Committee of Public Safety

The Committee of Public Safety (French: Comité de salut public), set up by the National Convention on April 6, 1793, formed the de facto executive government of France during the Reign of Terror (1793-4) of the French Revolution. Under war conditions and with national survival seemingly at stake, the Jacobins under Robespierre, centralized denunciations, trials, and executions under the supervision of this committee of twelve members. The committee was responsible for thousands of executions, most by the guillotine, in what was known as the "Reign of Terror." Frenchmen were executed under the pretext of being a supporter of monarchy or against the revolution. The Committee ceased meeting in 1795.

Accomplishments

• Stabilization of prices through the Maximum Price Act
• Mobilization of France's human resources through conscription by the Levée en masse. France had over 850,000 men in her armies
• Creation of a war dictatorship for the first time.
• Suppression of counter-revolution and rebellions

Failures

• Tens of thousands of French citizens are killed
• Many tens of thousands more are alienated from the Revolution
• Did very little for the poor, who bore the burden of conscription and grain requisitions.
• Hospitals, schools and charities became deprived of staff because of attacks on religious orders.
• Deepening hostilities in the countryside over the dechristianisation campaign.

Prominent members

• Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac - Earlier a Girondist, later a Bonapartist, drew up the 9 Thermidor report outlawing Robespierre.
• Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, an Hébertist
• Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès was a member only after 9 Thermidor
• Lazare Carnot - physicist, the "Organizer of Victory"
• Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois, an Hébertist
• Georges Couthon
• Georges Danton, only from April - July 1793
• Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles
• Robert Lindet
• Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, also mayor of Paris
• Claude Antoine, comte Prieur-Duvernois (also known as Prieur de la Côte-d'Or)
• Pierre Louis Prieur (also known as Prieur de la Marne)
• Maximilien Robespierre, a Montagnard
• Jean Bon Saint-André
• Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, a Montagnard
• Jean Lambert Tallien was a member only after 9 Thermidor

See also

• Committee of General Security
• Public safety
• Revolutionary Tribunal

External links

• Complete list of the members of the Committee of Public Safety
• Reference for membership of the Committee of Public Safety (in French)

References

• R.R. Palmer Twelve Who Ruled (1941, ISBN 0-691-05119-4)

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