Robespierre

Robespierre Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) was a French lawyer and statesman who became one of the most influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution. A member of the Jacobin Club and later a leading member of the Committee of Public Safety, he championed political virtue, universal male suffrage and a republic based on reason, and he directed the Terror that sent thousands to the guillotine before being overthrown and executed himself in 1794.

Early Life and the Estates General

Robespierre was born on 6 May 1758 in Arras, in the northern province of Artois, the son of a lawyer. His mother died when he was six and his father later abandoned the family, leaving the children to be raised by relatives. He studied law in Paris on a scholarship, distinguished himself at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, and returned to Arras to practise as an advocate, where he became known for his uprightness and for his concern for the poor.

In 1789 he was elected as a deputy of the Third Estate for Artois to the Estates General, the assembly that the king had summoned to deal with the financial crisis of the monarchy. Though he was a mediocre orator at first, he worked hard in the committees and in the Jacobin Club, and his uncompromising defence of democratic principles gradually won him a following in Paris.

As the Revolution moved through the declaration of the Rights of Man, the abolition of feudal privilege and the drafting of a constitution, Robespierre argued consistently for the sovereignty of the people, for equality before the law, and for the admission of all citizens to public office. He opposed the property qualification that marked out so-called active citizens, and he campaigned for the rights of religious minorities.

The Republic and the Terror

After the fall of the monarchy in August 1792 and the proclamation of the republic in September, Robespierre became a dominant voice in the National Convention. He opposed the more moderate Girondins and helped to bring about their fall in June 1793, after which the Jacobins consolidated their control. In July 1793 he was elected to the Committee of Public Safety, the executive body created to meet the emergency of foreign invasion and civil war.

The Committee instituted the Terror, a policy of revolutionary justice justified as a response to treason and counter-revolution. A Revolutionary Tribunal judged suspects without appeal, and the Law of Suspects and the Law of 22 Prairial widened the grounds for arrest and execution. Tens of thousands died across France, including the former queen Marie Antoinette and the moderate deputies, and Robespierre himself came to be identified with the system he defended.

Robespierre justified the Terror as the instrument of virtue. He argued that terror without virtue is destructive and virtue without terror is powerless, and that in a revolutionary republic the government must be energetic and severe to save the state from its enemies. He also promoted a cult of the Supreme Being, a deistic civic religion designed to replace both Christianity and the atheism he distrusted, which was celebrated in the Festival of the Supreme Being in 1794.

Ideals of Virtue and Equality

Robespierre's political philosophy centred on virtue and equality. He believed that a republic can rest only on the morality of its citizens, and that the pursuit of private interest corrodes the common good. His speeches repeatedly invoked the general will, the rights of the poor, and the duty of the state to guarantee subsistence and education. He also opposed slavery in the colonies and supported the emancipation of the enslaved.

He was suspicious of concentrated wealth and of the corruption he associated with it. He favoured progressive taxation, limits on the accumulation of property, and measures to relieve the poor, ideas that placed him on the radical left of the revolutionary spectrum. At the same time he opposed the more extreme egalitarian proposals of the so-called Enragés, whom he regarded as a threat to order.

His ideal of the republic was austere and demanding: citizens were to be simple, honest and devoted to the public good, and any sign of luxury or factional interest was to be punished. This moral intensity inspired devotion among his followers and fear among his enemies, and it made him the most idealistic and the most feared figure of the Revolution.

Fall and Execution

By the summer of 1794 the Terror had destroyed so many factions that its remaining leaders felt it would turn on them. The victories of the revolutionary armies reduced the justification for emergency rule, and Robespierre's withdrawal from public view for several weeks heightened suspicion. On 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) he was denounced in the Convention and arrested with his allies.

The Paris Commune briefly supported him, but the Convention rallied the sections and the National Guard, and Robespierre and his companions were declared outlaws. He was wounded by a shot in the jaw during the seizure of the Hôtel de Ville and was guillotined the next day, 28 July 1794, at the age of thirty-six. The fall of Robespierre ended the most radical phase of the Revolution and was followed by the reaction known as the Thermidorian Reaction.

His reputation has divided opinion ever since. To some he is a tyrant whose pursuit of purity produced mass murder; to others he is a sincere democrat who defended the poor and paid with his life for the excesses forced on the republic by war and conspiracy. Historians continue to debate the relationship between his ideals and the violence of the Terror, and he remains the central symbol of both the promise and the tragedy of the French Revolution.

See also

• French Revolution
• Jacobin Club
• Committee of Public Safety
• Reign of Terror