ABSTRACT
The thermidorian conspirators were the first group to confront the difficulty. Initially it was not clear whether they wanted to eliminate Robespierre's methods, or just the man. But thermidor unleashed a reaction against the Terror and the radical revolution that they could not control. For the next five years, the question of how to repudiate the worst excesses of the Revolution without endangering the principles it had articulated, and the new elites it had brought to power, dominated French political life. The "thermidorian reaction" turned against the Revolution's social and economic policies. The political leaders of the Directory lacked the stature of their predecessors under the National Assembly and the Convention. Paul Barras, a corrupt thermi-dorian Convention deputy who served on the five-man Executive Directory throughout its existence, symbolized their shortcomings. Militant republicans and Idologue intellectuals continued to identify Catholicism with counter-revolution and obscurantism, while the faithful resisted the regime's restrictions on worship and religious education.
