Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution

by R.R. Palmer

Not one of the twelve had ever labored with his hands. Not one of them, except Collot d’Herbois, had ever experienced any economic insecurity. Not one of them in 1789 lived in fear of poverty, for even Collot had worked to the top of the actor’s profession.

None, however, except Saint-André for a short while, had ever engaged in trade. They had no personal knowledge of industry. They had no experience with wage-earning people, except in hiring a few clerks or domestic servants or occasional craftsmen. What could they know of the proletariat of Paris, the silk weavers of Lyons, or the iron workers of Le Creusot?

The new thing after September 1793 was that terror was organized, and became for the first time a deliberate policy of government.

The Terror was not simply an outburst of the fury of radicals, as Sorel would have it, nor was it a mere defense against perils for which the revolutionists were not responsible, as Aulard appears to have believed. It was made necessary by circumstances, but the chief of these circumstances was the internal chaos which the Revolution had produced. It began as a means of defense against the menace of invasion, but invasion was a menace because of the disunity in France.

It was perfectly true that schemers like the one-eyed man were active, and that some of them were agents of foreign powers. It was probably true also that the Jacobins could assure their position only if they put a stop to such machinations. Where the Jacobins went astray was in believing that such plotters were the real cause of the disorders. This belief led to a fatal delusion—the idea that the country would be pacified if certain individuals, perhaps a few hundred or a few thousand, were put to death.

Each committee was to draw up a list of the suspects in its district, secure their papers, and put them in a house of detention—or, that failing, guard them in their homes. No committee, however, was to act unless seven of its members were present (thus were petty personal rancors to be avoided), and each committee was to furnish the Committee of General Security with a list of persons arrested, a statement of the reasons for arrest, and the documents seized on the suspected premises. Thus the local committees became branches of the central government.

The Subsistence Commission, which, under the Committee of Public Safety, drew up the law of September 29, believed firmly in laissez-faire. “In normal times,” said its spokesman, “prices are formed naturally by the reciprocal interests of buyers and sellers. This balance is infallible. It is useless for even the best government to interfere.” “But,” he continued, “when a general conspiracy of malignancy, perfidy and unparalleled fury joins together to break this natural equilibrium, to famish and despoil us, the welfare of the people becomes the highest rule.” The law, therefore, provided that anyone who sold goods above the maximum price was to be treated as a suspect. The effect of the Maximum was immensely to broaden the scope of the Draconian law of September 17.

The dictatorship of the Twelve was greatly advanced by their parliamentary victory of September 25. It became clear from Robespierre’s speech that serious criticism of the government would henceforth be dangerous in the Convention.

The doctrine of the Social Contract, with these moral overtones, became the theory of the Terror. A group of the consciously right-minded, regarding their enemies as “outside the sovereign,” took to themselves, in the name of justice and reason, that majestic sovereign will which Rousseau had called indestructible, indivisible, imprescriptible, constant, unalterable and pure.

The Republic now faced a tremendous interrogation mark. In a world where generalship had been the business of aristocrats, could a régime that denounced aristocracy conduct a successful war? Was it possible to find commoners who could lead armies? Could the middle class, which had replaced the aristocracy in so many other ways, now replace it on the battlefield? If it could, then aristocracy, as known before the Revolution, would have lost still another reason for existence. If not, democratic ideas would remain a dream. The right men were soon found. Representatives on mission sometimes commissioned promising young officers tentatively as generals, like medieval kings knighting the valiant on the field. It was thus that Bonaparte became a brigadier at the end of 1793. Sometimes the agents of Bouchotte, acting through local patriotic clubs, sent in glowing reports to the War Office. Bouchotte and Carnot digested and compared these reports, confirmed appointments, rectified mistakes. Somehow they discerned the men of ability amid the vapors of patronage, favoritism and suspicion. It may be doubted whether any other government, in an equal time, has matched their record, for before the end of 1793 they raised to the rank of general (among others) Bonaparte, Jourdan, Hoche, Pichegru, Masséna, Moreau, Davout, Lefèvre, Perignon, Serrurier, Augereau and Brune. One of these became an emperor, eight others marshals of his empire; the remaining three (Hoche, Pichegru, Moreau) rose ...

These men walked precariously upon a brink, living in mortal danger; but the most immediate danger was from their fellow revolutionists, not from the reactionaries and the foreign powers. The Jacobins had to win victories in order to protect themselves from each other. They had to check counter-revolution, or be denounced for supporting it themselves. Their fear of each other drove them relentlessly to more extremes; hence came the terrific crescendo of the Terror.

The law of 14 Frimaire (December 4), passed virtually as Billaud proposed it, definitely founded the revolutionary dictatorship. It was the constitution of the Reign of Terror. Nor was it merely ephemeral. It created the Bulletin des lois, which existed until 1929, the organ by which French legislation was formally published. Setting up a strong central power, providing channels for the quick flow of authority from Paris to the remotest village, sweeping away all intermediate agencies that could obstruct or twist the policies of government, it recalled the age-old efforts of kings and ministers to bring order out of feudalism, and anticipated the means by which Napoleon organized modern France. The law of 14 Frimaire, “extraordinary” though the circumstances in which it was enacted, proves the profound continuity that joined the Revolution to past and future.

But the ideas that went into the law of 14 Frimaire were not really provisional. They have contributed as much to the making of modern states as the more liberal philosophy for which the Revolution is better known. Modern states exist by the ideas of unity, order, subordination and efficiency, and by the idea of law as the will of a sovereign power. Twentieth century states, democratic or dictatorial, share these ideas; and these are the ideas of 14 Frimaire, proclaimed at a time when the rest of Europe was largely feudal.

“We wish to substitute in our country morality for egotism, probity for a mere sense of honor, principle for habit, duty for etiquette, the empire of reason for the tyranny of custom, contempt for vice for contempt for misfortune, pride for insolence, large-mindedness for vanity, the love of glory for the love of money, good men for good company, merit for intrigue, talent for conceit, truth for show, the charm of happiness for the tedium of pleasure, the grandeur of man for the triviality of grand society, a people magnanimous, powerful and happy for a people lovable, frivolous and wretched—that is to say, all the virtues and miracles of the Republic for all the vices and puerilities of the monarchy.

Step by step, as he discovered in others weaknesses of character or differences of purpose which he did not believe were natural to humanity, and which he therefore attributed to conspiracy or perversity, he isolated himself from those who had been his companions in guiding the Revolution, to the point where not the staunchest Republican could feel safe, and the majority of the Committee of Public Safety turned against him.

But the very success of the Committee undermined it. The retreat of the Allies strengthened the argument of those who thought the Terror could be dispensed with. Others, who had no intention of ending the Terror, felt it safe to bring their quarrels into the open as the military menace receded.