Girondins on their way to the scaffold during the Reign of Terror

During the French Revolution, two political factions originating from Jacobinism were locked in fierce conflict. The ‘Montagnards’, the radical wing of Jacobinism, and the ‘Girondins’, who had emerged from the more moderate Patriotic Party.
Influential in the Legislative Assembly, the Girondins held ministerial posts in the government of Louis XVI and supported France’s entry into the war against Austria (April 1792). After the arrest of Louis XVI, they remained a significant faction in the new assembly, the National Convention, but faced hostility from the Montagnards, backed by the Paris Commune, which represented the Parisian sans-culottes.
Their conflict ended in June 1793 with the victory of the Montagnards and the political defeat of the Girondins, which paved the way for the Reign of Terror and the death sentence of 21 Girondin deputies, following a sham trial. Forcibly removed from the courtroom, the accused learned that they had been sentenced without having been able to defend themselves.