Total War and the Terror

A year later, in July 1794, the central government had reasserted control over the provinces, and the Austrian Netherlands and the Rhineland were once again in French hands. This remarkable change of fortune was due to the revolutionary government’s success in harnessing the explosive forces of a planned economy, revolutionary terror, and modern nationalism in a total war effort.

Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety advanced on several fronts in 1793 and 1794, seeking to impose republican unity across the nation. First, they collaborated with the sans-culottes, who continued pressing the common people’s case for fair prices and a moral economic order. Rather than let supply and demand determine prices, the government set maximum prices for key products. Though the state was too weak to enforce all its price regulations, it did fix the price of bread in Paris at levels the poor could afford.

The people were also put to work, mainly producing arms and munitions for the war effort. The government told craftsmen what to produce, nationalized many small workshops, and requisitioned raw materials and grain. Through these economic reforms the second revolution produced an emergency form of socialism.

Second, while radical economic measures supplied the poor with bread and the armies with weapons, the Reign of Terror (1793–1794) enforced compliance with republican beliefs and practices. Special revolutionary courts responsible only to Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety tried “enemies of the nation” for political crimes. Some forty thousand French men and women were executed or died in prison, making Robespierre’s Reign of Terror one of the most controversial phases of the Revolution. Presented as a necessary measure to save the republic, the Terror was a weapon directed against all suspected of opposing the revolutionary government.

The Terror also sought to bring the Revolution into all aspects of everyday life. The government sponsored revolutionary art and songs as well as a new series of secular festivals. The government attempted to rationalize French daily life by adopting the decimal system for weights and measures and a new calendar based on ten-day weeks. Another important element of this cultural revolution was the campaign of de-Christianization, which aimed to eliminate Catholic symbols and beliefs. Fearful of the hostility aroused in rural France, however, Robespierre called for a halt to de-Christianization measures in mid-1794.

The third and perhaps most decisive element in the French republic’s victory over the First Coalition was its ability to draw on the power of dedication to a national state and a national mission. An essential part of modern nationalism, which would fully emerge throughout Europe in the nineteenth century, this commitment was something new in history. With a common language and a common tradition newly reinforced by the ideas of popular sovereignty and democracy, large numbers of French people were stirred by a common loyalty.

The all-out mobilization of French resources under the Terror combined with the fervor of nationalism to create an awesome fighting machine. After August 1793, all unmarried young men were subject to the draft, and by January 1794, French armed forces outnumbered those of their enemies almost four to one.2 By spring 1794, French armies were victorious on all fronts. The republic was saved.

National Assembly (1789–1791)
May 5, 1789 Estates General meets at Versailles
June 17, 1789 Third estate declares itself the National Assembly
June 20, 1789 Tennis Court Oath
July 14, 1789 Storming of the Bastille
July–August 1789 Great Fear
August 4, 1789 Abolishment of feudal privileges
August 27, 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
October 5, 1789 Women march on Versailles; royal family returns to Paris
November 1789 National Assembly confiscates church land
July 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy establishes a national church; Louis XVI agrees to constitutional monarchy
June 1791 Royal family arrested while fleeing France
August 1791 Declaration of Pillnitz
Legislative Assembly (1791–1792)
April 1792 France declares war on Austria
August 1792 Mob attacks the palace, and Legislative Assembly takes Louis XVI prisoner
National Convention (1792–1795)
September 1792 September Massacres; National Convention abolishes monarchy and declares France a republic
January 1793 Louis XVI executed
February 1793 France declares war on Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Spain; revolts take place in some provinces
March 1793 Struggle between Girondists and the Mountain
April 1793 Creation of the Committee of Public Safety
June 1793 Arrest of Girondist leaders
September 1793 Price controls instituted
October 1793 National Convention bans women’s political societies
1793–1794 Reign of Terror
Spring 1794 French armies victorious on all fronts
July 1794 Robespierre executed; Thermidorian reaction begins
The Directory (1795–1799)
1795 Economic controls abolished; suppression of the sans-culottes begins
1799 Napoleon seizes power
Table 19.4: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION