Civil War and Counter-Revolution

Virtue and Terror

Background Reading
Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, pp. 85-114.

Discussion: 2 Nov. 2007, Violence and Faith
Decree establishing Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 12 July 1790, available on-line.

Pope Pius VI, "Charitas" (Encyclical on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy), available on-line.

Law of Suspects (17 Sept. 1793), available on-line at Liberty, Equality, Fraternity [type "suspects" into the search box] or on the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity cd-rom.

Maximilian Robespierre, "Report on the Principles of Public Morality," 17 pluviôse Year II (5 February 1794), on-line.

Further Reading
Keith Baker, ed., The Terror, vol. 4 of The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture (1994).
François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (1978).
Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror (1935).
Jean-Pierre Gross, Fair Shares for All (1997).
Patrice Higonnet, "Terror, Trauma, and the 'Young Marx' Explantion of Jacobin Politics," Past & Present 191 (May 2006), 121-164.
Timothy Tackett, Religion, Revolution, and Regional Culture in France: the Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791 (1986).
Charles Tilly, The Vendée (1964).

Peter McPhee review of Reynald Secher, A French Genocide: the Vendée (2003).


Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)—see especially the sections on the "General Will" and on "civic religion."