In Our Time - The French Revolution's reign of terror

Episode Date: May 26, 2005

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of terror during the French Revolution. On Monday September 10th 1792 The Times of London carried a story covering events in revolutionary France: "The streets of Paris, strewed with the carcases of the mangled victims, are become so familiar to the sight, that they are passed by and trod on without any particular notice. The mob think no more of killing a fellow-creature, who is not even an object of suspicion, than wanton boys would of killing a cat or a dog". These were the infamous September Massacres when Parisian mobs killed thousands of suspected royalists and set the scene for the events to come, when Madame La Guillotine took centre stage and The Terror ruled in France. But how did the French Revolution descend into such extremes of violence? Who or what drove The Terror? And was it really an aberration of the revolutionary cause or the moment when it truly expressed itself? With Mike Broers, Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall; Rebecca Spang, Lecturer in Modern History at University College London; Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, on Monday, September 10, 1792, the Times of London carried a story covering events in Revolutionary France. Quote,

The streets of Paris, strewn with the carcasses of the mangled victims, are become so familiar to the sight that they're passed by and trod on without any particular notice. The mob think no more of killing a fellow creature who's not even an object of suspicion than wanton boys would of killing a cat or a dog. These were the September massacres,

when Parisian mobs killed thousands of suspected royalists. They were a foretaste for the terror and set the scene for the events to come soon afterwards, when the guillotine took centre stage and the terror ruled in France. But how did the French Revolution descend into such extremes of violence? Who or what drove the terror? And was it really an aberration of the revolutionary cause

or the moment when it truly expressed itself? With me to discuss the French Revolutionary Terror is Mike Brose, lecture in modern history at the University of Oxford and fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Rebecca Spang, reader in European history at University College London, and Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge. Mike Brose, let's just start in some of the same.

1799, sorry, 1789, we've had the French Revolution, we've got the Estates General, and then what? Yeah, well, I think you've got to see the terror between 1792 and 1794 as a revolution within the revolution, because it really does start in 1789. And that's when Louis XVIth decides to step outside the established institutions of the French monarchy and call this thing the Estates General. this big amorphous anarchic body really that divided into the three old feudal orders of France, the church, the nobles, the commons,

the commons being everybody else, that hasn't actually met since 1614. And the problem is, I think, where you really see the revolution taking off is that he has an agenda. He's faced with a massive financial crisis. He has a reform agenda to streamline the administration,

of the country, to cut out noble and ecclesiastical privilege, provincial privilege, to ensure a better and more equitable and more profitable taxation system for France. So we have a reforming king? Very much a reforming king. Very much a king who is prepared to take on the nobility, to take on the great vested interests of France, the whole privatized system of tax gathering. The problem is that's his agenda.

And when he calls the Estates General, what he finds out to his surprise is that particularly the third estate, the Commons, have their own agenda, and it isn't his. He wants to talk about administrative and fiscal reform. They want to talk about giving France a whole new form of government a constitution. So effectively they break off and they take what's called the tennis courtos that they form themselves into the National Assembly, and they take the tennis court, they say they will not split up at all until they formed a constitution.

Can you tell us what constitution they formed? Well, they have an awful lot of rouse about that, and I think a lot of historians rightly have seen some of the origins of the terror in this argument. They also draw up this document, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, say everybody's equal. But the constitution they actually produce is based on a property qualification. You have to have a certain amount of taxes to vote. That means you're an active citizen. You have to pay a certain amount of taxes of a higher level

to be allowed to hold office, to run for office. And everyone outside that loop, as it were, is a passive citizen, and that's most people. But there's a very vociferous element within the National Assembly, led particularly by Maximilian Robs-Pierre, who will become a leading figure in the terror, who call themselves Democrats, who are enraged by this, and who refuse to recognize this new constitution,

which is eventually put into place in 1791. And it's a sort of constitutional monarchy. Is it what Louis would have wanted? Has he got what he wanted from this? He's still alive and obviously on the sidelines, sitting in Versailles thinking, well, rather perturbed it's got out of hand, but does he still think, well, I might have got something here?

