The Reign of Terror

Constitution of 1795

Constitution of 1795, French constitution established during the Thermidorian Reaction in the French Revolution. Known as the Constitution of Year III in the French republican calendar, it was prepared by the Thermidorian Convention. It was more conservative than the abortive democratic Constitution of 1793.

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin

Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was a French physician, politician and freemason who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a device to carry out death penalties in France, as a less painful method of execution.

Revolutionary/ Execution Square

During the French Revolution in 1789 the statue of Louis XV of France was torn down and the area renamed the Place de la Révolution. The new revolutionary government erected a guillotine in the square, and it was here that King Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793, which is why it is such an important spot.

The Directory Government

Group of five men who held the executive power in France. They were chosen by the new legislature, by the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients each year one director, chosen by lot, was to be replaced.

Maximilian Robespierre

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer and politician, as well as one of the best known and most influential figures associated with the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Robespierre was the architect of the Reign of Terror in France. His name is often associated with the French Revolution. He started out representing the Third Estate, advocating for basic human rights for all-rich, poor, slave, free or otherwise. He also opposed the death penalty for many years.

Continental System

The blockade designed by Napoleon to paralyze Great Britain through the destruction of British commerce.

Revolutionary Tribunal

The Revolutionary Tribunal was a court instituted by the National Convention during the French Revolution for the trial of political offenders. It eventually became one of the most powerful engines of the Reign of Terror. The Revolutionary Tribunals were politically motivated courts, formed by the National Convention in March 1793. They were best known for sending people to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. 2.

Committee of Public Safety

The Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 by the National Convention and then restructured in July 1793, formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror, a stage of the French Revolution.

Revolutionary Calendar

The French Revolutionary Calendar was officially adopted in France on October 24, 1793 and abolished on 1 January 1806 by Emperor Napoleon I. It was used again briefly during under the Paris Commune in 1871. The calendar was adopted more than one year after the advent of the First Republic after a long debate. The mathematicians contributed equal month division, and a decimal measures of time. The poets contributed the name of the days, choosing the names of plants, domestic animals and tools; the months rhyme three by three.

Thermidorian Reaction

The French politician Maximilien Robespierre was denounced by members of the National Convention as a tyrant, leading to Robespierre and twenty-one associates including Louis Antoine de Saint-Just being arrested that night and beheaded on the following day.

Law of 22 Prairial

The Law of 22 Prairial, also known as the loi de la Grande Terreur, the law of the Great Terror, was enacted on 10 June 1794. It was proposed by Georges Auguste Couthon and supported by Robespierre. It sought to expand the rights of accused people.

Law of Suspects

The Law of Suspects was a decree passed by the Committee of Public Safety on 17 September 1793, during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. It marked a significant weakening of individual freedoms that led to "revolutionary paranoia" that swept the nation.

Levee en Masse

The Levée en Masse, August 23, 1793. In response to the dangers of foreign war, the Committee of public safety established a mass conscription and succeeded in training an army of about 800,000 soldiers in less than a year from ages 18-25.

National Convention

The National Convention was the first government of the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly. Created after the great insurrection of 10 August 1792, it was the first French government organized as a republic, abandoning the monarchy altogether.

September Massacres (1792)

The September Massacres were a wave of killings in Paris and other cities from 2-7 September 1792, during the French Revolution. There was a fear that foreign and royalist armies would attack Paris and that the inmates of the city's prisons would be freed and join them. Radicals called for preemptive action.

War in the Vendee

The War in the Vendée was an uprising in the Vendée region of France during the French Revolution. The Vendée is a coastal region, located immediately south of the Loire River in western France. Tens of thousands of civilians, Republican prisoners, and sympathizers with the revolution were massacred by both armies.

Execution of Louis XVI

The execution of Louis XVI, by means of the guillotine, a major event of the French Revolution, took place on 21 January 1793 at the Place de la Révolution in Paris. The National Convention had convicted the king in a near-unanimous vote and condemned him to death by a simple majority. He was convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention

De-Christianization

The phenomenon of Dechristianisation was characterised, by being short-lived, and also not a government organisation. The Public Safety Authority and the Convention were hostile to, at least suspicious of, the phenomenon. The first closure of churches was in the provinces, under the Surveillance Committees. But Paris was soon to follow suit

Sans-Culottes

The sans-culottes were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime.