The Terror

By 1793 France may have become a Republic it faced however many problems most of Europe was arrayed against the revolutionaries.  Enraged by the treatment of the clergy areas of France such as the Vendee began to rise up in rebellion.  Food was scarce and expensive sans-culottes condemned the lack of progress and railed against the still present inequalities in French society. Many believed that the days of the Revolution were fading.  With the removal of the Girondins in June 1793 the Jacobins were now free to shape France and face down the problems besetting her.

The Jacobins now in ascendancy in the Convention created the Committee of Public Safety on the 6 September 1793 in order to better control the progress of the Revolution.  On the 10th of October 1793 it was decreed that government would be revolutionary until the peace.  Extreme measures would be taken to maintain the revolution terror would be used to control the populace and serve as a warning to all.  Soon Representatives on Mission were sent out to rebellious areas such as Lyon, Marseilles and Toulon and they were brought under control.  In some of these cities thousands of priests, noblemen and in the main ordinary people deemed not enthusiastic about the revolution whether in some cases by drowning or cannon shot.  The Law of the 22 Prairial made it illegal for suspects to call witnesses and the Law of Suspects enabled the arrest all of those who could not show their commitment to the revolution as well as their families could now be executed.  Convention passed laws to assist the speed of trials as the jails across France filled with prisoners.  The opponents of the regime were rounded up over the next year or so and executed whether they had been supportive of the revolution initially or not.  So it was that Marie Antoinette, Louis Philippe Duke of Orléans, all Girondins who could be found, Olympe Gouges, Madame Roland and many others met their fate at the guillotine.  By July 1794 the rate of executions had accelerated and this period has been known as the Great Terror.

At the same time laws were passed to ease the economic issues that France was suffering.  A Maximum was introduced on grain in the hope of limiting price rises.  Any who were seen as hoarding grain could also be executed.

The Terror would turn on its own as first the radicals were arrested and executed and those who questioned the necessity of the all the executions when the tide of war had turned in France’s favour.  Hébert and Danton therefore would be executed.  Many loyal revolutionaries now worried for their own lives and so it was that Robespierre and his associates were brought down in the events of Thermidor.

Gabriel Brute remembers seeing as a teenager the trial of the Priest and the three Sisters of La Chapelle in the Diocese of Rennes.  Taken from Memoirs of the Right Reverend Simon WM. Gabriel Brute, The Catholic Publication Society, New York (1876) p118-124

Mr. Raoul (the priest), and the three good Sisters of La Chapelle St. Aubert, have been seized and brought to the city yesterday ; to-day they are to be tried."  Such was the sad news of the morning, and about 8 or 9 o'clock. I saw them passing under our windows on their way to the Tribunal, followed by the mob, who accompanied them with the usual cry, "a la Guillotine." I immediately went after them, and, young as I was, crept along from place to place until I got so near that I stood immediately behind M. Raoul seated upon the bench, with my arms folded upon the railing, almost touching his back. The Sisters were seated upon a bench across the other side of the floor. The Judges elevated with their seats upon a higher floor, about upon a level with the heads of the Prisoners, and the Gendarmes. The President of the Court was Bouassier, who had been a reputable attorney of Rennes, esteemed before the Revolution as a good, moral man, but a philosopher, as our French Deists were called naturally kind-hearted, but gradually drawn on, or rather pushed on from one excess to another, and then fixed in his dreadful position by personal fear.  

"Thy name and age," said the President. "Raoul-Bodin " answered the Priest, aged 70 years, or perhaps more, I do not exactly remember, but I still see the worthy man, as he sat there, tall, very thin, with a bald forehead, hair quite gray, a placid, noble, and truly religious countenance. " Thy profession?" "A Priest Cure of La Chapelle St. Aubert." " Didst thou take the civic oath?" "No, citizen." " Why not?" was then asked; and he answered " because he could not, according to his conscientious views of the subject."

Two or three short questions and answers may then have taken place which I do not call to mind, but I remember distinctly that the good old man began to entreat in favour of the three Sisters in whose house he had been arrested speaking in a very calm but very affecting and impressive manner, to the President and the court, for two or three minutes, until he was repeatedly silenced. The tones of his voice are still sounding in my ears ; his words were to this effect: "Citizens, judges! will you put to death these poor ladies, for an act of hospitality so inoffensive to the public so natural, so worthy of their kind hearts, when I had been for twenty years (or more) their Pastor? Do spare them, citizens; it becomes so much better the Republic to show clemency," Silence ! They must speak for themselves. Silence ! It is none of thy office to address the Tribunal in their favour. Silence! citizen." He was compelled to stop, and sat down (he had stood up whilst speaking) and looked towards the poor Sisters, who were then, successively, called upon to give their names and age, and acknowledge that they knew the Priest and gave him asylum in contravention to the national decrees. They were three elderly Sisters, between 45 and 50 years of age, or more, of a most respectable and gentle appearance and dress a calm, simple deportment before the Tribunal. They lived on their estate at Chapelle St. Aubert. One of them had been expelled by the decrees of the Convention from her Convent, and obliged to return and live with her Sisters. She was now dressed like them, and seated the last in order upon the bench, and was the last called upon to answer. In addition to the replies made by her Sisters to the interrogatories of the Judges, she added, " That she had no home after her expulsion from her Convent, and was compelled to return to her Sisters and live upon their bounty, and that consequently she did not come under the severe terms of the law against those who gave protection to Priests." The plea seemed fair enough, but it gave occasion to no particular consultation amongst the Judges, but was immediately overruled, in a very harsh and abusive manner, as a preposterous and useless attempt to have her cause separated from that of the others. She then, if I am not mistaken, or one of the Sisters, began to entreat in favour of the good old man, as he had done for them, but in a more earnest and severe manner. "How cruel it would be to put to death so holy and innocent a man, who had committed no crime, but whose whole life -had been spent in doing good to all, and especially to those who were then called the Sansculottes, so particularly dear to the Republic, to the poor, to the aged, to the little ones,". She was repeatedly ordered to be silent, but became only the more animated, until compelled to hold her peace, and let the matter take its course.

