Chapter 12: The spread of Terror
The Terror and executions
Between 1792 and 1794 there were around 40,000 victims of the Terror. It is, of course, difficult to provide
exact figures as any of these deaths were as the result of internal war, but it has been estimated that
approximately 17,000 of these wee guillotined. These were the years during which the newly adopted
guillotine was transformed from being a symbol of progress as a ‘humane’ method of early revolutionary ideals
as the chaos and paranoia created by war and the fear of counter-revolution brought death and fear
The popular Terror, September to December 1793
- 9th September 1793: Convention establishes Revolutionary Armies
- September 1793: the Convention declared that it must destroy its enemies, or they would destroy the
Republic.
- Hence, following the Law of Suspects (passed by the CPS on 17th September 1793) there was a rapid
increase in the numbers of those brough before the Revolutionary Tribunal
- Between March and September, the tribunal had heard 260 cases; between September and December it
dealt with 500,000. Similarly, in the six months before September, the Tribunal had sent 66 people to
the guillotine; in the three months after this, it sent 180 and this was just in Paris
The show trials
- These featured prominent people, most of them aristocrats being executed as a result of growing
pressure of the sans-culottes for bloodshed. However, only 9% of executions in this phase of the Terror
actually came from the ranks of the nobility and 7% from the clergy
- The first was Marie-Antoinette, who was tried by the RT on the 14 th October 1793
- She was accused of orgies, squandering government money, conspiracy against the internal and
external security of the state and sharing intelligence with the enemy. She was found guilty of all these
crimes and guillotined on 16th October
- 24th October: the trial of the 21 expelled Girondin leaders began. The result was a foregone conclusion
and al were condemned to death and guillotined on 31st October
- 6th November: duc d’Orléans despite his support for the revolution and Republic, his son’s friendship
with Dumouriez, along with his links to the royal family, placed him under suspicion
- 8th November: Madame Roland, the wife of a disgraced Girondin minister is guillotined
The deaths of ‘ordinary citizens’
- 10th October: a major speech delivered by Saint-Just in the name of the CPS said that ‘the provisional
government of France is revolutionary until there is peace’. This was used to justify an intense
campaign across the départements. The campaign used:
1. Local watch committees (comités de surveillance) to monitor residents in every municipality
2. Armées révolutionaires (made up of around 40,000 men) to roam the countryside and clamp down
on federalist and counter-revolutionary activity
3. Spies and agents from the CGS
4. More than a hundred représentants-en-mission from the Convention, to pursue the cause of
‘revolutionary justice’
- Although their activities were overseen by the CPS, officials and groups frequently took law into their
own hands and some acted with indiscriminate savagery. The worst affected areas were the Vendée and
those of the federalist revolt.
- Areas outside the main centres of revolt may have suffered less but they too were forced to bow down
to the will of the représentants-en-mission
Area Atrocities and deaths
The Vendée The représentant-en-mission was Jean Baptiste Carrier. A total of 7873 for guillotined
(Nantes) and many more shots without trial. Between November 1793 and January 1790 for a
further 2000 executed in annoying ads which are a master earnings on the river are not.
Toulon Toulon was recaptured from the British, thanks to Napoleon on 19th December. The
suppression of the city, directed by Paul Barras and others was extremely bloody and
, around 700-800 prisoners were shot or slain by bayonet in a massacre on Toulon’s
Champ de Mars
Lyons Lyons surrendered in October. Barrère suggested to the Convention that old Lyons
should be destroyed and become ‘Ville-Affranchie’. He proposed torching everything
except the homes of the poor and erecting a column which read ‘Lyons made war on
liberty: Lyons is no more’. A commission was sent under Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois and
Joseph Fouchée. In December it carried out the mitraillades whereby the condemned
were killed using cannons loaded with grapeshot which propelled them into mass graves.
These were so brutal that the Convention ordered that they cease by the end of the
month. By the end of 1790 for at least 2000 people have been executed in Lyons.
The influence of the sans-culottes
- The Convention and the CPS yielded to a considerable amount of popular pressure during the early
months of the Terror.
- As well as helping to bring about the law of maximum and the law of suspects sans-culottes enthusiasm
was directed towards a dechristianisation campaign.
- Encouraged by agitators Hébert and Chaumette, the sans-culotte supported and move to close churches
and destroy all religious signs and symbols.
- The campaign was principally centred on Paris, but it could be carried to the provinces through the
représentant and the armées révolutionaires. For example, Fouché waged a continuous campaign of
religious terror in the region for which he was a représentant-en-mission from September 1793
- In October the Paris Commune made dechristianisation an official policy.
- Religious statues, street crosses and other religions ornamentation were removed or vandalised. For
example, the figures on the west front of Notre Dame cathedral were all beheaded.
- Busts of Marat were popular replacements for religious objects particularly on street corners. Church
property such as vestments was stolen to use in ‘mock ceremonies’ while bells and plate were melted
down to use for coins or weapons. Street names with religious references were changed.
- Some frenzied attacks on the remaining religious buildings culminated in an order to close all the
remaining churches in November.
- Royal tombs were desecrated, royal bones were thrown into a common grave and the secret oil of
Clovis used to annoint French kings were smashed.
- 7th November: Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel, who have been elected Archbishop of Paris under the Civil
Constitution sported a bonnet rouge and resigned from his episcopal out of ‘love for the people’; other
Paris clergymen followed in suit.
- The culmination of all this activity was the transformation of Notre Dame Cathedral into the Temple of
Reason. In November, a ‘Festival of Reason’ organised by the Paris commune and radical journalist
Hébert was held there.
- The festival was not authorised by the Convention who actually refused to visit it as a body, although
their decision to adopt the new non-religious calendar helped encourage such sentiments.
- Robespierre was particularly fearful of such excesses which run the risk of earning the Revolution more
enemies. He believed that faith could be valuable in the maintenance of order and control; this was a
different stance from that of Fouché and Hébert who wanted a completely secular society.
- Following a minor revolt in Brie in December when peasants attacked the local Jacobin club, he
persuaded the Convention to prohibit violent attacks on religion.
- By the decree on the ‘liberty of cults’, religious toleration was reaffirmed.
- However this came too late to save the 20,000 priests have been forced to renounce their positions.
The influence of Robespierre and the CPS
- By the end of 1793 the Federalist Revolt was under control and the war situation and economy, thanks
for a good harvest that year, were improving. This might therefore have seemed an appropriate time to
relax the Terror.
- Instead, however, a new law was passed wage increase the powers of the CPS and CGS.
- The argument put forward by Robespierre and his Montagnard supporters was that France needed a
more ordered system of government since too many conflicting bodies had emerged.
- In reality it was also a way of keeping the activity of the sans-culottes, both in Paris and in other towns
in France, whose demands for a share of power and property, were incompatible with the need to keep
the support of farmers merchants and other taxpayers and end the social disruption caused by
dechristianisation
The Terror and executions
Between 1792 and 1794 there were around 40,000 victims of the Terror. It is, of course, difficult to provide
exact figures as any of these deaths were as the result of internal war, but it has been estimated that
approximately 17,000 of these wee guillotined. These were the years during which the newly adopted
guillotine was transformed from being a symbol of progress as a ‘humane’ method of early revolutionary ideals
as the chaos and paranoia created by war and the fear of counter-revolution brought death and fear
The popular Terror, September to December 1793
- 9th September 1793: Convention establishes Revolutionary Armies
- September 1793: the Convention declared that it must destroy its enemies, or they would destroy the
Republic.
- Hence, following the Law of Suspects (passed by the CPS on 17th September 1793) there was a rapid
increase in the numbers of those brough before the Revolutionary Tribunal
- Between March and September, the tribunal had heard 260 cases; between September and December it
dealt with 500,000. Similarly, in the six months before September, the Tribunal had sent 66 people to
the guillotine; in the three months after this, it sent 180 and this was just in Paris
The show trials
- These featured prominent people, most of them aristocrats being executed as a result of growing
pressure of the sans-culottes for bloodshed. However, only 9% of executions in this phase of the Terror
actually came from the ranks of the nobility and 7% from the clergy
- The first was Marie-Antoinette, who was tried by the RT on the 14 th October 1793
- She was accused of orgies, squandering government money, conspiracy against the internal and
external security of the state and sharing intelligence with the enemy. She was found guilty of all these
crimes and guillotined on 16th October
- 24th October: the trial of the 21 expelled Girondin leaders began. The result was a foregone conclusion
and al were condemned to death and guillotined on 31st October
- 6th November: duc d’Orléans despite his support for the revolution and Republic, his son’s friendship
with Dumouriez, along with his links to the royal family, placed him under suspicion
- 8th November: Madame Roland, the wife of a disgraced Girondin minister is guillotined
The deaths of ‘ordinary citizens’
- 10th October: a major speech delivered by Saint-Just in the name of the CPS said that ‘the provisional
government of France is revolutionary until there is peace’. This was used to justify an intense
campaign across the départements. The campaign used:
1. Local watch committees (comités de surveillance) to monitor residents in every municipality
2. Armées révolutionaires (made up of around 40,000 men) to roam the countryside and clamp down
on federalist and counter-revolutionary activity
3. Spies and agents from the CGS
4. More than a hundred représentants-en-mission from the Convention, to pursue the cause of
‘revolutionary justice’
- Although their activities were overseen by the CPS, officials and groups frequently took law into their
own hands and some acted with indiscriminate savagery. The worst affected areas were the Vendée and
those of the federalist revolt.
