om a military standpoint, the position of the republic was extremely perilous. Enemy powers had resumed the offensive on all fronts. Mainz had been recaptured by the Prussians, Conde-Sur-L’Escaut and Valenciennes had fallen, and Toulon was under siege by the British. Royalist and Roman Catholic insurgents controlled much of the Vendee and Bretagne. Caen, Lyons, Marseille, Bordeaux, and other important localities were in the hands of the Girondists. By a new conscription decree, issued on August 23, the entire able-bodied male population of France was made liable to conscription. Fourteen new armies, numbering about 750,000 men, were speedily organized, equipped, and rushed to the fronts. Along with these moves, the committee struck violently at internal opposition. On October 16 Marie Antoinette was executed, and 21 prominent Girondists were beheaded on October 31. Beginning with these reprisals, thousands of Royalists, nonjuring priests, Girondists, and other elements charged with counterrevolutionary activities or sympathies were brought before revolutionary tribunals, convicted, and sent to the guillotine. Executions in Paris totaled 2639; more than half (1515) the victims perished during June and July, 1794. In many outlying departments, particularly the main centers of Royalist insurrection, even harsher treatment was meted out to traitors, real and suspect. The Nantes tribunal, headed by Jean Baptiste Carrier, which dealt most severely with those who aided the rebels in the Vendee, sent more than 8000 persons to the guillotine within three months. In all of France, revolutionary tribunals and commissions were responsible for the execution of almost 17,000 individuals. Including those who died in overcrowded, disease-ridden prisons and insurgents shot summarily on the field of battle, the victims of the Reign of Terror totaled approximately 40,000. All elements of the opposition suffered from the terror. Of those condemned by...
