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ABSTRACT

ROBESPIERRE:
VIRTUE, TERROR
AND CULPABILITY

The Terror became the apotheosis of revolutionary


desire for a radical utopian restructuring or renewal
of society within the framework of war both within
and without. Historians have split over the utilitarian
necessity of the Terror insofar as how the
implemented policies were actually mandatory to the
survival of the state. Ultimately, Robespierre, both in
his utopian obsession with societal virtue as well as
with existential enemies, conflated violence with
virtue. In doing so, he used the Terror to not only rid
the radical revolutionary government of foreign and
domestic enemies but also to remake or regenerate
society into a permanent virtuous revolution.

AnneMarie Dickey

The Reign of Terror is possibly the most discussed, most recognized and certainly the most
mythologized period of the French Revolution. The duration was short; lasting only from
September 5, 1793 to July 28, 1794. Nonetheless, it oversaw a wave of inquisitorial state
spying, mass executions, genocidal warfare in the Vendee and a despotic, dictatorial executive
committee that seems unthinkable in the context of a revolution ostensibly predicated on
freedom from tyranny. How this came to be has been the subject of non-stop debate for over
150 years. Historians tend to fall into two camps that basically allow that the Terror was an
unfortunate and temporary necessity due to existential threats to the Revolution. The first
holds that if there had been no revolt from troublesome Catholic revanchists in the Vendee,
coupled with invasions of France by foreign armies during a constitutional crisis (which led to
the execution of the King), then the Terror need never have occurred. The second, including
Simon Schama and Francois Furet, see violence as an inherent aspect of the Revolution and
ideology particularly that of the Montagnards and the Herbertists, was a major causative factor
in the evolution of the Terror.1 In this view, the radical Jacobins substitute the Catholic religion
associated with the Ancien Regime for something entirely of their own making and refuse to
tolerate heresy or any deviation. Therefore, the Terror, and virtuous violence become a
purifying and even edifying experience that will renew and strengthen the Republic by ridding
the body politic of all enemies.
These explanations still do not entirely encompass the very personal motivations of the
men who ran the retributive machinery of the Revolution and the Terror, nor those of the one
man, Maximillian Robespierre, who became increasingly responsible for and associated with
1

Peter McPhee The French Revolution: 1789-1799 (NY, Oxford University Press, 2002), 99

the policies of Terror during his tenure on the Committee of Public Safety. In the bloody radical
coup of 10 August, 1792 as well as in the September Massacres that shortly followed,
Robespierre consistently excused or minimized the bloodshed in terms of necessity under the
control of the virtuous People who did as they must. In this light, the proximate causal
justifications for the Terror as stated cannot account for policies of the Terror as they
developed over the radical phase of the Revolution and then were actually implemented,
especially when Robespierres record of conflating violence and virtue is examined.
Ultimately, Robespierre became consumed with utopian obsession of societal virtue as
well as Manichean conflict between the ultimate good of the Revolution and the overwhelming
evil of existential enemies engaged in conspiracies and plots. Robespierres career arc of
violence and virtue demonstrates how he used the Revolution, the violence of the people and
the Terror in particular to not only rid the radical revolutionary government of foreign and
domestic enemies but also to remake or regenerate society into a permanent virtuous
revolution.
The Brissotins
The utopian and Manichean underpinnings of the revolution had been evident since the
storming of the Bastille and the street executions of Foullon de Dou and Berthier de Sauvigny.2
Extra-legal killings, especially gruesome street executions of this sort became foundational to
the pattern of virtuous violence that Robespierre came to defend as the Revolution proceeded
apace. The release of prisoners and rebellion against the old social order provided the utopian
2

Schama 403-406

promise of better things to come, while the gruesome extra-legal executions of enemies of the
people defined the reaction of the revolution against enemies who would be given no
quarter. Despite these trends, the Revolution initially took a relatively moderate stance
regarding the role of the King and nobility, and was remarkably permissive with respect to
womens rights, freedom of expression and access to the political process.
Robespierre was a lawyer and one of the elected representatives to the Estates General.
He was known for his classical education and a marked tendency to allude to classical history
and philosophers in his speeches, freely mixing references to Scipio, Hannibal and Themistocles
when it suited him.3 English observer John Moore described him as A man of small size and
disagreeable countenance, which announces more fire than understanding.4 Certainly,
Robespierre could never be accused of a want of passion.
Spartan in taste and temperament and occupied with notions of virtue, Robespierre also
had a tendency to conflate his own personal ambitions and mores to those of the people at
large. Over time this became an abstraction that was both useful (when he claimed to speak
for the people as their watchful eyes in opposing the war against Austria, he later seemed
prescient5) and dangerous (as time went on and the Terror continued, his claims to speak for
the people became obviously unreliable). This need to establish legitimacy by presuming to
speak for the people, for indeed the people were presumed to be the supreme source of

