The archives of revolutionary justice, a major source of political history of the French Revolution?

The study of these records raises several problems relating to their interpretation and their specificity. These difficulties can however be overcome if we consider that this justice of exception functioned according to mechanisms similar to those linking ordinary criminal justice to the population. Thus, the exploitation of the revolutionary justice records shows an intense political life, where the local aspiration for a negotiated reorganization of Society clashes with the repressive preferences of the State, a preference which will increase under the next political regimes and throughout the 19th century.