During the French Revolution, was the Terror successful in preserving the Republic?

The Terror, which lasted from 1793 to 1794, has provoked a lot of debate among historians. What they basically agree on is that the Terror cannot be understood except in the context of the broader French war against the monarchies of Europe. This conflict was for the survival of the Revolution itself, and in this environment, men like Georges Danton and especially Maximilian Robespierre sought to eliminate what they saw as domestic enemies of the...

The Terror, which lasted from 1793 to 1794, has provoked a lot of debate among historians. What they basically agree on is that the Terror cannot be understood except in the context of the broader French war against the monarchies of Europe. This conflict was for the survival of the Revolution itself, and in this environment, men like Georges Danton and especially Maximilian Robespierre sought to eliminate what they saw as domestic enemies of the Revolution. Robespierre in particular wanted to impose his understanding of republican virtue on the French population. Both of these measures, which were seen as necessary to victory in the war, were pursued in tandem with such measures as price supports long advocated by the Parisian sans-culottes who provided a base of political power for Robespierre and his radical Jacobin faction. Robespierre established the Committee of Public Safety to carry out these measures, which were given added urgency by a revolt of counter-revolutionaries in the Vendee, a region outside Paris, that escalated into a full-scale civil war in 1793. As one historian has observed, the Terror was in large part an attempt to rein in what its leaders saw as the unchecked, random violence of the Parisian mobs--to "prevent the sans-culottes from taking the law into their own hands." 

In this aim, it has to be said, the Terror was a success. It was also successful in crushing the Vendee revolt, which threatened the very future of the Revolution, and in eliminating many people who were in fact enemies of the Revolution. It is also true that the French army defeated its enemies on the battlefield in 1794, preserving the Republic for years. The role played by the Terror in bringing about this victory is open for debate. However, the Terror and the actions of the Committee of Public Safety in general mobilized the nation for war in ways unprecedented in human history. In any case, we must remember that whatever successes the Terror had can only be considered in light of its enormous human cost--thousands of people died under the guillotine and in mass executions, and many were, in fact, not enemies of the Revolution.