"Joining the debate late, but led here from Zenpundit's link. I'll apologetically take a moment to disagree with much of what ZP says; the Committee on Public Safety was an organization of the State - chartered by the National Assembly. If their actions were terrorism, then so are the actions of every brutal dictatorship in the world - so, in fact, are the actions of every state that uses deadly force to enforce state policy"
Yes, that however was the point of origin for the concept of terrorism and "Terrorists", as a state agency, propagators of "the Terror" during the French Revolution, though the tactic is ancient (see LaQueur, Voices of Terror). The Jacobins and the Paris Commune were the heavy historical influence on Lenin's ideas of revolutionary violence ( along with the theories of Sergei Nechaev). Terrorism later became associated with groups and individuals which is how we use it today but "state terrorism" has never disappeared, we just call it something else.