Height: 57cm (22.5in)

Parade drum with wood hoops with dog tooth decoration, rope tensioning system and metal cylinder emblazoned with Revolutionary symbols including a Phrygian cap and inscription ‘… Club des Girondins …’

The present drum celebrates the Girondins, the moderate faction engaged in the political discourse of the Legislative Assembly from October 1791 to September 1792. During the reign of terror of 1793-94 they were purged from the National Convention, imprisoned and executed. After the fall of Robespierre, however, they made their way back into the Convention and became celebrated as martyrs of liberty.

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Lawyers, intellectuals and journalists, the Girondins attracted a following of businessmen, merchants, industrialists, and financiers to their loose coalition within the Legislative Assembly - some of whom were originally from the département of the Gironde. They stood in opposition to the Montagnards (deputies of the left, mainly newly elected from Paris, who headed the Jacobin dictatorship of 1793-94). The antagonism between the two groups was marked by bitter personal hatreds but also by opposing social interests. The Girondins had strong support in provincial cities and among local government officials, while the Montagnards had the backing of the Paris sans-culottes (extreme radical revolutionaries). 

The Girondins, however, undermined their own position during the trial of Louis XVI, when its leaders met with the king in secret. Among the first to fall foul of the extremists was Madame Roland in whose salon the Girondins regularly met. The publicists Marat and Hébert conducted a smear campaign against her. In June 1793, she was the first Girondin to be arrested during the Terror and was guillotined a few months later. Brissot, the nominal leader of the group, followed soon her to the scaffold soon after.