Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) is by far the most well-known of the French revolutionaries. As the leader of the Jacobin Club, he sat in the Assembly as a Montagnard when he voted for the death of the king and war against European monarchies. In June 1793, the Committee of Public Safety, of which he was one of the most influential members, established the Reign of Terror and had all suspects of counter-revolution guillotined.
Robespierre himself died at the guillotine in 1794. The controversies surrounding him demonstrate that while he continues to provoke passions, he is also an unavoidable figure not only in the history of the French Revolution but more broadly in the history of France.
Robespierre’s First Steps in Politics
Born on May 6, 1758, into a family of middle-class and merchant background, Maximilien de Robespierre, orphaned by his mother and early abandoned by his father, first experienced academic success—he obtained a scholarship to study at the Louis-le-Grand high school in Paris, where he was associated with Camille Desmoulins—and then social success in his hometown. A lawyer in 1781, he won cases there and became a member of the Academy of Fine Arts (perpetual secretary, then elected director in 1786).
Although modest, this ascent encountered local ostracism as a result of his blunt criticisms of his contemporaries’ flaws. He further isolated himself from society through writings critiquing the clientelism of the legal profession and, in 1788, the desire of the notables of Arras to protect their privileges at the Estates of Artois.
His entry into politics under the sign of radicalism resulted in his difficult election to the Estates-General of 1789 as a deputy of the Third Estate. He distinguished himself there with numerous speeches (over a thousand between 1789 and 1794), regardless of his qualities as an orator, which remained controversial. His life henceforth merged with an incessant public commitment. As for the absence of a private life, it corresponded to an inclination but also to a choice that explained his subsequent commitments and gave the man an extraordinary personality: living frugally at the carpenter Duplay’s house in Paris, Robespierre could rightly be called “the Incorruptible.”
Ideas and Principles
In the aftermath of the Storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, Robespierre believed that the aristocrats had only capitulated superficially to the popular uprising and were pretending to applaud in order to reap its benefits. The defense of popular movements was the leitmotif of his speeches, which aroused enthusiasm in the most revolutionary newspapers. Isolated in the Constituent Assembly, he appealed to the people and remained in constant contact with them by publishing his speeches. Posterity has remembered from his numerous interventions the determination he showed in combating the old aristocratic society and liberating all the oppressed, for example, the slaves in the colonies against the constitutionalization of the slave trade: “Let your colonies perish if you keep them at this price,” even though debates continue about the ambiguity he may have had at certain moments on this subject.
He also emerged as a defender of the natural rights of the people: against the death penalty, on the organization of the clergy, the judicial system, the organization of the national guards, and speeches in which we find the motto of today’s republic: “They will wear on their chest these words engraved: The French People, and below: Liberty Equality Fraternity.” Above all, Robespierre fought against the censitary regime, which, after the privilege of birth, introduced the privilege of money into society. To counterbalance this society of the rich, he invariably opposed universal suffrage.
He also had an unwavering attachment to the principles of equality: “People, remember that, if justice doesn’t reign with absolute power in the Republic, and if this word doesn’t mean the love of equality and of the patrie, liberty is but a vain name!” (Speech of the 8 Thermidor year II). Thus, he was determined to limit the right to property to common utility, differentiating between the vital and the superfluous.
Robespierre made these unshakable principles more than a political struggle; they were a moral one. He thus attached to these universal laws the principle of public virtue, so dear to Montesquieu. “Now, what is the fundamental principle of popular or democratic government, that is to say, the essential mainspring that sustains it and makes it move? It is a virtue. I speak of the public virtue which worked so many wonders in Greece and Rome and which ought to produce even more astonishing things in republican France—that virtue which is nothing other than the love of the nation and its laws…” (Speech of the Law on February 4, 1794)
The Incorruptible
Nicknamed the Incorruptible, Robespierre never wavered from these principles until his death, which also contributed to his radical and uncompromising image. He, who had never doubted the existence of an aristocratic conspiracy since 1789, was the most resolute detractor of the Constituent Assembly, which, following the events of Varennes, preferred to invent an incredible story of abduction.
