Maximilien Robespierre

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (IPA: [maksimiljε̃ fʁα̃swa maʁi izidɔʁ də ʁɔbəspjεʁ]) (6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794) is one of the best-known leaders of the French Revolution. His supporters knew him as "the Incorruptible" because of his austere moral devotion to revolutionary political change. He was an influential member of the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror that ended with his arrest and execution in 1794.

Politically, Robespierre was a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, among other Enlightenment philosophes, and a capable articulator of the beliefs of the left-wing bourgeoisie. He was described as physically unimposing and immaculate in dress and personal manners.

Family and early life

Maximilien Robespierre was born in Arras, France on 6 May 1758. His family, according to tradition, was of Irish descent,^[1] having emigrated from Ireland at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the "Flight of the Earls" to escape English oppression, and his direct ancestors in the male line had been notaries in the little village of Carvin near Arras from the beginning of the 17th century. However, several genealogists have traced his family back to the Middle Ages in Northern France.

His paternal grandfather established himself in Arras as a lawyer. His father, also a lawyer, married daughter of a brewer Jacqueline Marguerite Carraut in 1757. Robespierre was the eldest of four children. In 1767 Madame Derobespierre, as the name was then spelled, died. Her husband left Arras and wandered about Europe until his death in Munich in 1777. The maternal grandfather and aunts raised the children. Robespierre also had to take care of his siblings.

Maximilien was sent to the college of Arras. In 1770, on the recommendation of the bishop, he obtained a scholarship at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Here he began to admire the idealized Roman Republic and the rhetoric of Cicero, Cato, and other classic figures; his fellow pupils included Camille Desmoulins and Stanislas Fréron.

Early politics

Robespierre completed his law studies with distinction and was admitted as a lawyer in 1781. He returned to Arras to seek practice and to struggle against poverty. His reputation had preceded him.

The Bishop of Arras, M. de Conzié, appointed him criminal judge in the diocese of Arras in March 1782. He soon resigned to avoid pronouncing a death sentence but continued to practice at the bar.^[1] He quickly became a successful advocate. He then turned to literature and society and was regarded one of the best writers – as well as one of the most popular dandies – of Arras.

In December 1783 Robespierre was elected a member of the academy of Arras and he attended the meetings. In 1784 he earned a medal from the academy of Metz for his essay on the question of whether the relatives of a condemned criminal should share his disgrace. He and Pierre Louis de Lacretelle, an advocate and journalist in Paris, divided the prize. Many of his subsequent essays were less successful, but Robespierre became popular in the Rosati, the literary and musical society at Arras, of which Carnot was also a member.

In 1788 Robespierre took part in the discussion about the way the Estates-General should be elected. He stated in his Adresse à la nation artésienne that if the former mode of election by the members of the provincial estates were adopted again, the new States-General would not represent the people of France.

Robespierre, the chief opponent of the leading members of the corporation, was elected alongside them. Rivalry was strong in the assembly of the bailliage, but Robespierre had begun to make his mark in politics with the Avis aux habitants de la campagne (Arras, 1789). He secured the support of the country electors, and even if he was only 30, comparatively poor and lacked patronage, he was elected fifth deputy of the tiers état of Artois to the States-General.

When the Estates-General met at Versailles on 5 May 1789, Robespierre's political convictions were obviously radical. As Honoré Mirabeau reportedly stated: "That young man believes what he says; he will go far". Robespierre was a fervent supporter of the doctrines of Rousseau and had begun to shape them into his own vision.

While the Constituent Assembly of provincial lawyers and wealthy bourgeois begun to draw up a constitution, Robespierre turned to the people of Paris. He was a frequent speaker in the Constituent Assembly (over 150 speeches up to 1791) often with great success although his voice is noted as being "high-pitched [and] metallic". He was eventually recognized as second only to Pétion de Villeneuve as a leader of the extreme left, a small group Mirabeau called the "thirty voices".

When Robespierre noticed that his ideas would not be popular in the Assembly, he turned to the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, known as the Jacobin Club. It originally consisted only of the Breton deputies. After the Assembly moved to Paris the Club began to accept members from various leaders of the Parisian bourgeoisie. Eventually many artisans and small shopkeepers also joined them.

Robespierre had found his audience and followers. As the wealthier bourgeois of Paris and moderate deputies seceded to the Club of '89, the influence of the old leaders of the Jacobins (Barnave, Duport, Alexandre de Lameth) diminished. When they founded the club of the Feuillants in 1791, alarmed at the progress of the Revolution, the followers of Robespierre already dominated the Jacobin Club.

