the reign of terror 5

8/10/2019 The Reign of Terror 5

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ROBESPIERRE:

VIRTUE, TERROR

AND CULPABILITY

ABSTRACTThe Terror became the apotheosis of revolutionar

desire for a radical utopian restructuring or renew

of society within the framework of war both withi

and without. Historians have split over the utilita

necessity of the Terror insofar as how the

implemented policies were actually mandatory to

survival of the state. Ultimately, Robespierre, bot

his utopian obsession with societal virtue as well a

with existential enemies, conflated violence with

virtue. In doing so, he used the Terror to not only

the radical revolutionary government of foreign a

domestic enemies but also to remake or regenera

society into a permanent virtuous revolution.

AnneMarie Dickey


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The Reign of Terror is possibly the most discussed, most recognized and certainly the most

mythologized period of the French Revolution. The duration was short; lasting only from

September 5, 1793 to July 28, 1794. Nonetheless, it oversaw a wave of inquisitorial state

spying, mass executions, genocidal warfare in the Vendee and a despotic, dictatorial executive

committee that seems unthinkable in the context of a revolution ostensibly predicated on

freedom from tyranny. How this came to be has been the subject of non-stop debate for over

150 years. Historians tend to fall into two camps that basically allow that the Terror was an

unfortunate and temporary necessity due to existential threats to the Revolution. The first

holds that if there had been no revolt from troublesome Catholic revanchists in the Vendee,

coupled with invasions of France by foreign armies during a constitutional crisis (which led to

the execution of the King), then the Terror need never have occurred. The second, including

Simon Schama and Francois Furet, see violence as an inherent aspect of the Revolution and

ideology particularly that of the Montagnards and the Herbertists, was a major causative factor

in the evolution of the Terror.1 In this view, the radical Jacobins substitute the Catholic religion

associated with theAncien Regimefor something entirely of their own making and refuse to

tolerate heresy or any deviation. Therefore, the Terror, and virtuous violence become a

purifying and even edifying experience that will renew and strengthen the Republic by ridding

the body politic of all enemies.

These explanations still do not entirely encompass the very personal motivations of the

men who ran the retributive machinery of the Revolution and the Terror, nor those of the one

man, Maximillian Robespierre, who became increasingly responsible for and associated with

1Peter McPhee The French Revolution: 1789-1799 (NY, Oxford University Press, 2002), 99


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the policies of Terror during his tenure on the Committee of Public Safety. In the bloody radical

coup of 10 August, 1792 as well as in the September Massacres that shortly followed,

Robespierre consistently excused or minimized the bloodshed in terms of necessity under the

control of the virtuous Peoplewho did as they must. In this light, the proximate causal

justifications for the Terror as statedcannot account for policies of the Terror as they

developed over the radical phase of the Revolution and then were actually implemented,

especially when Robespierres record of conflating violence and virtue is examined.

Ultimately, Robespierre became consumed with utopian obsession of societal virtue as

well as Manichean conflict between the ultimate good of the Revolution and the overwhelming

evil of existential enemies engaged in conspiracies and plots. Robespierres career arc of

violence and virtue demonstrates how he used the Revolution, the violence of the people and

the Terror in particular to not only rid the radical revolutionary government of foreign and

domestic enemies but also to remake or regenerate society into a permanent virtuous

revolution.

The Brissotins

The utopian and Manichean underpinnings of the revolution had been evident since the

storming of the Bastille and the street executions of Foullon de Dou and Berthier de Sauvigny.2

Extra-legal killings, especially gruesome street executions of this sort became foundational to

the pattern of virtuous violence that Robespierre came to defend as the Revolution proceeded

apace. The release of prisoners and rebellion against the old social order provided the utopian

2Schama 403-406


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promise of better things to come, while the gruesome extra-legal executions of enemies of the

people defined the reaction of the revolution against enemies who would be given no

quarter. Despite these trends, the Revolution initially took a relatively moderate stance

regarding the role of the King and nobility, and was remarkably permissive with respect to

womens rights, freedom of expression and access to the political process.

Robespierre was a lawyer and one of the elected representatives to the Estates General.

He was known for his classical education and a marked tendency to allude to classical history

and philosophers in his speeches, freely mixing references to Scipio, Hannibal and Themistocles

when it suited him.3English observer John Moore described him as A man of small size and

disagreeable countenance, which announces more fire than understanding.4 Certainly,

Robespierre could never be accused of a want of passion.

