This Dutch engraving, based on a sketch by Berthault, shows Robespierre laid out on the table where his Committee of Public Safety did its work. It is the morning of 10 Thermidor and having been condemned to death by the Convention the night before,…
From Berthault’s series of great moments of the Revolution, this engraving depicts the victorious entry of the republican French forces into the southern Netherlands (currently Belgium) on 21 January 1795, where a "sister republic" of Batavia would…
Men and women threaten the deputies on 20 May 1795. They demand "Bread and the Constitution of 1793." This day marked one of the last interventions of ordinary women into national politics.
In the waning days of the Convention in the fall of 1795, royalist–influenced sections of Paris revolted to prevent the adoption of a new constitution that protected the position of the radicals. Bonaparte was delegated to put down the uprising of 5…
After Jacobin control faded, with its repression of exuberant social life as well as political diversity, the following years saw a rebirth of open pleasures. This image focuses on fashionable men and women enjoying the good life. Some contemporaries…
In this propagandistic allegorical engraving, Napoleon saves the female figure of France from the abyss to which she has been led by "revolutionary fanaticism." The figure of fanaticism is armed to the teeth with "the daggers of party spirit" and…
The image points out the destruction of the nobility, depicting the arrival in Hell of a "marquis" and several other "aristocrats," described in the legend as "conspirators" and "traitors."
This engraving focuses on expurgating the clergy, this time with vomiting as the intended method. Here, the cleric spits up the unfair advantages enjoyed in the old regime.
The Terror, which many justified then as now as an unfortunate necessity, raised enormous anxieties. A hostile cartoon equates the Revolution with severed heads.
