Maximilien Robespierre: A Virtuous Man
by From Visionaries and Revolutionaries: More Prisoners of Eternity.
A revolutionary fanatic, vain and egomaniacal, a cold-blooded pedant and killer. The man who used Terror as an instrument of policy. Rarely has a man been more misunderstood in history than Maximilien Robespierre.
Closure
Immorality, according to Robespierre, was the basis of despotism. “In order for the Government to keep in closest harmony with the law, it is over its own head that it must wield the heaviest stick”.
For the Republic of Virtue to be established it must be one and indivisible. No dissent could be tolerated. Any contrary views poisoned it in its entirety. Therefore, it had to be constantly and repeatedly cleansed. Despite Robespierre’s best intentions this could only lead to the spilling of blood. And it is for this that he is now best remembered (All else being too easily forgotten). As a young lawyer he defended the poor, often for free. As a politician he believed in the innate goodness of the people and struggled to create a France free of the extremes of wealth and poverty. But the events of the terror cannot be ignored. Whether they can be justified, or whether the Revolution could have been saved without them, is another topic. Needless to say, at the height of the crisis, when the Revolution was threatened from all sides, and in the crucible of war, terrible atrocities were committed. Peasants were tied to boats and drowned in the Loire, priests were disemboweled, mothers and children burned to death in their homes, and thousands guillotined. As the leading member of the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre cannot be exonerated of blame. But he tried to rein in those responsible for the worse excesses, and it was this more than anything else that was to lead to his own downfall.
Robespierre was the champion of the sans-culottes and the common people of Paris. They had loved him and he was feared because of their love. He had ordered a moratorium on their rents, kept prices artificially low, and forced the bakeries to open. In the wider political sphere he had redistributed land, created a fairer system of taxation, introduced a system of national welfare, and advocated compulsory free education for all. He had also abolished the Monarchy, defeated France’s external enemies and secured the Revolution.
But when the crisis came on 27 July, 1794 (9 Thermidor, according to the revolutionary calendar) the people abandoned him. He had addressed the Jacobin Club the night before and had been shouted down. It must have been evident to him what was in store. But he made no effort to flee or rouse the mob in his defence. He seemed resigned to his fate. When they came for him the following day he shot himself but only managed to smash his jaw. Saint-Just, who was present, remained with his friend cradling his head in his arms. They both went to the guillotine later that same day, Robespierre in great pain.
After his death, his enemies wrote the history. All the horrors of the Revolution were placed firmly at his door. It was even suggested that he had kept small birds as a child so he could decapitate them with a toy guillotine, so preternaturally bloodthirsty was he; (Even if the guillotine had not been designed at the time). Such is the level of the abuse and accusations levelled at him. He is the axis upon which discussions of the Revolution revolve. As Baudrillard wrote “There are those who let the dead bury the dead, and there are those who are always digging them up to finish them off”.
Postscript: The Cult of the Supreme Being
Culte de l’etre Supreme, was to be the new State religion. A religion of reason. There was such a thing as Godhead, but as a supreme and divine being, not one who interfered in human affairs. It was designed to effectively deChristianise France. Adherence to it was on the pain of death. The festival of its inauguration took place on 8 June, 1794, with Robespierre at its head. For many this was the final straw, Robespierre associating himself with the Divine. Was he God, or merely the High Priest of his own religion? This could only mean that he had either gone mad, or become intoxicated with power. Though in hindsight, it is easy to see how this would have been the culmination of all he was trying to achieve.
Quotes
“The King must die so that the country can live”
“Terror is the only justice”
“Pity is treason”
“To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty”
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