That tricky death toll statistic

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I thought I would draw upon our combined knowledge of the French Revolution to answer a question I can't quite figure out.  How many people died during the Terror?  Or perhaps that's too vague a question.  I've seen multiple numbers cited on this.  There is the constant 40,000 one, which is usually cited by sensationalist accounts of the Revolution.  I looked through some book that I unfortunately can't recall the name of that was concerned with adding up how many people were executed during the Terror and I remember the author got a number in the 16,000s.  I've seen 20,000-25,000 sometimes too.  Sources seem to vary wildly.

So where are all these numbers coming from?  I presume there would be a significant difference between the number of people guillotined during the Terror, the number of people officially executed overall (which would include the noyades and the fusillades), then including the number of people who died fighting in the civil wars and rebellions (and would that include both sides' casualities, or only those rebelling against the government?), and then more if you wanted to add in the people who died in prison.

I'm wondering if you guys have come across any more accurate numbers with legit statistics to back them up?  For numbers guillotined?  Executed overall?  Died in the civil wars?  Do you know where the more commonly numbers cited come from, or are they just the claim of some random historian that has been picked up over the years? 

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

There's a pretty good analysis over at royet.org (http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/ihm/index_nea1789-1794.htm--it's the first under "Articles thématiques"). Unfortunately, it only counts for Paris--but there's a very good reason for this:

We really have no way of knowing how many people were killed in the various areas of civil war; they often didn't keep records, and those they kept were inaccurate. Besides, the line between battles, massacres, and executions is a bit fuzzier in the provinces where those things have been harder to keep track of. The best anyone can do is estimate, and those estimates are almost inevitably colored by ideology. >.>

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that, that was helpful. I was thinking it was about 2,600 for Paris. I just skimmed through Twelve Who Ruled and Palmer cites the executions for Lyon (fusillades and guillotine) as almost 2,000, though as you said, things are fuzzier in the provinces.

So if Paris and Lyon only rack up around 4,600 executions, 40,000 for overall executions is a clear over-estimate. This is as I thought, but I'd been running across it a lot recently and I was getting confused. Of course that doesn't account for people killed in battle and other ways.

I'm trying to remember the name of the book I saw devoted to these stats! I didn't recognize it in the bibliography on the Royet article, but I could very well have completely forgotten the title and didn't recognize it.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

You're quite welcome. I wish I could remember where I read this, but I do remember reading that the commonly cited numbers, like the total of 40,000 are based on some kind of statistical formula rather than actually counting known cases, so that's probably why it's so exaggerated. I can try to find that book again, if you like...

I don't know if this is the one you mean, but a book that's often cited is Donald Greer's The Incidence of the Terror, and I believe many of those commonly used but imprecise estimates may come from there.

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, that book sounds familiar, but I distinctly remember the book concluding that 16,000-something hundred people were executed, so it wasn't one of the hugely exagerated ones.

Oh well, I shall keep looking.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, in that case I must be misremembering.

Good luck!

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

An interesting point about death tolls is the impact of disease and fear of disease. I've just seen a British newspaper reporting that Parisians in early 1794 were demanding action over the increasing prison numbers because of a fear of disease (hence 22nd Prairial). This would have been well justified - Typhus was called 'Jail Fever' in the UK and US (maybe elsewhere too?), and was rife in Newgate Gaol: in France, there was an outbreak after Valmy, it killed 10,000 in Nantes (and Napoleon's army in 1812) - the massive concentrations of people after the Irish Famine caused an outbreak that killed thousands in Liverpool (my home town, hence my interest in typhus!) and New York (the next port on) in 1847, and it was a big killer in concentration camps. It's unpleasant, but it's a factor that weighed heavily on public consciousness at the time and made them choose mass execution over indefinite internment of prisoners.
I presume disease victims would be buried quickly and anonymously in mass graves and plague pits aren't something archaologists like to disturb (a lot of diseases survive when buried) so numbers like this, and amongst refugees or famine victims can only ever be estimated.
A couple of recent statistics for a laugh, though: I stopped reading Neil Gaiman's comic 'Sandman' after the issue called Thermidor (don't go there!) where Tom Paine accuses Robespierre of killing 10,000 a month or something: Grant Morrison (another far-leftwinger, amazingly) has them guillotining 1,000 a month in Paris in Jan 93 in his comic The Invisibles. And the entertaining 1930's b&w 'Scarlet Pimpernel' opens with a newspaper report reading something along the lines of 'June 1792 [yes, really!], and Robespierre, Dictator of France, is sending 70 a day to the Guillotine'. This must be where Simon Schama gets his 'facts' from...