Robespierre 62
English witnesses 206
5
Robespierre 35-39
4

legitimacy and the Revolutions sole agent6 was not restricted to Robespierre by means, yet he
mastered the art of combining prose and power in a fashion that his contemporaries never
managed.
In pursuit of virtue, Robespierre claimed: The whole foundation of civil society is
morality! Immorality is the basis of despotism, as virtue is the essence of the Republic7 In
his final speech to the assembly before the events of Thermidor, he exulted Virtue? It is a
natural passion, without doubtbut it exists, this tender, imperious, irresistible passion, the
torment and the delight of magnanimous souls8 In defining the contrast between the
Revolution and its enemies he described tyrants thusly: Every vice is enlisted in their service;
the Republic has only virtue on its side. Virtue is simple, modest, humble, often ignorant and
sometimes boorish; it is the natural lot of the poor; the patrimony of the people. 9 One
unsympathetic Brissotin observer wrote He has all the characteristics, not of a religious leader,
but of the leader of a religious sect; he has built up a reputation for austerity which borders on
sainthood10 Indeed, this cult of virtue and austerity was Robespierres defining
characteristic and he intended remake French society in his own image.
Robespierres predilection for virtue was shared by many in the Brissotin wing of the
Jacobin Club, and they were eager to share that virtue with others by force if necessary. This
was to become a familiar theme as the Revolution radicalized. By 1791, a war crisis had

Furet interpreting the French Revolution 29


Robespierre 70
8
Robespierre 76
9
Robespierre 63
10
McPhee Robespierre 138
7

engulfed the Revolution as the Brissotins sought to export revolution outside French borders. 11
The newly adopted Declaration of the Rights of Man, a universal and utopian document that
codified the rights and condition of every human seemed to demand that anyone opposing it
was not only an enemy of the Revolution but also an enemy of mankind.12 The Manichean logic
demanded action. In this way, war (virtuous violence) and the enforcement of virtue can
already be seen as the logical conclusion of the Revolution. Helpfully, Brissotin leader Mme
Roland explained that war would be A school of virtue and compared French Revolutionaries
to Roman legionnaires.13 By January, 1792, Brissotin speeches on the nobility of the free
Frenchmen, exhorting what Simon Schama calls the pledge of patriotic self-immolation had
carried the day.14 France would export the Revolution.
Robespierre was the one voice in the wilderness speaking against the war. Obsessed
with notions of conspiracy, Robespierre condemned the Brissotin wing for the war repeatedly
and warned that This is not the moment to declare war. Before all else, this is a moment to
manufacture arms, in every place and at every hour; to arm the National Guards; to arm the
people, if only with pikes; to adopt severe measures and not as have been adopted up to
now.15 Robespierre found himself on the wrong side of public opinion in the matter and was
dismissed and ridiculed. As he stated, the makeover of society, the hunt for internal enemies
and the adoption of severe measures took precedence over foreign adventurism. He would
develop this theme in the future after the sans-cullote uprising on August 10, 1792. Moreover,
11

Schama 591
Schama 592
13
Schama 595
14
Schama 595
15
Robespierre 38
12

he dryly noted that No one loves armed missionaries.16 However, as the Brissotins patriotic
war became a disastrous fiasco, he found his power and influence rising as a result of the very
war he had opposed from the beginning. Robespierre, even at this time of declaring himself
against a foreign war, was not against violence by any means. He merely thought more of it
needed to occur at home.
The Montagnards
By early August, the French forces continued to flounder against the professional
Austrian army and rumors swirled that the King would deliver the Revolution over to
murderous Austrian royalists. The radicals in the Jacobin Club saw their chance grab the reins
of power from the Brissotins and on the night of August 9th to the 10th, the tocsin bells rang in
the sections and the radical sans-cullottes took to the streets. Outrage had been building over
the kings use of his veto power and his summary dismissal of several Revolutionary council
members.17 The assumption that he engaged in treason and was in league with the Austrians
proved an easy sell to the public and bloody, virtuous public violence spilled over into the
streets.
Although the uprising of August 10th was presented as a spontaneous populist revolt, it
was carefully managed behind the scenes by Robespierre, Danton and Camille Desmoullins who
had formed an Insurrectionary Committee and were giving orders to the National Guard.18
When it was over, the King had been deposed, hundreds of Parisians and lay dead and some

16

Schama 595
Schama 605
18
Schama 613
17

600 of the Kings Swiss Guard, assigned to protect the palace and the Royal family, had been
massacred.19 The mob gave no quarter, and those unlucky enough to be taken alive were
mercilessly bludgeoned and stabbed. Their bodies were hacked apart and fed to dogs.
Robespierre declared it was The most beautiful revolution that has ever honored humanity. 20
English witness Thomas Blaike described sans-cullottes returning from the palace: Many of
these anthrophages passed in the street and stopt to show us parts of the Suisses they had
misacred some of whom I knewevery one seemed to glory in what he had done and to Show
even their furrie upon the dead body by cutting themthis seemed as if the people were struck
with a sort of madness.21 The beauty of the moment was lost on Mr. Blaike, apparently.
True to his conviction that violence in the name of the General Will and carried out by
the people was inherently just, Robespierre found no fault with the actions of 10 August. He
proceeded merely five days later to complain of courts procedures that put too great a
restraint on the vengeance of the people, for the crimes go back much further.22 This
conflation of violent vengeance, social virtue, and the governmental prerogative of justice
becomes increasingly evident and problematic as the radical phase of the revolution came into
fruition.
The September Massacres brought this trend into sharp focus. The fall of Verdun to the
Austrians led to a new round of conspiracy theories that prisoners throughout the country
might be set free by the Austrians to fight against the Revolution. Although violence and extra19

McPhee Robespierre 126


Schama 615
21
English witnesses 172
22
McPhee Robespierre 127
20

judicial killing had been a part of the Revolution from the beginning, the massacres occurred on
a scale not seen before, and targeted members of the royal household. Englishman Colonel
George Monro personally witnessed some of the killing at Abbaye and wrote an extensive and
detailed letter to Lord Grenville on what he witnessed, including a number of prisoners
precipitated by the door on a number of piques, and then among the savage cries of vive la
nation, to be hacked to pieces by those that had swords and were ready to receive them. 23
Colonel Monro also reported on the death of Princess Marie Louise of Savoy, the governess of
Marie Antoinettes children, who was hacked to death and decapitated. Her head was put on a
pike for display while her body was dragged through various streets.24 Some 1,400 people,
including many priests, were killed in appalling fashionoften with hand held implements such
as carpenters tools.25
The horror of the September Massacres and revulsion towards the bloodshed
threatened to derail Jacobin support as Brissotins (who shared much of the blame in fact) fixed
responsibility for the deaths on Robespierre and Marat.26 Marat in particular had been
sanguinary in his earlier pronouncements that: A year ago by cutting off five or six hundred
heads you would have set yourself free and happy for ever more. Today it would take ten
thousand; within a few months you will need to cut off a hundred thousand 27Robespierre
had not been involved in the massacres and likely knew nothing about them at the time they

23

English witnesses 193


English witnesses 193
25
Schama 635
26
McPhee Robespierre 131
27
The press 268
24

occurred.28 However, he was quick to excuse the bloodshed as he was elected vice president of
the assembly, saying Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution? To make a
crime of a few apparent or real misdemeanors, inevitable during such a great upheaval, would
be to punish them for their devotion29 As he had glossed over the anarchic bloodshed of
August 10th as it had coincided with his goals, so he acted as an apologist for extra-legal mass
murder committed in the name of the Revolution. The People, Robespierres abstraction of
virtuous Revolutionary ideals, can do no wrong. Ergo, enemies of the People choose their fate
and deserve what becomes of them. Virtuous violence became a permanent fixture of the
Revolution, and Robespierre one of its most ardent supporters in word and later, in deed.
In a macabre finale, Louis XVI went to the guillotine himself in January of 1793.
Robespierre argued in a speech before the Assembly that It is with regret that I utter this
baneful truthBut Louis must die in order that our country may live.30 The utopian certainty of
a better and more virtuous nation lies balanced against the Manichean certainty that
opponents were not only evil but must perish in order for utopia to arrive. Louis XVI was only
the first of many to come as the virtuous violence of the people became institutionalized.
The winter and spring of 1793 saw the French Revolution in dire peril from both within
and without. Austrian troops were on French soil as a result of the Brissotin instigated war.
Prussia and England entered the war following the execution of Louis XVI. A call for 300,000
conscripts on Feb 24th, 1793 to deal with the invaders only added to the woes of the young

