The Efficacy and Justification of the Committee of Public Safety

During the course of the French Revolution, there were many distinct phases that changed both the political and economic direction of the country. First, there was the political change of 1789, which included the desacralization of the monarchy and the creation of a constitutional monarchy, including elections to a newly formed National Assembly. However, as the Revolution progressed, radicalism became every more entrenched in French politics. This caused the National Assembly to disband, and a new Legislative Assembly formed, containing members of the Parisian Jacobin club, a younger and more radical group of politicians. Even later, however, an even more radical group of politicians, known as the Mountain, led by Maximilien Robespierre, controlled the newly formed National Convention, and employed dictatorial tactics to maintain control over the people. The Committee of Public Safety, set up by the National Convention and maintained by Robespierre and his compatriots, utilized effectively brutal techniques during a period known as the Reign of Terror, which eventually contradicted the fundamental principles on which the French Revolution began.

Robespierre's infamous Committee of Public Safety was a crude but impeccably effective political weapon that forever changed the course of the Revolution by instilling fear in the people and by dictatorially controlling them. Robespierre's Reign of Terror seemed to be blind to any class or political distinction. It broadly combatted any enemy of the state,

and was unhesitant in its arrest of hundreds of thousands of people during the radical phase of the Revolution (McKay, 698). It not only destroyed the political enemies to the new power structure, but also placed fear in the people. Such widespread terror worked "to solidify the home front" (McKay, 698). In essence, the Committee of Public Safety acted to control the people and place their focuses on the Revolution that Robespierre and his allies envisioned. Without such terror, negative sentiment which rose during this time period against war and tyranny might have formally arisen to oppose those in power; however, the implication of dictatorial tactics enabled the country to move forward in its war against Europe, without the worry of such an uprising. In your opinion, did Robespierre and his allies effectively control the populace during the Reign of Terror? Also, do you think that the Committee benefited France, or was it a bad influence to the French?

Even though Robespierre's famous Committee of Public Safety was effective in controlling the French populace, its extermination of thousands of men and women during the course of the Revolution severely repudiated the basic ideals of the Revolution on which Robespierre and other radicals like himself started the Revolution only four years prior. The original French Revolution of 1789, a time when moderate middle class businessmen rallied for individual liberties and republican government, embodied the heart and soul of the Revolution. They overthrew the tyrannical monarchy, established an elected legislative body that represented the people, and confirmed the individual liberties of the people with passage of such documents as the "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" (Sherman, 57-58). Contradictory to this was Robespierre's epic Reign of Terror over the people. Courts set up by the National Convention ignored legal procedure and swiftly executed thousands of people at the whims of a few dictatorial leaders (McKay, 698). Robespierre attempted to justify his terror in the "Speech to the National Convention" (Sherman, 60-61); however, he merely stated that terror was necessary for control, not for liberty. Not once did he maintain the core principles of the French Revolution through the employment of the Committee of Public Safety. Moreover, he stated the ideals of the Revolution, but only justified the terror only as necessity for Revolution, never justifying it as compliant with the ideals of the Revolution. He supported Revolution when it suited his ascendancy to power, yet fervently quelled it whenever it threatened his power. The Reign of Terror was a period of time when the original ideals of the Revolution were forgotten, and a new era of bloody dictatorial rule was employed, continuing from then through the fall of Napoleon. Do you think that the actions of the Committee of Public Safety were justified? Did they or did they not embody the ideals of the original French Revolution of 1789?