Few books about the French Revolution have had better legs in the academy than R.R. Palmer’s classic, “Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of Terror in the French Revolution.” First published in 1941, it is still often found on college syllabi across the country today.
In its fifth summer, 1793 or Year II according to the new calendar, the French Revolution was in crisis. Foreign armies threatened it from every direction. Civil insurrection raged across the countryside. Starvation and inflation gripped the major cities. Foreign plots and domestic conspiracies were imagined to be everywhere. Meanwhile, the revolutionary government in Paris was paralyzed by political infighting. The fate of the Revolution hung in the balance. Such is the backdrop for Palmer’s narrative history of the Committee of Public Safety (CPS). The one problem that underlay all others was the need for a government sufficiently unified, powerful and legitimate to master the crisis.
“Twelve Who Ruled” addresses several fundamental questions. What was the Committee of Public Safety? What was it trying to achieve? Was it successful? Why did it fall? Palmer tackles these core issues in a lively, narrative format while presenting nice little biographical vignettes of all twelve members of the committee.
Created on April 6, 1793, the CPS was tasked to “watch over and speed up government actions.” As a unit, the twelve members of the CPS had much in common. They were, for the most part, financially well off before the Revolution, middle class intellectuals from the provinces (8 of the 12 were lawyers, while just 2 had any military experience whatsoever) who had shown no radical tendencies before 1789. Just three had been elected to the Estates General, but all were elected deputies to the National Convention in 1792. All but one was under 40-years-of-age. (Robespierre didn’t join the committee until the 27th of July; it was his first official role after four years of non-stop Revolutionary activity in Paris.)
“The month of September was the turning point in the transition from anarchy to dictatorship,” according to the author. The original powers of the CPS were somewhat circumscribed. That would quickly change. On September 5th terror was declared “the order of the day.” The war in Europe viewed as a life-and-death struggle of liberty against tyranny. On September 17th the Law of Suspects was passed, casting a wide net to detain anyone with even a hint of counter-revolutionary sympathies, real or even simply perceived. And then, on September 29th, the General Maximum law was passed fixing prices on 39 commodities. Those caught not abiding by the price and wage laws were instantly guilty of being “Suspects.” For the first time in 5 years France had something like an effective central government. On December 4th (14 Frimaire) the convention passed a law granting unlimited power to the CPS.
The Terror led to the first totalitarian state as the CPS attempted to nationalize the entire life of the country. However, “socialism was far from the intention of the [CPS],” according to Palmer. Rather, “the economic regulations grew up piecemeal, imposed by circumstances, with no foundation in theory except a genuine sense of the sovereignty of the nation.” Not only was France at war and under blockade, but also private enterprise had all but collapsed, as many bourgeois were resistant to the Jacobin government. The CPS essentially sought economic self-sufficiency, an autarky that Palmer calls nothing but “a gloss on the brute fact of isolation.” The CPS had only two options to requisition the needed supplies for the war and domestic consumption, both of them fraught with peril. They could either print assignats (which would lead to run-away inflation) or seek to control prices and wages. The chose the latter, but with limited success.
So, what was the purpose of the Terror? The situation had been complicated by the return of Danton to Paris in late 1793. His call for moderation was supported in the Convention. His Citra or Indulgent followers there were opposed by the Ultras of the Paris Commune and the Cordelier Club, the Herbertists who pushed for more of the guillotine. In the middle was Robespierre; a man who Palmer repeatedly insists had the utmost respect for constitutional government and the freedom of religion (so long as it didn’t influence political allegiances). On January 26, 1794, Robespierre issued a circular letter to all the Jacobin Clubs of France urging unity of purpose and avoiding “the pitfalls of overzealousness.” And then, on February 5th, in a speech to the National Convention that Palmer hails as “one of the most noble utterances in the history of democracy,” Robespierre sought “to mark clearly the aim of the Revolution,” the true principles of the government’s actions. In short, he wanted to replace a country of egotism, etiquette, custom, insolence, vanity, greed, conceit, intrigue and the triviality of grand society with a nation built upon morality, probity, reason, large-mindedness, merit, talent, and the love of glory and pride in one’s country. In other words, to trade “all the virtues and miracles of the republic for all the vices and puerilities of the monarchy.” It was a vision aligned with Robespierre’s reading of Cicero’s “The Catiline Conspiracy” and Plutarch’s “Life of Lycurgus.”
