7 7. Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860. Recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambres françaises […], founded under the direction of M.J. Mavidal and M. E. Laurent, Paris, Dupont, 102 vols, 1879–2012, vol. XCIV, p. 302 [henceforth AP].
8 8. Ibid.
9 9. AP, vol. XCV, p. 297.
10 10. Ibid.
11 11. Ibid., p. 298.
12 12. See Cesare Vetter, ‘“Système de terreur” et “système de la terreur” dans le lexique de la Révolution française’, https://revolution-francaise.net/2014/10/23/594-systeme-de-terreur-et-systeme-de-la-terreur-dans-le-lexique-de-la-revolution-francaise. See too, Cesare Vetter, Marco Marin and Elisabetta Gon, Dictionnaire Robespierre. Lexicométrie et usages langagiers. Outils pour une histoire du lexique de l’Incorruptible, Trieste, EUT, 2016, vol. I, pp. 475–89.
13 13. Barère mentioned a ‘system of terror’ on 10 November 1792 to describe what, in his eyes, was the overwhelming power of the municipality of Paris. AP, vol. LIII, p. 349. See too, Cesare Vetter, ‘Système de terreur’. On 8 July 1793, Saint-Just had associated a ‘system of terror’ with the Girondin deputies, whom he deemed responsible for spreading distrust and hatred against Paris, AP, vol. LXVIII, p. 428. Another Montagnard, Mallarmé, used the expression at the Jacobin Club on 22 August, reported in Le Moniteur, 10 Fructidor Year II (27 August 1794).
14 14. AP, vol. XCIV, pp. 56–7.
15 15. Ibid., p. 57.
16 16. Ibid., p. 58.
17 17. Michel Biard, Collot d’Herbois. Légendes noires et Révolution, Lyon, Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1995, pp. 182–8.
18 18. See Ariane Fichtl, La Radicalisation de l’idéal républicain. Modèles antiques et la Révolution française, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2020, pp. 235–52.
19 19. ‘One was to dominate in Paris, the other had the mountains of Auvergne, and the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Mediterranean were the present made to the brotherhood; and the one who had the most cunning and apparent sang-froid was going to watch over the command of the armies of the North and the Rhine, already prepared by his intrigues. Saint-Just was the plenipotentiary of the North; Couthon and young Robespierre, the pacifying congress of the South; Robespierre the elder reigned in Paris over heaps of corpses; the death of the republicans, the debasement of the Convention and the usurpation of the commune ensured its tyrannical domination’ (AP, vol. XCIII, p. 635).
20 20. On the many dimensions of the ‘black legend’ of Robespierre, see Marc Belissa and Yannick Bosc, Robespierre. La fabrication d’un mythe, Paris, Ellipses, 2013; and Bronislaw Baczko, Ending the Terror: The French Revolution After Robespierre, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, chap. 1.
21 21. AP, vol. XCV, p. 494.
22 22. See, for example, Address of the general council of the inhabitants of the commune of Donzy (Nièvre) to the National Convention, 7 Brumaire Year III (28 October 1794) (AP, vol. CI, pp. 281–2).
23 23. Michel Biard, ‘Après la tête, la queue. La rhétorique antijacobine en fructidor an II et vendémiaire an III’, in Michel Vovelle (ed.), Le tournant de l’an III. Réaction et Terreur blanche dans la France révolutionnaire, Paris, Éditions du CTHS, 1997, pp. 201–13.
24 24. Michel Biard, La Révolution hantée. Enfers fantasmés et Révolution française, Paris, Vendémiaire, 2017.
