The Reign of Terror, also known simply as The Terror, was a period of violence that
occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political
factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies
of the revolution". The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed
by guillotine, and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.
The guillotine became the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions:
King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité, and Madame Roland, and
others such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade.
During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with conspiracies by internal and foreign
enemies. Within France, the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had
lost its inherited privileges. The reactionary Roman Catholic Church did everything to discredit
the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they
take an oath of loyalty to the nation. In addition, the First French Republic was engaged
in a series of wars with neighboring powers intent on crushing the revolution to prevent
its spread. The extension of civil war and the advance
of foreign armies on national territory produced a political crisis and increased the rivalry
between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins. The latter were eventually grouped
in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and they had the support of the Parisian population.
The French government established the Committee of Public Safety, which took its final form
on 6 September 1793 in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise
additional French military forces. Through the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's
leaders exercised broad powers and used them to eliminate the internal and external enemies
of the Republic. The repression accelerated in June and July 1794, a period called la
Grande Terreur, and ended in the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II, leading to the Thermidorian
Reaction, in which several instigators of the Reign of Terror were executed, including
Saint-Just and Robespierre.
Origins and causes After the resolution of the foreign wars during
1791–93, the violence associated with the Reign of Terror increased significantly: only
roughly 4 percent of executions had occurred before November 1793, thus signalling to many
that the Reign of Terror might have had additional causes. These could have included inherent
issues with revolutionary ideology, and/or the need of a weapon for political repression
in a time of significant foreign and civil upheaval, leading to many different interpretations
by historians.
Many historians have debated the reasons why the French Revolution took such a radical
turn during the Reign of Terror of 1793–94. The public was frustrated that the social
equality and anti-poverty measures that the Revolution originally promised were not materializing.
Jacques Roux's Manifesto of the Enraged in 25 June 1793 describes the extent to which,
four years into the Revolution, these goals were largely unattained by the common people.
The foundation of the Terror is centered on the April 1793 creation of the Committee of
Public Safety and its militant Jacobin delegates. The National Convention believed that the
Committee needed to rule with "near dictatorial power" and the Committee was delegated new
and expansive political powers to quickly respond to popular demands.
Those in power believed the Committee of Public Safety was an unfortunate, but necessary and
temporary reaction to the pressures of foreign and civil war. Historian Albert Mathiez argues
that the authority of the Committee of Public Safety was based on the necessities of war,
as those in power realized that deviating from the will of the people was a temporary
emergency response measure in order to secure the ideals of the Republic. According to Mathiez,
they "touched only with trepidation and reluctance the regime established by the Constituent
Assembly" so as not to interfere with the early accomplishments of the Revolution.
Similar to Mathiez, Richard Cobb introduced competing circumstances of revolt and re-education
within France as an explanation for the Terror. Counter-revolutionary rebellions taking place
in Lyon, Brittany, Vendée, Nantes, and Marseille were threatening the Revolution with royalist
ideas. Cobb writes, "the revolutionaries themselves, living as if in combat… were easily persuaded
that only terror and repressive force saved them from the blows of their enemies."
Terror was used in these rebellions both to execute inciters and to provide a very visible
example to those who might be considering rebellion. Cobb agrees with Mathiez that the
Terror was simply a response to circumstances, a necessary evil and natural defence, rather
than a manifestation of violent temperaments or excessive fervour. At the same time, Cobb
rejects Mathiez's Marxist interpretation that elites controlled the Reign of Terror to the
significant benefit to the bourgeoisie. Instead, Cobb argues that "social struggles" between
the classes were seldom the reason for revolutionary actions and sentiments.
Francois Furet, however, argues that circumstances could not have been the sole cause of the
Reign of Terror because "the risks for the Revolution were greatest" in the middle of
1793 but at that time "the activity of the Revolutionary Tribunal was relatively minimal."
