ABSTRACT
‘The Terror’ has often been seen as an attempt to contain the violence that led to the massacre of prisoners in September 1792 and/or a response to a crisis situation brought about by threats to the Revolution. Repression of opposition 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. The label ‘the Terror’ was only applied to the year of revolutionary government 1793-94 once it was over.
Article 1. Immediately after the publication of the present decree, all suspected persons who are within the territory of the Republic and still at large shall be placed under arrest.
Article 2. The following are considered suspected persons: (1) those who, either by their conduct, relations, words or writings, have shown themselves to be partisans of tyranny, federalism and enemies of liberty; (2) those who cannot justify in the manner prescribed by the law of 21 March last [establishing Committees of Surveillance] their means of existence and their discharge of their civic duties; (3) those who have been refused certificates of patriotism; (4) public officials suspended or removed from their offices by the National Convention or its commissaries, and not reinstated, especially those who have been or shall be removed by virtue of the law of 12 August last; (5) those former nobles, including husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons or daughters, brothers or sisters, and agents of émigrés who have not constantly demonstrated their loyalty to the Revolution; (6) those who emigrated in the interval from 1 July 1789 to the publication of the law of 8 April 1792 [confiscating émigré property], although they may have returned to France in the period determined by that law or previously.
Article 3. The Committees of Surveillance established according to the law of 21 March last, or those substituted for them either by order of the representatives of the people sent to the armies and the departments, or by virtue of special decrees of the National Convention, are charged with preparing, each in its own arrondissement, a list of suspected persons, with issuing arrest warrants against them, and with affixing seals to their papers. Commanders of the public force to whom these arrest warrants shall be delivered shall be required to execute them at once, under penalty of dismissal.
Article 4. The Committee may not order the arrest of any person unless seven members are present, and only on an absolute majority of votes.
Article 5. Individuals arrested as suspects shall first be taken to jails in the place of their detention; in default of jails they shall be kept under surveillance in their respective places of residence.
Article 6. During the following week they shall be transferred into national buildings, which the departmental administrations shall be required, as soon as possible after receipt of the present decree, to designate and prepare for this purpose.
Article 7. The detainees may have their absolutely essential belongings taken into these buildings. They shall remain there under guard until the peace.
Article 8. The guard costs shall be borne by the detainees and divided among them equally. This guard duty shall be entrusted, preferably, to fathers of families and relatives of citizens who have gone or shall go to the frontiers. The salary is fixed, for each man of the guard, at the value of a day and a half of labour.
Article 9. Surveillance Committees shall forward without delay to the Committee of General Security of the National Convention the list of persons whom they have had arrested, with the reasons for their arrest, and the papers which they have seized with respect to them.
Article 10. The civil and criminal tribunals may, if there is occasion, hold under arrest as suspected persons, and send to the jails above mentioned, those accused of offences in respect of which it has been declared that there is no occasion for indictment, or who have been acquitted of charges brought against them.
Source: Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez and Prosper-Charles Roux, Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, 40 vols (Paris, 1834–8), vol. 29, pp. 109–10.https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781032618814/e9ac31eb-0a68-4fdc-b417-e6e5b1e67c6c/content/fig16_Unfig_001.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>