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Analyze the events or factors that you believe were the most significant causes of the Reign of Terror.

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Analyze the events or factors that you believe were the most significant causes of the Reign of Terror.
This essay peels through the layers of the remarkable years from 1789 through to 1794 to explore the catalysts of that period of the French Revolution characterized by political repression and widespread violence known as la Terreur, or, The Reign of Terror. The French Revolution, which initially saw an overthrow of the dictatorship of Louis XVI, was a period of time when France descended into a stage of political purges and indiscriminate martial law where many innocent civilians were killed. This essay investigates the causes for this unfortunate turn in the trajectory of the revolution. These causes are the storming of Bastille, the …show more content…

After overthrowing the monarchy there was a perception, fuelled by their opponents the Jacobins that the Girondins wished to halt the democratic progress of the revolution now that they had achieved their own political goals.9 Evidence for this lies in the fact that the Girondins did not want King Louis to be tried. The Jacobins, however, relying on the support of the fervent and militant Parisian laborers, the sans-culottes10, insisted upon this though the Girondins tried to save the Kings life. This, combined with a growing perception that they were too vacillating slowly alienated from the other major power brokers in the city. The key to the Girondins falling from power was their capacity to alienate the Parisian populace. Maximilian Robespierre, a prominent Jacobin politician who had been in favor of more radical democratic reforms and was in sympathy with the sans-cullottes, symbolizes the difference between the Girondin position and the more radical Jacobins. At the 1792 National Convention which met to agree on the policy and legislative platforms of the government, Robespierre launched a passionate attack on the Girondins – ‘You seemed to prefer power, and we equality.’ Robespierre went on to admonish the Girondins for their concern for policy and legality of commitment to the principles of the revolution. Robespierre pointed out that liberty, under the old regime was illegal. ‘Citizens’ he said, ‘do you want a revolution without a revolution?

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