The Reign of Terror

"The revolutionary government must I act like a thunderbolt," wrote Maximilien Robespierre, the acknowledged chief of the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution. Throughout history, revolution has al most always been followed by a period of vengeance and terror in the name of justice. The American Revolution was a notable exception. But by comparison with the mass bloodshed that followed the French and Russian revolutions, not to mention Mao Tse-tung's conquest of China, the summary actions of Iran's new Islamic Revolutionary Court might even be considered restrained.

The classic Reign of Terror, of course, occurred during the French Revolution, when hasty trials and execution by the guillotine were used as instruments of policy to help combat conspiracies from both within and without the country. Although tens of thousands died over a decade of turmoil and civil war, the actual Terror, as the historians have come to call it, lasted only from mid-1793 to mid-1794. The terrible year in which the revolution devoured its own leaders as well as its enemies began with the execution of King Louis XVI on a cold, misty morning in January.

Entire families, including mothers with their children and nurses, con verged on Paris' Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde) to see the spectacle. After the blade fell, an executioner displayed the severed head of the King to the crowd. Shouts of "Vive la nation!" rang out. Louis' tricornered hat was auctioned from the scaffold and Ms hair and hair ribbon were also sold by the executioner's aide. Some people took home hand kerchiefs and scraps of paper dipped in the King's blood as souvenirs. Many danced around the guillotine, singing the Marseillaise.

Queen Marie Antoinette followed her husband to the guillotine in October. By that time, the Committee of Public Safety, a panel of revolution aries appointed to watch over the country's internal security, had taken over the government of France. Under the pressures of war from Britain, The Netherlands, Austria and Prussia, and the threat of civil war in the provinces, the Committee condemned hundreds of aristocrats, clergymen and ordinary folk to their death on charges of plotting counterrevolutionary activities. Justice was rough, swift and harsh. Wit nesses were summoned at the discretion of the courts, defendants were refused the right of counsel, and verdicts were limited to acquittal or death. The rattle of the tumbrels, the two-wheeled carts that car ried the doomed through the streets to the guillotine, became a familiar sound in French cities.

The atmosphere of suspicion and vengeance was such that the Committee soon began turning on its own. Robespierre succeeded in bringing to trial a number of revolutionary heroes, including Georges Jacques Danton, who had led the movement to imprison Louis XVI. Legend has it that when Danton passed Robespierre's house on his way to the guillotine, he prophesied, "Tu me mis" (You will soon follow me). Within six months Robespierre, too, had been consigned by his colleagues to the guillotine, without any trial at all. His death marked the end of the Terror, and indeed of the revolution. In 1799 a country weary of intrigues, dissension and bloodshed, almost gratefully accepted the military dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.