The French Navy and the Struggle for Revolutionary Authority: The Mutiny of the Brest Fleet in 1793

Abstract

In September 1793, the French Atlantic fleet mutinied in Quiberon Bay and the sailors demanded to return to Brest in defiance of government orders and their admiral’s authority. Beyond interpretations which emphasize a counter-revolutionary conspiracy or the collapse of discipline, the Quiberon mutiny illustrates a fundamental characteristic of the political situation throughout France. The inherent ambiguity of popular sovereignty created confusion and conflict over the location of legitimate revolutionary authority: was national authority to be identified with executive power and its agents, or was the Will of the Sovereign People to be expressed in the decisions of local administrations or even the direct democracy of sailors? Jeanbon Saint-André and the Committee of Public Safety were justified in linking naval disorder to Brest’s participation in the “Federalist Revolt” against the Convention in the spring and summer of 1793. Yet just as the Revolt is no longer interpreted as a direct reflection of the parliamentary conflict, neither should the navy be seen as divided clearly between partisans of the Montagnards and the “Girondins.” In Brest, as elsewhere, moderate republicans rebelled against revolutionary extremism and justified their resistance as more legitimate than the rule of the purged Convention. The fleet was also torn between political moderates and radical revolutionaries, but the more fundamental cause of the mutiny concerned division over the location of national authority. When the Nation’s Will ceased to be equated with the authority of agents of executive power, the commanding officers, mutiny became unavoidable. The mutiny of the Brest fleet was thus a microcosm of the larger political struggle in 1793 over whether the government of the state should be acknowledged as the only legitimate expression of popular sovereignty.