Maximilien Robespierre

Maximilien de Robespierre was born in Arras in the old French province of Artois. His family has been traced back to the 15th century in Vaudricourt, Pas-de-Calais; one of his ancestors, Robert de Robespierre, worked as a notary in Carvin the mid-17th century.[16] His paternal grandfather, also named Maximilien de Robespierre, established himself in Arras as a lawyer. His father, François Maximilien Barthélémy de Robespierre, was a lawyer at the Conseil d'Artois who married the pregnant Jacqueline Marguerite Carrault, the daughter of a brewer. Maximilien was the eldest of four children and was conceived out of wedlock. His siblings were Charlotte (1760–1834),[lower-alpha 1] Henriette (1761–1780),[lower-alpha 2] and Augustin (1763–1794).[17][18]

Early in July 1764, Madame de Robespierre gave birth to a stillborn daughter; she died twelve days later, at the age of 29. Devastated by his wife's death, François de Robespierre left Arras around 1767.[lower-alpha 3] His two daughters were brought up by their paternal aunts, and his two sons were taken in by their maternal grandparents.[19] Already literate at age eight, Maximilien started attending the collège of Arras (middle school).[20][21] In October 1769, on the recommendation of the bishop Hilaire de Conzié, he received a scholarship at the Collège Louis-le-Grand. His fellow pupils included Camille Desmoulins and Stanislas Fréron. In school, he learned to admire the idealised Roman Republic and the rhetoric of Cicero, Cato and Lucius Junius Brutus. He also studied the works of the Genevan philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau and was attracted to many ideas, written in his "Contrat Social". Robespierre became intrigued by the idea of a "virtuous self", a man who stands alone accompanied only by his conscience.[22] His study of the classics prompted him to aspire to Roman virtues, but he sought to emulate Rousseau's citizen-soldier in particular.[23][24] Robespierre's conception of revolutionary virtue and his programme for constructing political sovereignty out of direct democracy came from Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Mably.[25][lower-alpha 4] With Rousseau, Robespierre considered the "volonté générale" or the general will of the people as the basis of political legitimacy.[29]

The house where Robespierre lived between 1787–1789, now on Rue Maximilien de Robespierre

Robespierre studied law for three years at the University of Paris. Upon his graduation on 31 July 1780, he received a special prize of 600 livres for exemplary academic success and personal good conduct.[30] On 15 May 1781, Robespierre gained admission to the bar. The bishop of Arras, Hilaire de Conzié, appointed him as one of the five judges in the criminal court in March 1782. Robespierre soon resigned, owing to discomfort in ruling on capital cases arising from his early opposition to the death penalty.[22] His most famous case took place in May 1783 and involved a lightning rod in St. Omer. His defence was printed and he sent Benjamin Franklin a copy.[31]

On 15 November 1783, he was elected a member of the literary Academy of Arras.[32] In 1784 the Academy of Metz awarded him a medal for his essay on the question of whether the relatives of a condemned criminal should share his disgrace, which made him a man of letters.[33] He and Pierre Louis de Lacretelle, an advocate and journalist in Paris, divided the prize. Robespierre attacked inequality before the law, the indignity of natural children, the lettres de cachet (getting arrested without a trial) and the sidelining of women in academic life. Robespierre had particularly that of Louise-Félicité de Kéralio in mind.[34] As president of the academy he became acquainted with the revolutionary journalist Gracchus Babeuf, the young officer and engineer Lazare Carnot and with the teacher Joseph Fouché.[35] Robespierre claimed to have seen Rousseau, shortly before he died.[36][37][38]

In August 1788, King Louis XVI announced new elections for all provinces and a gathering of the Estates-General for 1 May 1789 to solve France's serious financial and taxation problems. Robespierre participated in a discussion regarding how the French provincial government should be elected, arguing in his Address to the Nation of Artois that if the former mode of election by the members of the provincial estates was again adopted, the new Estates-General would not represent the people of France. In late February 1789, France saw a pressing crisis due to its desire for a new constitution, according to Gouverneur Morris.[39]

Portrait said to be of Robespierre by Boilly, c. 1783 (Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille)

In his electoral district, Robespierre began to make his mark in politics with his Notice to the Residents of the Countryside of 1789 in which he attacked the local authorities.[lower-alpha 5] With this, he secured the support of the country electors. On 26 April 1789, Robespierre was elected as one of 16 deputies for Arras to the Estates-General; others were Charles de Lameth and Albert de Beaumetz.[41] [lower-alpha 6] He was almost 31, comparatively poor, and lacking patronage. When the deputies arrived at Versailles they were presented to the king and listened to Jacques Necker's three-hour-long speech about institutional and political reforms.[42] They were informed that all voting would be "by order" not "by head", so their double representation as promised in December 1788 was to be meaningless.[43][44] It resulted in Abbé Sieyès opposing the veto of the King, suggesting the Third Estate to meet separately and changing its name.[45] On 13 June, Robespierre joined the deputies, who would call themselves the National Assembly representing 96% of the nation.[46] On 9 July, the Assembly moved to Paris. It transformed itself into the National Constituent Assembly to discuss a new constitution and taxation system.

On 13 July, the Assembly declared the formation of a "bourgeois militia".[47] On 14 July, the day of the Storming of the Bastille, the National Guard was created in Paris.[48] On 15 July, Marquis de La Fayette was acclaimed their commander-in-chief. On 20 July 1789, the Assembly decided to establish National Guards in every commune in the country.[49][50] Discussing the matter Robespierre defended the citizens who had no access to it.[51][52]

In October he was one of the few who supported Maillard after the Women's March on Versailles.[53] While the Constituent Assembly occupied itself with male census suffrage, Robespierre and few more deputies opposed the property requirements for voting and holding office.[54] Robespierre succeeded in attracting the attention of the excluded classes, particularly Protestants in France, Jews,[55] blacks, servants and actors.[56][57]

As a frequent speaker in the Assembly, Robespierre voiced many ideas in support of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and constitutional provisions for the Constitution of 1791 but rarely attracted a majority among fellow deputies, according to Malcolm Crook.[58][59] Robespierre, who never gave up wearing a culotte and always 'poudré, frisé, et parfumé', seems to have been nervous, timid and suspicious. Madame de Staël described Robespierre as 'very exaggerated in his democratic principles'. He supported the most absurd propositions with a coolness that had the air of conviction.[60] Before the end of the year 1789, he was seen as one of the leaders of the small body of the extreme left.

Terracotta bust of Robespierre by Deseine, 1791 (Musée de la Révolution française)

Courtyard of the house of Maurice Duplay, Robespierre's landlord. Robespierre's room was on the second floor, above the fountain. Other lodgers were his sister, brother and Georges Couthon

From October 1789, Robespierre lived at 9, Rue de Saintonge in Le Marais.[61] Pierre Villiers claimed he was his secretary for several months, and they shared the apartment on the third floor.[62] Robespierre associated with the new Society of the Friends of the Constitution, commonly known as the Jacobin Club. Originally, this organization (the Club Breton) comprised only deputies from Brittany, but after the National Assembly had moved to Paris, the Friends admitted non-deputies, supporting the changes in France. As time went on, many of the more educated artisans and small shopkeepers joined the Jacobin club.[63] Among these 1,200 men, Robespierre found a sympathetic audience. Equality was the keystone of the Jacobin ideology. In January he held several speeches in response to the decision making the exercise of civil rights dependent on a certain sum in the tax. During the debate on the suffrage, Robespierre ended his speech of 25 January 1790 with a blunt assertion that ‘all Frenchmen must be admissible to all public positions without any other distinction than that of virtues and talents’.[64] He began to acquire a reputation, and on 31 March 1790 Robespierre was elected as their president.[65] On 11 May he supported Arras in a federation of all the National Guards in the Nord and Pas de Calais.[66] On 19 June he was elected secretary of the National Assembly.

In Spring 1790 the departments of France were reorganized; the Commune was divided up in 48 sections and allowed to discuss the election of a new mayor. In July Robespierre demanded "fraternal equality" in salaries.[67] On 2 August Jean Sylvain Bailly became Paris' first elected mayor with 12.500 votes; Georges Danton had 49, Marat and Louis XVI only one.[68][69] Discussing the future of Avignon Robespierre and his supporters on the galleries succeeded to silence Mirabeau. Robespierre was one of "the thirty voices", as Mirabeau referred to Barnave with contempt: "That man will go far—he believes everything he says."[70] On 5 December Robespierre delivered a speech on the urgent topic of the National Guard, a police force independent from the army.[71][72][73] "To be armed for personnel defense is the right of every man, to be armed to defend freedom and the existence of the common fatherland is the right of every citizen".[74] Robespierre coined the famous motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" by adding the word fraternity.[lower-alpha 7][76][77] In January 1791 the Paris Department was placed above the Commune in all matters of general order and security. According to Jan ten Brink it had the right to suspend the Commune's decisions and to dispose of the army against her in case of emergency.

On 27 and 28 April 1791, Robespierre opposed plans to reorganize the National Guard and restrict its membership to active citizens.[78] It was regarded as too aristocratic. He demanded the reconstitution of the National Guard on a democratic basis,[79] to allow an equal number of officers and soldiers in the court martial. He felt that the National Guard had to become the instrument of defending liberty and no longer be a threat to it.[80][81]

On 9 May, the Assembly discussed the right to petition.[82] Article III specifically recognised the right of active citizens to meet together to draw up petitions and addresses and present them to municipal authorities.[83] On 16–18 May when the elections began, Robespierre proposed and carried the motion that no deputy who sat in the Constituent assembly could sit in the succeeding Legislative assembly.[84] The principal tactical purpose of this self-denying ordinance was to block the ambitions of the old leaders of the Jacobins, Antoine Barnave, Adrien Duport, and Alexandre de Lameth,[85] aspiring to create a constitutional monarchy roughly similar to that of England.[86][lower-alpha 8]

On 28 May, Robespierre proposed all Frenchmen should be declared active citizens and eligible to vote.[88] On 30 May, he delivered a speech on the abolishment of the death penalty but without success.[89] The following day, Robespierre attacked Abbé Raynal, who sent an address criticising the work of the Constituent Assembly and demanding the restoration of the royal prerogative.

