Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
M
AXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE has ‘That young man believes what he
always provoked strong feel- says: he will go far,’ Mirabeau. Portrait
ings. For the English he is the of Robespierre by Joseph Boze.
‘sea-green incorruptible’ portrayed by
Carlyle, the repellent figure at the a spokesman for them. It is for this
head of the Revolution, who sent reason that he came to dominate the Revolution,
thousands of people to their death Revolution in its most radical phase. and throws light both on its ideals,
under the guillotine. The French, for This was the period of the Jacobin and on the violence that indelibly
the most part, dislike his memory still government, which lasted from June scarred it.
more. There is no national monu- 1793 to Robespierre’s overthrow in Born in Arras in 1758, Robe-
ment to him, though many of the rev- July 1794; the months when the com- spierre suffered loss early in his life.
olutionaries have had statues raised to mon people became briefly the mas- His mother died when he was six,
them. Robespierre is still considered ters of the first French republic, and soon after, his father abandoned
beyond the pale; only one rather which had been proclaimed in the family. The children were
shabby metro station in a poorer sub- September 1792. It is also known, brought up by elderly relatives who
urb of Paris bears his name. more ominously, as the Terror. continually reminded them of their
Although Robespierre, like most The enigmatic figure of Robe- dependent situation and their
of the revolutionaries, was a bour- spierre takes us to the heart of the father’s irresponsibility. Maximilien
geois, he identified with the cause of was the eldest, a conscientious, hard-
the urban workers, the sans-culottes as ‘Hell Broke Loose’: an English comment working scholarship boy. As soon as
they came to be known, and became on the execution of Louis XVI, 1793. he was able he shouldered the bur-
spierre spoke for them when he the Jacobins were both on the gation of the forty-eight sections of
declared that the aristocrats were extreme left, and shared many of the sans-culottes urged the Convention to
plotting a conspiracy to destroy the same radical republican convictions ‘make Terror the order of the day!’
Revolution. In August the monarchy of the Girondins, the Jacobins were The Jacobins responded: the Law of
was overthrown in a pitched battle at much more brutally efficient in set- Suspects was passed on September
the Tuileries palace. A new govern- ting up a war government. A Com- 17th, 1793, giving wide powers of
ment, the National Convention, was mittee of Public Safety was estab- arrest to the ruling Committees, and
formed in September 1792, which lished to act as a war cabinet. It defining ‘suspects’ in broad terms.
promptly declared France to be a became the chief executive power, In October the Convention passed
republic. By now Robespierre’s with Robespierre – now moving from the Decree on Emergency Govern-
ascendancy in the Jacobin club was opposition to government for the ment. This authorized the revolu-
unrivalled. The Jacobins identified first time – one of its twelve mem- tionary government to pass beyond
themselves with the popular move- bers. Like so many politicians mak- accepted limits. Saint-Just decreed
ment and the sans-culottes, who in ing such a move, Robespierre’s atti- that the government ‘would be revo-
turn saw popular violence as a politi- tude to political power was to change lutionary until the peace’. The con-
cal right. dramatically from this moment. In stitution was shelved: the libertarian
The most notorious instance of June the Jacobins drafted a new con- ideals of the Revolution were sus-
the crowd’s rough justice was the stitution, the most libertarian and pended, indefinitely. Sans-culottes
prison massacres of September 1792,
when around 2,000 people, includ-
ing priests and nuns, were dragged
from their prison cells, and subject-
ed to summary ‘justice’. The Con-
vention was determined to avoid a
repeat of these brutal scenes, but
that meant taking violence into their
own hands as an instrument of gov-
ernment.