- Areas outside the main centres of revolt may have suffered less but they too were forced to bow down
to the will of the représentants-en-mission
Area Atrocities and deaths
The Vendée The représentant-en-mission was Jean Baptiste Carrier. A total of 7873 for guillotined
(Nantes) and many more shots without trial. Between November 1793 and January 1790 for a
further 2000 executed in annoying ads which are a master earnings on the river are not.
Toulon Toulon was recaptured from the British, thanks to Napoleon on 19th December. The
suppression of the city, directed by Paul Barras and others was extremely bloody and
, around 700-800 prisoners were shot or slain by bayonet in a massacre on Toulon’s
Champ de Mars
Lyons Lyons surrendered in October. Barrère suggested to the Convention that old Lyons
should be destroyed and become ‘Ville-Affranchie’. He proposed torching everything
except the homes of the poor and erecting a column which read ‘Lyons made war on
liberty: Lyons is no more’. A commission was sent under Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois and
Joseph Fouchée. In December it carried out the mitraillades whereby the condemned
were killed using cannons loaded with grapeshot which propelled them into mass graves.
These were so brutal that the Convention ordered that they cease by the end of the
month. By the end of 1790 for at least 2000 people have been executed in Lyons.
The influence of the sans-culottes
- The Convention and the CPS yielded to a considerable amount of popular pressure during the early
months of the Terror.
- As well as helping to bring about the law of maximum and the law of suspects sans-culottes enthusiasm
was directed towards a dechristianisation campaign.
- Encouraged by agitators Hébert and Chaumette, the sans-culotte supported and move to close churches
and destroy all religious signs and symbols.
- The campaign was principally centred on Paris, but it could be carried to the provinces through the
représentant and the armées révolutionaires. For example, Fouché waged a continuous campaign of
religious terror in the region for which he was a représentant-en-mission from September 1793
- In October the Paris Commune made dechristianisation an official policy.
- Religious statues, street crosses and other religions ornamentation were removed or vandalised. For
example, the figures on the west front of Notre Dame cathedral were all beheaded.
- Busts of Marat were popular replacements for religious objects particularly on street corners. Church
property such as vestments was stolen to use in ‘mock ceremonies’ while bells and plate were melted
down to use for coins or weapons. Street names with religious references were changed.
- Some frenzied attacks on the remaining religious buildings culminated in an order to close all the
remaining churches in November.
- Royal tombs were desecrated, royal bones were thrown into a common grave and the secret oil of
Clovis used to annoint French kings were smashed.
- 7th November: Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel, who have been elected Archbishop of Paris under the Civil
Constitution sported a bonnet rouge and resigned from his episcopal out of ‘love for the people’; other
Paris clergymen followed in suit.
- The culmination of all this activity was the transformation of Notre Dame Cathedral into the Temple of
Reason. In November, a ‘Festival of Reason’ organised by the Paris commune and radical journalist
Hébert was held there.
- The festival was not authorised by the Convention who actually refused to visit it as a body, although
their decision to adopt the new non-religious calendar helped encourage such sentiments.
- Robespierre was particularly fearful of such excesses which run the risk of earning the Revolution more
enemies. He believed that faith could be valuable in the maintenance of order and control; this was a
different stance from that of Fouché and Hébert who wanted a completely secular society.
- Following a minor revolt in Brie in December when peasants attacked the local Jacobin club, he
persuaded the Convention to prohibit violent attacks on religion.
- By the decree on the ‘liberty of cults’, religious toleration was reaffirmed.
- However this came too late to save the 20,000 priests have been forced to renounce their positions.
The influence of Robespierre and the CPS
- By the end of 1793 the Federalist Revolt was under control and the war situation and economy, thanks
for a good harvest that year, were improving. This might therefore have seemed an appropriate time to
relax the Terror.
- Instead, however, a new law was passed wage increase the powers of the CPS and CGS.
- The argument put forward by Robespierre and his Montagnard supporters was that France needed a
more ordered system of government since too many conflicting bodies had emerged.
- In reality it was also a way of keeping the activity of the sans-culottes, both in Paris and in other towns
in France, whose demands for a share of power and property, were incompatible with the need to keep
the support of farmers merchants and other taxpayers and end the social disruption caused by
dechristianisation
