1979 DBQ The French Revolution and The Terror

Essay: 

The Terror was a horrendous period during the French Revolution of murder and unfair rule. The Committee of Public Safety and the National Convention had decided that they would unite the forces of the Mountain and Jacobin against the nobility and the Girodins.  Anyone who was against them and the revolution was killed. The Terror was helpful in exterminating the rebellious Frenchmen and intimidating the people; however, even those that had been on the side of the Mountain and Jacobin realized how bad things were, so they rose up against the tyrannical Committee of Public Safety and National Convention, disbanding them, and creating a new democratic government.

The Terror was a terrible time to be living in France.  Robespierre, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, led the Terror.  The Terror was time where anyone against the Revolution was murdered.  The areas where the executions of the Terror were mainly focused were Vendee, Lore, Lyon, and Paris (Doc. 1). People were brought to be executed by either having their head chopped off by the guillotine, being shot, or being drowned. In Paris 2,639 people were executed.  Most of these people, 53%, were nobles or upper middle class.  Only 23% of the people executed in Paris were the working class and peasants.  However, throughout France only 15% of the people executed were in the upper class or nobles and 68% were in the working class or peasantry (Doc. 2).  People were murdered for an array of crimes including, conspiracy, being against the revolution, "hostile acts against the state," and "intelligence with the enemy" (Doc. 3)

All of this horror was terrifying to the people.  Family members and friends were everyday, being murdered right in front of their eyes. In a speech to Parliament, the British Prime Minister, William Pitt, talks about the French people saying, "But their efforts are merely the result of a system of restraint and oppression, the most terrible and gigantic, that has, perhaps, ever existed. They are compelled into the field by the terror of the
guillotine – they are supported there only by those resources which their desperate situation affords;
and, in these circumstances, what can be the dependence on the steadiness of their operations, or what
rational prospect can there be of the permanence of their exertions?" (Doc. 8)  The situation for the French people was not good.  If they rose up against Robespierre, they were executed.  The people soon realized that the Terror could go on no more and that they had to do something.  In a report to the French government on public opinion from February 23, 1794, it was said that, “Bitter complaints already expressed numberless times, were repeated today of the arrest and imprisonment of citizens who are good patriots and are victims of ambition, cupidity, jealousy, and, in short, every human passion" (Doc. 10).  In another report to the government from March of 1794, it says that, "The revolutionary committees are every day falling into discredit. You daily hear that they consist of a number of intriguers, who plunder the nation and oppress citizens, It is a fact that there is no section in Paris which is not dissatisfied with its revolutionary committee or does not seriously desire to have them abolished" (Doc. 13)  The people were unhappy with their government.  They were becoming fed up with the unfair rule and evil that was their government.  Some people still believed in the government saying, "The law is just" (Doc. 12).

Most of the people disagreed though and eventually that grew to be so much that Robespierre was accused of treason and executed, something which he had accused of so many innocent people. At the end of the Terror the Committee of Public Safety was disbanded.  The government was taken down and a new group called the Thermidorians came to power.  They created a democratic government and greatly improved the French nation.