Spartan in taste and temperament and occupied with notions of virtue, Robespierre also

had a tendency to conflate his own personal ambitions and mores to those of the peopleat

large. Over time this became an abstraction that was both useful (when he claimed to speak

for the people as their watchful eyes in opposing the war against Austria, he later seemed

prescient5) and dangerous (as time went on and the Terror continued, his claims to speak for

the people became obviously unreliable). This need to establish legitimacy by presuming to

speak for the people, for indeed the people were presumed to be the supreme source of

3Robespierre 62

4English witnesses 206

5Robespierre 35-39


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legitimacy and the Revolutions sole agent6was not restricted to Robespierre by means, yet he

mastered the art of combining prose and power in a fashion that his contemporaries never

managed.

In pursuit of virtue, Robespierre claimed: The whole foundation of civil society is

morality! Immorality is the basis of despotism, as virtue is the essence of the Republic7 In

his final speech to the assembly before the events of Thermidor, he exulted Virtue? It is a

natural passion, without doubtbut it exists, this tender, imperious, irresistible passion, the

torment and the delight of magnanimous souls8 In defining the contrast between the

Revolution and its enemies he described tyrants thusly: Every vice is enlisted in their service;

the Republic has only virtue on its side. Virtue is simple, modest, humble, often ignorant and

sometimes boorish; it is the natural lot of the poor; the patrimony of the people.9 One

unsympathetic Brissotin observer wrote He has all the characteristics, not of a religious leader,

but of the leader of a religious sect; he has built up a reputation for austerity which borders on

sainthood10

Indeed, this cult of virtue and austerity was Robespierres defining

characteristic and he intended remake French society in his own image.

Robespierres predilection for virtue was shared by many in the Brissotin wing of the

Jacobin Club, and they were eager to share that virtue with others by force if necessary. This

was to become a familiar theme as the Revolution radicalized. By 1791, a war crisis had

6Furet interpreting the French Revolution 29

7Robespierre 70

8Robespierre 76

9Robespierre 63

10McPhee Robespierre 138


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engulfed the Revolution as the Brissotins sought to export revolution outside French borders.11

The newly adopted Declaration of the Rights of Man, a universal and utopian document that

codified the rights and condition of every human seemed to demand that anyone opposing it

was not only an enemy of the Revolution but also an enemy of mankind.12

The Manichean logic

demanded action. In this way, war (virtuous violence) and the enforcement of virtue can

already be seen as the logical conclusion of the Revolution. Helpfully, Brissotin leader Mme

Roland explained that war would be A school of virtue and compared French Revolutionaries

to Roman legionnaires.13

By January, 1792, Brissotin speeches on the nobility of the free

Frenchmen, exhorting what Simon Schama calls the pledge of patriotic self-immolation had

carried the day.14

France would export the Revolution.

Robespierre was the one voice in the wilderness speaking against the war. Obsessed

with notions of conspiracy, Robespierre condemned the Brissotin wing for the war repeatedly

and warned that This is not the moment to declare war. Before all else, this is a moment to

manufacture arms, in every place and at every hour; to arm the National Guards; to arm the

people, if only with pikes; to adopt severe measures and not as have been adopted up to

now.15

Robespierre found himself on the wrong side of public opinion in the matter and was

dismissed and ridiculed. As he stated, the makeover of society, the hunt for internal enemies

and the adoption of severe measurestook precedence over foreign adventurism. He would

develop this theme in the future after the sans-cullote uprising on August 10, 1792. Moreover,

11Schama 591

12Schama 592

13Schama 595

14Schama 595

15Robespierre 38


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he dryly noted that Noone loves armed missionaries.16

However, as the Brissotins patriotic

war became a disastrous fiasco, he found his power and influence rising as a result of the very

war he had opposed from the beginning. Robespierre, even at this time of declaring himself

against a foreign war, was not against violence by any means. He merely thought more of it

needed to occur at home.

The Montagnards

By early August, the French forces continued to flounder against the professional

Austrian army and rumors swirled that the King would deliver the Revolution over to

murderous Austrian royalists. The radicals in the Jacobin Club saw their chance grab the reins

of power from the Brissotins and on the night of August 9th

to the 10th

, the tocsin bells rang in

the sections and the radical sans-cullottestook to the streets. Outrage had been building over

the kings use of his veto power and his summary dismissal of several Revolutionary council

members.17

The assumption that he engaged in treason and was in league with the Austrians

proved an easy sell to the public and bloody, virtuous public violence spilled over into the

streets.

