Reign of Terror in the French Revolution - Essay Example

1 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: AIMS OF THE TERROR The Reign of Terror is one of the saddest and darkest chapters in the history of France. It is because of the cruelty and the unparalleled fear it generated and because it involved annihilation of Frenchmen by Frenchmen. France was deeply divided: Girondists versus Jacobins, clergy versus anticlergy, monarchists versus republicans and each wanted to get the upper hand by hook or by crook and when the republicans , using mob power in the Fall of Bastille, the women's march to Versailles palace and the storming of the Tuilleries palace and thus ending the Bourbon monarchy, they made sure that France would be drenched in blood. From September 5, 1793 to July 28, 1794, France went back to the dark ages as violence, mayhem, rape, genocide, and devastation were showcased to make any civilized person retch in revulsion and everything was supposed to be done in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity. The Reign of Terror was the piece de resistance of the French Revolution (1789-1799) and shook the whole of Europe especially Europe's surrounding monarchies. When the haze of smoke of violence settled down, more than 40,000 Frenchmen were guillotined and more died by brutal means such as drowning i.e. 3,500 were victims of mass drowning termed as noyades in Nantes1 and death by mob lynching. The most celebrated head shown to the jeering, cheering mob belonged to Queen Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Queen Maria Theresa of Austria and the sister of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Earlier in that fateful year 1793, her husband, King Louis XVI was butchered via the guillotine for alleged crime of treason together with all those perceived to be "enemies of the revolution". The latter were either guillotined or mass executed by firing squad without due process of law2 . Most of the victims were those from 2 the clergy, nobility and pro-monarchy Girondists. The Reign of Terror was also marked by dechristianization as Christianity was banned temporarily, a result of massive sentiment by the 'enragees' or extremists3 against the clergy for its special privileges such as the the right to tax the feudal estates via the 'dime'or tithe4, its political power (it possessed a third of the voting power of the Estates General) and its possession of untaxed vast landholdings all over France. In its stead, was established the revolutionary religion termed as the Cult of Reason. Hatred against the clergy even caused the Julian calendar to be flung aside in favor of the Republican calendar.5 The Reign of Terror also saw the ascendancy to power of the common people, the peasants, the working class and the disadvantaged who were radicalized by the hunger and famine, the widespread unemployment, the excessive consumption of the royalty in the Versailles palace6, the civic inequality produced by dispensation of special privileges to the aristocracy, the burden of feudal taxation and the surging inflation that went haywire to drive them to bare subsistence. When these sans-culottes' (literally without knee breaches) aspirations were amalgamated with the Mountains' (the radical Jacobins) resolution to abolish monarchy, we had the perfect formula for an explosive group that would ignite and power a radical revolution that would be unparalleled in its cruelty and brutality. This combination jumpstarted the Reign of Terror. By wresting control of the National Convention, which previously abolished the monarchy and convicted King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, they were able to engineer an extermination of all the enemies of the republic , particularly the counter- 3 revolutionaries. The execution of the French monarchs was based on flimsy evidences i.e that both fled to Austria-held Netherlands (Belgium)7 but were captured in Varennes and that the Prussian army general , Duke of Brunswick, in his manifesto swore to raze Paris to the ground if they harmed the royal family. It was also based on suspicion that they were in cahoots with the enemy forces. In law, these are mere circumstantial evidences. The Convention did not only train its guns on the enemies of the people but also against neighboring countries. Because Prussia (northern Germany) and Austria gave haven to French 'emigres' or French aristocrats who fled the revolution and espoused the feudal landlords' fight to preserve their feudal rights, France declared war against them. It also waged war against Great Britain, Holland, Spain, and Sardinia. All 6 coalesced to form the First Coalition against France primarily in dire revulsion to the cruel murder of the king and queen of France.8 The first battle waged, pitting the coalition against the French forces was decided in favor of the French. In September 20, 1792, the revolutionary forces under Georges Danton halted the Prussian forces in Valmy and followed this up with a string of victories in Germany, Austrian Netherlands, Nice, and Savoy.9 The levee en masse or the coercion of all able-bodied Frenchmen for conscription, the manipulation of their patriotism so evidenced by the singing of Marsellaise of the marching southern contingent and the sacrificing of civilian life for war achievements, seemed to produce the desired outcome. Another fly in the Convention's ointment was the rebellion staged by the aristocrats, clergy and Girondists in the western provinces of Brittany and the Vendee and the cities of Lyons, Caen, Toulouse