Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution is a 2009 documentary broadcast on BBC Two in July 2009. In 1794, French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre produced the world's first defense of "state terror" - claiming that the road to virtue lay through political violence. This film combines drama, archive and documentary interviews to examine Robespierre's year in charge of the Committee of Public Safety - the powerful state machine at the heart of Revolutionary France. Contesting Robespierre's legacy are Slavoj Žižek, who argues that terror in the cause of virtue is justifiable, and Simon Schama, who
France in the Middle Ages later years of the elderly Charlemagne's rule, the Vikings made advances along the northern and western perimeters of his kingdom. After Charlemagne's death in 814 his heirs were incapable of maintaining political unity and the empire began to crumble. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 divided the Carolingian Empire, and Charles the Bald ruled over West Francia, roughly corresponding to the territory of modern France. Viking advances were allowed to escalate, and their dreaded longboats were sailing up the Loire and Seine Rivers and other inland waterways, wreaking havoc and spreading terror. In 843 Viking invaders murdered the Bishop of