25 25. Filbomets [anonymous], Grande comète, ou Voyez ma queue, no place, no date [Fructidor Year II or start of Year III], p. 1. The titles listed here refer to: Fethemésl [Jean-Claude Méhée de la Touche], La Queue de Robespierre, ou les Dangers de la liberté de la presse, Paris, Rougyff, Fructidor Year II; Fethemésl [Jean-Claude Méhée de la Touche], Rendez-moi ma Queue, ou Lettre à Sartine Thuriot sur une violation de la liberté de la presse et des droits de l’homme, par l’auteur de la Queue de Robespierre, no place, no date [Paris, Fructidor Year II]; Fethemésl [Jean-Claude Méhée de la Touche], Défends ta Queue, par l’auteur de la Queue de Robespierre, no place [Paris], Guffroy, no date [Fructidor Year II]; Marie et Prévost, Réponse à la Queue de Robespierre, par un franc républicain, Paris, Prévost, no date [Fructidor Year II]; Baralère [Jean-Baptiste Jollivet], Coupons-lui la queue, Paris, Imp. des Amis de la Vérité, no date [Fructidor Year II].
26 26. Anonymous, La Tête à la Queue, ou Première lettre de Robespierre à ses continuateurs, no place [Paris], Guffroy, no date [Fructidor Year II or start of Year III], pp. 1 and 6–7.
27 27. The phrase ‘reign of terror’ was in use as early as 1795, as in Le Moniteur of 14 Pluviôse Year III (2 February 1795), which reported an intervention by Parisian sectionnaires before the Convention three days earlier, which concluded: ‘No, you swore it with the whole people, the reign of terror is over’. Madame de Staël was one of the first authors to use it – in a text published in Switzerland in 1796, then in Paris the following year: De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations, by Mad. la Baronne Staël de Holstein, Lausanne, Mourer et Hignou, 1796, pp. 6 and 136.
28 28. Le Moniteur, 16 November 1792.
29 29. Ibid.
30 30. AP, vol. XCII, pp. 391–3.
31 31. Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1947 (original French edition, 1932); Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2003.
32 32. Le Moniteur, 21 April 1793.
33 33. AP, vol. LXXIV, pp. 315–16.
34 34. Ibid., vol. LII, p. 109.
35 35. Ibid., p. 139.
36 36. Discours à la Convention nationale le 3 décembre 1792 (OMR, vol. IX, p. 130).
37 37. Le Moniteur, 20 January 1793.
38 38. AP, vol. LII, p. 563.
39 39. Ibid., vol. LIII, p. 57.
40 40. Ibid., p. 349.
41 41. Ibid., vol. LXI, p. 48. On the 20th, Vergniaud’s fellow Girondin Gensonné claimed that ‘the majority of the inhabitants of Paris … does not abandon the exercise of its sovereignty’ to a handful of men who dominate ‘the sections by fear of proscriptions and by terror’: vol. LXIII, p. 18.
42 42. Marat, speaking after his acquittal by the Revolutionary Tribunal, claimed that policies of terror had brought him there, and could be used against other Montagnards: Le Moniteur, 3 May 1793.
43 43. Ibid., 10 July 1793.
44 44. An address by the Convention to the French, the day after the death of Le Peletier, was unambiguous on this point: ‘there is an attempt to sow terror in the Republic’ (AP, vol. LVII, p. 605). On the assassination of Le Peletier and Marat, see Michel Biard, La Liberté ou la mort. Mourir en député (1792–1795), Paris, Tallandier, 2015.
45 45. Convinced like all his fellow Montagnards that Corday was linked to the outlawed Girondins, some of whom had gathered in Calvados, where she came from, Couthon declared on 14 July that the Girondins ‘intended, through the assassination of the patriots, to produce a great terror’ (AP, vol. LXVIII, p. 723). On the impact of Marat’s assassination, see Guillaume Mazeau, Le bain de l’histoire. Charlotte Corday et l’attentat contre Marat 1793–2009, Seyssel, Champ Vallon, 2009; and Ian Germani, Jean-Paul Marat: Hero and Anti-Hero of the Revolution, New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1992.
46 46. Jacques Guilhaumou, ‘“La terreur à l’ordre du jour”: un parcours en révolution(1793–1794)’,https://revolution-francaise.net/2007/01/06/94-la-terreur-a-lordre-du-jour-un-parcours-en-revolution-juillet-1793-mars-1794.
47 47.