Maximilien Robespierre

Biography

Maximilien Robespierre was the mind of the Terror and its primary victim. A provincial lawyer who had championed the rights of the poor before the Revolution, he was incorruptible, intensely principled, and genuinely believed that the Republic could be built on virtue — which he defined with increasing specificity as whatever he and his supporters agreed on. His political ascent through the Jacobin Club and the Committee of Public Safety made him the dominant figure of the French government by 1793. During his period of power, the Revolutionary Wars were prosecuted with the ferocity that fear of counter-revolution demands: the levée en masse, the execution of incompetent generals, the political surveillance of the army, and the systematic use of political terror against anyone suspected of insufficient revolutionary commitment. Carnot built the army; Robespierre provided the ideological framework that justified the total mobilization of society for its defense. He was overthrown in Thermidor (July 27, 1794) by a coalition of his own colleagues who feared they were next. Arrested on the floor of the Convention, he attempted suicide — shooting himself in the jaw but surviving — and was carried to the guillotine the following day, his jaw held together with a bandage. The Terror ended within weeks of his death. The army he had helped build continued fighting.