Nostradamus

from the enslaved populace: This is a reference to the ordinary citizens of France.

songs, chants and demands: A legacy of the Age of Enlightenment, the motto ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’  (Liberty, Equality and Fraternity) first appeared during the French Revolution. It wasn’t until the Third Republic that the motto established  itself as the guiding principle of French Republicanism.

Princes and Lords are held captive in prison: The Reign of Terror (French: la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, prominent aristocrats and their supporters were arrested. Soon after, a series of massacres and public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety.

There is disagreement among historians over when exactly ‘the Terror’ began. Some historians maintain the Terror begun in 1793 when the Revolutionary Tribunal came into existence. Others believe the the Terror began much earlier, from the September Massacres of 1792, or even July 1789, when the first killing of the revolution occurred.

headless idiots: Some commentators see the French Aristocracy as the headless idiots, and while it is true that their obstinacy in the face of reasonable calls for reform was partly responsible for the Terror, here the headless idiots are the leaders of the revolution, most of whom were were executed on the guillotine.

received as divine prayers: In 1793 there was a concerted effort by the more radical leaders of the Revolution to replace Catholicism with the Cult of Reason. The Cult was explicitly anthropocentric, and sought Truth and Liberty through the exercise of Reason. As Antoine-François Momoro, one of the main supporters of the Cult stressed repeatedly, Liberty, Truth and Reason are abstractions and not gods. Anacharsis Clootz, another radical leader, declared during the Festival of Reason on the 10th of November 1793, that henceforth there would be one god – the people.

While the Cult lacked a deity and merely celebrated Reason as an abstract ideal, it encouraged traditional religious practices such as congregational worship and devotional displays. The Cult and the Festival galvanized anti-revolutionary forces and caused many Jacobins, including Robespierre, to publicly distance themselves from the radical faction. At the time, Robespierre denounced the Cult and related festivals as ‘ridiculous farces’.

In 1794, Robespierre replaced the Cult of Reason with the Cult of the Supreme Being, a form of deism. Those who championed the Cult  of Reason, such as those shown below, were executed. Robespierre wanted his Cult to become the state religion of the new French Republic, replacing both Roman Catholicism and the Cult of Reason. Robespierre’s Cult found few supporters after his fall, and along with the Cult of Reason, it was banned by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802.