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Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror was a period of mass executions by which the Paris-based Jacobins secured power through fear against the province-based Girondists after the French Revolution. The Terror famously used the guillotine to behead victims, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The Terror grew out of fears that counter-revolutionary forces were threatening the revolution, but soon led to executions of nobles, clergy, and the educated in general. -
Guillotine
A killing machine with a blade that chopped peoples heads off for their death penalty. 15,000- 40,000 is roughly the amount of people that died from the guillotine. -
The Jacobins
Jacobin clubs served as debating socitites where politically minded Frenchmen aired their views and discussed current political issues. -
Girondin
The Girondists were a political faction in France within the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention during the French Revolution. They campaigned for the end of the monarchy but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution. -
The French Republic
This period is characterized by the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of the National Convention and the infamous Reign of Terror, the founding of the Directory and the Thermidorian Reaction, and finally, the creation of the Consulate and Napoleon’s rise to power. -
Committee of Public Safety
The Committee of Public Safety was created by the National Convention in 1793. Originally consisting of nine members of the convention, it was formed as an administrative body to supervise and expedite the work of the executive bodies of the convention and of the government ministers appointed by the convention. -
Robespierre
Most influential of the members of the Committee of Public safety. Hard worker with strong principles, and he became known as the Incorruptible because of his honesty and rigid commitment to transforming France into a republic of Virtue. -
The Fall of Robespierre
Robespierre used his power as a member of the Committee of Public Safety to have his fellow citizens and friends Danton and Desmoulins to the guillotine. He had ordered the death of two of his close friends. Robespierre was the sole person who decided between wrong and right. The Convention saw Robespierre as a tyrant and his Republic of Virtue as authoritarian. A faction of the Convention banded together to destroy Robespierre before he destroyed the remaining members of the French government. -
Thermidorian Reaction
Threats, shouting, arrests, and killing with the guillotine. Which resulted in the fall of Maximilien Robespierre and the collapse of revolutionary fervour and the Reign of Terror in France.
