Revolt of Lyon against the National Convention
The city was visited by the keen eyed English documentary writer Arthur Young in December of that year: he estimated that 20,000 people were living from charity and starving.
[2] These social conflicts bound together the interests of the old royalist elite under the leadership of Jacques Imbert-Colomès with those of the revolutionary patriots surrounding the local industrialist turned politician Jean-Marie Roland.
These were established in opposition to more bourgeois revolutionary societies such as "The association of friends of the revolution" ("Société des Amis de la Révolution"), membership of which was restricted to "active citizens", and the "Friends of the constitution" ("Amis de la Constitution"), which was affiliated to the network of Jacobin Clubs springing up around France in the wake of the revolution.
Confronted by economic stagnation, he persuaded the assembly to agree an interest free loan of three million francs to be divided between the citizens in proportion to their wealth.
"[5] The combination of Joseph Chalier's extreme radicalism and the confused environment of Lyons contributed towards the general Jacobin population losing control over city affairs.
Mayor Nivière-Chol resigned again, and was replaced by the moderate Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert who was elected in a contest against an ally of Chalier's named Antoine-Marie Bertrand [fr].
As news came through of the treason (in Jacobin eyes) of Dumouriez, Gilibert's position became unsustainable and he was succeeded as mayor on 9 March 1793 by Bertrand: this ushered in a period of 80 days during which the city hall operated under the control of Chalier's faction.
Meanwhile, in Paris, the Girondist deputy Chasset [fr] persuaded the revolutionary government to annul the laws originating with locally based extraordinary "tribunals".
[7] On 29 May, a meeting at the Arsenal building of the various sectional delegates decided to replace the radical municipal government, which in military terms was only lightly defended.
The newly extremist national government saw the events in Lyon as part of a more widespread Girondist revolt threatening the authority of central government: Such concerns proved well justified a couple of weeks later, as during June 1793, 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 municipality also had command of an army of approximately 10,000 which, though largely popular in its composition, was commanded by royalists led by the Count of Précy, with an aristocratic group of officers including Stanislas Marie Adelaide, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, Virieu, Pantigny, Nolhac, Villeneuve, La Roche d'Angly and de Melon.
[7] The Army of the Alps, under the command of Kellermann, was engaged in a campaign in Savoy against the Piedmontese when it received the assignment to head west in order to re-establish central government authority in Lyon, and was able to turn its attention to its new mission only a month later, on 10 August 1793.
Just over a week later, on 21 August, the Paris government sent to Lyon a high level team that included Georges Couthon, a leading member of the Committee of Public Safety and a close colleague of Robespierre himself.
[7] The next day, at dawn, Précy escaped via a district in the north-west of Lyon called Vaise, and went into hiding, turning up shortly afterwards in Switzerland.
On 12 October Barère, a leading member of the government, put a decree through the convention that Lyon was to lose its name, and would instead be known as Ville-Affranchie (Liberated City) and would be destroyed.
Three days later the National Convention itself decided to create a five-member "Extraordinary Commission" which they tasked with imposing "immediate military punishment" on the "criminal counter-revolutionaries of Lyon".
It was presided over by General Parein, and decided early on to substitute collective shootings for the individual firing squad killings and guillotinings which had been imposed by the earlier commissions.
[8] These massacres have been blamed both on Commission Chairman Parein and on the government representatives Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois and Joseph Fouché, whom the Convention had appointed the previous month when they recalled Couthon to Paris.
The victims of the commission were a diverse and in many cases distinguished group, including a former president of the department called Debrost, a former member of the Revolutionary Constituent Assembly called Merle, the architect Morand, the executioner who had executed Chalier, the Canon Roland, the Hôtel-Dieu Head Surgeon Pierre Bouchet,[9] Feuillants, Rolandins, priests and other members of religious orders, merchants and manufacturers along with other aristocrats and commoners.
The list also includes counter-revolutionaries sent to the Commission at Lyon from Feurs, from Montbrison, from Saint-Étienne and from the neighboring departments of Loire, Ain, Saône-et-Loire, Isère and Allier.
Although Lyon continued to lead France in industry after the unsuccessful attempt to quell federalist sentiments, the silk trade was certainly affected, and local artisans needed to rebuild.
[12] Finally, as well as disrupting the silk trade, the revolt caused a lasting rift between the people of Lyon and the radical government of Paris.
[14] This anti-Parisian, federalist sentiment which had existed before the revolt, and its subsequent violent suppression, persisted in the city, as many in Lyon continued to see Paris as too radically revolutionary.
[15] Although revolutionary intervention was meant as a way to increase fervor for the new republic and its politics, it only succeeded in creating a more strongly polarized environment through the violent suppression of the revolt.