On 10 June, Robespierre delivered a speech on the state of the army and proposed to dismiss officers.[80] On 11 June, he accepted the function of the public prosecutor in Paris.[90] On 13 June L'Ami du Roi, a royalist pamphlet, described Robespierre as a "lawyer for bandits, rebels and murderers".[71] On 14 June, the abolition of the guild system was sealed; the Le Chapelier Law prohibited any kind of workers' coalition or assembly. (It concerned in the first instance as much collective petitioning by the political clubs as trade associations.[91]) Proclaiming free enterprise as the norm upset Jean-Paul Marat, but not the urban labourer nor Robespierre.[92] On 15 June, Pétion became president of the "tribunal criminel provisoire", after Duport refused to work with Robespierre.[93]

After Louis XVI's failed flight to Varennes, the Assembly decreed that the king be suspended from his duties on 25 June until further notice. Between 13–15 July the Assembly debated the restoration of the king and his constitutional rights.[94] Reflecting on Louis' fate, Robespierre declared himself "neither monarchist nor republican".[95] He frowned on the efforts to promote republican ideology, but had not yet acquired the unchallenged grip over the Jacobins for which he would be known. The crowd on the Champ de Mars approved a petition calling for the king's trial. Alarmed at the progress of the Revolution, the moderate Jacobins in favour of a constitutional monarchy founded the club of the Feuillants on the next day, taking with them 264 deputies. In the evening, the King was restored in his functions.

On Saturday 17 July, Bailly and La Fayette declared a ban on gathering followed by martial law.[96][97] After the Champ de Mars massacre, the authorities ordered numerous arrests. Robespierre, who attended the Jacobin club, did not dare to go back to the rue Saintonge where he lodged, and so asked Laurent Lecointre if he knew a patriot near the Tuileries who could put him up for the night. Lecointre suggested Duplay's house and took him there.[98] Maurice Duplay, a cabinetmaker and ardent admirer, lived at 398 Rue Saint-Honoré near the Tuileries. After a few days, Robespierre decided to move in permanently, although he lived in the backyard and he was constantly exposed to the sound of working.[99] He was motivated by a desire to live closer to the Assembly and the meeting place of the Jacobins in the rue Saint-Honoré. [lower-alpha 9] According to his friend, the surgeon Joseph Souberbielle, Joachim Vilate, and Duplay's daughter Élisabeth, Robespierre became engaged to Duplay's eldest daughter Éléonore, but his sister Charlotte vigorously denied this; also his brother Augustin refused to marry her.[100][101][102]

On 3 September, the French Constitution of 1791 was installed. On 29 September, the day before the dissolution of the Assembly, Robespierre opposed Jean Le Chapelier, who wanted to proclaim an end to the revolution and restrict the freedom of the clubs. Robespierre had been carefully preparing for this confrontation and it was the climax of his political career up to this point.[103] Pétion and Robespierre were brought back in triumph to their homes. On 16 October, Robespierre arrived in Arras. On 28 November, he was back in the Jacobin club, where he met with a triumphant reception. Collot d'Herbois gave his chair to Robespierre, who presided that evening.

Portrait of Robespierre (1792) by Jean-Baptist Fouquet. By using an instrument, called a physiognotrace a "grand trait" was produced within a few minutes. This life-size drawing on pink paper was completed by Fouquet.[104]

As Marat, Danton and Robespierre were not elected in the new legislature thanks to the Self-Denying Ordinance, oppositional politics often took place outside the Assembly. On 18 December 1791, Robespierre gave a speech at the Jacobin club against the declaration of war.[105] Robespierre warned against the threat of dictatorship stemming from war, in the following terms:

If they are Caesars, Catilinas or Cromwells, they seize power for themselves. If they are spineless courtiers, uninterested in doing good yet dangerous when they seek to do harm, they go back to lay their power at their master's feet and help him to resume arbitrary power on condition they become his chief servants.[106]

On 25 December, Guadet, the chairman of the Assembly, suggested that 1792 should be the first year of universal liberty.[107] Jacques Pierre Brissot stated on 29 December that a war would be a benefit to the nation and boost the economy. He urged that France should declare war against Austria. Marat and Robespierre opposed him, arguing that victory would create a dictatorship, while defeat would restore the king to his former powers; neither end, he said, would serve the revolution.[108]

The most extravagant idea that can arise in a politician's head is to believe that it is enough for a people to invade a foreign country to make it adopt their laws and their constitution. No one loves armed missionaries... The Declaration of the Rights of Man... is not a lightning bolt which strikes every throne at the same time... I am far from claiming that our Revolution will not eventually influence the fate of the world... But I say that it will not be today (2 January 1792).[109]

This opposition from expected allies irritated the Girondins, and the war became a major point of contention between the factions. In his third speech on the war, Robespierre countered in the Jacobin club, "A revolutionary war must be waged to free subjects and slaves from unjust tyranny, not for the traditional reasons of defending dynasties and expanding frontiers..." Indeed, argued Robespierre, such a war could only favour the forces of counter-revolution, since it would play into the hands of those who opposed the sovereignty of the people. The risks of Caesarism were clear, for, in wartime, the powers of the generals would grow at the expense of ordinary soldiers, and the power of the king and court at the expense of the Assembly. These dangers should not be overlooked, he reminded his listeners; "...in troubled periods of history, generals often became the arbiters of the fate of their countries."[110] Already, Robespierre knew that he had lost, as he failed to gather a majority. His speech was nevertheless published and sent to all clubs and Jacobin societies of France.[111]

Maximilien Robespierre, physionotrace by Chrétien, the inventor.[112] By adjusting the needles of a pantograph he achieved a reduction ratio. This device was connected to an engraving needle. Thus it enabled the production of multiple portrait copies.[113]

On 10 February 1792, he gave a speech on how to save the State and Liberty and did not use the word war. He began by assuring his audience that everything he intended to propose was strictly constitutional. He then went on to advocate specific measures to strengthen, not so much the national defences as the forces that could be relied on to defend the revolution.[114] Not only the National Guard but also the people had to be armed, if necessary with pikes. Robespierre promoted a people's army, continuously under arms and able to impose its will on Feuillants and Girondins in the Constitutional Cabinet of Louis XVI and in the Legislative Assembly.[115] The Jacobins decided to study his speech before deciding whether it should be printed.[116]

The Girondins planned strategies to out-manoeuvre Robespierre's influence among the Jacobins.[117] He was accused by Brissot and Guadet of trying to become the idol of the people.[118] On 26 March, Guadet accused Robespierre of superstition, relying on divine providence;[119] being against the war he was also accused of acting as a secret agent for the Austrian Committee.[120] On 10 April, Robespierre resigned the post of public prosecutor, which he had officially held since 15 February.[121] He explained his resignation to the Jacobin Club, on 27 April, as part of his speech responding to the accusations against him. He threatened to leave the Jacobins, claiming he preferred to continue his mission as an ordinary citizen.[122]

On 17 May, Robespierre published the first issue of his journal Le Défenseur de la Constitution (The Defender of the Constitution), in which he attacked Brissot and publicised his scepticism over the whole war movement.[123][124] The journal served multiple purposes: to print his speeches, to counter the influence of the royal court in public policy, to defend him from the accusations of Girondist leaders and to give voice to the economic and democratic interests of the broader masses in Paris and defend their rights.[125][126]

Demonstration of 20 June 1792 at the Tuileries

A sans-culotte with his pike

When the Legislative Assembly declared war against Austria on 20 April 1792, Robespierre stated that the French people must rise and arm themselves completely, whether to fight abroad or to keep a lookout for despotism at home.[127] Robespierre responded by working to reduce the political influence of the officer class and the king. While arguing for the welfare of common soldiers, Robespierre urged new promotions to mitigate the domination of the officer class by the aristocratic and royalist École Militaire and the conservative National Guard.[lower-alpha 10] Along with other Jacobins, he urged in his magazine the creation of an "armée révolutionnaire" in Paris, consisting of 20,000 men,[129] to defend "liberty" (the revolution), maintain order in the sections and educate the members in democratic principles; an idea he borrowed from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Machiavelli.[130] According to Jean Jaures, he considered this even more important than the right to strike.[79]

On 29 May 1792, the Assembly dissolved the Constitutional Guard, suspecting it of royalist and counter-revolutionary sympathies. In early June 1792, Robespierre proposed an end to the monarchy and the subordination of the Assembly to the General will.[131] Following the king's veto of the Assembly's efforts to suppress nonjuring priests on 27 May, to raise a militia of volunteers on 8 June, and the reinstatement of Brissotin ministers dismissed on 12 June, the monarchy faced an abortive demonstration of 20 June.[132] Sergent-Marceau and Panis, the administrators of police, were sent out by Pétion to urge the Sans-culottes to lay down their weapons, telling them it was illegal to present a petition in arms, although their march to the Tuileries was not banned. They invited the officials to join the procession and march along with them.[133]

Because French forces suffered disastrous defeats and a series of defections at the onset of the war, Robespierre and Marat feared the possibility of a military coup d'état. One was led by the Marquis de Lafayette, head of the National Guard, who at the end of June advocated the suppression of the Jacobin Club. Robespierre publicly attacked him in scathing terms: "General, while from the midst of your camp you declared war upon me, which you had thus far spared for the enemies of our state, while you denounced me as an enemy of liberty to the army, National Guard and Nation in letters published by your purchased papers, I had thought myself only disputing with a general... but not yet the dictator of France, arbitrator of the state."[134]

On 2 July, the Assembly authorized the National Guard to go to the Festival of Federation on 14 July, thus circumventing a royal veto. On 11 July, the Jacobins won an emergency vote in the wavering Assembly, declaring the nation in danger and drafting all Parisians with pikes or pistols into the National Guard.[135] Billaud-Varenne in the Jacobin club on 15 July, outlined the program following the uprising; the deportation of all the Bourbons, the cleansing of the National Guard, the election of a Convention, the "transfer of the Royal veto to the people", the deportation of all "enemies of the people" and exemption of the poorest from taxation. This sentiment reflected the perspective of more radical Jacobins including those of the Marseille Club, who wrote to the deposed mayor Pétion and the people of Paris, "Here and at Toulon, we have debated the possibility of forming a column of 100,000 men to sweep away our enemies... Paris may have need of help. Call on us!" [136] At the end of July more than 3,000 Fédérés had entered Paris useful in provoking various measures, notably the overthrow of the king.[137] On 29 July Robespierre called for the deposition of the King and the election of a Convention.[138][139]

A few days later the news of the Brunswick Manifesto began sweeping through Paris. It was frequently described as unlawful and offensive to national sovereignty.[140] On 1 August the Assembly ordered the municipalities that pikes should be made and issued to all citizens. On 3 August Pétion and 47 sections demanded the deposition of the king. On 5 August Robespierre announced the uncovering of a plan for the king to escape to Château de Gaillon.[141] On 7 August Pétion suggested to Robespierre to contribute to the departure of Fédérés to appease the capital.[142] The Council of Ministers suggested arresting Danton, Marat and Robespierre if they visited the Jacobin club.[143] On 9 August, when the Assembly refused to impeach LaFayette, the tocsin called the sections into arms.[144] In the evening the "commissionaires" of several sections (Billaud-Varenne, Chaumette, Hébert, Hanriot, Fleuriot-Lescot, Pache, Bourdon) gathered in the town hall. At midnight the municipal government of the city was dissolved. Sulpice Huguenin, head of the sans-culottes of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, was appointed provisional president of the Insurrectionary Commune.

