[Sidenote: The "Terror" A Political Expedient]
Terrorism has been the word usually employed to describe the internal policy of the Committee of Public Safety, and the "Reign of Terror," the period of the Committee's chief work, from the summer of 1793 to that of 1794. So sensational and so sanguinary was the period that many writers have been prone to make it the very center of the Revolution and to picture "liberty, equality, and fraternity" as submerged in a veritable sea of blood. As a matter of fact, however, the Reign of Terror was but an incident, though obviously an inevitable incident, in a great Revolution. Nor may the French people be justly accused of a peculiarly bloodthirsty disposition. Given the same circumstances, it is doubtful whether similar scenes would not have been enacted at Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, or even London. It must be remembered that great principles and far-reaching reforms were endangered by a host of foreign and domestic enemies. It seemed to the republican leaders that the occasion demanded complete unanimity in France. A divided nation could not triumph over united Europe. The only way in which France could present a united front to the world was by striking terror into the hearts of the opponents of the new régime. And terror involved bloodshed.
The chief allies of the Committee of Public Safety in conducting terrorism were the Committee of General Security and the Revolutionary Tribunal. The former was given police power in order to maintain order throughout the country. The latter was charged with trying and condemning any person suspected of disloyalty to the republic. Both were responsible to the Committee of Public Safety. A decree of the Convention, called the Law of Suspects, proclaimed as liable to arbitrary arrest every person who was of noble birth, or had held office before the Revolution, or had any relation with an émigré, or could not produce a signed certificate of citizenship.
With such instruments of despotism France became revolutionary by strokes of the guillotine. [Footnote: The guillotine, which is still used in France, consists of two upright posts between which a heavy knife rises and falls. The criminal is stretched upon a board and then pushed between the posts. The knife falls and instantly beheads him. The device was invented by a certain philanthropic Dr. Guillotine, who wished to substitute in capital punishment an instrument sure to produce instant death in the place of the bungling process of beheading with an ax. (Mathews.)] It is estimated that about 2500 persons were executed at Paris during the Reign of Terror. Among others Marie Antoinette, Philippe Égalité, and Madame Roland suffered death.
The Terror spread to the provinces. Local tribunals were everywhere established to search out and condemn suspected persons. The city of Lyons, which ventured to resist the revolutionary government, was partially demolished and hundreds of its citizens were put to death. At Nantes, where echoes of the Vendée insurrection were long heard, the brutal Jacobin deputy Carrier loaded unhappy victims on old hulks which were towed out into the Loire and sunk. The total number of those who perished in the provinces is unknown, but it may have reached ten thousand.
When the total loss of life by means of revolutionary tribunals is calculated, it will certainly be found to bear slight comparison with the enormous sacrifice of life which any one of the numerous great wars of the nineteenth century has entailed. The chief wonder about the Reign of Terror is that its champions and supporters, who had so much at stake, did not do worse things.
[Sidenote: Factions among the Revolutionaries]
A more calamitous phase of the Terror than the slaughter of royalists and reactionaries was the wretched quarreling among various factions of the radicals and the destruction. of one for the benefit of another. Thus, the efforts of the Girondists to stay the execution of the king and to appeal to the provinces against the violence in Paris, coupled with the treason of Dumouriez, seemed to the Parisian proletariat to mark the alliance of the Girondists with the reactionaries. Accordingly, the workingmen of Paris, under the leadership of Marat, revolted on 31 May, 1793, and two days later obliged the Convention to expel twenty-nine Girondist members. Of these, the chief, including Brissot and Vergniaud, were brought to the guillotine in October, 1793. Next, the leaders of the commune of Paris, who had gone to such extreme lengths as to suppress the Christian churches in that city and to proclaim atheism, were dispatched in March, 1794, by a coalition of the followers of Danton and Robespierre. Then in April, when Danton at length wearied of the Terror and counseled moderation, that redoubtable genius, together with his friend, Camille Desmoulins, was guillotined. Finally, Robespierre himself, after enjoying a brief dictatorship, during which time he vainly endeavored to put in practice the theories of Rousseau, was sent, in company with St. Just, to the guillotine by direction of the National Convention in July, 1794. This meant the beginning of reaction.
[Sidenote: End of the Terror: Thermidorian Reaction, 1794]
The death of Robespierre ended the Reign of Terror. The purpose of the Terror, however, was already achieved. The Revolution was preserved in France, and France was preserved in Europe. The Thermidorian Reaction, as the end of the Terror is called, left the National Convention free to resume its task of devising a permanent republican constitution for the country. A few subsequent attempts were made, now by reactionaries, now by extreme radicals, to interfere with the work, but they were suppressed with comparative ease. The last uprising of the Parisian populace which threatened the Convention was effectually quelled (October, 1795) by a "whiff of grape-shot" discharged at the command of a young and obscure major of artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte by name.