How can we evoke without transmitting commonplaces this singular moment of the French Revolution that those who survived, accomplices or victims, subsequently called the Terror? This is the bet offered by the Musée Carnavalet exhibition “Paris 1793-1794, a revolutionary year”. Full of passions, new aspirations and contradictions, Year II deserves to be measured by both its audacity and its hardness.
To better allow this immersion, the commissioners chose to hit hard by presenting from the beginning the destiny reserved for the Constitution of 1791, associated with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. of 1789. Bombarded on May 3, 1793 by the “national sheep”, this mass that destroyed the project of a constitutional monarchy condemned to death for the taking of the Tuileries, on August 10, 1792, this ephemeral political government wanted to be replaced by the first republican Constitution, adopted on June 24 – that is, the 6th of Messidor Year I – through an unprecedented popular consultation, the first referendum ever organized. But the ideal score, sacrificed in the name of the state of war, will not be set to music starting in August and finally suspended by decree on October 10 in favor of a state of exception. “revolutionary until peace”.
What draws attention throughout the visit is the effervescence of the time, its creative energy, the tension that accompanies breakups and the resurgence of utopias. Proof of this is the avalanche of images that recount Year II, from allegories, often misleading – women who embody freedom or reason cannot make us forget that supposedly universal suffrage is only for men – to caricatures as radical as explicit. If the shadow cast by the guillotine that devours both the enemies of the regime and its own defenders marks the imagination, the Convention strives to offer other references of the Republic, through painting: David celebrating the martyrs (Le Pelletier, Marat) or the festive one. commemorations, such as that of unity and indivisibility with the Feast of the Reunion, on August 10, 1793, as well as urban planning projects, aimed at erasing royal references and imposing new civic values, fraternity or equality.
Break as much as innovate
But to stick to the urban inscription of the new era would be to ignore the profound change that is taking place. Evoking the figure of the sans-culotte who sets an ideal without defining a social class is less important than understanding who these people are. And if foreigners such as the homeless, servants or former slaves (the abolition was decreed on February 4, 1794) seemed to gain legitimacy, women, despite the struggles of Olympe de Gouges and a marked presence in the sections and clubs, remain excluded.
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