In response to escalating unrest and fears of counterrevolution, the Convention decreed an extraordinary criminal court in Paris—later known as the Revolutionary Tribunal—which became a central instrument of political repression during the Terror.
The National Convention created the Committee of Public Safety as a small executive body to direct the Republic’s war effort and internal security amid foreign invasion and civil unrest, laying institutional foundations for revolutionary emergency government.
As military and internal crises intensified, the Committee’s composition was reshuffled (10 July), reducing Danton’s influence and preparing the way for a more hardline, centralized direction of revolutionary policy.
Maximilien Robespierre was elected to the Committee, strengthening its association with Jacobin political leadership and helping drive a tighter linkage between wartime governance, internal surveillance, and revolutionary justice.
The Convention decreed the levée en masse, a broad national mobilization that requisitioned manpower for the armies and organized civilian labor for war production and supply—an essential pillar of the Committee’s wartime program.
The Convention passed the Law of Suspects, expanding the category of “suspect” persons and enabling mass detentions via local oversight mechanisms—often treated as a key legal trigger for the Terror’s nationwide expansion.
To address subsistence crisis and inflation, the Convention enacted the Law of the General Maximum, setting price ceilings (and related enforcement) for essential goods—linking economic regulation to revolutionary security priorities.
Following trial before revolutionary justice mechanisms in Paris, Marie Antoinette was executed, exemplifying how high-profile prosecutions were used to signal the Republic’s break with monarchy and to legitimize harsh internal measures.
After political conflict between Montagnards and Girondins, prominent Girondin deputies were condemned and guillotined, marking a decisive purge within the Convention and further concentrating power around Jacobin-aligned institutions.
The Law of 14 Frimaire formalized central control by the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, curbing independent action by representatives-on-mission and systematizing the emergency state apparatus of the Terror.
Perceiving radical Hébertists as destabilizing, the Committee moved against Jacques-René Hébert and allies; their execution weakened sans-culotte pressure politics and intensified factional isolation within revolutionary leadership.
Georges Danton—an early Committee figure associated with calls for moderation—was tried and guillotined, showing the Committee’s willingness to eliminate influential rivals and narrowing the regime’s political base.
Robespierre promoted a civic deist religion through the Festival of the Supreme Being, a highly choreographed state ceremony that highlighted ideological ambitions of the revolutionary government and contributed to political backlash against Robespierre’s prominence.
The Law of 22 Prairial streamlined Revolutionary Tribunal procedures and narrowed defendants’ protections, helping drive the “Great Terror” spike in convictions and executions in the weeks before Thermidor.
On 9 Thermidor Year II, Robespierre and key allies were arrested in a Convention-led coup. The event decisively broke the Committee’s Terror leadership and is commonly treated as a turning point ending the Terror’s peak phase.
Robespierre was executed the day after his arrest, consolidating Thermidorian control and rapidly undermining the political configuration that had empowered the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror.
Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror (Apr 1793–July 1794)
