Essay/Term paper: The reign of terror

Essay, term paper, research paper:  History Essays

The Reign of Terror


History is said to be written by the winners, but is it possible to
rewrite history? In a way, the French, like many who have preceded them, and
many who will proceed them have done the impossible, rewriting history. From
trivial folklore, such as George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, to the
incredibly wrong, the African slave trade; people's views of history can be
shaped and molded. The French have done a superb job of instilling all of us
with the concept that their Revolution was a fight for liberty, justice and the
good of all Frenchmen everywhere. Their glorification of the Bastille with it's
depictions in painting and sculpture and how the Revolution was the beginning of
a new age pales to some of the events during this period. In fact, the storming
of the Bastille was merely a hole in the dike, and more would follow. The
National Guard, the Paris Commune, the September Massacre, are all words that
the French would prefer us not to hear. These events were a subtle dénouementto
an climax that was filled with both blood and pain. The Reign of Terror, or the
Great Terror, was a massive culmination to the horror of the French Revolution,
the gutters flowing with blood as the people of Paris watched with an
entertained eye. No matter what the French may claim, if one chooses to open
his eyes and read about this tragedy, they are most certainly welcome.
The revolution begins quietly in the fiscal crisis of Louis XVI's reign.
The government was running deeply into bankruptcy, and at the urging of his
financial advisors, he called the Estates General. The governing body had not
been called for almost two centuries, and now it's workings seemed outdated. A
small number of people said that the Third Estate, that which was drawn from the
towns, should have power to equal the other Estates. Clubs of the bourgeoisie,
the middle class, were formed, proclaiming, "Salus populi lex est." It was a
simple cry meaning "the welfare of the people is law." To these people, the
Estates General was like a pair of shoes that no longer fit. Reformed seemed
iminent, the phrase, "The Third Estate is not an order, it is the nation itself"
began to circulate.1
With much fanfare and circumstance, the three estates were called
together. However, on trying to meet, the Third Estate found the doors to their
meeting place locked. Moving to the tennis court, with much deliberation, an
oath was sworn between the delegates and some clergy, proclaiming themselves as
the National Assembly. They swore to remain indivisible until a constitution
had been formed. As they met at the church of St. Louis, the King was delayed
in his attempt to end this display of independence. Finally, he informed them,
that he would not allow any reforms to be made, unless he approved of them.
Unfortunately, their will would not be easily undone, and in a vote to four
hundred ninety three to ninety four, the National Assembly declared that serious
action would be taken against the King. With such an resounding opposition, on
June 27th, 1789, Louis XVI gave into their demands.
Educated in Paris, a young man of twenty six years, would be one of the
first to set off the spark of revolution. Jumping on top of a table at the
Palais Royale, a social gathering place in Paris, he spoke out against the
enemies of the people in a well scripted oration. The crowd quickly fawned over
their new found hero, marching through the streets of Paris, even interrupting a
performance at the Paris opera. Military forces were required to remedy the
situation, yet Paris only had six thousand troops with which to defend itself
against the rampaging mob. At the Place Vendome, the cavalry attempted to
control the riot, only to find their horses surrounded and unmovable through the
dense crowd.
The officers of the Swiss and Turkish armies attacked the rioters
outright, but the garde-nationale was called in to stop this massacre. This
chaos caused the Hotel de Ville to demand each tocsin, or summoning bell, cannon,
drum, and church bell be used to summon the people of Paris. Drawing from the
electoral populace of each section, four thousand and eight hundred men were
given the task of protecting Paris, now named the Paris commune. They wore the
colors of red and blue, symbolizing the colors of Paris. Armed with cannons and
muskets, they had little powder with which to defend Paris.
The Bastille was a prison, built of stone, it had eight round towers,
with it's highest tower being seventy-three feet. It was built as a defensive
fort against the British, and was not converted into a prison until under the
rule of Charles VI. To the authors, sculptors and painters who glorified the
taking of the Bastille, it was a dark and secret castle, where prisoners never
returned from. Each prisoner hung from shackles until their dried bones were
pushed into a corner, but the Bastille was nothing like that in reality. It was
a prison for nobility, clergy, the occasional scandalous author, and juvenile
delinquents whose parents had asked for them to be kept there. Most prisoners
had more money spent on them, then it took for an average Parisian to subsist.
The living quarters were octagonal rooms, sixteen feet in diameter. Pets were
allowed to deal with the vermin, and prisoners were allowed furnishings, clothes,
and other personal belongings. Even one of the most infamous criminals, the
demented Marquis de Sade, made his home their, receiving his wife and other
visitors on a regular basis.
