Mainz during the French Revolution (M. Gilli)
After the victory of Valmy, the Army of the Vosges, commanded by general Custine, took the offensive on the Rhine. Its march towards the Palatinate was carried out without difficulties because of the important support provided by the peasants. After the capture of Speyer and Worms, the prince-elector abandoned Mainz ; the city surrendered without difficulties and Custine entered it on 21 October 1792. This lack of resistance does not mean that the city was committed to the republican cause, and one did not encounter the same enthusiasm there as among the peasants of the Palatinate. The citizens of the city were indifferent and apathetic. Nonetheless, Custine was received by a certain number of enlightened citizens who were ready to help him. On 23 October a Society of the friends of liberty and equality was founded, created on the model of the Jacobin club in Paris. It counted 20 persons on the first day, 200 on the second and 400 to 500 afterwards. Doctors, teachers, jurists, scribes, students, academics, administrators, artisans and shopkeepers met there. The mission of the club consisted of spreading the Enlightenment and of helping reason to dominate. In order to win over the population, the clubistes sought for spectacular activities that were more or less appreciated: the planting of a liberty tree, festivals, balls, a livre noir (slavery) and a livre rouge (liberty-equality) where one invited the population to come in order to sign. The orators multiplied the speeches which were often of high quality (particularly those of Wedekind, Dorsch and Forster) and whose goal was to spread the ideas of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and to show all the advantages of changing the constitution. The press developed in an equally considerable manner, and an amateur theatre was founded which would play revolutionary dramas. Even during the siege of the city, it did not cease its performances. But the club had not always been equal to the height of its task due to numerous dissensions which manifested. The crisis of the club largely stemmed from the difficulties of the conditions that had been brought about by the policy of general Custine. Furthermore, the clubistes remained clumsy and, all things considered, quite far from the people. The errors which they committed often caused them to be hated, and the club was called Lumpenklub. It is due to this unpopularity and the divisions that the French commissioners decided to dissolve it in order to reconstitute it on 19 March 1793. But one cannot know, because of the siege which began, if this new society would have been more efficient.
The administrative transformations
In the beginning, Custine had the order to impose nothing and he summoned the corporations in order to ask them which constitution they desired. The latter wished to keep their institutions and came out, to the great consternation of all, in favour of a monarchical constitution that was to be limited by the States, whose members would be chosen within the bourgeoisie. Custine then established a provisional administration of nine members, with Dorsch being the president and Forster the vice president. The acts of the General Administration show that it almost exclusively had to deal with economical and practical questions: supply of provisions, lighting, deliveries to the French army, cleaning of the city, education etc… The administrators were equally concerned with the situation in the countryside, organising meetings. Their primary task was to prepare the elections. In December, Custine received new instructions: the generals had to introduce the institutions of the Revolution, have new authorities elected and abolish feudalism. Self-determination was no longer in question. The application of these instructions brought about important conflicts with the general administration.
The Rhenish-German Convention
It could be elected notwithstanding. It assembled for the first time on 17 March with 65 deputies. It then counted 130 members. Hofman was the president, Forster the vice president. The Noveau Journal de Mayence noted that this was the first time that the sun rose over a German popular assembly. On 18 March, a decree proclaimed that all lands between Bingen and Landau would henceforth form a single Freistaat and that the links with the empire would be terminated. Those who did not want to take an oath on the new State were expelled. Then, the problem of the fate of this State emerged. Forster was a partisan, from the beginning of the events onwards, of the rattachement to France, and he developed the argument of the natural border of the Rhine long before the French would think of using it. From 19 March onwards, the Conventionnels discussed this problem. There were two types of advanced arguments: first and foremost the security of the new State, but also the economy of the country which would flower again with a new regime. The decision was taken on 21 March and a delegation of three members was sent to Paris (G. Forster, A. Lux and A. Patocki) in order to request the incorporation of the free Rhenish people into France at the National Convention. On 30 March, the Convention promulgated a decree within which it accepted this freely expressed wish. On 31 March, the blockade of the city of Mainz began. The siege of the city was very hard and Custine was obliged to capitulate in July.
In spite of the difficulties and the indifference of the majority of the population, this ephemeral Republic represents more than a parenthesis in the history of Germany. For the first time since the Reformation, Germans were invested in political action ; for the first time, there were elections on German soil. Certainly, these nine months did not allow the realisation of veritable transformations, but one would rediscover the Jacobins of Mainz in the Cisrhenian movement and their children and grandchildren in the revolutionary movement of 1830 and 1848.