon were linking up both with neighbouring departments and with other "insurgent cities" in the French south, Marseille, Nîmes and Bordeaux.

The Jacobin repression led to the deaths of 115 of the 400 businessmen who ran silk spinning concerns,[24] while many of the master craftsmen in the sector also abandoned the city.

[25] Given the scale and ferocity of the Convention's reprisals against Lyon, it is not surprising that during the First White Terror widespread hatred of Jacobins led to many acts of collective violence.

[7][28] After the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 in Paris, the Girondins in Marseille created a general committee of sections which broke up the Jacobin club and imprisoned its leaders, before trying and executing them in July.

[7] Drôme remained loyal to the Convention, with the Jacobins in Valence preventing the Federalists from Gard from moving north to join up with Lyon on 24, 25 and 26 June.

Thanks to their assistance, a detachment from the Army of the Alps under General Carteaux, sent by the Convention to restore order, was able to enter Avignon,[8] where the Jacobin town authorities were re-established on 25 July.

The city was renamed "ville sans nom" ("town with no name") on 28 August and Carteroux set up a revolutionary tribunal that began the Terror in Provence.

[32] Similar revenge actions took place in other former Federalist towns across the South East - for example on 27 June 1795 members of the former Revolutionary Tribunal at Orange were killed and thrown into the Rhône.

[33] The arrival of Carteaux at Marseille was followed by a royalist takeover in Toulon; the new leaders of the city then surrendered it to the British and their Spanish and Neapolitan allies on 18 August.

[6]: 181–184 The differences of view between Bordeaux and Paris were sufficiently deep that the city did not wait until the arrest of the Gironde deputés to declare itself insurrectionary.

[6]: 195 Faced with this abject military failure, on 2 August the Federalist Commission populaire dissolved itself, four days before it was outlawed by the Convention and its members declared traitors.

There they were soon joined by two new commissioners, Jean-Lambert Tallien and fr:Guillaume Chaudron-Rousseau, who brought instructions from Paris to impose revolutionary order in no uncertain terms.

As hunger spread in Bordeaux, the radical section Francklin took the lead, on 9 September, by demanding that the Convention's decrees against the Federalist authorities of the city be enforced.

With the city now securely in the hands of politically reliable elements, the four Convention commissioners were able to re-enter Bordeaux on 16 October, this time accompanied by 3,000 infantry and cavalry.

Armed with dictatorial powers, the représentants en mission managed to put down unrest, but in the process the decentralisation intended in the Constitution of 1791 could not be realised.