With only a few prisoners, the Bastille was an ideal place to store
large amounts of ammunition. Bernard-Rene de Launay was in control of a force
of just over a hundred men that were given the task of defending more then
thirty-thousand pounds of powder. In the event of a siege, the Bastille would
not be able to hold out long, only containing a two day food supply, and no
internal water. The morning of July 14th, a large crowd of over eight hundred
people set before the Bastille, calling for it's surrender. Delegates were sent
in to speak with de Launay, yet he refused to capitulate until orders from the
Hotel de Ville were presented to him.
As the orders were being fetched, the crowd grew less patient, until
finally a carriage-maker cut the lines of the drawbridge, allowing them access
to the inner courtyard. As shots were fired on both side, the siege became
imminent. For a day, desperate attempts on both sides finally ending in the
surrender of the guards. The guards were then rounded up, decapitated, and
their heads were paraded on pikes like the wax busts of French heroes. De
Launay was stabbed, rolled into a gutter, then shot before his head was taken as
a trophy. By the end of November of 1789, Palloy, a labor leader who had jumped
the gun to begin demolition, the crews of Palloy had nearly finished destruction
of the Bastille.
The church had become split over those who did or did not support the
revolution. The Papacy was on the side of the counter-revolutionaries, and
could not support the King's signing of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in
1791. The seasons since 1789 had been quiet, violence sporadic and viewed as
behind the new way of life in France. Unfortunately, the King did not
appreciate his stay in the Tuilleries, and in the summer of 1791, an escape
attempt was expected. The palace was surrounded with guards at every gate,
river front, and over six hundred national guardsmen watching every possible
escape route. Among the servants, a few were informants, and leaving the royal
quarters required a pass.
An extremely generous young cavalier, Count von Fersen, was willing to
do anything to assist the King and Queen, and so on the night of June 20, 1791,
they made their escape. They made it out of the palace, disguised, and made it
as far as the town of Varennes in the north east. The ride back to Paris was an
ordeal, followed by a mob and the National Guard.
Riots began occurring in Paris, as the sans cullotes, or the poor of
Paris, sued for their rights. Some sides wished for the king's freedoms, while
the left sought to radicalize the revolution even further. The journalists
Jacque Hebert and Jean-Paul Marat, they wrote the journals, Le pere Duchesne,
and L'Ami du Peuple, respectively. Their attacks on established French
Institutions were biting with much venom in their arguments. Marat suffered
from a strange skin disease that gave him horrible lesions that reeked and
sickened those that were around him. Of the two, he was the more violent
insisting that, "Let the blood of the traitor's flow. That is the only way to
save the country."
In June of 1791, as the King attempted escape from the Tuilleries, the
sans culottes armed themselves. Holding aloft a calf's heart they claimed to be
the heart of an aristocrat, they found Louis, forcing him to wear a liberty cap
and drink with them. As the weeks past, in the early days of August, the
National Assembly declared that Paris would become the Insurrectionary Commune.
They removed the royalists from any positions of power, along with replacing
lawyers with artisans, and on August the 9th, they began their normal
deliberations. A huge crowd of twenty thousand sans cullotes called for the
King and Queen who had taken refuge with the National Assembly. A crowd broke
through the gates, demanding that liberty and equality be maintained. In
response, the National Assembly declared that the King be imprisoned and
replaced by six ministers.
The mood of Paris changed quite suddenly as stores closed and
dignitaries left. Many attempted to escape from the city, fearing what would
come. Paranoia in Paris reached a feverous pitch, as the sans cullotes feared
that royalists, church spies, and counter revolutionaries would endanger the
revolution. This fear extended into the government as vigilance committees were
setup, passports were revoked, and hundreds were imprisoned if they were a
suspected enemy of the revolution. When news of a recent military defeat
reached Parisian ears, it was believed that treachery from inside the ranks had
been the cause. Danton was a man of action and power, a lawyer, he was
described as a "vehement tribune of the people", and "voice of the revolution."
In Paris, with scarred facial features due to accidents upon the farm as a boy,
Danton had become very powerful in the Insurrectionary Commune, becoming the
minister of Justice. His power added to that of the Girondists, a party of
lawyers and atheists, who were now the ruling party.
By the beginning of September, Danton was calling for all able men of
Paris to arm themselves and search every house to find any "enemy of the people".
In his paper, Marat supported the execution of all counter revolutionaries.