No, Louis is playing a double game that sometimes slips away from him. He's like some of the reforms the revolutionaries have pushed forward. They've abolished noble privilege. They've streamlined the administration along lines he was hoping to do. But he is not a constitutional monarch at heart. He does not want to do this. It's quite interesting, you know, at Louis' trial. He actually says that was the moment I lost it.

A real king does not have a constitution, does not have other people choose his ministers for him. and Louis all this time is plotting to run away. Can we then move to the National Convention? The National Assembly comes to an end. It gets the Constitution it wants. It says it's very high-minded. We've done this. We can't possibly implement it because we're implicated

and the National Convention is set up. Can you take us through that Rebecca Spangett? If you keep the king in the picture. You've jumped to stage. You've left out the Legislative Assembly, which is the body that was to be the parliamentary body. I want to get to the terror, but let's have the legislative which is to be the parliamentary body that governed with the king. And it's created, it's elected

in 1791. This is after the royal family has tried to run away from France. So arguably from the point that the royal family tries to leave France, tries to perhaps to rejoin Marie Antoinette's in-laws and family on the other side of the border, perhaps where there might be military forces gathered to invade. At that point, even though France is a constitutional monarchy, it's very hard in good faith to think king, constitution, these things go hand in hand. It's increasingly obvious to people. And the country is also split by what's happened over the church. So for all of those reasons, the church land is nationalized. That's how they're going to take care of the national debt problem. But what that means is that the institution

that has been just central to people's lives on a daily basis for hundreds and hundreds of years is quickly threatened in all its means of existence. And priests who, because they're Catholic priests, say that their oath of loyalty is to the Pope, not to the king. We're getting too much detail. We really are. I'm sorry about that. But, you know, there you go. The king feels pushed out by the Coldham National Convention. The convention hasn't been created.

Just a second. Hold on. We're going to have to get there my way. Otherwise, I'm lost and not all lost. Okay, right. And we've got the National Convention coming in, about to come in after the National Assembly, is... It's the Legislative Assembly. What happens during the Legislative

is that for any number of reasons, on the 10th of August 1792, the Tullery Palace in Paris, which is where the royal family is living. They're not in Versailles anymore. is invaded by ordinary people from Paris. The royal family seeks sanctuary with the legislative assembly and the legislative assembly at that point

in really trying to calm the situation abolishes the monarchy. Now what it's done there is it's put itself out of a job because it's the body that governs with a king. So this isn't the National Assembly? You're saying this is the legislative. The Legislative Assembly. So it's changed from the national to the legislative? Yeah.

And then it's going to change again because the Legislative Assembly is the parliamentary body that goes with the king. No king, no legislative assembly. So they have to change the form of government again for the third time in three years. And there's a period of about six weeks from the middle of August to the end of September

when really nobody's in charge. And that's quite calamitous because there is a war to fight and there are people to be fed. Now, can I move on a little bit from that? Then we can find. We've done the distinction in the National Assembly and the Legislature Assembly,

which I unhappily lumped together. gather for the sake of speed, but we know where we are now. Okay? Right. Now the king fled to Varenne. Can we have that? Just a second. The king, I'm going to take over now. The king went to the king, the king was caught at Varenne. He was trying to get to Austria. His wife was Austrian. He wanted to join a lot of Irish secrets in Austria. People thought that that would help to foment a rising outside France to attack France. And by doing that, he lost a lot of face in France and the faith from the people in France itself. Was that Tim Blunning, was that something that prompted what we started the programme with,

the September massacres? Yes, I think it does because it leads to a drive for war during the course of 1791 to 2. And that picking up on what Rebecca was saying about the legislative assembly, and I can see how awfully confusing this is as you move from one legislative body to another. But one red thread going through this to keep one's mind on, is that from September 1791, in this new legislative assembly, there is a drive for war going on, led by Brissot and his friends, who have made one crucial, they have one crucial insight,

and that is that the royal approval, which had been given to the constitution, finally drawn up in September 1791, was bogus, that Louis XVI did not commit to this new constitution. He had all kinds of reservations about it, advertised to the world by his attempt to flee the revolution back in June. So what Briseau and his friends do is to drive for war, and they see that if only they can get France into the war, into a war against Austria,

then they can expose the king and the queen for the traitors they undoubtedly were, they can drive the revolution left, they can create a republic and last, but by no means least, they can bring themselves to power. So through the winter of 91 to 2, you've got in the legislative assembly this very powerful, or very eloquent group of orators, led by Brousseau, going for war. So we have the factions inside what was the third estate,

changes the constitution once, twice a third time, change the constitution. We have the king increasingly, let's say, sideline and then running away unsuccessfully being brought back. We have the start of a war to bring France into coherence. Another factor that's come in is the Paris section, the 48 boroughs of Paris, the Paris, what's sometimes known as the Paris mob, but it might be the Paris Revolutionaries.

