Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794) or simply The Terror (French: la Terreur) was a period in the French Revolution characterized by brutal repression. The stated aim of the Terror was to defend the Revolution by destroying internal enemies and conspirators and chasing the external enemies from French territory. During The Terror, a centralized political regime suspended most of the politically democratic achievements of the Revolution, while pursuing the Revolution on many social matters.
Although the regime under which the Terror took place began to assemble itself as early as 2 June 1793, the Terror as such started on 5 September 1793 and lasted until the executions following the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), in which several key leaders of the Reign of Terror were executed, ushering in the Thermidorian reaction. The Terror took the lives of between 18,500 to 40,000 people (estimates vary widely, due to the difference between historical records and statistical estimations). In the single month before it ended, 1,300 executions took place.
The Terror
On 2 June, 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 managed to convince 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 the mastermind of the September 1792 massacres – by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin, resulted in further increase of Jacobin political influence. George Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the King, having the image of a man who enjoyed luxuries, was removed from the Committee and on 27 July, Maximilien Robespierre, "the Incorruptible", 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, variously referred to as the French Constitution of 1793 or Constitution of the Year I. It was ratified by public referendum, but never applied, because normal legal processes were suspended before it could take effect.
Facing local revolts and foreign invasions in both the East and West of the country, the most urgent government business was the war. On 17 August, the Convention voted general conscription, the levée en masse, which mobilized all citizens to serve as soldiers or suppliers in the war effort. On 5 September, the Convention, pressured by the people of Paris, institutionalized The Terror: systematic and lethal repression of perceived enemies within the country.
La terreur n'est autre chose que la justice prompte, sévère, inflexible. ("Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice.") — Robespierre
The result was a policy through which the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the central government. Under control of the effectively dictatorial Committee, the Convention quickly enacted more legislation. On 9 September, the Convention established sans-culotte 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, Convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods and fixed wages.
The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions; Queen Marie-Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité despite his vote for the death of the King, 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. Most of the victims received an unceremonious trip to the guillotine in an open wooden cart (the tumbrel). Loaded on these carts, the victims would proceed through throngs of jeering men and women.
Another anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the installment of the Revolutionary Calendar on 24 October. Against Robespierre's concepts of Deism and Virtue, Hébert's atheist movement initiated a religious campaign in order to dechristianize society. The climax was reached with the celebration of Goddess "Reason" in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November.
The Reign of Terror was able to save the revolutionary government from military defeat. The Jacobins expanded the size of the army, and Carnot replaced many aristocratic officers with younger soldiers who had demonstrated their ability and patriotism. The Republican army was able to throw back the Austrians, Prussians, British, and Spanish. At the end of 1793, the army began to prevail and revolts were defeated with ease. The Terror became identified with ruthless, centralized revolutionary government. The dirigiste economic program didn't solve the problems. Suspects' goods were confiscated by the Decrets of Ventôse (February-March 1794), in order to prepare for the redistribution of wealth.
Because dissent was now regarded as counterrevolutionary, extremists such as Hébert and moderate Montagnards such as Danton were guillotined in the spring of 1794. On June 7 Robespierre, who had previously condemned the Cult of Reason, advocated a new state religion and recommended the Convention to 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 popular festivals, this austere new religion of Virtue was received with signs of hostility by an amazed Parisian public.
The End
The centralization of repression also brought thousands of victims before the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal, whose work was expedited by the draconian Law of 22 Prairial (10 June 1794) which had led to the Terror. 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 the Austrians at the Battle of Fleurus, Robespierre was overthrown by a conspiracy of certain members of the Convention on 9 Thermidor (27 July). After trying a failed attempt to raise Paris, the Robespierrists and most members of the Commune were guillotined on 28 July. This led to the Thermidorian reaction, which was characterized by a much lesser known White Terror. This reaction killed hundreds of Jacobins. This continued intermittently for some years afterward in the form of unchecked violence by gangs of Muscadins as well as rigged trials by the authorities.
Treatment in fiction
- Georg Büchner, Danton's Death
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
- Neil Gaiman, "Thermidor" (story in the Sandman comic book series)
- Victor Hugo, Quatrevingt-treize
- Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
- Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel and sequels
- Stanislawa Przybyszewska, The Danton Case and Thermidor
Treatment in film
- Andrzej Wajda, Danton (1983)
- Robert Enrico and Richard T. Heffron, La Révolution française , part 2 (1989)
Treatment in television
- Doctor Who: "The Reign of Terror" (1964)