ABSTRACT
Historians are usually apprehensive about attributing to the actions of the men they study an ideological dimension of which the actors themselves may have been unaware or to which they were indifferent. Generations of French historians who have insisted that 'the revolution' was a bloc have in practice also identified it with the general will, which has allowed them to damn all those who could not accept the way that things were going as 'counter-revolutionaries'. The French revolution, therefore, provides an introduction to any study of terrorism and its justification. The revolutionaries denied the legitimacy of individual acts of terrorism. On 30 August 1793 the Jacobins were urged to make Terror the order of the day. In his speech of 5 February 1794 Robespierre defined revolutionary government as resting on the twin bases of vertu and Terror. Regenerating an entire people meant that the terror would have to last for a very long time.
