(1758-1794)
[Illustration: Robespierre. [TN]]
Maximilien Isidore Robespierre, the leader of the most violent of those
theorizers who overthrew the French monarchy, the exponent of all that
deep-rooted hatred which the commoners of France, as the result of long
centuries of oppression, harbored against their king, nobles, and
clergy; Robespierre, who ruled the infant republic during her first bold
defiance of united Europe, yet whose name has become, even among his
countrymen, a symbol of horror, was born at Arras, in 1758. His father
was an advocate in the supreme council of Artois, and, ruined by his
dissipation, had left France long before the revolution. An orphan at
the age of nine, and without fortune, Maximilien was indebted to the
benevolent protection of the Bishop of Arras, M. de Conzie, for the
situation of bursar of the College of Louis XIV. We are assured that
from his infancy he manifested a cruel, reserved, and timid disposition,
and an ardent love of liberty and independence. After having passed
through his studies, and obtained the honor of being chosen by his
fellow-students to address Louis XVI., upon the entrance of that prince
into Paris, he returned to Arras, where, having become an advocate of
the council of Artois, he composed strictures against the magistrates of
that province. A daring enthusiast, in 1789 he was elected, on account
of his revolutionary principles, by the third estate of Artois, to a
seat in the Constituent Assembly. We shall not follow him in detail in
that assembly: we shall simply remark, that he spoke much without
obtaining any particular influence and evinced himself constantly the
enthusiastic champion of the people. Robespierre, in all his harangues,
appears to foresee events. The avowed enemy of royalty, we behold him on
the side of republicanism, of which he ventured to alter the name on the
day when the Assembly decreed the French government monarchical. We
behold him again, after the arrest of the king at Varennes, resuming his
projects for the destruction of that monarch, preparing the movements
which took place at the Champ-de-Mars, on July 14, 16, 17, 1791, and
attacking, on the 14th, in the Assembly, the principle of the
inviolability of the sovereign, in the hope of having him arraigned; but
at the end of the sitting, finding his opinion rejected, he began to
tremble for his temerity, and required that they should not provoke the
ruin of persons who had engaged in that affair.
If Robespierre was unable to distinguish himself among the orators of
the Constituent Assembly; if his principles appeared obnoxious to the
innovators acting from sentiment in 1789; if they often drew upon him
the indignation of his colleagues; they were the means of his acquiring
among the Jacobins that reputation and favor which, daily increasing,
rendered him at last the idol of the people and the ruler of the
government. He was called "The Incorruptible." The day of the closing of
the Assembly, the populace surrounded him on his coming out of the hall,
put a crown of oak upon his head, placed him in a carriage, and, taking
out the horses, dragged him to his house, exclaiming as they moved,
"Behold the friend of the people, the great defender of Liberty!"
Robespierre was fully sensible of the advantages which might result from
his alliance with the Jacobins. He devoted himself entirely to the
direction of a club bearing that name, and refused, in order to give up
his whole time to the objects they had in view, the office of accuser in
the criminal tribunal at Paris, to which he had been appointed. Until
his election to a seat in the Convention, he was never seen personally
to engage in those insurrections which produced the atrocious attack
upon the king, nor in the horrible massacres which, in 1792, covered
Paris with murder and blood, and the French name with eternal
opprobrium. He refused even to preside at the tribunal of August 10th,
because, as he said, "He had long since denounced and accused the
conspirators, whom this tribunal was ordained to judge." But he had
scarcely entered the Convention when he resolved to raise his faction
upon the ruins of all the others, and his power upon the destruction of
those factions which he might employ. To attain this end, he was seen at
first to strengthen the ties by which he had already been united to
Marat and Danton, and to avail himself particularly of the latter, in
order to overthrow the Girondins, who, from the fifth session, had
suspected his ambition, and accused him of aspiring to the dictatorship.
It was during this struggle that Louvet pronounced against him that very
eloquent harangue, which Madame Roland called the "Robespierreiad."
Assisted by his brother and by Danton, Robespierre, in the sitting of
November 5th, overpowered the Girondins, and went to the Jacobins to
enjoy the fruits of his victory, where Merlin de Thionville declared him
an eagle, and a barbarous reptile. From that moment he never ceased to
promote the death of Louis XVI., with an asperity and a perseverance
almost incredible. In short, until the fatal day of the martyrdom of
that amiable and unfortunate prince, he continually importuned the
tribune to pronounce upon him (according to the expression of one of his
colleagues) _des vociferations de cannibale_, and the most atrocious
prejudgments. It is almost superfluous to add, that he voted for his
death on the day of the nominal appeal to the nation.
Within any moderate limits, it would be impossible to give the details
of this monstrous proceeding. Of all the disorders which had occurred
during the stormy period which had seen him on the throne of France,
Louis was accused. He was assigned counsel; and MM. Tronchet, Lamoignon,
Malesherbes, and De Seze, with his approbation, undertook his defence.
Their exertions, though creditable to themselves, were of no avail; and
on January 16, 1793, after hearing them in his defence, and his solemn
denial of the crimes laid to his charge, and after a sitting of nearly
thirty-four hours, the punishment of death was awarded.
