Jacobin in the context of "Guillotine"

The Republic of Venice was dissolved and dismembered by the French general Napoleon Bonaparte and the Habsburg monarchy on 12 May 1797, ending approximately 1,100 years of its existence. It was the final action of Napoleon's Italian campaign of 1796–1797 before the War of the First Coalition formally ended in October.

In 1796, General Napoleon had been sent by the newly formed French Republic to confront Austria, as part of the Italian front of the French Revolutionary Wars. He chose to go through Venice, which was officially neutral. Reluctantly, the Venetians allowed the formidable French army to enter their country so that it might confront Austria. However, the French covertly began supporting Jacobin revolutionaries within Venice, and the Venetian Senate began quiet preparations for war. The Venetian armed forces were depleted and hardly a match for the battle-tested French or even a local uprising. After the capture of Mantua on 2 February 1797, the French dropped any pretext and overtly called for revolution among the territories of Venice. By 13 March, there was open revolt, with Brescia and Bergamo breaking away. However, pro-Venetian sentiment remained high, and France was forced to reveal its true goals after it provided military support to the underperforming revolutionaries.

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (/ˈroʊbzpjɛər/; French: [maksimiljɛ̃ ʁɔbɛspjɛʁ]; 6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794) was a French lawyer and statesman, widely recognised as one of the most influential figures of the French Revolution. Robespierre fervently campaigned for the voting rights of all men and their unimpeded admission to the National Guard. Additionally, he advocated the right to petition, the right to bear arms in self-defence, and the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.

A radical Jacobin leader, Robespierre was elected as a deputy to the National Convention in September 1792, and in July 1793, he was appointed a member of the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre faced growing disillusionment with other revolutionaries which led him to argue for the harsh measures of the Reign of Terror. Increasingly, members of the Convention turned against him, and accusations of excesses came to a head on 9 Thermidor. Robespierre was arrested and with around 90 others, he was executed without trial.

In the historiography of the French Revolution, the Thermidorian Reaction (French: Réaction thermidorienne or Convention thermidorienne, "Thermidorian Convention") is the common term for the period between the ousting of Maximilien Robespierre on 9 Thermidor II, or 27 July 1794, and the inauguration of the French Directory on 2 November 1795.

The Thermidorian Reaction was named after the month in which the coup took place and was the latter part of the National Convention's rule of France. It was marked by the end of the Reign of Terror, decentralization of executive powers from the Committee of Public Safety, and a turn from the radical Jacobin policies of the Montagnard Convention to more moderate positions.

The Federalist revolts were uprisings that broke out in various parts of France in the summer of 1793, during the French Revolution. They were prompted by resentments in France's provincial cities about increasing centralisation of power in Paris, and increasing radicalisation of political authority in the hands of the Jacobins. In most of the country, the trigger for uprising was the exclusion of the Girondins from the National Convention after the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793. Although they shared common origins and political objectives, the revolts were not centrally organised or well-coordinated. The revolts were put down by the armies of the Convention over the following months. The Reign of Terror was then imposed across France to punish those associated with them and to enforce Jacobin ideology.

The French Revolutionary Wars re-escalated as 1793 began. New powers entered the First Coalition days after the execution of King Louis XVI on 21 January. Spain and Portugal were among these. Then, on 1 February France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands.

Three other powers made inroads into overwhelmingly French-speaking territory in the following months prompting France to amass, domestically, an army of 1,200,000 soldiers. The very ascendant Jacobins executed thousands of proven and suspected dissenters, in the final, climactic phase of the Reign of Terror. Counter-revolutionary forces turned Toulon over to Britain and Spain on 29 August, capturing much of the French navy, a port not retaken by Dugommier (with the assistance of the young Napoleon Bonaparte) until 19 December. Between these months a battle on the northern frontier, in September, was won by France, which saw the mainly British siege of Dunkirk lifted. The year ended with the First French Republic's government, the National Convention, having rebuffed attacks from the south and south-east but having made an unsuccessful counter into Piedmont (toward Turin).

The Girondins (US: /(d)ʒɪˈrɒndɪnz/, French: [ʒiʁɔ̃dɛ̃] ), also called Girondists, were a political group during the French Revolution. From 1791 to 1793, the Girondins were active in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. Together with the Montagnards, they initially were part of the Jacobin movement. They campaigned for the end of the monarchy, but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution, which caused a conflict with the more radical Montagnards. They dominated the movement until their fall in the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, which resulted in the domination of the Montagnards and the purge and eventual mass execution of the Girondins. This event is considered to mark the beginning of the Reign of Terror.

The Girondins were a group of loosely affiliated individuals rather than an organized political party and the name was at first informally applied because the most prominent exponents of their point of view were deputies to the Legislative Assembly from the département of Gironde in southwest France. Girondin leader Jacques Pierre Brissot proposed an ambitious military plan to spread the Revolution internationally, therefore the Girondins were the war party in 1792–1793. Other prominent Girondins included Jean Marie Roland and his wife Madame Roland. They also had an ally in the English-born American activist Thomas Paine.

The Committee of Public Safety (French: Comité de salut public) was a committee of the National Convention which formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the Reign of Terror, a violent phase of the French Revolution. Supplementing the Committee of General Defence, created early January 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was created on 6 April 1793 by the National Convention. It was charged with protecting the new republic against its foreign and domestic enemies, fighting the First Coalition and the Vendée revolt. As a wartime measure, the committee was given broad supervisory and administrative powers over the armed forces, judiciary and legislature, as well as the executive bodies and ministers of the convention.

As the committee, restructured in July, raised the defense (levée en masse) against the monarchist coalition of European nations and counter-revolutionary forces within France, it became more and more powerful. In December 1793, the Convention formally conferred executive power upon the committee. Among the members, the radical Montagnard Jacobin Maximilien Robespierre was one of the most well-known, though he did not have any special powers or privileges. After the arrest and execution of the rival factions of Hébertists and Dantonists, sentiment in the Convention eventually turned against Robespierre, who was executed in July 1794. In the following Thermidorian Reaction, the committee's influence diminished after 15 months and it disappeared on the same day as the National Convention, which was 25 October 1795, but it probably continued till the end of the month.