However, he sensed that the Assembly would take advantage of the petition from the popular society of the Cordeliers demanding the proclamation of the Republic to crush the opposition. To this end, martial law was proclaimed on July 17 by Bailly and La Fayette, who ordered the shooting of a crowd of unarmed men, women, and children of the people gathered at the Altar of Liberty.
Robespierre became increasingly popular among the Parisian sans-culottes. The entire democratic opposition, societies, and patriots were thus gathered around the Jacobin Club of Paris, while also bringing considerable prestige to its leader from the sans-culottes of all France. When it was time for the Constituent Assembly to separate, he wrested from this assembly the decree that prohibited its members from standing for re-election to the next legislature. He refused to let deputies retain their mandates indefinitely.
Robespierre and the War
Brissot and his companions, known since Lamartine as the Girondins, constituted a great bourgeoisie of bankers, merchants, and shipowners from Bordeaux whose difference in interests with the bourgeoisie of the Ancien Régime structures made them the left wing of the new assembly. When they proposed to initiate conflict with the European powers, Robespierre rose from the Jacobins against a conflict that would engender “the death of the body political.” Knowing that the Girondins were primarily eyeing the future exploitation of the ports of the North Sea, he denounced their maneuvers: war “is good for military officers, for the ambitious, for speculators who speculate on such events.”
Brushing aside the hope of seeing European populations throw themselves into the arms of their invaders, Robespierre warned above all against the advent of a France reduced to exceptional measures to defend itself, risking sinking into a military dictatorship: “No one likes armed missionaries […] In times of trouble and factions, the leaders of armies become the arbiters of the fate of their countries and tilt the balance in favor of the party they have embraced. If they are Caesars or Cromwells, they seize authority themselves” (Speech of December 18, 1791).
In vain, the opponents of war could not indefinitely confront hostile audiences and public opinion won over to this eventuality. On April 20, 1792, revolutionary France “to the King of Bohemia and Hungary” declared war. The Revolution was threatened on all sides by its internal enemies allied with foreign powers: the emigrants with the Prussians, the Vendéens waiting for English aid, the royalists handing over Toulon to them…
The End of the Monarchy
The fight of Robespierre against war revealed him as uncompromising; it was with the same vigor that he prepared public opinion to overthrow the monarchy. However, he was aware of not being a leader of the insurrection and preferred to encourage the insurgents by appealing to the Federates gathered in Paris through the voice of the Jacobins and by arranging for them to meet the Parisian sans-culottes at the carpenter Duplay’s. He contributed, like Marat, not only to prepare minds for this insurrection but also to give it a national character.
After August 10, 1792, he was elected to the General Council of the Commune, during which he refused to condemn the September massacres, considering that the responsibility lay with a Legislative Assembly incapable of facing the foreign invasion at the gates of Paris (armies that had indeed promised to set the capital on fire upon their arrival).
He was elected on September 5, along with his brother Augustin, as deputy of Paris to the new assembly, the National Convention, which, at its first session on September 21, proclaimed the abolition of monarchy in France.
The Girondins changed their status from the left wing of the Assembly to that of the right wing. They then opposed the deputies sitting at the top of the stands, nicknamed the Mountain. Among them, Danton, Desmoulins, Marat, and Robespierre were all newly elected. The resurgence of the Battle of Valmy in September had offered a brief respite to the Revolution. Despite an extremely serious situation, the Gironde was hoped for, in part, by the wealthy bourgeoisie who had previously supported the Feuillants and now hoped that the majority of the Convention would offer them a precarious peace with the enemy, a pretext to complete the Revolution for their benefit.
