Élisabeth of France (1764–1794) to the spirit of equality proclaimed by the Republic [...] representing to the General Council of the Commune the absurdity of keeping three persons in the Temple Tower, who caused extra service and excessive expense", and Hébert insisted on her execution. Although Robespierre himself wished to avoid such a "useless cruelty", the political climate was such that he "hid his thought of reprieve under words of insult. He dared not claim that innocent woman from the ferocious impatience of Hebert without insulting the victim he desired to save. He called her the 'despicable sister of Capet'." On 9 May 1794,
Prisons of the Reign of Terror decided by political calculation, with various ulterior motives, to accentuate Terror by "purging" (it is their word) the prisons of Paris. Those were overflowing since the removal of the provincial revolutionary tribunals, in March 1794—the defendants stopped in the provinces were submitted in Paris, the recrudescence of the orders of arrest launched in Ile-de-France, by the Committee of general security and the "administrative slownesses" of the revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, backed-up by the paperwork, and the need for arguing the charges. Under the law of the 22 Prairal, the alleged conspiracies of prisoners made it possible to go more quickly,