This was not the revolution anyone had imagined. In 1788, the King, Louis XVI, had agreed to let the Estates General meet, because he needed to tax the people to raise money, largely because of the expense involved in helping the United States with their revolution. Two of the Estates, the clergy and the nobles weren't taxed, because though there were obviously more middle-class people (the Third Estate), each Estate had one vote. The meeting was called to raise taxes, but went in a different direction. "When called to discuss national finances, the Third Estate had other complaints to air" (Hartman). Food was already scarce and prices were high, and yet the nobles and clergy wanted to raise their taxes. Riots broke out in the countryside and the mob in Paris stormed the Bastille. It was "built originally for the defense of Paris, it had become a … reminder of the injustices of absolute monarchy" (Fisher 59). After a bloody fight, the Bastille was overrun by the mob. This proved the power of the mob and their next target was the King's castle, Versailles. The King and his family were brought to Paris, where they were kept as prisoners, but held on to many of their powers. Although by this time most Frenchmen were angry with the nobility, they couldn't fathom the idea of removing the King entirely, as he was practically a god to them. A new constitution was drawn up under which the King maintained veto power over the bills that the new National Assembly passed. He agreed to support the Revolution by cooperating with it in this way. This situation remained more or less stable until 1791, when the Revolution moved from this relatively moderate state to the radical, frenzied state under which Robespierre took hold of the country.

Louis XVI's wife was Marie Antoinette, daughter of the Austrian empress Maria Theresa (Yapp). She was widely disliked even before the Revolution started because of her wasteful spending habits and haughty attitudes towards the people of France. She was about to give them a much better reason to dislike her. She secretly made plans with her brother in Austria for the royal family to escape to Austria. They were discovered very close to the border, and brought back and put in jail under much tighter security. The people of Paris were "shocked and outraged that Louis had broken his promise to support the Revolution" (Eimerl 43).

The attempted flight from Paris gave certain radicals all the ammunition they needed. A large portion of the population was already angry with the new Assembly, because they felt the poor were being ignored. The poor organized themselves into clubs, the most important of which became the Jacobins, "who hated the deputies of the Assembly because of the indifference they showed to the sufferings of the poor" (Eimerl 55). But when a new National Convention was elected, it was a moderate group, the Girondins, who held a majority of the seats. This new Convention debated for two months on, "what should be done with the King, whether he should be brought to trial and if so who should try him" (Fisher 142). The discovery of papers, which, among other things, detailed the planned flight to Austria, probably sealed his fate. After two days of voting, the verdict was in and, "on 21 January 1793, at about ten in the morning, Louis XVI was guillotined" (Belloc 69)

It was not long after this that the Jacobins seized control of the government. They skillfully turned the mob of Paris against the Girondins. A Jacobin named Couthon gave a speech accusing twenty-two Girondins of being traitors to France. They were all sentenced to house arrest, but they knew that this meant they would soon be put to death. The men sentenced to death that day, "included most of the men who had led the Revolution since the fall of 1791" (Eimerl 133). As soon as the Revolution turned radical, when the Jacobins took control, the Revolution began devouring its own leaders.

A young woman from the French countryside named Charlotte Corday was a Girondin supporter. When she read of the conviction of the Girondin leaders, she became convinced that a man named Marat was to blame. He published a newspaper that, "spew[ed] out messages of hate and urg[ed] people to further brutalities" (Eimerl 139). She gained entrance to his house by pretending to desire an interview with him, found him in the bath, and stabbed him to death there. After being captured, she was questioned. The Jacobins would not believe that she'd acted alone. Suddenly, they had something they could use to validate their point that there were traitors everywhere, a vast conspiracy against the Revolution, "and now the Terror was surely approaching" (Fisher 165). Still, due to its radical acts, the Revolution lost yet another leader.

The Jacobins were now led by two men, Robespierre and Danton. Danton was the more reasonable of the two; he was concerned with ending France's wars with foreign powers. Robespierre, on the other hand, was determined to kill off as many of his opponents as he needed to in order to secure the power of the Jacobins. Danton was genuinely interested in conducting fair trials for those accused of treason. He organized the Revolutionary Tribunal as a place for these fair trials to take place. However, once Robespierre and his supporters, "became masters of the Convention, the Tribunal lay ready to their hand" (Eimerl 151). They used this as a tool for legally condemning people to death. Marie Antoinette, the former queen, was one of its first victims. Robespierre soon found another way to obtain power through one of Danton's committees. Danton had created the Committee of Public Safety as a body to control the various departments of government. When he left the Committee, however, Robespierre quickly joined. This was the beginning of the true Reign of Terror.

Robespierre had laws passed under which an accused person had no right to question witnesses or documents produced as evidence. Later, the laws stated that no witnesses or documents were necessary to prove that someone had committed treason. The trials were by no means fair, but "behind all this was a conviction that if only enough blood were shed, the State would be purged of traitors" (Fisher 178). The terror grew worse and worse in Paris as Robespierre grew more afraid of the traitors that he felt were all around him. Eventually, even the great Jacobin leader Danton was sent to the guillotine, because Robespierre perceived him as a threat. There was an attempt in the Convention to speak out in favor of Danton, but fear of Robespierre was so great by that time that it took only a few threatening words to quiet the dissenters. The role call of those to be executed each day grew, "forty name a day, fifty, sixty…" (Eimerl 195).

For some time, it looked like Robespierre and his followers would have total control of France indefinitely. But, we've already seen that such radical men cannot remain in power forever. Robespierre finally outdid himself. He delivered a vicious speech in which he claimed that many in the government, including those on the Committee of Public Safety, were traitors and that the Committee had to be purified. This was finally too much. The next day, a deputy named Tallien spoke out against Robespierre in the Assembly. Soon, all of his traditional friends, including the Jacobin mob, turned on him. The deputies voted to arrest him, and he was sentenced to death. He was guillotined on July 28, 1794, (Belloc 79) killed as much by his own final, radical, spiteful speech as by any "traitors to the Revolution."

Belloc, Hilarie. The French Revolution. New York : Oxford University Press, 1966.

Eimerl, Sarel. Revolution! France 1789-1794. Boston : Little, Brown, and Company, 1967.

Fisher, John. Six Summers in Paris 1789-1794. New York : Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966.

Hartman, Paul. All You Need to Know About the French Revolution. http://olympus.athens.net/~hartman/essay13.htm 1996.