Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror

Also called: The Terror, Committee of Public Safety, Law of Suspects, Jacobin dictatorship

Amid crises at home and abroad, the Committee of Public Safety made “terror the order of the day” and rounded up suspects; some 17,000 were officially executed.

In April 1793 the Convention created a Committee of Public Safety to oversee the government, and once Robespierre joined it in July it became in effect the revolutionary government. Beset by foreign armies and revolts in the Vendée, Lyon and Marseille, the Convention decreed a mass levy (levée en masse) in August, and when the Paris crowd surrounded it on 5 September it resolved to make “terror the order of the day”. The Law of Suspects of 17 September allowed anyone suspected of being an enemy of the Revolution to be detained.

The Revolutionary Tribunal sent Marie Antoinette and the Girondin deputies to the guillotine in October, then the Hébertists in March and the Dantonists in April 1794. The Law of 22 Prairial in June 1794 removed defence counsel and witnesses and sped up the executions. During the Terror about 17,000 people were officially executed across France, and deaths in prison or without trial bring the total to more than 35,000 by most estimates. The government also fixed prices of necessities through the Maximum and abolished slavery in the colonies in February 1794.