Mirabeau's death strengthened Robespierre's influence in the Assembly. On 15 May (or 16 May) 1791 he proposed and carried the motion that no deputies who sat in the Constituent could sit in the succeeding Assembly, which became known as the "self-denying ordinance".^[2]^[3] The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article on Robespierre attributed this much-censured stance to his "lack of statesmanlike insight and his jealous suspicion of his colleagues."

When the flight of Louis XVI and his family failed 20 June when they were arrested at Varennes, Robespierre declared that he was ni monarchiste ni républicain ("neither monarchist nor republican").

After the massacre of the Champ de Mars on 17 July 1791, in order to be nearer to the Assembly and the Jacobins, Robespierre moved into the house of Maurice Duplay. Duplay, a cabinetmaker who lived in the Rue Saint-Honoré, was Robespierre's ardent admirer. Robespierre lived at Duplay's house until his death (except for two short intervals). According to various sources, including his doctor, Souberbielle, Vilate, a juror on the Revolutionary Tribunal, and his Duplay's youngest daughter (who would later marry Philippe Le Bas) he became engaged to Duplay's eldest daughter, Éléonore Duplay.

On 30 September on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the people of Paris crowned Pétion and Robespierre as the two incorruptible patriots. Afterwards Robespierre returned for a short visit to Arras, where he met a triumphant reception. In November he returned to Paris.

Robespierre's opposition to war with Austria

File:MRobespierre.jpg

Bust of Robespierre by Dessein (1792).

On 18 December 1791 Brissot de Warville, the dame politique of the Girondist party in the Legislative Assembly, urged that France should declare war against Austria. Marat and Robespierre opposed him. Robespierre feared a development of militarism, which might then be turned to the advantage of the reactionary forces. This opposition from expected allies irritated the Girondins and begun a political rivalry.

Robespierre continued to oppose the war when the Girondists, especially Brissot, attacked him. In April 1792, Robespierre resigned the post of public prosecutor at the tribunal of Paris, which he had held since February, and started a journal, Le Defenseur de la Constitution, in his own defence.

During the summer of 1792 neither the Girondins nor Robespierre took any active part in the overthrow of the monarchy. Georges Danton and Billaud Varenne begun the insurrection of 10 August and took the Tuileries. The Girondists, however, were quick to take advantage of the situation. Robespierre took his seat on the Commune of Paris, intending to check the political ambitions of the Girondins.

Because of his popularity, his reputation for virtue and his influence over the Jacobin Club, the strongmen of the Commune were glad to have Robespierre's aid. On 16 August Robespierre presented the petition of the Commune of Paris to the Legislative Assembly, demanding the establishment of a revolutionary tribunal and the summoning of a Convention.

Robespierre failed to quell the massacres of September. They showed that the Commune had more confidence in Billaud than in him. However, he was elected few days later the first deputy for Paris to the National Convention due to his popularity. Robespierre and his allies took the benches high at the back of the hall, giving the faction the label 'the Mountain' (Montagnards); below them were the Manège of the Girondins and then 'the Plain' of the independents.

At the Convention, the Girondins immediately attacked Robespierre. As early as 26 September the Girondist Marc-David Lasource accused Robespierre of aiming at a dictatorship. He later heard a rumor that Marat, Danton and himself were plotting to become triumvirs. On 29 October Louvet de Couvrai attacked Robespierre in a speech of false accusations, possibly formed with Madame Roland. Robespierre easily rebutted this attack on 5 November when he denounced the federalist plans of the Girondists.

The execution of Louis XVI

On December 1792 the personal disputes were replaced by the question of the king's trial. Here Robespierre took a position that the king must be executed. In his speech on 3 December he said:

"This is no trial; Louis is not a prisoner at the bar; you are not judges; you are—you cannot but be—statesmen, and the representatives of the nation. You have not to pass sentence for or against a single man, but you have to take a resolution on a question of the public safety, and to decide a question of national foresight. It is with regret that I pronounce, the fatal truth: Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die, so that the country may live."

Robespierre argued that the King, having betrayed the people when he tried to flee the country (or in Robespierre's opinion, having been a King at the first place) was a danger to the state as the unifying symbol to the enemies of the Republic. On the debate of January of 1793, he and many other members like Jean-Paul Marat, Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins and Antoine de Saint-Just, opposed the Girondins and the few remaining Royalists.

The Girondin arguments convinced the convention that there should be a trial. By a vote of 721-0 (with 29 deputies absent for the vote), the King was found guilty. The Girondins did not support execution of the King and proposed that his verdict and sentence be submitted to a popular referendum.

Robespierre and his associates stated that requests for a referendum betrayed sympathy for the King and were attempts to delay the execution of the sentence. Rhetoric of Robespierre swayed the Convention and it voted 424-283 against the referendum. Last minute attempts to delay the execution of the King failed. Louis XVI was guillotined on 21 January 1793.

