Maximilien Robespierre - Revolutionary’s Quest for Power 1758-1794

 One revolutionary’s quest for power, liberty and the love of the people in 18th century France.

In the elegant château of the Hôtel de Ville, Maximilien Robespierre had his head in his hands and was contemplating his fate. The revolution he sparked to set men free had finally caught up with him; he was now the prisoner of the revolt he once commanded. The guards would be coming soon to take him to his show trial but he had made up his mind. He would not suffer the terrifying prospect of being guillotined in front of cheering crowds – the fate he had forced hundreds of people to endure when he was in power. He put his finger on the trigger of his pistol, held it to his jaw and pulled the trigger.

 

Robespierre was not a man marked for greatness – it was his ambition and intelligence brought him power. Residing from Arras, a town in northern France, he had an unhappy childhood. The death of his mother when he was six-years-old and his father deserting his family shortly afterwards brought rumour and suspicion down on his family. He and his four siblings were spilt up to live among relatives and suffered the constant shame of their father’s actions from the town’s people. Rather than wallow in self-pity, Robespierre decided to make the grim world around him a better place for unfortunates like himself. He read the words of Rousseau, who assured the French people that humans were naturally good, that there was no such thing as ‘bad blood’ – words that had taunted Robespierre during his childhood. He took comfort in this prose, won himself a scholarship to a law school and began a career as a litigator specialising in civil liberties.

 

He quickly gained a reputation for honesty and integrity in the cases he sat for, taking particular interest in combating abuses of power from the French monarchy and, ironically, the curbing of dictatorial rule in the French political system. He fought injustice wherever he saw it, taking on cases from the poor out of principle and, like a true man of the enlightenment, worked himself up from provincial obscurity to the basin of French power in Paris. In 1789 he was elected as a representative of the estates-general
to usher in reforms of the corrupt French monarchy. His idealism for a better world had not been extinguished though, proved by these words he wrote to his sister, ‘My life’s task will be to help those who suffer.’

 

During the initial meetings of the estates-general his speeches were shouted down because of his small voice, but for the people who were paying attention he quickly gained a reputation for political astuteness and the possessor of a uniquely sharp mind. It was here, during this turbulent period of revolution, that Robespierre found his feet. He preached to the revolutionary Jacobin club as if they were his flock ready to do battle against injustice, his newly found tenacity earning him the unofficial leadership position of the Jacobins by 1791.

Jacobin Club

As the mouthpiece of the revolution, the Jacobin club represented a network of political fraternities that were designed to give revolutionary thinkers a chance to air their views to other like-minded gentlemen. They were a group of enlightenment thinkers who campaigned for freedom, liberty and justice under a Republican government. It was one of the first places that Robespierre gained his reputation as a man who could lead France to a new beginning. By the 1790s the influence of the club was so huge that Robespierre would try to gain support for his new policies by speaking to the Jacobins first before bringing his new legislation to the government. Despite being ‘friendly’ to the new order, even government officials the Jacobins helped bring into power were not above criticism within the club, and lack of favour could spell trouble.

 

Along with this new dynamism came a change in his character. He realised liberty could not blossom without a firm hand guiding it. He successfully lobbied for the king’s execution after it was discovered that Louis had tried to escape from Paris and was asking foreign powers to invade France. But far from ushering in the stability Robespierre sought for the nation, Louis’s execution in early 1793 only increased the violence as pitched battles between royalist sympathisers and republicans engulfed the countryside. It was clear to Robespierre that France was descending into chaos and he believed himself to be the man who could prevent the revolution from falling into anarchy.

 

He facilitated his rise to the committee of public safety, an organ of the government ostensibly established to deal with the various monarchical powers abroad, which had declared war on France. Its power and influence had been radically expanded after the execution of Louis XVI at the beginning of 1793 and it was now charged with rooting out trouble at home. In the same year Robespierre was elected to the leadership position of the committee and set about destroying dangers to the revolution wherever he found them – instigating what history would call ‘the reign of terror’. He successfully saw off the men who planned to destroy the church system, declaring them dangerous to the nation. He had the radical anticleric Jacques René Hébert guillotined in 1794, cutting off his influence along with his head. Fanatics like Hébert served their purpose but ultimately were as dangerous to the stability of the nation as the royalists.

 

By June 1794 Robespierre’s zeal for punishing enemies of his new order was so intense that Parisian jails were full to capacity with traitors. The problem of what to do with these people was solved by Robespierre who enacted new laws that dispensed with defence council and witnesses for ‘enemies of the people’ in order to dispose of cases quicker. There was only one punishment for these traitors – death by guillotine. As far as Robespierre was concerned this was a just form of punishment in this new age of equality, since commoners and kings died the same way. His popularity with the people was growing to dangerous levels and at the height of his power he merely needed to voice his opinion at the Jacobin club and a new law would be enacted or a hapless individual would be condemned. As a contemporary noted: ‘he saw himself as the public school headmaster of a slum school, devoted to his pupils [the people] and all that – so long as they remembered that they were his and they were only pupils.’

The Parisian Mob

The Parisian mob was one of the most dangerous and unpredictable elements of the French revolution. The mob projected propaganda of the revolution in mass rallies and demonstrations outside the city’s buildings of power. Even Robespierre stood in fear of the masses and the destruction they could cause. In the September Massacres of 1792 the the mob ran amok; storming the Parisian jails and butchering the royalists held inside, including many women and children. It was reported later that noble women were literally torn to pieces by the enraged crowd. The spectre of the mob played a critical part in post-revolutionary thinking and part of the reason so many people were executed was to appease the crowds gathered around the guillotine.

For a time, this paternal relationship with the nation worked and Robespierre was the champion of the revolution. His utopian vision of a new, democratic France under liberty would be realised no matter how many traitors had to die in the process, and he convinced the people to support him. As he wrote in 1794, ‘The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny’. This brutal ideology brought its share of critics and he suffered an assassination attempt while walking through Paris in the spring of that year. The assassin was a 16-year-old girl with a fruit knife who wanted ‘to see what a tyrant looked like’. Her fate was the same as thousands of others scheduled to visit Madame Guillotine.

 

The attack shook Robespierre; his strongest shield against criticism was the people’s love and the fear that inspired in his enemies. Yet he was resolute on pushing on, the ideals for his new republic were too important. In response to the increased lawlessness, he enacted yet more oppressive powers, now death penalties could be passed down to suspected traitors even if there was no hard evidence. He became distant, his colleagues started to mock him and he could no longer muster support from the Jacobins. He was shouted down at the convention, the new people’s assembly, and accused of being a tyrant. On 27 July 1794 his former colleagues issued a warrant for his arrest as a traitor of the people. He still had enough supporters in Paris to lead a counter rebellion but he was exhausted, so allowed himself to be arrested. He had lost the people and with them, his revolution.

 

Two national guardsmen burst into the room as the gun went off. The sound of the door threw off his aim, and the bullet clipped his jaw, but not fatally. He was dragged to the committee of public safety where he spent the night bleeding from his mouth. His trial lasted no more than a day. As he was dragged outside, the Parisian mob jeered for blood and National guardsmen had to hold them back. He saw the guillotine and recalled the words of his last speech to the French people: ‘Death is the commencement of immortality’. He prayed it was true.

The times of Robespierre

Assaults on the faith

New enlightenment ideals had cast organised Christianity and its established dominance over life in Europe into a bad light by the late 1700s. Religion was seen to oppress man and his rightful place as a freethinking being by enlightenment thinkers. Robespierre was very much in the minority when he professed to be a man of the enlightenment and faith.

Enlightened thinking

The great dawn of enlightenment thinking originated in France through the works of Voltaire and Rousseau. Both men wrote about the ‘spirit of the nation’ and the nature of liberty among the people. While these ideals of equality were popular among the more learned gentlemen, they challenged the longestablished order of church and monarchy, which caused massive upheaval.

Problems abroad

War in Europe and insurrections in the colonies depleted the strength of the French monarchy. The drain of the country’s resources in fighting these wars meant that the king could no longer feed his own people, leading to popular disaffection and the classic (and untrue) Jacobin slander of Marie Antoinette and her ‘let them eat cake’ comment.

The nobility and the common people

The French class system instructed and governed the French people during this period. The king and the Royal family ruled the entire country and the aristocracy ran the provinces in their name. However, as Robespierre reached adulthood this was changing; an emerging educated middle class started to demand reform and advancement based on merit as opposed to birth.

The nation

The idea of the ‘nation’ was a new and explosive concept during this period. Before, there was no such thing as a nation other than the kingdom ruled by the king. By the end of the 1700s new ideas of the nation belonging to everyone through universal suffrage developed, and explosive examples of popular protest against the established order began.

Storming of the Bastille - 14 July 1789

The Bastille prison is stormed in a violent turning point in the revolution. The act of storming the prison, a symbol of royalist authority in Paris, shows Robespierre that the French masses wanted no compromise in dealing with the royal family. While the physical act of storming the Bastille actually achieved very little in terms of prisoners released – there were only seven people in the jail at the time – the symbol of French mobs assaulting a royal fortress becames a potent rallying cry for further upheaval.

Royal family arrested - 10 August 1792

After rumours circulate in Paris that Louis will bring foreign troops to France in order to rescue him, crowds working for the republicans burst into the palace grounds to seize the king. The royal family escape under gunfire and seek shelter in the legislative assembly established to work with the king to maintain the monarchy. They are promptly arrested and the legislative assembly is dissolved.

Ascension to power - 27 July 1793

Robespierre is elected to the committee of public safety, the government department that now represents real power in France. He now holds de facto control over the military, government, and life and death. While the department is technically elected by the convention, the new legislative assembly in France, in practice it operates as a virtual dictatorship. It is tasked with hounding out traitors and destroying enemies of the revolution. Robespierre sets about this task with zeal.

Timeline

Elected to power - May 1789

After becoming a popular lawyer, Robespierre is elected to the estatesgeneral in Paris, which demands reforms from the king. His initial speeches are largely ignored but the content does inspire some early followers.

Tennis Court Oath - 20 June 1789

The first time Louis XVI was formally opposed, Robespierre and 576 other signatories sign the Tennis Court Oath. They promise that the estates-general will meet until a new constitution based on liberty is signed in defiance of the French king.

Jacobin approval - April 1790

After hearing Robespierre speak at the club’s meetings, the Jacobin members elect him as president of the club and he becomes one of the key voices of the French revolution.

Massacre at Champs de Mars - 17 July 1791

A resolution tries to bring the crown and the National Assembly (evolved from the estates-general), together. As a result, there is a republican riot in the city, killing many royalists. Robespierre flees until the mob is appeased.

Royalty outlawed - 21 September 1792

In the wake of escalating violence, Robespierre seizes his chance and moves for the complete abolition of the monarchy and the declaration of a republic under the convention where he has the commanding voice.

Execution of a king - 21 January 1793

Louis XVI is executed to the horror of royalists in France and monarchists abroad. Robespierre declares it to be a necessity and assents to the leadership of the revolutionary movement.

The terror - 5 September 1793

Robespierre is now in nominal control of the country through his leadership of the committee of public safety. He instigates a reign of terror to force through revolutionary ideals.

Marie Antoinette dispatched - 16 October 1793

Fearing that Marie Antoinette will become a rallying point for more royalist resistance, Robespierre supports moves to have her executed as a traitor.