8 Historians of political violence point routinely to the French Revolution as the first time that terror was used systematically and deliberately to create a new and better social order. This was the birth of the modern definition of terrorism. “One achieves nothing by having cut off twenty heads yesterday if one is not prepared to cut off thirty heads today, and sixty tomorrow.” This method of governing, according to Tallien, split society in two: “those who are afraid, and those who make others afraid.” So unique was this system of power, that Tallien used a new word- terrorisme-to describe it. To be effective, the Terror had to be unpredictable and self-expanding. The goal was not to eliminate the enemies of the Revolution but to break their will to resist. Executions had to be spectacular, even theatrical, in order to make a lasting impression on the spectators.
FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY CALENDAR AP EURO DEFINTION HOW TO
“The art of Terror,” he said, “consists in setting a trap for every step, a spy in every home, a traitor in every family.” The regime must know how to use the public death of the few to terrify the many. The Terror, according to Tallien, was a political system based on the principle of fear. To end the instability, one had to define the present moment, and to define the present moment, one had to define the Reign of Terror. It was time then, declared Tallien, to put an end to “this state of oscillation we have been living in for a month now.” 6 5 Officially, the government was still revolutionary, and the 4 The pamphlet was a diatribe against the Montagnards, but its title became a popular catchphrase of the period, warning readers that they must remain vigilant against “Robespierre’s Tail,” that is, those who would revive the Terror. 3 Two days before Tallien delivered his speech, his former secretary, Méhée de la Touche, published a pamphlet titled La queue de Robespierre. According to the journalist Jean-Joseph Dussault, the gates of the prisons were not so much opened as “torn off their hinges.” 1 The playwright Georges Duval described in his memoirs the revival of Parisian night life after a year of Jacobin austerity: “From every corner of the Capital, the joyous sounds of the clarinet, the violin, the tambourine, and the flute call on passersby to the dance halls.” 2 On the other hand, it was far from clear that the dangers of the Terror were over. In the time that had passed since those events, the revolutionary government abolished repressive laws, relaxed censorship, and began the mass release of prisoners. On the one hand, there was little doubt that the repression, which had characterized the previous months, was being relaxed. There had been much uncertainty since the events of 9 Thermidor. On August 28, 1794, precisely one month after the execution of Robespierre, the Thermidorian leader Jean-Lambert Tallien delivered a seminal speech in the National Convention on the future of the revolutionary government in France.