Ventose Decrees

Ventose Decrees

 

decrees adopted during the Great French Revolution on the 8th and 13th Ventose in the second year of the Republic (Feb. 26 and Mar. 3, 1794) by the Jacobin Convention, based on the report by L. A. Saint-Just.

The Ventose Decrees provided for the confiscation of the property of persons considered enemies of the revolution and its distribution among propertyless patriots. The decrees conformed with the program of strengthening the revolutionary dictatorship of the Jacobins. Their implementation would have increased the number of small property owners and broadened the social base of the Jacobin dictatorship. The execution of the Ventose Decrees encountered the resistance of the counterrevolutionary big property-owning bourgeoisie, whose economic position was threatened by the decrees. Issued at a time when the Jacobin bloc began to split, the Ventose Decrees were not put into practice.

REFERENCES

Mathiez, A. Bor’ba s dorogoviznoi i sotsial’noe dvizhenie v epokhu terrora. Moscow-Leningrad, 1928. (Translated from French.)
Lefebvre, G. Agrarnyi vopros v epokhu terrora [1793-1794]. Leningrad, 1936. (Translated from French.)

A. Z. MANFRED