The Reign of Terror as the Armed General Will

The 1789 crisis of French society signaled its impending collapse, demanding radical

restructuring from the Third Estate, the only Estate not deriving privileges from the ancien

régime. But from Third Estate emerged two fundamentally different responses. The educated and

wealthier Third Estate members learned the art of politics, while the Third Estate popular classes

learned the art of insurrection. The former were concerned with order and stability necessary for

nascent capitalism, the latter with the problems of hunger, poverty and inequality. For the French

Revolution to succeed, these two paths, at least in the earliest stage, would have to discover a

common ground. It was the former’s challenge to impose its definition of the general will upon

the latter whose popular insurrection came closer to embodying the general will, and whose

Terror was an expression of that will. The assertion that the Terror was an expression of the

popular general will, therefore, is recognition that the Terror was not centered in the Jacobin

government, as has often been accepted, but within the ranks of the popular classes, politically

organized as the sans-culottes.

In the first days of the crisis, Third Estate elites sought power-sharing with the aristocrats

but marginalized by the other two Estates retaliated and proclaimed their Estate the nation. The

fledging politicians had no power to enforce its bold assertion. When Royalist troops amassed

and threaten the few political gains of the Third Estate, the hungry popular classes unexpectedly

mobilized, and in so doing discovered the insurrection, which it used to bring down the edifice of

the ancien régime. The sans-culottes were born with the destruction of the Bastille on 11 July

1789 and their subsequent virtual house arrest of the King on 10 October. The basic pattern was
set of a hesitating National Assembly debating their options while the spontaneous action of the

sans-culottes delivered practical solutions.

The sans-culottes developed a new form of rule: direct democracy through its newly

formed sectional organizations. In 1789 Paris had been divided into sixty districts to facilitate the

elections for the Estates General, but afterward rather than disappearing, these districts organized

general assemblies. A suspicious Assembly abolished the districts and replaced them with forty-

eight sections intended for purely electoral purposes.1

The ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, more than any other Enlightenment thinker,

impacted the course of the French Revolution, specifically its most radical phase that began with

the “second revolution” of 10 August 1792. Many of Rousseau’s contemporary philosophes

through the salons became absorbed into the upper middle class, but Rousseau remained

“essentially a man of the people,”2 giving voice for the first time to the lower class. This is one

reason why his ideas, as expressed by certain educated middle class Third Estate revolutionary

leaders, resonated strongly with the sans-culottes. The conservative editor of the Mercure de

France claimed that already in 1788 he had heard Marat “discussing the Contrat social in the

streets of Paris amid applause.”3 Marat’s early success, however, paled in comparison to

Maximilien Robespierre’s success with these ideas throughout his short but world historic

revolutionary career.

Robespierre subscribed to Rousseau’s notion of the “General Will” but the real challenge

was its application. Of such a difficulty, Rousseau confessed to Mirabeau that it “resembled that

of squaring the circle.” The challenge was the existence of antagonistic interests, of which

Rousseau had foreseen the possibility of causing representative assemblies to “degenerate into
1
Albert Soboul, The Sans-Culottes. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 164.
2
David Williams, "The Influence of Rousseau on Political Opinion," The English Historical Review 48, No. 191
(1933), 415.
3
Williams, “The Influence”, p. 421.
factions seeking their own interests.”4 Rousseau’s deus ex machina is literally a godlike

lawgiver. In the Social Contract Rousseau demanded of this lawgiver: “You would need a

superior intelligence that sees all the human passions without experiencing them … it would take

gods to give laws to men.” Robespierre, whether consciously or not, sought to be Rousseau’s

godlike lawgiver.5 The social dynamics of 1789 suggested a more complicated notion of the

General Will than the one found in the writings of Rousseau. Although Robespierre envisioned

himself as the interpreter of the General Will, realizing the sans-culottes were exploring their

own path, he trusted and defended their demands. Among the most important being the

permanence of the sectional organizations they had forged in the heat of battle.

