Paine’s First ‘Girondin’ Moment?

Abstract

This substantial chapter attempts to unravel the key issue of Paine’s partisanship in and outside the Convention. It questions Paine’s potential ‘Girondism’ as this category is itself problematic. The chapter addresses the perception of Paine by the opponents of ‘Girondins’, as well as the way the latter constructed and sometimes instrumentalized Paine. Even if after the spring 1793 and the anti-‘Girondin’ purge Paine seemed to have kept the respect of non-‘Girondin’ or downright ‘Montagnard’ Conventionnels such as Danton, Saint-Just and Barère, his arrest in December 1793, at Robespierre’s request, was part of the policy of the Comité de salut public which consisted of ensuring the perfect orthodoxy of revolutionaries which it felt foreign-born citizens like Paine could not share. Using Paine as a kind of symbol of what historians have believed the Gironde was turns out in some respects to follow in the footsteps of the revolutionaries of the time, who tried to fit Paine into their views or were angered by his failure to endorse them. Even if Paine clearly had intellectual affinities with major ‘Girondin’ figures and had a ‘Girondin’ moment, this chapter concludes that he should not be considered the touchstone of ‘Girondism’.