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 (22 Prairial of the Year II under the French Revolutionary Calendar). It was proposed by Georges Auguste Couthon but seems to have been written by Maximilien Robespierre according to Laurent Lecointre. [1] Using this law, the Committee of Public Safety simplified the judicial process to one of indictment and prosecution.
The immediate background to the introduction of the Prairial Law was the attempted assassinations of Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois on 23 May and of Maximilien Robespierre on 25 May. Introducing the decree at the Convention, Georges Couthon, who had drafted it, argued that political crimes were far worse than common crimes because in the latter 'only individuals are wounded' whereas in the former 'the existence of free society is threatened'. Under these circumstances, 'indulgence is an atrocity... clemency is parricide.'. [2] The law was an extension of the centralisation and organisation of the Terror, following the decrees of 16 April and 8 May which had suspended the revolutionary court in the provinces and brought all political cases for trial in the capital. [3] The result of these laws was that by June 1794 Paris was full of suspects awaiting trial. On 29 April it was reported that the forty prisons of Paris contained 6,921 prisoners; by 11 June this number had increased to 7,321 and by 28 July to 7,800. [4]
'No Revolutionary Tribunal could work fast enough to prevent the ship of state sinking under such a sea of crime. What was to be done? Precedents had been created at Lyon, Marseille and elsewhere.... at Orange in particular, there had been set up, by decree of the Convention, a Commission of Five, which, by dispensing with the usual formalities of counsel and witness, had succeeded in condemning to death, within two months, 332 out of the 591 persons brought before it'. [4]
The law was also prompted by the idea that members of the Convention who had supported Georges Danton were politically unreliable - a view shared by Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just and others. They felt that these people needed to be brought swiftly to justice without a full debate by the Convention itself. They considered Jean-Pierre-André Amar, for example, to be suspect. [5]
i. The law extended the reach of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which henceforth could hear cases for 'slandering patriotism', 'seeking to inspire discouragement', 'spreading false news' and 'depraving morals, corrupting the public conscience and impairing the purity and energy of the revolutionary government'. [6]
ii. It placed an active obligation on all citizens to denounce and bring to justice those suspected - 'Every citizen is empowered to seize conspirators and counterrevolutionaries, and to bring them before the magistrates. He is required to denounce them as soon as he knows of them.' As Couthon explained to the Convention, 'For a citizen to become suspect it is sufficient that rumour accuses him'. [7]
iii. It limited trials in the Revolutionary Tribunal to three days. [8]
iv. It prevented the Revolutionary Tribunal both from calling witnesses, or from allowing defence counsel to the accused. Juries were to come to judgement entirely on the basis of the accusation and the accused's own defence. [6]
v. It required the Tribunal to come to one of only two possible verdicts - acquittal or death. [6]
vi. The law cancelled all previous legislation on the same subject. Without being explicit, this removed the immunity of members of the Convention, which until then had protected them from summary arrest and required that the Convention itself vote to send any of its members to trial. [9]
vii. The law would free the Revolutionary Tribunals from control by the Convention and would greatly strengthen the position of prosecutors by limiting the ability of suspects to defend themselves. Furthermore, the law broadened the sorts of charges that could be brought so that virtually any criticism of the government became criminal. [10]
The Prairial Law had an immediate effect on the tempo of executions under the Terror. From an average of five executions a day in Germinal, the rate rose to seventeen in Prairial and twenty-six in Messidor. [11] The law thus inaugurated the period known as "The Great Terror".
| Revolutionary Month | Executions | Acquittals |
|---|---|---|
| Germinal | 155 | 59 |
| Floréal | 354 | 159 |
| Prairial | 509 | 164 |
| Messidor | 796 | 208 |
| Thermidor 1-9 | 342 | 84 |
The proposals were met with dismay when they were presented to the Convention. The Committee of Public Safety had not reviewed the text before it was presented, although it was presented in the name of the Committee itself. The Committee of General Security had not even been informed that the law was being drafted. [12]
Some of the deputies were uneasy, in particular, about the removal of their immunity and asked for the debate to be adjourned so the clauses could be examined. Robespierre refused and demanded immediate discussion. At his insistence the entire decree was voted on, clause by clause. It passed. [5] The next day, 11 June, when Robespierre was absent, Bourdon de l'Oise and Merlin de Douai put forward an amendment proclaiming the inalienable right of the Convention to impeach its own members. The amendment was passed. [5]
Furious, Robespierre and Couthon returned to the Convention the next day, 12 June, and demanded that the amendment of the previous day be revoked. Robespierre made a number of veiled threats and during the debate clashed particularly with Jean-Lambert Tallien. [13] The Convention acceded to Robespierre's wishes and restored the original text of the decree Couthon had drafted. [5]
As the Terror accelerated and members felt more and more threatened, Tallien and others began to make plans for the overthrow of Robespierre. Less than two months later, on 27 July, Tallien and his associates overthrew Robespierre, beginning the Thermidorian Reaction.
The Law of 22 Prairial was repealed on 1 August 1794 and Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, who had presided over the Revolutionary Tribunal, was arrested and later guillotined. [14]
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.
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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. A modest and unknown lawyer on the eve of the Revolution, Danton became a famous orator of the Cordeliers Club and was raised to governmental responsibilities as French Minister of Justice following the fall of the monarchy on 10 August 1792, and was subsequently 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. Danton was sent to Belgium as commissioner to deal with Dumouriez.
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 early January 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was created on 6 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.
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Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, also known as Jean Nicolas or by his nicknames, the Righteous Patriot or the Tiger, was a French lawyer and a major figure in the French Revolution. A close associate of Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre, he was one of the most militant members of the Committee of Public Safety, and is often considered a key architect of the Reign of Terror.
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The September Massacres were a series of killings of prisoners in Paris that occurred in 1792, from Sunday, 2 September until Thursday, 6 September, during the French Revolution. Between 1,176 and 1,614 people were killed by fédérés, guardsmen, and sans-culottes, with the support of gendarmes responsible for guarding the tribunals and prisons, the Cordeliers, the Committee of Surveillance of the Commune, and the revolutionary sections of Paris.
Georges Auguste Couthon was a French politician and lawyer known for his service as a deputy in the Legislative Assembly during the French Revolution. Couthon was elected to the Committee of Public Safety on 30 May 1793. Along with his close associates, Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, he formed an unofficial triumvirate within the committee which wielded power until their arrest and execution in 1794 during the period of the Reign of Terror. A Freemason, Couthon played an important role in the development of the Law of 22 Prairial, which was responsible for a sharp increase in the number of executions of accused counter-revolutionaries.
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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 Hébertists, or Exaggerators were a radical revolutionary political group associated with the populist journalist Jacques Hébert, a member of the Cordeliers club. They came to power during the Reign of Terror and played a significant role in the French Revolution.
The Revolutionary Tribunal was a court instituted by the National Convention during the French Revolution for the trial of political offenders. In October 1793 it became one of the most powerful engines of the Reign of Terror.
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a prominent French lawyer and statesman, widely recognized as one of the most influential, and controversial figures of the French Revolution. Robespierre played a pivotal role in the events that led to the downfall of the French monarchy on 10 August 1792 and the subsequent convening of the National Convention. His vision was centered on forging a unified and indivisible France, establishing equality under the law, eradicating prerogatives, and staunchly upholding the principles of direct democracy.
The Coup d'état of 9 Thermidor or the Fall of Maximilien Robespierre is 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. 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.