28

McPhee Robespierre 137


McPhee Robespierre 137
30
Robespierre 31
29

republic as it precipitated a particularly nasty lion/civil war in the Vendee region. Moreover,
food shortages and rioting had broken out in that same winter of 1792 to 1793, leading
Robespierre to charge that the shortages were part of an English and Royalist plot to punish the
people and discredit the Revolution. He declared: The people are still persecuted by the rich,
who are what they always were: hard and merciless. He concluded: The people must, indeed,
rise: not to seize sugar but to exterminate the brigands.31 The eliminationist rhetoric became
a familiar and integral part of defining both the nature of the Revolutionary Republic as well as
the opposition. As always, the People must take matters into their own hands and
exterminate the enemies of the Revolution by dint of their innate virtue and capacity to
violently solve problems.
By April, 1793, Revolutionary armies were dealt serious reversals in the Vendee.
Losses were high. Spanish troops moved into the Catalan region, and Corsica was in open
revolt. The assembly placed executive power in the hands of a select Committee of Public
Safety between March and May of 1793 to deal with these existential threats more efficiently
and effectively. To thunderous applause in the assembly, Robespierre called for the death of
the people of the Vendee: I declare that we must not only exterminate all the rebels in the
Vendee, but all the rebels against humankind and the French people32 Again, the
apocalyptic Manicheanism and eliminationism contained in the speech aptly defines
Robespierres notions of Revolutionary legitimacy and the need to transform French society
through Revolutionary action and the violence legitimized by virtue. In Robespierres world,

31
32

Robespierre 47-48
McPhee Robespierre 148

enemies cannot be accommodated nor even merely defeated: they must be exterminated.
Utopia cannot be reached without the bloodshed of traitors, tyrants and rebels.
Around mid May of 1793, the battle between the Gironde and the Montagnards
reached its climax as the Brissotin (or Girondin as they increasingly became known as)
assemblymen abortively indicted Marat for threatening violence against the assembly, using his
own words taken from his newspaper.33 It quickly became a fiasco as Marat was vindicated at
trial. Meanwhile, populist Jacobin supporters such as Herbert had drawn up a list of 35
Girondins, to be expelled from the assembly in retaliation and called for action: The audacity
of the Brissotins has redoubled itself; the jackasses think that they are approaching the longedfor moment of the counter-revolutionBrave sans-cullottes, your enemies are only audacious
because you remain with your arms folded; wake up, damn it; get up, and you will see the at
your feet.34 Herberts calls for action through virtuous armed insurrection swiftly came to
fruition as 20,000 sans-cullotte militia surrounded the assembly and arrested 29 Girondin
representatives.35 The purge, as it became known, ended the revolutionary experiment with
representative government. The radical Montagnards now controlled the assembly, and
Robespierre lost no time in getting to work.
On July 27, 1793, Robespierre accepted placement to the executive Committee for
Public Safety.36 With the immediate threat of Girondin/Federalist treason (and the
assassination of Marat by Girondin Suporter Charlotte Cordray), foreign invasion and Royalist
33

Schama 718-719
The Press 190-191
35
Schama 728
36
McPhee Robespierre 161
34

counter revolutionary intrigue, Robespierre had a blank check to turn the Committee into a
stripped downconcentrated state machine 37that would enable his need to consummate a
complete regeneration, and if I may put it like this, to create a new people which he had
iterated in a proposal only days before on the afternoon that Marat had been assassinated. 38
Additionally, as President of the Assembly, Robespierre had the bully pulpit to expound his
doctrines and the power to enact them.39
The Terror
Robespierres appointment to the Committee created a mirror image counterpoint to
the Ancien Regime. Whereas King Louis XVI had subscribed to the traditional model of King and
Kingdom indivisible creating one nation mandated by God, Robespierres assumption of
unilateral assumption of power within the Committee created a similar, if opposed, unitary
model of power derived from the Will of the People.40 In this case, the paradox of individual
sovereignty and the need for society and rule of law had not been solved by the Revolution,
and the notion of balancing competing interests between society and the individual had been
generally ignored.41As Robespierre had already assumed the mantle of speaking for the People,
as well as encouraging populist violence from the People, he used his position on the
committee to create a singular and unified government by the Peoples Will. As embodiment of
the General Will, Robespierre was empowered to carry out that will, however mythical or
fallacious his understanding of the Will actually was.
37

Schama 755
McPhee Robespierre 162
39
McPhee Robespierre 167
40
Furet interpreting the French Revolution 39
41
Furet interpreting the French Revolution 30
38

Robespierre was not alone in this. Louise-Antoine St-Just, just 28 years old by this point,
had impressed Robespierre with his Spartan zeal and his oratory skills before the Assembly.42
In the lead up to the Kings execution, it was St-Just who had initially declared in a speech to
become legendary that Louis XVI was incompatible with the Republic simply by having been a
king in the first place. Therefore, Louis had to die, as he could not help but be a tyrant by
definition, thereby strengthening Robespierres position on the infallibility of the People in
revolution.43 Ergo, for the Republic to live, Louis had to be killed. No trial would be
necessary.44 This pronouncement put St-Just in good stead to become Robespierres top
lieutenant in the Committee, St-Just having been appointed to the Committee on the 10 th of
July.45 In the meantime, Robespierre immersed himself in the business of realizing his new
order of Spartan virtue where people in whatever circumstances they find themselves during
their lives they will be used to being able to do without comforts and excess, and despise
artificial needs.46 Virtue and Terror were now the order of the day.
On July 27th, the Committee of Public Safety was empowered to strike terror into the
hearts of counter-revolutionaries.47 This included surveillance of citizens, detention without
charge or trial, and suspension of civil liberties that had been guaranteed in the constitution
that had been successfully voted into acceptance scarcely a month earlier.48 The Constitution
of 1793 that Robespierre had authored would have to wait until society was sufficiently
42

