Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution itself. There has been much scholarly debate over whether the movement was popularly motivated. The French Revolution initially began with attacks on church corruption and the wealth of the higher clergy, an action with which even many Christians could identify, since the Roman Catholic church held a dominant role in pre-revolutionary France. During a two-year period known as the Reign of Terror, the episodes of anti-clericalism grew more violent than any in modern European history. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the church; abolished the Catholic monarchy; nationalized church property; exiled 30,000 priests and killed hundreds more. In October 1793 the
Political terror scale between 1976 and 1983. In 1984, Mark Gibney took over as manager of the database and expanded the list of countries coded to 180 and the range of years to the most recent years available (currently 2012).The Political Terror Scale uses three sources to code each country: The State Department's "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices," the "Annual Report" from Amnesty International and most recently the "World Report" from Human Rights Watch.The database can be viewed and downloaded from its website. The Political Terror Scale is a five-point fixed scale. The scale is based on the assessment of violence along