Robespierre and the Montagnards then echoed the voice of the people at the Convention. This was a decisive stage of the Revolution. The working classes were now linked to the salvation of the Republic. He could finally see the implementation of his social policy, which he believed was inseparably linked to this salvation. The situation of the Gironde was absolutely untenable in the face of the sans-culottes from all over France who felt that their victory of August 10 was being usurped. Distrustful of the people and repugnant to measures of public safety, the Girondins were overthrown by the denunciations of the Mountain and the popular national day of June 2nd. As Albert Mathiez summarized it, “The Girondins were defeated because, in a word, they neglected public safety and confined themselves to a class policy benefiting only the bourgeoisie.”
Robespierre’s Social Democracy
Robespierre, within the revolutionary government, pursued social policy derived from his convictions and principles. Alongside the young convention member, Saint-Just, he was one of the proponents of social democracy. Proposing a new Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as a preamble to the future Constitution of Year I, he declared that property was no longer a natural and inalienable right but a social fact defined by law: “the right to property is limited like all others by the obligation to respect the rights of others.” Speaking of the declaration of 1789, “your declaration seems to have been made not for men but for the rich, for the monopolizers, for the speculators, and for the tyrants.”
However, inequalities and the privilege of wealth persisted due to the workings of economic laws. In this context, Robespierre was instrumental in introducing the notion of social rights into the construction of the Republic. The nation became responsible for controlling the right to property and for establishing relative equality through the reconstitution of small property. The law ensured equal sharing of inheritances to divide fortunes. Above all, Robespierre defended the laws of Ventôse Year II presented by Saint-Just, which gave the destitute the goods confiscated from suspects.
The Incorruptible was one of the architects of a new society, recognizing its debt to the people. Its duty was to educate its citizens. In this regard, on July 29, 1793, Robespierre presented the Saint-Fargeau education project to the Convention. A century before Jules Ferry, this project allowed access for all to a common foundation of education, free, compulsory, and liberated from the constraints of the Church.
The law of Floréal 22 (May 11, 1794) organized “national benevolence” and applied the declaration of 1793 to the letter: free medical assistance, home aid for the elderly, allowances for work-related accidents, and for the families of those who died for the homeland. It was a practical application of Robespierre’s proposed first article of the Declaration of Rights from 1793, which reads, “The aim of society is the common happiness.” Saint-Just also wanted to “give all French people the means to obtain life’s basic necessities without depending on anything other than the laws.”
Finally, slavery was abolished for the first time in France on the Law of February 4, 1794 (16 pluviôse year II).
The Terror
While a completely new society was being created, the members of the Committee of Public Safety, which Robespierre joined on July 27, 1793, had to lead revolutionary France to victory in civil and foreign wars while mitigating the effects of these wars felt by the populations. To this end, the revolutionary government established the dictatorship of public safety. Like many members of the Convention, they saw only one solution to bring the Revolution and its achievements to victory: exceptional measures—measures that are now known as the “Terror (Reign of Terror).”
The goal of a constitutional government is the protection of the Republic; that of a revolutionary government is the establishment of the Republic.
Since 1790, Robespierre has believed that the nation could resort to exceptional force to achieve its goal. He summarized this belief in a famous speech on 25 Nivôse: “The goal of a constitutional government is the protection of the Republic; that of a revolutionary government is the establishment of the Republic. The Revolution is the war of Liberty against its enemies […] The revolutionary government requires extraordinary activity because it is at war.” Knowing the dangers of these exceptional measures, he gave them a moral guideline, the already mentioned Civic Virtue: “If the spring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the spring of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror:virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent […] It is less a specific principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most pressing needs of the country.”
To feed the people, this government resorted to requisitions and set a general maximum price for essential goods. It ensured its independence by nationalizing war production. It should be noted that the various measures of imprisoning suspects and judging enemies of the Revolution by the revolutionary tribunal served as a substitute for disorganized and fragile popular violence. This legal terror often accompanied speeches with accents more vehement than their applications.