McPhee Robespierre 131


Schama 651
44
Schama 651
45
Beraud 12 portraits 98
46
McPhee Robespierre 162-163
47
McPhee the French revolution 118
48
McPhee revolution 118
43

virtuous to deserve having it. Instead, the Committee of Public Safety immediately began
putting the Patrie on a war footing to deal with the numerous military foes on various fronts,
including raising new units of national guard, assuring adequate supplies and provisions for the
military and preparing propaganda for domestic morale.49
On September 5th, emboldened sans-culottes stormed the assembly yet again and
demanded radical military and economic measures in response to the endless conspiracies of
counter-revolutionary food price manipulation.50 The assembly enacted significant controls on
prices and wages and distributed rural property to the poor. The Law of Suspects allowed
detention and intimidation of political critics. Then in October, St-Just announced a
Revolutionary Government with all government effects and the military being placed under
control of the Committee.51 He said: It is impossible for revolutionary laws to be executed
unless the government itself is truly revolutionarythose who would make revolutions in the
world, those who want to do good in the world must sleep only in the tomb.52
Representatives from the Committee, including St-Just, were sent to every district with the
power to investigate and punish enemies of the stateoften by the guillotine or firing squad. 53
Robespierres singular vision of the General Will of the People married to the functions of
government had been realized as the successive insurrections and use of extra-legal violence by
the citizenry confirmed his notions of virtuous self-government by the people.

49

Mchee revolution 118


Mcphee revoltion 119
51
McPhee revolution 119
52
Schama citizens 767
53
Mcphee revolution 121
50

According to historian Albert Mathiez, the Terror was a sad but necessary reaction to
the severe and even existential threats facing the young republic (although many of these woes
were determinedly self-inflicted through needless antagonizing of foreign neighbors and
internal populations.) According to Mathiez, the Terror was much less the result of a well
thought out ideology then of inescapable pressures brought on by civil and foreign war. The
enemy had to be repulsed, the royalist and Girondin revolts crushed.54 The effectiveness of
the Terror in accomplishing these goals is not in doubt, yet Mathiez ignores the voluminous
evidence in Robespierres own words that he had planned to install a society of Spartan virtue
all along, and his decision to suspend his own constitution until society was cleansed
demonstrates his motivation.
The cleansing began in short order. The former Queen, Marie Antoinette, went to the
scaffold on October 16th. Herbert, ever the vulgarian, gloated as the frail, gaunt Marie was
trundled to the hot hand, which was his current nickname for the guillotine, and complained
that The bitch was audacious and insolent right to the very end.55 Mme Roland, the Brissotin
who had praised the virtue of war and had actually congratulated Robespierres
accomplishments merely a year earlier found herself before the blade on November 8th.56
Other Brissotin/Gironde assembly members soon followed suit. The man who had
administered the Tennis Court Oath, Bailly, took the tumbril ride on November 11 th.57 The
bloody toll of Gironde counter-revolutionaries grew inexorably to the demands of violent

54

French Reolution conflicting interpretations 189


Schama citizens 800
56
McPhee Robespierre 172
57
McPhee Robespierre 172
55

virtue as interpreted by the Revolutionary Tribunal, The Committee of Public Safety and their
notions of mythologized General Will.
Simultaneously, Robespierre long-time Jacobin ally Danton had set about defanging the
sans-cullottes and stopping the endless insurrections and tocsin alarms. Danton understood far
better than Robespierre how waves of populist violence had successively brought their
predecessors into power and then swept them out. He was determined that the Montagnards
would be the final word in administration and would possess a monopoly on state sanctioned
violence, testifying to the Convention: Let us be terrible, so that the people will not have to
be.58 Danton restricted local section meetings to twice a week and instituted a payment
scheme to encourage additional (and less radical) people to show up, including spies for the
Committee.59 Danton encountered a far more intractable problem when he and Camille
Desmoulins went head to head with Robespierre concerning the Terror.
By autumn of 1793, the enemies of the Republic had been reversed on all fronts. Lyon
capitulated October 9th, and Revolutionary forces had crushed the Marseillais army earlier on
August 25th. The British and Austrians had both been repulsed and the Vendean army was
soundly thrashed on October 17th.60 With victory in sight and the Revolution secure, the easing
of the Regime of terror should have been evident if Mathiez is correct in his assertion that it
was both temporary and necessary. On the contrary, the Terror, now the official manifestation
of the Peoples vengeance, continued apace with new arrests, closing of womens clubs and a

