Danton was born in Arcis-sur-Aube in northeastern France on 26 October, 1759, to a comfortably off but by no means rich family. He was a rumbustuous child and a bit of a bully who was always in trouble of one kind or another. With a face scarred by accidents and smallpox his ugly countenance and often lack of charm never prevented him from pursuing the ladies with the utmost vigour and no little success.

He studied as a lawyer and despite coming from a relatively humble background he prospered. It seemed that people appreciated his honesty and straight-talking, and he was never one to kow-tow to his supposedly social superiors. He had always wanted to be involved in politics and watched events in Paris with an envious eye, he was determined to play a key part.

Even though, he had not been elected to any formal position by sheer force of personality alone he made himself the leading man of his district. He became a Captain in the National Guard and helped establish the Cordeliers Club in Paris which was to become pivotal in the firmament of the revolutionary years to come.

On 14 July, 1789, the Bastille, the fortress that lay at the heart of Paris and had for centuries been the symbol of Royal power, fell to the mob. It had been a bloody affair and Danton had lain behind it. Indeed, his presence seemed to loom large over all the major events of the Revolution. He had made his mark on the ordinary people of Paris where he wielded considerable influence but he lacked any real political power. Being denied any formal political office, other than the position he held in the Paris Commune, did not impede his ability to influence events, however. He was instrumental in forcing the Royal Family to leave the Court at Versailles and return to Paris. In July, 1791, he led the people of Paris on a march to the Champ de Mars to protest at the Girondist majority in the legislatures decision to retain Louis XVI as a constitutional Monarch. With Danton at their head exhorting them to action the mob turned on the National Guardsmen hemming them in. At first hurling only abuse they soon began to throw stones. The Marquis de Lafayette in charge of the Guard panicked and ordered them to open fire. The result was to leave more than 50 of the demonstrators dead and for a time Danton was forced to flee to England.

He wasn’t away for long and upon his return was again quick to harness the support of the Parisian mob for as he saw it the good of the Revolution (not, as in the case of Marat, for the sake of vengeance). ” Paris, he said, is the natural and constituted centre of France. It is the centre of light. If Paris shall perish there shall be no Republic.”

In 1792, Danton was at last elected to the National Convention where he was sat next to Jean-Paul Marat, the two rarely spoke. Nearby sat Robespierre, a man he held in low regard. Robespierre, by contrast, respected and admired Danton. He needed him, though he also feared him.

Maximilien Marie Isidore d’Robespierre    

Danton was a big man, tall, of athletic build and immensely strong. His features, it was said, were marked, coarse and displeasing, but he was difficult to ignore. It was said that when he spoke the walls shook. He was also a man of gigantic appetites, a heavy drinker, and a notorious philanderer. He was garrulous and sociable, unlike Robespierre who said little and rarely left his house accept to attend political meetings, and believed in the power of oratory over that of the written word. A force of nature he could be brilliant and generous but he was just as likely to be idle and mean-spirited. He was also venal and corrupt and was a man who always loved money more than he ever loved power. In every respect the apotheosis of his rival the slight, pasty-faced, tight-lipped, thin-bloodied, Robespierre, whose relentless pursuit of virtue earned him the sobriquet the Sea Green Incorruptible, and of whom Danton once said, ” the problem with Robespierre is that he is afraid of money and can’t fuck.”

I April, 1792, France declared war on Austria. It was a decision that was to change the course of the Revolution forever. Danton believed that the war was necessary to push the Revolution forward and supported it with all his energy and vigour, declaring that it must be pursued mercilessly.

Danton also continued to manipulate the Paris mob and on 10 August, 1792, they marched on and ransacked the Tuilleries Palace forcing the Royal Family to flee in their nightclothes and seek refuge in the Legislative Assembly for their own protection.