Early in the morning on Thursday (Friday, 10 August) 30,000 Fédérés (National Guards) and Sans-culottes militants from the sections led a successful assault upon the Tuileries;[145] according to Robespierre a triumph for the "passive" (non-voting) citizens. The frightened Assembly suspended the king and voted for the election of na National Convention to take its place.[146] On the night of 11 August Robespierre was elected to the Paris Commune as a representative for the "Section de Piques". The governing committee called for the summoning of a convention chosen by universal male suffrage,[147] to form a new government and reorganize France. On 13 August Robespierre declared himself against the strengthening of the départments.[148] On 14 August Danton invited him to join the Council of Justice. Robespierre published the twelfth and last issue of "Le Défenseur de la Constitution", both an account and political testament.[149] On 16 August, Robespierre presented a petition to the Legislative Assembly from the Paris Commune to demand the establishment of a provisional Revolutionary Tribunal that had to deal with the "traitors" and "enemies of the people". The next day Robespierre was appointed as one of eight judges, but he refused to preside over it.[150] He declined any position that might take him out of the political arena.[151] (Fouquier-Tinville was appointed as president.) The Prussian army crossed the French frontier on 19 August. The Paris armed sections were incorporated in 48 battalions of the National Guard under Santerre. The Assembly decreed that all the non-juring priests had to leave Paris within a week and the country within two weeks.[152] On 27 August, in the presence of almost half the population of Paris, a funeral ceremony was held on Place du Carrousel for the victims who were killed during storming the Tuileries.[153]

The passive citizens still strived for acceptance and the supply of weapons. Danton proposed that the Assembly should authorize house searches ‘to distribute to the defenders of the "Patrie" the weapons that indolent or ill-disposed citizens may be hiding’.[150] The Paris sections organized themselves as surveillance committees, conducting searches and making arrests.[154] The gates were closed to prevent (royalist) suspects and deputies would leave the city. The raids began on 29 August which seem to have gone on for another two days.[150] Marat and Robespierre both disliked Condorcet who proposed that the "enemies of the people" belonged to the whole nation and should be judged constitutionally in its name.[155] A sharp conflict developed between the Legislative and the Commune and its sections.[156][151] On 30 August the interim minister of Interior Roland and Marguerite-Élie Guadet tried to suppress the influence of the Commune because the sections had exhausted the searches; the Assembly, tired of the pressures, declared the Commune illegal and suggested the organization of communal elections.[157]

Robespierre was no longer willing to cooperate with Brissot, who promoted the Duke of Brunswick, and Roland, who proposed that the members of the government should leave Paris, taking the treasury and the king with it.[150] On Sunday morning 2 September the members of the Commune, gathering in the town hall to proceed the election of deputies to the National Convention, decided to maintain their seats and have Rolland and Brissot arrested.[158][159] Madame de Staël who tried to escape Paris was forced by the crowd to go to the town hall. She noted that Robespierre was in the chair that day, assisted by Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne as secretaries.[160]

Imaginary meeting between Robespierre, Danton and Marat (illustrating Victor Hugo's novel Ninety-three ) by Alfred Loudet

On 2 September 1792 French National Convention election began. At the same time, Paris was organizing its defence, but it was confronted with a lack of arms for the thousands of volunteers. Danton delivered a speech in the assembly and possibly referring to the (Swiss) inmates: “We ask that anyone who refuses to serve in person, or to surrender their weapons, is punished with death.[161][162] Not long after the September Massacres began.[163][164][165] Charlotte Corday held Marat responsible, Madame Roland Danton. Robespierre visited the Temple prison to check on the security of the royal family.[166] The next day on proposal of Collot d'Herbois the Assembly decided excluding royalist deputies from re-election to the Convention.[167] Robespierre made sure Brissot (and his fellow Brissotins Pétion and Condorcet) could not be elected in Paris.[168] According to Charlotte Robespierre, her brother stopped talking to his former friend, mayor Pétion de Villeneuve, who finally rallied to Brissot.[169] On 5 September, Robespierre was elected deputy to the National Convention but Danton and Collot received more votes than Robespierre. Madame Roland wrote to a friend: "We are under the knife of Robespierre and Marat, those who would agitate the people."[170]

On 21 September Pétion was elected as president of the Convention. The Jacobins and Cordeliers took the high benches at the back of the former Salle du Manège, giving them the label the "Montagnards", or "the Mountaineers"; below them were the "Manège" of the Girondists, moderate Republicans. The majority the Plain was formed by independents (as Barère, Cambon and Carnot) but dominated by the radical Mountain.[171] On 25 and 26 September, the Girondists Barbaroux and Lasource accused Robespierre of wanting to form a dictatorship.[172] Danton was asked to resign as minister as he was also a deputy. Rumours spread that Robespierre, Marat and Danton were plotting to establish a triumvirate. (From October 1791 until September 1792 the French Legislative Assembly saw an unprecedented turnover of four ministers of Justice, four ministers of Navy, six ministers of the interior, seven ministers of foreign affairs, and eight ministers of war.[173]) On 30 September Robespierre advocated for better laws; the registration of marriages, births and burials was withdrawn from the church. On 29 October, Louvet de Couvrai attacked Robespierre.[174] He accused him of star allures,[175] and have done nothing to stop the September massacre; instead, he had used it to have more Montagnards elected.[176] Robespierre, who seems to have been sick was given a week to respond. On 5 November, Robespierre defended himself, the Jacobin Club and his supporters in and beyond Paris:

Upon the Jacobins, I exercise, if we are to believe my accusers, a despotism of opinion, which can be regarded as nothing other than the forerunner of dictatorship. Firstly, I do not know what a dictatorship of opinion is, above all in a society of free men... unless this describes nothing more than the natural compulsion of principles. This compulsion hardly belongs to the man who enunciates them; it belongs to universal reason and to all men who wish to listen to its voice. It belongs to my colleagues of the Constituent Assembly, to the patriots of the Legislative Assembly, to all citizens who will invariably defend the cause of liberty. Experience has proven, despite Louis XVI and his allies, that the opinion of the Jacobins and the popular clubs were those of the French Nation; no citizen has made them, and I did nothing other than share in them.[177]

Turning the accusations upon his accusers, Robespierre delivered one of the most famous lines of the French Revolution to the Assembly:

I will not remind you that the sole object of contention dividing us is that you have instinctively defended all acts of new ministers, and we, of principles; that you seemed to prefer power, and we equality... Why don't you prosecute the Commune, the Legislative Assembly, the Sections of Paris, the Assemblies of the Cantons and all who imitated us? For all these things have been illegal, as illegal as the Revolution, as the fall of the Monarchy and of the Bastille, as illegal as liberty itself... Citizens, do you want a revolution without a revolution? What is this spirit of persecution which has directed itself against those who freed us from chains?[178]

As his opponents knew well, Robespierre had a strong base of support among the women of Paris. John Moore (Scottish physician) was sitting in the galleries, and noted that the audience was ‘almost entirely filled with women’.[179][180] He is a priest who has his devotees but it is evident that all of his power lies in the distaff. Robespierre tried to appeal to women because in the early days of the Revolution when he had tried to appeal to men, he had failed.[179] The Girondines called on the local authorities to oppose the concentration and centralization of power.

Execution of Louis XVI

The last interrogation of Louis XVI at the National Convention on 26 December 1792

Plaidoyé de Louis XVI accompagné de De Sèze, Valazé à l'assemblée de la Convention, salle du Manège, palais des Tuileries, 26 décembre. Engraving by Reinier Vinkeles

The Convention's unanimous declaration of a French Republic on 21 September 1792 left the fate of the former king open to debate. A commission was therefore established to examine the evidence against him while the Convention's Legislation Committee considered legal aspects of any future trial. Most Montagnards favoured judgment and execution, while the Girondins were more divided concerning how to proceed, with some arguing for royal inviolability, others for clemency, and others advocating lesser punishment or banishment.[181] On 13 November Robespierre stated in the Convention that a Constitution which Louis had violated himself, and which declared his inviolability, could not now be used in his defence.[182] Robespierre had been taken ill and had done little other than support Saint-Just, a former colonel in the National Guard, who gave his first major speech to address and argue against the king's inviolability. On 20 November, opinion turned sharply against Louis following the discovery of a secret cache of 726 documents consisting of Louis's personal communications with bankers and ministers.[183] At his trial, he claimed not to recognize documents clearly signed by himself.[184]

With the question of the king's fate now occupying public discourse, Robespierre delivered on 3 December a speech that would define the rhetoric and course of Louis's trial.[185] All the deputies from the Mountain were asked to attend. Robespierre argued that the dethroned king could now function only as a threat to liberty and national peace and that the members of the Assembly were not to be impartial judges but rather statesmen with responsibility for ensuring public safety:

Louis was a king, and our republic is established; the critical question concerning you must be decided by these words alone. Louis was dethroned by his crimes; Louis denounced the French people as rebels; he appealed to chains, to the armies of tyrants who are his brothers; the victory of the people established that Louis alone was a rebel; Louis cannot, therefore, be judged; he already is judged. He is condemned, or the republic cannot be absolved. To propose to have a trial of Louis XVI, in whatever manner one may, is to retrogress to royal despotism and constitutionality; it is a counter-revolutionary idea because it places the revolution itself in litigation. In effect, if Louis may still be given a trial, he may be absolved, and innocent. What am I to say? He is presumed to be so until he is judged. But if Louis is absolved, if he may be presumed innocent, what becomes of the revolution? If Louis is innocent, all the defenders of liberty become slanderers. [186]

In arguing for a judgment by the elected Convention without trial, Robespierre supported the recommendations of Jean-Baptiste Mailhe, who headed the commission reporting on legal aspects of Louis's trial or judgment. Unlike some Girondins, Robespierre specifically opposed judgment by primary assemblies or a referendum, believing that this could cause a civil war.[187] While he called for a trial of Queen Marie-Antoinette and the imprisonment of the Dauphin of France, Robespierre advocated that the king be executed despite his opposition to capital punishment:

Yes, the death penalty is, in general, crime, unjustifiable by the indestructible principles of nature, except in cases protecting the safety of individuals or the society altogether. Ordinary misdemeanours have never threatened public safety because society may always protect itself by other means, making those culpable powerless to harm it. But for a king dethroned in the bosom of a revolution, which is as yet cemented only by laws; a king whose name attracts the scourge of war upon a troubled nation; neither prison nor exile can render his existence inconsequential to public happiness; this cruel exception to the ordinary laws avowed by justice can be imputed only to the nature of his crimes. With regret, I pronounce this fatal truth: Louis must die so that the nation may live.[188]

On 4 December the Convention decreed all the royalist writings illegal.[189] 26 December was the day of the last hearing of the King. On 14 January 1793, the king was unanimously voted guilty of conspiracy and attacks upon public safety. On 15 January the call for a referendum was defeated by 424 votes to 287, which Robespierre led. On 16 January, voting began to determine the king's sentence and the session continued for 24 hours. During this time, Robespierre worked fervently to ensure the king's execution. Of the 721 deputies who voted, at least 361 had to vote for death. The Jacobins successfully defeated the Girondins' final appeal for clemency.[190] On 20 January 1793 Robespierre defended the September massacres as necessary.[191] The next day Louis XVI was guillotined at the Place de la Révolution.[192]

Destruction of the Girondists

Journées des 31 Mai, 1er et 2 Juin 1793, an engraving of the Convention surrounded by National Guards, forcing the deputies to arrest the Girondins and to establish an armed force of 6,000 men. The insurrection was organized by the Paris Commune and supported by Montagnards.

François Hanriot chef de la section des Sans-Culottes (Rue Mouffetard); drawing by Gabriel in the Carnavalet Museum

The uprising of the Parisian sans-culottes from 31 May to 2 June 1793. The scene takes place in front of the Deputies Chamber in the Tuileries. The depiction shows Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles and Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud.

After the execution of the king, the influence of Robespierre, Danton and the pragmatic politicians increased at the expense of the Girondins who were largely seen as responsible for the inadequate response to the Flanders Campaign they had themselves initiated. At the end of February, more than a thousand shops were plundered in Paris. Protesters claimed that the Girondins were responsible for the high prices.[193] On 24 February the Convention decreed the first, but unsuccessful Levée en Masse as the attempt to draft new troops set off an uprising in rural France. The Montagnards lost influence in Marseille, Toulon and Lyon. On 10 March 1793, a provisional Revolutionary Tribunal was established; the Convention appointed Fouquier-Tinville as the public prosecutor and Fleuriot-Lescot as his assistant.

On 12 March Charles-François Dumouriez criticized the interference of officials of the War Ministry which employed many Jacobins.[194] The Jacobin leaders were quite sure that, after the Battle of Neerwinden (1793), France had come close to a military coup mounted by Dumouriez and supported by the Girondins. On 22 March Dumouriez urged the Duke of Chartres to join his plan to dissolve the Convention, to restore the French Constitution of 1791, the restoration of a constitutional monarchy and to free Marie-Antoinette and her children.[195][196] On 25 March Robespierre became one of the 25 members of the Committee of General Defence to coordinate the war effort.[197] He left the Committee after eight days, not willing to cooperate with Girondins.

On 3 April Robespierre declared before the Convention that the whole war was a prepared game between Dumouriez and Brissot to overthrow the Republic. On 6 April the Committee of Public Safety was installed with mostly members from the Mountain. Robespierre who was not elected was pessimistic about the prospects of parliamentary action and told the Jacobins that it was necessary to raise an army of Sans-culottes to defend Paris and arrest infidel deputies, naming and accusing the Duke of Orleans, Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet and Gensonné.[198] Robespierre's speeches during April 1793 reflect his growing radicalization. "I ask the sections to raise an army large enough to form the kernel of a Revolutionary Army that will draw all the sans-culottes from the departments to exterminate the rebels …"[199] "Force the government to arm the people, who in vain demanded arms for two years."[200] Suspecting further treason, Robespierre on 13 April invited the Convention to vote the death penalty against anyone who should propose negotiating with the enemy.[201] On 24 April 1793 Robespierre presented his version for the new Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793 with four articles on the right of property; he advocated a progressive tax and fraternity between the people of all the nations.[202]

On 1 May, according to the Girondin deputé Jacques-Antoine Dulaure 8,000 armed men prepared to go to the Vendée surrounded the Convention and threatened not to leave if the emergency measures (a decent salary and maximum on food prices) demanded were not adopted.[203] On 8 and 12 May in the Jacobin club, Robespierre restated the necessity of founding a revolutionary sans-culottes army that would be funded by a tax on the rich and would be intended to defeat aristocrats and counter-revolutionaries inside both the Convention and across France. He said that public squares should be used to produce arms and pikes.[204] After hearing these statements, the Girondins became concerned. On 18 May Guadet proposed to examine the "exactions" and to replace municipal authorities.[205][206][207] A commission of inquiry of twelve members, with a very strong Girondin majority, was set up on 21 May to examine all the prisoners taken last month and their plots against the Convention.[208] Hébert, the editor of Le Père Duchesne, was arrested for attacking its members. The next day, the Commune demanded that Hébert be released. Maximin Isnard, who had enough of the tyranny of the municipality, then threatened with the destruction of Paris. On 24 May the Twelve proposed reinforcing the National Guard patrols round the Convention.[209]

On 26 May Robespierre delivered one of the most decisive speeches of his career.[210] He openly called at the Jacobin Club "to place themselves in insurrection against corrupt deputies".[211] Isnard declared that the Convention would not be influenced by any violence and that Paris had to respect the representatives from elsewhere in France.[212] The Convention decided Robespierre would not be heard and Isnard hindered him to speak. The atmosphere became extremely agitated; some deputies were willing to kill if Isnard dared to declare civil war. On 28 May the Commune accepted the creation of a sans-culottes army to protect the revolution and enforce revolutionary laws.[211] Robespierre called for an armed insurrection against the majority of the Convention. On 29 May, the delegates representing 33 of the Paris sections formed an insurrectionary committee.[213] On 30 May several new members were added to the Committee of Public Safety: Saint-Just, Couthon and Hérault-Seychelles.[214] Early in the morning of Friday 31 May the city gates were closed and the tocsin in the Notre-Dame was rung. Hanriot ordered to fire a canon on the Pont-Neuf as a sign of alarm. Vergniaud suggested to arrest Hanriot. Robespierre attacked Vergniaud and accused the Girondins of royalism.[215] He urged the arrest of the Girondins, who had supported the installation of the Commission of Twelve. Around ten in the morning 12,000 armed citizens appeared to protect the Convention against the arrest of Girondin deputies. On Saturday afternoon 40,000 men surrounded the Convention to force their arrest. The attack on the representatives was led by Marat. He called for the arrest of nine members of the Commission of Twelve and repeated his call for the expulsion of 22 (or 26?) Girondins, who in January had voted against the execution of the King.[216] The accused Girondins believed they were protected by the law, but the people on the galleries called for their arrest. Some deputies were willing to step down, others refused.

The commune declaring itself duped demanded and prepared a "Supplement" to the revolution. The next day Hanriot was ordered to march his National Guard from the town hall to the National Palace.[217] In the early evening on 2 June, a large force of armed citizens, eighty or hundred thousand were estimated, surrounded the Convention with artillery. "The armed force", Hanriot said, "will retire only when the Convention has delivered to the people the deputies denounced by the Commune."[218] The accused Girondins attempted to exit, walked around the palace in a theatrical procession and confronted on all sides by bayonets and pikes, returned to the meeting hall and submitted to the inevitable. Twenty-two Girondins were seized one by one after some juggling with names.[219] They decided that 31 deputies were not to be arrested,[lower-alpha 11] but were called upon to voluntarily to suspend the exercise of their functions. The Montagnards now had unchallenged control of the Convention. The Girondins, going to the provinces, joined the counter-revolution.[220] Within two weeks almost fifty departments were in rebellion.

During the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 Robespierre had scrawled a note in his memorandum-book:

What we need is a single will (il faut une volonté une). It must be either republican or royalist. If it is to be republican, we must have republican ministers, republican newspapers, republican deputies, a republican government. The internal dangers come from the middle classes; to defeat the middle classes we must rally the people. ... The people must ally itself with the Convention, and the Convention must make use of the people.[221][222]

The Pavillon de Flore, the seat of the Committee of Public Safety and General Police Bureau. Also, Joachim Vilate lived there in an apartment. Drawing in brown ink (1814)

Peasants and commoners (insurgent royalists or Chouans) in the Vendée, Maine, the south of Normandy or the eastern part of Brittany defending a Catholic church. Artist unknown

After the fall of the Girondins, the French government faced serious internal challenges, when four provincial cities—Caen, Bordeaux, Lyon, and Marseille—rebelled against the more radical revolutionaries in Paris. In July France threatened to plunge into civil war, attacked by the aristocracy in Vendée and Brittany, by federalism in Lyon, in Le Midi and in Normandy, in a struggle with all Europe and the foreign factions.[223]

On 27 July 1793, Robespierre was added to the Committee of Public Safety and replaced Gasparin the only member of a sleeping subcommittee of war.[224] It was the second time he held any executive office to coordinate the war effort. It may seem Robespierre behaved as a kind of Minister without Portfolio,[225] apparently as the unofficial prime-minister but the committee was non-hierarchical.[226]

On 4 August the French Constitution of 1793 passed through the Convention. Article 109 stated: All Frenchmen are soldiers; all shall be exercised in the use of arms.[227] From the moment of its acceptance, it was made meaningless, first by the Convention itself, which had been charged to dissolve itself on completion of the document, then by the construction of the working institutions of the Terror.[228][lower-alpha 12] On 21 August Robespierre was elected as president of the Convention.[232] He was particularly concerned that the public officials should be virtuous.[233] He sent his brother Augustin (and sister Charlotte) to Marseille and Nice to suppress the federalist insurrection.[234]