Rumors around Paris circulated that the prisons would be raided, and those
inside would be killed. On the afternoon of September 2nd, the violence began
as a mob surrounded a number of coaches filled with priests to be brought to the
prison of L'Abbaye. The leader leapt onto the coach, thrusting and slicing with
his rapier. He shouted to the shocked crowd that watched on, "So, this
frightens you, does it, you cowards? You must get used to the sight of death."
The words were quite prophetic, the even beginning the September Massacres.
Within the next five days over twelve hundred people would be brutally
slaughtered by the mass of armed Parisians. The next to be slaughtered was a
group of one hundred and fifty priests. As they were decapitated, one of the
priest's demanded a fair trial. A mock tribunal was set up, and the priests
were decapitated one by one, their body's thrown into a well. Every prison,
save for the ones that contained the prostitutes and debtors, was broken into as
the semptembriseurs, named for the month, slaughtered those in side. They
stopped only to eat and drink, sometimes on the naked corpses that littered the
ground. Strangely enough, a few lives were spared, by either compassion of
sheer luck, but it was nothing compared to the disgusting brutality with which
many of the murders were committed. One woman, charged with mutilating her
lover, had her breasts cut off as she was nailed to the ground, a bonfire set
under her spread legs. One septembriseur sliced open the chest of a noble,
removing the heart, squeezing it into a glass, and after drinking a sip, and
forced Mme de Sombreuil to drink to save her father. Undoubtedly, one of the
most gruesome acts was that of the Princess de Lamballe. She was raped, her
body mutilated and her breasts sliced off. Her legs were shot of a cannon, and
her genitals were cut off and paraded around Paris on a pike. The man who had
cut off her genitals had also supposedly cooked and eaten her heart. Her head
was placed upon a bar at a cafe' where those there were asked to drink to her
death, before her head was placed on a pike and paraded under the Queen's window.

At Bicetre, it was claimed that the prisoners were revolting, and that
they had to be put down. However, the prison held a large number of adolescents
who were detained there by their parent's wish. Forty three people were killed,
all under the age of eighteen, of the one hundred and sixty two prisoners. By
the end, the septembriseurs were not pursued, in fact, some in the commune
commended their deeds as a necessary culling. To the outlying Provinces, the
killing of nearly half of the prisoners of Paris, was a clear message. In the
two weeks proceeding the deaths, members of the church and supporters of the
king were executed.
However, these troubles were soon followed by the battle of Valmy, which
the army of France had defeated the Prussians. If the leader of the Prussian
army, the Duke of Brunswick, would have moved swiftly enough, Paris might have
been taken, ending the revolution. However, reports have it that Danton paid
Brunswick to retreat back into Germany. The citizens in Paris left their
thoughts of murder and celebrated the great victory. Goethe, a German novelist,
concluded that, "Here and today begins a new era in the history of the world."
as he watched the battle from a hill side. The statement found it's truth in
France's use of the citizen as a soldier, and the mobilization of such a massive
force.
A new force met at Paris, the next day. On September 21st, 1792, the
National Convention met. It looked like it's predecessors, composed of mostly
the middle class with a few clergy and nobility, endorsing the Girondin.
However, the more conservative Girondin were prevented from voting in Paris,
allowing the radical Jacobin to gain power. However, one of the first acts of
the Convention was to abolish the monarchy, and began the New Republic, with
it's own strange calendar. However, the Convention was deeply divided, as the
Girondin repeatedly tried to attack the Mountain, the highest seats in the
convention that belonged to the Jacobin leadership. Yet the Girondin blatantly
opposed the Parisians, their septembriseurs, and their Commune. They were in
support of the trying the king, but the Montagard, the Mountain, along with
Danton, would chose only to condemn him. Their deliberations on his fate lasted
until the winter months of the year.
By January, the King was in trial. On the 20th of the new year, the
King was tried, found guilty, and was sentenced to be executed the following day.
The Girondins hoped to save the king from death by proposing a bill to the
people of France. However, their attempts were futile, and only served to anger
the sans culottes. Those that gathered to watch the guillotining were mainly
the angry poor, and when the blade came down, they threw their hats in the air
shouting, "Vive la Nation! Vive la Republique!"
Yet, not all was as well as it seemed for the Revolution. The enemies
of the people had extended into foreign borders as European nations condemned
the execution of Louis XVI. The value of their money had lessened, food was
becoming more and more scarce, and the cost of living rose. The Convention took
a united stand against the violence of the sans culottes but still persecuted
the counter revolutionaries. The problems they faced were no small matter,
especially the peasant rebellion occurring in the Vendee. The peasant's were
loyal to the King, and anti-republican, not wishing to participate in the
drafting for the National Guard. Attacking government offices and forcing the
National Guard to retreat. The force of some ten thousand peasant's were
quickly move to Rochefort to open the port for a British Invasion fleet. The
Vendee was not the only spot of counter revolution, as troops were sent to Lyons,
Nantes, Bordeaux and Marseille to crush anti-revolutionary support.