58

Schama 707
Schama 759
60
Schama Citizens 767
59

vast acceleration in executions.61 Between December of 1793 and January of 1794, nearly
7,000 people were executed by the tribunals.62 Despite the misgivings of relatively moderate
Jacobins left in the Convention who called for an end to the Terror in December of 1793, the
radicals could always point to more foes to be overcome and new reasons to continue the
violent repressions.63
Nevertheless, Desmoulins and Danton, both longtime friends and ideological comrades
of Robespierre, made overtures of an Indulgent Policy to roll back the institutional coercion of
the Terror.64 Of course, this was distinctly at odds with what Robespierre had intended from
the beginning, which was societal regeneration and recognition of the innate ability of the
People to use violence for the common good. Even if the Patrie was out of immediate danger
now, enemies abounded within and without and maximalist revolutionary movements must
have maximalist eternal enemies to overcome.65 This is something that Desmoulins and
Danton never grasped about the nature of their revolution or indeed, that of their sometime
friend and comrade.
The policies of the Terror continued to bear fruit by December, 1793 as the Revolt in the
Vendee was crushed despite the initial heavy casualties and difficulties experienced by the
Revolutionary armies in fighting counter-insurgency campaign against a foe that knew the
terrain and refused to fight except on the most favorable circumstances. 66 General Turreau

61

McPhee the French Revolution 142-144


McPhee The French Revolution 144
63
McPhee The French Revolution 144
64
Schama citizens 767
65
Furet interpreting French Revolution 54
66
Dwyer, mcphee French revolution and napoleon. 99
62

reported to the Minister of War that My purpose is the burn everything and that All brigands
caught bearing arms, or convicted of having taken up arms to revolt against their country, will
be bayoneted. The same will apply to girls, women and children67 In the end, he proved
true to his word. The scale of bloodshed in the Vendee far exceeded anything that had been
seen previously as the application of violence in the pursuit of virtuous social regeneration
became coupled with the language of extermination.
After effect resistance had ended, the campaign was capped by 12 infernal Columns
which engaged in mass killings of all humans foundincluding even loyalists as well as women
and childrenin 773 communities set aside for extermination.68 Robespierres statement: I
declare that we must not only exterminate all the rebels in the Vendee, but all the rebels
against humankind and the French people69 proved gruesomely prophetic. Death was
carried out at bayonet point, with swords, firing squad or by the novel fashion of crowding
people onto boats designed to be sunk and consigning them to mass drowning.70 This was
called sending to the water tower or The Republican Bath.71 The policies of virtue, violence
and extermination simply left no room for compromise, quarter or empathy, and death on a
previously unimaginable scale was the logical result.
The bloodshed in Lyon was scarcely less robust as Committee representatives set about
their business with bureaucratic efficiency. Joseph Fouche, an acquaintance of Robespierre,
and Collot dHerbois, a sometime actor, enacted a grim repression that was only exceeded by
67

Dwyer, mcphee French revolution and napoleon 101


Dwyer mcphee French revolution and napoleon 101-102
69
McPhee Robespierre 148
70
Dwer mcphee French revolution and napoleon 101-102
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Dwer mcphee French revolution and napoleon 101-102
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the Vendean affair.72 Homes were searched, decrees read and judgments pronounced. On
one day, 32 heads were collected in only 25 minutes.73 The drainage ditch leading from the
scaffold overran with blood to the point that citizen complaints led to additional executions
being carried out as in the Vendee: by bayonet, musket fire and even groups chained together
and obliterated by grapeshot from cannons.74 Excusing this affair, as always, came easily to
Robespierre: No, their memory [of Jacobin representative Chalier and others arrested by the
Federalists in Lyon] must be avenged and those monsters unmasked and exterminated.75
Maximalist language of extermination meant that the normal rules of the conduct of warfare
simply no longer applied, and that the need for social virtue and renewal dictated that the
people and their representatives must use every tool at hand to cleanse away enemies.
Nearly 2,000 citizens of Lyons met their fate, and while many of them were from the
upper classes, the poor and working classes from book keepers and brewers to lemonade stand
owners all found their way to the scaffold, the bayonet or the end of a gun. 76 This number did
not take into account those who had died during the siege of the city and the artillery
bombardment. Word of massacres at Nantes, Arras and elsewhere filtered back to the
Committee to add impetus to Dantons and Desmoulinss pleas for indulgency. However, the
language of extermination remained ascendant.77

