Committee of Public Safety
The Committee of Public Safety (French: Comité de salut public), set up by the National Convention on April 6, 1793, formed the de facto executive government of France during the Reign of Terror (1793 - 1794) of the French Revolution. Under war conditions and with national survival seemingly at stake, the Jacobins under Robespierre, centralized denunciations, trials, and executions under the supervision of this committee of twelve members. The committee was responsible for thousands of executions, most by the guillotine, in what was known as the "Reign of Terror." Frenchmen were executed under the pretext of being a supporter of monarchy or against the revolution.
The Committee ceased meeting in 1795.
Accomplishments
- Stabilization of prices through the "maximum"
- Mobilization of France's physical and human resources (Conscription of the levee en masse)
- Prevention of Counter-Revolution
Failures
- Tens of thousands of French citizens are killed
- Many tens of thousands more are alienated from the Revolution
Prominent committee members
- Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac - Earlier a Girondist, later a Bonapartist, drew up the 9 Thermidor report outlawing Robespierre.
- Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, an Hebertist
- Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès was a member only after 9 Thermidor
- Lazare Carnot - physicist, the "Organizer of Victory"
- Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois, an Hebertist
- Georges Couthon
- Georges Danton, only from April - July 1793
- Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles
- Robert Lindet
- Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, also mayor of Paris
- Claude Antoine, comte Prieur-Duvernois (also known as Prieur de la Côte-d'Or)
- Pierre Louis Prieur (also known as Prieur de la Marne)
- Maximilien Robespierre, a Montagnard
- Jean Bon Saint-André
- Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, a Montagnard
- Jean Lambert Tallien was a member only after 9 Thermidor
See also
External links
Reference
- R.R. Palmer Twelve Who Ruled (1941, ISBN 0-691-05119-4)