Although the uprising of August 10th

was presented as a spontaneous populist revolt, it

was carefully managed behind the scenes by Robespierre, Danton and Camille Desmoullins who

had formed an Insurrectionary Committee and were giving orders to the National Guard.18

When it was over, the King had been deposed, hundreds of Parisians and lay dead and some

16Schama 595

17Schama 605

18Schama 613


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600 of the Kings Swiss Guard, assigned to protect the palace and the Royal family, had been

massacred.19

The mob gave no quarter, and those unlucky enough to be taken alive were

mercilessly bludgeoned and stabbed. Their bodies were hacked apart and fed to dogs.

Robespierre declared it was The most beautiful revolution that has ever honored humanity.20

English witness Thomas Blaike described sans-cullottes returning from the palace: Many of

these anthrophages passed in the street and stopt to show us parts of the Suisses they had

misacred some of whom I knewevery one seemed to glory in what he had done and to Show

even their furrie upon the dead body by cutting themthis seemedas if the people were struck

with a sort of madness.21

The beauty of the moment was lost on Mr. Blaike, apparently.

True to his conviction that violence in the name of the General Will and carried out by

the people was inherently just, Robespierre found no fault with the actions of 10 August. He

proceeded merely five days later to complain of courts procedures that put too great a

restraint on the vengeance of the people, for the crimes go back much further.22

This

conflation of violent vengeance, social virtue, and the governmental prerogative of justice

becomes increasingly evident and problematic as the radical phase of the revolution came into

fruition.

The September Massacres brought this trend into sharp focus. The fall of Verdun to the

Austrians led to a new round of conspiracy theories that prisoners throughout the country

might be set free by the Austrians to fight against the Revolution. Although violence and extra-

19

McPhee Robespierre 12620

Schama 61521

English witnesses 17222

McPhee Robespierre 127


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judicial killing had been a part of the Revolution from the beginning, the massacres occurred on

a scale not seen before, and targeted members of the royal household. Englishman Colonel

George Monro personally witnessed some of the killing at Abbaye and wrote an extensive and

detailed letter to Lord Grenville on what he witnessed, including a number of prisoners

precipitated by the door on a number of piques, and then among the savage cries of vive la

nation, to be hacked to pieces by those that had swords and were ready to receive them.23

Colonel Monro also reported on the death of Princess Marie Louise of Savoy, the governess of

Marie Antoinettes children, who washacked to death and decapitated. Her head was put on a

pike for display while her body was dragged through various streets.24

Some 1,400 people,

including many priests, were killed in appalling fashionoften with hand held implements such

as carpenters tools.25

The horror of the September Massacres and revulsion towards the bloodshed

threatened to derail Jacobin support as Brissotins (who shared much of the blame in fact) fixed

responsibility for the deaths on Robespierre and Marat.26

Marat in particular had been

sanguinary in his earlier pronouncements that: A year ago by cutting off five or six hundred

heads you would have set yourself free and happy for ever more. Today it would take ten

thousand; within a few months you will need to cut off a hundred thousand27

Robespierre

had not been involved in the massacres and likely knew nothing about them at the time they



25Schama 635


27The press 268


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occurred.28

However, he was quick to excuse the bloodshed as he was elected vice president of

the assembly, saying Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution? To make a

crime of a few apparent or real misdemeanors, inevitable during such a great upheaval, would

be to punish them for their devotion29

As he had glossed over the anarchic bloodshed of

August 10th

as it had coincided with his goals, so he acted as an apologist for extra-legal mass

murder committed in the name of the Revolution. The People, Robespierresabstraction of

virtuous Revolutionary ideals, can do no wrong. Ergo, enemies of the Peoplechoose their fate

and deserve what becomes of them. Virtuous violence became a permanent fixture of the

Revolution, and Robespierre one of its most ardent supporters in word and later, in deed.

In a macabre finale, Louis XVI went to the guillotine himself in January of 1793.

Robespierre argued in a speech before the Assembly that It is with regret that I utter this

baneful truthBut Louis must die inorder that our country may live.30

The utopian certainty of

a better and more virtuous nation lies balanced against the Manichean certainty that

opponents were not only evil but must perish in order for utopia to arrive. Louis XVI was only

the first of many to come as the virtuous violence of the people became institutionalized.

The winter and spring of 1793 saw the French Revolution in dire peril from both within

and without. Austrian troops were on French soil as a result of the Brissotin instigated war.

