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The Reign of Terror 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.
Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac was a French politician, freemason, journalist, and one of the most prominent members of the National Convention, representing the Plain during the French Revolution. The Plain was dominated by the radical Montagnards and Barère as one of their leaders supported the foundation of the Committee of Public Safety in April and of a sans-culottes army in September 1793. According to Francois Buzot, Barère was responsible for the Reign of Terror, like Robespierre and Louis de Saint-Just. In Spring 1794 and after the Festival of the Supreme Being, he became an opponent of Maximilien Robespierre and joined the coup, leading to his downfall.
Georges Jacques Danton was a French lawyer and a leading figure in the French Revolution. He became a deputy to the Paris Commune, presided in the Cordeliers district, and visited the Jacobin club. In August 1792 he became French Minister of Justice and was responsible for inciting the September Massacres. In Spring 1793 he supported the foundation of a Revolutionary Tribunal and became the first president of the Committee of Public Safety. After the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 he changed his mind on the use of force and lost his seat in the committee; Danton and Robespierre became rivals. In early October 1793, he left politics but was urged to return to Paris to plead, as a moderate, for an end to the Terror. Danton's continual criticism of the Committee of Public Safety provoked further counter-attacks. At the end of March 1794, Danton made a speech announcing the end of the Terror. Within a week he became embroiled in a scandal concerning the bankruptcy proceedings of the French East India Company and was guillotined by the advocates of revolutionary terror after accusations of conspiracy, venality and leniency toward the enemies of the Revolution.
The Committee of Public Safety was a committee of the National Convention which formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the Reign of Terror, a violent phase of the French Revolution. Supplementing the Committee of General Defence created after the execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 by the National Convention. It was charged with protecting the new republic against its foreign and domestic enemies, fighting the First Coalition and the Vendée revolt. As a wartime measure, the committee was given broad supervisory and administrative powers over the armed forces, judiciary and legislature, as well as the executive bodies and ministers of the Convention.
The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for political crimes.
The National Convention was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during 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. The Convention sat as a single-chamber assembly from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795.
Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, also known as Jean Nicolas, was a French personality of the Revolutionary period. Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was an instrumental figure of the period known as the Reign of Terror. Billaud-Varenne climbed his way up the ladder of power during that period, becoming one of the most militant members of the Committee of Public Safety. He was recognized and worked with French Revolution figures Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre, and is often considered one of the key architects of The Terror. "No, we will not step backward, our zeal will only be smothered in the tomb; either the Revolution will triumph or we will all die."
This is a glossary of the French Revolution. It generally does not explicate names of individual people or their political associations; those can be found in List of people associated with the French Revolution.
The cantons of France are territorial subdivisions of the French Republic's departments and arrondissements.
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 but seems to have been written by Robespierre according to Laurent Lecointre. By means of this law the Committee of Public Safety simplified the judicial process to one of indictment and prosecution.
The Committee of General Security was a parliamentary committee of the French National Convention which acted as police agency during the French Revolution. Along with the Committee of Public Safety it oversaw the Reign of Terror. The Committee of General Security supervised the local police committees in charge of investigating reports of treason, and was one of the agencies with authority to refer suspects to the Revolutionary Tribunal for trial and possible execution by guillotine.
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 drownings at Nantes were a series of mass executions by drowning during the Reign of Terror in Nantes, France, that occurred between November 1793 and February 1794. During this period, anyone arrested and jailed for not consistently supporting the Revolution, or suspected of being a royalist sympathizer, especially Catholic priests and nuns, was cast into the river Loire and drowned on the orders of Jean-Baptiste Carrier, the representative-on-mission in Nantes. Before the drownings ceased, as many as four thousand or more people, including innocent families with women and children, died in what Carrier himself called "the national bathtub".
The Bulletin des lois was a publication created during the French Revolution, as an "official anthology of the laws, orders and regulations that govern" the people. It was created by the decree of 14 Frimaire of year II of the French Republican calendar.
Le Vieux Cordelier was a journal published in France between 5 December 1793 and 3 February 1794. Its radical criticism of ultra-revolutionary fervor and repression in France during the Reign of Terror contributed significantly to the downfall and execution of the Dantonists, among whom its author, the journalist Camille Desmoulins, numbered. It comprised seven numbers, of which six appeared; the seventh remained unpublished for some forty years.
The French theatre of the late 18th century functioned as a forum for political expression and debate; during this period, society and art became highly politicised. The French took great national pride in their theatres. A report commissioned by the Commune of Paris in 1789 declared Paris to be a centre for the "foremost theatres of Europe" that served as an "exemplar for foreigners." An audience's response to the play was important to its success—if a play was received poorly (claques), rather than favourably (cabales), the play would not receive royalty payments.
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer and statesman who became one of the best-known, influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution. As a member of the Estates-General, the Constituent Assembly, and the Jacobin Club, he campaigned for universal manhood suffrage, the right to vote for people of color, Jews, actors, domestic staff and the abolition of both clerical celibacy and French involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1791, Robespierre was elected as "public accuser" and became an outspoken advocate for male citizens without a political voice, for their unrestricted admission to the National Guard, to public offices, and to the commissioned ranks of the army, for the right to petition and the right to bear arms in self defence. Robespierre played an important part in the agitation which brought about the fall of the French monarchy on 10 August 1792 and the convocation of the National Convention. His goal was to create a one and indivisible France, establish equality before the law, abolish prerogatives, and defend the principles of direct democracy. He earned the nickname "the incorruptible" for his adherence to strict moral values.
The politics of France take place with the framework of a semi-presidential system determined by the French Constitution of the French Fifth Republic. The nation declares itself to be an "indivisible, secular, democratic, and social Republic". The constitution provides for a separation of powers and proclaims France's "attachment to the Rights of Man and the principles of National Sovereignty as defined by the Declaration of 1789".
The Coup d'état of 9 Thermidor or the Fall of Maximilien Robespierre refers to the series of events beginning with Maximilien Robespierre's address to the National Convention on 8 Thermidor Year II, his arrest the next day, and his execution on 10 Thermidor Year II. In the speech of 8 Thermidor, Robespierre spoke of the existence of internal enemies, conspirators, and calumniators, within the Convention and the governing Committees. He refused to name them, which alarmed the deputies who feared Robespierre was preparing another purge of the Convention.
Gilbert-Amable Faure-Conac,, was an officer of the French Navy and politician for the department of Creuse in the late eighteenth century.
References
- 1 2 3 Roswell., Palmer, Robert (1958). Twelve who ruled. OCLC 163776553.
- ↑ Fenwick, Jill; Anderson, Judy (1 October 2005). Revolution: France. History Teachers' Association of Victoria. ISBN 9781875585588.