Government by Terror 1793–4

Question 1

What were the two periods of the terror?

Answer 1

1. Started with attack on Tuileries/ August 10th 1792 Journee, included September massacres and ended with battle of Valmy
2. Started with journee of 31 May-2 June 1793, ended with execution of Robespierre and his supporters in July 1794. Ended with victory of Fleurus 1794.

Question 2

What led to the downfall of the Gerondins?

Answer 2

1. Gerondins blamed for failures in war (had supported Dumouriez/ advocated for war)
2. Portrayed as royalist by Jacobins following the appel nominal
3. Several ministers were Gerondin and therefore held responsible by the plain for failures like the vendee rebellion and economic issues

Question 3

What was the anti-republic opposition?

Answer 3

Forces opposed to the Republic. Comprising former members of the nobility, refractory priests and monarchists.

Question 4

What was the Committee of General Security? (CGS)

Answer 4

• Task of rooting out anti-republican opposition
  1. Revolutionary Tribunal: A court specialising in trying those accused of counter-revolutionary activities.
  2. Representatives-on-mission: Mainly Jacobin deputies from the Convention who were sent to reassert government authority in provinces.
  3. Watch committees: Set up in each commune and each section of major towns.
  4. Summary execution decree: From 19 March 1793, any rebels captured with arms were to be executed immediately.

Question 5

What was the Committee of Public Safety? (CPS)

Answer 5

• Its purpose was to supervise and speed up the activities of
  ministers, whose authority it superseded.
• Of the 9 members selected in April, 7 were from the plain.

Question 6

What was the journee of 31st May-2nd June and its significance?

Answer 6

• On 2 June 80,000 National Guardsmen surrounded the Convention and directed their cannon at it.
• They demanded the expulsion of the Girondins from the Assembly and a maximum price imposed on all essential goods.
• 29 Gerondin deputies and 2 ministers arrested and killed
• Helped the Jacobins come into power and showed how popular violence made the government take action + led to federalist revolts

Question 7

How serious a threat to the government was the federalist revolt?

Answer 7

• In many departments, the rebels resented the influence of Paris and its Commune over the Convention and the power of the Jacobins.
• Some form of disturbance occurred in 60/83 departments.
• Most serious revolt was in the naval base of Toulon where food supplies were cut off so the people negotiate with the British. They entered town which was a blow as half the French fleet was lying off the coast of Toulon.
• The federal forces were small so they did not pose much of a threat.

Question 8

What was the composition of the new CPS?

Answer 8

• After 2 June most deputies feared and distrusted the Montagnards
  because of the way they had dealt with the Girondin.
• However, the new CPS’s 12 members were all either Montagnards or deputies of the Plain.
• They were young, mostly middle class and jointly responsible for the committee’s actions

Question 9

How did Robespierre justify the terror?

Answer 9

• Robespierre’s love of virtu swept aside all human emotion
• He believed the Terror was nothing other than justice, prompt, severe and inflexible; it was therefore an essence of virtue
• Wanted to create a Republic of virtues- a citizen who places civic duty above all else

Question 10

Why did the sans culottes rise to power?

Answer 10

1. Economic problems made them angry and made them riot and realise their power (Revellion riots, Fall of Bastille)
2. La patrie en danger decree/ passive citizens allowed to join NG
3. Rise of political clubs (Jacobins and Gerondins represent their views and encourage them)

Question 11

What were the main features of the sans culottes?

Answer 11

• Believed in direct democracy and that political life should take place in the open
• Anti-clericism
• Egalitarian
• anti aristocracy

Question 12

What control did the sans culottes exert over the Paris sections?

Answer 12

• Each Section was controlled by a small minority of militants, usually the better-off members, who had the time to devote to Section business.
• Issued ‘certificates of citizenship’, in control of NG
• The Parisian sans-culottes had the force with which to seize power but they chose to persuade or intimidate the Convention, never to replace it.

Question 13

What concessions were made to the sans-culottes?

Answer 13

• New Constitution presented to the people on 24th June 1793, which recognised many sans culotte aspirations. It was preceded by a dec of rights which went further than the 1789 one- right to work, to be educated, to have assistance
• Sections demanded conscription to fight the war- levee en mass
• Economic concessions: law of maximums, anti-hoarding laws

Question 14

What was the levee en masse?

Answer 14

• 23 August 1793
• Marked the appearance of total war
• 1/2 million conscripts called, state factories used to make arms and ammunitions, govt took control of foreign trade
• Success

Question 15

Why was Jacques Roux considered to be a threat?