Prussia and England entered the war following the execution of Louis XVI. A call for 300,000

conscripts on Feb 24th

, 1793 to deal with the invaders only added to the woes of the young



30Robespierre 31


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republic as it precipitated a particularly nasty lion/civil war in the Vendee region. Moreover,

food shortages and rioting had broken out in that same winter of 1792 to 1793, leading

Robespierre to charge that the shortages were part of an English and Royalist plot to punish the

people and discredit the Revolution. He declared: The people are still persecuted by the rich,

who are what they always were: hard and merciless. He concluded: The people must, indeed,

rise: not to seize sugar but to exterminate the brigands.31

The eliminationist rhetoric became

a familiar and integral part of defining both the nature of the Revolutionary Republic as well as

the opposition. As always, the People must take matters into their own hands and

exterminate the enemies of the Revolutionby dint of their innate virtue and capacity to

violently solve problems.

By April, 1793, Revolutionary armies were dealt serious reversals in the Vendee.

Losses were high. Spanish troops moved into the Catalan region, and Corsica was in open

revolt. The assembly placed executive power in the hands of a select Committee of Public

Safety between March and May of 1793 to deal with these existential threats more efficiently

and effectively. To thunderous applause in the assembly, Robespierre called for the death of

the people of the Vendee: I declare that we must not only exterminate all the rebels in the

Vendee, but all the rebels against humankind and the French people32

Again, the

apocalyptic Manicheanism and eliminationism contained in the speech aptly defines

Robespierres notions of Revolutionary legitimacy and the need to transform French society

through Revolutionary action and the violence legitimized by virtue. In Robespierres world,

31Robespierre 47-48



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enemies cannot be accommodated nor even merely defeated: they must be exterminated.

Utopia cannot be reached without the bloodshed of traitors, tyrants and rebels.

Around mid May of 1793, the battle between the Gironde and the Montagnards

reached its climax as the Brissotin (or Girondin as they increasingly became known as)

assemblymen abortively indicted Marat for threatening violence against the assembly, using his

own words taken from his newspaper.33

It quickly became a fiasco as Marat was vindicated at

trial. Meanwhile, populist Jacobin supporters such as Herbert had drawn up a list of 35

Girondins, to be expelled from the assembly in retaliation and called for action: The audacity

of the Brissotins has redoubled itself; the jackasses think that they are approaching the longed-

for moment of the counter-revolutionBrave sans-cullottes, your enemies are only audacious

because you remain with your arms folded; wake up, damn it; get up, and you will see the at

your feet.34

Herberts calls for action through virtuous armed insurrection swiftly came to

fruition as 20,000 sans-cullotte militia surrounded the assembly and arrested 29 Girondin

representatives.35

The purge, as it became known, ended the revolutionary experiment with

representative government. The radicalMontagnardsnow controlled the assembly, and

Robespierre lost no time in getting to work.

On July 27, 1793, Robespierre accepted placement to the executive Committee for

Public Safety.36

With the immediate threat of Girondin/Federalist treason (and the

assassination of Marat by Girondin Suporter Charlotte Cordray), foreign invasion and Royalist

33Schama 718-719

34The Press 190-191

35Schama 728



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counter revolutionary intrigue, Robespierre had a blank check to turn the Committee into a

stripped downconcentrated state machine37

that would enable his need to consummate a

complete regeneration, and if I may put it like this, to create a new people which he had

iterated in a proposal only days before on the afternoon that Marat had been assassinated.38

Additionally, as President of the Assembly, Robespierre had the bully pulpit to expound his

doctrines and the power to enact them.39

The Terror

Robespierres appointment to the Committee created a mirror image counterpoint to

theAncien Regime. Whereas King Louis XVI had subscribed to the traditional model of King and

Kingdom indivisible creating one nation mandated by God, Robespierres assumption of

unilateral assumption of power within the Committee created a similar, if opposed, unitary

model of power derived from the Will of the People.40

In this case, the paradox of individual

sovereignty and the need for society and rule of law had not been solved by the Revolution,

and the notion of balancing competing interests between society and the individual had been

generally ignored.41

As Robespierre had already assumed the mantle of speaking for the People,

as well as encouraging populist violencefrom the People, he used his position on the

committee to create a singular and unified government by the Peoples Will. As embodiment of

the General Will, Robespierre was empowered to carry out that will, however mythical or

fallacious his understanding of the Will actually was.

37Schama 755






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Robespierre was not alone in this. Louise-Antoine St-Just, just 28 years old by this point,

had impressed Robespierre with his Spartan zeal and his oratory skills before the Assembly.42

In the lead up to the Kings execution, it was St-Just who had initially declared in a speech to

become legendary that Louis XVI was incompatible with the Republic simply by having been a

king in the first place. Therefore, Louis had to die, as he could not help but be a tyrant by

definition, thereby strengthening Robespierres position on the infallibility of the People in

revolution.43

Ergo, for the Republic to live, Louis had to be killed. No trial would be

necessary.44

This pronouncement put St-Just in good stead to become Robespierres top

lieutenant in the Committee, St-Just having been appointed to the Committee on the 10th

of

July.45

In the meantime, Robespierre immersed himself in the business of realizing his new

order of Spartan virtue where people in whatever circumstances they find themselves during

their lives they will be used to being able to do without comforts and excess, and despise

artificial needs.46

Virtue and Terror were now the order of the day.

