Committee of Public Safety
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The Committee of Public Safety (French: Comité de salut public), set up by the National Convention on April 6, 1793, formed the de facto executive government of France during the Reign of Terror (1793 - 1794) of the French Revolution. Under war conditions and with national survival seemingly at stake, the Jacobins under Robespierre centralized denunciations, trials, and executions under the supervision of this committee of twelve members. The committee was responsible for thousands of executions, most by the guillotine, in what was known as the "Reign of Terror." Frenchmen were executed for little or no reason, although most were accused of anti-revolutionary activity.
The Committee ceased meeting in 1795.
The most prominent members of the committee
- Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac - Earlier a Girondist, later a Bonapartist, drew up the 9 Thermidor report outlawing Robespierre.
- Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, an Hebertist
- Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès was a member only after 9 Thermidor
- Lazare Carnot - physicist, the "Organizer of Victory"
- Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois, an Hebertist
- Georges Couthon
- Georges Danton
- Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles
- Robert Lindet
- Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, also mayor of Paris
- Claude Antoine, comte Prieur-Duvernois (also known as Prieur de la Côte-d'Or)
- Pierre Louis Prieur (also known as Prieur de la Marne)
- Maximilien Robespierre, a Montagnard
- Jean Bon Saint-André
- Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, a Montagnard
- Jean Lambert Tallien
See also
External links
- [Complete list of the members of the Committee of Public Safety]
- [Reference for membership of the Committee of Public Safety] (in French)
Reference
- R. R. Palmer Twelve Who Ruled (1941, ISBN 0691051194)
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