Terror: The French Revolution and Its Demons

256 Pages·2022·2.364 MB·English

by  Michel Biard, Marisa Linton

Terror

Terror
The French Revolution and Its Demons
Michel Biard and
Marisa Linton
With a Foreword by Timothy Tackett
polity
Originally published in French as Terreur! La Révolution française face à ses
demons. By Michel Biard & Marisa Linton © Armand Colin 2020, Malakoff.
Armand Colin is a trademark of DUNOD Editeur, 11, rue Paul Bert, 92240
Malakoff
This English edition © Polity Press, 2021
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ISBN- 13: 978- 1-5095- 4835- 4
ISBN- 13: 978- 1-5095- 4836-1 (pb)
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Contents
Note on the Text viii
Acknowledgements ix
Foreword by Timothy Tackett x
Introduction: The Demons of Terror 1
Chapter 1: The Terror – a Concept Imposed by the
Thermidoreans 8
1. How the ’system of terror’ and the black legend of
Robespierre were retrospectively invented 10
2. Developing use of the word ‘terror’ between 1789 and
1794 16
3. ‘Terror as the order of the day’: an unsaid, unofficial yet
widespread order from the Convention 19
Chapter 2: The Meaning of ‘Terror’ Before the Revolution 25
1. Terror and Enlightenment. A problematic connection 26
2. The concept of ‘terror’ in the Ancien Régime 28
3. The role of terror in political theory 35
Chapter 3: Terror in the Heart: The Weight of Fears and
Emotions 42
1. The spectre of conspiracy and treason 45
2. The flow of emotions and fears 49
3. The impossible combination of virtue and terror 53
vi Contents
Chapter 4: The Revolution and its Opponents: Clashes and
the Intensification of Repression 62
1. Legislation targeting refractory clergy and émigrés 63
2. ‘The suspects’: how the net of suspicion widened 69
3. Repression against ‘federalism’ and the emblematic case
of the Lyon revolt 73
Chapter 5: Creating Revolutionary Law: A Time of Political
Exception 79
1. From ordinary law to ‘revolutionary’ law 81
2. ‘Revolutionary’ institutions and their role in repression 85
3. The recourse to extraordinary justice 90
Chapter 6: Terror in the Convention: Political Conflict as
an Engine of ‘Terror’ 96
1. The Convention and the clubs: from political strife to
‘purging’ 97
2. From arrests to political trials 105
3. Death as a means to eliminate opponents in the
Convention 108
4. The elimination of factions, the apogee of ‘terror’ or the
will to end it? 112
Chapter 7: Paris and the Vendée at the Heart of the ‘Terror’ 119
1. Paris, capital of the sans-culotte movement 120
2. Paris, epicentre of the ‘Terror’ 127
3. The ‘military Vendée’, a zone of civil war 131
Chapter 8: Who Lived and Who Died? The Difficult
Balance Sheets of Terror 136
1. Working out the death toll 137
2. Fraternal France and fratricidal France 143
Conclusion: How the Convention Reconstructed Itself After
Thermidor 157
Chronology for the Years of the National Convention 165
Maps 179
Some Further Reading 188
Notes 190
Index 229
In memory of Michel Vovelle (1933–2018)
Note on the Text
This is a shortened and revised version of the original French lan-
guage editon: Terreur! La Révolution française face à ses démons,
Armand Colin, 2020, Malakoff, a trademark of Dunod Editeur.