On July 27th

, the Committee of Public Safety was empowered to strike terror into the

hearts of counter-revolutionaries.47

This included surveillance of citizens, detention without

charge or trial, and suspension of civil liberties that had been guaranteed in the constitution

that had been successfully voted into acceptance scarcely a month earlier.48

The Constitution

of 1793 that Robespierre had authored would have to wait until society was sufficiently


43Schama 651

44Schama 651

45Beraud 12 portraits 98

46McPhee Robespierre 162-163

47McPhee the French revolution 118

48McPhee revolution 118


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virtuous to deserve having it. Instead, the Committee of Public Safety immediately began

putting the Patrieon a war footing to deal with the numerous military foes on various fronts,

including raising new units of national guard, assuring adequate supplies and provisions for the

military and preparing propaganda for domestic morale.49

On September 5th

, emboldened sans-culottesstormed the assembly yet again and

demanded radical military and economic measures in response to the endless conspiracies of

counter-revolutionary food price manipulation.50

The assembly enacted significant controls on

prices and wages and distributed rural property to the poor. The Law of Suspects allowed

detention and intimidation of political critics. Then in October, St-Just announced a

Revolutionary Government with all government effects and the military being placed under

control of the Committee.51

He said: It is impossible for revolutionary laws to be executed

unless the government itself is truly revolutionarythose who would make revolutions in the

world, those who want to do good in the world must sleep only in the tomb.52

Representatives from the Committee, including St-Just, were sent to every district with the

power to investigate and punish enemies of the stateoften by the guillotine or firing squad.53

Robespierres singular vision of the General Will of the Peoplemarried to the functions of

government had been realized as the successive insurrections and use of extra-legal violence by

the citizenry confirmed his notions of virtuous self-government by the people.

49Mchee revolution 118

50Mcphee revoltion 119

51McPhee revolution 119

52Schama citizens 767

53Mcphee revolution 121


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According to historian Albert Mathiez, the Terror was a sad but necessary reaction to

the severe and even existential threats facing the young republic (although many of these woes

were determinedly self-inflicted through needless antagonizing of foreign neighbors and

internal populations.) According to Mathiez, the Terror was much less the result of a well

thought out ideology then of inescapable pressures brought on by civil and foreign war. The

enemy had to be repulsed, the royalist and Girondin revolts crushed.54

The effectiveness of

the Terror in accomplishing these goals is not in doubt, yet Mathiez ignores the voluminous

evidence in Robespierres own words that he had planned to install a society of Spartan virtue

all along, and his decision to suspend his own constitution until society was cleansed

demonstrates his motivation.

The cleansing began in short order. The former Queen, Marie Antoinette, went to the

scaffold on October 16th

. Herbert, ever the vulgarian, gloated as the frail, gaunt Marie was

trundled to the hot hand, which was his current nickname for the guillotine, and complained

that The bitch was audacious and insolent right to the very end.55

Mme Roland, the Brissotin

who had praised the virtue of war and had actually congratulated Robespierres

accomplishments merely a year earlier found herself before the blade on November 8th

.56

Other Brissotin/Gironde assembly members soon followed suit. The man who had

administered the Tennis Court Oath, Bailly, took the tumbril ride on November 11th

.57

The

bloody toll of Gironde counter-revolutionaries grew inexorably to the demands of violent

54French Reolution conflicting interpretations 189





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virtue as interpreted by the Revolutionary Tribunal, The Committee of Public Safety and their

notions of mythologized General Will.

Simultaneously, Robespierre long-time Jacobin ally Danton had set about defanging the

sans-cullottesand stopping the endless insurrections and tocsin alarms. Danton understood far

better than Robespierre how waves of populist violence had successively brought their

predecessors into power and then swept them out. He was determined that the Montagnards

would be the final word in administration and would possess a monopoly on state sanctioned

violence, testifying to the Convention: Let us be terrible, so that the people will not have to

be.58

Danton restricted local section meetings to twice a week and instituted a payment

scheme to encourage additional (and less radical) people to show up, including spies for the

Committee.59

Danton encountered a far more intractable problem when he and Camille

Desmoulins went head to head with Robespierre concerning the Terror.

