His power and influence assumed legendary proportions during the second Committee of Public Safety. He was the hero of the Paris mob, the devil incarnate to his opponents.
The Jacobins were advocates of unlimited democracy, of revolutionary dictatorship and violence. They were proffesional lawyers and journalists. the majority of their supporters (tha sanscullottes) were drawn from the proletariat from the Paris suburbs. These sanscullottes contained elements that were still more radical than any of the groups and individuals that actually exercised power; they numbered Europe's first communists, socialists, and feminists. In terms of revolutionary motive power, they may well have been more effective than the bourgeois who are usually given the credit. It can be argued that this group gripped the throats of 20 million. The Committee of Public Safety became the instrument of unlimited dictatorial control. |
