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Reign of terror   /reɪn əv tˈɛrər/   Listen
Reign of terror

noun
1.
Any period of brutal suppression thought to resemble the Reign of Terror in France.
2.
The historic period (1793-94) during the French Revolution when thousands were executed.






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"Reign of terror" Quotes from Famous Books



... the seventeenth century made the Bourbons more than ever determined to consolidate the royal despotism and to stamp out Protestantism. The excesses of the French royal despotism brought as a consequence the excesses of the Revolutionary democracy. The Reign of Terror in its turn made Englishmen more than ever suspicious of the application of rational political ideas to the fabric of English society. So the ball was tossed back and forth—the national temperament of each people being at once profoundly modified by this action and reaction and for ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... there will be much fighting," he said; "if the troops fraternize with the Communists there's an end of the business, all France will join them, and we shall have the Reign of Terror over again, though they will not venture upon any excesses here in Paris, for, fortunately, the Germans are still within gunshot, and they would have the hearty approval of all Europe in marching in here, and stamping the whole thing out. If the ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... Nipigon, Province of Ontario, Canada, there existed a reign of terror from wolves. The first man killed was a half-breed mail-carrier. Then, in December, another mail-carrier, who was working the lumber camps north of Lake Nipigon, was killed by wolves and completely devoured. The snow showed a terrible struggle, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... attack, murder, rapine, fire and bloodshed became common experiences, and the discovery of many bodies, the skulls crushed with battleaxes, of skeletons of men slain with the deadly arrow, of bodies twisted by torture and charred by fire, reveal what a reign of terror and dread that epoch must have been in the ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... during the Revolutionary period could produce the impression given by a simple exhibition of the broadsides issued by the proconsuls of that period; no description of the collapse of the triumvirate and the Reign of Terror could equal a half-hour's reading from the "Moniteur''; and all accounts of the Empire were dim compared to grandiose statements read from ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy. By G. A. Henty. With illustrations by J. Schoenberg. 12mo, cloth, olivine edges, ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... monsters worked their will whithersoever they chose. The sheriff brought reinforcements up, but with no other effect than to rouse the discontent of the ranchers at their utter failure. It seemed as though the acts of these rustlers was a direct challenge to all authority. A reign of terror set in, and settlers, who had been in the country for years, declared their intention of getting out, and seeking a place where, if they had to pay more for their land, they would at least find protection for ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... vividly what London as a whole thought and did in face of the rebellion. It is an old story. Were not the Romans in the theatre when the Goths came over the hills? Did not the theatres flourish, never better, during the Reign of Terror? ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... only a little longer than had that of the Mauryas. Its downfall was hastened by the long reign of terror which India went through during the invasion of the White Huns. Europe had undergone a like ordeal nearly a century earlier, for when the Huns began to move out of the steppes of Eastern Asia they poured forth in two separate streams, one of which swept ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... Mdlle. de Saint Belin, whose beauty and charm of manner were extolled by all her contemporaries. One son was born to him, who entered the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only before the extinction of the Reign of Terror. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... be concealed about the building, but the Mayor and councilmen refused to go home, and even assisted in the search for possible bombs. Secret service men were called from Washington, and went into consultation with Bishop Chuff. It was a night of uproar. A reign of terror was freely predicted, and many prominent citizens sat up until after midnight on the chance of discovering similar ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... be incredible, if it were not attested by witnesses unconnected with each other and attached to very different interests. There is a close, and sometimes almost a verbal, agreement between the description given by Protestants, who, during that reign of terror, escaped, at the hazard of their lives, to England, and the descriptions given by the envoys, commissaries, and captains of Lewis. All agreed in declaring that it would take many years to repair the waste which had been wrought in a few weeks by the armed peasantry, [153] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... which the knights had made of the judicial power entrusted to their keeping, that the Mamilian commission could be represented as an outrage on the public conscience, and the ordinary cognisance of public crimes as a reign of terror intended merely to ensure the security of investments.[1207] The knights were to be attacked in their stronghold, and Caepio came forward with a new judiciary law. Two accounts of the scope of this measure have come down to us. According to the one, the bill ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... the place where the theatre stood, filling the space on the left-hand side in entering, between the chateau and the chapel, but the inscription on the last, Voltaire a Dieu, was removed during the reign of terror. The old gardener spoke favourably of his old master, who was, he said, bon homme tout-a-fait, bien charitable, and took an airing every morning ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various

