Reign of Terror, The

The, in French history, a period of the French Revolution. It may be said to have begun in January, 1793, when the king, Louis XVI, was executed, and to have ended in July of the following year with the execution of Robespierre and his assistants. The Reign was inaugurated in a period of extremity. The Convention was beset by the nations of continental Europe; the nobility in exile was plotting with the members of the nobility yet at home to overthrow the Revolutionary authorities. The republic was endangered by treason, anarchy, and invasion. Cities were incited to revolt. In what may well be termed desperation, the Convention named a Committee of Public Safety--this in April, 1793--and gave it practically unlimited power. "We must," said one of the leaders, "establish the despotism of liberty in order to crush the despotism of kings." The committee took strong measures. Deputies with despotic power were sent to the several departments to bring France into order. Revolts were put down; submission, as at Nantes and Lyons, was followed by military executions, virtually massacres. In Paris a revolutionary tribunal filled the jails with "suspects." The unfortunate queen, Marie Antoinette, was carted to the guillotine that she might not be a rallying center, and Royalists by the score were executed with little ceremony. People of every language and description were sent to the block. The chief victims were the aristocrats of Paris, who had made themselves obnoxious to the common people. The fishwife who had a grudge against some gentleman or his family had but to enter her denunciation with the Revolutionary authorities. The "suspected" party was arrested, thrown into jail, and executed with slight formality. Those in authority were free, of course, to include the objects of their fear, hatred, or jealousy, in the list of proscriptions. It is estimated that no less than 2,800 persons perished in Paris. The principal place of execution was the square now known as Place de la Concorde. The loss of life throughout France was not less than 15,000. See Guillotine

It should not be forgotten that very few of the people at Paris stood in any fear of the guillotine. The city during the Reign of Terror was not the gloomy place that we might imagine. Never did the inhabitants appear happier, never were the theaters and restaurants more crowded. The guillotine was making away with the enemies of liberty, so the women wore tiny guillotines as ornaments, and the children were given toy guillotines and amused themselves decapitating the figures of "aristocrats."--J. H. Robinson, History Western Europe.

Singular city, for overhead of all of this, there is the customary brewing and baking. Labor hammers and grinds. Frilled promenaders saunter under the trees, white-muslin promenadresses, with green parasols, leaning on your arm. . . . . In this Paris, are twenty-three theaters nightly; some count as many as sixty places of dancing.--Carlyle, French Revolution.

However, when all has been said in excuse and explanation, the Reign of Terror remains a blot upon the history of mankind. If it was begun to save France, it was continued for party ends; and though the leaders were personally incorruptible and were animated, most of them, by lofty motives, the subordinate agents were unspeakably cruel and sordid. At the same time the crimes of the Terrorists do not stand by themselves. They have attracted attention because of the class of society against which they were directed. John Morley, a cultivated and liberal English scholar, calls their deeds "almost as horrible as the scenes an English army was to enact six years later in Ireland"; and certainly they were less terrible than the needless vengeance inflicted by the conservative government of Paris in 1871 upon twenty thousand victims of the Commune,--a matter of which the world hears very little.--W. M. West, Modern Europe.