In a series of chapters organized both thematically and chronologically, the authors bring together a range of new research – including many of their own studies – to confront and demolish the ahistorical legend of 1793–4. As they make abundantly clear, the repression of those years was never conceived as a ‘system’. Most of the measures associated with the ‘terror’ were pieced together, adapted and strengthened by the National Convention over a period of several months, in response to the transforming circumstances of foreign war, civil war and popular pressure. Some had precedents dating back to the early years of the Revolution or even to the Old Regime. There was never anything approaching a single pre-conceived ideology at work in this process. And while the role of Robespierre was far from insignificant, he was by no means the dominant force as he has so often been presented. Indeed, in many cases Robespierre’s opponents, the Girondins, were at least as complicit in the creation of ‘terrorist’ institutions as were the Montagnard Jacobins.
Moreover, as the authors also make clear, it is impossible fully to understand the behaviour and political choices of the leaders of the Revolution without taking into consideration the role of emotions. On the one hand, it is important not to underestimate the extraordinary force of the joy and enthusiasm and the collective love of ‘fraternity’ as motivating factors – and the possible frustration and impatience that sometimes arose when the Revolutionaries were compelled to confront those who did not share the same enthusiasm. But to understand the repression of 1793–4, it is above all essential to examine the multiple manifestations of fear: fear of military invasion, fear of revenge, fear of traitors, fear of conspiracy: a complex of fears that might well be transformed into anger, hatred and cynical efforts at manipulation. The authors provide a graphic demonstration of the extent to which the ‘terrorists’ themselves might well feel ‘terrorized’.
To be sure, and it is to their credit, Biard and Linton are careful not to gloss over the human toll of the ‘terror’. They examine the statistics available for the executions ordered by Revolutionary tribunals and military commissions. They do not overlook the terrible repression against the Vendée rebellion and the so-called ‘Federalist’ revolts; the political ‘show trials’ against various factional opponents; and the generalized hecatomb in Paris in June and July 1794 arising from the ‘Prairial law’. They take note of the impact on the physical and mental health of those compelled to spend long months in insalubrious prisons. They meditate on the extent to which the Revolutionaries chose to set aside the Rights of Man in the face of the perceived necessity of ‘violating the law to save the law’.
But the authors also take care to contextualize all such actions in terms of both circumstances and emotions. They are impatient with the utterly inaccurate putative links between the terror phase of the Revolution and the totalitarian regimes and ideologies of the twentieth century. They underline the substantial number of exonerations and case dismissals (non-lieux), often 50 percent or higher, among those individuals brought before the Revolutionary tribunals. And they note the widely varying impact of the repression from region to region, department to department. It is clear that the most intense repression was precisely in those areas that were the scene of major armed counter-revolution against the Convention.
In conclusion, we must express our gratitude for the publication of this enormously thoughtful and nuanced study and for the authors’ efforts to come to grips with the phenomenon of French Revolutionary ‘terror’ in all its complexities and contradictions.
Timothy Tackett
Introduction: The Demons of Terror
Terror … the word has become synonymous with the French Revolution. When we think of the French Revolution, it is perhaps inevitable that we also think of the demons that came to haunt it and to overshadow its humanitarian project – the demons of terror. In our modern world this association has been intensified by the huge importance that the words ‘terror’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ have assumed for us, and the visceral fears and hatreds that these words invoke. The use of a capital letter for the Terror has reified the word, all the more so as it is accompanied by a definite article intended to reinforce it: it has become the Terror, sometimes The Reign of Terror. By making this word signify a unified phenomenon, we assume that we know what it meant, and what it encompassed. Yet when the women and men of the Revolution used the term ‘terror’, they almost never gave it a capital letter, or the definite article. However they experienced terror, it was not yet, for them, the Terror.
The term, the Terror (definite article, capital T) comes primarily from historians who wanted to impose a particular narrative on the past. This process began with nineteenth-century French historians, above all, Jules Michelet. In Michelet’s general introduction to his Histoire de la Révolution française (published from 1847 onwards) not only did he use this capital letter, but, with his fluent, impressionistic style, he practically personified Terror, making it almost another character in his narrative of the Revolution, and giving it the capacity to speak, like a monster lurking in wait to savage the achievements of the Revolution.1 From that time onwards the practice of using a capital letter for Terror was increasingly adopted.2 A search on the Internet using the Ngram Viewer linguistic application demonstrates a surge in the use of the term with its capitalization in the decades 1840–60, a peak in the 1880–1910 period (linked to the Centenary of 1789) and then a marked decrease. Another surge, still more spectacular, came with the Bicentenary of the Revolution in 1989, an anniversary that coincided with intense historiographical controversy from historians of both left and right over the meaning and nature of the Revolution.3 Thus, the Terror as a unified and reified entity is a creation of historians, a polemical construction based on antagonistic interpretations, a means for historians to obsessively denigrate this revolution, or, indeed, any revolution.
One of the most problematic features of the term, the Terror and, even more so, The Reign of Terror, is that these words have so often been depicted as synonymous with a chronological period, although historians do not necessarily agree on when that period began, or when it ended. Whilst the expression the Terror has often been used to designate the entirety of the most radical phase of the Revolution, during the years 1793 and 1794, some of it coinciding with the Year II in the new revolutionary calendar (22 September 1793–21 September 1794), there is little consensus on when in 1793 the Terror began. To confuse us further, some historians have dated its onset further back, to August 1792, with the overthrow of the monarchy; still others have contended that the Terror began even earlier, seeing it as intrinsic to the entire Revolution – a view epitomized by Simon Schama’s often-cited pronouncement that: ‘The Terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count’.4 This chronological definition of the Terror is particularly misleading because it carries the implication, whether intended or not, that everything within the designated dates (assuming we go along with September 1793 to the end of July 1794) was about the Terror, and that nothing outside those dates qualifies as terror. Of course, the years 1793 and 1794 were a time as unprecedented as they were exceptional, but they cannot be reduced to the repressive aspects that for 200 years have commonly been associated with the Terror.
In recent years a growing number of historians have been prepared to call into question traditional delineations of the Terror.5 This is not an easy task, not least because the term is such a familiar one, to be found in almost all the older history books, and throughout popular culture. We are faced with a practical question – if we do not call it the Terror, then what do we call it, how do we define and explain it? What words do we use that do not become impossibly involved and complicated? Recently, the eminent American historian of the Revolution, Timothy Tackett stated that he continued to use ‘the term “Terror” – with the initial capital letter and the definite article … simply because, like other terms