Widespread terror and a consequent rise in executions came after external and internal
threats were vastly reduced. Therefore Furet suggests that ideology played the crucial
role in the rise of the Reign of Terror because "man's regeneration" became a central theme
for the Committee of Public Safety as they were trying to instill ideals of free will
and enlightened government in the public. As this ideology became more and more pervasive,
violence became a significant method for dealing with counter-revolutionaries and the opposition
because, for fear of being labelled a counter-revolutionary themselves, "the moderate men would have to
accept, endorse and even glorify the acts of the more violent."
The Terror On 2 June 1793, Paris sections – encouraged
by the enragés Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert – took over the Convention, calling for
administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of
the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone. With the backing of the National Guard, they
persuaded the Convention to arrest 29 Girondist leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot.
On 13 July the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat – a Jacobin leader and journalist
known for his violent rhetoric – by Charlotte Corday resulted in a further increase in Jacobin
political influence.
Georges Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the King, was removed from
the Committee. On 27 July Maximilien Robespierre, known in Republican circles as "the Incorruptible"
for his ascetic dedication to his ideals, made his entrance, quickly becoming the most
influential member of the Committee as it moved to take radical measures against the
Revolution's domestic and foreign enemies. Meanwhile, on 24 June the Convention adopted
the first republican constitution of France, the French Constitution of 1793. It was ratified
by public referendum, but never put into force; like other laws, it was indefinitely suspended
by the decree of October that the government of France would be "revolutionary until the
peace". On 25 December 1793 Robespierre stated:
The goal of the constitutional government is to conserve the Republic; the aim of the
revolutionary government is to found it... The revolutionary government owes to the good
citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People
but death... These notions would be enough to explain the origin and the nature of laws
that we call revolutionary ... If the revolutionary government must be more active in its march
and more free in his movements than an ordinary government, is it for that less fair and legitimate?
No; it is supported by the most holy of all laws: the Salvation of the People.
On 5 February 1794 Robespierre stated, more succinctly that, "Terror is nothing else than
justice, prompt, severe, inflexible." The result of this was policy through which
the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the government. Under control
of the effectively dictatorial Committee, the Convention quickly enacted more legislation.
On 9 September the Convention established sans-culottes paramilitary forces, the revolutionary
armies, to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On 17 September
the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with
vaguely defined crimes against liberty. On 29 September the Convention extended price-fixing
from grain and bread to other essential goods, and also fixed wages. The guillotine became
the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the
start of the terror; Marie-Antoinette, the Girondists, Philippe Égalité, Madame Roland
and many others lost their lives under its blade.
The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine,
while mobs beat other victims to death. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or
actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had
a stake in getting rid of them. Among people who were condemned by the revolutionary
tribunals, about 8 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 14 percent middle class,
and 72 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion,
rebellion. Maximilien Robespierre, "frustrated with the progress of the revolution," saw
politics in a rather tyrannical way because "any institution which does not suppose the
people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil."
Another anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the instalment of the Revolutionary Calendar
on 24 October. Hébert's and Chaumette's atheist movement initiated an anti-religious campaign
in order to dechristianise society. The program of dechristianisation waged against Catholicism,
and eventually against all forms of Christianity, included the deportation or execution of clergy;
the closing of churches; the rise of cults and the institution of a civic religion; the
large scale destruction of religious monuments; the outlawing of public and private worship
and religious education; the forced abjurement of priests of their vows and forced marriages
of the clergy; the word "saint" being removed from street names; and the War in the Vendée.
