The "Reign of Terror" which never took place and other misconceptions about the French Revolution

[loup99]

That's harsh. I thought loup's point was Robbie ain't as bad as the Thermidorians, not outright whitewashing.

My point wasn't even exactly that, even if you are closer than Abdul who made a description which has nothing in common with what I said.

To summarise in one paragraph the point was that Robespierre was one actor amongst several, he has personal responsibility just as other members of the Committee of the Public Safety, but you can't describe him as a "dictator" since he was one in a group, was absent during key periods and was constantly accountable before the National Convention. Furthermore it was during Girondin rule that instability started, and both the Girondins and Montagnards tried to eliminate each other, the difference being that the Montagnards had the support of the popular movement and the Paris Commune. With regards to the Thermidorians, I do indeed underline that the height of executions is after Robespierre's death and that they coined the term "Reign of Terror" to whitewash themselves. But just as the "Reign of Terror" didn't happen as the Thermidorians framed it, the "White Terror" didn't happen either in the way some caricature it, and even the term "Thermidorian Reaction" can be misleading given that some former Montagnards participated in it. Saying this does not erase the 17 000 persons who died, it does not remove the context of civil war, the fact that women were excluded from civic life, the brutality of the September Massacres, the abolition of slavery only happening after considerable mobilisation of slaves etc... Robespierre even participated in "glacing" the Revolution as Saint-Just correctly said, weakening the force of the popular movement.

In short, the general point is to nuance all the quick takes in order to introduce authors who have much more expertise on the subject than I do, like Martin or Leuwers, but also in English Tackett.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

Difference?

Whitewashing comes in many flavors, "A not as bad as B" being one of them of course, but loup is acknowledging the problematic actions of both Rob and the Therms, so the difference is there in his words.

 

[Kovax]

So, the bottom line is that the supposed "Reign of Terror" was indeed a "reign of terror" in one sense, but not in another, and that while Robespierre was highly influential in the Committee and responsible for a lot of its brutal excesses, he didn't actually start the mess, wasn't an actual dictatorial leader of the organization, and it didn't end with his demise.

Or, to put it another way, that particular period was only half as bad as popular myth portrays it, but still pretty terrible. That still leaves the topic title (claiming that the "Reign of Terror" never really took place) looking a bit like a Midnight Star or National Inquirer headline along the lines of "Aliens made love to my weed whacker", or other clickbait with just enough shred of credibility to make you consider reading it.

 

[loup99]

Whitewashing comes in many flavors, "A not as bad as B" being one of them of course, but loup is acknowledging the problematic actions of both Rob and the Therms, so the difference is there in his words.

I consider their action as very problematic, no massive violence, deprivation of liberty, arbitrary trials, executions and imprisonment, regardless of the causes, can be ignored, and those events deserve to be considered in their own right, in light of the entire revolutionnary period rather than as a distinct unit. You can not ignore it as much as it would be inappropriate to skip the social and democratic progress of the period, which allowed for greater citizen implication.

So, the bottom line is that the supposed "Reign of Terror" was indeed a "reign of terror" in one sense, but not in another, and that while Robespierre was highly influential in the Committee and responsible for a lot of its brutal excesses, he didn't actually start the mess, wasn't an actual dictatorial leader of the organization, and it didn't end with his demise.

Yes, but allow me to nuance in that for there to be a reign, it has to be planned, organised and conceived as a systemic form of government. That is also why I do not use the word "reign".

That still leaves the topic title (claiming that the "Reign of Terror" never really took place) looking a bit like a Midnight Star or National Inquirer headline along the lines of "Aliens made love to my weed whacker", or other clickbait with just enough shred of credibility to make you consider reading it.

I disagree, the quotation marks make it very clear that the opening post takes its distance with that expression. It would have been clickbait to suggest there was an actual implementation of terror on the order of the day since then I would have been deceiving the reader into believing something that was explicitly rejected by the revolutionaries.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

So, the bottom line is that the supposed "Reign of Terror" was indeed a "reign of terror" in one sense, but not in another, and that while Robespierre was highly influential in the Committee and responsible for a lot of its brutal excesses, he didn't actually start the mess, wasn't an actual dictatorial leader of the organization, and it didn't end with his demise.

Or, to put it another way, that particular period was only half as bad as popular myth portrays it, but still pretty terrible. That still leaves the topic title (claiming that the "Reign of Terror" never really took place) looking a bit like a Midnight Star or National Inquirer headline along the lines of "Aliens made love to my weed whacker", or other clickbait with just enough shred of credibility to make you consider reading it.

