The Reign of Terror

8 Key excerpts on "The Reign of Terror"

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  eBook - ePub

  Unbelief and Revolution (Lexham Classics)

  • Groen van Prinsterer, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, Harry Van Dyke(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Lexham Press

    (Publisher)

  LECTURE

  XIII

  The Reign of Terror

  Only one period in the phase of Development remains for us to consider: the last, the most dreadful, the most instructive of all, namely The Reign of Terror. I deem it superfluous to sketch this political descent into Inferno from the fall of the Girondins to the fall of Robespierre, 1 June 1793 to 27 July 1794 . But it is by no means redundant to draw attention to its link with the Revolution doctrine and to belie its representation as an exaggeration par excellence . We have to do here neither with an exceptional period nor with exceptional persons. In terms of issues, it was the continuation, to the farthest extent possible, of what had come to pass since 1789 ; and as for the persons, they were theorists who in the spirit of the Revolution, so far from committing excesses, proclaimed revolutionary theses and employed revolutionary means with wonderful steadiness of mind.

  Allow me, first, to cast a glance at the nature of this remarkable period in general, and then to discuss in greater detail some of the men who were at the head of the revolutionary development.

  The revolutionaries’ vilification of this period finds its explanation in their blindness to the consequences of their own dogmas. From 1789 , all governing parties were actually but nuances of the same party. Each party in turn looked upon those who supplanted it as enemies who disrupted its work, rather than as disciples and imitators who carried on with firmer step where it had halted. Each party thought it became moderate when in fact it became inconsistent. It took offence at the conclusions drawn from what it had lately preached, at the consequences of what it had lately performed. Such was the attitude of the English party to the Constitutionalists; of the Constitutionalists to the Girondins; of the Girondins to the Jacobins. Such was soon to be the attitude of everyone against the most recent faction in power. Overwhelmed by the stream they had fancied they could direct, all parties almost forgot their hatred for each other in order to transfer their hostility, indignation, abhorrence—and especially their responsibility—to the Terrorists. Disasters and atrocities were brought about, they said, because the Terrorists had abandoned the road hitherto followed. The contrary is the case. The principles were the same as those taken as guidelines not only by the Girondins but much earlier even by the Constitutionalists, by Mirabeau, Necker and Turgot, nay by the benignant king himself in his well-intentioned zeal for reform. This is true, for example, of the basic maxim that contains the keynote both of the entire theory and of the whole reign of terror: unconditional promotion of the common good or public safety. Madame de Staël at times prefers to see in this banner the maxim solely of the men of 1793 : “Arbitrary will, without limits, was their doctrine; it was enough for them to give as a pretext for every act of violence the peculiar name of their government, public safety—a fatal expression, which implies sacrificing morality to what they are agreed to call the interest of the state, that is to say, sacrificing morality to the passions of those who govern.”1

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  The History of Terrorism

  From Antiquity to ISIS

  • Gérard Chaliand(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  1 0 2 / T E R R O R I S M F R O M 1 7 8 9 T O 1 9 6 8 ization of terror when it was adopted as official revolutionary policy. The policy of terror reached its high point when the government began implementing its strategy of stamping out “enemies of the people”—as witnessed in the Vendée campaign—and of treating counterrevolution-aries as the nationals of a foreign enemy state. In confrontation with an enemy state, the use of force in self-defense can be morally justified. “Ter-ror,” says François Furet, “is government by fear, based on Robes-pierre’s theory of government by virtue.” 10 The Terror was thus part and parcel of the Revolution: “Launched to exterminate the aristocracy, the Terror had become a tool for crushing villains and fighting crime,” Gueniffey observes. “It had become an integral component of the Revo-lution, inseparable from it, because only terror could ultimately bring about a Republic of citizens . . . . If the Republic of free citizens was not yet possible, it was because men, warped by their history, remained evil; through Terror, the Revolution—history as yet unwritten and brand-new—would make a new kind of man.” 11 The French Terror prefigured a system to be found in all the great rev-olutions, especially the Bolshevik Revolution: the exploitation of ideo-logical fanaticism, the manipulation of social tensions, and extermina-tion campaigns against rebellious sectors (of the peasantry). 12 Whereas 2,625 people were executed in Paris, and some 16,600 throughout France, these figures account only for the official victims of the “legal” terror; there were at least 20,000 more. Moreover, the Republican colonnes infernales (“infernal columns”) killed tens of thousands in the Vendée—between 40,000 and 190,000 by some estimates. 13 All in all, the Terror claimed from 200,000 to 300,000 victims, out of a popula-tion of 28 million—a modest number in comparison to the terror cam-paigns of the twentieth century.

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  Gothic Fiction and the Invention of Terrorism

  The Politics and Aesthetics of Fear in the Age of the Reign of Terror

  • Joseph Crawford(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  At the same time, people began to seek for phrases to describe the bloody year through which France had just passed. Initially, it was simply ‘the reign of Robespierre’: it suited the purposes of all sides to paint Robespierre as responsible for all the excesses of the year 1793–4, as the counter-revolutionaries wanted to have a revolutionary monster to demonise, and the men at the head of the post-Thermidorian revolutionary government wished to minimise the extent to which they, too, were implicated.

  69 By January 1795, the first references to ‘The Reign of Terror’ were starting to appear, becoming more frequent as the year went on, and by 1796 it was everywhere. 70 In his Considerations Upon the State of Public Affairs at the Beginning of the Year 1796 , Thomas Bentley referred to the possibility that the ‘reign of terror’ could be restored in France; The Bloody Buoy , a compendium of ‘bloody anecdotes’ concerning revolutionary atrocities published by William Cobbett in 1796, explained that ‘this murdering time ... had justly assumed the name of the reign of terror ’, while in his Examination of the Principles of the French Revolution , Jean Baptise Duvoisin asserted that the National Convention ‘vaunts itself on having destroyed The Reign of Terror’. 71

  In his Secret History of the French Revolution , published in English in 1797, François Xavier Pagès looked back on the confusion of factional names that had arisen in France after Thermidor:

  After the fall of Robespierre, the Thermidorians called their enemies, or those whom they regarded as such, Robespierrists, Terrorists, Jacobins, Blood-Drinkers, and Anarchists. The Thermidorian re-actors were in their turn called Hecatombists, or makers of Hecatombs, new Terrorists, or Furorists.

  72

  As this passage implies, while the word ‘terrorist’ was clearly used initially to refer only to members of the party of Robespierre, it was re-deployed almost immediately for use against other targets; the description of the Thermidorians as ‘new Terrorists’ implies both a recognition that they were distinct from the original terrorists (i.e. the followers of Robespierre), and an accusation that their methods were essentially the same. Pagès himself uses ‘terrorist’ as a general term for anyone attempting to further their political aims through violence and fear, including the anti-revolutionary Royalist extremists who called themselves the Society of the Sun, of whose excesses he writes: ‘Thus terror had only changed hands.’73 ‘It was natural that the terrorists, Jacobins, Cromwellists, and Robespierrists should be succeeded by other terrorists and other men of blood,’ he writes, ‘because in morals as well as in physics, action and re-action are proportionate to each other ...’.74 (Pagès makes no effort to explain what distinguishes ‘terrorists’, ‘Jacobins’, ‘Cromwellists’, and ‘Robespierrists’ from one another; evidently all were fairly interchangeable post-Thermidorian terms for the faction which had held power in 1793–4.) Indeed, so many different groups of ‘terrorists’ appear in Pagès’ narrative that he is forced to use a special term, ‘ancient terrorists’, to make clear when he is using the word to refer specifically to the party responsible for the blood-letting of 1793–4, rather than to any of the many other terror-using groups active in France during the 1790s. In a similar vein, the authors of the New Annual Register for the Year 1799 use the word ‘terrorist’ five times to refer to the Jacobins, but also refer to ‘the extremes of both parties, the terrorist jacobins and the terrorist royalists’, demonstrating that while the word was still heavily associated with the political faction responsible for the revolutionary Reign of Terror, it could also be applied, by analogy, to violent extremists of other political persuasions.75

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  The Morality of Terrorism

  Religious and Secular Justifications

  • David C. Rapoport, Yonah Alexander, David C. Rapoport, Yonah Alexander(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  The Law of Prairial was repealed and the opera-tion of the revolutionary tribunal curtailed. There are nearly as many versions and interpretations of The Reign of Terror as there are commentators. Not unexpect-edly, positions frequently polarize around the figure of Robespierre and his Jacobin colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety. Those for whom the terror was a defensive reaction of the revolutionary government either to war and THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 145 rebellion or to Parisian mobs give credit to the terrorists for their success but blame them for their excess. Those for whom the terror was a form of paranoia, which led to a purge of France's finest, attribute its impetus to the Jacobin leaders. Current historians often substitute classes or forces for leaders and motives, retelling the conflict as bourgeois versus sans-culottes or order versus anarchy. (19) Since it was the official spokesman for the militants of Paris and the Jacobin Club who took the cry Let terror be the order of the day! to the Convention of the 5th of Septem-ber, it seems appropriate to consider how that terror might reflect not only the chronic suspicions of Parisians but also the few skills which the Jacobins had acquired in their four years as men of politics. In that short time the Jacobins had distinguished themselves both as exemplary patriots and as masters of expediency - exemplary in that the collective ortho-doxy toward which their discussions tended was tailored for exportation to the clubs of greater France for imitation; ex-pedient in the ease with which they not only recovered from political defeats in the assembly but rallied their rationalist approach to policy to the fears and armed might of Parisians. Those two characteristics of Jacobin politics served them well and made them the ideal auxiliary when their leaders gathered power as the Committee of Public Safety.

