“[B]efore the threats of the rioters who invaded the Assembly they [the men of the Convention] constantly exhibited an excessive pusillanimity [cowardess], obeying the most absurd injunctions, as we shall see if we re-read the history of the revolutionary Assemblies.
“All the forms of fear were observed at this period. One of the most widespread was the fear of appearing moderate. Members of the Assemblies, public prosecutors, representatives ``on mission,'' judges of the revolutionary tribunals, &c., all sought to appear more advanced than their rivals. Fear was one of the principal elements of the crimes committed at this period. If by some miracle it could have been eliminated from the revolutionary Assemblies, their conduct would have been quite other than it was, and the Revolution itself would have taken a very different direction.”*
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*Le Bon, Gustave. The Psychology of Revolution (p. 52). . Kindle Edition. (Bold emphasis added.)
Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (French: ... 7 May 1841 – 13 December 1931) was a leading French polymath [a person of encyclopedic learning] whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology. | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Le_Bon