A satirical engraving shows Robespierre guillotining the executioner, having guillotined everyone else in France, late 18th C. He was born on May 6, in Arras. He soon became active politically, and at age thirty he was elected to represent the Third Estate delegation to the Estates General of Robespierre played a key role in the Estates General, and later in the National Assembly.
But his uncompromising stances on democratic ideas and equality did not make him politically popular. There is abundant evidence, however, that he gave and received affection, although we will never know why such emotions evidently did not result in a fully intimate relationship. These reforms were at the heart of the revolutionary project, and Robespierre brought to them values learnt as a little boy and young man in a world in which his mother in particular, then his sisters, aunts and grandmothers were of unusual importance.
Instead of the emotionally stunted, rigidly puritanical and icily cruel monster commonly portrayed in history and literature, Robespierre was a passionate man. While positive images of Robespierre were kept alive among radical republicans in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was not until the s that the first wholly positive biography appeared, a massive work by Ernest Hamel.
A positive approach to Robespierre was at its peak in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in the context of two world wars and the rise of fascism in Europe.
For them Robespierre personified the uncompromising realization of the principles of and the heroic defense of the Republic against counterrevolutionary Europe in — Roberspierre, Print, From an orthodox Marxist perspective in the 20th century he was seen as the great saviour of a bourgeois Revolution but — in contrast to Lenin — as doomed to failure because the peasantry and sans-culottes for whom he spoke had different, and internally inconsistent, class interests from the middle-class Jacobins.
English biographers have been generally antipathetic towards him. Even the best English-language biography of Robespierre, written by the historian and theologian J. Maximilien Robespierre is one of the most controversial figures in history. Or was he a principled, self-abnegating visionary, the great revolutionary martyr who succeeded in leading the French Revolution and the Republic to safety in the face of overwhelming military odds?
Were the controls on individual liberties and the mass arrests and executions of the Year II the necessary price to pay to save the Revolution? Or was this year a time of horror, of unnecessary death, incarceration and privation?
Of great importance in the Archives nationales in Paris are:. Louis Jacob, Robespierre vu par ses contemporains , is a very useful collection of contemporary descriptions and comments. This could not be achieved, Robespierre argued, in a society where there were very rich and very poor.
But he insisted that social equality was not synonymous with political equality, attacking the idea of radical property redistribution. While urban sans-culottes and peasants identified friends and enemies in terms of material needs and self-interest, for Robespierre these were matters of individual virtue and morality.
At the Estates-General in Versailles, then in the National Assembly and Jacobin Club in Paris, Robespierre soon distinguished himself by his uncompromising commitment to the principles in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. He spoke often, despite not having a strong physical presence or voice. During the period of the Legislative Assembly, for which he was not eligible, in , he concentrated on journalism and speaking at the Jacobin Club.
On July 27, , Robespierre and many of his allies were arrested and taken to prison. When he received word that the National Convention had declared him an outlaw, he tried to commit suicide but succeeded only in wounding his jaw. Shortly after, troops from the National Convention stormed the building and seized and arrested Robespierre and his followers. The next day, he and 21 of his allies were executed at the guillotine. After the coup, the Committee of Public Safety lost its credibility and the French Revolution became distinctly less radical.
France saw the return of bourgeois values, corruption and further military failure. In , a military coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory and established him as the first consul, with dictatorial powers. In , Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor of France. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.
Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat and philosopher who became notorious for acts of sexual cruelty in his writings as well as in his own life. Maximilien Robespierre was born in Arras, France, in He studied law through a scholarship and in was elected to be a representative of the Arras commoners in the Estates General.
After the Third Estate, which represented commoners and the lower clergy, declared itself the National Assembly, Robespierre became a prominent member of the Revolutionary body. In April , he presided over the Jacobins, a powerful political club that promoted the ideas of the French Revolution.
He called for King Louis XVI to be put on trial for treason and won many enemies, but the people of Paris consistently came to his defense. In , he excluded himself from the new Legislative Assembly but continued to be politically active as a member of the Jacobin Club.
In , he opposed the war proposal of the Girondins—moderate leaders in the Legislative Assembly—and lost some popularity. However, after the people of Paris rose up against the king in August , Robespierre was elected to the insurrectionary Commune of Paris. He then was elected to head the Paris delegation to the new National Convention. In the National Convention, he emerged as the leader of the Mountain, as the Jacobin faction was known, and opposed the Girondins. The uprising gave him an opportunity to finally purge the Girondins.
On July 27, , Robespierre was elected to the Committee of Public Safety, which was formed in April to protect France against its enemies, foreign and domestic, and to oversee the government.
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