The enactment of a law on 21 October 1793 made all suspected priests and all persons
who harboured them liable to death on sight. The climax was reached with the celebration
of the goddess Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November. Because dissent was now regarded
as counter-revolutionary, extremist enragés such as Hébert and moderate Montagnard indulgents
such as Danton were guillotined in the Spring of 1794. On 7 June Robespierre, who favoured
deism over Hébert's atheism and had previously condemned the Cult of Reason, recommended
that the Convention acknowledge the existence of his god. On the next day, the worship of
the deistic Supreme Being was inaugurated as an official aspect of the Revolution. Compared
with Hébert's somewhat popular festivals, this austere new religion of Virtue was received
with signs of hostility by the Parisian public. The End of the Reign
The repression brought thousands of suspects before the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal, whose
work was expedited by the Law of 22 Prairial. As a result of Robespierre's insistence on
associating Terror with Virtue, his efforts to make the republic a morally united patriotic
community became equated with the endless bloodshed. Finally, after 26 June's decisive
military victory over Austria at the Battle of Fleurus, Robespierre was overthrown on
9 Thermidor. The fall of Robespierre was brought about
by a combination of those who wanted more power for the Committee of Public Safety,
and a more radical policy than he was willing to allow, with the moderates who opposed the
Revolutionary Government altogether. They had, between them, made the Law of 22 Prairial
one of the charges against him, and after his fall, advocating Terror would mean adopting
the policy of a convicted enemy of the Republic, endangering the advocate's own head. Robespierre
tried to commit suicide before his execution by shooting himself, although the bullet only
shattered his jaw. He was guillotined the next day.
The reign of the standing Committee of Public Safety was ended. New members were appointed
the day after Robespierre's execution, and term limits were imposed; its powers were
reduced piece by piece. This was not an entirely or immediately conservative
period; no government of the Republic envisaged a Restoration, and Marat was reburied in the
Pantheon in September. Gallery
See also Bals des victimes
Tricoteuse Use of the Guillotine in Paris
References
Further reading Secondary sources
Andress, David. The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-27341-3. Baker, Keith M. François Furet, and Colin
Lucas, eds. The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol.
4, The Terror Beik, William. "The Absolutism of Louis XIV
as Social Collaboration: Review Article". Past and Present: 195–224.
Censer, Jack, and Lynn Hunt. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution.
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: University
of California Press. Gough, Hugh. The terror in the French revolution
Hibbert, Christopher. The Days of the French Revolution. New York: Quill-William Morrow.
ISBN 978-0-688-16978-7. Kerr, Wilfred Brenton. Reign of Terror, 1793–1794.
London: Porcupine Press. ISBN 0-87991-631-1. Linton, Marisa. "Robespierre and the Terror",
History Today, August 2006, Volume 56, Issue 8, pp. 23–29 online
Loomis, Stanley. Paris in the Terror. New York: Dorset Press. ISBN 0-88029-401-9.
Moore, Lucy. Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France. London:
HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-720601-1. Steel, Mark. Vive La Revolution. London: Scribner.
ISBN 0-7432-0806-4. Reviewed by Adam Thorpe in The Guardian, 23
December 2006.
Palmer, R. R.. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-12187-7. Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the
French Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 678–847. ISBN 0-394-55948-7.
Scott, Otto. Robespierre, The Fool as Revolutionary – Inside the French Revolution. Windsor,
New York: The Reformer Library. ISBN 978-1-887690-05-8. Shulim, Joseph I. "Robespierre and the French
Revolution," American Historical Review 82#1 pp. 20–38 in JSTOR
Soboul, Albert. "Robespierre and the Popular Movement of 1793–4", Past and Present, No. 5.,
pp. 54–70. in JSTOR Sutherland, D.M.G. The French Revolution and
Empire: The Quest for a Civic Order pp 174-253 Weber, Caroline. Terror and Its Discontents:
Suspect Words in Revolutionary France online Historiography
Kafker, Frank, James M. Lauz, and Darline Gay Levy. The French Revolution: Conflicting
Interpretations. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company.
Rudé, George. Robespierre: Portrait of a Revolutionary Democrat. New York: Viking Press.
ISBN 0-670-60128-4. A Marxist political portrait of Robespierre,
examining his changing image among historians and the different aspects of Robespierre as
an 'ideologue', as a political democrat, as a social democrat, as a practitioner of revolution,
as a politician and as a popular leader/leader of revolution, it also touches on his legacy
for the future revolutionary leaders Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong.
Primary sources Cléry, Jean-Baptiste; Henry Essex Edgeworth
[1798]. Sidney Scott, ed. Journal of the Terror. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 3153946.
External links The Terror from In Our Time