The Thermidorian Reaction refers to the political rupture on 9–10 Thermidor Year II (27–28 July 1794), when members of the National Convention arrested Maximilien Robespierre, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, Georges Couthon, and their allies, executing them by guillotine the following day. The name derives from Thermidor, the eleventh month of the French Republican Calendar. The coup ended the period historians call the Reign of Terror, during which the Committee of Public Safety had directed mass political executions under emergency revolutionary government.
The reaction was driven less by ideology than by self-preservation. Deputies including Jean-Lambert Tallien, Paul Barras, and Joseph Fouché feared they would be the next targets of Robespierre's denunciations. After Robespierre's ambiguous speech to the Convention on 8 Thermidor threatening unnamed conspirators, they organized his arrest the next day. A brief insurrection at the Paris Commune failed when the National Guard sections did not rally.
The aftermath, often called the Thermidorian Convention (July 1794 – October 1795), dismantled the machinery of the Terror: the Revolutionary Tribunal was reorganized, the Law of 22 Prairial repealed, the Jacobin Club closed in November 1794, and surviving Girondins readmitted. A so-called White Terror saw reprisals against former Jacobins, particularly in the south. Economic deregulation followed the abolition of the General Maximum in December 1794, producing severe inflation and the Germinal and Prairial uprisings of 1795.
The Convention drafted the Constitution of Year III (August 1795), establishing the Directory, a five-member executive and bicameral legislature designed to prevent both royalist restoration and renewed radicalism. The Directory governed until Napoleon Bonaparte's coup of 18 Brumaire (November 1799).
For political analysts, "Thermidor" became a generic label — used notably by Leon Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed (1936) — for the conservative consolidation phase that follows a radical revolution.
Example
On 27 July 1794, deputies led by Tallien and Barras executed the Thermidorian Reaction by ordering Robespierre's arrest in the National Convention, ending the Reign of Terror.
Frequently asked questions
Thermidor was the summer month in the French Republican Calendar; the coup occurred on 9 Thermidor Year II, corresponding to 27 July 1794.
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