The examination of all four of them had occupied but a short time being, in fact, a mere formality, since, the Letter of the Law was most express, “the Priest and those who harbour him to be put to death within twenty-four hours after being seized." The President then proceeded, after scarcely a moment's conference with the other Judges, to apply this cruel enactment, and to pass sentence of death, in the name of the Republic, upon the Priest Raoul and the three Sisters who had given him asylum adding the usual order, that all the religious objects found in the house, and which in the language of the sentence were styled "les hochets du fanatisme," should be … burned at the side of the scaffold.  When the sentence had been pronounced the Nun could not restrain her feelings of indignation. She rose from her seat, snatched from her cap the national cockade, which even the women were obliged to wear during these days of delusion, and, trampling it under her feet, she addressed alternately the Judges and the people with two or three sentences of vehement reproach: " Barbarous people!" she exclaimed, "amongst what savage nations has hospitality ever been made a crime, punishable with death?" I cannot now call to mind her other expressions, except that she appealed to the higher tribunal of God, and denounced his judgment against them.  Her Sisters tried in the meanwhile to check her, and recall her to silence. The one who sat next to her pulled gently at her dress (I can see her now), as if urging her to stop.  All was soon hushed to silence, and the Judge addressed, as usual, an emphatic and opprobrious charge to the victims, and particularly the Priest, with bitter reproaches for their fanaticism, as he called it addressing himself also to the spectators

with energetic declarations of their determined resolution to free the Republic from all dangers, and have the Priests and their accomplices and dupes brought to the same punishment ; the whole a most shocking piece of outrage, and raving enthusiasm still more shocking, as coming from one who, like the unfortunate Bouassier, had enjoyed a character little fitted for such a horrid profanation of every best principle. During the whole time M. Raoul was engaged in prayer. Methinks I can still hear the sounds, and low, little swellings of his prayer some of the Psalms, it seemed from the Latin final or syllable, rising from time to time in a half-suppressed murmur whilst the Jailer or Executioner (for he was always present) was putting on the handcuffs, and securing them so tight that I remember the Priest gave signs of uneasiness, and looked at the man as if entreating him not to screw them so tight.

No further distinct recollections connected with the scene come to my mind. I cannot now recall the state of my feelings. I know only that they were generally a mixture of horror, and pity, and admiration, and exaltation religious views of Heaven, mixed with a detestation of Deism and Naturalism, which at such moments seemed destined to prevail over the Christian Religion in France.  The same day these four victims -were immolated upon the fatal Guillotine; they were taken, I think, as was often the case, from the Tribunal to the Scaffold, which stood permanently erected under the windows.

Gouveneur Morris comments on the Terror in December 1792.  Taken from Witnesses to the Revolution American and British Commentators in France 1788-1794, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London (1989) p188

Some days ago a man applied to the Convention for damages done to his quarry.  The quarries are deep pits, dug through several feet of earth into the bed of stone under the surface.  The damage done to him was by the number of dead bodies thrown into his pit, and which choked it up so that he could not get men to work at it.

Gabriel Brute reports on what happened to churches during French Revolution and their state after the revolution.  Taken from Memoirs of the Right Reverend Simon WM. Gabriel Brute, The Catholic Publication Society, New York (1876) p112-114

1. The Cathedral St. Melanie first Bishop of Rennes, an old, vast, high-towering building an abbey founded on this spot in the 6th century during the Revolution turned into a stable for the cavalry, the steps leading to the grand entrance having been removed, and a sloping way made for the horses, immense heaps of manure, &e., piled up on both sides of the public square ; the soldiers in their shirt-sleeves going out and coming in, and at work about the horses, with, continued oaths and vile songs, some of them in mockery of the offices of the Church manifesting their coarse impiety in every possible way.

2. Toussaint, All-Saints' the largest and most beautiful church in the city, turned into a stable was burnt one day, with forty horses and some of the men ; the ruins cleared away, a public square now where it stood.