When the Convention debated
the fate of Louis XVI, now a prisoner
of the revolutionaries,
Robespierre and his
youthful colleague,
Saint-Just (1767-
94) – also once
an opponent
of the death
penalty –
led the way
in claim- ‘Live free or die’: a formed armed militias to go out into
ing that Revolutionary the provinces to requisition supplies
‘ L o u i s plate of 1792 (left), for the armies and the urban popu-
must die in and, above a lace and to root out counter-revolu-
order for cartoon of ‘The tionaries. In October Brissot and
the Revolu- Revolution Failed’, other Girondin leaders, as well as
tion to live’. 1792. Marie-Antoinette went to the guillo-
Robespierre had tine.
not abandoned his egalitarian the world had For the first time in history terror
libertarian convic- yet seen. Yet for some became an official government poli-
tions, but he was coming to months they hesitated to imple- cy, with the stated aim to use vio-
the conclusion that the ends justified ment it, as the pressures of war with lence in order to achieve a higher
the means, and that in order to Austria and Prussia, and of full- political goal. Unlike the later mean-
defend the Revolution against those blown civil war in the Vendée in the ing of ‘terrorists’ as people who use
who would destroy it, the shedding west were compounded by revolts violence against a government, the
of blood was justified. across the country by départements terrorists of the French Revolution
In June 1793, the sans-culottes, rejecting the authority of the radical were the government. The Terror was
exasperated by the inadequacies of government in Paris. legal, having been voted for by the
the government, invaded the Con- In September 1793, impatient, the Convention.
vention and overthrew the Giron- sans-culottes, once again invaded the Robespierre, like a number of the
dins. In their place they endorsed Convention to exert pressure on the Jacobin government, had been a
the political ascendancy of the deputies. They wanted economic lawyer. He clung to the form of law
Jacobins. Thus Robespierre came to measures to ensure their food sup- partly in order to prevent the sans-
power on the back of popular street plies, and the government to deal culottes taking the law into their own
violence. Though the Girondins and with counter-revolutionaries. A dele- hands through mob violence. As fel-
Roman Empire, he said, paraphras- that a man of virtue must put the The festival of the Supreme Being held
ing Tacitus, people could be con- good of la patrie before private loyal- at Robespierre’s instigation on June 8th,
demned as counter-revolutionary for ty, even to his friends. Never had his 1794.
being ‘too rich… or too poor… too own virtue seemed so appalling and
melancholy... or too self-indulgent’. inhuman as at that moment. (June 10th 1794) which, by depriv-
Robespierre saw this satire – rightly – Perhaps he thought so too, and ing the accused of counsel and
as a veiled attack on the Committee the strain of what he had become removing the need for witnesses to
of Public Safety itself. Robespierre was beginning to tell. In the last few substantiate accusations, removed
tried to persuade Desmoulins to weeks of his life he shut himself in the vestige of justice from the Tri-
burn the journal publicly in the his rooms, and did not attend the bunal.
Jacobin Club. Desmoulins refused, meetings of the Committee or the Robespierre was never the head of
recklessly citing the words of Robe- Convention. He was losing his grip, the government, nor the only terror-
spierre’s hero, Jean-Jacques both on himself and on power. In his ist: he was one man on the Commit-
Rousseau, against him, ‘burning is absence it is notable that it was ‘busi- tee – albeit its most high-profile
not an answer’. Robespierre was ness as usual’ for the Terror: in Paris member. Other members of the
stung, and stopped trying to help his the executions intensified, based on Committee, together with members
friend. When the Committees decid- the notorious Law of 22nd Prairial of the Committee of General Securi-
ed to arrest Danton and Desmoulins ty (responsible for the police, pris-
in March 1794, Robespierre used his ons and most of the arrests), were as
personal knowledge of the two men much responsible for the running of
to supplement his notes for the offi- the Terror as Robespierre. Some of
cial indictment against them. his colleagues were hard, ambitious
Desmoulins’ wife, Lucille, tried to men, not averse to political corrup-
agitate for his release but she too was tion unlike Robespierre, and scorn-
accused of conspiracy against the ful of his dream of a virtuous repub-
Revolution and followed her hus- lic. There were aspects of the Terror
band to the guillotine in April. The with which Robespierre disagreed.