On 4 September, the Sans-culottes again invaded the Convention. They demanded tougher measures against rising prices and the setting up of a system of terror to root out the counter-revolution.[235] On 5 September Terror was formally instituted as a legal policy by the Convention. On a proposal of Chaumette, supported by Billaud and Danton a Sans-culotte army was formed in Paris, to sweep away conspirators.[236][lower-alpha 13] The next day the ultra's Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne were elected in the Committee of Public Safety.[238] The Committee of General Security which was tasked with rooting out crimes and preventing counter-revolution began to manage the country's National Gendarmerie and finance. On 8 September, the banks and exchange offices were closed to prevent the exchange of forged assignats and the export of capital.[239] On 11 September the power of the Comité de Salut Public was extended for one month. Robespierre protested against the appointment of Lazare Carnot in the committee (who wasn't a Jacobin and did not accept the events on 31 May.[240]) On 17 September, the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the imprisonment of vaguely defined "suspects" within 24 hours. The Revolutionary Tribunal was reorganized and divided into four sections, of which two were always active at the same time. On 29 September, the Committee introduced the General maximum, particularly in the area which supplied Paris.[241]

On 3 October Robespierre was convinced the Convention was divided up in two factions, friends of the people and conspirators.[242] On 4 October he defended the Girondins, who were arrested on the day before, as useful.[243] He attacked Danton, who had refused to take a seat in the Comité, believed a stable government was needed which could resist the orders of the Comité de Salut Public.[244] On 8 October Robespierre called for the dissolution of the Convention; he believed they would be admired by posterity. The minister of finance Cambon replied that was not his intention; applause followed and the session was closed.[245] On 10 October the Convention decreed to recognize the Committee of Public Safety as the supreme "Revolutionary Government",[246] (which was consolidated on 4 December).[247] The provisional government would be revolutionary until peace according to Saint-Just. Every eight days the Committee of Public Safety would report to the Convention.[248] Though the Constitution was overwhelmingly popular and its drafting and ratification buoyed popular support for the Montagnards, on 10 October the Convention set it aside indefinitely until a future peace.[249] The Committee became a War Cabinet with unprecedented powers over the economy as well as the political life of the nation, but it had to get the approval of the Convention for any legislation and could be changed any time.[250] Danton who was dangerously ill since a few weeks,[251] probably knowing that he could not get along with Robespierre,[252] quit politics and set off to Arcis-sur-Aube with his 16-year-old wife, who pitied the Queen since her trial began.[253]

On 12 October when Hébert accused Marie-Antoinette of incest with her son, Robespierre had dinner with Barère, Saint-Just and Joachim Vilate. Discussing the matter, Robespierre broke his plate with his fork and called Hébert an "imbécile".[254][255][256] According to Vilate Robespierre then had already two or three bodyguards. One of them was his neighbour, the printer Nicolas. On 25 October the Revolutionary government was accused of doing nothing.[257] At the end of the month, several members of the General Security Committee assisted by armées revolutionnaires were sent into the provinces to suppress active resistance against the Jacobins. Barras and Fréron went to Marseille and Toulon. Fouché and Collot-d'Herbois halted the revolt of Lyon against the National Convention, Jean-Baptiste Carrier ordered the drownings at Nantes. Tallien succeeded in feeding the guillotine in Bordeaux and Joseph Le Bon in Somme and Pas-de-Calais. Saint-Just and Le Bas visited the Rhine Army to watch the generals and punish officers for the least sign of treasonous timidity, or lack of initiative.[258] On 31 October Brissot and 21 Girondins were guillotined in 36 minutes.

On the morning of 14 November, François Chabot burst into Robespierre's room dragging him from bed with accusations of counter-revolution and a foreign conspiracy, waving a hundred thousand livres in assignat notes, claiming that a band of royalist plotters gave it to him to buy Fabre d'Eglantine's vote, along with others, to liquidate some stock in the French East India Company.[259][260] Chabot was arrested three days later; Courtois urged Danton to return to Paris immediately. On 25 November, the remains of Comte de Mirabeau were removed from the Pantheon on the initiative of Robespierre when it became known that in his last months the count had secretly conspired with the court of Louis XVI.[261] On 3 December Robespierre accused Danton in the Jacobin club of feigning an illness with the intention to emigrate to Switzerland. Danton showed too often his vices and not his virtue. Robespierre was stopped in his attack. The gathering was closed after applause for Danton.[262]

On 4 December, by the Law of Revolutionary Government, the independence of departmental and local authorities came to an end, when extensive powers of Committee of Public Safety were codified. This law, submitted by Billaud, implemented within 24 hours, was also a drastic decision against the independence of deputies and commissionaires on a mission. The Commune of Paris and the revolutionary committees in the sections had to obey the law, the two Committees and the Convention.[263] On 7 December all the armées revolutionnaires in France (except the ones authorized by the Convention) were dismissed within 24 hours.[264] Under intense emotional pressure from Lyonnaise women, protesting at the end of November and gathering 10,000 signatures Robespierre suggested that a secret commission be set up to examine the cases of the Lyon rebels, to see if injustices had been committed by Collot and Fouché. This is the closest he came to adopting a public position against the use of terror.[265] On 12 December the Indulgents mounted an attack on the Committee of Public Safety being murderers.[266] Robespierre replied to Danton's plea for an end to the Terror on 25 December (5 Nivôse, year II). Robespierre presented a report to the Convention on the principles of the revolutionary government, justifying the collective dictatorship of the National Convention, administrative centralization, and the purging of local authorities. He said he had to avoid two cliffs: indulgence and severity. He could not consult the 18th century political authors, because they had not foreseen such a course of events. He protested against the various factions [Hébertists and Dantonists] that threatened the government.[267][268] Robespierre strongly believed that the Terror should be increased in intensity, rather than diminished:

The theory of the revolutionary government is as new as the revolution that created it. We must not look for it in the books of political writers, who have not foreseen this revolution, nor in the laws of tyrants who, content to abuse their power, do little to seek its legitimacy..." Robespierre would suppress chaos and anarchy; "the Government has to defend itself" [against conspirators] and "to the enemies of the people it owns only death.”[269][270][271]

According to R.R. Palmer, this was the first important statement in modern times of a philosophy of dictatorship.[272]

In the winter of 1793–94, a majority of the Committee decided that the ultra-left Hébertists would have to perish or their opposition within the Committee would overshadow the other factions due to its influence in the Commune of Paris. Robespierre also had personal reasons for disliking the Hébertists for their atheism and "bloodthirstiness", which he associated with the old aristocracy.[273] Early January Augustin Robespierre was shocked at the changed atmosphere in the Jacobin club.[274][275] By now the revolutionaries feared one another.[276]

The "enemy within"

Cartoon showing Robespierre guillotining the executioner after having guillotined everyone else in France.

On 5 December the journalist Camille Desmoulins launched a new journal, Le Vieux Cordelier, attacking François Chabot. He defended Danton and warned not to exaggerate the revolution. He attacked the dechristianisation and compared Robespierre with Julius Caesar and arguing that the Revolution should return to its original ideas en vogue around 10 August 1792.[277] After the fourth issue on 20 December, Robespierre came into conflict with Desmoulins, who had taken up the cause of the 200,000 defenseless civilians and had been detained in prisons as suspects.[278] According to Desmoulins, a Committee of Grace had to be established. Desmoulins counselled Robespierre not to attempt to build the Republic on such a rare quality as virtue. Robespierre attacked the authenticity of Desmoulins by giving the blackest interpretation to words and actions that he had witnessed from the privileged position of being a trusted friend.[279] In the fifth issue Desmoulins accused Hébert. On 7 January Robespierre proposed that copies of Le Vieux Cordelier be burned in the brazier of the Jacobin club, but decided to withdraw this suggestion after heavy attacks on the freedom of the press.

In his Report on the Principles of Political Morality of 5 February 1794, Robespierre praised the revolutionary government and argued that terror and virtue were necessary:

If virtue is the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country ... The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.[280]

Aulard sums up the Jacobin train of thought, "All politics, according to Robespierre, must tend to establish the reign of virtue and confound vice. He reasoned thus: those who are virtuous are right; error is a corruption of the heart; error cannot be sincere; error is always deliberate."[281][282] According to the German journalist K.E. Oelsner, Robespierre behaved "more like a leader of a religious sect than of a political party. He can be eloquent but most of the time he is boring, especially when he goes on too long, which is often the case."[283]

"Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the Patrie [the 'fatherland']."[284]

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is barbarity.[285]

Maximilien Robespierre, 5 February 1794

From 13 February to 13 March 1794, Robespierre had withdrawn from active business on the Committee due to illness.[286] (On 19 February, Maximilien decided therefore to return to the Duplays.[287]) On 15 March, he reappeared in the Convention. Subsequently, he joined Saint-Just in his attacks on Hébert.[22] Hébert, the voice of the Sans-culottes, had been using the latest issue of Le Père Duchesne to criticize Robespierre. On the same evening, 13–14 March, Hébert and 18 of his followers were arrested on charges of complicity with foreign powers and guillotined on 24 March. The leaders of the "armées révolutionnaires" were denounced by the Revolutionary Tribunal as accomplices of Hébert, except Hanriot who was protected by Robespierre.[288][lower-alpha 14] Their death was a sort of carnival, a pleasant spectacle according to Michelet's witnesses.

On 25 March Condorcet was arrested as he was seen as an enemy of the Revolution; he committed suicide two days later. On 29 March Danton met again with Robespierre privately; afterwards, Marat's sister urged him to take the offensive.[293] On 30 March the two committees decided to arrest Danton and Desmoulins after Saint-Just became uncharacteristically angry.[294] In the Convention criticism was voiced against the arrests, which Robespierre silenced with "...whoever trembles at this moment is guilty."[295] Legendre suggested to hear Danton in the Convention but Robespierre replied "It would be violating the laws of impartiality to grant to Danton what was refused to others, who had an equal right to make the same demand. This answer silenced at once all solicitations in his favour."[296] No friend of the Dantonists dared speak up in case he too should be accused of putting friendship before virtue.[297]

On 2 April the trial began on charges of conspiracy with the Duke of Orléans and Dumouriez. A financial scandal involving the French East India Company provided a "convenient pretext" for Danton's downfall.[298][299][lower-alpha 15] The Dantonists, in Robespierre's eyes, were not serving the people. They had become false patriots, who had preferred personal and foreign interests to the welfare of the nation. "Danton had been a traitor from the beginning of the Revolution and the emergency law voted to stifle his resounding voice make this one of the blackest moments in the whole history of the Revolution."[301][302] The defendants were removed from the room before the verdict was delivered. Fouquier-Tinville asked the tribunal to order the defendants who “confused the hearing” and insulted “National Justice” to the guillotine. Desmoulins struggled to accept his fate and accused Robespierre, the Committee of General Security and the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was dragged up the scaffold by force. On the last day of the trial Lucile Desmoulins was imprisoned. She was accused of organizing a revolt against the patriots and the tribunal to free her husband and Danton. She admitted to having warned the prisoners of a course of events as in September 1792, and that it was her duty to revolt against it. Remarkably Robespierre was not only their eldest friend but also witnessed at their marriage in December 1790, together with Pétion and Brissot.[303][304]