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  Figures of Pathos

  Festschrift in Honor of Elisabeth Bronfen

  • Frauke Berndt, Isabel Karremann, Klaus Müller-Wille, Frauke Berndt, Isabel Karremann, Klaus Müller-Wille(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Königshausen & Neumann

    (Publisher)

  For this reason, Robespierre concludes that the present system – which he describes as “popular government […] during a revolution” (1794, 10), soon to be substituted by its regular, peacetime counterpart – is not despotic. The opposite is true. After all, the sole pur- pose of the current Reign of Terror is to fight despotism. Temporary terror for the sake of liberty – and from the hands of the virtuous – is preferable to the permanent terror of despots. As Helmut Kessler has demonstrated, the idea that the transition from despotism to democracy may involve some form of terror predates the Terreur. In a chapter discussing the historical preconditions of The Reign of Terror, Kessler suggests that from the 1720s to the 1760s, French drama showed a growing interest in terreur as a weapon at the disposal of both despots and those who fight them (1973, 117–158). Kessler lists several plays that juxtapose the aggression of a tyrannical usurper with that of an individual or collective actor who removes the tyrant to re-establish legiti- mate rule. In these plays, political violence is employed either to transform or to maintain a given system of government. The implied evaluation of that violence changes according to the agents and their agendas: that which appears negative in the context of anti-republican terror may appear posi- tive when it is used to achieve or defend freedom. As early as 1730, Vol- taire’s tragedy Brutus depicted “republican terror” (Kessler 1973, 145– 148). Significantly, moreover, playwrights increasingly made the terrible incidents part of the stage action, in opposition to the classical tradition of keeping violence out of sight. According to Kessler, then, French Enlightenment drama in some ways prefigured the violent events of the Revolution. And the same may be said of contemporary theories of drama.

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  Understanding Politics

  Ideas, Institutions, and Issues

  • Thomas Magstadt(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Later, those merely suspected of dissenting became victims of the guillotine. Deep distrust enveloped those in power, as sur- vivors feared for their safety. Eventually, collective fear led to the overthrow and execution of Robespierre himself. During his year-long rule, some 40,000 people were summarily executed—an astonishing number in the eighteenth century. Reign of Terror During the French Revolution, the period during which Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety arrested and mass executed thousands of French citizens for the “crime” of opposing the revolution or daring to dissent. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. LO14-3 REVOLUTION—A RIGHT OR ALL WRONG? 463 The King Is Dead, Long Live the Emperor The results of the French Revo- lution are not easy to evaluate. Clearly, it did not achieve its desired ends. After Robespierre’s fall, a corrupt and incompetent government known as the Directory assumed power. In 1799, that regime gave way to the dictatorship of Napoléon Bonaparte, who managed to restore order and stability and crowned himself emperor in 1804. Under his rule, France tried to conquer all Europe in a series of ambitious wars that ultimately led to defeat and Napoléon’s downfall. Thus, no popular government followed on the heels of the French Revolu- tion. After Napoléon’s deposition, in fact, the monarchy was reinstituted. Many worthwhile and long-lasting changes did come about, however. For instance, the monarchy installed in 1815 was significantly limited in its powers.

