The Reign of Terror:
The power to execute political enemies suspected of being an enemy of the revolution.

A constitutional monarchy was set up, after King Louis and his queen, Marie Antoninette, tried to flee the country, they were arrested, tried for treason an were beheaded.

Control of the government passed to Robespierre and other radicals, the extreme Jacobins and the Reign of Terror followed in 1793, when thousands of French nobles and others considered enemies of the revolution were executed. To deal with external opposition, it had established a Committee of Public Safety with the power to execute anyone suspected of being an enemy of the revolution.

Reign of Terror prisoners

As head of this committee, Robespierre was respnsible for the deaths of some 50,000 people during the Reign of Terror. Ironically, when he was ousted from the Committee of Public Safety, the man who had begun and supervised the Reign of Terror found himself condemned as excessively radical and faced the same guillotine on July 28, 1794 to which he had sent so many political enemies.

Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre

Cultural Literacy and Essay on Leadership
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.