Second White Terror

The Second White Terror (French: Terreur blanche de 1815) occurred in France in 1815–1816, following the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815) and the enthronement of Louis XVIII as King of France after the Hundred Days. Suspected sympathizers of the French Revolution (including former Jacobins), Republicans, Bonapartists and, to a minor degree, Protestants, suffered persecution. Several hundred were killed by angry mobs or executed after a quick trial at a drumhead court-martial. Historian John B. Wolf argues that Ultra-royalists — many of whom had just returned from exile — were staging a counter-revolution against the French Revolution and also against Napoleon's revolution. Throughout the Midi — in Provence, Avignon, Languedoc, and many other places — the White Terror raged with unrelenting ferocity. The royalists found in the willingness of the French to desert the king fresh proof of their theory that the nation was honeycombed with traitors, and used every means to seek out and destroy their enemies. The government was powerless or unwilling to intervene. The period is named after the First White Terror that occurred during the Thermidorian Reaction in 1794–1795, when people identified as being associated with Robespierre's Reign of Terror (by means of distinction, also known as the "Red Terror") were harassed and killed.