Reign of Terror

5 September 1793: Paris comes to the Convention

On 5 September 1793 a Paris delegation led by municipal officials entered the National Convention and demanded stronger enforcement of food-supply laws and the formation of a revolutionary army. Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, the Commune's prosecutor, spoke for them.

The petitioners wanted more than soldiers: they asked for a tribunal — and the guillotine — to follow the revolutionary army.

Maximilien Robespierre was presiding over the Convention when the delegation sought admission.

What the decree actually authorized

The Convention decreed a treasury-paid armed force in Paris to suppress counterrevolutionaries, enforce revolutionary laws and public-safety measures, and protect food supplies.

The force was set at 6,000 armed men and 1,200 artillerymen. The decree ordered it organized that very day and paid its members at the rate of the Paris gendarmerie.

The slogan that was never decreed

Bertrand Barère, reporting for the Committee of Public Safety, invoked the slogan about placing terror on the order of the day while arguing that the proposed army would direct popular force against counterrevolutionaries.

The enacted decree did not formally proclaim that "Terror is the order of the day." The phrase appears in reported versions of Barère's speech, where the revolutionary army — not the Convention itself — was the actor expected to spread terror among enemies.

September 5 is often presented as the formal beginning of the Reign of Terror, but scholars dispute that interpretation because no decree legally proclaimed terror that day, and surviving newspaper versions of Barère's wording differ.