By autumn of 1793, the enemies of the Republic had been reversed on all fronts. Lyon

capitulated October 9th

, and Revolutionary forces had crushed the Marseillais army earlier on

August 25th

. The British and Austrians had both been repulsed and the Vendean army was

soundly thrashed on October 17th

.60

With victory in sight and the Revolution secure, the easing

of the Regime of terror should have been evident if Mathiez is correct in his assertion that it

was both temporary and necessary. On the contrary, the Terror, now the official manifestation

of the Peoplesvengeance, continued apace with new arrests, closing of womens clubs and a

58Schama 707

59Schama 759

60Schama Citizens 767


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vast acceleration in executions.61

Between December of 1793 and January of 1794, nearly

7,000 people were executed by the tribunals.62

Despite the misgivings of relatively moderate

Jacobins left in the Convention who called for an end to the Terror in December of 1793, the

radicals could always point to more foes to be overcome and new reasons to continue the

violent repressions.63

Nevertheless, Desmoulins and Danton, both longtime friends and ideological comrades

of Robespierre, made overtures of an Indulgent Policy to roll back the institutional coercion of

the Terror.64

Of course, this was distinctly at odds with what Robespierre had intended from

the beginning, which was societal regeneration and recognition of the innate ability of the

People to use violence for the common good. Even if the Patriewas out of immediate danger

now, enemies abounded within and without and maximalist revolutionary movements must

have maximalist eternal enemies to overcome.65

This is something that Desmoulins and

Danton never grasped about the nature of their revolution or indeed, that of their sometime

friend and comrade.

The policies of the Terror continued to bear fruit by December, 1793 as the Revolt in the

Vendee was crushed despite the initial heavy casualties and difficulties experienced by the

Revolutionary armies in fighting counter-insurgency campaign against a foe that knew the

terrain and refused to fight except on the most favorable circumstances.66

General Turreau

61McPhee the French Revolution 142-144

62McPhee The French Revolution 144

63McPhee The French Revolution 144


65Furet interpreting French Revolution 54

66Dwyer, mcphee French revolution and napoleon. 99


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reported to the Minister of War that My purpose is the burn everything and that All brigands

caught bearing arms, or convicted of having taken up arms to revolt against their country, will

be bayoneted. The same will apply to girls, women and children67

In the end, he proved

true to his word. The scale of bloodshed in the Vendee far exceeded anything that had been

seen previously as the application of violence in the pursuit of virtuous social regeneration

became coupled with the language of extermination.

After effect resistance had ended, the campaign was capped by 12 infernal Columns

which engaged in mass killings of all humans foundincluding even loyalists as well as women

and childrenin 773 communities set aside for extermination.68

Robespierres statement: I

declare that we must not only exterminate all the rebels in the Vendee, but all the rebels

against humankind and the French people69

proved gruesomely prophetic. Death was

carried out at bayonet point, with swords, firing squad or by the novel fashion of crowding

people onto boats designed to be sunk and consigning them to mass drowning.70

This was

called sending to the water toweror The Republican Bath.71

The policies of virtue, violence

and extermination simply left no room for compromise, quarter or empathy, and death on a

previously unimaginable scale was the logical result.

The bloodshed in Lyon was scarcely less robust as Committee representatives set about

their business with bureaucratic efficiency. Joseph Fouche, an acquaintance of Robespierre,

and Collot dHerbois, a sometime actor, enacted a grim repression that was only exceeded by

67Dwyer, mcphee French revolution and napoleon 101

68Dwyer mcphee French revolution and napoleon 101-102


70Dwer mcphee French revolution and napoleon 101-102

71Dwer mcphee French revolution and napoleon 101-102


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the Vendean affair.72

Homes were searched, decrees read and judgments pronounced. On

one day, 32 heads were collected in only 25 minutes.73

The drainage ditch leading from the

scaffold overran with blood to the point that citizen complaints led to additional executions

being carried out as in the Vendee: by bayonet, musket fire and even groups chained together

and obliterated by grapeshot from cannons.74

Excusing this affair, as always, came easily to

Robespierre: No, their memory [of Jacobin representative Chalier and others arrested by the

Federalists in Lyon] must be avenged and those monsters unmasked and exterminated.75

Maximalist language of extermination meant that the normal rules of the conduct of warfare

simply no longer applied, and that the need for social virtue and renewal dictated that the

people and their representatives must use every tool at hand to cleanse away enemies.

