What is "girondins"

The Girondins or Girondists were members of the Gironde, a political group operating in France from 1791 to 1795 during the French Revolution. The Girondins were active within the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. They were part of the Jacobin movement, though not every Girondin was a member of the Jacobin Club.

The Girondins campaigned for the end of the monarchy but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution. They came into conflict with The Mountain (Montagnards), a radical faction within the Jacobin Club. This conflict eventually led to the fall of the Girondins and their mass execution, the beginning of the Reign of Terror. The Girondins comprised 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 department of Gironde in southwest France. The term became standard with Lamartine's history in 1847.

Girondin leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot proposed an ambitious military plan to spread the Revolution—one that Napoleon later achieved. He called on the Convention to dominate Western Europe by conquering the Rhineland, Poland, and Holland, with a goal of creating a protective ring of satellite republics in Britain, Spain and Italy by 1795. The Girondins were thus the war party in 1792–93. Other prominent Girondins included Jean Marie Roland and his wife Madame Roland. They had an ally in the English-born, sometime American, activist Thomas Paine. Brissot and Madame Roland were executed and Jean Roland (who had gone into hiding) committed suicide when he learned what had transpired. Paine was arrested and imprisoned but narrowly escaped execution. The famous painting Death of Marat depicts the killing of the fiery radical journalist (and denouncer of the Girondins) Jean-Paul Marat by the Girondin sympathizer Charlotte Corday, who was executed.