Can you bring them in because they play a part in the September massacres, which are the foretests of the terror? You certainly can bring them, and you must bring them in. They're an omnipresence throughout these years. Ever since the royal family had been brought back to Paris from Versailles in the October days of 1789, the Estates General, which has now become the National Assembly, is under constant pressure

from a new kind of political culture in Paris. It's organized through the press, it's organized through the clubs, it's organized through the sections, it's organized through the commune. They're under really heavy pressure all the time from a new kind of political legitimacy, and that is the legitimacy of the streets

of direct political representation and a lot of violence. The violence is there in 1789, it's there in 1991, and then it erupts, as we know, in September 1792, which is where we started with your very, lurid description from the Times. And it erupts? Why does it erupt then and there, Tim?

What's going on? And it's attacking so-called sweddies on royalists? It does seem from the Times reports and from the other stuff I've read. It does seem indiscriminate, drunken, butchery, butchery raiding prisons and so on. It's not, yes it is. Of course, there's a great deal of butchery. There's a lot of mindless, and it has to be said psychopathic violence going on. But to the participants, this was a rational response to a dire emergency, and it has to be related, I think, to the war. The war had been declared by the National Assembly on the 20th of April 1792.

And everyone expected inside France, committed revolutionaries inside France, one or two exceptions were obisier, a notable one, believed that this war was going to be very quick and very easy. That's what Brissau and his friends have been telling them throughout the winter. It was going to be quick and it was going to be easy.

It turns out to be not quick or easy at all. On the contrary, when French armies invade Belgium at the end of April 1792, and they run into a force of Austrians. It is not the Austrians who mutiny and run away. It's the other way around. It's the French who run away and butcher their officers into the bargain.

So the war starts with a cataclysmic, collapse of confidence in the ability of the revolutionary armies. That leads to the 10th of August, 1792 and the de facto abolition of the monarchy. And then as the situation at the front continues to deteriorate, On the 1st of September, the last great fortress barring the way of the German powers, the Austrians and the Prussians on their march to Paris. Verdeux, Verdeur falls on the 1st of September. And I think it seems clear to me, at least, that it's the news of this succession of military catastrophes which leads to the September massacres.

Because the real enemy, as the revolutionaries see it, are not outside. The real enemies are within. And if the enemies in within are not dealt with, then the whole... thing will collapse. You see, this is where the war changes everything, and it sets the scene for the terror, because it looks in September, well, in really in August,

1792, that Paris is going to be attacked by a Prussian army. So what do you do? You have to arm the people of Paris to protect Paris. That means that it lets the revolutionary crowd come back into politics with a vengeance, because they'd been disarmed previous to that, you know, in the course of 1791 after the Chonde-de-Mars. But from the late summer of 1792, the people of Paris, the sections are armed.

They're armed. And what they do, as Tim has said, is to turn those weapons not on the Prussians, but on what they perceive to be a fifth column inside Paris. And above all, on the king, they overthrow the monarchy. But one of the great mysteries of all this, I think, at the start of the terror, is, okay, we're getting into the bloodletting between 92 and 94. But if you think about it, stand back. It should have stopped.

Because what's the disagreement been about? Whether France is going to be a democracy or a limited parliamentary government. It's solved. France is a democracy. The National Convention is elected on universal manhood suffrage. What's France going to be? A republic or a monarchy? It's decided. It's a republic. Can I just say, can I ask you,

the King was executed in January 1793? So who finally authorized that? And what was the National Convention is in charge then? Who there said he must be executed? What went into that? that was obviously a massive thing. Yeah, and this is one of the drawings of the line that's going to fuel the terror. They have a big argument about what they're going to do with Louis.