Triumvirate of : (L-R) Saint-Just, Robespierre, and Couthon

On 1 April Lazare Carnot proposed the provisional executive council of six ministers be suppressed and the ministries be replaced by twelve Committees reporting to the Committee of Public Safety.[202] The proposal was unanimously adopted by the National Convention and set up by Martial Herman on 8 April. When Barras and Fréron paid a visit to Robespierre, they were received extremely unfriendly. (Robespierre was without the spectacles he usually wore in public.) On 16 April, it was decreed to bring all the political suspects in France to the Revolutionary Tribunal to Paris; the two committees received the power to interrogate them immediately. Foreigners were no longer allowed to travel through France or visit a Jacobin club. On 23 April a General Police Bureau was set up, independent of the Committee of General Security, tasked with gathering information and mostly report directly to Robespierre.[305][306] Robespierre took over the running and expanded its remit within a week when Saint-Just left Paris for the army in the north.[307]

On 10 June Georges Couthon introduced the drastic Law of 22 Prairial. The Tribunal became a simple court of condemnation refusing suspects the right of counsel and allowing only one of two verdicts – complete acquittal or death and that based not on evidence but on the moral conviction of the jurors.[308] The courtroom was renovated to allow sixty people to be sentenced simultaneously. The guillotine was moved to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in order to stand out less. On 11 July the shopkeepers, craftsmen, etc. were temporarily released from prison. According to François Furet, the prisons were overpopulated; they housed over 8,000 "suspects" at the beginning of Thermidor year II.[309] Within three days, 156 people were sent in batches to the guillotine; all the members of Parliament of Toulouse were executed.[310][311] The city also had to solve serious problems on the cemeteries because of the smell. Mid-July two new mass graves were dug at Picpus Cemetery in the impermeable ground.[312][313]

Throughout the Revolution, Robespierre (at times ambivalently and at others outspokenly) opposed slavery on French soil or in French territories and he played an important role in abolishing it.[314][315]

On 12 May the National Assembly gave citizenship to mulattos, but the colonial whites refused to implement the decree.[316] Robespierre argued passionately in the National Assembly against the Colonial Committee, dominated by slaveholders in the Caribbean. The colonial lobby declared that political rights for Black people would cause France to lose her colonies. Robespierre responded, "We should not compromise the interests humanity holds most dear, the sacred rights of a significant number of our fellow citizens," later shouting, "Death to the colonies!"[317] Robespierre was furious that the assembly gave "constitutional sanction to slavery in the colonies," and argued for equal political rights regardless of skin colour.[318] Robespierre did not argue for slavery's immediate abolition, but slavery advocates in France regarded Robespierre as a "bloodthirsty innovator" and a traitor plotting to give French colonies to England.[317] Only months later, hundreds of thousands of slaves in St Domingue led a revolution against slavery and colonial rule.[319]

In the following years, the slaves of St. Domingue effectively liberated themselves and formed an army to oppose re-enslavement. Robespierre denounced the slave trade in a speech before the Convention in April 1793.[320] The radical 1793 constitution supported by Robespierre and the Montagnards, which was ratified by a national referendum, granted universal suffrage to French men and explicitly condemned slavery. However, the constitution was never implemented.[320] In November 1793, Robespierre supported a proposal to investigate the colonial general Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, a Girondist who had freed slaves in the colonies.[320] At the same time, Robespierre denounced the French minister to the newly formed United States, Edmond-Charles Genêt, who had sided with Sonthonax.[320]

By 1794, French debates concerning slavery reached their apogee. In late January, delegations representing both former slaveholders as well as former slaves arrived in France to petition respectively for the abolition of slavery and its abolition.[320] After being briefly imprisoned, the delegation opposing slavery was freed on the orders of the Committee of Public Safety, on which Robespierre sat. Receiving the delegation on their release, the National Convention passed a decree banning slavery on 4 February.[320] At the same time, Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety heard a petition from the slaveholders but did not adopt it. On the day after the emancipation decree, Robespierre delivered a speech to the National Convention in which he praised the French as the first to "summon all men to equality and liberty, and their full rights as citizens," using the word slavery twice but without specifically mentioning the French colonies.[320] Despite petitions from the slaveholding delegation, Robespierre and the Committee decided to endorse the decree in full.[320]

Several weeks later, in a speech before the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre linked the cruelty of slavery with serfdom:

Ask a merchant of human flesh what is property; he will answer by showing you that long coffin he calls a ship... Ask a gentleman [the same] who has lands and vassals... and he will give you almost the identical ideas.

— Robespierre, "The Principles of Property", 24 April 1794.[321][322]

He attended a meeting of the Jacobin club in June 1794 to support a decree ending slavery, and later signed orders to ratify it.[321] The decree led to a surge in popularity for the Republic among Black people in St-Domingue, most of whom had already freed themselves and were seeking military alliances to guarantee their freedom.[318]

Stage of the Festival of the Supreme Being (June 8, 1794)

The Festival of the Supreme Being, by Pierre-Antoine Demachy (1794)

Robespierre's desire for revolutionary change was not limited only to the political realm. He also opposed the Catholic Church and the pope, particularly their policy of clerical celibacy.[323] Having denounced the Cult of Reason and other perceived excesses of dechristianization undertaken by political opponents in France, he sought to instil a spiritual resurgence across the nation predicated on Deist beliefs. On 6 May 1794 Robespierre announced to the Convention that in the name of the French people, the Committee of Public Safety had decided to recognize the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul. Accordingly, on 7 May, Robespierre delivered a long presentation to the Convention ‘on the relation of religious and moral ideas to republican principles, and on national festivals’.[202] Robespierre supported a decree that the Convention passed to establish an official state religion called the Cult of the Supreme Being. The notion of the Supreme Being was based on the creed of the Savoy chaplain that Jean-Jacques Rousseau had outlined in Book IV of Emile.

In the afternoon of 8 June (also the Christian holiday of Pentecost) a "Festival of the Supreme Being" was held. Everything was arranged to the exact specifications that had been drawn up previously set before the ceremony. The ominous and symbolic guillotine had been moved to the original standing place of the Bastille. Pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers with their babies were specifically invited to walk in the procession which started at the Tuileries.[324] (Joachim Vilate had invited Robespierre to have lunch in the Pavillon de Flore, but he ate little.)

The festival was also Robespierre's first appearance in the public eye as a leader for the people, and also as president of the Convention, to which he had been elected only four days earlier.[325] Witnesses state that throughout the "Festival of the Supreme Being", Robespierre beamed with joy. He was able to speak of the things about which he was truly passionate, including virtue, nature, deist beliefs and his disagreements with atheism. He dressed elaborately, wearing feathers on his hat and holding fruit and flowers in his hands, and walked first in the festival procession. According to Michelet: "Robespierre, as usual, walked quickly, with an agitated air. The Convention did not move nearly so fast. The leaders, perhaps maliciously and out of perfidious deference, remained well behind him, thereby isolating him."[326] The procession ended on the Champ de Mars. The Convention climbed to the summit, where a liberty tree had been planted.[202] (The choirs were composed by Étienne-Nicolas Méhul and François-Joseph Gossec, with lyrics from the obscure poet Théodore Désorgues.) Robespierre delivered two speeches in which he emphasized his concept of a Supreme Being:

Is it not He whose immortal hand, engraving on the heart of man the code of justice and equality, has written there the death sentence of tyrants? Is it not He who, from the beginning of time, decreed for all the ages and for all peoples liberty, good faith, and justice? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power. He created men to help each other, to love each other mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue.[327]

Robespierre came down the mountain in a way that resembled Moses as the leader of the people. To offset his small stature (5’3" = 160 cm), he wore elevated shoes with silver buckles. While for some it was exciting to see him at his finest, other deputies agreed that Robespierre had played too prominent a role. Someone was heard saying, "Look at the blackguard; it's not enough for him to be master, he has to be God". On 15 June, the president of the Committee of General Security Vadier on behalf of the two committees presented a report on a new conspiracy by Catherine Théot, Christophe Antoine Gerle and three others. He insinuated that Robespierre fitted her prophecies.[328] His speech caused much laughter in the Convention. Robespierre felt ridiculed and demanded on the 26th that the investigation of Théot be stopped and Fouquier-Tinville replaced.[329] Robespierre with his ‘tyrannical habit of judging’ demanded the heads of nine people, who opposed his republic of virtue.[330] According to Madame de Staël, it was from that time he was lost.[331]

The Committee of General Security was located in Hôtel de Brionne on the right; it gathered on the first floor. (The Tuileries Palace, which housed the Convention, is on the left)

On 9 Thermidor Tallien threatened in the Convention to use his dagger if the National Convention had not the courage to order the arrest of Robespierre.

Collot d'Herbois

The Fall of Robespierre in the Convention on 27 July 1794

On 20 May, Robespierre personally signed the warrant for Theresa Cabarrus' arrest. Never did Robespierre pursue a victim more remorselessly.[332] On 23 May, Cécile Renault was arrested after having approached Robespierre's residence with two penknives; dressed in a red smock she was executed together with her parents (and 52 others) one week later. Robespierre used this assassination attempt against him as a pretext for scapegoating the British.[333]

On 10 June, the Law of 22 Prairial was introduced without consultation from the Committee of General Security, which deepened the conflict between the two committees.[334] It doubled the number of executions; the so-called Great Terror began. Collot d'Herbois, Fouché and Tallien feared for their lives, due to the excesses carried out by them in various regions of France to stamp out opposition to the revolutionary government.[335] Almost all the deputies agreed it had become dangerous.