Answer 15

• Economic conditions worsened by summer 1793 (assignat further lost value and drought reduced grain supplies)
• Jacques Roux and his followers the enrages (wage earners) saw the poverty people were in and demanded better conditions
• Economic terror: demanded execution of hoarders and purge of ex-nobles from the army
• Threatened the NC with actions on the street and responsible for journee of 5th September

Question 16

What was the journee of 5th September 1793?

Answer 16

• Urged by Roux, a crowd marched to the NC and made it accept a series of radical measures + terror as ‘Order of the Day’
• Led convention to authorise the creation of armee revolutionnaire made mostly of sans culottes
• Used in about 2/3 of the departments

Question 17

What was the purpose behind setting up the ‘armee revolutionnaire’?

Answer 17

• Ensured food supplies of Paris and large provincial cities
• Round up counter-revolutionaries
• Establish revolutionary ‘justice’ in the south and west where there was little enthusiasm shown for the revolution

Successful in supplying bread to Paris till Spring of 1794
Small in numbers
Met opposition from rural areas

Question 18

What was the impact of the ‘maximum laws’? (Economic Terror)

Answer 18

• Death penalty imposed on hoarders
• Law of General maximum- fixed wages and prices

Was it revolutionary?

• Harmed producers (peasants)- eventually had to revise prices upwards in February 1794 as the law was imposed by the rich (peasants) who didn’t like it
• Less food was produced- not successful
• Original aim of the revolution had been to set up a free market- this was interventionist
• Did not repeal the Le Chaplier laws

Question 19

What were the main aspects of the political terror?

Answer 19

• Oct 1793: the recently approved constitution was suspended on recommendation of the CPS which allowed for the adoption of extreme policies:
  1. The official Terror, controlled by the CPS and CGS, centred in Paris and whose victims came before the Revolutionary Tribunal. (many celebrity trials, most of which ended in execution)
  2. The Terror in the areas of federal revolt such as the Vendée and Lyon, where the worst atrocities took place.
  3. The Terror in other parts of France, under the control of watch committees, representatives-on-mission and the revolutionary armies.

Question 20

What measures were used in the provinces to restore the authority of the government?

Answer 20

• By the end of 1793, the federal revolt had been suppressed by the regular army
• Marseille, Lyon and Toulon were taken and the Vendean rebellion crushed
• Shot peasants, burnt their farms, killed animals and raped and mutilated women
• Revolutionary courts condemned 8700 people from the Vendean rebellion, mostly peasants
• Noyades (drownings)
• 72% of executions during the terror were in these areas

Question 21

What was the Law of suspects?

Answer 21

• Anyone suspected of counter revolutionary activity and undermining the Republic could be arrested and held without trial indefinitely.
• Local revolutionary committees could send anyone accused before one of the Revolutionary tribunals and replace local administration with militant sans-culottes.

Question 22

What is significant about the figures relating to deaths during the Terror?

Answer 22

• 80,000 deaths in the Vendee (53% of total)

Question 23

What was the impact of the dechristianisation campaign?

Answer 23

• Came from sans-culottes who hates Catholicism as they felt it had caused divisions among the revolution
• Like the abolition of the monarchy, the destruction of churches was a symbol of the revolutionaries’ determination to destroy everything connected with the ancien régime.
• Churches were closed, church bells and silver destroyed, clerical salaries were not paid and priests were forced to renounce their religion and marry
• Lack of priests affected many ordinary people the most

Question 24

What was the revolutionary calendar?

Answer 24

• On 5 October 1793 a new revolutionary calendar was introduced.
• It was dated from 22 September 1792, when the Republic was proclaimed. Thus the period from 22 September 1792 to 21 September 1793 became Year 1.
• The new calendar ignored Sundays and festivals of the Church.

Question 25

What were conditions like by the end of 1793?

Answer 25

• the federal revolts had been crushed
• food supplies were moving into towns and cities and assignat value was rising
• in the west, the defeats of the rebels at Cholet and Le Mans effectively ended the civil war in the Vendée
• French armies were also doing well in the war. Battle of Wattignies in October.

Question 26

How did the government restore its authority?

Answer 26

• There was administrative confusion in many departments in the autumn of 1793 as local revolutionary committees etc interpreted the law, or ignored it, on a whim.
• Sept 1793: general assemblies of the Sections should meet only twice a week.
• Oct 1793: suspension of the Constitution of 1793.

Question 27

What was the Law of Frimaire and its impact?

