the revolutionary tribunals, approximately 8 percent were nobles, 6 percent were members of the clergy, 14 percent belonged to the middle class, and 70 percent were workers or peasants charged with draft dodging, desertion, hoarding, rebellion, and various other crimes. Of these social groupings, the clergy of the Roman Catholic church suffered proportionately the greatest loss. Anticlerical hatred found further expression in the abolition, in October 1793, of the Julian calendar, which was replaced by a Republican calendar. As a part of its revolutionary program, the Committee of Public Safety, under the leadership of Robespierre, attempted to remake France in accordance with its concepts of humanitarianism, social idealism, and patriotism. Striving to establish a “Republic of Virtue,” the committee stressed devotion to the republic and to victory and instituted measures against corruption and hoarding. In addition, on November 23, 1793, the Commune of Paris, in a measure soon copied by authorities elsewhere in France, closed all churches in the city and began actively to sponsor the revolutionary religion known as the Cult of Reason. Initiated at the insistence of the radical leader Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and his extremist colleagues (among them Hebert), this act accentuated growing differences between the centrist Jacobins, led by Robespierre, and the fanatical Hebertists, a powerful force in the convention and in the Parisian government. The tide of battle against the allied coalition had turned, meanwhile, in favor of France. Initiating a succession of important victories, General Jean Baptiste Jourdan defeated the Austrians at Wattignies-La-Victoi on October 16, 1793. By the end of the year, the invaders in the east had been driven across the Rhine, and Toulon had been liberated. Of equal significance, the Committee of Public Safety had largely crushed the insurrections of the Royalists and the Girondists. Struggle ...
