Prairial uprising
| The insurrection of 1 Prairial Year III | |||||
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| Part of the French Revolution | |||||
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The insurrection of 1 Prairial Year III was a popular revolt in Paris on 20 May 1795 against the policies of the Thermidorian Convention. It was the last and one of the most remarkable and stubborn popular revolts of the French Revolution. After their defeat in Prairial, the sans-culottes ceased to play any effective part until the next round of revolutions in the early nineteenth century. To a lesser extent, these movements are also important in that they mark the final attempt of the remnants of the Mountain and the Jacobins to recapture their political ascendancy in the Convention and the Paris Sections; this time, though they gave some political direction to the popular movement which arose in the first place in protest against worsening economic conditions, their intervention was timorous and halfhearted and doomed the movement to failure.
The abandonment of the controlled economy provoked a frightful economic catastrophe. Prices soared and the rate of exchange fell. The Republic was condemned to massive inflation and its currency was ruined. In Thermidor, Year III, assignats were worth less than 3 percent of their face value. Neither peasants nor merchants would accept anything but coin. The debacle was so swift that economic life seemed to come to standstill.
The insurmountable obstacles raised by the premature reestablishment of economic freedom reduced the government to a state of extreme weakness. Lacking resources, it became almost incapable of administration, and the crisis generated troubles that nearly brought its collapse. The sans-culottes, who had unprotestingly permitted the Jacobins to be proscribed, began to regret the regime of the Year II, now that they themselves without work and without bread.
A pamphlet, published in the evening of 30 Floreal (19 May 1795) and entitled Insurrection of the People to obtain bread and reconquer their right, gave the signal for the movement. This pamphlet, which was known as The Plan of Insurrection, provided the popular agitators with definite objectives, the first of which was expressed in a single word: Bread! Its political aims were expounded at greater length: the putting into practice of the Constitution of 1793, the election of a legislative assembly which should take the place of the Convention, the release of the imprisoned patriots. The people were asked to march in a body to the Convention on 1 Preirial. There can be no doubt about the preparation of the insurrection by the sans-culottes leaders. As early as 29 Germinal (18 April), Rovère had reported a plot to the Convention. As for the deputies of the Left, their attitude on the first of Prairial showed that they looked favorably on the movement, yet they did nothing to organize or direct it.
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