For a number of reasons, including commitment to the General Will previously

discussed, later on when the Republic was established and its fate necessitated an alliance

between the sans-culottes and at least one faction of the Third Estate elite, Robespierre turned

out to be the link par excellent. Robespierre was strongly influenced by Rousseau’s emphasis on

equality and the inherent goodness of man6, attitudes that compelled him to consistently side

with the victims of oppression.7 Even as a small time lawyer back in Artois his preference for

representing the poorest had inspired his sister Charlotte to call him the “supporter of the

oppressed and the avenger of the innocent.”8 A remarkable lack of interest in money and a

reputation for indifference to bribes later helped earn him the nickname the Incorruptible.9 He

also had a sincere, disinterested, and absolute devotion to the Republic.10

4
Williams, “The Influence”, pp. 424-426.
5
Ruth Scurr, Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2006), p. 231.
6
Ruth, Purity, p. 25.
7
Ruth, Purity, p. 6.
8
Ruth, Purity, p. 41.
9
Ruth, Purity, p. 112.
10
Ruth, Purity, p. 7.
 Already in 1790, before the Republic had been proclaimed, Robespierre was the

Assembly’s leading advocate of democratic principles. He stood with the poor even when it

resulted in political isolation, such as when he opposed the division of citizenship into passive

and active with a long campaign for universal suffrage, defending the rights of despised groups

like actors, Jews, and French colonial subjects.11 Also, in 1789, he had been a staunch defender

of the districts of the sans-coluttes when the Assembly had moved to abolish them.12

From spring of 1792 onward different sections petitioned the Assembly for the right to

operate in permanence. Some, like the Théatre-Francais, croix-Rouge and Fontaine-de-Grenelle

sections, argued also for surveillance powers. Permanence was finally granted on 24 July by an

Assembly alarmed at the Brunswick Manifesto issued by the Duke of Brunswick. Robespierre

had endorsed the formation of the National Guard, which he regarded as an unprecedented

revolutionary act. He demanded that all citizens of legal age be admitted into the National

Guard,13 and for the 48 Paris sections to go into permanent session as part of an alliance.14

Robespierre hoped for an insurrection to sweep the king and all his supporters. He

correctly predicted that the Revolution was “about to take a more radical course” in a letter to

Couthon. By 9 August 1792, Danton and representatives of the 48 section had formed an

Insurrectionary Commune, which led attacks against the Tuileries. Robespierre recognized this

insurrection as more advanced than the fall of the Bastille. Importantly, he acknowledged that the

sans-culottes alone had protected the revolution.15 With the proclamation of the Republic on 10

August, Robespierre turned his attention to discerning between those who founded it on the

11
Ruth, Purity, pp. 117-119.
12
Ruth, Purity, p. 120.
13
Ruth, Purity, p. 155.
14
Ruth, Purity, p. 185.
15
Ruth, Purity, p. 212-216.
“principle of equality and in the general interest,” and those who wanted it out of selfish

reasons.16

After the French victory at the Battle of Valmy the Parisian sans-culottes were left

empowered, and having gained momentum made a pact with Robespierre’s faction in the

convention, the eventual outcome of which was a revolutionary government that put an end to

the separation of power between legislature and the executive.17 The sans-culottes called for

Louis XVI to be punished and complained that “two months later you still haven’t decided if he

is to be judged.”18 Robespierre, fully supported by the Paris sections, demanded the trial of Louis

XVI,19 in his speeches echoing the sans-culottes language that the King was “either guilty or

innocent,” and like any other person in the republic should be judged and sentenced

accordingly.20 Robespierre also championed Paris against their common enemies within the

convention: the Girondins. For the free-market Girondin the crime of the Jacobin was the

establishment of universal suffrage, restrictive market measures to assure everyone food and

promises of welfare assistance and state education for all.21

The pact, however, did not signal Jacobin willingness to give the sans-culottes free rein.

The most important example is the formation of the Revolutionary Tribunal in March 1793.