Destruction of the Girondins

After the king's execution, influence of Robespierre, Danton, and the pragmatic politicians increased in the expense of that of the Girondins. They refused to have anything to do with Danton and the government became more schismatic.

In May 1793 Camille Desmoulins, at the behest of Robespierre and Danton, published his Histoire des Brissotins and Brissol demasqué. Maximin Isnard declared that Paris must be destroyed if it pronounced itself against the provincial deputies. Robespierre preached a moral "insurrection against the corrupt deputies" at the Jacobin Club. On 2 June, large crowd of armed men from the Commune of Paris came to the Convention and arrested 32 Girondin deputies accused of counter-revolutionary activities.

Founding the Committee of Public Safety

On 11 March a Revolutionary Tribunal was established in Paris and on 6 April the nine-member Committee of Public Safety replaced the larger Committee of General Defense. On 27 July 1793 the Convention elected Robespierre to the Committee though he had not sought the position. The Committee of General Security begun to manage of the internal police of the country.

Robespierre's role in the Terror

You must add a |reason= parameter to this Cleanup template – replace it with {{Cleanup|September 2006|reason=<Fill reason here>}}, or remove the Cleanup template.
Historians have yet to reach agreement on Robespierre's role in the Terror. Some state that it was minor and that he was a subordinate player within the Committee of Public Safety. Babeuf and Buonarroti have tried to exculpate him on the grounds of practical expediency. However Robespierre's role as a leader, mouthpiece and articulator of the Terror is clear.

Robespierre is usually regarded as the dominant spirit of the committee. However, it may be that after his death many of his colleagues tried to save themselves by blaming him. He was one of the most popular orators in the Convention and his carefully prepared speeches often made a deep impression. His panegyrics on the system of revolutionary government and his praise of virtue illustrated his belief that the system of the Terror was entirely necessary, laudable, and inevitable. It was Robespierre's ideological belief, however, that political terror and virtue were of necessity inseparable.

For example, in a speech he delivered to the Convention in early February 1794, Robespierre stated,

"If virtue be 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."[[1]]

In the winter of 1793–1794 Committee decided that the Hébertist party must perish or its 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 Hébertist's for their "atheism" and bloodthirstiness. On Dantons', Camille Desmoulins protested against the Terror in his third issue of Le Vieux Cordelier (Robespierre had read and approved of the first two issues):

Robespierre retired for a month (from 13 February to 13 March 1794) from active business due to illness. Meanwhile he decided that the end of the Terror would mean the loss of political power he hoped to use to create the Republic of Virtue. He broke with Danton and co-operated in the attacks of the Committee on Danton and the Hebertistes. Robespierre charged his opponents with complicity with foreign powers. The charges against Danton - reaching from accusations of corruption to alleged spying for Pitt and plotting to restore monarchy - were, "even by the standards of the Revolutionary Tribunal, an incredibly feeble document."^{[This quote needs a citation]}

On 15 March Robespierre reappeared in the Convention; on 19 March Hébert and nineteen of his friends were arrested and on 24 March they were guillotined. On 30 March Danton, Camille Desmoulins and their friends were arrested, tried on 2 April and guillotined on 5 April.

After the execution of Danton, Robespierre began to develop his own policy. He used his influence over the Jacobin Club to dominate the Commune of Paris through his followers. Two of them, Fleuriot-Lescot and CF de Payan, were elected respectively mayor and procurer of the Commune. He tried to usurp the influence of the other members of the Committee over the army through his young follower Saint-Just who he sent on a mission to the frontier.

In Paris Robespierre decided to increase the pressure of the Terror: no one should accuse him of being a moderate. The Convention should pass whatever measures he might dictate. To secure his aims his other ally in the Committee Couthon, and carried on 10 June the drastic Law of 22 Prairial. Tribunal became a simple court of condemnation without need of witnesses. The result of this law was that until the Robespierre's death, 1,285 victims were executed by the guillotine in Paris.

Robespierre's desire for revolutionary change was not limited to the political realm alone. He also sought to instill a spiritual resurgence of the French nation based on Deist beliefs. Accordingly, on 7 May 1794 Robespierre authored a decree passed the Convention that established a Supreme Being. The notion of the Supreme Being was based on ideas that Jean-Jacques Rousseau had outlined in The Social Contract In honor of the Supreme Being a great festival of celebration was to be held on 8 June. Robespierre, as President of the Convention, walked first in the festival procession and delivered a speech commemorating the day.

In this speech, Robespierre made it clear that his concept of a Supreme Being was far different from the traditional God of Christianity. Robespierre's Supreme Being was a radical democrat, like the Jacobins,

"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." [[2]]

Robespierre's downfall

Again, Robespierre retired from the Convention for four weeks to plan his next move. He reappeared on 26 July and delivered a two-hour long speech, warning of conspiracy against the Republic. He accused certain deputies of injustice and excess and stated that the Committees of Public Safety and General Security should be reformed.

