ABSTRACT

The Terror has often been seen as an attempt to institutionalise the violence that led to the massacre of prisoners and/or a response to a crisis situation brought about by threats to the Revolution. It was also, as the following decree shows, an integral part of the process of revolutionary government and the centralisation of the State. The Law of Suspects, along with the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunals and Committees of Surveillance, was an important part of that machinery and the pursuit of those considered, for one reason or another, hostile to the Revolution.