Western Civilization - History Of European Society

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815 405

tribunals around France ordered an estimated fourteen
thousand to seventeen thousand executions; the most
famous, the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, accounted
for more than twenty-seven hundred (see table 21.2).
The overwhelming majority of the executions (71 per-
cent) were in regions of civil war, especially the
Vendée; of those, 75 percent were rebels caught with
weapons in their hands. Despite stereotypes in popular
literature, most of the people executed were workers
(31 percent) and peasants (28 percent), not aristocrats
(8 percent) or priests (7 percent). The revolutionary tri-
bunals acquitted many people. The tribunal at Mar-
seilles, for example, acquitted more than 50 percent of
the accused and sentenced 31 percent to death. The
Parisian tribunal sent many famous figures to the guillo-
tine: Members of the royal family (such as the duke of
Orléans), leaders of the Old Regime (Malesherbes),
noted scholars (the distinguished chemist Antoine
Lavoisier), leading Girondins (Brissot), and feminists
(Olympe de Gouges) all died there.
The civil war was especially bloody. Lyons was
conquered, with ruthless reprisals, in October 1793;
more than sixteen hundred people were executed. The
Vendéen counterrevolution dragged on for years with
enormous casualties and mass executions of rebels.
One ferocious representative of the revolution in the
Vendée—Jean-Baptiste Carrier—drowned prisoners in

the Loire River by the hundreds, proclaiming, “We shall

turn France into a cemetery rather than fail in her re-

generation.” A minimum of eighty thousand Vendéens

died; some estimates for the civil war put the dead at

more than 200,000. (By contrast, total war-related

deaths during the American Revolution were fewer

than ten thousand; in the American Civil War, more

than 600,000.)

The Thermidorean Reaction and

the Directory, 1794–99

The Reign of Terror reached its peak in December

1793–January 1794, when 49 percent of the executions

(mostly in the west) occurred. In Paris, however, the Ja-

cobin dictatorship accelerated the terror in June and

July 1794, accounting for 57 percent of the executions

there. Like the god Saturn in classical mythology, the

revolution consumed its own children; even Danton

was executed. Revulsion and fear then produced a con-

spiracy against Robespierre. The Convention ended the

terror by arresting him in what is called the Thermi-

dorean reaction (named for the date in the republican

calendar). Robespierre attempted suicide, but he, Saint-

Just, and other leading Jacobins went to the guillotine.

Executions by the Paris

Revolutionary Tribunal Total executions in France

Class category Number Percentage Class category Number Percentage

Nobles 533 19.4 Nobles 1,156 8.2

Clergy 240 8.7 (Old 878 6.2)

Middle class 1,443 52.6 (Robe 278 2.0)

(Upper 903 32.9) Clergy 920 6.5

(Lower 540 19.7) Middle class 3,452 24.6

Workers 478 17.4 (Upper 1,964 14.0)

Unknown 53 1.9 (Lower 1,488 10.6)

Total 2,747 Workers 4,389 31.2

Peasants 3,961 28.1

Unknown 200 1.4

Total 14,078

Source: Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935),

p. 164; Colin Jones, ed., The Longman Companion to the French Revolution(London: Longman, 1988), p. 120.

TABLE 21.2

The Reign of Terror, 1793–94