letter from her heart-broken mother He was an opponent of dechristian-
to Robespierre, begging for his inter- ization – a policy carried out by some
vention to save her daughter, went militant sans-culottes of forcibly clos-
unanswered. Robespierre had said ing churches and preventing any
kind of religious activity. In June
Georges Danton on the way to his 1794 he organized the festival of the
execution, April 5th, 1794. Sketch by Supreme Being, based on Enlighten-
Pierre Wille. ment deist beliefs, intended to unify
the people around broadly moral But he refused. His enemies among
and vaguely religious principles. It the Jacobins spent that night in orga-
made him a laughing stock with the nizing their conspiracy. The next day
atheists among the deputies and Saint-Just was shouted down when he
failed to conciliate devout Catholics, tried to speak in his friend’s defence.
long since alienated from the Revo- Robespierre and his closest associ-
lution by its anti-clericalism. ates were arrested and, after a futile
Robespierre also deplored the vio- attempt to rally the sans-culottes to
lent excesses of some of the Jacobin defend them at the town hall, they
deputies sent out ‘on mission’ from were executed the following day.
the Convention to oversee the imple- The men who overthrew Robe-
mentation of policy in the provinces spierre were more ruthless and cyni-
and with the armies. While many of cal terrorists than he. They included
the deputies on mission were consci- Vadier, Elie Lacoste, Billaud-Varenne
entious and restrained, others mis- and Collot d’Herbois on the Com-
used their powers to arrest, intimi- mittees, as well as the deputies who
date and execute local populations. had carried out atrocities whilst ‘on
Robespierre had some of these mission’. Initially they wanted the
deputies, including Tallien, Fouché, Terror to continue. But it rapidly
Fréron, Barras and Collot d’Herbois, became clear that the public had
in his sights when he went to the sickened of it. Since the overwhelm- ‘Having executed everyone else,
Convention for the first time in ing victory over the Austrians in the Robespierre executes the executioner’:
more than four weeks on the July Low Countries at Fleurus on June satirical print of 1794.
26th (8 Thermidor by the revolution- 26th, the military justification for it
ary calendar). It was the turning had also diminished. In the reaction When he spoke of conspiracies
point. He had already quarrelled after Thermidor, as the coup is against the Revolution, of the threats
with men on both the ruling Com- known, terrorist politicians rapidly to ‘the patrie in danger’, and the
mittees, and, having rejected the rec- restyled themselves. Members of the need for extreme measures, he
onciliation which Saint-Just tried to Committees now claimed that they voiced the fears of many at that time
broker, he was left with little alterna- had concerned themselves exclusive- that France was about to be over-
tive but to try to destroy his enemies ly with the war: it was only the Robe- whelmed by foreign and internal
before they could do the same to spierrists who had been terrorists. In enemies. The policies of the Jacobin
him. He made a long speech in the popular imagination Robe- Committees had, after all, been
which he sought to justify the stand spierre the enigma rapidly became endorsed by the deputies of the Con-
he had taken as a defender of virtue. the embodiment of the Terror. Yet vention. Perhaps this is why he has
But he also took the opportunity to he would never have been so influen- been so vilified: in holding one indi-
demand another purge of suspect tial had he not spoken for a wide vidual culpable for the ills of the Ter-
deputies. In a fatal miscalculation, swathe of society and government. ror, French society was able to avoid
he failed to name these men. Not looking into its own dark heart at
unnaturally, many of the fearful The arrest of Robespierre, 9-10th that traumatic moment. Robespierre,
deputies thought he might mean Thermidor, Year II (July 27th, 1794). you might say, took the rap.
them. ‘The names!’ they shouted. Jean-Jacques Tassaert.
FOR FURTHER READING
J. M.Thompson, Robespierre (Blackwell, 1988);
Norman Hampson, The Life and Opinions of
Maximilien Robespierre (Duckworth, 1974);
William Doyle and Colin Haydon (eds),
Robespierre (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
John Hardman, Robespierre (Pearson Education,
1999); Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the
French Revolution (Chatto and Windus, 2006);
David P. Jordan, The Revolutionary Career of
Maximilien Robespierre (The Free Press, 1985);
David Andress, The Terror: Civil War in the French
Revolution (Little, Brown, 2005); R.R. Palmer,
Twelve Who Ruled: the Year of the Terror in the French
Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1969).
See page 57 for related articles on this subject in
the History Today archive and details of special
offers at www.historytoday.com