February 4: The Convention votes to abolish slavery in French provinces. The decision is, above all, an officialization of that of the Girondin Sonthonax, who abolished it in Santo Domingo several months earlier by observing the uprising of the slaves. Different colonies refuse to apply the decision, taking advantage of their remoteness.
February 5: Robespierre speaks the Convention on the need for the Terror: “The establishments of a popular government in a revolution are virtue and Terror; Terror without virtue is disastrous, and virtue without Terror is powerless. The Government of the Revolution is the dictatorship of freedom over oppression.”