2H - The aftermath of the Terror: the Thermidorian reaction and White Terror
After Robespierre's fall, the Convention tried to recover political freedom and prevent a return to Terror. Its reaction weakened popular organisations and economic controls, however, while revenge and hunger produced new violence. The Paris risings of 1795 show why ending the Terror did not settle the Revolution.
The Thermidorian reaction
Thermidorian reaction describes the movement away from the institutions and radical politics associated with the Terror after 9 Thermidor, 27 July 1794. The men who overthrew Robespierre did not begin with a single moderate programme. Some had participated in repression and feared becoming its next victims. Their shared objective was to remove his circle; the direction of government then developed through further struggles.
The Convention reduced the power of the Committee of Public Safety, restored more regular turnover in committee membership and repealed the Law of 22 Prairial. Prisoners were released as accusations were reconsidered. Surviving Girondin deputies returned to the Convention. The Paris Commune's defeat and the closure of the Jacobin Club in November weakened organisations that might support a renewed radical challenge.
These changes widened the space for parliamentary disagreement. In his memoirs, the deputy Durand-Maillane recalled being able to criticise the Mountain in August 1794 without being silenced as before. His account is valuable for the change in deputies' experience; his claim to have resisted oppression also served to defend his own conduct. Use the political position and retrospective purpose alongside the content. Durand-Maillane's account.
The reaction did not restore the old monarchy or aristocratic privileges. Many Thermidorians remained republicans and beneficiaries of revolutionary changes. They sought to preserve legal equality and property while excluding forms of popular intervention that they associated with instability. Greater freedom for deputies could therefore accompany fewer opportunities for militants outside the assembly.
White Terror and revenge
The White Terror was violence directed against former Jacobins, militants and officials associated with the Terror, especially in 1795. It drew on anger among relatives of victims, religious grievances, royalist mobilisation and local rivalries. In the south, gangs attacked former terrorists and massacred prisoners. Places such as Lyon and Marseille, which had experienced severe repression, became centres of revenge.
White Terror
Anti-Jacobin intimidation and killings after the fall of Robespierre, involving local vengeance and royalist or conservative activism. It was not simply the old Terror operating under a new national committee.
In Paris, the jeunesse dorée, or gilded youth, attacked radical militants and used dress and songs to signal hostility to sans-culotte culture. Fréron, himself formerly associated with severe revolutionary repression, encouraged this movement. His change of alignment shows why a simple division between former executioners and innocent moderates is misleading.
Authorities sometimes tolerated or encouraged anti-Jacobin action, and official prosecutions of former terrorists reinforced the reaction. Carrier was tried and executed in December 1794 for his role at Nantes. Yet judicial accountability and mob revenge were different processes. A fair judgement must distinguish the investigation of specific crimes from treating everyone associated with Jacobin politics as a legitimate target.
The White Terror exposed the weakness of claims that Thermidor immediately restored the rule of law. Protection from revolutionary courts did not necessarily mean protection from local enemies. Its uneven, often local nature also distinguishes it from the centrally authorised machinery of the earlier Terror.
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