The War Upon Religion / Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of Anti-Christianism in Europe

by Francis A. Cunningham

MARAT.

The Legislative Assembly, after a final law granting divorce upon mutual consent, or upon the demand of one of the parties, was dissolved on September 20, 1792.

THE CONVENTION.

On September 21st, 1792, a new government, entitled the Convention, began its sittings. It has been justly characterized as an organization the most bloody and atrocious in history. It was during its administration that that dark period occurred to which has been given the significant name of the "Reign of Terror." Composed as it was of the vilest and most unscrupulous element of the nation its inauguration gave little promise of peace or security to the country. Its sessions were dominated by the Jacobins, the Girondists, and the Mountaineers, parties sworn to oppose each other in all political matters, though uniting in all measures of oppression to religion and the Church.

Their methods of tyranny were conceived with system and precision worthy of a better cause, and were executed by a machinery whose organized efforts reached into every village and hamlet in the land. Its Committee of Public Safety, the supreme secret council of the Convention, included men like Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. There was a Committee of General Security for the detection of political crimes, and the punishment of all suspected or proscribed persons. The Revolutionary Tribunal condemned the victims indicated by the General Security, and condemned them to death without a hearing.

There were Revolutionary committees in every department and municipality throughout the country, whose office it was to imprison suspects, and to employ the guillotine regardless of trial. The Revolutionary Army—composed of only such as had proven themselves devoted to the anarchistic doctrines of the times—was employed in the guarding the prisons, arresting suspects, demolishing castles, pulling down belfries, ransacking churches for gold and silver vessels, and other like purposes. It had its regiments in every city of France. It was by means of such powerfully organized associations that the Convention was able to perpetrate the atrocities of the Reign of Terror.

The first act of the new Assembly was to declare the abolition of royalty, and to proclaim France a Republic. At the same time it began the attempt to inaugurate a new era, the first day of the first year of which was to be September 22nd, 1792.

THE CALENDAR.

In the new Revolutionary calendar the Christian order of months and weeks was set aside for an arbitrary arrangement whose awkward and frivolous character was evident, even independently of its sacrilegious intent. Instead of weeks of seven days, periods of ten days, or decades, were substituted. As there was to be no Sunday, the tenth or last day of the decade, called "Decadi," was to be observed as the day of rest, and have all the importance of the Lord's Day, the place of which it had taken. The months were twelve and consisted each of thirty days; to make up the necessary 365 days of the year, five intercalary days, called sans culottes, were added.