The Ninth of Thermidor: Robespierre's Fall

By July 1794 the military emergency that had justified the Terror was easing, after the victory at Fleurus, yet executions in Paris were at their peak. Many deputies feared they could be next, especially after Robespierre told the Convention on 26 July that he had a list of unnamed enemies but refused to name them. The next day, 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), deputies shouted him down and voted to arrest him, Saint-Just, Couthon and others.

The Paris Commune tried to rescue them, but few sections sent armed support, and forces loyal to the Convention retook the city hall that night. Robespierre, wounded in the jaw, was guillotined with about twenty followers on 28 July, and dozens of Commune members followed. Most of the conspirators who overthrew him had themselves been leading terrorists; they acted partly from self-preservation rather than from opposition to terror in principle.