Should they try him or should they just execute him? They decide to try him. Then they get into an argument about, well, what are we going to do with him? Are we going to execute him? Or what do we do if we find him not guilty? Are we going to jail him anyway? They decide they're going to find him guilty. They're going to execute him.

And what they do is they have to vote. all have to stand up and say one way or the other. And they vote to execute you. And they vote to execute them. Rebecca. I was going to say that, to say that it's been resolved, is to assume that the only issue that mobilizes people is what we would call politics or political philosophy.

And there are other issues, such as the status of the church, such as the currency. How do you buy things? The government's been printing a new sort of paper money. It had the king's face on it. could say that with the flight to Varennes, it's not just the monarchy as a form of government that's discredited, it's the currency. And in fact, the currency starts to devalue terribly from the summer of 1791 onward. People can't make purchases, and the government isn't collecting

taxes in any unit that it can then use to make its own purchases. So there's a crisis that's political and representational, but that's also economic and social. And people really feel, I think, that they don't know what's going to happen next. So to say that the argument's been resolved, I think is with the benefit of hindsight. I would say that what happens in the summer of 1792, say if we think about the period of September massacres, people don't know what's happening. They really don't. And it's just a collapse of so many different systems of thinking and ways of functioning simultaneously.

It's astonishing that in the aftermath of that, a government is set up and actually they go on and win some battles. No, I disagree. Because what you've got finally is within the National Convention. You've got a group of politicians who are all committed to universal manhood suffrage, all committed to the Republic. They are also all committed to keeping the popular movement, popular and on side. And that starts to help momentarily, artificially, solve the economic crisis. for the Parisians. Now, what we're doing though, and you're right, is that we're living in a Parisian bubble. Out there is the clash over the reforms to the church. And particularly as the war builds up, there's a war government that is determined to pursue the war, to save the Democratic Republic.

Who's going to pay for that, the peasantry? Then you've got a problem. Can I come more, almost to the start of the to-o with Tim Blanning. There are various factions in the Lusual Convention. and one is led by a man called Briseau. He leads the Giron-on section. These sections are sometimes geographical, sometimes clusters of people of like-minded, as they're named after various. He was arrested in June 1793,

and how was behind that and how could it be said to mark the beginning of the real terror? Yes, I think it can, or of the great terror. We already have a series of terror. There's a terror in 1789. There's another one in 1792 and so on. But once again, I think we have to come back to the war. I appreciate what Rebecca and Mike have been saying about problems inside France.

But once again, I think there is a regular rhythm here. And what we find is that when the front looks in danger of collapsing, when it looks as though the Austrians and the Prussians really are going to arrive in Paris, and remember Paris is really quite close to that northeastern frontier. So there's an immediacy about this. And the Prussians have threatened to put Paris to the torch and the sword if the king and queen were harmed, and the king, after all, had been executed in January 1793. So they were under no illusions as to what the Prussians might do to them should they arrive in Paris.

We've got to keep that constantly in our mind. And also a lot of French aristocrats have great wealth, and one would have thought, in the consciousness influence, were outside wanting to get back in again. Absolutely. I mean, there is a strong paranoia running through the revolutionary mentality. If one defines paranoia as an unreasonable sense of persecution, But as with most paranoia, the bastards really were out to get them. You know, there's an element, there's a strong element of truth about this.

Anyway, going back to Briseau and how he finds himself on a guillotine which he had done so much to contribute to erect, it comes fundamentally as a result of a failure in the war. He and his friends had started the war. He promised that the war was going to be quick and easy, and it had proved to be not easy at all. There had been some victories. There had been a lot of defeats.

And at no time more so than in the spring of seven, The volunteers who had gone to the armies in 1792 and had succeeded in turning the Prussians and the Austrians back in the autumn of 1792 had volunteered their way out. They'd gone home. They'd gone home to mummy or to their wives or whatever at Christmas, 1792. And as a result, the Revolutionary armies in the winter, spring, 1793, have just faded away. And the Austrians and the Prussians are now for the first time, Notabene, are taking the war seriously. They go on the offensive and it looks as though there are. about to arrive in Paris again. At this point, down goes Brissot.

