La terreur

"Terror" is the best French political concept for export: red terror, brown terror, Islamic terror ... while historians still do not agree on the nature of this episode of the French Revolution. If it is admitted that Terror ends on the 10th Thermidor Year II (28 July 1794), with the execution of Robespierre, a multitude of questions remain. When did it really start? Who used the term, and for what purpose? Should we write it with a capital letter? Is it the product of a policy or the consequence of the vacancy of power? Was it invented to disqualify Robespierre, or even the whole work of the Revolution? Has it been more deadly than the contemporary crises in Europe and America? More than two hundred years after the facts, it is time to sort out the legend and the truth, in order to better understand what the Revolution was, a key period in our national history.--Page 4 of cover translated by Éditions Perrin.