Contradictions and Ruptures
Approaching victory in April 1794 revealed divergences within the revolutionary government and placed Robespierre in front of the contradictions of his policies. In the spring of Year II, the Revolution witnessed the emergence of factions that fell victim to the vigilance of the revolutionary government. The fiery journalist Hébert, editor of Le Père Duchesne, very close to popular circles, had fought against the revolutionary government, which was seen as too compromised with the bourgeoisie. He was guillotined along with his companions. Danton, whom Robespierre defended until the eve of his arrest, also fell for assuming the role of leader of a heterogeneous faction of corrupt individuals, demanding a committee of clemency, especially for them… “The Revolution is frozen,” wrote Saint-Just.
During this period, Robespierre continued his policy by seeking to give a transcendental dimension to the Revolution, introducing the cult of the Supreme Being on 18 Floréal Year II: “The French people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul.” Even though this cult had the government’s approval, it stirred up disagreements regarding religion. Robespierre was a deist, believing in the free exercise of worship and abhorring an atheistic dechristianization that he considered nihilistic and far from the concerns of the people: “Priests have been denounced for saying Mass! They will say it even more if they are prevented from doing so. He who wants to prevent them is more fanatical than the one saying Mass.” This conflict introduced a simmering hostility into the Convention that was felt even in the Parisian sections.
These sections began to grumble against a law that imposed a maximum wage. As the war receded, the bourgeoisie exerted pressure to break some of the gains of the wage earners, which they succeeded in doing. Despite some blindness among the Robespierrists, the revolution remained bourgeois. In the prelude to this downfall, one must also mention the bureaucratization of revolutionary bodies that distanced them from their original militancy and led them towards a bureaucracy detached from the popular movement. All of this slowed down democracy in the sections and increased weariness among the masses for their institutions. This fundamental contradiction prepared the ground for the Fall of Thermidor.
9 Thermidor: The Fall and Death of Robespierre
The very institutions themselves were targets of attacks, which gossip and slander exacerbated. The two Committees accused each other of mutual encroachments. The Law of Prairial Year II (June 1794), known as the “Great Terror,” was intentionally diverted from its initial purpose, which was to limit recourse to the revolutionary government, in order to discredit Robespierre and Couthon, who were behind it.
During a session and yet another dispute within the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre stormed out to sink into an illness, both physical and psychological, which kept him bedridden. Fouché and Tallien, who had good reasons to believe that their survival depended on Robespierre’s downfall, took advantage of his absence to rally the right-wing deputies, the majority of whom were neither Montagnards nor Girondins.
Undoubtedly aware of all these contradictions and wanting to rely solely on national representation, Robespierre delivered a testament speech on the 8th of Thermidor Year II, defending his principles and denouncing, without naming them, certain members of the government. The next day, Saint-Just was interrupted during the reading of a report, and a faction of deputies decreed the arrest of the Robespierrists, who were then taken to prison. They were released by the Paris Commune and taken to City Hall.
Refusing to lead an insurrection against the national representation, the Robespierrists saw their feeble defense scattered throughout the evening, at the end of which Robespierre attempted suicide and was arrested along with his companions. The victors did not hesitate for long with these cumbersome accused and had them guillotined the next day, July 28, 1794, amidst the cheers of the most bourgeois sections of western Paris.
An anecdote from Michelet, who cannot be accused of being a Robespierrist, has been repeated many times: “A few days after Thermidor, a ten-year-old boy was taken to the theater by his parents […] People in jackets, hats lowered, said to the exiting spectators, ‘Do you need a carriage, my master?’ The child did not understand these new terms. He was only told that there had been a great change since the death of Robespierre.”
Robespierre, despite his contradictions, despite his mistakes and wanderings, was considered by many, often the poorest, as a bulwark of democracy. Faced with the pragmatism of the liberal bourgeoisie, he laid the foundations for society outside their utilitarian and profane frameworks by incorporating the Revolution into a universal legitimacy of justice, reason, and morality. And it is this legitimacy that he referred to as the Supreme Being. That is the entire meaning—the struggle, the true constant, the life of Robespierre. A vision that gives purpose to the Revolution. He had an unwavering faith in democracy, as he described it on the eve of his death in his final speech.
