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Committee of Public Safety Committee of Public Safety For other uses, see Committee of Public Safety (disam- biguation). The Committee of Public Safety (French: Comité de sa- lut public), created in March 1793 by the National Con- vention and then restructured in July 1793, formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794), a stage of the French Revolution. The Committee of Public Safety succeeded the previous Committee of General Defence (established in January 1793) and assumed its role of protecting the newly estab- lished republic against foreign attacks and internal rebel- lion. As a wartime measure, the Committee—composed at first of nine, and later of twelve, members—was given Lettre anglaise (English Letter) dated 29 June 1793 as published broad supervisory powers over military, judicial, and leg- by the French National convention during the Revolution (1793). islative efforts. It was formed as an administrative body This document was used to prove English spying and conspiracy. to supervise and expedite the work of the executive bod- ies of the Convention and of the government ministers appointed by the Convention. As the Committee tried tion did not accede to his leadership. News of his de- to meet the dangers of a coalition of European nations fection caused alarm in Paris, where imminent defeat by and counter-revolutionary forces within the country, it the Austrians and their allies was feared. A widespread became more and more powerful. belief held that revolutionary France was in immediate peril, threatened not only by foreign armies and by recent In July 1793, following the defeat at the Convention of anti-revolutionary revolts in the Vendée, but also by for- the moderate Republicans (or "Girondists"), the promi- eign agents who plotted the destruction of the nation from nent leaders of the radical Jacobins—Maximilien Robe- within.[1] spierre and Saint-Just —were added to the Committee. The power of the Committee peaked between August The betrayal of the revolutionary government by Du- 1793 and July 1794, under the leadership of Robespierre. mouriez lent greater credence to this belief. In light In December 1793, the Convention formally conferred of this threat, the Girondin leader Maximin Isnard pro- executive power upon the Committee, and Robespierre posed the creation of a nine-member Committee of Pub- established a virtual dictatorship. lic Safety. Isnard was supported in this effort by Georges Danton, who declared, “This Committee is precisely what The execution of Robespierre in July 1794 represented we want, a hand to grasp the weapon of the Revolutionary a reactionary period against the Committee of Public Tribunal.”[1] Safety. This is known as the Thermidorian Reaction, as Robespierre’s fall from power occurred during the The Committee was formally created on 6 April 1793. Revolutionary month of Thermidor. The Committee’s Closely associated with the leadership of Danton, it was influence diminished, and it was disestablished in 1795. initially known as “the Danton Committee”.[2] Danton steered the Committee through the 31 May and 2 June 1793 journées that resulted in the fall of the Girondins, and through the intensifying war in the Vendée. How- 1 Origins and evolution ever, when the Committee was recomposed on 10 July, Danton was not included. Nevertheless, he continued to [3] 1.1 Committee of discussion support the centralization of power by the Committee. On 27 July 1793, Maximilien Robespierre was elected to On 5 April 1793, the French military commander and the Committee. At this time, the Committee was enter- former minister of war General Charles François Du- ing a more powerful and active phase, which would see mouriez defected to Austria, following the publication it become a de facto dictatorship alongside its powerful of an incendiary letter in which he threatened to march partner, the Committee of General Security. The role his army on the city of Paris if the National Conven- of the Committee of Public Safety included the gover- 1 2 1 ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION nance of the war (including the appointment of generals), the appointing of judges and juries for the Revolutionary Tribunal,[4] the provisioning of the armies and the pub- lic, the maintenance of public order, and oversight of the state bureaucracy.[5] The Committee was also responsible for interpreting and applying the decrees of the National Convention, and thus for implementing some of the most stringent policies of the Terror—for instance, the levée en masse, passed on 23 August 1793, the Law of Suspects, passed on 17 Septem- ber 1793, and the Law of the Maximum, passed on 29 September 1793. The broad and centralized powers of the Committee were codified by the Law of 14 Frimaire (also known as the Law of Revolutionary Government) on 4 December 1793. 