The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution by Timothy Tackett (review)

Why did the French Revolution, carried out in the name of “liberty and equality,” generate the violence of the Terror? For Tackett, the answer lies neither in circumstances nor ideology, but rather in the “evolving mindset” of revolutionary leaders and in the revolutionary process itself (5). To trace this dynamic, Tackett has produced a masterful, overarching narrative of the Revolution in both Paris and the provinces, paying particular attention to how specific incidents and new political practices influenced the psychology and emotions of revolutionaries. “We must seek to understand how it was that the Terrorists themselves felt terrorized” (7). Fear—especially obsessive fear of counterrevolutionary conspiracy—engendered a mentality enabling the Terror. Tackett focuses on political elites, on the men who joined political clubs or held national or local office. To build his case, he draws artfully from the diaries and letters of several representative revolutionaries, including a bookseller, an estate agent, a mathematician, and a deputy’s wife.

These people enable Tackett to personalize his tale of Revolution as emotional whirlwind. Although optimism and exhilaration frequently share the stage with uncertainty and apprehension, the account overall continually tips the balance toward the darker, more worrisome impact of revolutionary innovation. For example, the new electoral politics in towns and villages across France created opportunities for thousands of new men to hold office and exercise local power, but this decentralization of state power also resulted in a “fracturing” or “breakdown of authority” that inevitably yielded divisiveness and anxiety (Chapter 3).

Tackett stresses the early roots of the Terror, whether psychological or institutional. The institutions of 1793—“the Revolutionary Tribunal, the representatives on mission, the surveillance committees, the Committee of Public Safety—all had been prefigured after the Flight to Varennes or in the weeks following August 10” in national decrees or local improvisations (277). Likewise, fear-producing panics, beginning with the Great Fear of 1789, were endemic to the revolutionary process. Certain practices, such as denunciation or the Manichean rhetoric of journalists on the left and right, began as early as 1789, increasingly reinforcing the spiral of trepidation.

Tackett’s emphasis on distress and fear in so many contexts across the early Revolution has both disadvantages and advantages. It runs the risk of becoming a litany, and at times makes it hard to understand why many people felt so committed to the Revolution. But it also powerfully reveals the long-term roots of evolving anxiety and makes conspiracy fears believable. To be fair, Tackett’s account also highlights surprising moments of optimism: In the winter of 1792/93, the new Republic and momentary victories in the war with Austria injected high-flown confidence into the revolutionaries, making the military losses and counterrevolution of spring 1793 all the more suspicious and terrifying.

Counter-revolution—both real and imagined—played a pivotal, emotional role. In the early 1790s, aristocratic émigrés made only laughable attempts to foment counter-revolution. But, as France’s traditional military leaders, they appeared threatening at the time. By 1793, larger opposition movements in the Vendée and the federalist cities produced panics that built on earlier fears. Pressure from Parisian militants intensified the mood of paranoia. Alarm also stemmed from the repeated betrayals by leaders, including Mirabeau (Honoré Gabriel Riqueti), Louis XVI, Lafayette (Gilbert du Motier), and Charles François Dumouriez. In addition, from the king’s flight onward, factionalism between political groups exacerbated fears of internal conspiracy. Although other historians have underscored these same factors leading toward the Terror, Tackett does far more than reiterate circumstances or revolutionary dynamics. With his nuanced portrait of revolutionary mentalité, he renders the terrorists’ own terror more real and inserts a crucial new interpretive layer that helps to overcome the stale debate about whether “ideology” or “circumstances” spawned the Terror. He also demonstrates the analytical power of the “history of the emotions” when grounded in deeply textured evidence and context.