Reign of Terror
| 5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794 | |
 Nine emigrants are executed by guillotine, 1793
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| Preceded by | Montagnard Convention |
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| Followed by | Thermidorian Reaction |
| Leader(s) | |
The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794), also known as The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between two rival political factions, the Girondins and Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution".
Between June 1793 and the end of July 1794, there were 16,594 official death sentences in France, of which 2,639 were in Paris. But the total number of deaths in France in 1793–96 in only the civil war in the Vendée is estimated at 250,000 counter-revolutionaries and 200,000 republicans. The guillotine, called the "National Razor", became the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions: King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, most of the Girondins, Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (a supporter of the revolution who had adopted the name "Philippe Égalité"), Madame Roland, and others such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade.
During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies. Within France, the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The Catholic Church opposed the revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy).
In addition, the French First Republic was engaged in a series of wars with neighboring powers, and parts of France were engaging in civil war against the loyalist regime. The extension of civil war and the advance of foreign armies on national territory produced a political crisis and increased the already present rivalry between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins. The latter were eventually grouped in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and they had the support of the Parisian population. The French government established the Committee of Public Safety, which took its final form on 6 September 1793, in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise additional French military forces.
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