Speech: The Terror and Virtue

Overview
Delivered to the National Convention on 5 February 1794 (17 Pluviôse, Year II), "The Terror and Virtue" is a forceful defense of the revolutionary government's use of state coercion during a period of civil war and internal conspiracy. Maximilien Robespierre frames "terror" not as mindless cruelty but as a form of civic discipline required to safeguard the republic and cultivate collective virtue. He presents a moral and political argument that links justice, public safety, and the ethical education of citizens.
Robespierre insists that the revolutionary project demands both moral rigor and practical firmness. He casts the revolution as a struggle to create a virtuous society and positions terror as an instrument to remove corruption, suppress counter-revolutionary plots, and protect the gains of equality and popular sovereignty.

Key Arguments
The speech pivots on the claim that virtue and terror are complementary: virtue without force is powerless against entrenched interests, while force without virtue becomes tyranny. Robespierre famously characterizes terror as "nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice" applied to enemies of the people, arguing that measured coercion can restore the conditions in which civic virtue can flourish. For him, terror is a temporary and legal measure directed at protecting republican institutions and the general will.
He emphasizes the context of existential threat, foreign invasion, internal conspiracies, economic hardship, as justification for extraordinary measures. Robespierre argues that constant vigilance and rigorous enforcement of revolutionary laws are necessary to remove the "monarchical" elements and corrupting influences that would subvert popular sovereignty. The goal is not vengeance or personal enrichment but the establishment of a moral republic in which citizens can exercise liberty responsibly.

Rhetorical Strategies
Robespierre blends moral rhetoric with legalistic precision, appealing to republican virtues such as equality, civic duty, and sacrifice for the common good. He invokes the language of natural rights and the sovereignty of the people while portraying the Committee of Public Safety as a guardian of those principles. His tone alternates between stern moral exhortation and cool administrative reasoning, seeking to persuade both the conscience and the practical concerns of deputies.
He also uses contrast and moral dramatization, juxtaposing the corrupting tendencies of privilege and counter-revolution with the purifying aims of the revolutionary law. By presenting terror as disciplined and principled, he seeks to distinguish republican enforcement from arbitrary cruelty, making an argument intended to reassure moderates while rallying the committed.

Context and Impact
Delivered at the height of the Reign of Terror, the speech served to legitimize measures already being taken by the Committee of Public Safety and to rally support for continued centralization of power in the revolutionary government. It came amid factional battles, between Jacobins, moderates, Hébertists, and Dantonists, and growing fears of both internal betrayal and foreign intervention. Robespierre's justification of terror further polarized the Convention and hardened policies that targeted perceived enemies.
The defense of terror contributed to the intensification of revolutionary justice and the expansion of maximum measures against suspects and dissenters. Paradoxically, the rhetoric that sought to protect virtue and republican liberty also helped to delegitimize dissent and fuel the political dynamics that led to Robespierre's own downfall in Thermidor later that year.

Legacy
"The Terror and Virtue" has remained a focal text in debates about the ethics of revolutionary violence and the tension between moral ideals and coercive state power. Critics see it as a rationalization for political terror and an example of how noble aims can justify brutal means. Supporters argue that it reflects a tragic but, for its defenders, necessary response to an acute crisis of state survival.
Scholars continue to study the speech as a window onto the revolutionary mindset that fused moral absolutism with emergency politics. Its enduring significance lies in the difficult questions it raises about when, if ever, violence becomes a legitimate tool of political transformation and how republican ideals can be defended without sacrificing the liberties they seek to establish.