Nearly 2,000 citizens of Lyons met their fate, and while many of them were from the

upper classes, the poor and working classes from book keepers and brewers to lemonade stand

owners all found their way to the scaffold, the bayonet or the end of a gun.76

This number did

not take into account those who had died during the siege of the city and the artillery

bombardment. Word of massacres at Nantes, Arras and elsewhere filtered back to the

Committee to add impetus to Dantons and Desmoulinsspleas for indulgency. However, the

language of extermination remained ascendant.77






77McPhee Robepierre 177


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An additional link between the massacres of the Vendee and Lyon exists in the fate of

physical structures for occupancy. As already seen in the Vendee, General Turreau was on a

mission to burn everything and that meant crops and building useful to the local inhabitants.

This scorched earth policy continued after almost all resistance had ceased, and a similar

pattern of structure demolition commenced in Lyon as workers by the hundreds became

employed to destroy some sixteen hundred domestic structures. These actions go well beyond

any immediate military or civil necessity, leading an incredulous Montagnard in the Convention

to ask: is it Republican to tear down houses?78

St-Just could almost have anticipated this very

question when he remarked: Republic consists in the extermination of everything that

opposes it.79

Robespierres policy of cleansing the Republic and exterminating enemies could

not be accomplished by merely killing people. All traces of their perfidy must be erased and

their evil ripped out by the roots to allow wholesome Republican replacements to flourish.

Eventually, and almost inevitably, the Terror began to consume the practitioners. The

executioner in Lyon was himself taken to the scaffold, and another executioner specially

brought in to complete the task.80

Herbert, locked in battle with the Indulgents and pressing for

increasingly ultra-radical social and economic policies, attempted to rouse the sections in

another insurrection on March 4th

, 1794 and found that Dantons policy of paying men to

attend the section meetings had effectively filled them with informants to the Committee. The

Ultras insurrection failed before it ever got started, and Herberts turn to hold the hot hand



80Schama 784


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or be shaved by the national razor saw him display far less composure than had Marie

Antoinette.81

Danton and Desmoulins were next. Danton was implicated in a tawdry financial scandal

which fatally damaged the Indulgency arguments both he and Desmoulins had made.82

Desmoulins continued to argue his points in print, which forced a very public showdown

between the conscientious objector and the man who could not admit to division of opinion in

the General Will of the People.83

Neither of them truly grasped what Robespierre intended the

Terror to actually be or to accomplish and this became their undoing. Danton and Desmoulins

went to the scaffold with the same flair and composure they had displayed as Revolutionary

leaders for years. Danton told the executioner: Dont forget to show my head to the people.

It is well worth the trouble.84

Indeed, it likely was.

Shortly after the deaths of Danton and Desmoulins, the Convention passed what

became known as simply the Prairial Law. It abolished what few defense resources accused

persons could bring in a trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and it widely expanded the

scope of who could be charged. Henceforth, anyone denounced for slandering patriotism,

seeking to inspire discouragement, spreading false news, and depraving moralsimpairing

the energy and purity of the Revolutionary Government could now be brought before the

Tribunal. The only allowable outcomes were acquittal or death, and the accused could not

81Schama 816

82Schama 817

83Schama 810-81

84Schama 820


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produce witnesses nor would he or she have access to counsel, since the virtuous citizens of the

Republic should be able to arrive at a fair conclusion on their own.85

The law was a response to panicked rumors of assassination or a Royalist uprising.

Robespierre described the procedure in analytical terms: A man is brought before the

Revolutionary Tribunal. If there are material proofs against him, he is condemned; if there are

no material proofs, in this case, witnesses are called.86

This became the advent of the Great

Terror, which saw another 1,376 victims take the tumbril ride to the scaffold between June 10

and July 27.87

Robespierres search for perfect Revolutionary justice in the hands of the

virtuous citizens of the Republic had reached a final crescendo of vengeance and blood.

Nothing stood in the way of his idealized Republic regenerated through the extermination of

the impure by the righteous hands of the citizenry.

Robespierres final speech before the Convention on July 26th

expounded the virtue he

was so determined to impart to his fellow man: Virtue? It is a natural passion, without

doubtbut it exists, this tender, imperious, irresistible passion, the torment and the delight of

magnanimous soulsthis generous ambition to found on Earth the first Republic of the

worldYou feel it burning in your souls, just as I feel it in mine.88

Doubtless his critics in the

Convention felt something as he proceeded to promise that additional traitors would be

unmasked in the Convention. He then made the amazing utterance: I was made to combat

85Schama 836

86The Revolutionary Career David P Jordan 204

87The Revolutionary career Jordan 204

88Robespierre 76


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crime, not to control it.89

He had become the Will of the Peoplemade corporeal, exacting

punishment and instilling social virtue in equal yet unlimited measure, yet his final promise of

unmasking traitors in the convention proved that virtue has its limits. The Convention turned

on Robespierre, St-Just and their supporters with ferocity born of fear and desperation. As the

tumbril brought Robespierre, St-Just and other Committee members before the scaffold in turn,

the peoplehis People, had turned on him as they had on so very many others brought before

him. As he was made by theGeneral Will of the People, so was he un-made.

