Reign of Terror Reign of Terror The Reign of Terror, or The Terror (), is the label given by most historians to a period during the French Revolution after the First French Republic was established. Several historians consider the "reign of terror" to have begun in 1793, placing the starting date at either 5 September, June or March (birth of the Revolutionary Tribunal), while some consider it to have begun in September 1792 (September Massacres), or even July 1789 (when the first lynchings took place), but there is a consensus that it ended with the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794. Between
Paris in the 18th century The former city government, the Commune, had virtually disappeared; of the one hundred forty members of its General Council before the Terror, eighty-seven had been guillotined, and forty imprisoned. Of the thirty-three senior city administrators, twenty had been executed and ten imprisoned. It was impossible to have a document registered for lack of living city employees. On August 24, 1794, the new government of France, the Directory created a whole new city government. The forty-eight sections, each governed by a revolutionary committee, were replaced by twelve arrondissements, strictly under the control of the Directory. Each arrondissement was governed by a