... thousands of prisoners in the city of Paris alone awoke from the shadow of death to the hope of life. The Reign of Terror was ended! ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... arrested by his brother Boers, and though kept under lock and key for months, he was never introduced to judge or jury. An advocate of peace, he was suspected of British leanings, and so almost before the war commenced rough hands were laid upon him. There was in the Transvaal a reign of terror. Secret service men were everywhere, and no one's reputation was safe, no one's position secure. In this land of newly-discovered gold men were driven to discover that the most golden thing of all was discreet silence on the part of those who differed from "the powers that be." So he who simply ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... great museum of human as well as natural products, and this singular race forms an interesting element of its motley population. It is supposed that the tribe found its way to Hungary in the beginning of the fifteenth century, having fled from Central Asia or India during the Mongol reign of terror. About the close of last century Pastor Benedict, of Debreczin, mastered their language, and on visiting England found that the Gipsies in this country understood him very well. There are now about eighty thousand of them in Transylvania, but three-fourths of this number have settled ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... terror inspired by the man that the news that he was out would clear the streets. A white Paraguayan dared not utter his name. During his lifetime he was 'El Supremo,' and after he was dead for generations he was referred to simply as 'El Difunto.'" [Footnote: Robertson's "Reign of Terror."] ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... public. He knew that the turning point of the industrial war was near. He did not deceive himself. He knew Jake Vodell's power. He knew the temper of the strikers. He saw clearly that if the assassin who killed Captain Charlie was not speedily discovered the community would suffer under a reign of terror such as the people had never conceived. And, what was of more vital importance to McIver, perhaps, if the truth was not soon revealed, Jake Vodell's charges that the murder was inspired by McIver himself would become, in the minds of many, an established fact. With the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... Reign of Terror was at its height, the Sally, owned by Colonel Swan, and commanded by Captain Stephen Clough, of Wiscasset, Maine, came home with a strange cargo and a stranger story. The cargo consisted of French tapestries, ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... that aid, under any circumstances, he will need: but, after all, his own influence and power for good will be measured by the extent of his personal acquaintance with the inmates as individuals. First, then, government is essential to this school; not a reign of terror, but a government whose majesty, power, equality, certainty, uniformity, and consequent justice, shall be experienced by all alike; and, being experienced by all alike, will be respected, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... seventy years; he says, 'I was twice called to the Council of him who was my Master, When all the world coveted that honour; and I owe him the same service now, when it has become one which many reckon dangerous!"—(Carlyle). Malesherbes was guillotined in 1794, during "the Reign of Terror."-ED. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... the populace goes mad, and the legislators pass weak and harmful laws. The law-making and constitutional bodies cannot make laws fast enough to regulate the affairs of the state. Lawlessness and violence increase until the "reign of terror" appears with all its indescribable horrors. The rest is plain. Having levelled all government to the ground, having destroyed all authority, having shown themselves incapable of self-government, the French people are ready for Napoleon. Under his command ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... whole, loyal to the King; while the old religion had, of late years, taken root so rapidly again, that perhaps a moiety of their population might be considered as Catholic. At the same time, the reign of terror under Alva, the paler, but not less distinct tyranny of Requesens, and the intolerable excesses of the foreign soldiery, by which the government of foreigners was supported, had at last maddened all the inhabitants of the seventeen provinces. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... three savages were cornered on a mountain, where two of them were killed after they had inflicted many hurts on their pursuers. The heads of these two were lopped, forwarded to the capital, and every one supposed that the reign of terror was at an end. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... of that humiliating scene woke him, years afterward, through more than one clammy midnight. In one second the peaceful dining-room was a chattering, howling reign of terror. For Margarita, with a choking cry of rage and anguish, threw the ice with terrible precision into the bland face of the waiter who had brought it; threw her glass of water with an equal accuracy into the wide-open ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... of yore, and he, Rayner, and I had some grand kangarooing together when he was here last. Lizzie, during the past five years has become more and more crotchety, and has given herself up to 'religious thought and work,' as she calls it, from which I surmise that her's is a reign of terror at Marumbah Downs. She has built a little tin-pot chapel in which there is not enough room to swing a cat by the tail, and had it opened