Reign of Terror
September 1793 - June 1794
During the French Revolution there was an incredible amount of executions that took place. An especially large number of these deaths were from the Reign of Terror. The Reign of Terror was the most famous individual series of events in the French Revolution. About 30,000 people lost their lives to the swift and sharp blade that the guillotine wields.
The Guillotine
The guillotine is the machine with which tens of thousands of executions were carried out during the Reign of Terror. The machine was the official instrument of execution in the French Revolution (the use of the guillotine was first proposed by Dr. Louis Guillotin who the machine was named after). The guillotine was used for almost all of the executions in the Reign of Terror. It was the machine that sent King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, and the Girondins (political opponents of the Jacobin controlling political party) to their deaths. The guillotine brings a blade down upon the necks of the victim severing the head from the body. This would cause instant death, except that the head remained alive for a few seconds sometimes, causing a very painful death. The guillotine was used for public executions and many came to watch its blade slice necks. The guillotine was not invented by the French, but first used by the Irish. Also, the guillotine was used a few times in more modern history by Hitler (he killed political opponents publicly).History of the Reign of Terror
After the French Revolution began, King Louis XVI was sent to a prison in Paris called the “Temple.” This is when the National Convention took over the country and began ruling the country. The Convention created the Committee of Public Safety (was actually an executive committee of the National Convention). This is the Committee that was responsible for all of the executions in France. The Convention decided to have King Louis XVI executed for his treasonous crimes. He was killed by the guillotine in the Revolution Square. The Committee of Public Safety was an awful group of people. They were almost solely responsible for the 30,000 people that died in the Reign of Terror. The committee was led by Maximilien Robespierre (shown in the picture). Robespierre is even referred to as the mastermind of the Committee of Public Safety. He was the most powerful man in France while he was the leader of the Committee of Public Safety. He believed that terror was a good thing, which would give structure to France, and would eventually lead to the formation of a completely free government. He once said that, “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.” Eventually though, after the deaths of tens of thousands, the Jacobins (the leading political party of the time) finally had enough. They decided that the Reign of Terror must be stopped. At first when people tried to speak against Robespierre they were killed by the guillotine. When Robespierre called for a new sweep of executions in 1794 however, the other members of the Committee of Public Safety swiftly rebelled against Robespierre. Robespierre was arrested and killed on the guillotine. This was a sad irony that took far too long to happen. After 30,000 people were killed, all of the nobility were dead, and all political opponents of the Jacobins were dead, the Reign of Terror finally ended in 1724 just a year after it started.
Who Was Killed?
One Last Thought
The Reign of Terror was an awful, loss of human life. Yet at the same time it eliminated all of the nobility and gave way for a system of government that gives its citizens more freedoms than many countries in the world. France is now gives its citizens as many rights if not more than the United States gives its citizens. So was the Reign of Terror worth it? Were the awful murders in the past worth the amazing freedoms given to the people of modern day?
Works Cited
"The Reign of Terror." Historywiz. 2008. Web. 31 Mar. 2011.<http://www.historywiz.com/terror.htm>.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Type your comments in here.