*****

If some in the Convention had seen the Terror as a means to attain peace, Robespierre

saw his creation in quite different terms. For him, the Revolution and the Terror in particular

were a means to regenerate and remake society through violent action applied both by and on

the behalf of the People. In short, virtue was the raison detre of the Revolution, and violence

supplied by the People would bring it to fruition.

Crane Brinton explains this in religious terms where Robespierre and his followers had

substituted the catholic faith of theAncien Regimefor the modern, austere religion of reason

and virtue.90

They would remake society in their own image as men of character,

incorruptible citizens as described by Desmoulins in 1791.91

This reliance on character and

virtue was one of the major tenants of the Committee of Public Safety and the attendant

89Robespierre 78

90Kafker conflicting interpretations 208



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tribunals for they relied on just this theory of incorruptible men who could dispense justice and

defend the people until such time as the Constitution of 1793 could be implemented.

Brinton calls this utopian view of human nature the religion of humanity and describes

the Jacobins as fanatical followers of the faith.92

Augustine Cochin goes further by describing

the Jacobins as a whole in terms of A society of unpractical idealists, fanatics bent on imposing

upon their fellows of the grande ville a rigid code quite inconsistent with normal human

conduct as we know it from tradition and observation.93

Therefore, the model Jacobin has

seized on the crisis of summer, 1793 as a means by which he could realize his heaven here on

earth.94

Brinton may paint with too large a brush and with too much assuredness in the

Utopianism of Robespierre and the Montagnard Jacobins. He strains credulity by describing

partisan Jacobins such as He has no ordinary, daily, selfish human interests.95

That manner of

observation tends to buy into the very sort of impossible utopian caricature that Robespierre

wanted to project. Francis Furet digs deeper when he acknowledges the initial utilitarian

reason for the Terror at a moment of military crisis, and then proceeds to examine the

ideological roots of the Terror that allowed it to flourish after all military pretense for it had

vanished. He notes: The Terror intensified with the improvement of the situation and the

victories, starting in October.96

This has been observed already. However, as the Terror began

to consume the Herbertists and then the Indulgents, Furet concludes that: It was less a part of




95Kafker conflicting interpretation 218



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the arsenal of victory then of an ambition for regeneration.97

What is left out of this

interpretation is that virtue and desire for violent regeneration led to the crisis to begin with in

the Brissotin led war against Austria, and which Robespierre had opposed only because of his

desire to see ever increasing severe measuresadopted at home.

Like Brinton, Furet holds that the ideology of the Terror predated the military

justification for its use, although he acknowledges the role that circumstances played in

developing the state apparatus Robespierre used to set the Terror into motion. Brinton and

Furet both agree on the quasi-religious and utopian nature of the Jacobins as well as the use of

the Terror for violent societal renewal. This is critical, since Robespierre argued that the

regeneration of society was the central character of the Revolution. Ergo, If the Republic of

free citizens was not yet possible, it was because men, perverted by their past history, were

wicked; by means of the Terror, the Revolution-a history without precedent, entirely new-

would make a new man.98

In short, Robespierre would not let a good crisis go to waste. He

would have his new society and his new man.

Contra Mathiez, it quickly became evident that the Terror was neither temporary nor

merely incidental to the character of the radical phase of the Revolution. In particular,

Robespierre stamped his own personality indelibly upon the Committee of Public Safety and

the policies that lead to the events between August, 1793 and Thermidor, 1794. His

legitimization of extra-legal violence ensured that it would remain a fixture in the Revolution.

His language of extermination became pronounced policy in Lyon and the Vendee. His




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conflation of good and evil with public policy sent Danton, Desmoulins and thousands of others

to their deaths on the scaffold. His questcrusadefor virtue led him and the Revolution down

a nightmarish path of institutionalized murder and suffering. It is unknowable (although highly

unlikely) whether Robesierre and the Montagnards could have seized power without a serious

military pretext. It is certain, however, that they used the September Massacres, the Vendee,

the Federalist Revolt and the foreign invasions to their own benefit to consummate their desire

for the perfect society of virtue legitimized and obtained through bloodshed.

the reign of terror 5

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