Post a Comment. Lebon was carried away with a holy fury against the inertia that bogged down Revolutionary measures. Those arrested were closely incarcerated.
The heads of aristocrats fell like hail. Le Bon busied himself ceaselessly with acts of accusation In northern France by mid there was mass emigration by nobles and priests, and foreign armies were only a few miles from towns like Arras and Cambrai. On his return to Paris he became briefly a member of the Committee of General Security but by the end of October , at the instigation of the Committee of Public Safety, he returned to the Pas-de-Calais.
Following the decrees of 14 Frumaire, he enjoyed virtually unlimited powers. As well as provisioning the army and ensuring security, he was charged with purifying the local administration - "gangrenous with indifference or moderatism" - and with carrying out the Revolutionary programme of class war and sequestration.
The tribunals in Arras and the frontier town of Cambrai were allowed to function autonomously even after the decree of 27 Germinal, which theoretically transferred jurisdiction over all those accused of conspiracy to Paris. The prisons filled with suspects. In all people were executed in Arras between February and February , with a further executions at Cambrai. The vast majority condemned were not active counter-revolutionaries or political opponents but ordinary respectable citizens.
They do not even profile clearly as "class enemies": according to Auguste Paris, of those guillotined in Arras only 88 were priests, nobles or army officers; were soldiers, merchants, advocates, farmers or labourers, and 93 women. In addition, by the end of June , the prisons of the Arras were bulging with 1, "suspects", among them Le Bon's one time ally, the former mayor Dubois de Fosseux.