72

McPhee Robespierre 177


Schama citizens 782
74
Schama citizens 783
75
Schama citizens 779
76
Schama citizens 784
77
McPhee Robepierre 177
73

An additional link between the massacres of the Vendee and Lyon exists in the fate of
physical structures for occupancy. As already seen in the Vendee, General Turreau was on a
mission to burn everything and that meant crops and building useful to the local inhabitants.
This scorched earth policy continued after almost all resistance had ceased, and a similar
pattern of structure demolition commenced in Lyon as workers by the hundreds became
employed to destroy some sixteen hundred domestic structures. These actions go well beyond
any immediate military or civil necessity, leading an incredulous Montagnard in the Convention
to ask: is it Republican to tear down houses?78 St-Just could almost have anticipated this very
question when he remarked: Republic consists in the extermination of everything that
opposes it.79 Robespierres policy of cleansing the Republic and exterminating enemies could
not be accomplished by merely killing people. All traces of their perfidy must be erased and
their evil ripped out by the roots to allow wholesome Republican replacements to flourish.
Eventually, and almost inevitably, the Terror began to consume the practitioners. The
executioner in Lyon was himself taken to the scaffold, and another executioner specially
brought in to complete the task.80 Herbert, locked in battle with the Indulgents and pressing for
increasingly ultra-radical social and economic policies, attempted to rouse the sections in
another insurrection on March 4th, 1794 and found that Dantons policy of paying men to
attend the section meetings had effectively filled them with informants to the Committee. The
Ultras insurrection failed before it ever got started, and Herberts turn to hold the hot hand

78

Schama Citizens 781


Schama Citizens 787
80
Schama 784
79

or be shaved by the national razor saw him display far less composure than had Marie
Antoinette.81
Danton and Desmoulins were next. Danton was implicated in a tawdry financial scandal
which fatally damaged the Indulgency arguments both he and Desmoulins had made.82
Desmoulins continued to argue his points in print, which forced a very public showdown
between the conscientious objector and the man who could not admit to division of opinion in
the General Will of the People.83 Neither of them truly grasped what Robespierre intended the
Terror to actually be or to accomplish and this became their undoing. Danton and Desmoulins
went to the scaffold with the same flair and composure they had displayed as Revolutionary
leaders for years. Danton told the executioner: Dont forget to show my head to the people.
It is well worth the trouble.84 Indeed, it likely was.
Shortly after the deaths of Danton and Desmoulins, the Convention passed what
became known as simply the Prairial Law. It abolished what few defense resources accused
persons could bring in a trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and it widely expanded the
scope of who could be charged. Henceforth, anyone denounced for slandering patriotism,
seeking to inspire discouragement, spreading false news, and depraving moralsimpairing
the energy and purity of the Revolutionary Government could now be brought before the
Tribunal. The only allowable outcomes were acquittal or death, and the accused could not

81

Schama 816
Schama 817
83
Schama 810-81
84
Schama 820
82

produce witnesses nor would he or she have access to counsel, since the virtuous citizens of the
Republic should be able to arrive at a fair conclusion on their own.85
The law was a response to panicked rumors of assassination or a Royalist uprising.
Robespierre described the procedure in analytical terms: A man is brought before the
Revolutionary Tribunal. If there are material proofs against him, he is condemned; if there are
no material proofs, in this case, witnesses are called.86 This became the advent of the Great
Terror, which saw another 1,376 victims take the tumbril ride to the scaffold between June 10
and July 27.87 Robespierres search for perfect Revolutionary justice in the hands of the
virtuous citizens of the Republic had reached a final crescendo of vengeance and blood.
Nothing stood in the way of his idealized Republic regenerated through the extermination of
the impure by the righteous hands of the citizenry.
Robespierres final speech before the Convention on July 26th expounded the virtue he
was so determined to impart to his fellow man: Virtue? It is a natural passion, without
doubtbut it exists, this tender, imperious, irresistible passion, the torment and the delight of
magnanimous soulsthis generous ambition to found on Earth the first Republic of the
worldYou feel it burning in your souls, just as I feel it in mine.88 Doubtless his critics in the
Convention felt something as he proceeded to promise that additional traitors would be
unmasked in the Convention. He then made the amazing utterance: I was made to combat