a few months ago by some swagger curate from Melbourne—poor old Preston, ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... most extreme men patronized, and which after a few months' existence was suppressed by Government. As the year 1792 drew to a close, the political heaven, both at home and abroad, became ominously dark. In Paris the king was in prison, the Reign of Terror had begun, and innocent blood of loyalists flowed freely in the streets; the republic which had been established was threatening to propagate its principles in other countries by force of arms. In this country, what at the beginning of the year had been but suspicion of France, was ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... some banter upon the Duke's picture of a scientific Reign of Terror, whereby, it seemed, all men of science were compelled to accept the Darwinian faith, and against which Huxley himself was ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... sudden cessation of hostilities the enemy's admiral would next have been heard of in such a position that a panic would have been caused throughout the country. As it was, the enemy's submarines of the D and E classes, which were sent away to hunt on their own, established a reign of terror, getting to the entrance of Cromarty Harbour, which was our base, and torpedoing the ships which were guarding the Fleet inside. They also torpedoed the Dreadnoughts St. Vincent and Collingwood, while another ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... the liberties of peoples." [1] Internally, she would have to be purified by the removal of the staunchest adherents of the old regime from positions of trust and influence. But neither of these operations could be carried out save under the reign of terror known as martial law. Parliament, therefore, voted martial law; and M. Venizelos, "irritated by the arbitrary proceedings" {208} of the Opposition, which protested against the restrictions on public opinion, "emphasised the fact that the Government was determined to ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... in his department, Savarin became mayor of Belley in 1793; but the Reign of Terror soon forced him to flee to Switzerland and join the colony of French refugees at Lausanne. Souvenirs of this period are frequent in his 'Physiologie du Gout', all eminently gastronomic, as befits his subject-matter, but full ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... public library in the land that did not begin feverishly expurgating its shelves; the publication of fiction, and particularly of foreign fiction, took on the character of an extra hazardous enterprise. Not, of course, that the reign of terror was not challenged, and Comstock himself denounced. So early as 1876 a national organization demanding a reasonable amendment of the postal laws got on its legs; in the late eighties "Citizen" George Francis Train defied the ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... "heaven-born minister" himself, a plain man might well have wondered what additional force the vocabulary of Jacobinism could have infused into the language of Pantisocracy. After summing up the crimes of the Reign of Terror the lecturer asks: "Who, my brethren, was the cause of this guilt if not HE who supplied the occasion and the motive? Heaven hath bestowed on that man a portion of its ubiquity, and given him an actual presence in the sacraments of hell, wherever ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... said, Wilfrid would not compromise her; and taking her lover's hand, she added with Italian mixture of wit and grace: "Happily for me, too, he does. The house is surrounded by enemies; it is a reign of terror for women. I am dead, if they slay him; but if they recognize ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... evil so ever present with him, be juggled with and led to destruction by fiends? May an undistinguishing fate sweep away at once the good with the evil—Hamlet with Laertes; Desdemona with Iago; Cordelia with Edmund? And above the turmoil of this reign of terror, is there no word uttered of a Supreme Good guiding and controlling the unloosed ill—no word of encouragement, none of hope? If this be so indeed, that man is but the puppet of malignant spirits, away with this life. It is not ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... one Christmas night at which two of the Dillam band were slain by Buffum. From then on Sam Dillam dogged the steps of Lem Buffum who finally killed his tormentor. This so enraged the Dillam band they started a reign of terror. They were openly out to get any Buffum sympathizer. They riddled their homes with bullets, burned barns, waylaid the sympathizers and shot them to death without warning. Once a friend of the Buffums', Jack Smith, when the Buffum home was besieged, rushed in and carried out the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... mince matters when their opportunity came. They, too, regarded them as vermin, and treated them according to the unrestrained edicts of the Reign of Terror, organized and administered by their late compatriots Sardanapalus, Danton, Maximilian Robespierre, and their literary colleague, the execrable Marat, who, by the way, was expeditiously dispatched by the gallant ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... reliance on their God in the moments of mortal agony, increased the number of converts to a religion which could work such a moral miracle. Persecution also united the Christians more closely together, and when the reign of terror ended with the death of Nero, it was found that Christianity had derived additional strength from the means ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... Mighty and Benevolent Kingdom of Szkazia, a minor reign of terror existed. The King, tired of complaints from his subjects, had just finished dressing down his Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was passing the abuse on to his Chief Scientist. "If something isn't done soon, I won't be responsible ...
— Holes, Incorporated • L. Major Reynolds

... hostility that manifested itself on the part of the Irish towards the invader from the moment that his foul and sacrilegious foot first desecrated their soil, a reign of terror was at once inaugurated in the vicinage of his camp or stronghold, by those chieftains with whom he came into more immediate contact, and upon whose territories he more directly impinged. In the track of both ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... and outrages which have been perpetrated in many counties of Middle and West Tennessee, during the past few months, have been so numerous, and of such an aggravated character, as almost baffles investigation. In these counties a reign of terror exists which is so absolute in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling to give free expression to their opinions. The terror inspired by the secret organization known as the Ku-Klux Klan is so great, that the officers of the law ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... would agree with me, Miss Galindo," said my lady. "You and I can remember how this talk about education—Rousseau, and his writings—stirred up the French people to their Reign of Terror, and all those ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Last Victims of the Reign of Terror, Painting, Muller Napoleon at Austerlitz, Painting, Vernet Napoleon, ...
— Shepp's Photographs of the World • James W. Shepp

... Directory formed to rule the Republic. A rich wife seemed essential for a poor young man with boundless ambitions just unfolding. Barras had taken up the Corsican, and arranged an introduction for him to Josephine Beauharnais, the beautiful widow of a noble who had been a victim of the Reign of Terror. He had previously made the acquaintance of Josephine's young son Eugene, when the boy came to ask that his father's sword ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... with thieves; for the unsettled state of Europe at this date perforce tended to bring desperadoes from far and near, and for a while the inhabitants of the different villages on the banks of the Rhine endured a veritable reign of terror. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... five minutes without drawing breath, it seems to me, harping on our best chances, on the ferocity of Montero, whom I made out to be as great a beast as I have no doubt he would like to be if he had intelligence enough to conceive a systematic reign of terror. And then for another five minutes or more I poured out an impassioned appeal to their courage and manliness, with all the passion of my love for Antonia. For if ever man spoke well, it would be from a personal ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... to be rude. But that the relations between them were such as to allow the bullying of Constance by an Amy downright insolent—this had shocked and wounded Sophia, who suddenly had a vision of Constance as the victim of a reign of terror. "If the creature will do this while I'm here," said Sophia to herself, "what does she do when they are alone together in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... this end had drawn together at Caen, near the border of Brittany. They had been defeated, however, and the Jacobins, in this month of August, were preparing to take a fearful vengeance at once on them and on the Royalists. The Reign of Terror had begun. Even to such a boor as this, sitting over his black bread, in his remote hovel, the Revolution had come home, and, in common with many a thousand others, he wondered what he could ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... in a condition of great excitement during most of the year, nearly one-half the parishes being under a complete reign of terror, and it has been a frequent thing to see one of our students from the country, especially from the southern parishes, in tears in consequence of the intelligence of some friend, father or brother perhaps, having ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 8, August, 1889 • Various

... agree with his ULTRA-LIBERAL politics! He has married an English lady, but does not seem to love the English. He himself once suffered from excessive revolutionism, and was condemned to death by it when young, about 1794, in the reign of terror, when Monsieur Raville and others were shot at Geneva. One would have thought that this would have made a convert of him in favour of legitimate governments. But I forget: he does not call them legitimate! He is a thick man, of middle height, with strong ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various

... stirring scenes that went abreast with the efforts of the whites to free themselves from the consequences of the war. With the accession of President Hayes came the restoration of the democracy to local control in the Southern states. All are acquainted with the "reign of terror" and the depredations of red-shirted adventurers and night-riders. The instinct of white supremacy solidified that section, and later came the era of lynchings. General disorder prevailed wherever the racial problem was brought ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... this military reign of terror, viz., Generals Adair and Dayton, Blennerhassett, Swartwout, Alexander, Smith, Bollman, Ogden, &c. Burr and Blennerhasset alone were brought to trial. On the 22d of May, 1807, came on the cause of Aaron Burr before the Circuit Court of the United States, Judge Marshall ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... organized by Wagner, and such as Victor Hugo, imitating the German model, possessed in the Young Guard which applauded Hernani. Another method of enforcing his mastery is the organization of a systematic reign of terror, consisting of bitter satires, such as Schiller and Goethe (after the model of Pope) founded in the Xenien, and the Romanticists established in many different forms—satires much more personal ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... of the witnesses. Its epoch was to be marked by a great political revolution, which, in the Apocalypse, is symbolized by an earthquake. In the year in which Christianity was suppressed by France, they beheaded their king, abolished the monarchy, and entirely revolutionized the government. In the reign of terror following, the best blood of the nation was shed like water, and no man of influence could consider his life secure. Men, women and children were dragged before the revolutionary tribunals, had their ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... of the Jacobins, and of the sanguinary tyrant who had become their chief, had at length sought for safety by confronting danger, and, succeeding in a desperate attempt to bring Robespierre to the guillotine, had terminated the reign of terror. The colossal powers of the clubs fell with that of their favorite member, and they sunk into long-merited disgrace. Not more certain is it that the boldest streams must disappear, if the fountain that fed them be emptied, than was the dissolution ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... which, fortunately for France and thanks to the heroism and bravery of the republican armies, did not take place; for had the restoration taken place at that time, a dreadful reaction would have been encouraged and the cruelties of the reign of Terror surpassed. With the same view, emissaries were dispatched from the Court of Coblentz to the South of France in order, under the disguise of patriots, to preach up the most exaggerated corollaries to the theories of liberty ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... those who believe themselves in the possession of the secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind. The Jacobins of the Reign of Terror were at bottom as religious as the Catholics of the Inquisition, and their cruel ardour proceeded from the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... execution was the signal-fire which announced to the horrified world the beginning of the reign of terror, and told Europe that in France the throne had been torn down, and in its stead the guillotine erected. Yes, the guillotine alone now ruled over France; the days of moderation, of the Girondists, had passed away; the terrorists, named also men of the Mountain, on account of the high seats they ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... character. I believe, as a matter of fact, that I am just as wicked as you would have me be, but I have friends in every walk of life, and, as you know, I like to peer into the unexpected places. I had heard of this man Billy the Tanner. He beats women, and has established a perfect reign of terror in the court and neighbourhood where he lives. I fear I must agree with you that there were some elements of morality—of conforming, at any rate, to the recognised standards of justice—in what I did. You know, of course, that I am ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... spiritual" became as thoroughly the King's courts as the temporal courts at Westminster. The enslavement of the clergy, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the gagging of the pulpits followed, the years of Cromwell's administration being an English reign of terror. But the ruthless manner in which he struck down his victims sickened the English people, and they exhibited their disapprobation in a manner which arrested the attention of the King. The time of Cromwell ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... doctrines are counteracted by other influences. Theories are tested by life. In an autocratic country theories are supreme. The undiluted theories of Rousseau and Robespierre were supreme under the Reign of Terror; the theories of Katkov and the extreme Pan-Slavists were supreme in Russia under the reign of Alexander III. Under a government like Prussia, where all the spiritual forces are mobilized, where Universities, Churches, ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... air developed into a reign of terror during the second half of the first year of the world catastrophe. While the armies on the land were locked in terrific conflict, and the navies were sweeping the seas, the huge ships of the air were hovering over cities with a desperate resolve to win on all sides. By ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... of the most virulent character. Blood flowed there even sooner than in Paris. The massacres at Nimes preceded the celebrated massacres of September by more than two years; and in Avignon, though this city was as yet French only in its situation and in the language of its inhabitants, the reign of terror was at its height in ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... we will go thus far and no farther. So thought the honest and earnest Girondists of revolutionary France; but the current to which they had first opened a passage swept them away. Though the experiment succeed at last, a long Reign of Terror may overwhelm ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... doors and vaults, and could they find in any house an individual whom affection or hospitality had sheltered, a rusty gun, an old picture of any member of the royal family, a button with the royal arms, a letter from a suspected person, or containing a sentiment against the "Reign of Terror," the father was instantly and rudely torn from his home, his wife, his children, and hurried with ignominious violence, as a traitor unfit to live, through the streets, to the prison. It was a night ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... been as a fellow-observer, and I will add as a fellow-sufferer, with the members of the Convention, that my judgment of the system of slavery among us has been formed. We have seen it seeking to inaugurate, in many instances all too successfully, a reign of terror in times of profound peace, of which Austria might be ashamed. We have seen it year by year driving out from our genial climate, and fruitful soil, and exhaustless natural resources, some of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... murders, and the times and circumstances of their occurrence. The results of the elections which immediately followed them disclose the motives and purposes of their perpetrators. These reports show that in the year 1867 a reign of terror prevailed over almost the entire State. In the parish of St. Landry there was a massacre of Colored people which began on the 28th of September, 1868, and lasted from three to six days, during which time between three and four hundred of them were ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... and I will tell you—you stifle me." The man slightly relaxed his grasp, and Gabriel said quickly "My mother perished on the guillotine in the Reign of Terror; I am for the Bourbons. I thought I overheard words which showed sympathy for poor George, the brave Chouan. I followed you; for I thought I ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... stability of the Union arose in the heart of the North. Abolition and the Abolitionists had produced these sectional disturbances. Abolition and the Abolitionists were, therefore, enemies of the "glorious Union." Northern excitement kept pace with Southern excitement until, in the summer of 1835, a reign of terror was widely established over both sections. To Garrison, from his Liberator outlook, all seemed "Consternation and perplexity, for perilous times have come." They had, indeed, come in New York, as witness this from the pen of Lydia Maria Child, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... of Antwerp's reign of terror fully 300,000 fugitives sought shelter in Bergan-op-Zoom about twenty-five miles northward across the Dutch frontier. Most of these were in a condition almost indescribable, ragged, travel-worn, shoeless, and bespattered and hungry. Few ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... would permit it. I believe the rank and file of their army are largely composed of a mass of ignorance, led, manipulated, and moulded by educated and ambitious wickedness. In attempting to overthrow the Union, a despotism and reign of terror were created which encompassed them as fetters of iron, and they will not accept the conditions until they have reached the last extremity. I hardly think they are yet willing to confess that such extremity has ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... horror of the long siege had followed the greater disorder of the Commune, when brave men were shot down by the insurgent National Guard, and all Paris was at the mercy of the rabble. Indeed, this Reign of Terror must ever remain a blot on the civilisation of the century and the history of the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... with what was called a solemn festival, as they moved along the boulevards to the Court of the Tuileries, they coupled the name of Napoleon with Jacobin curses and revolutionary songs. The airs and the words that had made Paris tremble to her very centre during the Reign of Terror—the "Marseillaise," the "Carmagnole," the "Jour du depart," the execrable ditty, the burden of which is, "And with the entrails of the last of the priests let us strangle the last of the kings," were all roared out in fearful chorus by a drunken, filthy, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... from the competition for work—when these deductions were advanced the opulent and the conservative started back in terror and dismay. Distribution of property, universal plunder, havoc, bloodshed, sans culottism, a red republic and the ghastly shapes of another Reign of Terror rose in frightful vividness before the fancy. As the speaker proceeded to illustrate and sustain his positions, which were those of the Communist, Socialist, Fourierist, call them which we may, and poured forth a fiery flood of persuasion, invective, denunciation and shouts of applause, mingled ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... sorcerers was mere fable, and that it was cruelly done to condemn them to death." This contract was found among his papers signed "with the Devil's own claw," as Howell says speaking of a similar case. It is not to be wondered at that the earlier doubters were cautious. There was literally a reign of terror, and during such regimes men are commonly found more eager to be informers and accusers than of counsel for the defence. Peter of Abano is reckoned among the earliest unbelievers who declared himself ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... block, the baby heir of the throne of the Capets was languishing in the hands of his keepers, and the Girondists, the true friends of republican liberty, were silenced by exile or the scaffold. In short, the Reign of Terror, the memorable sway of Robespierre, hung like a funeral pall upon the land which was fast becoming a vast cemetery. The provincial towns, faithful echoes of the central capital, were repeating the theme of horror with a thousand variations. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... were all gone in the morning, having been drowned the preceding night. Fifteen thousand persons perished either under the hands of the executioner, or of disease in prison, in one month: the total victims of the Reign of Terror at that place ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... year we clamor for an appropriation. The man who is kicked by a nightmare while dreaming of the draft demands a pension and every burning patriot wants an office. Twice, yea, thrice within the memory of men now living, America has been on the very verge of an industrial revolution, a Reign of Terror; yet we continue to hang our second Providence on a job-lot of political Jacksnipes who carry their patriotism in their pockets and their sense under their surcingles. While we who feed three times a day; who have a cocktail every morning ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... development; or they can indolently leave all to the benighted and malignant, and see reproduced a war of classes, different indeed in its weapons and its physical aspects, but not different in its essential character from the ravages of France by the Jacquerie or the butcheries of the reign of terror. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... and passionate Neapolitan. The third might well regard filial piety: "Behold thy son—behold thy mother:" illustrated perhaps by a slave scene in Morocco, or the last adieus between a Maccabaean mother, and her noble children rushing on duteous death; or the dangers of a son, during the Reign of Terror, protecting his proscribed parents; or allusive to the case of many razed and fired homes in the Irish rebellion. The fourth, necessarily a tale of overwhelming calamity ultimately triumphant, "My God, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the opening of each sitting. What people, even in a time of tranquillity, could have resisted the pulsations of this fever, whose throbbings were daily renewed from the end of 1790 in every city in the kingdom? It was the rule of fanaticism preceding the reign of terror. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... his high-born foe's sympathy by telling him that he has sons, grandchildren, a poor, old father, and a marriageable daughter. In extenuation of his cowardice it should be remembered that Antonio di Montoro lived during a reign of terror, under Ferdinand and Isabella, when his race and his faith were exposed to most frightful persecution. All the more noteworthy is it that he had the courage to address the queen in behalf of his faith. He laments plaintively that despite his sixty years he has not been able to eradicate ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... other difficulties to face of which it may be well to remind you. Long before actual fighting began in our revolution the rebel party, or perhaps I should say, the rougher elements of it, created by means of tar and feathers and other methods, a reign of terror throughout the whole country. They went about in parties taking weapons of all kinds out of loyalists' houses, although they have since put a clause in the National and all state constitutions that "the right to keep and bear ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher

... the General pointed out to me the spot where two of his female connexions suffered under the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. On one occasion, in passing, we entered the Castle of Vincennes, which is a sort of citadel for Paris, and which has served for a state prison since the destruction of the Bastille. Almost all of these strong old places were formerly the residences of the kings, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Reign of Terror, began with Robespierre, a village lawyer; in whose mingled cruelty and craft originated the bloody mockeries of that "Revolutionary Tribunal," which, under the semblance of trial, sent all the accused to the guillotine, and in all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... she did not require a great deal of education; and she even spoke of the lake and the boat. Oh, I was so glad to come! for I am not certificated, you know, and cannot get the posts that other women can. Well, anyhow, I arrived, and for a month it was really a reign of terror." ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... Blackwell, said: "I wish I had time to tell you of my Lockport experience; it was rich. I never felt so cool and self-possessed among the plannings and plottings of the few old fogies, and they never appeared so frantic with rage. They evidently felt that their reign of terror is ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... suppose that, at the beginning of the Lutheran and Zwinglian movement, a vision of its immediate consequences had been granted to Erasmus; imagine that to the spectre of the fierce outbreak of Anabaptist communism, which opened the apocalypse, had succeeded, in shadowy procession, the reign of terror and of spoliation in England, with the judicial murders of his friends, More and Fisher; the bitter tyranny of evangelistic clericalism in Geneva and in Scotland; the long agony of religious wars, persecutions, and massacres, which devastated ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... three boys again mounted their machines, and set out. They had been warned by the accommodating officer that they might run into a nest of the enemy at almost any time now, for detachments of the Germans were raiding the country, trying to inspire a reign of terror among ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... deaths of Lobelalatutu's most trusted chiefs, and perhaps discover whether or not there really existed a conspiracy to overthrow that monarch and restore the barbarous practices that had made the rule of the last king literally a reign of terror. Then he turned into his hammock and slept soundly until Mafuta aroused him at sunrise with the early cup of chocolate which was the invariable prelude to ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... and over and over again, with the salt tears trickling down her nose and splashing on the keys; played it with tired, fat fingers and a rebellious, burning heart. But this was during Split's convalescence—a reign of terror for the whole household; for to the natural taste she possessed for bullying, Split Madigan then added the whims and caprices of the invalid, who uses her weaknesses as a cat of a hundred tails with which to ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... will be declared a fiction. Religious worship will be renounced; the Sabbath abolished; and a prostitute, crowned with garlands, will receive the adorations of the mayors and councilmen of Cincinnati and Newport. The reign of terror will commence. The guillotine shall take its place on the Fifth Street Market place. Proscription will follow proscription. Women will denounce their husbands, and children their parents, as bad citizens, and lead them to the ax; and well-dressed ladies, filled with savage ferocity, will ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... informer had still some of the crumbs sticking to his jacket—so vitiating is the influence of a reign of terror. The bread was eaten, and the giver might be betrayed in the hope of gaining a little favour with ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... applied for the fair guerdon, the Shaykh traitorously refused to keep his word. The Brave, finding a fit opportunity, naturally enough carried off the girl to the mountains; solemnly thrashed every pursuing party; and, having established a "reign of terror," came to the banks of the Wady Hamz, and built the "Palace" for himself and his wife. But his love for butcher's-meat did not allow him to live happily ever after. As the land yielded little game, he took to sallying out every day and carrying ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... between these two lives, separated by more than five centuries. The chevalier in coat-of-mail had been killed in the battle of the Mansourah during the first crusade of St. Louis. The young man with the supercilious smile had mounted the scaffold during the Reign of Terror, holding between his lips a rose, his usual decoration for his coat. The history of the French nobility was embodied in these two men, born in blood, who ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... II. was endeavouring to secure the recognition of his absolute monarchy in England. There also he rigorously demanded submission to despotic claims. By abolishing Parliaments, annulling charters, appointing the star chamber, he introduced a reign of terror. In the room of those legislative bulwarks of liberty, which the nation had constructed through the skill and experience of generations, a "grim tyranny," writes Dr. Wylie, "reared its gaunt form, with the terrible accompaniments of ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... sure about that. You got a black eye out of him, and that's for publication. We can't have this reign of terror, Mr. Malone. We must bring the man to his bearings. I'll have a leaderette on him to-morrow that will raise a blister. Just give me the material and I will engage to brand the fellow for ever. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... thoughts, of the President with a view to discover something in his past life prejudicial to his character from parasites and informers, this would be an ordeal which scarcely any mere man since the fall could endure. It would be to subject him to a reign of terror from which the stoutest and purest heart might shrink. I have passed triumphantly through this ordeal. My vindication is complete. The committee have reported no resolution looking to an impeachment against me; no resolution of censure; not even a resolution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... Lauter. The Prussians then laid siege to Landau, while the Austrians invested Strasburg, the capital of the province of Alsace. The Austrians had been invited by the noblesse of Strasburg, and the convention in consequence despatched thither Saint Just and Lebas, who introduced the reign of terror, not only into the town, but also into the whole of Alsace, except where the Austrians were located. General Oustine was sent to Paris to be beheaded, and Saint-Just called young Hoche from Dunkirk and gave him the command of that army, which was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... and joy and peace was breaking on the world, and "France lured him forth." He crossed the Channel, and for two years he lived through all the storm and stress of the Revolution. He might have ended his life in the fearful Reign of Terror which was coming on, had not his friends in England called him home. He left France full of pity, and sorrow, and disappointment, for no reign of peace had come, and the desire for Liberty had been swallowed up in ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... Washington was taking stock quietly of national resources and watching for Germany's next move. The winter impasse in Europe gave way to the first fighting of spring, raids and sorties mostly, since the ground was still too heavy for the advancement of artillery. On the high seas the reign of terror was in full swing, and little tragic echoes of the world drama began again to come by cable across the Atlantic. Some of Graham's friends, like poor Chris, found the end of the path of glory. The tall young Canadian Highlander died before ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... promoted to a first lieutenancy, and shortly after, during the Reign of Terror in Paris, having once more for the moment yielded to an impulse to speak out in meeting, he denounced anarchy in unmeasured terms, and was arrested and ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... steps to the regeneration of France—others, to the unifaction of Germany? And what are myriads of lives in comparison with a regenerate—what violation of the most solemn engagements in comparison with a united, people? Did not the millions of Frenchmen who survived the Reign of Terror gain more than was lost by the thousands who were guillotined at Paris, or drowned at Nantes, or shot down at Lyons? Is not Germany likely to turn Kiel to far better account than Denmark ever did or could have done? and will not German ascendency be abundant compensation ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton



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