On 2 September, 1792, news reached Paris that the Austrian Duke of Brunswick had invaded France and that the Fortress of Verdun had fallen. Panic swept the city as rumours spread that the defeat had been caused by spies, counter-revolutionaries, and was the result of an aristocratic Catholic plot. Later that day 24 non-juring priests (those who still owed their allegiance to the Vatican) being transported to prison were intercepted and brutally murdered. Over the next 48 hours convents were raided, monasteries destroyed, and the prisons broken into. More than 1200 nuns, priests, prisoners, and aristocrats were dragged into the streets and butchered. The fact that many of the attacks seem to have been planned in advance have led some to believe that Danton was behind them. There is little evidence for this but he certainly did nothing to prevent or stop them. 

Following the Royal Family’s desperate Flight to Varennes when they tried to escape the country but were captured before they reached the border and were returned to Paris the clamour for the abolition of the Monarchy and the establishment of a Republic reached fever-pitch. Such was the hatred directed at Louis XVI and in particular his Queen, Marie Antoinette, that eventually the King was put on trial for his life. In January, 1793, Danton voted for his death. His wife, Gabriele Charpentierre, wept at his decision and begged him to change his mind but he remained adamant – the King must die! Following the execution, Danton thundered in the Legislature, “ Whom among the Monarchs of Europe would dare challenge us? When we throw them the head of a King.”

Despite his defiant words the war was going badly for France. Charles Dumouriez, the General who had led the French to victory at the Battle’s of Valmy and Jemappe had defected to the enemy and counter-revolution had broken out in the Vendee in the west of the country.

Danton, who had little time for personal enmity, had tried more than once to bring the Girondin majority in the Legislature and the more radical Jacobins led by Robespierre together. His attempts at reconciliation were a miserable failure however, and when the Girondins blamed Danton directly for the failures of the war, he decided to act. He instigated the insurrection of 31 May, 1793, that saw the Girondists purged from the Convention, arrested, and executed. For a brief time at least, Danton was the most powerful man in France, but it was the Jacobins who now had their hands on the levers of that power. 

The Revolution, however, had reached crisis point. The war would have to be fought to the death and counter-revolutionaries would have to be eliminated. The Revolution had to be harsher. It needed the Terror. On this at least Danton and Robespierre were agreed. Danton now helped set up the Revolutionary Tribunal. A committee of nine, of whom Danton was one, that would take revolutionary violence out of the hands of the mob and would instead carry out the Terror on their behalf. On 6 April, 1794, all executive power was placed in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton was briefly its leading member. He soon resigned and was replaced by Maximilien Robespierre. It was to be the absolute exertion of national power and the enemies of the Revolution would be pursued to the Gates of Hell.

Earlier, Danton had returned from visiting the troops on the front-line to discover that his much beloved wife Geraldine had died and had already been buried. He was distraught and openly wept at her graveside. Robespierre sent him a letter of condolence. ” You and I are one, ” he wrote. Yet within weeks he had remarried.

Danton now began to spend more and more time with his new young wife and in his absence his enemies began to gather. With the coming to power of the Jacobins the Revolution had veered sharply to the left and Danton was dangerously exposed as a moderate. In fact, he was a realist, a pragmatist. He did share the dreams of others. For him ideals were throwaway objects. No idea, no matter how worthy, should be pursued if did not work. People now began to call for his head. He did not share the virtue of Robespierre, they said. In response to the accusation, Danton wrote that, ” Virtue is something I do in bed with my wife.” It was Robespierre who defended him and prevented his arrest. But it was only a matter of time.

Danton and Robespierre, two such different men. Danton, the collosus, tall and muscular, who ate to excess, was frequently drunk, and too easily prey to the lure of sex, was the driver of events. Robespierre, short and thin, the abstainer who picked at his food, and had no interest in sex, manipulated those events to his advantage. Danton, robust, hearty, and sociable. Robespierre, pallid, often ill, and reclusive. The one was determined to make history and build a new France. The other determined to create a Spartan Paradise and change the world. 

Rumours continued to circulate that Danton was about to be arrested. He refused, however, to either keep quiet, flee, or go into hiding. He mockingly said, ” Maximilien does not have the balls to arrest me. If only I could lend him my own.” It would seem that Robespierre did not want him arrested. He had little time for Danton’s appetites but he recognised that he still needed him. But his own position was precarious and he bowed to pressure. Perhaps, he needed Danton’s balls after all. On 30 March, 1794, Danton was indeed arrested.

