The "great Terror" In The French Revolution

[redstar2000]

It is almost certain that the Revolution would not have survived but for the dictators during the Reign of Terror who managed, through reorganizing the army and ruthlessly pursuing internal dissidents, to secure the French Republic (for its eventual downfall, of course, at the hands of Napolean).

http://www.wsu.edu:8000/~dee/REV/RADICAL.HTM

Surprisingly, we've never had a thread on the "terror" during the French Revolution.

So here is a brief and apparently "balanced" account of those "bloody" events.

Have a look and then, if you like, say what you would have done.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[PRC-UTE]

Since I first read about this in school, I've always loved the fact that the Reign of Terror was orchestrated by the Committee for Public Safety! :lol:

This part sounded like Redstar2000:


The first move, then, was to eliminate Christianity. They first began by throwing the old Christian calendar, which, though based on the Roman calendar, set its dates from the (supposed) death of Christ. In October, 1793, shortly after seizing control of France, the Convention threw out the old calendar and replaced it with a Revolutionary calendar. On this new calendar, the first day of the calendar was the first day of the Revolution. Each month consisted of thirty days, and the old Roman names were replaced by names describing the season (since July is hot, for instance, it became "Thermidor"). In order to fully dechrisianize the calendar, they threw out the old sabbath system and made every tenth day a holiday rather than every seventh.

I'm no expert but it seems like the dictatorship that was an attempt to fight several countires at once and prevent a reactionary revolt also wiped out so many radicals that it paved the way for a return of the priests and conservatives. The text as much says so:


On July 27, Robespierre was arrested as an enemy of the Republic and, like Danton before him, died at the hands of his own bloody machinery of justice along with twenty-one other radical leaders of the Convention. The Terror came to an end. While historians point to the dechristianization of France and the sheer bloodiness of the Terror as motives for a counter-reaction, in reality the Terror came to an end because it succeeded so well. The tribunals had managed to execute so many people—probably forty thousand people—so efficiently that all the uprisings, both radical and monarchist, had been effectively snuffed out by the summer of 1794. The Revolution entered its third and final stage, a return to the original, more moderate Revolution called the Thermidorean Reaction. . . As the Revolution turned back to middle class concerns, monarchists and priests returned back to France and added, with their conservatism, even more momentum to the Thermidorean reaction.

. . . The Directory called on a brilliant young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had achieved astonishing military victories in Italy and the Middle East, to help bail them out.

Interesting how difficult it is to escape the past. England reduced the power of the crown but can't rid itself completely of the monarchy, Russia is still ruled by a former KGB boss and America still has slavery through the prison system.

[LSD]

Well considering that it was our discussion that lead to this post (I'm assuming), I should probably comment on it!


Personally, I feel it is great historical error to isolate the nine months of the "reign of terror". It would be more apt to look at the entire perdiod from late 1791 to early 1794.

The Committee made a lot of fundamental errors. After the revolution it wasn't surprising that the other monarchic states of Europe weren't particularly pleased, but Robbespierre's response was absolutely wrong. Delcaring war on England, effectively declaring war on America, invading Holland, Belgium, Italy. Sure republican France would have been a target regardless, but the Committees's foreign policy was just plain imperialism.

Domestically, the "revolutionary goverment" was even worse. This is where the "terror" part of the "reign of terror" come from.

Robespierre's internal policies were nothing short of brutal. The masacre of Varennes, the "Public Safety" enactements, the 22 Prairial law. Tens of thousands of innocent people were killed for being too leftist, too rightist, too Christian, too atheist...

This policy was defended on the grounds that it was nescessary to deal with the foreign threat facing France, but it was a threat that the Committee had created itself!

The French Revolution was effectively a bourgeois one. In England, where industrialization was rapidly making the aristocracy less and less relevent, a bouregois revolution was appealing. Furthermore, after centuries of war and relgious differences, no one in England really minded seeing the French King deposed. Certainly no one in America! Robespierre's decision to declare war on both of them was....well, not a good one.

In many ways the Committee's foreign policy was an attempt to distract from the domestic policy. The "republican war" was a good way to keep the focus on ideaology and to keep the army out of France. A military coup d'êtat was a very real threat, especially with the growing discontent over the oppressive and pseudotheocratic policies of the Committee. In the end, of course, it would be a military uprising that would overthrow revolutionary France, so it was certainly a justified fear, but that fear lead to disatrous imperialism and and the financial ruin of revolutionary France.

The revolution could have been "successful", if it had stayed in France and if its leaders hadn't attempted the moralism they did. Robespierre's "religion of reason" and his overidealistic "crusade" killed the popular nature of the popular revolution.