Now, can we get on with the terror? There's Brissau. We've had the guillotine, we've had the guillotine invented and erected, because usually the aristocrats were killed by the sword, and the more common people were hung, but they wanted one way, and they discovered a mechanical way, and being the period it was, it had to be a machine, and Mr. Gillotine stepped forward, and Monsieur Gillotine stepped forward, and he which bears his name. And he, and Brissot was ejected,

named, framed, in my view, but you'll say whether he was or not, and guillotined. And did that mark a spin, a new spin, a new turn in the terror? Without a doubt. And I think one of the interesting things about it is, and this is where I really think

there's more to it than the war. The war drives it, but there's more to it because look at the way, as it were, Briso, is framed. First of all, Robespier starts to argue he's managing the war badly. Then he starts to say, why is he managing the war badly?

because he's not really on side. It's because he's not really committed. Then he takes it back and say, Briso hesitated over the execution of the king. Briso is a traitor. And this is where I think... And then he says Brissau's backed by the British. Exactly.

As he says, everybody's banked by the British in the end. And what comes out of it, to me, this is where the new spin begins. This is the Republicans turning on themselves. Briso isn't executed and destroyed by royalists. He's executed and destroyed by other Republicans. This sets the precedent that you can't just have a disagreement and eject someone from office. You have to say that they're a traitor.

You have to say that they're wrong. The interesting thing for me is I think Robs Pierre believes this, and I think most of the Parisian sections believe it. You can't just say it's cynical politics. How are the Parisian sections, Rebecca? How are they feeding into the terror now that we have the guillotine, people be Briseau and the Girondin and others are being carted off the guillotine. And the terror as people, now let's stick with this.

this terror now. We've had the other, as people generally receive it, is underway. What are the sections doing? Are they fomenting it? Are they encouraging it? Are they cheering it along? One thing I always tell my students is that the period that we call the terror marks an effort to establish control by the central government of the use of violence. Violence will not come from the streets. There will be a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence and that will be in the government. So in that sense, I mean, that is something that we expect to be a characteristic of governments. We may not expect them to be as violent as we now think of the Convention as having been, but we expect that governments prevent ordinary citizens from using violence against each other.

This is not something that necessarily in all of the sections of Paris is met with enthusiasm. So this is why we can call it the reign of terror, because the government is reining through violence. deliberately using violence and fermenting violence and it's not the sort of organised control in inverted commas violence of having a police force this is go out and kill those who are against us type violence It's not go out and kill because they're put on trial It's not just

They're fairly much show trials, I just Tim, yeah Well, yes there's a certain amount of truth in that And it's certainly true after December 1793 When the central authorities claw back Some of the authority which are just evaporate in the autumn. But I have to say, in response to Rebecca, it is true. They say to the armies going to pacify the Vonday,

where counter-revolution have broken out in the spring of 1793, go out and kill everything that you can find. They kill a lot. Yes, yes. And they do kill 250,000 people in the Vonday, and so we are talking about using terror to go out and kill. That's the idea. Do we want to assimilate civil war to the terror in terms of the execution of

It wasn't a civil war. They said the revolutionary government sent out armies to kill people who are against a revolutionary government. I mean, in the end, you could say it's civil war, but it doesn't begin a civil war. Well, there was an army in the Vomde. It begins as... Well, I don't know.

Mike, what do you think? Well, I mean, I think if you look at the long trend of French history, you've got to see it as a civil war because in many ways it's still going on. They didn't see it that way. Let's get back to what they think. Because it's quite helpful. They didn't see it that way.

We see it all of a piece. We can stand back and say there are different elements to this. There's a peasant revolt in the Vande, which is driven by religion, which is driven by conscription, opposition to the revolution. Now, when they turn around and they kill Briso and his pals, all the constituencies that Briso and his pals represented, mainly the large cities of southern France, Bordeaux, Leon Marseille, turn around and say, excuse me, you can't kill our MPs,

you can't kill the guys we elected, and they revolt. and it's called the Federalist Revolt and the name is branded on them by Robespierre who says these guys are federalists in the nasty sense that they want to break up the Republic, they're counter-revolutionaries. They see it all as one piece. We're all under threat.

