The reign of terror (June 1793 – 27 July 1794), also known as the
The Terror () was a period of violence that occurred for one year and two months 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." Estimates vary widely as to how many were killed, with numbers ranging from 16,000 to 40,000; in many cases, records were not kept, or if they were, they are considered likely to be inaccurate. The
guillotine ("National Razor") became the symbol of a string of executions:
Louis XVI,
Marie Antoinette, the
Girondins,
Louis Philippe II and
Madame Roland, as well as many others, such as "the father of modern chemistry"
Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade.
During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with real or imagined conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies. Within France the revolution was opposed by the
French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The
Roman Catholic Church was generally against the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy). In addition, the
First French Republic was engaged in a series of
French Revolutionary Wars with neighboring powers.
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 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 and was ultimately dominated by
Maximilien Robespierre, in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise additional French military force. Through the
Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's leaders exercised broad dictatorial powers and used them to instigate mass executions and political
purges. The repression accelerated in June and July 1794, a period called "
la Grande Terreur" (The Great Terror), and ended in the
coup of 9
Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), the so-called "
Thermidorian Reaction", in which several leaders of the Reign of Terror were executed, including
Saint-Just and Robespierre.
The Terror
On 7 June 1793, Paris sections — encouraged by the
enragés ("enraged ones")
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 31
Girondin leaders, including
Jacques Pierre Brissot. Following these arrests, the Jacobins gained control of the
Committee of Public Safety on 10 June, installing the
revolutionary dictatorship. On 13 July the assassination of
Jean-Paul Marat — a Jacobin leader and
journalist known for his bloodthirsty
rhetoric — by
Charlotte Corday, a Girondin, resulted in further increase of Jacobin political influence.
Georges Danton, the leader of the
August 1792 uprising against the
King, was removed from the Committee. On 27 July
Maximillien 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, secure and inflexible."
The result 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 Girondins,
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 18 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 4 percent
middle class, and 72 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading
the draft,
desertion, rebellion, and other purported minimal crimes.
Another
anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the installment of the
Revolutionary Calendar on 24 October. Hébert's and Chaumette's
atheist movement initiated a religious campaign in order to
dechristianize society. The program of dechristianization waged against
Catholicism, and eventually against all forms of
Christianity, included the
deportation of clergy and the condemnation of many of them to death, the closing of churches, the institution of revolutionary and civic
cults, 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, and the
War in the Vendée.
The enactment of a law on 21 October 1793 made all suspected priests and all persons who harbored 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 counterrevolutionary, 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, advocated a new state religion and recommended that the Convention acknowledge the existence of
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 (10 June 1794). 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 by a conspiracy of certain members of the Convention on
9 Thermidor (27 July).
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. Before his execution, Robespierre tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide by shooting himself, but the bullet merely shattered his jaw, and Robespierre was gullotined 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 (a quarter of the committee retired every three months); 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.
See also
