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Ending the Terror: The French Revolution after Robespierre
Ending the Terror makes accessible for the first time in English a major assessment of a crucial moment in the history of the French Revolution. The fall of Robespierre in July 1794 marks not only a turning point in the history of the Revolution: 'Thermidor' is also a symbolic moment which came to haunt the subsequent revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Baczko analyses the Terror in detail through the political history of the French National Assembly, and also looks at the broader issues of the political culture of Revolutionary France.
284 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
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April 10, 2013
‘Ending the Terror’ is about a very specific period in French history that accounts of the French Revolution usually ignore completely. Because I have an (unhealthy?) fascination with French history, I of course wanted to know more about it. I refer to the ‘Thermidorian’ period, between the execution of Robespierre in 1794 and the rise of the Directory about a year and a half later. This book describes the political and social trends at work at this time, which centred around dealing with the legacy of the Terror. Although the book begins with the day that Robespierre died, he casts a long shadow across it, as he has continued to do over French history.
What struck me in Baczko’s account is that Robespierre’s fall was sudden and absolute: one day he dominated both the Convention (through the Committee of Public Safety) and the Jacobin Club, but as soon as he was dead both institutions decried him as a tyrant, ‘new Cromwell’, blood-drinker, and other extreme epithets. As has continued to be the case subsequently, he was used to personify the horrors of the Terror. Thus, once he was gone the Convention was faced with the dilemma of how to end the Terror and, in a sense, to end the Revolution, since it had clearly gone too far. A balance needed to be struck between forgetfulness and vengeance, between sharing responsibility for actions during the Terror (in which the entire Convention was actively complicit) and solely blaming Robespierre and his followers. Either extreme was dangerous and some reprisals (legal and extra-legal) took place. Nonetheless, the death of Robespierre (9 Thermidor) was a watershed and the Convention never took responsibility for their role in the Terror.
Baczko approaches the Thermidorian period in a number of ways, which I found very interesting and accessible as a non-historian. These include a discussion of the power of rumour, of vandalism narratives, and a detailed account of how the arch-Jacobin Carrier was prosecuted for horrible crimes committed during the Terror. I was especially struck by the discussion of structural political problems inherent in the revolutionary institutions, including the never-used 1793 constitution (supposedly written in a week!). For example, I found this enlightening:
I thought that was an admirably lucid analysis. The only fault I can pick in this book is an excessive use of italics. Now I want to read something about the Directory.
What struck me in Baczko’s account is that Robespierre’s fall was sudden and absolute: one day he dominated both the Convention (through the Committee of Public Safety) and the Jacobin Club, but as soon as he was dead both institutions decried him as a tyrant, ‘new Cromwell’, blood-drinker, and other extreme epithets. As has continued to be the case subsequently, he was used to personify the horrors of the Terror. Thus, once he was gone the Convention was faced with the dilemma of how to end the Terror and, in a sense, to end the Revolution, since it had clearly gone too far. A balance needed to be struck between forgetfulness and vengeance, between sharing responsibility for actions during the Terror (in which the entire Convention was actively complicit) and solely blaming Robespierre and his followers. Either extreme was dangerous and some reprisals (legal and extra-legal) took place. Nonetheless, the death of Robespierre (9 Thermidor) was a watershed and the Convention never took responsibility for their role in the Terror.
Baczko approaches the Thermidorian period in a number of ways, which I found very interesting and accessible as a non-historian. These include a discussion of the power of rumour, of vandalism narratives, and a detailed account of how the arch-Jacobin Carrier was prosecuted for horrible crimes committed during the Terror. I was especially struck by the discussion of structural political problems inherent in the revolutionary institutions, including the never-used 1793 constitution (supposedly written in a week!). For example, I found this enlightening:
The revolution invented a democracy which, by apparent paradox, joined together individualism and a true cult of unanimity, representative government and the refusal to allow any interest other than the ‘general interest’ to be represented, the recognition of freedom of opinion and the mistrust of divisions in public opinion, the desire for a transparent political life and the obsessive search for ‘plots’; in short, a democracy which, in politics, mixed modernity with archaism. [...] They never succeeded, at any stage of the revolution, in agreeing to disagree, in recognising that conflicts in a society are at the origin of its working and not a vice to be eradicated.
I thought that was an admirably lucid analysis. The only fault I can pick in this book is an excessive use of italics. Now I want to read something about the Directory.
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