Though charged with treason, the main accusation against Danton was that of financial corruption. For this was the one charge that the prosecution knew would stick. There is little doubt that Danton was guilty of taking bribes, creaming it off the top, and insider trading. He had taken money, it was said, from the Royalist Mirabeau, the King of England, even France’s Austrian enemies. Some of the accusations were patently absurd but the charge that he had appropriated the funds of the now defunct French East India Company was a substantial one, and he had become a very rich man indeed from the Revolution. In response to the charges Danton shouted, ” No one has enough money to buy a man like me.” Indeed, so good was his performance in Court that Robespierre’s right-hand man Antoine St Just, told it to desist with the conventions as it was not necessary for a man who shows such contempt for the course of justice. Danton was swiftly found guilty and  sentenced to death.

Georges Jacques Danton was executed on 5 April, 1794. As his tumbril passed the house of Robespierre he shouted, ” You’re next Robespierre! It won’t be long until you follow me!” The watching Robespierre did not reply. Upon the scaffold his last words to the executioner were, ” Do not forget to hold up my head. It is well worth seeing.”

Danton was 34 years old when he died. Just over three months later on 28 July, 1794, the 36 year old Maximilien Robespierre followed him to the scaffold.     

On 10 October, 1793, the National Assembly declared that until the war was won the Government would remain revolutionary. Even before the declaration of war on Austria on 20 April, 1792, the fear of counter-revolution within France itself had reached almost paranoid proportions. The often deliberate prevarications of the King, and his unwillingness to cooperate, had led many to doubt his loyalty. Also, rumours to the effect that his Queen Marie Antoinette* and her close associates in her Court circle were in contact with foreign agents and the Comte d’Artois and his emigre army based at Coblenz, were rife. The perfidious nature of Royal consent seemed to be confirmed with the Flight to Varennes of the Royal Family in June, 1791. The general feeling of uncertainty was maintained by rumour and counter-rumour. The volatility of the mob, the attempt by the Marquis de Lafayette, the Commander of the National Guard, to impose Constitutional Reform at the point of a bayonet, and the refusal of the majority Girondins to impose price controls, which they considered to be an attack upon property, added to a sense of  fear bordering on panic prevailing in much of the country. This paranoia exploded into violence with the brutal massacre of the inmates of Parisian prisons in September, 1792. It seemed as if the unity of the revolution was unravelling. A breach had already been made in this unity with the failure of the Government to avoid schism with the Church over the imposition of the Oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in November, 1790. This was to have serious repercussions in the West of the country and particularly in the Vendee. Intense pressure was also being brought to bear on the National Convention from below. The radical pamphleteer and journalist, Jean-Paul Marat* had long called for a revolutionary dictatorship of the people. The insurgent Paris Commune and their most vocal representatives, Jacques Hebert and the defrocked priest “Red” Jacques Roux demanded controls on the price of bread, the arrest of refractory priests, and a forceful prosecution of the war. It was in this atmosphere of increased fear and anxiety that the Committee of Public Safety was formed. It was originally intended to root out speculators  war profiteers, and those perceived to be undermining the revolution. It soon took upon itself dictatorial powers however, and would do so until  France was free from foreign invasion and the Revolution secured.

These were the conditions under which the Terror was implemented. It was never merely a child born of war but was primarily designed to combat perceived enemies within and would soon be used to determine the course of domestic politics in the most brutal and deadly manner.

A number of factors do need clarification, however. For example, just how many people were victims of the Terror is difficult to assess. Perhaps as many as 200,000 were killed in the civil wars that ravaged western France, the majority deliberately put to death. The official figure for those who fell prey to the guillotine is a little over 17,000, though some estimate this figure to be as high as 35,000. The records also show that the social makeup of those who were its victim is at variance with the popularly held belief that the Terror was in its implementation class genocide. Though one cannot doubt that there was a pathological mistrust and hatred of the nobility, official figures show that 31% of its victims could be described as working men, and a further 28% were peasants, and the majority of these executions were carried out in the provinces in revolt.