and Marseilles. The newly established Committee of Public Safety, dictatorially ruled by 12 despots immediately stamped out the fires of insurrection by 4 heinously brutal means.10 This committee and the Committee on General Security (for police affairs), which was ultimately ruled by Maximilien Robespierre, Jean Paul Marat and Georges Danton were responsible for fanning the Reign of Terror to fever pitch proportions. More mass executions and purging of dissidents followed as the committee used the Revolutionary Tribunal to serve their bloody ends.11 Because Danton himself was executed for alleged corruption and treachery by corresponding with the enemy and because Marat was assassinated by the royal fanatic Charlotte Corday, Robespierre, who is admittedly a fanatic student of Rousseau and his Social Contract, was left as the sole dictator of the Reign of Terror. Nicknamed as the Incorruptible, Robespierre was a master of brilliant oratory, was highly esteemed because of his rectitude, honesty and his ardor to "oppose corruption and self-interest in his life".12 He was an outstanding figure of the revolution because he "combined the attributes of a tactical politician with those of an idealistic visionary".13 But he is basically a radical and an extremist. Under his leadership, the revolutionary forces dictated the tempo of the war as they were able to stem the tide of war in their favor. This is because of a "unified command structure, centralized lines of communication and clear strategic aims" as well as the execution of generals who failed in their mission.14 To this we add high morale and the levee en masse which was able to round-up 800,000 men for war frontline operations and for the stomping off of all internal dissension.15 Everywhere in France, the Committee of Public Safety made sure to extinguish all enemies of the republic from the face of France by murderous and barbaric means. The mindless revolutionary paranoia cost a heavy toll on human lives as everywhere they can find a suspected 5 'enemy of the state', lives had to be necessarily stifled and the Revolutionary Tribunal16, empowered by the Law of Suspects,17 which allowed it to come up with verdict of either acquittal or death with no necessity of due process of law, was rendered practically trigger happy in immolating whosoever it wished to send to damnation. First the royalists, then the aristocrats, then the clergy and the Girondists. Then the gory mayhem and the mania for the shedding of more blood went helter skelter that even the dictators Danton and Robespierre got devoured by the guillotine's maniacal blade. Because unfettered beheadings can be sickening, especially when the heads belonged to fellow radical Jacobins, Robespierre lost the confidence of so many factions and himself got victimized by conspiracy. And on the 9th Thermidor of the Republican calendar i.e. July 27, 1794, Robespierre, Saint-Just and 99 others were themselves decapitated18, giving justice to the saying, "a man who lives by the blade, dies by the blade". With Robespierre's demise, came down the curtains writing finis to a bloody chapter in French history. However, Robespierre's totalitarian and destructive ways were exported and he got reincarnated in the persons of Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and a host of other vicious personalities. They said that the French Revolution changed the face of France and Europe in general because it made monarchical despotism an anathema. It also abolished feudalism and serfdom; terminated the privileged positions of the aristocracy and the clergy; made social and economic reforms that finally gave expression to the French people's hunger for equality, liberty and democracy; modernized the french government and its institutions on the basis of popular sovereignty and caused the development of nationalism in France and in the whole of Europe. 6 But at what price, may we ask At the expense of more than 40,000 heads rolling and more unspeakable brutalities and violence This is certainly not the concept of Enlightenment and even Rousseau's Social Contract, which is Robespierre and his ilk's bible, never advocated wholesale execution of citizens without fair trial and presentation of evidence in his favor. It pales in comparison to the American Revolution, which allegedly inspired the authors of the Reign of Terror because the former was engineered with less violence and brutality. During the American Revolution, people didn't cut off heads like savages while frenetically cheering the sight and running off the streets of America with heads impaled on pikes. Victor Hugo in Les Miserables deemed the mayhem as dreadful but necessary and called those who slew all the Swiss Guards of the Tuilleries palace and those who purged by means of the guillotine "savages of civilization".19 But when were savages ever civilized Can evil, despicable, immoral, ungodly means justify a good end Even the French Revolution can hardly be considered a success. Thousands died in the name of the abolition of monarchy but look, 26 years thereafter a Bourbon king, King Louis XVIII was reinstalled to the throne of France.20 Whereas the American revolution drafted only one constitution which persisted up to the present, the French Revolution had to draft a total of 11 constitutions. That's stability for you. The fact that dictatorial power corrupts was never better illustrated as when the powers behind the Reign of Terror had to butcher their own confreres on account of corruption. It really is the outcome when an activity spins out of control due to mindlessness and absence of moderation. 