#French revolutionary calendar chart series

The leaders felt that their ideal version of government was threatened from the inside and outside of France, and terror was the only way to preserve the dignity of the Republic created from French Revolution. Those who resisted the government were deemed ' tyrants' fighting against the virtue and honor of the general will. Drawing from the idea of a general will, Robespierre felt that the French Revolution could result in a Republic built for the general will but only once those who fought this ideal were expelled. Under the social contract, the government was required to act for the general will, which represented the interests of everyone rather than a few factions. Rousseau's Social Contract argued that each person was born with rights, and they would come together in forming a government that would then protect those rights. Influences Enlightenment thought Д®nlightenment thought emphasized the importance of rational thinking and began challenging legal and moral foundations of society, providing the leaders of the Reign of Terror with new ideas about the role and structure of government. Others suggest there were additional causes, including ideological and emotional. Some historians argue that such terror was a necessary reaction to the circumstances. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice it is thus an emanation of virtue it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie. If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror virtue, without which terror is baneful terror, without which virtue is powerless. In February 1794 in a speech he explains why this 'terror' is necessary as a form of exceptional justice in the context of the revolutionary government: He opposes the idea of terror as the order of the day, defending instead 'justice' as the order of the day. What Robespierre calls 'terror' is the fear that the justice of exception shall inspire the enemies of the Republic. The members of the convention were determined to avoid street violence such as the September Massacres of 1792 by taking violence into their own hands as an instrument of government. According to French historian Jean-ClГ©ment Martin there was no 'system of terror' instated by the Convention between 17, despite the pressure from some of its members and the sans-culottes. Under the pressure of the radical sans-culottes, the Convention agreed to institute a revolutionary army, but refused to make terror the order of the day. Bertrand BarГЁre exclaimed on 5 September 1793 in the convention: 'Let's make terror the order of the day!' This quote has frequently been interpreted as the beginning of a supposed 'system of Terror', an interpretation no longer retained by historians today. There was a sense of emergency among leading politicians in France in the summer of 1793 between the widespread civil war and counter-revolution. By then, 16,594 official death sentences had been dispensed throughout France since June 1793, of which 2,639 were in Paris alone and an additional 10,000 died in prison, without trial, or under both of these circumstances. Today there is consensus amongst historians that the exceptional revolutionary measures continued after the death of Robespierre, and this subsequent period is now called the ' White Terror'. The term 'Terror' being used to describe the period was introduced by the Thermidorian Reaction who took power after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794, to discredit Robespierre and justify their actions. Others, however, cite the earlier time of the September Massacres in 1792, or even July 1789, when the first killing of the revolution occurred. Some consider it to have begun only in 1793, giving the date as either 5 September, June or March, when the Revolutionary Tribunal came into existence. There is disagreement among historians over when exactly 'the Terror' began.

#French revolutionary calendar chart series

The Reign of Terror, commonly called The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety. Nine Г©migrГ©s are executed by guillotine, 1793