I think you could try to understand it in terms of the different motives for Lenin and Stalin's political violence. While Lenin was chronically plagued by leading a country that was broke and ravaged by war (sounds like Revolutionary France to me) and has to resort to or tolerate the excessive violence of his political allies to keep government bank accounts and warehouses stocked, Stalin tried to acquire more power than Lenin had for his mega-projects and was not simply trying to hold a crumbling ship together. This is why, despite being a political moderate in his early days, Stalin cranked up an infamous reputation after the Great Purge - so much people tend to forget he already was one of Lenin's preferred successors.

 

[loup99]

I think you could try to understand it in terms of the different motives for Lenin and Stalin's political violence. While Lenin was chronically plagued by leading a country that was broke and ravaged by war (sounds like Revolutionary France to me) and has to resort to or tolerate the excessive violence of his political allies to keep government bank accounts and warehouses stocked, Stalin tried to acquire more power than Lenin had for his mega-projects and was not simply trying to hold a crumbling ship together. This is why, despite being a political moderate in his early days, Stalin cranked up an infamous reputation after the Great Purge - so much people tend to forget he already was one of Lenin's preferred successors.

The comparison between the Soviets and Revolutionary France is one that was done extensively, most notably by the critical school of which François Furet is one of the major historians. The problem is however that the context was very different and that many things that appeared as evident to the Bolshevik were absolutely opposite to everything the French revolutionaries believed in. Stalin organised a totalitarian system of government, with systematic purges and a total control of wide-ranging aspects of life. None of that was ever even conceivable to any revolutionnary in France and in fact his beliefs would have been anathema to any Montagnard. Furthermore, the importance of ideology should be nuanced in the case of the French Revolution, many of the deputies having experience in local government in pre-revolutionnary institutions, and only later discovered or referred themselves to major Enlightenment philosophers like Rousseau.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

Whitewashing comes in many flavors, "A not as bad as B" being one of them of course, but loup is acknowledging the problematic actions of both Rob and the Therms, so the difference is there in his words.

So you agree, that Robespierre was not as bad as the Thermidorians? May I ask for your reasoning?

 

[loup99]

So you agree, that Robespierre was not as bad as the Thermidorians? May I ask for your reasoning?

Many Thermidorians were Montagnards. Opposing them and Robespierre hides the fact that several were a part of the Montagne as much as Robespierre himself. They made Robespierre into a "monster" for posterity to whitewash themselves. Why do you think Carrier and Fouché, some of the most brutal representatives on mission, took part in ensuring Robespierre was eliminated? They felt threatened since they knew Robespierre condemned their abuses. It is not a binary "as bad as", there are evolutions and continuities. One person can evolve and change their views over time. It is more interesting to study trajectories than to sort out protagonists between "good" and "bad". The former allows you to see the complexity of a figure, the latter is to adopt the rhetoric of the actors of the period without any critical distance.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

Many Thermidorians were Montagnards. Opposing them and Robespierre hides the fact that several were a part of the Montagne as much as Robespierre himself. They made Robespierre into a "monster" for posterity to whitewash themselves. It is not a binary "as bad as", there are evolutions and continuities. One person can evolve and change their views over time. It is more interesting to study trajectories than to sort out protagonists between "good" and "bad". The former allows you to see the complexity of a figure, the latter is to adopt the rhetoric of the actors of the period without any critical distance.

I was not talking to you.

 

[loup99]

I was not talking to you.

No, you were only talking about what I had said according to you. Allow me to disagree with your portrayal of my posts when you distort them so blatantly as you have done when intervening and referring to this thread. You apparently prefer to talk to your own straw mens than to the real posters.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

No, you were only talking about what I had said according to you. Allow me to disagree with your portrayal of my posts when you distort them so blatantly as you have done when intervening and referring to this thread. You apparently prefer to talk to your own straw mens than to the real posters.

No, I was talking about what you had said according to @FondMemberofSociety . And, again, I was talking to him in the first place.

 

[loup99]

No, I was talking about what you had said according to @FondMemberofSociety . And, again, I was talking to him in the first place.

As I explained above to them, that is not my opinion. They can not agree with me on something I did not say, that is entirely their analysis in that case. It is a bit frustrating to see a discussion arising from two differing parties arguing over things I did not say... So maybe instead of arguing over straw mens and reinterpretations you could pay attention to what was posted?

