Committee of Public Safety

The Committee of Public Safety (French: le Comité de Salut Public), set up by the National Convention on April 6, 1793, formed the de facto executive government of France during the Reign of Terror (1793 – 1794) of the French Revolution.

Under war conditions and with national survival seemingly at stake, the Jacobins under Robespierre centralised denunciations, trials, and executions under the supervision of this committee of twelve members.

The Committee ceased meeting in 1795.

Members of the committee

• Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac – Earlier a Girondist, later a Bonapartist, drew up the 9 Thermidor report outlawing Robespierre.
• Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, an Hebertist
• Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès was a member only after 9 Thermidor
• Pierre Joseph Cambon
• Lazare Carnot – physicist, the "Organizer of Victory"
• Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois, an Hebertist
• Georges Couthon
• Georges Danton
• Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles
• Robert Lindet
• Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, also mayor of Paris
• Claude Antoine, comte Prieur-Duvernois (a.k.a. Prieur de la Côte-d'Or)
• Pierre Louis Prieur (a.k.a. Prieur de la Marne)
• Maximilien Robespierre, a Montagnard
• Jean Bon Saint-André
• Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, a Montagnard
• Jean Lambert Tallien

Further Reading

• R.R. Palmer Twelve Who Ruled (1941, ISBN 0691051194)
• Georg Buchner Danton's Death

External links

• The Committee after the Thermidorean Reaction
• Reference for membership of the Committee of Public Safety