No, I would say that the Reign of Terror was not justified. You can decide to elaborate however you wish, but it’d be pretty hard to justify the Reign of Terror as any sort of a good thing. Even if the motives behind it were originally sound and moral, the ends do not justify the means. The French Revolution (which later developed into the Reign of Terror) originally started as a peasant uprising, with the goal of abolishing the antiquated estates system, and closing the vast and ridiculous wage and quality-of-life gap between the rich and poor. Of course, as time went on, people of public importance, like Maximillien Robespierre for example, took advantage of the instability of revolutionary France. Robespierre and his affiliates, such as the Jacobin Club, began using the newfound ease of execution that resulted from the invention of the guillotine, to their own benefits. What was originally a movement to abolish the estates and the Ancien Régime, had now become a political tool that Robespierre was often using to execute his political opponents, detractors, and dissidents. Summary executions without trial were a staple of the Reign of Terror, and began happening more and more for reasons that were increasingly insignificant. Robespierre himself eventually found himself at the end of a Guillotine for his treachery; people were being executed constantly, and lived in constant fear that they would one day make a mistake that could cost them their life, hence the name of the Reign of Terror. And as history has shown us, time and time again, using violence to achieve political gain typically only causes damage in the long run, though goals may seem more easily attainable at the time. It was seen during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, where Martin Luther King Jr.’s more peaceful method of civil disobedience quickly found more favor than Malcolm X’s radical and violent incitements did. And it was seen countless other times throughout history as well.
