How can you defend the fact that most of the deaths during the Reign of Terror were peasants if the aristocracy was suppose to be the enemy of the revolution? | Reign of Terror Questions & Answers

The largest death toll during the Regin of Terror was taken during the Vendean War, with casualties (largely peasant, although class difference in the region were less defined than in Paris) estimated at as many as 200,000. Those who were executed at the guillotine were generally aristocracy. Really its a matter of proportions and definition. The Great Terror is usually associated with the death of Marie Antoinette and the 3000 guillotined along with her, but the Committee on Public Safety was terrified of any perceived threat to the new Republic. That fear led to the declaration of war with Austria (external threats), the passing of the Law of Suspects (royalist threats), and the Vendean War (radical threats). It just so happened that a whole lot of peasants rioted in Vendee, so they had the highest body count when the Republican Army swept in to put it down. Naturally, much of the army that fought in the foreign wars was made up of the lower classes, as well. In fact, although it is shocking that so many were imprisoned for no apparent reason other than the possibility that they might be sympathetic to the King due to the station of their birth, the aristocracy were seen as a relatively small threat to those in power, and a threat easily dealt with. The Reign of Terror was not necessarily about enemies of the Revolution (although some victims were). It was about enemies of the government, which at this time was a revolutionary dictatorship, and far from the Republic of which the early revolutionaries dreamed.

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