On 11 June Robespierre attacked Fouché, accusing him of leading a conspiracy. At the end of June, Saint-Just arrived in Paris and discovered that Robespierre's political position had degraded significantly. Carnot and Cambon proposed to end the terror. Carnot described Saint-Just and Robespierre as "ridiculous dictators".[202][336] On 1 July, Robespierre spoke in the Jacobin club: "In London, I am denounced to the French army as a dictator; the same slanders have been repeated in Paris."[202] On 3 July he left the Committee slamming the door and shouting "Then save the country without me".[337] He attacked Tallien had him excluded from the Jacobins on 11 July.[338] On 14 July Robespierre had Fouché expelled from the Jacobin Club. To evade arrest, which usually took place during the night, about fifty deputies avoided staying at home. On 22 and 23 July, the two committees met in a plenary session. Both committees were responsible for suppressing counterrevolution but ended targeting each other.[246][339] Saint-Just declared in negotiations with Barère that he was prepared to make concessions on the subordinate position of the Committee of General Security.[340][341] Couthon agreed to more cooperation between the two committees. For Robespierre, the Committee of General Security had to remain subordinate to the Committee of Public Safety. He wanted to take away the authority of the Committee of General Security.[342]

Within a few days Robespierre decided to make himself clear in a new report. On Saturday 26 July, Robespierre reappeared at the Convention and delivered a two-hour-long speech on the villainous factions.[343] Dressed in the same sky-blue coat and nankeen trousers which he had worn on the proclamation of the Supreme Being, he defended himself against charges of dictatorship and tyranny and then proceeded to warn of a conspiracy against the Committee of Public Safety. Calumny, he charged, had forced him to retire for a time from the Committee of Public Safety; he found himself the most unhappy of men. He gave the impression that no one was his friend, that on one could be trusted.[344] He complained of being blamed for everything;[345] and that not only England but also members of the Committee of General Security were involved in intrigue to bring him down. When he was interrupted Robespierre accused the Convention of limiting the freedom of speech; Billaud Varennes replied they all wanted that.[346] Specifically, he railed against the bloody excesses he had observed during the Terror.[347] Intoxicated with his virtue, Robespierre announced a new wave of purification. "Punish the traitors, purge the bureau of the Committee of General Security, purge the Committee itself, and subordinate it to the Committee of Public Safety, purge the Committee of Public Safety itself and create a unified government under the supreme authority of the Convention".[348]

When called upon to name those whom he accused, however, he refused. Cambon flew to the rostrum. "One man paralyzes the will of the National Convention".[349] The Convention decided not to have the text printed, as Robespierre's speech had first to be submitted to the two committees. It contained matters sufficiently weighty that it needed to first be examined.[350] Robespierre was surprised that his speech would be sent to the very deputies he had intended to sue.

In the evening, Robespierre delivered the same speech, which he regarded as his last will, at the Jacobin Club, where it was very well received.[351] He spoke of drinking hemlock, and David, the painter, cried out: ‘I will drink it with you.’ Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne were driven out because of their opposition to the printing and distribution of the text. Billaud managed to escape before he was assaulted, but Collot was knocked down. They set off to the Committee of Public Safety, where they found Saint-Just working. They asked him if he was drawing up their bill of indictment. Saint-Just promised to show them his speech before the session began.[352][353]

Gathering in secret, nine members of the two committees decided that it was all or nothing; after exactly one year in power Robespierre had to be voted off. Barras said they would all die if Robespierre did not. (The Convention lost 144 delegates in 13 months; 67 were executed, committed suicide, or died in prison.) Now extremists and indulgents joined against him. Laurent Lecointre was the instigator of the coup,[354] assisted by Barère, Fréron, Barras, Tallien, Thuriot, Courtois, Rovère, Garnier de l’Aube and Guffroy. (Fouché was no longer involved and had hidden.[355]) Each one of them prepared his part in the attack. They decided that Hanriot, his aides-de-camp, Lavalette and Boulanger,[356] the public prosecutor Dumas, the family Duplay and the printer Charles-Léopold Nicolas had to be arrested first, so Robespierre would be without support.[354]

At noon, Saint-Just went straight to the Convention, prepared to blame everything on Billaud, Collot and Carnot.[357] He began: "I am from no faction; I will contend against them all.[288] [347] After a few minutes, Tallien —having a double reason for desiring Robespierre's end, as, on the evening before, Robespierre refused to release Theresa Cabarrus — interrupted him and began the attack. "Yesterday a member of the government was left quite isolated and made a speech in his own name; today another one has done the same thing." He continued "Yesterday, the president of the revolutionary tribunal [Dumas] openly proposed to the Jacobins that they should drive all impure men from the Convention." Billaud-Varennes complained about how he was treated in the Jacobin club on the evening before and that Saint-Just had not kept his promise the show his speech before the meeting. A secretary of the Committee had stolen 114.000 livres and Robespierre had been against his arrest. They had organized a spy system among the representatives in the Convention whom they wanted to destroy. He better stop talking about justice and virtue. Billaud would use his dagger if he was not arrested.[358] According to Tallien "Robespierre wanted to attack us by turns, to isolate us, and finally he would be left one day only with the base and abandoned and debauched men who serve him". He demanded the arrest of Dumas, Hanriot and Boulanger. According to Barère, the committees asked themselves why there still existed a military regime in Paris; why all these permanent commanders, with staffs, and immense armed forces? The committees have thought it best to restore to the National Guard its democratic organization.[359]

As the accusations began to pile up, Saint-Just remained silent. Robespierre rushed toward the rostrum, appealed to the Plain to defend him against the Montagnards, but his voice was shouted down. Robespierre rushed to the benches of the Left but someone cried: "Get away from here; Condorcet used to sit here". He soon found himself at a loss for words after Vadier gave a mocking impression of him referring to the discovery of a letter under the mattress of the illiterate Catherine Théot.[lower-alpha 16] When Garnier witnessed Robespierre's inability to respond, he shouted, "The blood of Danton chokes him!"[364] Robespierre then finally regained his voice to reply with his one recorded statement of the morning, a demand to know why he was now being blamed for the other man's death: "Is it Danton you regret? ... Cowards! Why didn't you defend him?"[365]

Arrest

Saint-Just and Robespierre at the Hôtel de Ville on the night of 9 to 10 Thermidor Year II. Painting by Jean-Joseph Weerts

Proclamation by the Commune, found in the pocket of Couthon. Couthon was invited by Robespierre, etc. for which they used official police writing paper.

The troops of Convention Nationale attack the Commune. Print by Pierre-Gabriel Berthault and Jean Duplessis-Bertaux (1804)

Apprehension of Robespierre ... who on being seized by a Gendarme fired a pistol into his mouth, but did not wound himself mortally.

Valery Jacobi's painting showing the wounded Robespierre

Closing of the Jacobin Club by Louis Legendre,[366] in the early morning of 28 July 1794

At around 2 p.m., Louis Louchet called for Robespierre's arrest; Robespierre the Younger demanded to share his fate. The whole Convention agreed including the two other members of the triumvirate, Couthon and Saint-Just. Le Bas decided to join Saint-Just. Robespierre shouted that the revolution was lost when he descended the tribune. The five deputies were taken to the Committee of General Security and questioned. At around 3 p.m. Hanriot was ordered to appear in the Convention; he or someone else suggested to only show up accompanied by a crowd. On horseback, Hanriot warned the sections that there would be an attempt to murder Robespierre and mobilized around six three thousand National Guards in front of the town hall.[202][367][368] What had happened was not very clear to their officers; either the Convention was closed down or the Paris Commune. Nobody explained anything.[369] The Paris Commune ordered to close the gates (and to ring the tocsin) and summoned an immediate meeting of the sections to consider the dangers threatening the fatherland.[370] For the Convention that was an illegal action without permission of the two committees. It was decreed that anyone leading an "armed force" against the Convention would be regarded as an outlaw.

At around 7 p.m. the five deputies were taken in a cab to different prisons. Robespierre to the Palais du Luxembourg, Couthon to "La Bourbe" and Saint-Just to the "Écossais". Augustin was taken from Prison Saint-Lazare to La Force Prison,[371] like Le Bas who was refused at the Conciergerie.[372][373][99] The Paris Commune was in league with the Jacobins to bring off an insurrection, asking them to send over reinforcements from the galleries, ‘even the women who are regulars there’.[179] At around 8 p.m. Hanriot appeared at the Place du Carrousel in front of the Committee but he was taken prisoner by the oldest deputy Philippe Rühl.[367] According to Eric Hazan: "Now came the turning-point of this journée: instead of taking advantage of its superiority, in both guns and men, to invade the nearby hall where the Convention was sitting, the column, lacking orders or leaders, returned to the Maison-Commune."[202] After 9 p.m. the vice-president of the Tribunal Coffinhal went to Committee of General Security with 1,200 men from the sections and their artillery. He succeeded in freeing Hanriot and his adjutants.[374][375]

How the five deputies escaped from prison was disputed. According to Le Moniteur Universel the jailers refused to follow the order of arrest, taken by the Convention.[376] According to Courtois,[372] and Fouquier-Tinville the police administration was responsible for any in custody or release.[377] Nothing should be done without an order of the mayor.[378] Escorted by two municipals Robespierre the younger was the first to arrive at the town hall.[379][380] An administrator of the police, who happened to be at the Luxembourg palace took Robespierre the older around 8 p.m. to the police administration on Île de la Cité; Robespierre insisted being received in a prison.[381] He hesitated for legal reasons for possibly two hours.

At around 10 p.m. the mayor appointed a delegation to go and convince Robespierre to join the Commune movement.[202] Robespierre was taken to the town hall by an "administrateur de police".[382][383] At around 11 p.m. Saint-Just was delivered by a "municipal",[384] after which Le Bas and Dumas were brought in by two administrators.[372] (Couthon arrived as the last one in the town hall, but after midnight.[385][386]) An Executive Committee was established to save the country. Both Hanriot and Le Bas suggested attacking the Convention.[387] The Convention declared the five deputies (plus the supporting members of the "Conseil-Général", like Payan, Dumas, Hanriot, Coffinhal, Lescot-Fleuriot and Vivier, the president of the Jacobin) to be outlaws. The Convention then appointed Barras and ordered troops (4,000 men) to be called out.[388]

After a whole evening spent waiting in vain for action by the Commune, losing time in fruitless deliberation, without supplies or instructions, the armed sections began to disperse. According to Colin Jones apathy prevailed with most of them drifting back to their homes.[380] Around 400 men from three sections seem to have stayed on the Place de Grève according to Courtois, whose report has a poor reputation.[389][390] At around 2 a.m. Barras and Bourdon accompanied by several members of the Convention arrived in two columns. Barras deliberately advanced slowly, in the hope of avoiding conflict by a display of force.[390][388] Then Grenadiers burst into the Hôtel de Ville; 51 insurgents were gathering on the first floor. Robespierre and his allies had withdrawn in the smaller "secrétariat".[391]

