Robespierre

French revolutionary leader

• Born: May 6, 1758
• Birthplace: Arras, France
• Died: July 28, 1794
• Place of death: Paris, France

Alone among the leaders of the French Revolution, Robespierre was identified with every stage of the revolution. He most clearly enunciated the leftist ideals upon which the revolution was to be based and fought most vigorously for its success.

Early Life

Robespierre (raw-behs-pyehr) was born at Arras, in the province of Artois, on May 6, 1758. He was the eldest of four surviving children of Maximilien-Barthélemy, a third-generation lawyer, and Jacqueline-Marguerite, née Carraut, de Robespierre. Maximilien was only five years old when his mother died in childbirth, and, soon after, his father abandoned his children and left them to the care of first their maternal grandfather and later their aunts. These events undoubtedly had a profound impact on the young boy. From an early age, he was forced to assume adult responsibilities and to suffer privation. His childhood instilled in him certain distinctive features of his personality, including serious-mindedness, studiousness, and an appreciation of what it meant to be poor.

Robespierre’s education was provided by charitable foundations. Following four years at a church-sponsored school in Arras, he won a church scholarship to the prestigious College of Louis-le-Grand of the University of Paris, where for twelve years he studied classics and law and was first exposed to the writings of his later philosophical idol, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Robespierre excelled as a classical scholar and was chosen, in 1775, to deliver a Latin address of welcome to the newly crowned king, Louis XVI, and his queen, Marie-Antoinette, on their return trip from Reims to Versailles.

In 1780, Robespierre was awarded a law degree and, in 1781, was admitted to practice before the nation’s premier court, the Parlement of Paris. After winning a monetary prize from Louis-le-Grand and being allowed to pass on his scholarship to his only brother, Augustin, Robespierre returned to Arras to care for his only surviving sister and to practice law. For the next eight years, he enjoyed the life of a middle-class provincial lawyer who was inclined, because of his commitment to altruistic principles, to champion the causes of the poor and humble against their social superiors.

Robespierre’s life as a country lawyer moved toward its end in 1788, when Louis XVI, under pressure from the nobility, called for a meeting of the Estates-General to address the problem of taxation, which had brought the kingdom to the brink of bankruptcy. The nobility, which comprised the First Estate, intended to join forces with the clergy, the Second Estate, to outvote the rest of the people, the Third Estate, who agreed with the Crown regarding the necessity of taxing the nobility. Election of representatives was authorized, and an outburst of pamphleteering and the drafting of cahiers de doléances (lists of grievances) reflected popular enthusiasm and anticipation. Robespierre wrote a cahier for the local cobblers’ guild, authored a pamphlet in which he called for equal representation, and won election as one of the eight deputies to represent Artois in the Third Estate of the Estates-General. On May 5, 1789, he appeared at Versailles with his fellow deputies to begin work on an anticipated regeneration of France.

Life’s Work

On June 20, in the face of obstructionism by the first two estates and vacillation by the king, the Third Estate, with the adherence of a few nobles and clergymen, took the revolutionary step of proclaiming themselves the national assembly and taking an oath not to disband until they had drafted a constitution for France. During the tumultuous summer of 1789, Robespierre played only a modest role. The fall of the Bastille, the peasant uprisings and the resulting August Decrees that abolished feudalism, and the danger of royalist counterrevolution that forced the removal of the royal family to Paris in October were all events that momentarily made the deliberations of the assembly secondary. Robespierre delivered several speeches, including addresses favoring freedom of the press and limitations on the king’s veto power, but his main activities came after the assembly followed the king to Paris. Robespierre was politically astute to court the support of the people of Paris by opposing the imposition of martial law.

During the next two years of relative tranquillity, Robespierre emerged as one of the leaders of the leftist faction of liberal democrats and fought for a democratic franchise and for the granting of civil rights to Jews, Protestants, and actors. Robespierre also became increasingly active in the Jacobin Club, which was to become a major base of his support in Paris and the provinces. During 1790 and 1791, he was in constant attendance in the assembly, delivering 125 recorded speeches in 1790 and 328 in the first nine months of 1791.

Here and at the Jacobin Club, he emerged as the apostle of Rousseau. He envisioned a nation whose laws and institutions would be founded on ethical and spiritual ideals that represented the sovereign will of the people, who were by nature instilled with the virtues of patriotism and selflessness. In conformity with his philosophy, Robespierre opposed the death penalty, censorship, and the distinction between active and passive citizens in establishing property qualifications for voting. Although favoring a constitutional monarchy at this time, he demanded severe limitations on the king’s veto power and on his power to declare war. He also demanded that all male citizens be allowed admittance to the national guard without property qualifications. It was also Robespierre who, in May, 1791, introduced the “self-denying” ordinance by which members of the national assembly disqualified themselves for election to the Legislature Assembly provided in the constitution of 1791.

By September, 1791, when the national assembly disbanded, Robespierre had emerged as the revolution’s popular hero. He was garlanded and carried in triumph through the streets. Already known as “the Incorruptible” because of his high principles, modest lifestyle, and refusal to accept financial rewards, Robespierre strengthened his ties to the people by moving to the home of a carpenter, in the rue Saint-Honoré, where he could be close to the legislative assembly and the Jacobin Club. Following a brief return to Arras in October, he was to remain there under the doting protection of the carpenter’s family, who idolized him, for the remainder of his life.

The new constitutional monarchy with its one-house legislative assembly was to survive from only October, 1791, to August, 1792. The king had already signified his lack of commitment to the constitution when he attempted to flee France to join the émigrés and the Austrian army in June, 1791. In the assembly, a leftist faction developed under the leadership of Jacques Brissot, known as the Brissotins, and later, in the convention, as the Girondins. This faction called for war against the crowned heads of Europe to extend the benefits of the revolution beyond France’s frontiers, to force compliance from the king, to divert the lower classes in Paris from the preoccupation with food prices, and to open new markets for the commercial middle class. Robespierre, through the local Jacobin Club, took a great political risk by almost alone opposing the war.

The war went badly for France, and Austrian and Prussian troops crossed the frontier in early August, 1792, dooming the Crown and the constitution of 1791. In the insurrection of August 10, 1792, the king was toppled from the throne and removed, with the royal family, from the Tuileries to the Temple prison. Robespierre, in the Jacobin Club, had played a role in this insurrection and was elected to the general council of the Paris Commune, which had been created on August 9. He now called for the election, by universal male suffrage, of a constitutional convention to draft a new republican constitution. He does not, however, appear to have played a direct role in the gruesome September massacres of Parisian prisoners precipitated by the Austro-Prussian invasion.

Robespierre was elected a delegate from Paris to the national convention, which began its deliberations in September. He emerged as the leader of the leftist faction of Jacobins known as the Mountain, who primarily espoused the interests of Parisians. They were opposed by the Girondins, who had their political base in the provinces. The two factions differed heatedly over a variety of issues. Robespierre and the Mountain called for the trial of the former king, to which the Girondins acceded. They differed, however, over the imposition of the death penalty. Robespierre prevailed, and Louis was guillotined in January, 1793. Girondin ascendancy prevailed, however, so long as the war went well, as it had done again after August, 1792. In April, 1793, however, the tide turned again. England had now joined the coalition that, after driving the French from Belgium, threatened to invade France. Working-class fears, exacerbated by rising prices and food shortages, resulted in the expulsion of the Girondins, the arrests of their leaders, and the flight of those remaining to the provinces to raise the banner of federalist counterrevolution. The Mountain was now in control of the convention.

The convention and the revolution were in grave danger. Foreign armies and their émigré royalist allies were at the gate. In the west, especially in the Vendée, peasants who detested the revolution’s religious policy and who remained loyal to the monarchy were in violent revolt. Thus, the convention was faced with the unenviable task of repressing civil strife and counterrevolution, mobilizing the nation’s people and resources to win the war against the allies, and giving France a new constitution. To assist in the tasks, the convention established the Committee of Public Safety, including among its most influential members Robespierre and his close associates Louis de Saint-Just and Georges Couthon and the “organizer of victory” Lazare Carnot.

Robespierre soon emerged as the leading spokesman of the committee before the convention. It was he who justified the establishment of the instruments of the Reign of Terror. Defining terror as prompt, severe, and inflexible justice, he argued that a combination of virtue (patriotism) and terror was necessary in a time of revolution. On June 10, 1794, under Robespierre’s sponsorship, the convention passed the notorious Law of Twenty-Two Prairial, which expanded the Revolutionary Tribunal, provided for the imposition of the death penalty for all those convicted, expanded the number of kinds of condemned conduct and the types of evidence that could be used, and disposed of the necessity of calling witnesses. As a result, the number of executions increased. Robespierre overextended himself in his support of this law, and the fear that this generated among fellow terrorists contributed to his fall. Robespierre had also frightened his colleagues by his elimination of the leftist Hébertistes in March and by his role in the condemnation of Georges Danton, a popular fellow Jacobin who favored a moderation of the Terror, and his associates in April. Robespierre and the committee also succeeded on the war front. By the summer of 1794, the allied armies were in retreat and the French Republican army was on the offensive and pushing into the Low Countries.

At the height of his power in June, 1794, Robespierre attempted to institute a civic religion. In the farcical Festival of the Supreme Being over which Robespierre officiated on June 8, he naïvely hoped to reconcile devout Catholics and freethinkers to the new order. Having succeeded in his basic goals and outgrown his usefulness, and having frightened several terrorists whose excesses he intended to punish, Robespierre was outlawed and arrested by the convention on July 27, 1794; he mounted the scaffold the following day with several of his associates, including his brother, Saint-Just, and Couthon.

Significance

With Robespierre died the popular hope for a truly democratic revolution. The reaction that followed was a betrayal of most of the principles for which the revolution’s most indefatigable leader had fought. The shelved 1793 democratic and republican constitution Robespierre had helped to draft was never tried. Robespierre emerged unjustly as the bloodthirsty ogre of the revolution—the vain man with catlike features and a cold and morbidly suspicious nature, who attempted to eliminate all who stood in the way of his ambition for popular adulation.

With time has come increased objectivity. Although Robespierre cannot be relieved of any responsibility for violent excesses during his tenure on the Committee of Public Safety, it must be remembered that he was simultaneously attempting to rule a nation, fight a foreign war and a civil war, control leftist extremism, and draft a constitution. In a less tumultuous time, he might well have realized, at least partially, his dream of a society and nation based on ethical and spiritual principles.

Bibliography

Cobban, Alfred. Aspects of the French Revolution. New York: George Braziller, 1968. In two outstanding essays in this compilation, the author delineates Robespierre’s fundamental ideas and traces the changes that took place in the subject’s attitudes as the revolution moved into its most critical and violent stages.

Hardman, John. Robespierre. New York: Longman, 1999. Part of the Profiles in Power series. This is not a biography, but is instead a study of how Robespierre came to power and how he used the extraordinary power he acquired. Describes the faction of French society who supported Robespierre and the circumstances that led to his downfall.

Haydon, Colin, and William Doyle, eds. Robespierre. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. A collection of essays examining various aspects of Robespierre’s life, political career, and influence from the vantage point of two hundred years after his death. Includes discussions of Robespierre’s ideology and vision for the French Revolution, his religious beliefs, his role in revolutionary politics, and the representation of Robespierre in French fiction and European drama.

Korngold, Ralph. Robespierre and the Fourth Estate. New York: Modern Age Books, 1941. This is a sympathetic treatment of the subject, in which the author argues that a major factor in Robespierre’s overthrow and execution was his championing of the proletariat, the Fourth Estate. Korngold’s sympathy for Robespierre was partially caused by the collapse of the Third Republic in 1940, which suggested the problems of the First Republic that Robespierre worked assiduously to save.

Palmer, R. R. Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941. This is the first scholarly treatment of the Committee of Public Safety in English. It is most useful in understanding the motivations of Robespierre during the last and most important year of his life.

Rudé, George. Robespierre: Portrait of a Revolutionary Democrat. New York: Viking Press, 1976. Although the author provides a useful biography of Robespierre, his main contribution is to trace the changing attitudes of historians toward the subject, from the revolution to the present. Contains a helpful bibliographical note, a useful glossary, and a concurrent chronology of the main events in the revolution and in Robespierre’s life.

Thompson, J. M. Robespierre. 2 vols. 1935. Rev. ed. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1939. This biography is generally regarded as the best in English and perhaps in any language. As such it is indispensable to the serious student.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Robespierre and the French Revolution. New York: Collier Books, 1952. An important contribution to the Teach Yourself History series, this book is especially useful to the beginning student because it treats Robespierre within the broader context of the revolution.