While it ostensibly encouraged the sans-culottes’ Terror, in fact, according to Danton, it was an

attempt to prevent the chaos of popular violence.22 Or as he famously declared, “Let us be

terrible so that the people will not have to be.”23 Robespierre astutely observed as early as the

Bastille that the people’s violence was a form of popular justice. At the time of the events he had

16
Ruth, Purity, p. 231.
17
Ruth, Purity, p. 263.
18
"Address of the Brave Sans-Culottes to the National Convention 1792," Primary Document.
19
Ruth, Purity, p. 251.
20
"Address of the Brave Sans-Culottes”, Primary Document.
21
Ruth, Purity, p. 271.
22
Ruth, Purity, p. 259.
23
Slavoj Zizek, Virtue and Terror. (London: Verso, 2007), p. xxix.
written that the terror the people inspired had “determined the revolution,” and observed about

the fate of one of Louis XVI’s ministers: he was “hanged yesterday by the people’s decree.”24

But now Robespierre and other Jacobins sought to minimize the violence.

For the sans-culottes wanting to maintain their power, the transition from insurrectionary

popular violence to orderly governmental sanction punishment, gave renewed importance to

denunciation as a way of exercising popular sovereignty. The sans-culotte regarded publicity as

their safeguard and revolutionary vigilance as a civic duty, of which the denunciation was a

manifestation.25 Hundreds of sans-culottes addressed the Legislative Assembly in February 1792,

reminding them of the importance of public sessions so that “the people should know who is not

working or watching out for their interests.”26 The vigilance was encouraged by Robespierre who

believed it was necessary to save the state from the “traitors wearing the masks of patriotism.”27

The charge was aimed primarily at the Girondin Legislative faction that demanded the

suppression of Paris early in 1793 and in April tried to set an example, sending Marat, the most

provocative of the Jacobins and friend of the sans-culottes, to the Revolutionary Tribunal. The

plot backfired. Not only was Marat released, he was crowned with a civic garland and carried,

“on the shoulders of a jubilant crowd,” right back to the Convention.28 The Girondin war on Paris

also manifested itself in the debate over representation. Echoing Rousseau, many sans-culottes

believed that representative government and liberty were incompatible. To reconcile

representative government with their own sectional democracy they demanded the powers of

veto and recall.29 They believed liberty required that the laws be condoned by the people30 and

24
Soboul, The Sans-Culottes, p.94.
25
Soboul, The Sans-Culottes, p. 143.
26
Soboul, The Sans-Culottes, p. 136.
27
Ruth, Purity, pp. 185-186.
28
Ruth, Purity, pp. 264-265.
29
Soboul, The Sans-Culottes, p. 107.
30
“On the Silver Mark,” in M. Robespierre and Slavoj Zizek, Virtue and Terror, (London: Verso, 2007), p. 7.
that the power of recall would ensure people’s control over the elected.31 In a sense the

insurrection of May 31 through June 2, 1793 was an exercise of the popular sovereign right of

recall, by force, which the Girondin had denied them in law.32 Robespierre had encouraged the

insurrection when he advocated the arming of the sans-culottes against the Girondins. The

general arming of the sans-culottes on June 2, 1793 (13 Prairial I) turned the balance of forces in

their favor. During this period the general will was most markedly felt, suggesting that the

general will is precisely the sovereign power of the people armed.

The Girondin leaders were arrested and their followers unleashed a federalist revolt to

unseat Paris.33 From among the Jacobin leaders Marat was singled out once again. A pro-

Girondin assassin struck Marat down in his home sending a shockwave of anger throughout Paris

and Jacobin supporters around the country. The revolt was crushed and the Girondin leaders

were sentenced to death. With the government firmly in the hands of the Jacobin, the sans-

culottes expectations increased. In November 1792, as a solution a wheat shortage, they

demanded the government forced “by a rigorous decree, the large landowners, the big farmers,

and all those who have storehouses of this commodity of primary necessity to take their wheat to

the market.”34 By early 1793, more embolden than ever, the more radical sans-culottes, the

enragés, demanded strong controls on the economy and the capitalists they termed the

aristocracy of the rich.35

The Jacobins understood that the appearance of the enragés was an manifestation of an

earlier threat, when back in November 1792 the sans-culottes had declared: “If this petition

doesn’t meet with the success we have the right to expect, then we’ll make a new one, which will

