White Terror Flashcards
(9 cards)
1
Q
When was the White Terror?
A
Summer of 1794 – Spring of 1796
2
Q
What was the White Terror?
A
- was a reaction against the Jacobin Terror (anti-Jacobin backlash)
3
Q
Where was the White Terror?
A
- Paris
- Lyon and Marseilles
- Vendee and Britanny
4
Q
Who were the perpetrators of the White Terror?
A
- Carried out by gangs and militias.
- Companies of Jesus in Lyon and Companies of the Sun in Nimes were royalist.
5
Q
What was the nature of the White Terror?
A
- The White Terror had little political ideology behind it, just revenge against those associated with the Terror regime.
6
Q
The White Terror in Paris
A
- Middle class youths led by Freron.
- Muscadins (wearing musk perfume) and la jeunesse doree (gilded youth)
- They had their own subculture (clothing, hair-style, songs etc).
- They formed gangs to beat up and intimidate Jacobins and sans-culottes.
- They forced the closure of pro-Jacobin newspapers and the Jacobin Club.
7
Q
The White Terror in the South-East (Lyon & Marseilles)
A
- May 1795 - prison massacres reminiscent of the massacres in the September massacre of 1792.
- Massacres, street murders cost as many as 2,000 lives in 1795.
- Sporadic violence was to continue into 1796 and 1797.
8
Q
The White Terror in the West (Vendee & Brittany)
A
- Guerilla warfare flared again in the Vendee.
- A royalist movement, the Chouannerie, in Brittany took shape.
- Law and order broke down outside the towns.
- June 1795 – the Chouannerie supported by 3,000 émigrés who were supported by the British.
- Put down by Hoche in 1796.
9
Q
What was the significance of the White Terror?
A
- The ‘White Terror’ was never as bloody or indiscriminate as the Jacobin Terror.
- But the White Terror went unchecked by the Thermidorian govt as people enacted vigilante justice against the Jacobins.
- The rising in the Vendee reared its ugly head once more.
- The ‘White Terror’ was eventually put down by the Directory who relied on unorthodox measures and the army used to regain control.
