ABSTRACT
After the death of Robespierre, chaos continued to rule the land until the Revolution gave way to a "security state" in November of 1799 with the advent of Napoleon, a general in the French army. The Law of 1905 ended the battle raging in the land between the "two Frances". Hereafter the identity of France was laique, bringing victory to the secular camp and ending the country's former identification with Catholicism. The law placed religion under suspicion as a divisive element in society and made the state supreme as the enlightened agent of social unity and rational progress. The term most associated with the decision and the new national identity was laicite and its cognates. On May 31, 1883, the Report of the Chamber of Deputies and its Commission of the Concordat endorsed much of Leon Gambetta's analysis, finding the power structure of the Catholic Church abusive to its underlings and detrimental to the authority of the French government.
