468 Ch. 12 • The French Revolution
non-threatening, and virtuous, representing the abstract virtues of liberty,
popular sovereignty, community, and nation. Contemporaries contrasted
republican virtue with the abuses of power that seemed to have characterized
the Old Regime. They did so even as Jacobin representatives of the Revolu
tion imposed their will wherever they were resisted in the provinces.
During the “year II” (which began in September 1793), radical revolu
tionaries undertook an ambitious campaign of “de-christianization,” a war
on religious institutions and symbols. They closed down churches and
removed crosses standing in public places. The campaign failed, unable to
overcome centuries of firmly implanted beliefs and traditions, even among
many people who supported the Revolution. It also turned many clergy who
had accepted the Civil Constitution away from the Revolution, generating
further resistance.
Outside of Paris, “representatives on mission,” armed with dictatorial
authority in the name of the Convention, tried to maintain order. They
worked with local “surveillance committees” and “revolutionary tribunals” of
Jacobins. Some of these revolutionary officials sent counter-revolutionaries
to the guillotine. “Revolutionary armies” of artisans and day laborers guarded
requisitioned provisions for the military and oversaw the melting down of
church bells for war use.
Yet the Terror was never uniformly implemented. Between 11,000 and
18,000 people perished at the hands of the Committee of Public Safety (a
fraction, by comparison, of the deaths that had resulted from the Thirty