France in the long nineteenth century executed; in consequence, however, his own popular support eroded markedly. Georges Danton was beheaded for arguing that there were too many beheadings. There were attempts to do away with organized religion in France entirely and replace it with a Festival of Reason. The primary leader of this movement, Jacques Hébert, held such a festival in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with an actress playing the Goddess of Reason. But Robespierre was unmoved by Hébert and had him and all his followers beheaded. On July 27, 1794 the French people revolted against the excesses of the Reign of Terror in what
Irreligion in France of Public Safety through their execution of Hébert and several of his followers on 24 March 1794, having ascended just seven months earlier. Even after the Thermidorean Reaction ended the revolutionary anti-clerical manifestations, the movement for secularization continued during the Napoleonic era and onward. French atheists participated in the increasingly popular political movements which sought for greater economic and political parity in society, the most notable being the French Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. In 1877, the Grand Orient de France (GOdF), the largest Masonic body, at the instigation of the Protestant priest Frédéric Desmons, allowed