Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror (Part 1)

The year is 1793, Louis XVI has just been executed. France is devastated by its civil war and is now threatened by the 1st Coalition. Paranoia and terror, oh, terror grips the country by its throat as the people ask for more and more purges. As a result, almost 17,000 are executed in just over a year. France now lives under the tyranny of the Committee of Public Safety, with at its head, Maximilien Robespierre.

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Robespierre was born on the 6th of May 1758. A model student, he studied law practice at the prestigious University of Paris, in the Collège Louis Le Grand to become a lawyer like his father and grandfather.

There, he came to admire an idealized Roman Republic through the lecture of Cicero, Cato and other classical writers. He was also attracted to 18th century philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas he would later try to emulate in France. He passed the bar of Arras at the age of 23 as a fervent supporter of direct democracy as he believed the people of France were virtuous enough to ensure the well-being of the nation.

The strength and conviction he showed for these views would earn him the nickname, “L’Incorruptible”. And in 1789, French revolutionary Mirabeau commented, “This man will go far - he believes everything he says.”

In 1782, he was appointed as a criminal judge by the Bishop of Arras. Ironically, he would quickly resign over his opposition to the death penalty to become a strong advocate of poor clients whom he defended through ideas of Enlightenment and Rights of Men.

In 1783, he was elected as a member of the Academy of Arras and in 1789, he campaigned as deputy of the Third-Estate to represent the peasants and bourgeoisie. Against all odds, Robespierre won.

On the 5th of May 1789, for the first time since 1614, Louis XVI assembled the Estates-General to deal with France’s crippling debt, which had soared during the American Revolution. During the assembly, the third estate, which was twice as many as the other estates, demanded sweeping political and social reforms. However, they were informed that all voting would be based on “order” rather than “number”, thus making their superior numbers meaningless.

As a result, they flat-out refused to take part of the assembly. Instead, they decided to meet separately by forming a National Assembly in Paris, of which Robespierre was appointed as one of its representatives on the 13th of July 1789.

After his arrival to Paris, that same year, he would get involved with the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, better known as the Jacobins, where he found a sympathetic audience to his ideas. Soon, Robespierre and his supporters, which had come to idolize his fanaticism, would dominate the club as more moderate, right-wing members left within the same year following the Massacre of the Field of Mars.

By then, the National Assembly had turned into the National Constituent Assembly, whose membership mostly comprised of lawyers and wealthy Parisian bourgeois occupied with drafting a constitution for their own interests. Robespierre instead favored France’s lower classes, particularly Jews, Blacks, and actors.

Through powerful speeches in front of the Assembly, he frequently advocated for the Declaration of the Rights of Man, often with great success. Above all, he coined the phrase, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”, which shaped the Republic up until today. He still fervently opposed the death penalty and campaigned for universal male suffrage, price controls on basic food commodities, and the abolition of slavery in French colonies. Quickly, he was recognized as one of the leaders of the small body of extreme left – the thirty voices, as Mirabeau would scornfully describe them.

But these ideals, that Robespierre had fervently defended before, would start to falter when, on Febuary 1792, Brissot, leader of the Girondins, another prominent faction of the Jacobins, urged France to declare war on Austria.

Robespierre fervently opposed this as he feared the rise of a Caesar-like figure during these times of war. With great wisdom, he reminded his listeners, “… in troubled periods of history, generals often became the arbiters of the fate of their countries." This conflict started a great divide within the Jacobins.

A divide that would come to set ablaze France for the years to come.