But can we come back to it? I'm glad you've come to Robs here because he had a justification for terror. He wrote virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is weakness. So there's virtue in the terror from Roeb Speer's point of view, isn't it? That is what we're trying to get at.

It was a virtuous form. of government to impose terror. Tim, your order. Terror is made, is officially made the order of the day. The date 5th of September 1793. It's not their word. It's not, sorry, it's not our word, it's theirs.

But the sections call for it to be made the order of the day. I just heard a paper by Jean-Clement Martin about this. The sections call for it. This is really a case where the demand for violence and for vengeance, what they mean by terror is basically a policy of no concessions. The sections call for it. The convention debates it. The sections in Paris, the sections, the ordinary, the street-level politics in Paris call for it. The convention debates it. What they do is they impose a series of very strict rules in terms of defining what is suspicious

behavior. Basically, as soon as somebody thinks you're suspicious, then you're a suspect, and then you're guilty. Well, that's not very strict. You said very strict truth. It's not being strict about that whatsoever. Were you being ironic? You must have been being ironic. They're not strict as rules, but they're harsh. But that's nothing. They're not harsh at all. They're completely the opposite. That's the point.

The point is they say, I suspect you, Rebecca Spite. So you're in prison. You're done in time to cool your heels in prison. You're off to the guillotine. That's the point. That's where virtue comes into it. You see, the word of a virtuous citizen should be good enough, and that's the principle they work on.

I think Robespier is a very profound person in a way. I think he's crazy, but I think he's profound. Because he says, this is not just about the war. This is not just about beating the counter-revolutionaries and the federalists and all of this sort of thing. We are going to come out of this a better nation, a better people. This is going to imbue us with virtue. And the virtuous will emerge.

And this drives it. This is why, say, in the next big purges, he can turn on people who are, in some senses, more revolutionary than he is. Tim, let's take to this virtue and terror notion. You're shaking your head. Well, I'm shaking my head in disbelief, really, how this can be in any way elevated. This is a situation.

Well, yes, we can all be virtuous those of us who are left. And there's a celebrated cartoon from 1794 which shows Robsby are guillotining himself. Everyone else in France has been guillotined and now Robsby are guillotines himself. That is, as it were, the logical end. But let's just get back so our listeners are in no contrary. conclusion over this because there was a bit of a ratat-tat-tat

going on a few minutes ago. When you said there were very strict rules, Rebecca, there weren't, there were just a couple of, you can seize anybody you'll want, and we're giving you a fig leaf to cover it. That was what was going on from, the two things that are in my notes, and Mike was nodding and so on.

So actually it was a license to murder, really. Except, I would again say that it's an effort to make sure that that license is done through something that has at least the appearance of a structure. And that's very important because the men who are in the convention, the 700 people whose names we know better than we do,

the other 25 million people in France at that time, they want to control the use of violence. Can I just give an example? Because we're talking here in generalities. How about the execution of Malz-Aab? This was a man who had defended Louis XVI at his trial. Malz-Aub is guillotined. But before he is guillotined, he is made to wait at the foot of the place of execution

and watch his granddaughter, his granddaughter's husband, and his daughter being guillotined before he himself is guillotined. And subsequently, his wife is his widow is gillotined. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, normal behaviour. And yet it is embedded in an official political culture which knows absolutely no political pluralism. If this is virtue, then give me vice. Well, I couldn't agree with you more. But don't forget that they themselves declare the war government, an emergency government, until the peace.

And sooner or later, and this is where you have to be careful about legality. They have drawn up a new constitution for France, and they've suspended it. And they've literally suspended it in a big wooden casket from the roof of the where the convention meets. And the idea is that when this is all, over that constitution, which embodies universal manhood suffrage, is going to be taken down and enacted.

And until that can happen, the gloves are off. Can I ask you, Mike, why at this time the people became so radicalised, they reset the calendar, they founded a new state religion, and they, can you explain why all that was happening? This is, to the argument, this was the true revolution. Those who say it was the terror, yes, but it was also the true revolution ones. The founding of the republic is day one. of the year zero. Yeah. And the idea is, again, virtue, it's to break with the past definitively.