It was in these provinces – Britanny, Normandy, and the Vendee – that the question of whether or not the Terror was a political weapon unleashed by war becomes most pointed. The brutal excesses of some of the “representant en mission” appointed by the Tribunal of General Security to pacify the regions under their control, are difficult to reconcile with any rationale or concept of political necessity. The actions they took and the atrocities they committed we would now consider to be genocide. The behaviour of these people, often derided as little more than bloodthirsty Pro-Consuls, have done much to obscure the actual aims of the Terror: to rid France of invading armies, unify the nation, and secure the Revolution. Instead Terror has taken on its most literal meaning giving credence to the statement made by Antoine St-Just that*, ” A Nation can only be regenerated on mountains of corpses.”

It would be simplistic and wrong, however, to consider the Terror to be no more than an attempt by the Jacobins to eliminate their political opponents, though it was used to do precisely that. In the ten months of its existence the Jacobin Republic of the Year II was under serious threat. France’s leading General, and the victor of the Battle of Valmy, Dumouriez, had defected to the enemy; Prussian and Austrian armies were still on French soil; much of western France was in open revolt; and the Paris mob volatile and unpredictable. In short time, however, the Revolutionary Government expelled the invading armies, quelled, if not entirely crushed, the revolt of the provinces (which were to continue for a number of years) and defeated the counter-revolution. Once the need for the Terror seemed to have passed steps were taken to end it. In June, 1794, Fouche, Tallien and the other representants en mission, also known as terroristes, who had been excessive in their pacification policies, were ordered back to Paris at the behest of Robespierre to answer for their crimes.

If the Terror could be ended so suddenly and peremptorily why was it implemented in the first place. The French socialist historian Matthiez, writing at the turn of the century, considered the Terror a weapon with which to enforce the Law of the First Maximum. This was a demand of the Parisian mob for the Government to control wages and prices, and to tax the rich to provide subsistence for the poor. The demand was also met for a Law of Suspects which empowered local revolutionary committees to arrest those who by their conduct had shown themselves partisans of tyranny, and it was to this law that many fell victim. The passing of such laws would indicate that the Sans-Culotte and working class of Paris dictated the machinations of the Terror. For example, the Law of Ventose passed in February and March, 1794, confiscating the property of those believed to oppose the Revolution again reflected a long-held demand of the Parisian working class.

So, was the Terror a device for winning the war, designed to counter rebellion, or merely an expedient gesture with which to appease the volatile poor of Paris? The unholy alliance of bourgeois Jacobins and the Parisian mob that had done so much to keep the Revolution alive and drive it forward crumbled when the need for Terror ceased. The execution of Robespierre, St-Just, Couthon, and the other Jacobins on 9th Thermidor (27 July, 1794) saw the end of the Terror and Revolutionary Government in France. As such, they can be seen as victims of their own success. It hardly seems fair but then others may say that you reap what you sow. As Robespierre himself, the great advocate of virtu, once said, ” Immorality is the basis of dictatorship.” 

* See related articles: Maximilien Robespierre, A Virtuous Man. Jean-Paul Marat, Death and Terror.  Antoine St-Just, The Archangel of Death.

In consideration of the French Revolution it is necessary to look at the condition of the labouring poor and of the problems that beset them. It is, after all, from the people that Revolutions so often derive their convictions, and it is in the name of the people that revolutions inevitably occur.

Social strife and economic unrest were not uncommon features of eighteenth century France. There were, for example, the strikes of the Lyons silk weavers in 1774, 1777 and 1788 (the latter of almost insurrectionary proportions). While on the land the “Demon Famine” was a frequent, if unwelcome, visitor. Indeed, the constant “guerre de farine”, so disrupted French rural society that it became bedevilled by bands of brigands who would swoop on isolated villages and farmhouses in the dead of night, raping, robbing, and murdering. This in part caused the seemingly irrational Grand Peurs (Great Panics).

