This small body, which included such Jacobin leaders as Carnot,
Robespierre, and St. Just, acting secretly, directed the ministers of
state, appointed the local officials, and undertook the administration
of the whole country. Manifold were the duties it was called upon to
discharge. Among other problems, it must conduct the foreign relations,
supervise the armies, and secure the active support of the French
people. Diligently and effectively did it apply itself to its various
activities.
[Sidenote: The "Terror" A Political Expedient]
Terrorism has been the word usually employed to describe the internal
policy of the Committee of Public Safety, and the "Reign of Terror,"
the period of the Committee's chief work, from the summer of 1793 to
that of 1794. So sensational and so sanguinary was the period that many
writers have been prone to make it the very center of the Revolution
and to picture "liberty, equality, and fraternity" as submerged in a
veritable sea of blood. As a matter of fact, however, the Reign of
Terror was but an incident, though obviously an inevitable incident, in
a great Revolution.
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