innocent; one is the reasonable fear of the laws, the other the stupid fear of persons. The characteristics of terror should be distinguished. Terror is a generalized, habitual trembling, an exterior trembling that affects the most hidden fibres, degrading man and turning him into an animal; it is the disruption of all physical forces, the commotion of all moral faculties, the disruption of all ideas, the upheaval of all emotions …
Since terror is an extreme emotion, it is not susceptible of being either more or less. The fear of the laws, on the other hand, can be increased if needed. Which of these two fears supports, consummates, guarantees the revolution? That is what the question boils down to and what I will examine. Let us begin with terror: judge it by the means it is supposed to employ and by the effects it produces. A government can only inspire terror by threatening capital punishments, only by threatening them with it ceaselessly and threatening everyone, only by threatening through acts of violence ever renewed and ever increased; only by threatening all sorts of action, and even inaction; only by threatening with all sorts of proof and even without a shred of proof; only by threatening with the always striking sight of absolute power and limitless cruelty. To make every person tremble, it is necessary not only to link every action with a torment, every word with a threat, every silence with suspicion; it is necessary to place on every step a trap, in every house a spy, in every family a traitor, in the service of a tribunal of assassins. It is necessary, in one word, to know how to torture all citizens by the misfortunes of some, cutting the life of some by shortening the lives of the others; that is the art of spreading terror. But does this art belong to a regular, free, humane government, or is it tyranny? I often hear it asked why the system of terror cannot be limited to suspect classes while leaving others alone. In response I wish to ask how there can be security for someone where actions are prejudged based on persons, and not persons by their actions. I would like to add that terror must be everywhere or nowhere. The Convention should no longer accept that the republic be divided into two classes, those who create fear and those who live in fear, persecutors and the persecuted. Couthon and Robespierre are no longer here to obstruct the defence of equality and justice. I am also asked if it is possible to strike terror in the hearts of evildoers without troubling good citizens of any class; I answer that it is not, for if the government of the terror pursues some citizens based on presumed intentions, it alarms everyone; and if it only monitors and punishes actions, it is no longer terror that is inspired but another kind of fear that I have already mentioned, the healthy fear of punishment following upon a crime. It is thus right to say that the system of terror presupposes the exercise of an arbitrary power in those charged with spreading it.14
Tallien added to the horror by stating that the ‘terror’ could strike any citizen anywhere in France; that the increasing number of capital punishments came from the very nature of this ‘system’ that could well fall into excess; that the executions were accompanied by the spectacle of rivers of blood to strike fear even harder into people’s minds; that executing different kinds of people together indiscriminately was another means to instil fear; and, finally, that a most cruel refinement was the collective executions of friends or members of the same family sent to the guillotine together.15 When it came to the guilt of Robespierre and his co-conspirators, there was, for Tallien, no doubt:
Citizens, everything that you have just heard is but a commentary on what Barère said at this very rostrum on the day that followed Robespierre’s death. I would like to add one thing: this was Robespierre’s system. He was the one who put it in practice with the aid of several subalterns, some of whom were killed alongside him and others of whom are buried alive in public hatred. The Convention was a victim, never an accomplice.16
In the weeks that followed Tallien’s speech, another new term would be coined, that of ‘terrorist’, to define those who had supported the ‘system of terror’.
The hunt for Robespierre’s surviving ‘subalterns’ started right away. The next day, 12 Fructidor, the deputy, Lecointre denounced seven former members of the two major committees, among them Billaud-Varenne, Collot d’Herbois, and Barère. The denunciation was timed to follow on from Tallien’s speech. While the accusation was rejected as slanderous, it was followed a month later with a second denunciation, made by another deputy, Legendre, against the three former members. Vadier took it up and an investigative committee was created.17
Contrary to Tallien’s claims, when Barère had denounced Robespierre and his ‘co-conspirators’ on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety on 11 Thermidor, he had made no mention of a ‘system’ they had put in place. Rather, Barère’s denunciation had followed a standard pattern amongst revolutionary factions, of accusing the four deputies who had been executed the previous day of having usurped public authority to make themselves rulers of France, a triumvirate of tyrants. Such accusations owed much to a common trope in revolutionary politics of accusing opponents of imitating Catiline’s conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Republic.18 According to Barère’s hastily-manufactured charges, Robespierre was supposed to ‘reign’ over Paris and the central part of the Republic, Saint-Just over the North (a fabrication based on his having served as a deputy on mission to the armies on the northern fronts and the Rhine), whilst Couthon and Robespierre’s brother, Augustin, would rule over the South.19 Not one word was said on the fifth deputy who died on 10 Thermidor, Le Bas, who chose to commit suicide rather than have the Convention send him to the guillotine with his friends. Barère’s speech contributed to the black legend of Robespierre, the ‘new Catiline’, stories which started circulating in the summer of 1794, if not earlier.20 While Barère’s speech was fundamentally different from Tallien’s in almost every respect, they had one key thing in common: the Convention and its committees (including, of course, themselves) had no responsibility for the ‘terror’ – it was the fault of other men. Dissenting voices could hardly rise to be heard. Thus Cambon was not heard at all when, in spite of denouncing Robespierre and ‘his system of terror’, he also pointed out that a number of exceptional institutions had been created by decrees voted in, quasi-unanimously, by the Convention to meet the crisis: ‘Take note that we are not in an ordinary time; take note that the Declaration of Rights did not institute surveillance committees, and yet you have unanimously judged them necessary.’21
The Convention had given itself an amnesty for its actions in supporting crisis measures enabling terror. It gave itself this absolution by making Robespierre the scapegoat, the so-called sole ‘mastermind’ behind a ‘reign of terror’. As a consequence, over the next two centuries, Robespierre would be remembered as the originator and master of the ‘terror’, an all-powerful dictator who had stifled all debate by imposing his domination over the Convention and kept adding names to endless interminable lists of undesirables, a tyrant who dreamed of being crowned king by marrying the daughter of Louis XVI so as to be tied in blood to the Bourbon line, a ferocious triumvir who imposed his authority upon Saint-Just and Couthon (Augustin Robespierre, mentioned by Barère, quickly disappeared from the group, not only to refine the formula of a conspiratorial triumvirate inspired by antiquity but also because he was not condemned to death for any reason except his family name, as no crime could be pinned on him). This allowed the Convention to spread the news over the entire national territory and to the armies, presenting Thermidor as the fall of yet another faction that would have usurped the sovereignty of the nation. A flood of letters gushed in to Paris in the summer and autumn of 1794. Written in a language laden with clichés and a limited, stereotyped range of vocabulary, they give an idea of how the news had been circulated to the provinces and how local authorities, popular societies and simple citizens saluted the Convention for its fine deed against ‘the infamous Robespierre’ or the ‘monstrous triumvirate’.22
Many pamphlets and brochures came out in the weeks after Thermidor, some waxing on the popular motif of ‘Robespierre’s queue’ – literally ‘Robespierre’s tail’ (meaning the remains of his faction, but also a term with a humorous phallic connotation)23 or the arrival of Robespierre and the Jacobins into hell.24 Among this mass of writings, the blood spilled in the execution of the ‘system of the terror’ occupied pride of place, while the sexualized humour offered light