You want to get Christianity and the old order and the old rhythm of life out of the way. So you bring in a 10-day week and you abolish Sunday. You abolish religious holidays. You create a whole new rhythm of life. It's to change people's conception of time as well as anything else. And that Marvelous book Mono Zouf wrote about revolutionary festivals. You even change the way things are celebrated. You usually, on the old regime, you celebrate on the main square of the town, inside the cathedral, inside the walls that were built by a previous generation. Now you go out into an open space, into a field. You know, you do it that way.

You've got to change the way people see their daily life. We have an idea of the war coming from you, Tim, and we have the sections from Rebecca and that foment in Paris. so and so far. But can I just concentrate for a little while on what was happening in the Convention? I mean, Brissau is executed. The Convention begins to turn in on itself and Feeding said, Robespier is there, curiously enough

against the death penalty to start with, as he was against the war to start with, but he then goes along with this. And now the next big, it seems to me, stage in this is the guillotine, the execution of d'anton, which was a huge turning point in this. Tim Blanick, can you take us to... I think by this time

Robespier is out of control. There was a time late in 1793 when it almost looked as though he was moving towards the centre and being quite cooperative with Dantan, the so-called indulgence. And then early in 1794, he swings back again. And ultimately this must be, I think, an enigma. It cannot be explained satisfactorily in a rational manner. Is it anything to do with mere personality then?

because Dantan is very human, he's brilliant, brilliant, a reality, very lazy, drunk, promiscuous, corrupt. Robespier is the sea green incorruptible, that lives very, excuse me, Spartan life, high ideals. Are we talking about personality clash as much as anything else here? I think that's an important insight. I think there is a strong personal element, personal hatred here. But he convinces himself, Robespier,

that Dantan and his friends really are in the pay of the British, that they really are, revolutionary conspirators. And I think that although I'm hesitant to use categories taken from mental illness because it's fraught with all kinds of problems, I think that there really is a personal paranoia in the case of Robespier and a collective paranoia among those who are prepared to vote through the execution as traitors of men and women who have proved themselves again and again

to be loyal, faithful supporters of the revolution, true Republicans, true patriots. Rebecca. But it's about trying to up. identify causes. So many things are happening and people can't understand everything that's happening to them. All the structures within which they would have explained events, the existence of a king, of a god, a structured church, all of those things they've tried to abolish in the course of just a few years. And in trying to identify why haven't things gone well, they keep looking for scapegoats. And the scapegoats they find keep coming closer and closer to home. It's really the

paradox of this category of virtue. If virtue is to be starting all over again completely from scratch, then you would have to execute everybody. Because everybody has a past. Everybody has a history. Nobody can just wipe out everything they know and start again. Good. That's good. I think you've got to bring in two other things here. One is the human element. We've talked about personalities. We've got to remember something else. These men were all very, very young. They were incredibly young. They were living... What's young in those days?

20s, 30s, 30. He's are old... Robs Pia and Danto are older men than they're in their 30s. And they're living at a frenetic pace. If you look at the timetable that these guys kept, the committee of public safety, which sort of runs the terror if anybody runs it at all, doesn't usually meet till quite late at night. And in the archives, you can find their wine bill. These guys were drunk most of the time.

They were single a lot of them. They were young. Paranoia thrives in that sort of atmosphere. If you've ever been in a university committee under pressure. The other thing, you know that I may. You're not comparing Universality committed to the reign of terror order. I think of anybody who's been on a lot of committees should have a lot of sympathy. Quite.

Committees at 11 o'clock with lots of wine and generally do good work in my experience. By their lights, they did. Don't forget. By their lights. The other thing is that they do. have a kind of a moral compass left to them and I think that that is Republican Rome these guys were fed on Plutarch they fed themselves on Plutarch

they did Levy and they were fed on Plutarch and that pushes it as well how does Rome survive bloodletting we've got Dantor and he has been named by Robespier and to the great shock of everyone guillotined and I think then everyone thinks who's next

if they can get Dantone they can get me they can get everybody. So let's bring this to the execution of Robespierre. Tim, could you take it? How did Robespier come to fall or be executed? Once there's been this great purge and, as you rightly say, once