For many, life in rural France was a bleak experience. No doubt, such a view would have its detractors. More than one-third of all peasants owned some land of their own and there were not the levels of feudal servitude to be found elsewhere in Europe in countries such as Spain and Russia. Even so, many of these landowning peasants had little beyond that which would provide them with a subsistence level existence, and the majority of peasants still remained landless labourers. They also bore an onerous taxation. They lived in fear of the dreaded taile, paid tithe (a 10% tax to the Church) and were prey to numerous indirect taxes including the hated Gabelle, or salt tax. They also paid a varying toll of obligation to the nobility and seigneurial extraction, and as is in the nature of rural life they were entirely reliant upon the harvest for their livelihood. When it failed, as indeed it did in the years immediately preceding the Revolution, the peasants starved, inflation soared, and it was not uncommon for as much as 80% of a family’s income to be spent on the purchase of bread alone.

This combination of social factors: the incessant grind of taxation, the constant fear of famine, rural crime, age-old peasant grievancies, and the last twenty-five years of aristocratic reaction, added to the already deep-seated resentment of a heterogenous and increasingly volatile peasantry.

The condition of the urban poor in France was conceivably even worse. Aside from the strikes of the Lyons silk weavers there was much industrial unrest in Paris itself. From the bookbinders strike in 1737, building workers, 1776 through to the porters dispute of 1786. Even more so than the peasantry the urban poor were reliant upon bread for their staple diet. It has often been remarked that during the Revolution itself the price of bread, ” registered the temperature of Paris with the accuracy of a thermometer.”

In 1787, the French Government’s announcement of bankruptcy and the resultant industrial depression threw many into unemployment. By early 1789, according to official figures, there were 10,000 unemployed in Rouen, 46,000 in Amiens, and more than 80,000 in Paris. Neither did the urban poor escape the invidious taxation that so tormented the peasantry. Indeed, they had to pay to move their goods at the many customs posts that preponderated in all the major towns. As unemployment rose so inflation soared. Yet another failed harvest saw the price of bread rocket beyond the pockets of most, and attacks upon bakers and bread riots became commonplace. With no prospect of employment and starvation the most likely outcome the future was grim indeed.

It is then easy to perceive in the years immediately preceding the revolution a resentful peasantry and a disaffected and starving urban poor both prone to riot. The lower stratas of society were already in a state of turbulence and volatility and vulnerable to agitation. The social conditions were ripe for exploitation.

Yet so much of this is misleading. Eighteenth century France was an aristocratic State. It was an absolute Monarchy – the most powerful absolute Monarchy in Europe, and despite the misery of so many of its people it was not poor. Her European and overseas trade had increased considerably in recent years, both industry and agriculture were undergoing rapid change and growth, the Empire had expanded, and she had recently fought a successful war against her bitterest rival, Britain. Yet the Government of France was an administrative and bureaucratic nightmare. Attempts at reform were made: the elimination of restrictive practices, improvements in agricultural efficiency, and most importantly a more equitable system of taxation. But all foundered on the rock of vested self-interest. The attempted reforms of a succession of Controller-Generals of Finance, Turgot, Calonne and Necker failed largely because of the intransigence of a myopic nobility and pampered clergy who steadfastly refused to countenance any diminution of their privileges. Meanwhile, in abeyance was an increasingly prosperous middle-class who saw their efforts to turn material gain into social advancement thwarted at every turn. They were unable to wield any direct influence over an Administration that was effectively barred to them. The Nobility saw their unique access to Government and consequent manipulation of the Administration as their aristocratic privilege. In defence of these privileges they would remain obdurate and oppose any attempt at reform. It is of great irony, therefore, that the French Revolution was sparked not by middle-class frustration or working-class starvation but by tiresome, unenlightened, aristocratic self-interest. The Revolution then was a an aristocratic revolt in defence of its privileges. More significant, perhaps, the Revolution had its genesis in a society unwilling and unable to change.

