Committee of Public Safety

The Committee of Public Safety (Comité de salut public) was a committee of the National Convention which formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the Reign of Terror, a violent phase of the French Revolution. Supplementing the Committee of General Defence, created early January 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was created on 6 April 1793 by the National Convention. It was charged with protecting the new republic against its foreign and domestic enemies, fighting the First Coalition and the Vendée revolt. As a wartime measure, the committee was given broad supervisory and administrative powers over the armed forces, judiciary and legislature, as well as the executive bodies and ministers of the convention. As the committee, restructured in July, raised the defense (levée en masse) against the monarchist coalition of European nations and counter-revolutionary forces within France, it became more and more powerful. In December 1793, the Convention formally conferred executive power upon the committee. Among the members, the radical Jacobin Maximilien Robespierre was one of the most well-known, though he did not have any special powers or privileges. After the arrest and execution of the rival factions of Hébertists and Dantonists, sentiment in the Convention eventually turned against Robespierre, who was executed in July 1794. In the following Thermidorian Reaction, the committee's influence diminished after 26 months and it disappeared on the same day as the National Convention, which was 25 October 1795, but it probably continued till the end of the month. The French Revolution brought about an immense shift in society in which citizens desired to bring about a new age of critical rationality, egalitarianism, and patriotism amongst French men. Revolutionary ideals were spread throughout France and a belief in democracy and civilian government was heralded as the new era of French civilization. 1793 would bring a new republican constitution, drafted by the National Assembly.

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Related concepts (17)

National Convention

The National Convention (Convention nationale) was the constituent assembly of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for its first three years during the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly. Created after the great insurrection of 10 August 1792, it was the first French government organized as a republic, abandoning the monarchy altogether.

Jacobins

The Society of the Friends of the Constitution (Société des amis de la Constitution), renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality (Société des Jacobins, amis de la liberté et de l'égalité) after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club (Club des Jacobins) or simply the Jacobins (ˈdʒækəbɪn; ʒakɔbɛ̃), was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for political crimes.

Sans-culottes

The sans-culottes (sɑ̃kylɔt, 'without breeches') were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th-century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime. The word sans-culotte, which is opposed to "aristocrat", seems to have been used for the first time on 28 February 1791 by Jean-Bernard Gauthier de Murnan in a derogatory sense, speaking about a "sans-culottes army".