Dantan and his friends have gone, well those now on the left, on the far left, to the left of Robespier, begin to think, whoa, I can fill a cool draft down the back of my neck. Is it going to be me? Is it going to be you? And by this time, Robespier, who incidentally has been

away from the convention, ill for a month. That's probably crucial. He was desperately overconfident about his support in the convention. Robespier is back in action denouncing busily. That's the thing he did best, denouncing plotters here and plotters there in the Jacobins in the convention and so on. So ultimately, it's, and paradoxically, you might think, it's from the left that the counter coup comes because they're afraid people like Biuvaren, they're afraid that they're

going to be next. But once they've nailed Robespier and it proves amazingly easy to do and I think that's because there's now a fear throughout the convention if they don't stop Robespier they're going to perish themselves once that's been done then there's a sharp move back towards the centre

and indeed Bio Varenne and his fellow plotters who deal with Robespier sent off in 1796 to the dry guillotine they're deported to French Biana but he is guillotined in the most extraordinary circumstance he makes an escape doesn't he and he calls in the parish sections your sections to help him they turn up, but he doesn't come out even to talk to them.

And then when it turns up to guillotine, his jaws hanging off because he's attempted to shoot himself. And so the Robespierre phenomenon becomes increasingly mysterious, really, towards the end, doesn't it? Yeah, the way he disappears for a month, as you say, when he's ill, leaves the door open, but it's the way he comes back and suddenly says, I'm going to denounce someone said, and he doesn't name names for once, and this frightens people. I think the Robspere phenomenon is very important, because, As Tim's talked a lot about the war,

inside this committee of public safety that runs things, it's a 12-man committee, and there is a split within it because there's Robespierre, it's all about virtue, there's a group that just want to run the war. And when Robes-Pier goes, the rationale for an awful lot of the terror disappears as well. And back to the popular movement,

those, that the Paris sections have lost the one person who was always on their side. The war has been won. We mustn't forget that. Robespier was no longer necessary. The terror has become dysfunctional. The French Revolutionary armies win a tremendous battle, a decisive battle against the Austrians at Flores

on the 26th of June 1794. The situation is now stabilized. Belgium has been reconquered. The French armies are on the move, on all fronts. We don't need the terror anymore. And I think that doomed Robespier even if it hadn't happened on Nine Fermador, it was going to happen sooner or later.

Briefly, Rebecca, what do you think the influence of the terror had on the image of revolution around Europe? I think it's very important to remember that the first thing that happens, or one of the very first thing that happens in 1848, when there's another revolution in France, is that La Martin, the poet, says, this is a peaceful revolution. We come in peace.

We are friends to the people of Europe. We mean nobody any harm. Really, really, we can have a revolution without violence. and what the terror does is to really problematize for the next 210 years the question of the relationship between dramatic political social change and violence. I'd just like to have a codicil to that. I'm sure you're right. Subsequently, all revolutionaries were putting on the brakes,

or most revolutionaries were putting on the brakes, even as the revolution was starting. But just end with it with a really chilling quote. This is Lenin, who'd learned from the terror, that what had gone wrong with the terror, it had not been terrorist enough. And he says in, I think it's January, 1918, in other words, very soon after the beginning of the Bolshek revolution, he said, in answer to a reply, why were they being so violent?

He said, why? Do you think we can really succeed without the very cruelest terror? Mike? It knocks the cause of democracy back in continental Europe almost 100 years. The terror is identified with democracy. The revolution survives, but one man, one vote. doesn't. We're all Whigs at heart and the terror is a

salutary reminder that history is not Whig history. It doesn't move in a straight line forward. People abandoned one of the most important principles of the revolution for decades. And it had a huge impact on this country, didn't it? I mean on the country that we're sitting in now which was moving very heavily

in the direction of democratisation and because of the terror and then because of our going to war with We had to oppose everything France stood for. Okay, thank you all very much indeed. I'm getting signate thanks to Rebecca Spang, Mike Brose and Tim Blanning.

Next week in our time we'll be discussing mathematics and the Renaissance. As for our search to find in our time of greatest philosopher, you've been nominating in your thousands. At present, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are out in front with Cant Plato and Hume in hot pursuit, but there's still plenty of time to nominate, say, Rousseau, Simone de Beauvoir, and whoever you want, before we hive off the top 20 and start the vote proper on Monday the 6th of June.

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