The Reign of Terror

Date

September 1793 – July 1794

Category

Politics & governance

Region

France

Era

Early Modern

Significance

Between September 1793 and July 1794 the French Revolution entered its most violent phase, the Reign of Terror.

Amid foreign invasion, civil war in the Vendée and economic crisis, the National Convention declared terror "the order of the day" and granted the Committee of Public Safety, dominated by Maximilien Robespierre, near-dictatorial power. Revolutionary tribunals and surveillance committees identified "enemies of the Revolution"; laws stripped suspects of legal counsel and public trials and mandated execution of the convicted. Tens of thousands died across France, many guillotined—including King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette earlier and figures of the revolution itself such as the Girondins and Georges Danton. The guillotine became the era's grim emblem. The Terror ended with the Thermidorian Reaction of 27–28 July 1794, when Robespierre and his allies were themselves arrested and executed. The episode exposed the capacity of revolutionary ideology to justify mass coercion and shaped enduring debates about revolution, virtue and violence.

Empires active in September 1793 – July 1794

• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE – 1912 CE
• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Mughal Empire
  1526 CE – 1857 CE

Related politics & governance events

• The storming of the Bastille and the outbreak of the French Revolution
  14 July 1789
• The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
  26 August 1789
• Napoleon's coup of 18 Brumaire ends the Revolution
  9–10 November 1799 (18–19 Brumaire)
• Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws and the separation of powers
  1748
• The United States Constitution drafted and ratified
  17 September 1787
• The Declaration of Independence
  4 July 1776

Further reading

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

The wider story

Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

Roger Crowley

Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.

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