As utopian as all of this sounded – and was – Palmer insists that Robespierre was a true child of the Enlightenment and believed that virtue is natural in people. Thus, any deviation from such virtuous behavior by society could only be ascribed to malevolence or foreign intrigue. The author concludes, “The fact that [Robespierre’s] aim was impossible does not mean that his diagnosis was incorrect.” Indeed, Palmer believes that Robespierre, “with all of his faults, which were many, was one of the half-dozen major prophets of democracy.”
Palmer writes that the events of Ventose, specifically those of 23 Ventose (March 13th), were perhaps even more important than those of Thermidor for what they signaled for the future. For the first time, it was stated and enforced that whoever opposed the present ruling order was in a state of insurrection and ipso facto a counter-revolutionary. In the words of Saint Just, a man Palmer claims “would be most at home in a twentieth century revolution”: “Every party is then criminal because it is a form of isolation from the people…a form of independence from the government.” Dissent was now officially treason. According to Palmer, “The Revolution was now in the government, not the populace.” And the CPS now “a full grown dictatorship.”
Armed with the new powers bequeathed by Ventose, Robespierre was quick to strike. The first to go were the radical Herbertists, the faction of the Paris Commune and rowdy sans-culottes. The Paris streets, which had guided revolutionary events since 1789, were silent. “For the first time in 5 years,” the author stresses, “central authority asserted itself.” Danton and his Indulgents were purged on April 5, 1794 (Palmer claims that Robespierre moved against the Herbertists first only because they had tried to launch a failed street revolt in March and had to be dealt with immediately). The fall of the Herbertists left the sans-culottes and the Paris militants confused and bewildered, the fall of the Dantonists left the deputies of the National Convention frightened.
Robespierre had overplayed his hand. The Revolution in March 1794 was in no threat of extinction, as it had been in July 1789 by Royalists or August 1792 by foreign powers or May 1793 by the forces of anarchy and civil insurrection. Just when reconciliation seemed like the most natural order of the day, the CPS pursued hardline policies. The Cordelier Club was closed and the Revolutionary Army disbanded. The theater was strictly controlled. New, uniformed forms of dress and language were devised. Indeed, the Revolution was being transmogrified into some sort of cult, which reached its apogee on June 8, 1794 at the Celebration of the Supreme Being. There were distinct puritanical undertones to the new regime, where frugality, discipline and chastity were virtues exalted above all others. Palmer says that Robespierre’s public prominence in these events and as the face of the CPS likely hastened his downfall as a would-be dictator.
After just 113 days of uncontested power, Robespierre was overthrown on July 27th or 9 Thermidor. The events leading to the downfall were, according to Palmer, “trivial…a series of personal intrigues culminating in coup d’état.” From the perspective of the Thermidoreans, the story was simple: Robespierre, with the aid of Georges Couthon and Saint Just, attempted to make himself dictator, even a quasi-religious figure. The parallels to Julius Caesar are uncanny, although Palmer makes no note of it. On the other hand, a more radical interpretation of events holds that Robespierre, frustrated that the purges of Ventose had not fully succeeded in rooting out corruption and selfishness, continued to fight hard to bring about his ideal republic of virtue and was opposed by the mendacious and venal deputies of the National Convention. Indeed, Palmer notes, “Those who think that Robespierre’s ideas were capable of realization regard Thermidor as an in calculable tragedy.”
In the end, Palmer takes a balanced view of the CPS, viewing it simultaneously as necessary, flawed, creative, successful and disastrous. Robespierre emerges as more of a flinty and naive idealist than a tyrannical monster, while the true and lasting legacy of the CPS was more that of effective central government than political extremism, purges and executions by guillotine. If you are looking to read just one book on the Reign of Terror or only a handful on the entire French Revolution, “Twelve Who Ruled” should be it, even after all of these years.
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