Write a short note on region of terror
Answers
The Reign of Terror or simply The Terror was a period of about 11 months during the French Revolution, led by Maximilien de Robespierre. During this time, French people who did not support the revolution were executed at the guillotine. The Reign of Terror was started on 5 September, 1793.
Answer:
(September 5, 1793 – July 28, 1794
Reign of Terror: A period of violence during the French Revolution incited by conflict between two rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of “the enemies of the revolution.” The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.
The foundation of the Terror was centered around the April 1793 creation of the Committee of Public Safety. As a wartime measure, the Committee was given broad supervisory powers over military, judicial, and legislative efforts. Its power peaked between August 1793 and July 1794 under the leadership of Robespierre, who established a virtual dictatorship.
In June 1793, Paris sections took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone. The Jacobins identified themselves with the popular movement and the sans-culottes, who in turn saw popular violence as a political right. The sans-culottes, exasperated by the inadequacies of the government, invaded the Convention and overthrew the Girondins. In their place they endorsed the political ascendancy of the Jacobins.
On June 24, the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, the French Constitution of 1793. It was ratified by public referendum, but never put into force. Like other laws, it was indefinitely suspended and in October, it was announced that the government of France would be “revolutionary until the peace.”
Although the Girondins and the Jacobins were both on the extreme left and shared many of the same radical republican convictions, the Jacobins were more brutally efficient in setting up a war government. The year of Jacobin rule was the first time in history that terror became an official government policy, with the stated aim to use violence to achieve a higher political goal.
In June 1794, Robespierre, who favored deism over atheism, recommended that the Convention acknowledge the existence of his god. The next day, the worship of the deistic Supreme Being was inaugurated as an official aspect of the revolution. As a result of Robespierre’s insistence on associating terror with virtue, his efforts to make the republic a morally united patriotic community became equated with the endless bloodshed. Shortly after that, following a decisive military victory over Austria at the Battle of Fleurus, Robespierre was overthrown on July 27, 1794.