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HIS: This Day in History: 1793 – French Revolution: The French National Convention initiates the Reign of Terror.

 HIS: This Day in History: 1793 – French Revolution: The French National Convention initiates the Reign of Terror.

The Reign of Terror, commonly The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First French Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and spurious accusations of treason by Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety.

There is disagreement among historians over when exactly "the Terror" began. Some consider it to have begun only in 1793, giving the date as either 5 September, June or March, when the Revolutionary Tribunal came into existence. Others, however, cite the earlier time of the September Massacres in 1792, or even July 1789, when the first killing of the revolution occurred. There is a consensus that it ended with the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794 and resulting Thermidorian Reaction. By then, 16,594 official death sentences had been dispensed throughout France since June 1793, of which 2,639 were in Paris alone; and an additional 10,000 died in prison, without trial, or under both of these circumstances.

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