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
Prisons of the Reign of Terror like Poland. Contrary to this, that one believed and repeated, the takeover by force of Thermidor 9 year II, in the spirit of Barère, was to make it possible to get rid of Robespierre to continue with more rigour the great project of Terror, and the destruction of the Republic. The "day of the dupes" on Thermidor 9, reversed the course of things, and the members of the joined committees, in the impossibility to continue their crimes, made against misfortune good heart and suddenly joined the Thermidoriens, to make accord with the opinion that, since Terror was stopped on Thermidor