The Federalist revolts was a series of Girondin and Royalist uprisings that broke out across France in the summer of 1793 in response to the centralization of power in Paris and the Jacobins' Insurrection of 31 May-2 June 1793. The revolts were put down by the armies of the National Convention over the following months, and the Jacobin regime responded by initiating the Reign of Terror to punish those associated with the Federalist movement and to enforce Jacobin ideology.
The Girondins had previously dominated the Legislative Assembly from October 1791 to September 1792, pushing France into the French Revolutionary Wars and advocating for the abolition of the monarchy. However, grain shortages, inflation, speculation, military setbacks against the Coalition, and the outbreak of the Royalist War in the Vendee in March 1793 drove many republicans towards the radical Jacobin group "the Mountain" and away from the Girondins. A May-June 1793 coup by the Jacobins against the moderate Girondins resulted in a final breach between the Girondins and the radical sans-culottes, and the National Convention voted for the suspension and house arrest of 29 Girondin politicians. The radicals proceeded to split up the land belonging to emigres and sell it to farmers, introduced a grain maximum, organized a revolutionary army, and consolidated power within the Committee of Public Safety and the Paris Commune.
In response to the Jacobin seizure of power, the federalist Girondins began preparing a resistance movement outside Paris. They were supported by the prosperous bourgeoisie and those elements of the urban poor affected by unemployment or hostile to anti-clericalism, and they based themselves in departments where notable families still held power. The Jacobins likewise mobilized the lower-middle-classes and the urban poor to resist the local establishment and create a radical egalitarian republic. Clashes immediately broke out in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nantes, and Rouen. Throughout early June, several departments formally protested the arrests of the 29 Girondin deputies, and several Girondin leaders escaped house arrest and fled to join armed rebellions in Normandy and Brittany, establishing Caen as their headquarters. The local notables and large merchants of the large towns mustered sufficient influence and support to prevent Jacobin takeovers, while lacking power in the smaller towns to break the hegemony of the local Jacobin clubs.
On 9 June, the Federalists arrested the Convention's two representatives in Caen, and, on 13 June, Eure department gave the signal for insurrection. Francois Buzot and Antoine Joseph Gorsas declared that the Convention was no longer a free body and called for 4,000 men to march on Paris. The Federalists formed departmental battalions and raised 1,700 volunteers in Brittany. The Girondins appointed General Georges Felix de Wimpffen as the leader of their departmental militias, and he gathered 5,000 troops and marched on Evreux. At the 13-14 July Battle of Brecourt, 1,500 government troops ambushed the Federalists and scattered them with the sound of cannon; without death or injury, the Federalist army collapsed due to desertion or defection. The Federalist revolt quickly dissipated in Normandy, and Caen fell to the government on 2 August. On the same day as the battle, Girondin sympathizer Charlotte Corday assassinated the radical pamphleteer Jean-Paul Marat in Paris.
The Girondin leaders fled to Quimper in Brittany on 8 August, but they found little support even among the monarchist peasantry. Convention forces prevented Saint-Malo from defecting to the British as Toulon had done, and the Girondins were again forced to flee to Bordeaux. Government general Jean-Baptiste Carrier restored order in Rennes before spending five weeks purging Federalists, Girondins, and monarchists from every public office, imprisoning counter-revolutionaries in local prisons or sending them to Paris for trial.
In Lyon, France's second-largest city, most of the sections supported the Girondins. Though a small group of Jacobins led by Joseph Chalier took over the city, the Girondins seized power in a coup on 29 May 1793. After the arrest of the Girondin deputies in Paris, the municipal leaders of Lyon collaborated with other separatist municipalities and departments, and the Royalist Count Louis Francois Perrin de Precy gathered 10,000 men for the city's defense. The Girondins executed Chalier and several of his Jacobin associates on 16 July, and, shortly after, Francois Etienne Kellermann besieged Lyon. The government troops attempted to bombard the city into submission, and it eventually fell to the Jacobins on 9 October. Lyon was renamed Ville-Affranchie and 1,604 people shot or guillotined; 115 of the city's 400 silk-spinning merchants were killed by the Jacobins, while most master craftsmen fled.
In Marseille, the Girondins created a general committee of sections which broke up the Jacobin club and executed its leaders in July. A new town council raised an army of its own and seized Avignon on 8 July. Montpellier joined in the revolt, and Gard raised a battalion of 600 men to join the uprising. However, General Jean-Francois Carteaux restored Jacobin rule in Avignon on 25 July, and a number of Marseille citizens abandoned the Federalist cause in the face of danger, leaving the city in monarchist hands. The city attempted to secure the aid of British Admiral Samuel Hood's Royal Navy fleet, but Carteaux retook the town amid a Jacobin uprising on 25 August. Carteaux set up a revolutionary tribunal that executed 289 enemies of the state.
Toulon, previously a bastion of Jacobin support until July 1793, was also taken over by the Girondins, who captured nearly the entire French Mediterranean fleet in its harbor. The Royalists proceeded to take over the city and surrender it to the British, Spanish, and Neapolitans on 18 August. Carteaux besieged Toulon on 8 September, and Napoleon Bonaparte distinguished himself in the ensuing action. The city fell to the Republicans on 19 December 1793, although the British were able to tow away many French warships and destroy those remaining.
In Bordeaux, a stronghold of Federalism, the citizens rebelled against the anarchists of the Convention on 9 May 1793, even before the Jacobin coup. The Gironde department declared itself insurrectionary on 7 June 1793, raising a Federalist army. However, the Federalists found it hard to recruit people to actively support their cause, and they only raised 400 men. This army was later depleted by desertions, and the Federalist popular commission dissolved itself on 2 August rather than be suppressed militarily. Bordeaux thus submitted peacefully, and 104 citizens were executed during the Reign of Terror.
The Federalist revolts prompted the strengthening of the revolutionary Terror and the increasing centralization of power. Though the Federalist uprisings were quickly suppressed and most Girondin leaders either executed or dead by suicide, Royalist resistance continued in the Vendee and Brittany.