85

Schama 836
The Revolutionary Career David P Jordan 204
87
The Revolutionary career Jordan 204
88
Robespierre 76
86

crime, not to control it.89 He had become the Will of the People made corporeal, exacting
punishment and instilling social virtue in equal yet unlimited measure, yet his final promise of
unmasking traitors in the convention proved that virtue has its limits. The Convention turned
on Robespierre, St-Just and their supporters with ferocity born of fear and desperation. As the
tumbril brought Robespierre, St-Just and other Committee members before the scaffold in turn,
the peoplehis People, had turned on him as they had on so very many others brought before
him. As he was made by the General Will of the People, so was he un-made.
*****
If some in the Convention had seen the Terror as a means to attain peace, Robespierre
saw his creation in quite different terms. For him, the Revolution and the Terror in particular
were a means to regenerate and remake society through violent action applied both by and on
the behalf of the People. In short, virtue was the raison detre of the Revolution, and violence
supplied by the People would bring it to fruition.
Crane Brinton explains this in religious terms where Robespierre and his followers had
substituted the catholic faith of the Ancien Regime for the modern, austere religion of reason
and virtue.90 They would remake society in their own image as men of character,
incorruptible citizens as described by Desmoulins in 1791.91 This reliance on character and
virtue was one of the major tenants of the Committee of Public Safety and the attendant

89

Robespierre 78
Kafker conflicting interpretations 208
91
Kafker conflicting interpretations 208
90

tribunals for they relied on just this theory of incorruptible men who could dispense justice and
defend the people until such time as the Constitution of 1793 could be implemented.
Brinton calls this utopian view of human nature the religion of humanity and describes
the Jacobins as fanatical followers of the faith.92 Augustine Cochin goes further by describing
the Jacobins as a whole in terms of A society of unpractical idealists, fanatics bent on imposing
upon their fellows of the grande ville a rigid code quite inconsistent with normal human
conduct as we know it from tradition and observation.93 Therefore, the model Jacobin has
seized on the crisis of summer, 1793 as a means by which he could realize his heaven here on
earth.94
Brinton may paint with too large a brush and with too much assuredness in the
Utopianism of Robespierre and the Montagnard Jacobins. He strains credulity by describing
partisan Jacobins such as He has no ordinary, daily, selfish human interests.95 That manner of
observation tends to buy into the very sort of impossible utopian caricature that Robespierre
wanted to project. Francis Furet digs deeper when he acknowledges the initial utilitarian
reason for the Terror at a moment of military crisis, and then proceeds to examine the
ideological roots of the Terror that allowed it to flourish after all military pretense for it had
vanished. He notes: The Terror intensified with the improvement of the situation and the
victories, starting in October.96 This has been observed already. However, as the Terror began
to consume the Herbertists and then the Indulgents, Furet concludes that: It was less a part of
92

Kafker conflicting interpretations 214


Kafker conflicting interpretations 214
94
Kafker conflicting interpretations 218
95
Kafker conflicting interpretation 218
96
Kafker conflicting interpretations 222
93

the arsenal of victory then of an ambition for regeneration.97 What is left out of this
interpretation is that virtue and desire for violent regeneration led to the crisis to begin with in
the Brissotin led war against Austria, and which Robespierre had opposed only because of his
desire to see ever increasing severe measures adopted at home.
Like Brinton, Furet holds that the ideology of the Terror predated the military
justification for its use, although he acknowledges the role that circumstances played in
developing the state apparatus Robespierre used to set the Terror into motion. Brinton and
Furet both agree on the quasi-religious and utopian nature of the Jacobins as well as the use of
the Terror for violent societal renewal. This is critical, since Robespierre argued that the
regeneration of society was the central character of the Revolution. Ergo, If the Republic of
free citizens was not yet possible, it was because men, perverted by their past history, were
wicked; by means of the Terror, the Revolution-a history without precedent, entirely newwould make a new man.98 In short, Robespierre would not let a good crisis go to waste. He
would have his new society and his new man.
Contra Mathiez, it quickly became evident that the Terror was neither temporary nor
merely incidental to the character of the radical phase of the Revolution. In particular,
Robespierre stamped his own personality indelibly upon the Committee of Public Safety and
the policies that lead to the events between August, 1793 and Thermidor, 1794. His
legitimization of extra-legal violence ensured that it would remain a fixture in the Revolution.
His language of extermination became pronounced policy in Lyon and the Vendee. His
97
98

Kafker conflicting interpretations 223


Kafker conflicting interpretations 224

conflation of good and evil with public policy sent Danton, Desmoulins and thousands of others
to their deaths on the scaffold. His questcrusadefor virtue led him and the Revolution down
a nightmarish path of institutionalized murder and suffering. It is unknowable (although highly
unlikely) whether Robesierre and the Montagnards could have seized power without a serious
military pretext. It is certain, however, that they used the September Massacres, the Vendee,
the Federalist Revolt and the foreign invasions to their own benefit to consummate their desire
for the perfect society of virtue legitimized and obtained through bloodshed.

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