Answer 27

This law gave the two Committees full executive
powers.
• The CGS was responsible for police and internal security. The
Revolutionary Tribunal, as well as the surveillance committees,
came under its control.
• The CPS had more extensive powers. In addition to controlling
ministers and generals, it was to control foreign policy and direct local government.
- officials of the communes and departments were put under national agents and representatives on mission were under the CPS
- Revolutionary armies except those in Paris were disbanded

Impact:
However, it rejected many of the principles of 1789. The Constitutions of 1791 and 1793 had established de-centralisation, elections to all posts, the separation of legislative from executive power and impartial justice. Now all this was reversed.

Question 28

How did the government deal with opposition?

Answer 28

1. Hebert and his leftist supporters: had support in the Cordeliers Club, the
   Commune, the Paris revolutionary army and the popular societies.
   - Arrested and accused of being foreign agents that wanted to pave the way for a restored monarchy.
   - Used this propaganda to disband societies, the Cordeliers club and the revolutionary army. Commune was purged and representatives on mission were recalled
2. Danton and the Indulgents wanted to halt the Terror and the centralisation imposed in December. They also wanted to end the war. Danton was brought in front of the revolutionary tribunal based on political charges and executed + Desmoulins.

This stifled opposition.

Question 29

What was the Great Terror?

Answer 29

• Lasted from 10 June-27 July 1794.
• In order to control all repression, the government in May 1794 abolished the provincial Revolutionary Tribunals.
• All enemies of the Republic had now to be brought to Paris, to be tried by the cities Revolutionary Tribunal.

Question 30

What does the Law of Prairial indicate about revolutionary justice?

Answer 30

• The most severe of the laws passed by the revolutionary government. The purpose of the law was to reform the Revolutionary Tribunal in order to secure more convictions. The law paved the way for the Great Terror.
• Under it, no witnesses were to be called and judgment was to be decided by ‘the conscience of the jurors’ rather than by any evidence produced. Defendants were not allowed defence counsel and the only verdicts possible were death or acquittal.

Question 31

What were the Laws of Ventose?

Answer 31

Property of those recognised as enemies of the Revolution could be seized and distributed among the poor.

Question 32

How did people react to Robespierre’s new religion?

Answer 32

• Robespierre was devoutly catholic and loathed dechristianisation, so he came up with the Cult of Supreme Being.
• This new religion pleased no-one.
• Catholics were distressed because it ignored Catholic doctrine, ceremonies and the Pope.
• Anti-clericals, including most members of the Committee of General Security, opposed it because they thought it was a first step towards the reintroduction of Roman Catholicism and Robespierre was setting himself up to be head of it.

Question 33

Why was Robespierre losing support among the sans-culottes?

Answer 33

• the execution of the Hébertistes
• the dissolution of the popular societies
• the end of direct democracy in the Sections
• the raising of the Maximum on prices in March, which led to
inflation and a fall in the assignat to only 36 per cent of its original value
• the imposing of the Maximum on wages.
- many felt that enemies had been defeated and the terror was no longer needed

Question 34

Why did tensions emerge within and between the CPS and the CGS?

Answer 34

• In April, the CPS set up its own police bureau, with Robespierre in charge,
  to prosecute dishonest officials. The CGS deeply resented this interference with its own control of internal security.
• Law of Ventose
• Church of Supreme Being
• Two members of the CPS, Billaud and Collot, had been closely attached to Hébert and so felt threatened by Robespierre. Robespierre was especially critical of Collot because of the extreme measures he had used to restore order in Lyon

Question 35

What was the impact of Robespierre’s speech to the Convention on 8 Thermidor?

Answer 35

• Robespierre delivered an important speech in the Convention suggesting that some of its members were plotting to overthrow the government: 26 July 1794
• When asked to name them, he declined. This proved to be his undoing. Any denunciation by Robespierre would have resulted in arrest and almost certainly death.
• Robespierre tried to order the NG under the sections to mobilise but they could not because of the dictatorship of the two committees.
• Execution of Robespierre and his leading allies Couthon and Saint-Just: 28 July 1794
• Coup of Thermidor: marked the end of the terror

Question 36

How successful was the Terror?

Answer 36

+:
- The Jacobin dictatorship ensured the defeat of the Republic’s internal and external enemies.
- Many of the gains made since 1789 were preserved and even extended.
- In the course of defeating her enemies, the Republic created a highly
motivated citizen army, which laid the foundations for future
conquests in Europe.

• :
• Deaths in the Vendee
• Dechristianisation
• The Great Terror