Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror was the period of the French Revolution, from September 1793 to July 1794, in which the revolutionary government used mass arrests and executions against those it considered enemies of the Revolution. Directed by the Committee of Public Safety, in which Maximilien Robespierre was the leading voice, and enforced by revolutionary tribunals, it sent some 17,000 people to their deaths by official sentence, while many more died in prison or in the suppression of revolts such as that in the Vendée. It ended with the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794).