Reign of Terror June 1793 and the end of July 1794, there were 16,594 official death sentences in France, of which 2,639 were in Paris. There was a sense of emergency among leading politicians in France in the summer of 1793 between the widespread civil war and counter-revolution. Bertrand Barère exclaimed on 5 September 1793 in the Convention: "Let's make terror the order of the day!" They were determined to avoid street violence such as the September Massacres of 1792 by taking violence into their own hands as an instrument of government. Robespierre in February 1794 in a speech explained the necessity of
History of the Jews in France up the Jews of Rouen in a church and to have murdered them without distinction of age or sex, sparing only those who accepted baptism. According to a Hebrew document, the Jews throughout France were at that time in great fear, and wrote to their brothers in the Rhine countries making known to them their terror and asking them to fast and pray. In the Rhineland thousands of Jews were killed by the Crusaders (see German Crusade, 1096). The First Crusade led to nearly a century of accusations (blood libel) against the Jews, many of whom were burned or attacked