There are views of course that run counter to the ones I have expressed, views that place far more emphasis on the political. The importance of politics cannot be denied. The French Revolution, after all, brought us the National Assembly, the Tennis Court Oath, the Mountain and the Plain, Virtue,  Girondins, Jacobins and Enrages, Robespierre and Danton, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, Revolutionary War and Revolutionary Ecumenicalism. Did, however, the policies enacted shape the Revolution or did they merely react to events? And what were these events?

As in all politics French society was split between the Left and the Right. The various factions that existed in France at this time were not political parties as we would recognise them. They had no membership list, no manifesto, no political platform, and no specific programme for reform. But this is not to say that they were devoid of ideas, or were lacking in a general philosophy. The various groupings shared a general consensus of opinion and were recognisable as separate and different, if not as political parties, then at least as in opposition to one another. It is hardly surprising then that the politics of personality were to play such a significant role in the development of the Revolution. 

Though the course of revolution was to be driven in large part by fear and the ambition, desires, and philosophical pathologies of individuals it has at its core that most revered item of the Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Adopted by the French National Convention on 26 August, 1789, it declared that all men are free and are equal in rights, and that it is the role of Government to secure and protect these rights. It was based on the Enlightenment principles of natural rights and closely followed the American Declaration of Independence in avowing that man has the natural right to property, liberty and life, free of any social distinction, and that these rights are universal and valid at all times.

The Declaration, however, was as much a social tract as it was a political document. For it reads as a statement of principles of a revolution still in progress. It is much admired now in retrospect but at the time it was designed to protect those who framed it. It was not intrinsically democratic and its adoption was a protective measure intended to placate and marginalise at the same time both the forces radicalism and reaction. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was then borne out of a sense of urgency, a response to the pressures of rapid social change.

In the same context as the Declaration the various amorphous political groupings that prevailed at different times during the Revolution were the result of movements within society already under way. For example, a Marxist analysis, in a simplistic and truncated form, would hold that the Girondin faction represented the “laissez-faire” bourgeoisie while the Jacobins represented the working class Sans-Culotte. It is worth remembering that the members of the National Assembly were overwhelmingly bourgeois and aristocratic in origin, even so there was little homogeneity, the factionalism of the politics mirrored the factionalism within French society as a whole. 

The French Revolution, like so many before or since, was primarily a series of reactions to events at a time of heightened political activity and deep social unrest. The bourgeoises grip on power depended upon them keeping one step ahead of these events. This requirement dictated many of the political decisions taken and became manifest in the internecine warfare of the Convention and later Assembly itself. Though political decisions can influence the mood of the people, it is often the strength and the will of the people that coerce their political peers. The social and the political then go hand-in-hand. Despite this it is difficult in the context of the French Revolution to escape the conclusion that it was the working class and urban poor, the Sans-Culotte, the Bras-Nus, and the Enrages of Paris who formed the dynamic of revolutionary change.

Many of the events to which the ruling bourgeoisie were forced to respond were working class inspired: the storming of the Bastille, the forced return of the King from Versailles to Paris, the overrunning of the Tuilleries, the Prison Massacres, and the siege of the Convention itself. Many of the decisions taken and laws passed were a direct response to the specific demands of the Sans-Culotte: the overthrow of the Monarchy, the execution of the King and later his Queen Marie Antoinette, and the establishment of a Republic; the downfall and arrest of the Girondins, the introduction of the Terror, and the Law of the Maximum (a freeze on prices). All were the specific demands of the poor of Paris, the mob. Under the leadership of Jacques Hebert and the defrocked priest “Red” Jacques Roux, and guided by the ideas of Jean-Paul Marat* the Sans-Culotte were an early example of organised working class political agitation. It is illuminating that the most radical period of the Revolution concluded with the fall of the (Robespierre* and St-Just* inspired)  Jacobin Republic of the Year II on 9th Thermidor (27 July, 1794, in the Revolutionary Calendar). Its fall coincided with the very moment that the Sans-Culotte, on whose support it was dependant, ceased to be militant in its defence. The fall of the radicals and the demise of Sans-Culotte militancy paved the way for the years of reaction that were to follow. It was in effect the death of the Revolution.

