White Terror

   The White Terror is the name given to the bloody reprisals of royalists and religious fanatics against the revolutionaries in the latter part of and after the revolution of 1789. The first White Terror occurred especially in the southeast of France after the failure of Jacobin insurrections (April and May 1795). Royalist bands of the Compagnies de Jéhu, Jésus, or soleil, as they called themselves, pursued and massacred jacobins, republicans, constitutional priests, Protestants, and political detainees in Lons-le-Saunier, Bourg, Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Aix, Marseille, Toulon, Tarascon, etc., generally with the complicity of the authorities. After the failed landing of émigrés at Quiberon, on France's west coast (June-July, 1795), and the failure of the uprising of 13 Vendémiaire, Year IV (October 5, 1795), the White Terror was partially suppressed. it began again after the Conspiracy of the Equals, a plan to overthrow the directory and establish a communist social order, led by françois-noël babeuf and others, was checked. Just as violent, the second White Terror took place after the defeat of napoléon i at Waterloo (June 18, 1815). In the west and southeast, bands of "greens" (verdets), wearing the green cockade of the count of artois, killed former revolutionaries, Jacobins, Bonapartists, and some military figures. The restoration government partly condoned this terror and itself executed Marshal Michel ney and banned the regicides.