Constant in his hatred of the Girondins, Robespierre attacked them with
great vehemence until May 31st, when he obtained a complete triumph. His
most dangerous enemies among the men of that faction were outlawed, and
others arrested. The success of this day rendered him absolute ruler of
the Convention, and founded that tyrannical empire which only terminated
with his life.
[Illustration: Robespierre's arrest.]
Among the factions which had lent him their assistance, the Hebertistes
were the first that separated from his cause. This faction aspired to
sole dominion, but the good fortune or the address of Robespierre was
able at once to oppose to it the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, and it
sunk in March, 1794, under their united efforts. Danton, who had been
particularly serviceable on this occasion, whose energy had been of such
utility, who had aided him in sweeping away the other factions; Danton,
in short, whom he ought to have considered as the instrument of his
power, became a formidable enemy, after being for a length of time a
most devoted friend and faithful ally. The two parties were at issue;
one or the other must necessarily be overcome. The cunning of
Robespierre triumphed over the inconsiderate ardor of his rival, whom he
took pains to render unpopular by sending him to enrich himself in
Belgium. A few days afterward he was accused, arrested, and conveyed to
the scaffold with Desmoulins, La Croix, Fabre, and others. In the course
of the same month (April, 1794) he delivered over to the Revolutionary
Tribunal the remainder of the party of the Hebertistes, and that of the
Cordeliers, whom he degraded by the name of Atheists, and from that
moment to the period of his downfall he met no opposition. It was then
that his language assumed a different tone. "I must be," "it is
necessary," "I will," were his general expressions; and the Convention,
as he himself called it, was only his _machine a decrets_. What is
worthy of remark is, that France, groaning under the struggles of
different parties, should applaud the conduct of Robespierre, from an
idea that she would be less miserable under a single tyrant. His new
plan of religion, ridiculous as it was, gained him some adherents; but
it must be evident to every reflecting mind that Robespierre must have
conceived himself at the head of the government, since he, whose sole
object had hitherto been to destroy, attempted to rebuild. It is
impossible to conjecture how long his power might have continued, had
he spared his colleagues, and if he had not incited to resistance men
who, until then, had blindly executed his orders, and who desired
nothing more than to continue to serve and obey him; but in sacrificing
the leaders of the Revolutionary Government, Robespierre sought a
support in the moderate party. This policy ruined him; those whose
destruction he had meditated occasioned his downfall. Danger, however,
inspired him with courage. From June 10th, Ruamps and Bourdon de l'Oise,
in particular, had expressed some distrust of the Committee of Public
Safety, which produced a discussion in which Robespierre, speaking with
an air of despotism, had the good fortune to silence them. This was the
moment he should have chosen to overwhelm the party, which redoubled its
intrigues for his destruction; and at whose head Tallien rendered
himself remarkable. His friend, St. Just, advised him to strike the
first blow. Robespierre had passed several days in retirement, occupied
in projecting, at a moment when he ought to have acted. When he
reappeared on the 26th, at the Convention, his partisans abandoned him;
he in vain endeavored to regain the ground he had lost. Sensible of the
danger which threatened him, he called together his most intimate
friends on the night of the 26th. St. Just pressed him immediately to
act. He hesitated for twenty-four hours, and this delay was the sentence
of his death. The next day Billaud-Varennes removed the veil, and
Robespierre having rushed to the tribune to reply to him, the cries of
"Down with the tyrant!" drove him instantly from the assembly. A few
minutes after a decree was passed for his arrest, and that of St. Just,
Couthon, and Lebas. "The robbers triumph," he exclaimed, on turning to
the side of the conquerors. He was afterward conducted to the
Luxembourg, and in a little time removed from that palace and conveyed
to the tribune which had delivered him up. He for some instants
cherished the hopes of a triumph; the national guard, under the command
of Henriot, assembled in his defence. But the Convention having put him
out of the protection of the law, the Parisians abandoned him, and at
three o'clock in the morning he found himself with his accomplices in
the power of the officers of the Convention. At the moment he was about
to be seized he discharged a pistol at his head, which only fractured
his lower jaw; others say it was fired by Medal, one of the gendarmes,
who had stepped forward to arrest him, and against whom he defended
himself. He was immediately conducted to the Commune, from thence
conveyed to the Conciergerie, and executed on the same day, July 28,
1794.
His last moments presented a terrific scene; his mouth full of blood,
his eyes half closed, his head bound up with a bloody handkerchief, he
was thrown into the same cell which had been successively inhabited by
Hebert, Danton, and Chaumette. When he quitted the prison to meet his
punishment, the proscribed persons obstructing the passage, the jailer
cried out, "Make way for monsieur the incorruptible!" He was conveyed in
a cart between Henriot and Couthon; the people halted before the house,
two women danced before the wagon, and one of them exclaimed; "Your
sufferings intoxicate us with joy! You will descend to hell, accompanied
by the curses of all wives and mothers." The executioner, in order to
dispatch him, rudely tore away the bandage from his wound. He uttered a
cry of horror; his lower jaw separated itself from the upper. The blood
again flowed, and his head exhibited a spectacle of the most frightful
kind. He died at the age of thirty-six.
Robespierre was not a monster; his life attests it; nor was he solely
guilty of the atrocities which signalized his reign. By his downfall he
was loaded with all those iniquities which, had he triumphed, he would
have attributed to his opponents.