First White Terror First White Terror The White Terror was a period during the French Revolution in 1795, when a wave of violent attacks swept across much of France. The victims of this violence were people identified as being associated with the Reign of Terror – followers of Robespierre and Marat, and members of local Jacobin clubs. The violence was perpetrated primarily by those whose relatives or associates had been victims of the Great Terror, or whose lives and livelihoods had been threatened by the government and its supporters before the Thermidorean Reaction. Principally these were, in Paris, the Muscadins, and in the
Reflections on the Revolution in France of Man" (1791) by Thomas Paine. Nonetheless, Burke's work became popular with reactionaries such as King George III and the Savoyard philosopher Joseph de Maistre. Historically, "Reflections on the Revolution in France" became the founding philosophic opus of Conservatism when some of Burke's predictions occurred: the Reign of Terror under the new French Republic executed thousands, (including many nuns and clergy) from 1793 to 1794 to purge so-called counter-revolutionary elements of society. That, in turn, led to the political reaction of Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte's government, which appeared to some to be a military dictatorship. Burke had predicted the rise of