3. St. Martin pulled down; a garden occupies the spot, and a house in the corner of the church-yard.

4. St. Helier's. This church, standing by itself, was turned into a powder-magazine, the windows being closed up with mason-work; since repaired and restored to the use of the parishioners.

5. St. Stephen's made a depot for the wagons of the army, and a shop for repairing them; still standing, but utterly desolate.

6. St. John's also turned into a shop for the workmen of the army.  The whole interior was so completely destroyed that it has never been restored to the use of Religion.

7. St. George's. Used as a stable for cavalry; since, part has been demolished, and part left standing in a ruinous condition.

8 St. Germain was turned into a barracks, and then into a depot of artillery; it was filled for many years with cannons, cannon carriages, & now repaired and restored to the use of the parishioners.

9. St. Sauveur's. Made the Temple of Reason, and resounded with all the vile and blasphemous speeches of the times; afterwards restored to religious uses.

10. St. Laurent's. Long neglected and almost in ruins; at length repaired and restored. It was in this church I married my brother to his good wife.  

So much for the parish churches. As regards the convents and religious houses:

11. The Convent of the Cordeliers was turned into a stable for the cavalry, then into a depot of wagons; finally part of it was restored and given to the Seminary.

12. The Convent of the Carmelites. Levelled to the ground; a street.

13. The Convent of the Minims. Bought by an architect, who turned it into an elegant house.

14. The Convent of the Augustins. The general blacksmith's shop of the army; since restored, and serves for the parish of St. Stephen.

15. The Jacobins. The bake-house for the army; still abandoned and half in ruins.

16. The Capuchins became a private dwelling with its fine walks and shades.

17. The discalced Carmelites. A private store-house.

18. St. Aubin (a parish church) turned into a stable, then into a store; half ruined, afterwards restored.

19. The Visitation turned into a store and private dwelling-house.

20. The Second Visitation into the Grand Masonic Hall.

21. The Ursulines A barrack; half destroyed.

22. The Second Ursulines the house of a notorious Atheist.

23. The Trinity Convent of Refuge, into a prison.

24. The Good Shepherd another house of refuge; also into a prison.

25. The House of Retreat a barracks for soldiers.

26. The Diocesan Seminary into a hospital for the soldiers.

27. The Preparatory Seminary a barrack.

28. St. Cyr into a hospital for foul diseases of the wicked.

29. The Grand Hospital turned into a school and depot of artillery.

30. The Mother House of the Sisters of Charity sold.

31. The House of the Daughters of Wisdom sold.

32, 33. The two Houses of the Brothers of the Poor Schools sold.

34. The House of the Confraternity of Notre Dame turned into a store-house, afterwards into a stable.

35. The Chapel of St. James into a store for toys, then into a dwelling house.

36. St. Ives, Hospital preserved but long shut up.

37. St. Yves, where the Canons officiated into a store.

38. The Hospital of the Incurables preserved, but no chapel permitted.

39. The Calvary into a place of meeting for the Revolutionary Club, a store, and then a theatre.

Gabriel Brute discusses his memories as a teenager on the state of religion in France.  Taken from Memoirs of the Right Reverend Simon WM. Gabriel Brute, The Catholic Publication Society, New York (1876) p111-115

During the progress of the persecution, the greater number of the Priests of the Diocese had been either guillotined or shot, or transported to the penal colonies. The more aged and infirm were imprisoned in the Castle of Mount Saint Michael (about 50 miles from Rennes). Of the few left, in deep concealment, some were almost daily discovered, and, according to the law, led, with those who had harboured them, to the guillotine within twenty-four hours. All the Churches of the Diocese had been seized upon and converted to profane uses.  Some were used as storehouses for forage, hay, etc. ; some were converted into barracks and stables or to make room for new streets: some, in short, were turned to the worst of purposes (yet under Providence, by this means, preserved); changed into temples for the decadi, the festivals of the national calendar, so curious a thing by itself, or for the clubs and political assemblies of the time.  All the old and best families, the most zealous for Religion, were not only deprived of all public exercise of it, but were scarcely able to practise their private and secret devotions in the interior of their houses. It was forbidden by law, and under penalties of line and imprisonment, to observe Sunday or to distinguish it in any way from common days, whilst the decadi, or every tenth day, which had been substituted for the Sunday and made the legal day of rest, was under the same penalties enforced, by ceasing from labour, keeping the shops closed. Such a state of things, which was the habitual condition of the whole population from the end of 1792 until 1795, had brought the minds of those who still remained attached to their Faith into a most desponding state in regard to the future prospects of religion in France.

Executions by area during the Terror.  Taken from The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, Colin Jones, Longman, Harlow (1988) p119

Executions by social and sexual criteria during the Terror.  Taken from The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, Colin Jones, Longman, Harlow (1988) p120

Recorded causes of indictment during the Terror.  Taken from The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, Colin Jones, Longman, Harlow (1988) p120

Recorded deaths by months during the Terror.  Taken from The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, Colin Jones, Longman, Harlow (1988) p121