At first the convention passed his motions; but Joseph Cambon the financier, Billaud-Varenne, Amar and Vadier, and the Convention rescinded their decrees and referred Robespierre's question to their committees. On the following day, 27 July, or in the revolutionary calendar 9 Thermidor, when Saint-Just began to speak on behalf of Robespierre, his opponents attacked him and begun to shout "Down with the tyrant!".-

When Robespierre hesitated in his speech to answer the attacks, there was a shout "C'est le sang de Danton qui t'étouffe" ("The blood of Danton chokes you"). At 5:00 PM Robespierre, his supporters Couthon and Saint-Just and two young deputies, his brother Augustin Robespierre and Philippe François Joseph Lebas, were ordered to be arrested. Troops of the Commune rescued them from Prison and brought them to the Hôtel de Ville. There his faithful adherents surrounded him, led by Payan and Coffinhal.

Commune met again when they heard of Robespierre's release and declared him and the Communards outlaws. The national guards troops under the command of Barras marched to the Hôtel de Ville top arrest them. Lebas shot himself, Augustin Robespierre jumped from a high window, Couthon was found with broken limbs on a stair, and Robespierre was taken away with his jaw broken by a bullet.

Later a young gendarme Merda claimed that he shot Robespierre when he was signing an appeal to one of the sections of Paris to take up arms for him. Thomas Carlyle and many other historians disbelieve that and instead suggest that the wound was a sign of a failed suicide attempt^[3]. All the released deputies were rearrested.

The next day Robespierre was taken before the tribunal and executed without trial by a guillotine on the Place de la Révolution on the 10th Thermidor An II (28 July 1794). Couthon, Saint-Just and nineteen of his followers were also executed. According to legend, he was the only man to be guillotined face-up. His corpse and head both are buried in the common cemetery of Errancis, today Place de Goubeaux, and an unmarked gravestone covers the spot.

Historians' views of Robespierre

Robespierre is a very controversial figure. He has defenders like Albert Soboul, who viewed most of the measures of the Committee for Public Safety necessary for the defense of the Revolution and mainly regretted the destruction of the Hébertists and other enragés.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica sums up Robespierre as a bright young theorist out of his depth of experience:

"A well-educated and accomplished young lawyer, he might have acquired a good provincial practice and lived a happy provincial life had it not been for the Revolution. Like thousands of other young Frenchmen, he had read the works of Rousseau and taken them as gospel. Just at the very time in life when this illusion had not been destroyed by the realities of life, and without the experience which might have taught the futility of idle dreams and theories, he was elected to the states-general."

"At Paris he was not understood till he met with his audience of fellow disciples of Rousseau at the Jacobin Club. His fanaticism won him supporters; his singularly sweet and sympathetic voice gained him hearers; and his upright life attracted the admiration of all. As matters approached nearer and nearer to the terrible crisis, he failed, except in the two instances of the question of war and of the kings trial, to show himself a statesman, for he had not the liberal views and practical instincts which made Mirabeau and Danton great men. His admission to the Committee of Public Safety gave him power, which he hoped to use for the establishment of his favorite theories, and for the same purpose he acquiesced in and even heightened the horrors of the Reign of Terror. It is here that the fatal mistake of allowing a theorist to have power appeared:

"Billaud-Varenne systematized the Terror because he believed it necessary for the safety of the country; Robespierre intensified it in order to carry out his own ideas and theories. Robespierre's private life was always respectable: he was always emphatically a gentleman and man of culture, and even a little bit of a dandy, scrupulously honest, truthful and charitable. In his habits and manner of life he was simple and laborious; he was not a man gifted with flashes of genius, but one who had to think much before he could come to a decision, and he worked hard all his life."

Conservative and royalist historians have traditionally viewed Robespierre as a demagogue and have often criticized him over his role in the suppression of the royalist uprising in the Vendée. ^{[citation needed]}

Notes

^ ^a ^b 1911 EB
^ Hilary Mantel, If you’d seen his green eyes, London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 8, 20 April 2006. Accessed online 9 October 2006.
^ "Sieyes, Emmanuel-Joseph", Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1911.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Maximilien Francois Marie Isidore Robespierre". [[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|Encyclopædia Britannica]] (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)

External links

Les Amis de Robespierre (Robespierre's Friends: the English version of the site is still under construction.)
"Robespierre, Terror, and the French Revolution"

[1911EB-1] 1911 EB

[2] Hilary Mantel, If you’d seen his green eyes, London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 8, 20 April 2006. Accessed online 9 October 2006.

[3] "Sieyes, Emmanuel-Joseph", Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1911.

[1]

[2]

[3]