The French Revolution: The Reign Of Terror

1614 Words7 Pages
Introduction At the onset of the French Revolution was a ray of hope as intellectuals were keen to have their ideas of enlightenment put into action. The revolution symbol was the “Declaration of the Rights of Man”, which decreed rights of man including the right to vote, and freedom of speech. Nevertheless, with Jacobins Club gaining control, French revolution took a U-turn, a dark turn, whereby blood and guillotine took over as the new symbol of the French radical revolution headed by Robespierre in what famously came to be referred to as the Reign of Terror. The Terror could have been avoided; it was not an inevitable outcome of the French Revolution, and it was unjustifiable. Terrorizing and victimizing innocent people to pass a message…show more content…
People were opposed to one person ruling their lives, enforcing and promoting laws beneficial to him and a selected few. Top in the new government’s constitution was the declaration of citizen’s rights. The constitution was a vital Revolution document which stated that the collective and individual rights of each social estate were universal. Laws were only meant to forbid actions that could hurt the society meaning that laws were to be created only for the people’s good and not for selfish reasons (Neely 2008, p. 79). However, the Terror enforced and promoted laws against equality and liberty ideals. Such rights like freedom of speech, freedom of religion were buried deep down when ending with opposition. The Reign of Terror gave birth to laws that were opposed to Christianity, closing churches, and surprisingly making men of the clergy to instead of vow to the church vow to be loyal to the constitution. Those were primitive laws that should have never been meant to see the light of day as they failed to put a stop to such actions that were hurtful to the society. All this barbarism was self-inflicted and could have been avoided. The Reign of Terror distorted the desire of people to put power limitations to the government as it gave rise to laws permitting only a small society section to have control on the lives of people, and make the people in the…show more content…
First, popular violence and public panic that were caused by escalating food prices and food shortages; and the danger that traitors posed at a period when both civil war and war confronted the nation. At the onset of May 1793, price control was imposed by the National Convention on bread and grain, in a move to ascertain adequate supply of food. Price controls were extended to the other consumer goods in September 1793 (Herrmann et al, 2010, p. 36). The armees revolutionnaires were then formed with the aim of enforcing the new price controls and coercing peasants to provide grains to markets. Additionally some of the revolutionary armies conducted patrols in the provinces using ambulatory guillotines, ready to administer what was termed as revolutionary justice to anyone who manipulated market prices or hoarded grain, right there on the spot. Large cities were hit by grain shortages and felt vulnerable to the popular unrest which accompanied them. Parisians had witnessed the dangerous under-supply in their city in 1793’s summer. Second, terror meant the civil liberties suspension and repression of the perceived revolution enemies. The most severe impacts of Terror were felt in civil war areas and counterrevolution as well as several frontier departments. Of the eighty three departments, Terror claimed less than 10 victims in about one-third of the total departments. Of the total death sentences, seventy
Open Document