The French Revolution, like most such upheavals, was a fusion of the social and the political. All movements that embrace the population as a whole, either in its support or opposition, are social in origin. The politics merely reflects the society that gave it birth, and it is in this respect that we all get the Government we deserve. The urban poor of Paris when they failed to support Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins were to experience the backlash of Thermidorian Government and were soon to regret their passivity as a result.

The French Revolution is viewed today in relation to its politics. Yet the social tension that so riddled French society in the years immediately preceding its outbreak, and that tore it apart in the decades that followed, cannot be overlooked, even if they are no more. The politics, however, remain. The politics of citizen and man, of constitutionalism and republicanism, of nationalism and revolutionary ecumenicalism, of Robespierre, Danton, Hebert, Marat and St Just. It was a mother of political invention whose ideas on freedom, virtue and democracy has given birth to the many revolutions that have since been fought in its name. It has been pivotal in the bourgeois democratisation of western Europe. But it should never be forgotten the society from which it emerged, the backward, autocratic, elitist, impoverished, and obscurantist Ancien Regime. For all the blood that was shed and all the mistakes that were made, we owe so much to those we now so often treat as villains.   

Maximilien Francoise Marie Isidore de Robespierre, one of the most misrepresented and vilified men in history, was born in Arras, northern France on 6 May, 1758. Though not himself working class, his father was a lawyer, his early life was one of some poverty. His mother died in childbirth when he was aged just 6, and his father abandoned the family soon after. He, his brother, and two sisters, were raised in separate homes. It would appear that from an early age he acquired an acute awareness of the moral corruption that attended wealth and increased prosperity. Likewise, he was aware, to the point of paranoia, of his own lack of means and low social standing. He had a chip on his shoulder no doubt, but was a quiet, nervous, some might say, timid child. But he worked hard and devoted himself to study.

Eventually, aged 16, he won a scholarship to a college in Paris to study law. He was far and away the poorest of the students and they weren’t slow in letting him know it, and his paranoia only increased as a result. He would claim that those who disagreed with his views were oppressing him. This verbal expression of his sense of inferiority would become a constant refrain in later life.

He was though, an outstanding student, and in 1775, he was chosen to present an address to the newly crowned King of France, Louis XVI, who was passing through Rheims, on his way back to Paris following his coronation. The weather was awful and the King was late. Young Maximilien had been waiting in the rain all day to present his poem to his Sovereign. Louis never emerged from his carriage or so much as glanced out of its window. Maximilien’s presentation was never acknowledged. Seventeen years later that same young student was to be the prime mover in that same King’s execution.

The Sea-Green Incorrupible

“The Revolution speaks through him its most tragic and purest discourse”. (Francoise Furet)

“The greatest man not only of the Revolution but of all history”. (George Sand)

“The most hateful character in the forefront of human history since Machiavelli reduced to a code the wickedness of public men”. (Lord Acton)

Incorruptible

So who was the real Robespierre? It is a question not asked often enough. Was he the abstemious, thin-bloodied, pedantic, blood-thirsty tyrant of popular history? Or the virtuous, incorruptible, freedom loving champion of the people? Was he the man who said “Virtue produces happiness as the sun produces light”. Or the one who stated that a “Nation can only be generated on mountains of corpses”.

During the Revolution he lived in the house of the Duplay family in the Rue St Honore. He didn’t socialise and rarely left the house except when work demanded it. He would, however, walk his dogs in the Bois de Boulogne. The Duplay’s youngest daughter Elisabeth, would often accompany him. She remembered him as a kind and patient man. He would wear a waistcoat embroidered with roses and they would pick cherries and cornflowers together. Elisabeth would later be ridiculed as a silly and foolish girl for remembering him so.