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

As I explained above to them, that is not my opinion. They can not agree with me on something I did not say, that is entirely their analysis in that case. It is a bit frustrating to see a discussion arising from two differing parties arguing over things I did not say... So maybe instead of arguing over straw mens and reinterpretations you could pay attention to what was posted?

Ignoring your posts is what keeps me sane. That is why I am talking to HIM. Was that clear enough? Stop bothering me with your nonsense.

 

[loup99]

Ignoring your posts is what keeps me sane. That is why I am talking to HIM. Was that clear enough? Stop bothering me with your nonsense.

Do I really have to write a "The 'White Terror' which never took place" thread? Because if the conclusion is that a supposed "White Terror" was worse than the so-called "reign of Terror" then I disagree just as much. The "White Terror" is as much a faulty construct as the initial "Terror". Call it nonsense if you want to, but I share neither your views nor theirs, and I will make it clear when you talk about "them agreeing with me". If you ignore my posts, don't comment them in the first place. Caricaturing the posts of someone else is not a good way of ignoring them.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

Ignoring your posts is what keeps me sane. That is why I am talking to HIM. Was that clear enough? Stop bothering me with your nonsense.

I don't really see how I could do better than loup. I thought people preferred to have OP explain to them on the thread topic in general since on threads like this one, the OP almost always does know more about the topic than folks who wander in. Or maybe you just want to find fault with my reasoning because my arguments won't be as coherent as loup, since among other things I can't read French.

 

[loup99]

I don't really see how I could do better than loup. I thought people preferred to have OP explain to them on the thread topic in general since on threads like this one, the OP almost always does know more about the topic than folks who wander in. Or maybe you just want to find fault with my reasoning because my arguments won't be as coherent as loup, since among other things I can't read French.

Everyone is legitimate to intervene, I don't pretend to be an expert either. There are good books and material in English (some translated from French, others natively in English), but naturally for any primary sources you would have to know French. If you have the time and interest Timothy Tackett is the author I would recommend that I already mentioned, his work is very good. When the King Took Flight, Becoming a Revolutionary and The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution amongst other books. Otherwise a more general synthesis with specialised entries like the Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution, directed by David Andress. On the historiography, you have Echoes of the Marseillaise. Two Centuries Look Back on the French Revolution, by Eric Hobsbawm. There can be English articles about French books in the specialised reviews sometimes, that can be a way of getting an overview of the arguments of the author even if you can't read the whole book. I hope those references can be helpful to those who want to delve deeper into the topic.

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

I don't really see how I could do better than loup.

By trying. Anyone can do better than "The Reign of Terror is just a Thermidorian fairy tale".

 

[loup99]

By trying. Anyone can do better than "The Reign of Terror is just a Thermidorian fairy tale".

That includes me, since I never said anything like that. I feel obliged to refute it again, since you reiterate it. It is a bit of a paradox that you mention the words "fairy tale", since that is what you are doing with regards to what I post, making them up as a part of a fairy tale. But since apparently you refuse to hear my views and instead want to hear how third parties reinterpret them, I guess you aren't interested in this either...

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

By trying. Anyone can do better than "The Reign of Terror is just a Thermidorian fairy tale".

Fine.
"The Reign of Terror is a narrative built on selective misrepresentation of historical facts."

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

Fine.
"The Reign of Terror is a narrative built on selective misrepresentation of historical facts."

I would argue, that the Reign of Terror is a historical fact.

What did Robespierre say in February 1794 about Terror?

„La terreur n’est autre chose que la justice prompte, sévère, inflexible ; elle est donc une émanation de la vertu ; elle est moins un principe particulier, qu’une conséquence du principe général de la démocratie, appliqué aux plus pressants besoins de la patrie“

(“Terror is nothing but swift, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is less a particular principle, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the homeland ")

If Terror is nothing but swift, severe and inflexible justice, then the Law of the 22nd Prairial is the embodiment of Terror. The Law targeted the "Enemy of the People". And since even a flimsy accusation of "impairing the purity of the revolutionary principles" or "depraving morals" could lead to a Trial, the only sentence if found guilty was death and the right to a defense attorney was annulled, basically anyone could fall as of now. The results were predictable: Increase of executions, decrease of acquittals.

Robespierre (together with Couthon) crafted that Law while the Thermidorians put it out of effect. In short: The Terror was real. Denying that is just whitewashing Robespierre for probably ideological reasons.