1.1.1 Execution of the Hébertists and Dantonists On 5 December 1793, journalist Camille Desmoulins be- gan publishing Le Vieux Cordelier, a newspaper initially aimed—with the approval of Robespierre and the Com- mittee of Public Safety[6]—at the ultra-revolutionary Hébertist faction, whose extremist demands, anti- Maximilien Robespierre, spokesman and a radical voice behind religious fervor, and propensity for sudden insurrec- the leadership of the Committee of Public Safety tions were problematic for the Committee. However, Desmoulins quickly turned his pen against the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security, comparing their reign to that of the Roman tyrants chron- icled by Tacitus, and expounding the "indulgent" views of the Dantonist faction. Public Safety and enacted on 10 June 1794, went further Consequently, though the Hébertists were arrested and in establishing the iron control of the Revolutionary Tri- executed in March 1794, the Committee of Public Safety bunal and, above it, the Committees of Public Safety and and the Committee of General Security ensured that General Security. The law enumerated various forms of Desmoulins and Danton were also arrested. Hérault de public enemies, made mandatory their denunciation, and Séchelles—a friend and ally of Danton—was expelled severely limited the legal recourse available to those ac- from the Committee of Public Safety, arrested, and tried cused. The punishment for all crimes under the Law of alongside them. On 5 April 1794, the Dantonists went to 22 Prairal was death. From the initiation of this law to the guillotine. the fall of Robespierre on 27 July, more people were con- demned to death than in the entire previous history of the Revolutionary Tribunal.[8] 1.2 Committee of rule However, even as the Terror reached its height, and with it the Committee’s political power, discord was growing The elimination of the Hébertists and the Dantonists, in within the revolutionary government. Members of the the opinion of historian François Furet, “had definitively Committee of General Security resented the autocratic closed the book on a collegial executive: Robespierre [7] behavior of the Committee of Public Safety, and par- was, in fact, the head of the Republic’s government.” ticularly the encroachment of Robespierre’s General Po- Certainly the strength of the committees had been made lice Bureau upon their own brief.[9] Arguments within evident, as had their ability to control and silence opposi- the Committee of Public Safety itself had grown so vi- tion. The Law of 14 Frimaire was enacted in December olent that it relocated its meetings to a more private 1793 to centralize and consolidate power within the Com- room to preserve the illusion of agreement.[10] Robe- mittee of Public Safety. The creation, in March 1794, of spierre, a fervent supporter of the theistic Cult of the a “General Police Bureau”—reporting nominally to the Supreme Being, found himself frequently in conflict with Committee of Public Safety, but more often directly to anti-religious Committee members Collot d'Herbois and Robespierre and his closest ally, Louis Antoine de Saint- Billaud-Varenne. Moreover, Robespierre’s increasingly Just—served to increase the power of the Committee of extensive absences from the Committee due to illness (he Public Safety, and of Robespierre himself. all but ceased to attend meetings in June 1794) created The Law of 22 Prairial, proposed by the Committee of the impression that he was isolated and out of touch. 3 1.3 Fall of the Committee, and aftermath • Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, representative of Hautes-Pyrénées (imprisoned, escaped guillotine to When it became evident, in mid-July 1794, that Robe- live in hiding) spierre and Saint-Just were planning to strike against their • Jean-François Delmas, representative of Haute- political opponents Joseph Fouché, Jean-Lambert Tal- Garonne lien, and Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier (the latter two of whom were members of the Committee of General • Jean-Jacques Bréard, representative of Charente- Security), the fragile truce within the government was Inférieure dissolved. Saint-Just and his fellow Committee of Pub- lic Safety member Barère attempted to keep the peace • Pierre-Joseph Cambon, representative of Hérault between the Committees of Public Safety and General (forced to live in hiding) Security; however, on 26 July, Robespierre delivered a • speech to the National Convention in which he empha- Georges Danton, representative of Paris proper sized the need to “purify” the Committees and “crush all (guillotined) factions.”[11] In a speech to the Jacobin Club that night, • Jean-Antoine Debry, representative of Aisne, later he attacked Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne, who replaced by Robert Lindet, representative of Eure had refused to allow the printing and distribution of his upon resignation speech to the Convention. On the following day, 27 July 1794 (or 9 Thermidor ac- • Louis-Bernard Guyton-Morveau, representative of cording to the Revolutionary calendar), Saint-Just began Côte d'Or to deliver a speech to the Convention in which he had • Jean-Baptiste Treilhard, representative of Seine-at- planned to denounce Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varenne, Oise and other members of the Committee of Public Safety.
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