31
Soboul, The Sans-Culottes, p. 252.
32
Soboul, The Sans-Culottes, pp. 111-112.
33
Ruth, Purity, p. 277.
34
"Address of the Brave Sans-Culottes”, Primary Document.
35
"Manifesto of the Enrages by Jacques Roux 1793," Primary Document.
be the last one; in which we will reveal all the traitors who, under the mask of patriotism, want to

overturn the holy edifice of liberty and equality. And then we’ll see if you’ll still thumb your

noses at us.”36 And so for it’s their central role in crushing the Girondin, but also worried about a

similar fate befalling its own government, the Jacobin Convention rewarded the sans-culottes

with the fixed price on basic necessities and the death penalty for hoarders, which the Girondin

had opposed.

The alliance was soon after stressed further by increasing pressure from the sans-culottes,

which came to include demands for better wages, and under the influence of the ultra-

revolutionary Hébert driven to near breaking point when the demands were transformed into a

general strike. Under intense sans-culotte pressure, the revolutionary government was forced to

appease them, it proclaimed “terror the order of the day,” and gave in to the economic demands,

which culminated in the General Maximum Law on 29 September.37 These surface gains masked

the government’s decision to insulate itself from the unstabilizing influence of the sans-culottes’

general assemblies. This was made plain on 4 December 1793 (14 Frimaire II) when the

Convention passed a law that effectively clamped down on activism not sanctioned by the

government.38 The sans-culottes never rebounded from these attempts to subjugate the General

Will through state channels. Shortly after France’s 26 June 1794 decisive military victory over

Austria had made the revolutionary government’s pact with the sans-culottes superfluous,

Robespierre and his closest political collaborators were disposed by a conspiracy involving

members of the Convention on 27 July (9 Thermidor II).

Robespierre’s revolutionary government was an unsustainable balancing act aimed more

at restraining the General Will than expressing it. In the oppressive and glaringly unequal world

36
"Address of the Brave Sans-Culottes”, Primary Document.
37
Ruth, Purity, p. 283-285.
38
Ruth, Purity, p. 297.
of the late eighteenth century, the exercise of democracy, in the truest sense, direct rule by the

people armed, could not have been anything short of explosive. This “authentic explosion of

revolutionary terror” has often been confounded with the revolutionary government’s attempt to

control it. But a significant shift had occurred in the nature of the Terror as power moved from

Paris to Robespierre’s government.39 Ostensibly, all the Jacobins understood terror was the only

way to save the revolution40, yet Marat alone, in his public demands for a dictatorship, appeared

to have grasped its full implications. Opposing the necessity of a dictatorship in theory,

nonetheless, both the sans-culottes and Robespierre’s Jacobins, compelled by the logic of events,

headed in that direction in practice.

So what was the Reign of Terror? It was the government sanctioned and scaled down

version of the otherwise much more explosive Terror of the popular classes. In this sense, the

real Terror, arising from the generally oppressive and unbearable conditions of the popular

classes, was a more genuine expression of the General Will than the official Reign of Terror that

sought to control it. Nonetheless, it must still be acknowledged that the official Reign of Terror

adhered to a concept of the General Will – albeit Robespierre’s own interpretation with himself

as lawgiver – and did partially meet many of the urgent needs of the sans-culottes.

39
Zizek, Virtue and Terror, xxxiii.
40
Ruth, Purity, p. 272.
 Bibliography

Primary Sources

"Address of the Brave Sans-Culottes to the National Convention 1792" Marxists Internet
Archive. http://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/1792/sans-culottes.htm.

"Manifesto of the Enrages by Jacques Roux 1793." Marxists Internet Archive.

http://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/roux/1793/enrages01.htm.

“On the Silver Mark.” In Maximilien Robespierre and Slavoj Zizek. Virtue and Terror. London:
Verso, 2007, pp. 5-19.

Secondary Sources

Robespierre, Maximilien, and Slavoj Zizek. Virtue and Terror. London: Verso, 2007.

Scurr, Ruth. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. New York: Holt Paperbacks,
2006.

Soboul, Albert. The Sans-Culottes. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Williams, David. "The Influence of Rousseau on Political Opinion." The English Historical
Review 48, No. 191 (1933): pp. 414-430.