7 The Aims of The Terror The Reign of Terror was a heinous, political violence that emanated from the hysterical paranoia that seized the godless minds of Robespierre, Danton and the rest of the infidels in the Committee of Public Safety. Such paranoia was triggered by the fact that the foreign enemies were virtually knocking at France's doorsteps and the royalist insurgents were threatening to control Brittany and the Vendee and some of the major cities of France. The Committee's reflexive, self-defensive reaction was to exterminate the counter-revolutionaries and the perceived enemies of the republic. As Robespierre tersely put it, "We must smother the internal and external enemies of the republic or perish with it to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror".21 Without tinge of conscience, Robespierre himself justified the genocide by putting forth the idea that terror is the most efficacious way of bringing about justice and that the aims of the republic "must be promoted through the use of terrorthe form, that virtue itself must take in a time of national peril".22 He and the gang were seized by the mania to destroy the "old, property-based monarchy and aristocracy" and supplant this with with an "equality-based republic of civic virtue". The megalomaniacs believed that they must destroy and from the ashes "rebuild society from the ground up".23 In effect, the aim of the Terror was "to institute the emergency measures necessary at a time of grave military crisis".24 From the mouths of the terrorists themselves, General Westermann was quoted as saying "pity is not revolutionary" while Carnot uttered:"We must smash them or they will crush us"25. Another 8 aim was to "establish a new revolutionary culture in which everything that reminded the people of the old regime was eliminated".26 But the whole aim was crystallized by Robespierre himself when he said: "Circumstances imposed harshness upon us, we are fighting for the survival of the Revolution. We have no choice but to save the republic, whatever the cost, whatever the weapons".27 The Threat of Counter-Revolution As to the query of whether the revolutionary violence of 1793-1794 was a direct and proportionate response to the threat of counter-revolution, the answer is YES because that was the impulse that entered the paranoidal minds of the terrorists. They perceived that counter-revolution was real. They claimed that Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI in connivance with King Leopold II were hatching a plot to reinstate themselves to the throne. The fear was reinforced by the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto and the fact that the royalists and the Girondins were on the verge of taking over the Vendee and Brittany and the cities of Lyons, Toulouse, Caen, Bourdeaux and Marseilles. The paranoia was heightened when Marat was assassinated by the royalist Corday. As Robespierre himself stated "The foreigners, the monarchs and the counter-revolutionaries imposed the need for terror upon France".28 Robespierre and the other terrorists notoriously entrenched themselves a place in history not only by massacring humanity in large numbers but by also successfully exporting their killing methods and inspiring future terrorists and murderers such as Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Stalin, Idi Amin, the Khmer Rouges, the Hutus of Rwanda, the Janjawid militia of Darfur, Sudan. The list is interminable and they have their patron saint, Robespierre to thank for. 9 REFERENCES Alison, Archibald. History of Europe From The Commencement of the French Revolution, Blackwood, 1849. Anderson, James. Daily Life During The French Revolution, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007. Andress, David. The Terror:Civil War in the French Revolution, Little Brown, 2005. Andress, David. French Society in Revolution,1789-1799, Manchester University Press,1999. Baker, Keith Michael. The Old Regime and the French Revolution,University of Chicago Press, 1987. Brink, Jan ten. Robespierre and the Red Terror, Adamant Media Corporation, 2004. Burbeck, James. The French Revolt and Empire, http://www.wtj.com/articles/napsum 1. Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford University Press,1989. Frey, Linda and Marsha. The French Revolution, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004. Haydon, Colin & Doyle, William. Robespierre, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Hazen, Charles. Europe Since 1815, H. Holt & Co., 1910. Hooker, Richard. The Radical Revolution, 1996.http://www.wsu.edu/dee/REV/RADICAL. HTM. Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables, Book I, chapter V, Wordsworth Edition, 1994. Korngold, Ralph. Robespierre, Read Books,2006. McPhee, Peter & Dwyer, Philip 2002, The French Revolution and Napoleon, Routledge, 2002 Palmer, Ronald. Twelve Who Ruled, Princeton University Press, 1970. Pilbeam, Pamela. Themes in Modern European History, Routledge, 1995. Robespierre's Speech, February 5, 1794, Robespierre on the Moral and Political Principles of Domestic Policy, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/robespierre_terror.html. 10 Rosner, Lisa & Theibault, John. A Short History of Europe, 1600-1815,ME Sharpe,2000 Soboul, Albert . The Parisians Sans-culottes and the French Revolution, 1793-4. Clarendon Press, 1964. Simpson, William & Jones, Martin. Europe, 1783-1914, Routledge,2000. Stewart, JH. A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution, MacMillan, 1951. Read More