Europe
EXECUTION OF ROBESPIERRE
Having carried the day in the Jacobin Club, Robespierre rose to speak the next day in the Convention, where he attacked members of the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security, until now his closest collaborators, for their extreme use of the Terror.
DEBATE ON THE LAW OF 22 PRAIRIAL
Many in the Convention, including some on the Committee of Public Safety, opposed the proposed law, which they feared concentrated too much power in too few hands and would only further destabilize the Republic.
THE LAW OF 22 PRAIRIAL YEAR II (10 JUNE 1794)
Although the most immediate threats to the security of the Republic—foreign invasion, the civil war in the Vendée, the Federalist uprisings, the grain shortage in Paris, and hyperinflation—had abated by June 1794, Robespierre and his allies on the Committee of Public Safety argued all the more st
RELIGION: THE CULT OF THE SUPREME BEING
Adapting the established strategy of staging public pageantry to win support for a political cause, Robespierre organized a "Festival of the Supreme Being" in the summer of 1794. Having recently eliminated his adversaries Hébert and Danton, Robespierre delivered the keynote speech.
THE CALENDAR
A reformed calendar was a goal of the revolutionaries who sought to remake not only the political system and the social order, but also the very experience of life.
REVOLUTIONARY ARMIES IN THE PROVINCES: TOULOUSE (SEPTEMBER 1793)
At the demand of patriots in Paris and the provinces, the National Convention sent irregular units to the countryside and to cities where resistance to the Revolution had appeared.
THE PÈRE DUCHESNE SUPPORTS THE TERROR
The radical journalist Jacques–René Hébert here calls on the sans–culottes of Paris to rise against their enemies in the capital, that is, those who block the work of the sections and revolutionary committees. Afterward, they should march against the forces of counterrevolution in the west.
REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS OWN—LE VIEUX CORDELIER
Despite the consolidation of power in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety and the creation of Revolutionary Tribunals across France to eliminate traitors to the Republic, the Convention continued to worry about conspiracies even among its political allies.
THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL’S USE OF THE GUILLOTINE
This description of the proceedings of the revolutionary tribunal, and of the physical setting of the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood, by an unsympathetic English observer gives the flavor of the workings of revolutionary justice.
THE VENDÉE—DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTERREVOLUTION
The first groups of "brigands" formed in the west in mid–1792, in response most immediately to the call to all citizens to volunteer for the army.