The "reign of terror" was a mistake, and what's worse, it was an esily aboidable one.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Lysergic Acid Diethylamide+--> (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide)Well considering that it was our discussion that lead to this post (I'm assuming), I should probably comment on it![/b]

Good guess. :D


The Committee made a lot of fundamental errors. After the revolution it wasn't surprising that the other monarchic states of Europe weren't particularly pleased, but Robespierre's response was absolutely wrong. Declaring war on England, effectively declaring war on America, invading Holland, Belgium, Italy. Sure republican France would have been a target regardless, but the Committee's foreign policy was just plain imperialism.

I'll let the document itself reply...


Almost from its beginning, the French Revolution frightened and dismayed the other powers of Europe. From the very moment that the National Assembly declared itself the legislative body of France, revolts broke out in countries such as Germany, and prominent intellectuals all over Europe began calling for the overthrow of the aristocracy. Fearing the consequences should the revolution spill over the borders of France, the European powers soon launched an uncoordinated counter-revolution. In August of 1791, Austria and Prussia declared that order, the rights of the monarch, and the privileges of the aristocracy should be restored in France. By the summer of 1792, it looked like all of Europe was ready to overthrow the revolution. -- emphasis added.

I see no "imperialism" here; if anything, I see a revolutionary France going to the defense of the oppressed in other European countries.


Originally posted by document+--> (document)The Assembly was controlled by a moderate faction called the Girondists, so-called because most of them came from the Gironde Department, which oversaw mercantile activity. Anxious to secure their political position, they rose with the popular tide and declared Austria's and Prussia's declaration to be a threat to national security and declared war on April 20, 1792.[/b]

War was not initiated by Robespierre or the Jacobins but by the moderate Girondists.


Originally posted by Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
Robespierre's internal policies were nothing short of brutal. The massacre of Varennes, the "Public Safety" enactments, the 22 Prairial law. Tens of thousands of innocent people were killed for being too leftist, too rightist, too Christian, too atheist...

The document suggests 40,000 were executed, including an unknown number of common criminals.

We have no way of knowing, of course, who was "innocent" and who was not. Nor do we know how many of those 40,000 were executed in connection with the counter-revolutionary uprising in the Vendée.


Originally posted by the document
The revolutionary tribunals had as their charge the trials and executions of the "enemies" of the Republic. What actually constituted an "enemy" was never fully defined, and as the tribunals spread from Paris to the countryside, they became a flash point for popular resentments and old wrongs.

Are "popular resentments and old wrongs" a legitimate target of revolution?

I think they are...and thus I doubt that many "innocents" were executed.


Originally posted by Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
The French Revolution was effectively a bourgeois one.

It certainly was...but no one knew that at the time.

In those days (before Marx), there was no reason to assume that a successful revolution couldn't do anything it wished: change the calendar, change the systems of weights and measures, abolish Christianity, even create a "proto-communist" society.


Originally posted by the document
The desires of the sans-culottes were simple: subsistence was a right for all people; inequality of any kind was to be abolished; the aristocracy and the monarchy was to be abolished; property was not to be completely eliminated, but to be shared in communal groups. These ideas were, on the whole, far more radical than what the Jacobins had in mind.

The bourgeois revolution contained within itself the seeds of proletarian revolution.


Lysergic Acid [email protected]
The revolution could have been "successful", if it had stayed in France and if its leaders hadn't attempted the moralism they did. Robespierre's "religion of reason" and his overidealistic "crusade" killed the popular nature of the popular revolution.

I suppose it depends on how you define "success". Had there been no "terror", there still would have been war with Europe.

As far as I can tell, the sans-culottes never actually had power directly in their own hands...even Robespierre tried to "hold them back" (which, in my opinion, cost him his head).

The conservative peasantry naturally balked at the abolition of Christianity...so in that sense the revolution lost a good deal of its popular support in the countryside.

And the "moderate" counter-revolution of Thermidore following Robespierre's execution led directly to the dictatorship of Napoleon and the first French Empire. Given the wars that France was constantly engaged in or threatened with, it's difficult to believe that a Napoleon-like figure would not have arisen at some point, terror or no.


Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
The "reign of terror" was a mistake, and what's worse, it was an easily avoidable one.

The only fault I can find with the "terror" is in the realm of implementation. In particular, on those occasions when it was directed against the most radical elements, it obviously undermined the revolution itself.

The use of the "terror" to "settle disputes" within the revolutionary camp was clearly stupid.

But I see nothing wrong with the principle of terror used against the genuine enemies of the revolution...especially if this weapon had been in the hands of the sans-culottes themselves.

The failure to staff the "revolutionary tribunals" with the sans-culottes might have been the biggest mistake of all.

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)
A site about communist ideas

[apathy maybe]

From what I know of the French Revolution (and I just finished a large part of my history unit on it) the terror was orchestrated by capitalists against the lower classes wanting "liberty", "equality" and above all food. The terror was not needed or necessary unless you look at it from the point of view of the cappies.

[LSD]

I see no "imperialism" here; if anything, I see a revolutionary France going to the defense of the oppressed in other European countries.

Yes, it was "liberating" them! :lol:

What this great "republican" drive really meant was invasion, looting, pillaging, occupation...imperialism.

Sure it sarted as some sort of noble crusade, but for many of the invaded countries, it just meant...well invasion. It further alienated France, stretched out its resources and supplies, and, in what's more important for our purposes, overspent and diverted its treasury. It basically ensured that when France was attacked, she had trouble defending herself because of the wars of occupation she had been waging. It was a very short-sighted foreign policy..

Yes, Austria was going to attack regardles, Prussia probably, but that was it! France could have probably held them back without "terror", if they hadn't made even more enemies. Declaring war on Engalnd for no reason was the height of stupidity, and declaring that any captured American would be killed was even more so!


The document suggests 40,000 were executed, including an unknown number of common criminals.

We have no way of knowing, of course, who was "innocent" and who was not. Nor do we know how many of those 40,000 were executed in connection with the counter-revolutionary uprising in the Vendée.

Well, we know that the definition of "enemy" was unbelievably vague, we also know that, especially later, the committee starting executing those who either were too christian or who were too atheist! Sure many of the executed were not innocent, but many were not guilty.

Hell we don't even know if "40,000" is the correct number.


I suppose it depends on how you define "success". Had there been no "terror", there still would have been war with Europe.

There would have been war with part or Europe. In fact there is reason to believe that absent the terror, that war could have been won better and quicker. If the army hadn't been diverted in its "glorious mission" of occupying half of Europe and if the general population hadn't been terrified of its "Revolutionary Government", there probably would have been a more conserted war effort.


And the "moderate" counter-revolution of Thermidore following Robespierre's execution led directly to the dictatorship of Napoleon and the first French Empire. Given the wars that France was constantly engaged in or threatened with, it's difficult to believe that a Napoleon-like figure would not have arisen at some point, terror or no.

We can't know. But it is certainly possible that absent the popular disconetent that Robespierre's policies incured, a Napoleonic figure might not have taken over. Had the people actually been being served by their popular revolution, they would not have felt the need for the security and peace that Naoplean promised them.


The only fault I can find with the "terror" is in the realm of implementation. In particular, on those occasions when it was directed against the most radical elements, it obviously undermined the revolution itself.

Well "implementation" is a pretty broad category! :lol:

I'd agree that it was "implemented" badly, in fact I'd say that it was "implemented" terribly. It was applied haphazardly and arbitrarily against ill-defined targets and for dubious reasons. If you read 22 Prairial, you realize that this government "of the people" was nothing short of a dictatorship. The only people who were served by this campaign of oppression were the people who sat on the commitee and their allies.


But I see nothing wrong with the principle of terror used against the genuine enemies of the revolution...especially if this weapon had been in the hands of the sans-culottes themselves.

Well, what is terror?

The problem with the committee was that "enemy" was a pretty arbitrary label. Had it only been the "enemies" who had been targeted, I would have no problem either. It wasn't.


The failure to staff the "revolutionary tribunals" with the sans-culottes might have been the biggest mistake of all.

Absolutely!

But it was the "terror" which aimed to keep them out of any positions of power. In fact, the committee was fiercely against giving power to the "masses".

The failure to turn over government to the people and the "reign of terror" are effectively the same thing. It was all part of the same campaign on the part of the "revolutionary leaders". Men who believed that they knew best and that they must make policy. It was this belief which kept the sans-culootes down and it was this belief that inspired the "terror".

[apathy maybe]

Initially the revolution was brought about by the lower classes. It was there revolution initially. But then the bourgeois took it over. They used the terror to keep the people who had started the revolution under thumb.

The wars of liberation were a mistake in that looting shouldn't have been allowed. But Austria and Prussia were already attacking France. If the initial ideals of the Revolution were kept, then it would have been a glorious thing. But it was hijacked by the capitalist classes, and the armies of liberation (which were made up of peasants and other lower classes who wanted to defend the revolution) turned into armies of occupation.

[gaf]

i just come from this land and the premice of this revolution
you could say came from a taxe other salt,wich was use to conserve meat,first the poor people couldn't afford this tax and they eventualy rebelled in west of france they where helped by teh church and the english the bourgeois whom power got stronger just use it to go for themself and accussed the arristocrate to want to starve people (who then follow them).and the church by the way.only the bad thing was that people where use to play soldier for the church or for the bourgeois .napoleon put eventualy put an end of this the rest is history.

ps. we still have a lot to learn from this revolution whom really begin als a reaction and einded in a dictatur....but 100 years later france got is republic....where bourgeois represant the people...200 years later more than 400000 people dont have any right and 4.000.000 live with the stickt minimum and more than 10.000.000 people live on the edges of society...and the republik still here saying liberty equality and fraternity for all
....hypocrisy is the real name of democraty(ekonocratie)
and terror is the best way to get into power.still is