The power of the Mountain, which Robespierre's allies had ended up by appropriating, was to last for fourteen months. On the military plane, this period began very awkwardly for the French government. The summer of 1793 saw the federalist uprising, the victories of the rebels in the Vendee, and the advance of the armies of the Coalition. However, in the course of the following autumn and winter, foreign enemies had to beat a retreat, while domestic enemies were annihilated. Only the economic crisis withstood the Committee of Public Safety, which no longer showed any hesitation in imposing the regulations, controls and interventions which the popular movement demanded.

The dirigiste policies failed, just as could have been anticipated by the very persons who had put them into operation, and who had in the past spoken out in favour of free trade. It only served in the end to worsen the subsistence crisis. This being the case, confrontation between the Convention and the Parisian sans-culottes seemed inevitable, for the latter felt that their deepest aspirations had been thwarted at every turn. This confrontation was not to be, however, for the representatives of the sans-culottes at this juncture, the Hébertists, the successors to the Enragés, were eliminated in the spring of 1794, as a preventative measure. Their disappearance did not, however, put a stop to the economic interventionism which they had championed. The logic peculiar to regulation, which seemed to call always for yet more measures, combined with what seemed to be the imperatives of war, led the Committee of Public Safety to place still more emphasis upon interventionism.