He was slight and pale, his face pinched and his hair blond. Quietly spoken, indeed his voice was considered weak, he was neither a loud nor bombastic orator, yet it was said he could seduce a rowdy crowd into mesmeric silence. His speeches would be laced with the language of victim-hood. He would later remark that he felt he had been oppressed all his life. But he rarely raised his voice preferring to speak in hushed and precise tones. It was his way of controlling his nerves. He would appear sometimes to shake as he spoke. Indeed he was of such a nervous disposition that his sister, Constance, felt she had to travel to Paris to keep house for him. He didn’t drink and ate only sparingly. He has often been contrasted to his contemporary and fellow revolutionary, Jacques Danton. The heavy-drinking, philandering, corrupt Danton, who went to the scaffold before him. Danton spoke scathingly of Robespierre as a man. “He can’t fuck and is afraid of money”, he said.

Robespierre has often been described as self-seeking and vain. Yet he never  actively sought high-office. Had it not been for the illness of an incumbent he would never have joined the Committee of Public Safety.

Robespierre and Virtue

For Robespierre the Revolution had to be justified. It had to be an expression of virtue. But what was this virtue? A dedicated follower of the precepts espoused by the philosopher Rousseau. he desired to see them enacted. His virtue spoke of strength, integrity, and purity of purpose. The public good must come before private self-interest. A better society need not be dreamed about, it could be created. But the people weren’t virtuous. They were corrupt, decadent, self-seeking, and immoral. To create his virtuous society, Robespierre, was to resort to summary justice and this was to lead to terror. For he perceived the judicial process to be part of the problem. With its trials, its defence, its calling of witnesses; due process of law was a cancer eating away at the Republic of Virtue. Henceforth, people would be judged solely on their actions, there would be no mitigating circumstances, and justice would be swift. As he stated, more than once, “Vice and Virtue forge the destiny of the earth”.

Robespierre and the Revolution

In 1789, Robespierre was elected to the Estates General. He was from the outset neither a liberal or a radical, but a revolutionary. He suspected the so-called Hero’s of 89′ to be nothing but the old regime with a different vocabulary. They were still supporters of the sectional interest. He would not be cowed or bought off. For two years he stuck to his rigidly revolutionary agenda. Others may pay lip-service to the Revolution but he would not. He meant every word of it. He supported manhood suffrage and opposed the property qualification for voting rights. He opposed capital punishment and slavery and sought the abolition of both. He was an advocate of full civil rights for Jews and Protestants and against the censorship of the press. For two years he was ignored. His ideas being far too radical for the majority. He was a lonely and often unheard trumpet of freedom. So where did it all go wrong?.

The Reign of Terror

Le Terreur (as it is known in France) is widely recognised as having lasted from 5 September, 1793, to 28 July, 1794, and the fall of the Republic of the Year II. Estimates vary as to how many died in this mass-execution of the enemies of the Revolution. Some have suggested that it may have been as low as 17,000 others as high as 100,000. As in most cases it probably falls somewhere between the two. The most common form of execution was the fast and efficient guillotine. Contrary to popular myth the majority of its victims were not aristocrats but common folk. It did, however, claim the lives of many notables including King Louis XVI, his Queen Marie Antoinette, his cousin, Philippe Egalitie, Madam Roland, Antoine Lavoisier, and very nearly the English radical, Tom Paine.

Threatened by internal civil wars in the Vendee and Brittany, invaded by foreign enemies and opposed by the Catholic Church, the French turned in upon themselves. With enemies everywhere and paranoia rife the revolution became a cancer upon its own body politic, eating itself up from within; and as in ancient Rome policy came to be dictated by fear of the mob. Political enemies and factions within the National Assembly went to the guillotine, Girondists, Dantonists and Enrages amongst them.

Such was the threat to the survival of the Revolution, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Revolutionary Tribunal along with it, were established to save it. Made up of 12 nominated members one man came to dominate it. That man was Maximilien Robespierre. It was he who set in motion the reign of terror. His vehicle for implementing the terror was the Revolutionary Tribunal. It arrested suspects, passed death sentences, and carried out executions on the spot. There was to be no right of appeal, no witnesses for the defence. The Tribunals organising genius was Antoine St Just (the Archangel of Death) Robespierre’s close friend and political ally.

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”