Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/62

 buoyed and lighted, and has a mean depth of 21 ft. There are extensive marshes on the right bank to the north of Blaye, and the shores on the left are characterized, especially towards the mouth, by low-lying polders protected by dikes and composed of fertile salt marshes. At the mouth of the Gironde stands the famous tower of Cordouan, one of the finest lighthouses of the French coast. It was built between the years 1585 and 1611 by the architect and engineer Louis de Foix, and added to towards the end of the 18th century. The principal affluent of the Dordogne in this department is the Isle. The feeders of the Garonne are, with the exception of the Dropt, all small. West of the Garonne the only river of importance is the Leyre, which flows into the Bay of Arcachon. The climate is humid and mild and very hot in summer. Wheat, rye, maize, oats and tobacco are grown to a considerable extent. The corn produced, however, does not meet the wants of the inhabitants. The culture of the vine is by far the most important branch of industry carried on (see ), the vineyards occupying about one-seventh of the surface of the department. The wine-growing districts are the Médoc, Graves, Côtes, Palus, Entre-deux-Mers and Sauternes. The Médoc is a region of 50 m. in length by about 6 m. in breadth, bordering the left banks of the Garonne and the Gironde between Bordeaux and the sea. The Graves country forms a zone 30 m. in extent, stretching along the left bank of the Garonne from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux to Barsac. The Sauternes country lies to the S.E. of the Graves. The Côtes lie on the right bank of the Dordogne and Gironde, between it and the Garonne, and on the left bank of the Garonne. The produce of the Palus, the alluvial land of the valleys, and of the Entre-deux-Mers, situated on the left bank of the Dordogne, is inferior. Fruits and vegetables are extensively cultivated, the peaches and pears being especially fine. Cattle are extensively raised, the Bazadais breed of oxen and the Bordelais breed of milch-cows being well known. Oyster-breeding is carried on on a large scale in the Bay of Arcachon. Large supplies of resin, pitch and turpentine are obtained from the pine woods, which also supply vine-props, and there are well-known quarries of limestone. The manufactures are various, and, with the general trade, are chiefly carried on at (q.v.), the chief town and third port in France. Pauillac, Blaye, Libourne and Arcachon are minor ports. Gironde is divided into the arrondissements of Bordeaux, Blaye, Lesparre, Libourne, Bazas and La Réole, with 49 cantons and 554 communes. The department is served by five railways, the chief of which are those of the Orleans and Southern companies. It forms part of the circumscription of the archbishopric, the appeal-court and the académie (educational division) of Bordeaux, and of the region of the XVIII. army corps, the headquarters of which are at that city. Besides Bordeaux, Libourne, La Réole, Bazas, Blaye, Arcachon, St Emilion and St Macaire are the most noteworthy towns and receive separate treatment. Among the other places of interest the chief are Cadillac, on the right bank of the Garonne, where there is a castle of the 16th century, surrounded by fortifications of the 14th century; Labrède, with a feudal château in which Montesquieu was born and lived; Villandraut, where there is a ruined castle of the 13th century; Uzeste, which has a church begun in 1310 by Pope Clement V.; Mazères with an imposing castle of the 14th century; La Sauve, which has a church (11th and 12th centuries) and other remains of a Benedictine abbey; and Ste Foy-la-Grande, a bastide created in 1255 and afterwards a centre of Protestantism, which is still strong there. La Teste (pop. in 1906, 5699) was the capital in the middle ages of the famous lords of Buch.

 GIRONDISTS (Fr. Girondins), the name given to a political party in the Legislative Assembly and National Convention during the French Revolution (1791–1793). The Girondists were, indeed, rather a group of individuals holding certain opinions and principles in common than an organized political party, and the name was at first somewhat loosely applied to them owing to the fact that the most brilliant exponents of their point of view were deputies from the Gironde. These deputies were twelve in number, six of whom—the lawyers Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Grangeneuve and Jay, and the tradesman Jean François Ducos—sat both in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. In the Legislative Assembly these represented a compact body of opinion which, though not as yet definitely republican, was considerably more advanced than the moderate royalism of the majority of the Parisian deputies. Associated with these views was a group of deputies from other parts of France, of whom the most notable were Condorcet, Fauchet, Lasource, Isnard, Kersaint, Henri Larivière, and, above all, Jacques Pierre Brissot, Roland and Pétion, elected mayor of Paris in succession to Bailly on the 16th of November 1791. On the spirit and policy of the Girondists Madame Roland, whose salon became their gathering-place, exercised a powerful influence (see ); but such party cohesion as they possessed they owed to the energy of (q.v.), who came to be regarded as their mouthpiece in the Assembly and the Jacobin Club. Hence the name Brissotins, coined by Camille Desmoulins, which was sometimes substituted for that of Girondins, sometimes closely coupled with it. As strictly party designations these first came into use after the assembling of the National Convention (September 20th, 1792), to which a large proportion of the deputies from the Gironde who had sat in the Legislative Assembly were returned. Both were used as terms of opprobrium by the orators of the Jacobin Club, who freely denounced “the Royalists, the Federalists, the Brissotins, the Girondins and all the enemies of the democracy” (F. Aulard, Soc. des Jacobins, vi. 531).

In the Legislative Assembly the Girondists represented the principle of democratic revolution within and of patriotic defiance to the European powers without. They were all-powerful in the Jacobin Club (see ), where Brissot’s influence had not yet been ousted by Robespierre, and they did not hesitate to use this advantage to stir up popular passion and intimidate those who sought to stay the progress of the Revolution. They compelled the king in 1792 to choose a ministry composed of their partisans—among them Roland, Dumouriez, Clavière and Servan; and it was they who forced the declaration of war against Austria. In all this there was no apparent line of cleavage between “La Gironde” and the Mountain. Montagnards and Girondists alike were fundamentally opposed to the monarchy; both were democrats as well as republicans; both were prepared to appeal to force in order to realize their ideals; in spite of the accusation of “federalism” freely brought against them, the Girondists desired as little as the Montagnards to break up the unity of France. Yet from the first the leaders of the two parties stood in avowed opposition, in the Jacobin Club as in the Assembly. It was largely a question of temperament. The Girondists were idealists, doctrinaires and theorists rather than men of action; they encouraged, it is true, the “armed petitions” which resulted, to their dismay, in the émeute of the 20th of June; but Roland, turning the ministry of the interior into a publishing office for tracts on the civic virtues, while in the provinces riotous mobs were burning the châteaux unchecked, is more typical of their spirit. With the ferocious fanaticism or the ruthless opportunism of the future organizers of the Terror they had nothing in common. As the Revolution developed they trembled at the anarchic forces they had helped to unchain, and tried in vain to curb them. The overthrow of the monarchy on the 10th of August and the massacres of September were not their work, though they claimed credit for the results achieved.

The crisis of their fate was not slow in coming. It was they who proposed the suspension of the king and the summoning of the National Convention; but they had only consented to overthrow the kingship when they found that Louis XVI. was impervious to their counsels, and, the republic once established, they were anxious to arrest the revolutionary movement which they had helped to set in motion. As Daunou shrewdly observes in his Mémoires, they were too cultivated and too polished to retain their popularity long in times of disturbance, and were therefore the more inclined to work for the establishment of order, which would mean the guarantee of their own