Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror (September 5, 1793 – July 28, 1794) (the latter is date 10 Thermidor, year II of the French Revolutionary Calendar), also known simply as The Terror (French: la Terreur), is a period of violence that occurrs after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution."

The death toll ranges in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris), and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.

The guillotine (called the "National Razor") becomes the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions: Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans) and Madame Roland, as well as many others, such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lose their lives under its blade.

During 1794, revolutionary France is beset with conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies.

Within France, the revolution is opposed by the French nobility, which has lost its inherited privileges.

The Roman Catholic Church is generally against the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and requires they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy).

In addition, the First French Republic is engaged in a series of wars with neighboring powers intent on crushing the revolution to prevent its spread.The extension of civil war and the advance of foreign armies on national territory produces a political crisis and increases the rivalry between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins.

The latter are eventually grouped in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and they have the support of the Parisian population.

The French government establishes the Committee of Public Safety, which takes its final form on 6 September 1793, in order to suppress internal counterrevolutionary activities and raise additional French military forces.

Through the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's leaders exercise broad dictatorial powers and use them to instigate mass executions and political purges.

The repression accelerates in June and July 1794, a period called "la Grande Terreur" (the Great Terror), and ends in the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), leading to the Thermidorian Reaction, in which several protagonists of the Reign of Terror are executed, including Saint-Just and Robespierre.

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