There are many stories what happened then. Le Bas killed himself with a pistol, handing another to Robespierre, who shot himself in the jaw.[392] According to Barras and Courtois Robespierre tried to commit suicide,[393][394][395] pointed at his mouth but didn't succeed as a gendarme seem to have prevented this.[396] This change in orientation might explain how Robespierre, sitting in a chair, got wounded from the upper right in the lower left jaw.[397][398][373][lower-alpha 17] According to Bourdon the soldier Méda wounded Robespierre from a short distance and then succeeded hitting Couthon's helper in his leg.[400][401][402][403][404] Couthon was found lying at the bottom of a staircase in a corner, having fallen from the back of his gendarme. In order to avoid capture, Augustin Robespierre took off his shoes and jumped from a broad cornice.[405] He landed on some bayonets resulting in a pelvic fracture and several serious head contusions, in an alarming state of "weakness and anxiety".[406] The unperturbed Saint-Just gave himself up without a word. Most sources say that Hanriot was thrown out of a window by Coffinhal after being accused of the disaster. (According to Ernest Hamel it is one of the many legends spread by Barère.[407]) Anyhow, Hanriot landed in a small courtyard on a heap of glass.[369] He had strength enough to crawl into a drain where he was found in the early afternoon and taken to the Conciergerie.[369] One of his eyes came out of its socket when he was arrested. Coffinhal, who succeeded escaping, was arrested seven days later, totally exhausted.[408][409]

Execution

Lying on a table, wounded, in a room of the Convention, Robespierre is the object of the curiosity and quips of Thermidorians, painting by Lucien-Étienne Mélingue (Salon de 1877)(Musée de la Révolution française)

Robespierre on the day of his execution; Sketch by Jacques Louis David

The execution of Couthon; the body of Adrien Nicolas Gobeau, ex-substitute of the public prosecutor Fouquier and member of the Commune, the first who suffered, is shown lying on the ground;[369] Robespierre {#10} is shown holding a handkerchief to his mouth. Hanriot {#9} is covering his eye.

For the remainder of the night, Robespierre was laid in an antechamber of the Committee of General Security.[410] He lay on the table with his head on a deal (pine) box, bleeding profusely. At 5 a.m. his brother and Couthon seem to have been taken to the nearest hospital Hôtel-Dieu de Paris to see a doctor. Barras denied that Robespierre went there too; the circumstances did not permit it.[411] A military doctor was invited and removed some of his teeth and fragments of his broken jaw. Robespierre was then placed in the cell in the Conciergerie and deposited on the bed in which Danton had slept while detained.[369]

In the afternoon of 10 Thermidor (28 July, a décadi, a day of rest and festivity) the Revolutionary Tribunal condemned Robespierre and 21 "Robespierrists" (c.q. 13 members of the insurrectionary Commune) to death by the rules of the law of 22 Prairial, only verifying their identity at the trial. Halfway through the proceedings, Fouquier-Tinville, who did not want to pass judgment on his friend the mayor Fleuriot-Lescot, took off his official robe.[412] In the late afternoon, the convicts, whose average age was 34 years old, were taken in three carts to the Place de la Révolution to be executed along with the cobbler Antoine Simon, the jailor of the Dauphin. A vast mob screaming curses followed them right up to the scaffold. His face still swollen, Robespierre kept his eyes closed throughout the procession. He was the tenth called to the platform and ascended the steps of the scaffold unassisted.[369] When clearing Robespierre's neck, executioner Charles-Henri Sanson tore off the bandage that was holding his shattered jaw in place, causing him to produce an agonising scream until the fall of the blade silenced him.[413] Sanson's grandson wrote that while his grandfather did this carefully, Robespierre nevertheless roared like a tiger in response.[369] After he was beheaded, applause and joyous cries arose from the crowd and reportedly persisted for fifteen minutes.[414][415] Robespierre and his guillotined associates were later buried in a common grave at the newly opened Errancis Cemetery (near what is now the Place Prosper-Goubaux).[lower-alpha 18]

Though nominally all members of the committee were equal, during the Thermidorian Reaction Robespierre was presented as the most responsible by the surviving protagonists of the Terror, especially by Bertrand Barère, a prominent member of the Plain. The day after his death, Barère who seems to have been a "weathervane" described him as the "tyrant" and "the Terror itself". On that day half of the members of the Paris commune (conseil-général), around 70 people, were sent to the guillotine. On Thuriot's proposal, the Revolutionary Tribunal, ‘peopled by Robespierre’s creatures’, was suspended and replaced by a temporary commission.[416] On 30 July Courtois took in custody Robespierre's books by Corneille, Voltaire, Rousseau, Mably, Locke, Bacon, Pope, articles by Addison and Steele in The Spectator, an English and Italian dictionary, an English grammar and a bible.[417] Nothing about Adam Smith, Richard Price or Joseph Priestley who had influenced Condorcet, Mirabeau, Clavière and Brissot so much.[418] On 1 August the Law of 22 Prairial was abolished. Mid August Courtois was appointed by the Convention to collect evidence against Robespierre, Le Bas and Saint-Just.[419] At the end of the month, Tallien stated that all that the country had just been through was the "Terror" and that the "monster" Robespierre, the "king" of the Revolution, was the orchestrator. In fact, a whole new political mythology was being created.[420]

Robespierre's reputation has gone through several cycles of re-appraisal.[421] To preach terrorism after Thermidor was to expose oneself to suspicions of Robespierrism, suspicions which above all other had to be avoided. The Robespierre legend grew, or rather two distinct legends, portraying a Robespierre whose irresponsible ambition had led to calamity, and a Robespierre who was an early friend of the proletariat, about to embark on economic revolution when he fell.[422] His name peaked in the press in the middle of the 19th century, between 1880-1910 and in 1940.[423] For Jules Michelet, he was the "priest Robespierre" and for Alphonse Aulard Maximilien was a "bigot monomaniac" and "mystic assassin".[424] The laborious Buchez, a democratic mystic, was producing volumes (forty in all) in which the Incorruptible rose up as the Messiah and sacrificial being of the Revolution.[425] In the 1920s the influential French Marxist Albert Mathiez argued that he was an eloquent spokesman for the poor and oppressed, an enemy of royalist intrigues, a vigilant adversary of dishonest and corrupt politicians, a guardian of the French Republic, an intrepid leader of the French Revolutionary government, and a prophet of a socially responsible state.[426] François Crouzet collected many interesting details from French historians dealing with Robespierre.[427]

By making himself the embodiment of virtue and of total commitment, Robespierre took control of the Revolution in its most radical and bloody phase: the Jacobin republic. His goal in the Terror was to use the guillotine to create what he called a "republic of virtue", wherein virtue would be combined with terror.[284]

Robespierre's main ideal was to ensure the virtue and sovereignty of the people. He disapproved of any acts which could be seen as exposing the nation to counter-revolutionaries and traitors and became increasingly fearful of the defeat of the Revolution. He instigated the Terror and the deaths of his peers as a measure of ensuring the Republic of Virtue but his ideals went beyond the needs and wants of the people of France. He became a threat to what he had wanted to ensure and the result was his downfall.[22]

Soboul argues that Robespierre and Saint-Just "were too preoccupied in defeating the interest of the bourgeoisie to give their total support to the sans-culottes, and yet too attentive to the needs of the sans-culottes to get support from the middle class."[428] According to R.R. Palmer: the easiest way to justify Robespierre is to represent the other Revolutionists in an unfavourable or disgraceful light. This was the method used by Robespierre himself.[429] For Peter McPhee, Robespierre’s achievements were monumental, but so was the tragedy of his final weeks of indecision. The members of the Committee, together with members of the Committee of General Security, were as much responsible for the running of the Terror as Robespierre."[430] They may have exaggerated his role to downplay their own contribution and used him as a scapegoat after his death.[431][432] Martin and McPhee interpret the repression of the revolutionary government as a response to anarchy and popular violence, and not as the assertion of a precise ideology.[418]

Robespierre fell ill many times: in the spring of 1790, in November 1792 (more than three weeks); in September–October 1793 (two weeks); in February/March 1794 (more than a month); in April/May (about three weeks) and in June/July (more than three weeks). These illnesses not only explain Robespierre's repeated absences from committees and from the Convention during important periods, especially in 1794 when the Great Terror occurred, but also the fact that his faculty of judgment deteriorated - as did his moods.[418]

Jonathan Israel is sharply critical of Robespierre for repudiating the true values of the radical Enlightenment. He argues, "Jacobin ideology and culture under Robespierre was an obsessive Rousseauiste moral Puritanism steeped in authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism, and xenophobia, and it repudiated free expression, basic human rights, and democracy."[433] He refers to the Girondin deputies Thomas Paine, Condorcet, Daunou, Cloots, Destutt and Abbé Gregoire denouncing Robespierre's ruthlessness, hypocrisy, dishonesty, lust for power and intellectual mediocrity.[434]

In the Soviet era, he was used as an example of a Revolutionary figure.[435][436] During the October Revolution and Red Terror, Robespierre found ample praise in the Soviet Union, resulting in the construction of two statues of him: one in Saint Petersburg, and another in Moscow (the Robespierre Monument). The monument was commissioned by Vladimir Lenin, who referred to Robespierre as a "Bolshevik avant la lettre" or a "Bolshevik before his time".[322] Due to the poor construction of the monument (it was made of tubes and common concrete), it crumbled within three days of its unveiling and was never replaced.[435] The Robespierre Embankment in Saint-Petersburg across Kresty prison is now called Voskresenskaya Embankment.

Public Memorials

La Place Robespierre in Marseille with the inscription: "Lawyer, born in Arras in 1758, guillotined without trial on 27 July 1794. Nicknamed L'Incorruptible. Defender of the people. Author of our republican motto: Liberté Égalité Fraternité".

According to David P. Jordan: "Any comprehensive bibliography would be virtually impossible. In 1936 Gérard Walter drew up a list of over 10,000 works on Robespierre, and much has been done since."

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Maximilien de Robespierre.

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Author:Maximilien Robespierre

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Maximilien Robespierre

• Works by or about Maximilien Robespierre at Internet Archive
• La Révolution française (film) by Richard T. Heffron (1989 dramatisation reflecting the official narrative of the Bicentenary commemorations, based on the view point of François Furet, rejecting a Marxist interpretation):
  The French Revolution — Part 2 — English subtitles

In reaction a "more balanced" picture is presented by:[1]

• Biography: essential elements of his life
• Conspiracy and Terror in the French Revolution – Marisa Linton (Kingston University) Public Lecture
• The Robespierre Problem – Peter McPhee (University of Melbourne) and Colin Jones (University of London) discussion
• Le Grand Méchant Robespierre – Marc Bélissa and Yannick Bosc – discussion in French, dissecting the creation of the légende noire with subtitles
• Hervé Leuwers (University of Lille) on Robespierre (French) with subtitles