The Terror in Comparative Perspective

From 1793 to 1794 the Committee of Public Safety, in which Robespierre was a leading member, governed France through emergency measures known as the Terror. The Law of Suspects (September 1793) allowed the arrest of anyone thought hostile to the Revolution, and revolutionary tribunals sentenced about 17,000 people to death officially, with many more dying in prisons or summary executions, while the war in the Vendée caused far greater loss of life.

Historians explain the Terror in different ways: as a response to war and civil war, as the product of an ideology that saw opponents as enemies of the people, or as a mix of both. Comparison helps. America persecuted Loyalists through confiscations and test oaths but had no centralized terror. Russia's Red Terror after 1918 was larger and more systematic. These contrasts raise the question of whether terror arises from circumstances or from ideas.