In Defence of the Terror (15 page)

13
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 60, p. 17.

14
Ibid, p. 59.

15
Ibid, p. 67.

16
In this respect, what René Girard says on the difference or lack of difference between vengeance and penal justice is illuminating: ‘The penal system has no principle of justice essentially different from the principle of vengeance. The same principle is at work in both cases, that of violent reciprocity or retribution. Either this principle is just, and justice is already present in vengeance, or else there is no justice in either case. The English expression for vengeance is that someone “takes the law into his own hands”.'
La violence et le sacré
, Paris: Grasset, 1972.

17
Danton.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 60, p. 63 (10 March 1793).

18
Ibid.

19
Procès-verbal des événements du 9 septembre dressé d'après le récit de monsieur le maire et de plusieurs officiers municipaux. Mémoires sur les journées de Septembre
. Cited after Conein,
Langage politique et mode d'affrontement
, p. 133.

20
A similarly long and laborious process had been needed to obtain a declaration that the
patrie
was in danger.

21
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 17, p. 388 (12 August 1792).

22
‘Sur les principes de morale politique' (17 Pluviôse year II); Robespierre,
Pour le Bonheur et pour la Liberté
, p. 296.

23
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 20, p. 695.

24
Robespierre,
Pour le Bonheur et pour la Liberté
, p. 277.

25
Robespierre, 17 Pluviôse year II.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 84, p. 330. Bronislaw Baczko seems to be commenting on this sentence when he says that ‘the Terror was not the realization of a preconceived political project'; see ‘The Terror Before the Terror', p. 23.

26
On this reorganization, see Françoise Brunel,
Thermidor. La chute de Robespierre
, Paris: Complexe, 1989, pp. 64, 70.

27
Saint-Just, 27 Germinal year II,
Œuvres complètes
, article 25 of the decree on the general police, p. 822.

28
Verdier,
La vengeance
, vol. 3, p. 152.

29
This was certainly the case with Danton.

30
In the expression of Myriam Revault d'Alonnes,
D'une mort à l'autre. Précipices de la révolution
, Paris: Esprit/Le Seuil, 1989.

31
King Saul, who did not fully obey God and spared the Amalekites he had captured, himself lost his kingdom. The God of Israel no longer recognized him as the king of Israel.

32
D. Vidal, in his article ‘Vengeance' in the
Dictionnaire d'anthropologie et d'ethnologie
. He goes on to note that ‘it is possible to invoke texts such as the
Iliad
, the
Mahabharata
or the Old Testament, to show how the expression of values may be constantly repeated in narrative situations dominated by a context of vengeance' (p. 738).

33
This ‘morality in action', however – the virtuous laws designed to end misfortune – most often preceded major measures of constraint.

34
Robespierre.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 84, p. 332.

35
Ibid, p. 302.

36
On the use of this term, see Marc Deleplace,
L'anarchie de Mably à Proudhon. Histoire d'une appropriation polémique
, Fontenay: ENS Édition, 2000.

37
Deputation from the Luxembourg, Tuileries and Muséum sections, 1 October 1793.
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 74, pp. 384–5. Cf. Benoît Deshaye,
Législation et exécution des lois
, Master's thesis, Université de Paris VI 2001, pp. 207–13.

38
LB 41-3393. This
Avis
was dated the 24th day of the first month, i.e. 15 October 1793; see Deshaye,
Législation et exécution des lois
, p. 210.

39
Le Moniteur universel
, 22 Prairial year II, vol. 20, p. 695.

40
[‘Decadal' in the sense of every ten days, the period with which the Convention had replaced the week, as part of the new revolutionary calendar. – D. F.]

1
Commission temporaire de Ville-Affranchie, pp. 6–7.

2
Maximilien Robespierre,
Œuvres complètes
, vol. 9, Paris: E. Leroux, 1910, p. 459.

3
Robespierre,
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 9, pp. 575–6.

4
Rancière,
Disagreement
, p. 8.

5
Ibid.

6
Ibid., p. 11.

7
Ibid., p. 9.

8
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 8, p. 354.

9
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, article VI.

10
From a speech of 5 September 1793, as printed in
Le Journal de la Montagne
, 6–7 September 1793.

11
Preamble to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

12
Robespierre,
Pour le Bonheur et pour la Liberté
, p. 233.

13
John Locke,
Second Treatise on Government
, London: A. Millar et al., 1764 Book 1, chap. 2, paras 7 and 8.

14
De Officiis
III,6.32; see Cicero,
De Officiis
, trans. W. Miller, London: William Heinemann, 1968, pp. 298–9.

15
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 25, p. 149.

16
On the Thermidorian backlash, see Suzanne Desan, ‘Reconstituting the social after the Terror: family, property and the law in popular politics',
Past and Present
164 (1999), pp. 81–121.

17
On this representation of the sans-culotte, see Michel Naudin, ‘La réaction culturelle en l'an III: la repésentation du jacobin et du sans-culotte dans l'imaginaire de leurs adversaires', in M. Vovelle (ed.),
Le tournant de l'an III. Reaction et terreur blanche dans la France révolutionnaire
, Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 1997, pp. 279–93.

18
Anne Vincent-Buffault,
Histoire des larmes: XVIIIème–XIXème siècles
, Paris: Rivages, 1986, p. 110.

19
Archives parlementaires
, vol. 45, p. 146.

20
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 25, p. 81; reprinted Paris: Plon, 1947. On the position of Boissy d'Anglas, see Yannick Bosc, ‘Boissy d'Anglas et le rejet de la Déclaration de 1793', in Roger Bourderon (ed.),
L'an I et l'apprentissage de la démocratie
, Saint-Denis: Éditions PSD, 1995.

21
Le Moniteur universel
, vol. 25, p. 151.

1
Saint-Just,
Œuvres complètes
, p. 700.

2
We should, however, bear in mind the proportions of cruelty involved: the repression of the Paris Commune left 20,000 dead, as pointed out by Jean-Pierre Faye in the article ‘Terreur' in his
Dictionnaire politique portatif en cinq mots
, Paris: Gallimard, 1982.

3
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, seeking to conceive the paradoxical ties between humanism and terror, noted that it is sometimes ‘allowable to sacrifice those who according to the logic of their situation are a threat and to promote those who offer a promise of humanity'.
Humanism and Terror
, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, p. 110.

4
On the question of the right of resistance to oppression, see Jean-Claude Zancarini (ed.),
Le droit de résistance, Xlle-XXe siècle
, Paris: ENS Éditions, 1999; and specifically my article there on the Thermidorian repression of the right of resistance.

5
I am in debt to Françoise Brunel for the clarification of his pseudo-quotation by Monique Canto-Sperber, who clearly lacked a gift for Saint-Just's language.

6
Kurt Hiller, Munich 1919; cited by Benjamin in ‘Critique of Violence', pp. 250–1.

7
Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence', p. 251.

8
Ibid., p. 236.

9
Ibid., p. 243.