The Coming of the Reign of Terror

Part 2: The Revolution Devours its Children

Art by Elliot Skow

[Continued from Part 1.]

6. France was now, technically, a constitutional monarchy. But many called for the king’s removal, and the establishment of a republic. While the Assembly procrastinated, local sections in Paris, dominated by republican militants, grew in power. Distrusting the Assembly as too conservative, the militants “concluded that they would have to remove the monarch themselves.” Local commissioners seized the royal arsenal and declared themselves an “Insurrectional Commune.” Was this legal? The Assembly’s own appeal to popular sovereignty had set a dangerous precedent, which the Paris Commune made use of:

when the people enter into a state of insurrection, they take back all power for themselves.

On August 10, 1792, militants approached the palace, intent on removing the king. The king escaped and took refuge, ironically, in the Assembly, as his palace guard opened fire on the militants. Fighting broke out throughout Paris, and while “the terrible civil war in the heart of Paris lasted little more than two hours...over a thousand people died.” The king was held responsible. Hatred for him spread, and “all the statues of the kings of France were pulled down, and those in bronze were sent to the foundry to be turned into cannons and cannonballs.”

7. The Paris Commune, competing for authority with the National Assembly, declared that the people had “recovered their rights for the second time.” In the coming weeks “France arguably came closer to anarchy, to the breakdown of law and order and the spread of uncontrolled violence, than at any other time in the Revolution.”

Royalists were arrested, and the people, wanting revenge, were frustrated by the slow pace of the courts. Exceptional tribunals were created, whose judgments could not be appealed, and whose death sentences would be carried out immediately. Even these were thought to move too slowly. Out of this frustration, militants stormed the prisons and killed those awaiting trial. The Commune issues a statement calling the executions

acts of justice that seem indispensable for halting through terror the legions of traitors hidden inside the walls.

8. A new Convention is elected, to write a new, republican, constitution. What should be done with the former king, waiting in prison? Under the just-jettisoned constitution, he was immune from prosecution. The radical Montagnards argued that no trial was necessary,

that the king had already been found guilty by the people and did not need to be judged.

They lost this argument; the king would be tried, under “natural laws” the transcended any human constitution. The Convention would serve as both judge and jury. At trial the king argued, plausibly, that he had broken no laws. He was convicted anyway, by unanimous vote, and then sentenced to death, by a one-vote majority.

As he was pulled down onto the cutting block, frustrated and no doubt terrified by his fate, “he uttered a frightful scream, that was stifled only with the fall of the blade.”

At first the crowd remained stunned and silent, but soon great cries arose of “Long live the nation! Long live the Republic.”

Some thought the king’s execution would be a uniting event, ending factionalism in French politics. It only made things worse: