Enlightenment · Europe · Politics

1794

Thermidorian Reaction

July 27, 1794

On 9 Thermidor, Year II, the Convention turned on Robespierre. He tried to shoot himself and shattered his jaw; he was guillotined next day. With him went Saint-Just and the Terror's apparatus. The machinery of revolution slowed. The Directory would take over and the middle class caught its breath. The Thermidorians dismantled the price controls and radical committees, and the Revolution settled into a conservative bourgeois phase.