Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution - Updated EditionThe years 1793 and 1794 marked the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, a bloody period characterized by the brutal repression of those suspected of being counterrevolutionary. The so called Committee of Public Safety, which directed the Terror, ordered 2,400 executions in July 1794 in Paris alone, and across France 30,000 people lost their lives. R. R. Palmer's Twelve Who Ruled is the classic study of the twelve men who made up the committee,