Leaders: Myth and Reality

by General Stanley McChrystal

In the midst of the chaos, the Convention increasingly centralized the management of revolutionary France. The most important of several committees was the Committee of Public Safety, which supervised investigations, surveillance, military affairs, and other important matters of policy. The Committee also oversaw the Revolutionary Tribunal, a twelve-person body responsible for hearing cases referred by the Convention and doling out punishment. As conditions in France unraveled from 1793 to 1794, and in an attempt to secure the Revolution’s gains, the Tribunal oversaw an increasing number of cases for increasingly minor crimes, conviction for which required ever lower burdens of proof. This devolution of France’s already shaky system of justice is known as the Reign of Terror. During this period, as many as forty thousand Frenchmen were executed. Robespierre was not the Terror’s architect—though, like many other politicians, he did help create the conditions that wrought its devastating impact.