Mapping the Terror: The Paris Revolutionary Tribunal and the Development of a National System of ‘Revolutionary Justice’ in France,1793–94

Abstract

This article draws on extensive research in the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal archives in order to explore the relationship between local and national political, administrative and legal structures in the implementation of ‘revolutionary justice’ during the Terror in the French Revolution. It highlights the extent to which the Paris Tribunal relied on preliminary investigations in the provinces – at the administrative levels of department, district and commune – for both information regarding counter-revolutionary activity and a substantial proportion of its caseload. In so doing, this article offers a reassessment of Donald Greer’s seminal work on the geographical incidence of the Terror, and challenges the stereotype of the Terror as a web of secret denunciation, private investigation and summary injustice. Furthermore, it concludes that a national perspective is vital to any analysis of the work of the Paris Tribunal itself, with the wider system of revolutionary justice regularly impacting on investigations, prosecutions and judgements in the capital.