Was terror an integral part of the mentality of the revolutionaries in France?

Résumé du document

No part of the Revolution calls as much pictures to mind as the "Terror". The endless lines of people waiting to be guillotined, the Committee of Public Safety with the heartless figure of Maximilien Robespierre, Marat's corpse lying in his bath... more and more bloody pictures until Robespierre's fall. This is the popular image of "The Terror", popularized by several movies, especially Eric Rohmer's L'Anglaise et le duc, and many books, such as Victor Hugo's Quatrevingt-treize. It is always compared with the generous laws and declarations of 1789, in particular the Declaration of the rights of man and tends to be blamed, or at least ignored. Thus the of the Terror period was overlooked in 1989 in the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution. But what is actually this so-called "Terror"? Here we enter the field of historiographical debates, which are particularly vivid on this subject.

Extraits

[...] The idea to behead and to harm the corpse remains of the royal justice itself : the French Revolution does not invent it . The French Revolution must be born with a terrorist aspect because, even if it wants to get rid of the ancien régime, it comes from it -it rejects it). Absolutism needed the power to be in one sole person -the king- who was the embodiment of the nation. This idea of a coincidence between the nation -people- and the power -people elected- remains in the Revolution. [...]

[...] Was terror an integral part of the mentality of the revolutionaries in France? No part of the Revolution calls as much pictures to mind as the “Terror”. The endless lines of people waiting to be guillotined, the Committee of Public Safety with the heartless figure of Maximilien Robespierre, Marat's corpse lying in his bath . more and more bloody pictures until Robespierre's fall. This is the popular image of Terror”, popularized by several movies, especially Eric Rohmer's L'Anglaise et le duc, and many books, such as Victor Hugo's Quatrevingt-treize. [...]

[...] And maybe this growing awareness of enemies is a key to 1793. Furthermore, I disagree with the idea that the September massacres were a “terror before the terror” (Baczko) because they put on stage a spontaneous and disorganized violence, which it is not a mean for a higher reason. No one understands the Great Fear as a moment of terror and I do not see why the September massacres should be -except if we count the dead bodies- because both of them are about plots and popular fear. [...]

[...] A war is not over until the peace treaty is signed and they had no way to know what was happening next. Even in a time of victories, one might want to fight again and again in order to keep winning the battles . until the end of the war. And war was not the only problem France was fighting. Thus I don't think we can evacuate the circumstances from the beginning of the Terror. In addition to the part of the events in the process, the critic (revisionist) school often forgets another fact,which is the construction of the Terror after its end by the Thermidorians. [...]

[...] Dossiers http://revolution- francaise.net/2007/01/11/99-la-terreur (Révolution Française.net) GUENIFFEY Patrick, La politique de la Terreur. Essai sur la violence révolutionnaire, 1789-1794. Paris: Fayard HUNT Lynn, The World we have gained : the future of the French Revolution address delivered to the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago Claude Mazauric, politique de la Terreur. Essai sur la violence révolutionnaire (1789-1794).», in Annales historiques de la Révolution française, Numéro 323, [En ligne], mis en ligne le : 21 avril 2004. URL : http://ahrf.revues.org/document1026.html. [...]