They dealt with the enemies of the people by setting up a Revolutionary
Tribunal, with which to try those who would otherwise have been killed by the
sans culottes. Despite the objections of Vergniaud, a member of the Convention
who shouted "Septembre" as they deliberated, the Tribunal began it's operations.
The Convention decided to form the Committee of Public Safety, as foreign
invasion became a more real threat. This cabinet would soon become the most
powerful governing body, and Danton held one of the nine positions.
Yet the Girondins had no support from the people of Paris, making the
mistake of bringing Marat, a prominent Jacobin, before the Revolutionary
Tribunal. Marat was easily acquitted, but they summoned him again. The
argument was over corn prices, and the Jacobin stand of lowering them only won
them more favor with the sans culottes. On Sunday June 2nd, a few days after a
protest by the sans culottes, the Convention arrested the leading Girondins in
the Convention, as the Tuilleries was surrounded by an angry mob of tens of
thousands of sans culottes.
The Committee seemed unfit to deal with the new problems that quickly
became evident. The Austrians were quickly advancing into French territory, and
counter revolutionaries in Lyons had seized control, executing Republican
leaders. Toulon, the royalists were handing over twenty six of France's sixty
one frigates over the Lord Hood, commander of the British navy. However,
Maximilien Robespierre joined the Committee and would soon become the dominant
revolutionary force. A man known for his virtue and upright moral standing, his
rise to through the Jacobin club and the Assembly was that his ideas were
supported by the Assembly and the people.
In Paris, the Enrage, a group of those who wanted death to all who
opposed the revolution and had guided the now abolished Insurectionary Commune,
still troubled the government. Varlet still cried out for the needs of the poor
and spurred them to riot against the price of food. The Committee was forced to
deal with these problems when a supporter of the Girondin, Charlotte Corday,
assasinated Marat as he lay in his therapeutic bath on July 13th. His death
caused him to become a martyr to the radicals, much to Ropespierre's envy, and
the Committee was forced by the prodding of the Enrages to institute warehouses
to store the grain in Paris and give the death penalty to those that hoarded.
The Committee also had to worry about it's critics that followed Danton,
who was now President of the Convention after losing his seat to Robespierre.
The Hebertists followed the freed journalist, who accused the Jacobins of
ignoring him after he helped them overthrow the Girondin. With so much pressure,
the Committee authorized the destruction of all federalists, royalists, and
other counter revolutionaries. Those rebelling in the provinces were quickly
dealt with. Still, the opposers wanted more, and a revolution on the Hotel de
Ville, forced the Convention to allow the Hebertists, Varenne and Herbois into
the Committee, and they declared that "Terror be the order of the day."
Along with the Queen, the twenty two Girondin leaders that had been
arrested were also brought to the guillotine in the same month. The former
president of the Convention, and converted noble, the Duc d'Orleans, more
commonly known as Philippe Egalite' was sentenced to death by the Tribunal also.
The once mayor of Paris, Jean Bailly was also executed.
The purpose of these killings that lasted in and out through the fall
and winter of 1793 was the Committee's ruthless drive to destroy any and all
enemies of the people, royalists and federalists alike. All in a effort to gain
support from the sans culottes to continue their one handed control of France.
The guillotine had struck over seventeen thousand necks in the Terror, and three
thousand of those belonged to Parisians. Those who survived lived through the
Terror fearing a knock on the door that would be their arrest. Robespierre
himself said, "We must rule by iron those who cannot be ruled by justice…You
must punish not merely traitors but the indifferent as well." Yet, those who
were brought before the Tribunal were not just the enemies of the people, they
were women, children, families, the elderly, and every social class was
represented. Those who shed tears for the loss of their family were executed
also, those who dared make the smallest misstep were dealt with harshly, the
penalty death. The innocent lost their lives through clerical error, and some
were killed being falsely accused by neighbors or enemies who wanted vengeance.
In the Provinces, the guillotine could not work fast enough for some,
and Joseph Fouche', a Jacobin representative, killed over three hundred with
cannon fire. At Toulon, they were shot, at Nantes, thousands died in the
disease ridden prisons, and thousands more were sunk in barges, causing ships
that anchored to pull out corpses. To the sans culottes of Paris, it was a
lively entertainment. They drank and ate, some placed bets, while others
knitted. They eagerly anticipated the sounds of the execution, and death was a
trivial thing.
A young and eloquent opponent of the Girondins, Chaumette, led the
movement of de-Christianization. He pushed for the republican calendar,
likening it's divisions to the divisions of the highest Reason. Religious
holidays and services were suspended, treasures of the church were seized,
images of Mary replaced with Marat, and any religious paraphernalia was strictly
prohibited. Festivals of Reason were celebrated, with prostitutes or others
such women playing the head of all Reason, the Goddess of Reason. Towns, streets,
squares all changed their names. Revolutionary names were much more popular
then saintly names in some districts. Yet, religion could not be easily undone,
and still it's hold was seen on France as threatening "acts of God" would force
peasants back into the churches to ask for forgiveness.
The war of a political nature raged silently, as the different factions
of the Convention dared not fight openly. Upon returning to Paris, Danton
immediately took the side of Robespierre, condemning the Enrages' and the
Hebertists. However, Robespierre would not be easily won over by Danton. He
believed that Danton wished to separate the Committee and the sans culottes to
protect himself and his friends. Ropespierre's course of action was to crush
both factions by use of the Tribunal.
The Hebertists fell easily, many of their members being accused of a
foreign plot. When they planned a journee' to revolt, this gave the Committee
it's final nail, and drove it into the coffin of the Hebertists. Hebert and his
followers were put to the guillotine March 14th, 1794.
As for Danton, he had made many powerful enemies, all of which ardently
spoke out against him. In spite of this Danton had little fear from these men,
taunting and threatening them, believing that Robespierre would stick by him no
matter what. Soon, their friendship grew weak, and on March 30th, the
Committees of Public Safety and General Security met together. Saint-Just, a
cold and calculating follower of Robespierre, produced the document to arrest
Danton. At the trial was Camille Desmoulins, and many other accused. On April
3rd, they were sent to the guillotine, and eighteen men were put under the blade.

Following in their path was Chaumette and even the widow of Camille,
Lucille Desmoulins. The bloodshed only increased as the law of Prairial was
passed, and the Tribunal no longer needed to bother with a trial. Of the
fifteen hundred that died in the final eight weeks of the terror, only a small
portion of the beheaded were noblemen are clergy, the remaining eighty five
percent coming from the people, the peasants, and those who had begun the
revolution. Ropespierre was far to virtuous to watch the executions, but he
stated that, "At the point where we are now, if we stop too soon we will die.
We have not been too severe…Without the revolutionary Government the Republic
cannot be made stronger. If it is destroyed now, freedom will be extinguished
tomorrow." As Danton had shouted at the Tribunal, "You will follow us,
Robespierre.", the Revolution would soon be over.
By Autumn of the same year, the Revolution turned decidedly to the right
as the Robespierrists were sent from the Convention. He had gradually lost
control of both Committee and Convention, and by July 27th, in the month of
Thermidor, we was arrested. After being badly beaten, he was brought to the
guillotine, and a newspaper reported, "The tyrant is no more." The government
changed hands throughout the next year as the Jacobins were disbanded, and the
Girondin returned to the Convention. It too was altogether disbanded as the
Directory was set up in a rather feeble attempt to retain control of the
republic. Even though Napoleon did not gain control until one year before the
next century, the people of France no longer wanted their revolution.
For my conclusion, I would like to step back and deliver my own opinion.
In my brief time on this planet, I have never come across a more brutal
depiction of man at his worst. The sad truth is that events of this nature have
occurred with amazing regularity. Perhaps if the Reign of Terror was just one
appalling moment of human cruelty, the world would be a different place. With
such things as the Gulag, the Holocaust, the African Slave Trade, and even
returning back to ancient times of the Assyrians and the Crusades, man has been
known to slaughter his brethren wholesale. We are a race, bred with violence
coursing through our veins, and we can do little about it. Perhaps my
speculations are wrong, but if such tragedies have occurred over and over, can
we truly ever change. The Reign of Terror is just the culmination to the
bloodiness and the atrocities of the French Revolution. It is quite ironic that
a Revolution based on the ideals of Reason and the fight for the people, would
kill over thirty thousand of their countrymen. In conclusion, the Reign of
Terror was the climax of this terrible Revolution. The violence and paranoia of
the sans culottes, the lust for political power in the convention, and the petty
differences of one person to another finally reached a head, exploding into a
mass execution.