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  Visualizing the Revolution

  Politics and Pictorial Arts in Late Eighteenth-Century France

  • Hubertus Kohle, Rolf Reichardt(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Reaktion Books

    (Publisher)

  6 Between Terror and Freedom 183 The patriotic razor-blade Whenever the subject of the ‘French Revolution’ comes up, in the public at large at any rate, it is usually not long before its murderous dark side, represented by what can be considered its emblem, the guil-lotine, rears its ugly head. 1 It is quite natural that the element of violence should occupy centre stage, this being a characteristic of all groundbreaking revolutions. The Terror of the years 1793 – 4 , when Robespierre issued his notorious incitement to both virtue and terror, 2 was indeed characterized by violence, both threatened and actual. However, it is all too easy to generalize the phase of the Terror to stig-matize the entire Revolution. The relationship between ‘Terror’ and ‘Revolution’ has been an important subject for revolutionary research, especially the question as to whether the ‘Terror’ was a logical conse-quence of the process that began with the storming of the Bastille, or whether it should be considered a dérapage , a disastrous departure from a highly auspicious beginning. 3 However, the complexity of the phenomenon tends to be too simplified when viewed with hindsight from a modish anti-Enlightenment perspective. The radicalization of the Revolution was expressed over the years in the increasingly warlike attributes of its symbolism, 4 such as Hercules’ club, the spear and destructive bolts of lightning – no longer the symbol of Jupiter but of the people. The introduction of ever more aggressive elements was also expressed in the dynamics of pictorial composition, for example, the allegories by Réattu from 1794 – 5 that have been mentioned. This is not to say that such tenden-cies were entirely absent during the early years of the Revolution. Just as violence frequently flared up during that time, so the early prints often featured destructive elements.

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  Lectures on the French Revolution

  • John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Jazzybee Verlag

    (Publisher)

  XVIII. The Reign of Terror  

  The liberal and constitutional wave with which the Revolution began ended with the Girondins; and the cause of freedom against authority, of right against force was lost. At the moment of their fall, Europe was in arms against France by land and sea; the royalists were victorious in the west; the insurrection of the south was spreading, and Précy held Lyons with 40,000 men. The majority, who were masters in the Convention, had before them the one main purpose of increasing and concentrating power, that the country might be saved from dangers which, during those months of summer, threatened to destroy it. That one supreme and urgent purpose governed resolutions and inspired measures for the rest of the year, and resulted in the method of government which we call The Reign of Terror. The first act of the triumphant Mountain was to make a Constitution. They had criticized and opposed the Girondin draft, in April and May, and only the new declaration of the Rights of Man had been allowed to pass. All this was now re-opened. The Committee of Public Safety, strengthened by the accession of five Jacobins, undertook to prepare a scheme adapted to the present conditions, and embodying the principles which had prevailed. Taking Condorcet's project as their basis, and modifying it in the direction which the Jacobin orators had pointed to in debate, they achieved their task in a few days, and they laid their proposals before the Convention on June 10. The reporter was Hérault de Séchelles; but the most constant speaker in the ensuing debate was Robespierre. After a rapid discussion, but with some serious amendments, the Republican Constitution of 1793 was adopted, on June 24. Of all the fruits of the Revolution this is the most characteristic, and it is superior to its reputation.

  The Girondins, by their penman Condorcet, had omitted the name of God, and had assured liberty of conscience only as liberty of opinion. They elected the executive and the legislative alike by direct vote of the entire people, and gave the appointment of functionaries to those whom they were to govern. Primary assemblies were to choose the Council of Ministers, and were to have the right of initiating laws. The plan restricted the power of the State in the interest of decentralisation. The Committee, while retaining much of the scheme, guarded against the excess of centrifugal forces. They elected the legislature by direct universal suffrage, disfranchised domestic servants, and made the ballot optional, and therefore illusory. They resolved that the supreme executive council of twenty-four should be nominated by the legislature from a list of candidates, one chosen by indirect voting in each department, and should appoint and control all ministers and executive officers; the legislature to issue decrees with force of law in all necessary matters; but to make actual laws only under popular sanction, given or implied. In this way they combined direct democracy with representative democracy. They restricted the suffrage, abolished the popular initiative, limited the popular sanction, withdrew the executive patronage from the constituency, and destroyed secret voting. Having thus provided for the composition of power, they proceeded in the interest of personal liberty. The Press was to be free, there was to be entire religious toleration, and the right of association. Education was to become universal, and there was to be a poor law; in case of oppression, insurrection was declared a duty as well as a right, and usurpation was punishable with death. All laws were temporary, and subject to constant revision. Robespierre, who had betrayed socialist inclinations in April, revoked his earlier language, and now insisted on the security of property, proportionate and not progressive taxation, and the refusal of exemptions to the poor. In April, an unknown deputy from the Colonies had demanded that the Divinity be recognised in the preamble, and in June, after the elimination of the Girondins, the idea was adopted. At the same time, inverting the order of things, equality was made the first of the Rights of Man, and Happiness, instead of Liberty, was declared the supreme end of civil society. In point of spiritual quality, nothing was gained by the invocation of the Supreme Being.

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