At the onset of the French Revolution, the revolutionaries who felt that the Monarchy of Louis XVI was tyrannical and could no longer be trusted to protect to people of France exclaimed the tenements of Fraternity, liberty, and equality. It was on these tenets that the French Revolution begins. Is it not rather ironic then, that only four years later, a man named Maximillian Robespierre, would take control of France and begin the "Reign of Terror." Robespierre and his followers believed that their Terror was on the side of the Revolutionaries of "Older times" which actually only occurred four years prior. In the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1789, the government was weak and unstable. It would go through many more changes until it would finally become somewhat stable during the Empire of Napoleon. But we get ahead of ourselves. It is among these disheveled years that Maximillian Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety took control of France, and in July of 1793, began "The Reign of Terror." .
What was this Terror? Who was it aimed at? Who was behind it? Robespierre believed that France's government and indeed all of France needed to be cleansed of all the filthy people who littered the opposite side of the street, the counter-revolutionaries, émigrés, and nobles. Robespierre did not feel that this cleansing process could be done without ample violence and public displays of governmental power through execution by decapitation. The Committee of Public Safety utilized the "Mob" mentality of Paris and made her public squares (execution grounds) equal to Rome's coliseum. He figured to rally support in the streets, and to instill fear in the hearts of all men and women who might be thinking about crossing the invisible line between life and death. Those people who were the target of his wrath were foreigners, who Robespierre considered dangerous to the stability of the government, as well as any French person who publicly or even privately voiced opposition to the Committee and its ideas.