470 Ch. 12 • The French Revolution
The Terror took on a momentum of its own. Saint-Just warned, “We
must punish not merely traitors, but also the indifferent.” The Jacobins
arrested the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) for alleged counter
revolutionary activity. Condorcet, an influential philosophe of the late
Enlightenment, had been elected to the Assembly in 1791. He believed
that all people should have a voice in approving acts of government, albeit
indirectly, and that all citizens should be equal before the law. He had cam
paigned against the death penalty and slavery, and he defended political
equality and the rights of women. Condorcet died of apoplexy—or commit
ted suicide—in his cell in the spring of 1794, shortly before he was to be
executed. The Revolution seemed to have turned on and destroyed the
enlightened reason that had arguably helped bring it about.
The Final Stages of the Revolution
Moderate Jacobins and other members of the Convention, fearing that
they might be next in line to be purged, overthrew the Jacobin dictatorship.
They established a new government called the Directory, which ended the
Terror. Caught between staunch Jacobins on the left and monarchists on
the right, the period of the Directory was marked by great political insta
bility, ongoing wars abroad, and economic hardship at home. Although the
Directory consolidated some of the gains of the Revolution, it too would be
overthrown by conspirators led by the Abbe Sieyes and one of the rising
stars of the revolutionary army, Napoleon Bonaparte.
ThermidorThe Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris used new powers granted by the Com
mittee of Public Safety in June 1794 to send 1,376 people to their deaths
over a period of six weeks. Afraid that they would be next on Robespierre’s
list, moderates in the Convention began to plot against Robespierre and his
allies. They were led by Paul Barras (1755-1829), a follower of Danton, and
Joseph Fouche (1758-1820). On July 27, 1794 (the 9th of Thermidor),
Robespierre haltingly addressed the Convention, calling for one more purge.
But, anticipating his own downfall, Robespierre also murmured, “I ask for
death.” That night, Robespierre and Saint-Just were arrested at the virtually
unguarded town hall of Paris. Robespierre attempted suicide, shattering his
jaw with a shot.
Robespierre and the others were executed without trial, their fate as swift
and pitiless as that of the Terror’s victims. They were followed to the scaffold
by more than a hundred of their allies. In the provinces, particularly in the
south, the revenge against the Jacobins by their enemies was swift and
brutal. Lazare Carnot (1753-1823), a talented military engineer, brilliant
administrator (“the organizer of victory”), and one of the twelve members of