Maximilien Robespierre

It was not until after the execution of Danton that Robes pierre began to develop a policy distinct from that of his col leagues in the Committee, an opposition which ended in his down fall. He began by using his influence over the Jacobin Club to dominate the Commune of Paris through his devoted adherents, two of whom, Fleuriot-Lescot and C. F. de Payan, were elected respectively mayor and procureur of the Commune. He also attempted to usurp the influence of the other members of the Committee over the armies by getting his young adherent, Saint Just, sent on a mission to the frontier. In Paris Robespierre deter mined to increase the pressure of the Terror: no one should accuse him of moderatism ; through the increased efficiency of the revolutionary tribunal Paris should tremble before him as the chief member of the Committee ; and the Convention should pass whatever measures he might dictate. To secure his aims, Couthon, his other ally in the Committee, proposed and carried on June ro the outrageous law of 22nd Prairial, by which even the appearance of justice was taken from the tribunal, which, as no witnesses were allowed, became a simple court of condemnation. The result of this law was that between June 12 and July 28, the day of Robespierre's death, no less than 1,285 victims perished by the guillotine in Paris. It was the bloodiest and the least justifiable period of the Terror. But before this there had taken place in Robespierre's life an episode of supreme importance, as illustrat ing his character and his political aims : on May 7 he secured a decree from the Convention recognizing the existence of the Supreme Being. This worship of the Supreme Being was based upon the ideas of Rousseau in the Social Contract, and was op posed by Robespierre to Catholicism on the one hand and the Hebertist atheism on the other. In honour of the Supreme Being a great fete was held on June 8; Robespierre, as president of the Convention, walked first and delivered his harangue, and as he looked around him he may well have believed that his position was secured and that he was at last within reach of a supreme power which should enable him to impose his belief on all France, and so ensure its happiness. The devotion of Robespierre's adherents was further excited by the news that a half-witted girl, named Cecile Renault, had been found wandering near his house, with a knife in her possession, intending to play the part of Charlotte Corday. She was executed on June 17, on the very day that Vadier raised a laugh at Robespierre's expense in the Convention by his report on the conspiracy of Catherine Theot, a mad woman, who had asserted that Robespierre was a divinity.

The 9th Thermidor.

Robespierre felt that he must strike his blow now or never. Yet he was not sufficiently audacious to strike at once, as Payan and Jean Baptiste Coffinhal, the ablest of his adherents, would have had him do, but retired from the Convention for some weeks, as he had done before the overthrow of the Hebertists and the Dantonists, to prepare his plan of action. These weeks, the last of his life, Robespierre passed very peacefully. He continued to live with the Duplays, with whose daughter Eleonore he had fallen in love, and used to wander with her in the Champs Elysees during the long summer evenings. At last, on July 26, Robespierre appeared, for the first time for more than four weeks, in the Convention and delivered a carefully studied harangue, which lasted for more than four hours, in which he declared that the Terror ought to be ended, that certain depu ties who had acted unjustly and exceeded their powers ought to be punished, and that the Committees of Public Safety and Gen eral Security ought to be renewed. The majority of the Com mittee of Public Safety determined to act promptly. The Con vention, moved by Robespierre's eloquence, at first passed his motions ; but he was replied to by Joseph Cambon the financier, Billaud-Varenne, Amar and Vadier, and the Convention rescinded their decrees and referred Robespierre's question to their com mittees. On the following day, July 27, or in the revolutionary calendar the 9th Thermidor, Saint-Just began to speak on behalf of the motions of Robespierre, when violent interruptions showed the temper of the Convention. Jean Lambert, Tallien, Billaud

Varenne and Vadier again attacked Robespierre; cries of "Down with the tyrant !" were raised; and, when Robespierre hesitated in his speech in answer to these attacks, the words "C'est le sang de Danton qui t'etouffe" showed what was uppermost in the minds of the Mountain. Robespierre tried in vain to gain a hearing, the excitement increased and at five in the afternoon Robespierre, Couthon and Saint-Just, with two young deputies, Augustin Robespierre (younger brother of Maximilien) and Philippe Francois Joseph Lebas, the only men in all the Convention who supported them, were ordered to be arrested. Robespierre was speedily rescued from his prison, with the other deputies, by the troops of the Commune and brought to the Hotel de Ville. There he was surrounded by his faithful adherents, led by Payan and Coffinhal. But the day was past when the Commune could over awe the Convention ; for now the men of action were hostile to the Commune, and its chief was not a master of coups d'etat. On the news of the release of Robespierre, the Convention had again met, and declared the members of the Commune and the released deputies outlawed. The national guards under the command of Barras made their way to the Hotel de Ville; Robespierre was shot in the lower jaw by a young gendarme named Meda while signing an appeal to one of the sections of Paris to take up arms for him, though the wound was afterwards believed to have been inflicted by himself ; and all the released deputies were again ar rested. After a night of agony, Robespierre was the next day taken before the tribunal, where his identity as an outlaw was proved, and without further trial he was executed with Couthon and Saint-Just and nineteen others of his adherents on the Place de la Revolution on the Loth Thermidor (28th July) Character.—The character of Robespierre, when looked upon simply in the light of his actions and his authenticated speeches, and apart from the innumerable legends which have grown up about it, is comparatively simple. A well-educated and accom plished young lawyer, he might have acquired a good provincial practice and lived a happy provincial life had it not been for the Revolution. Like thousands of other young Frenchmen, he had read the works of Rousseau and taken them as gospel. Just at the very time in life when this illusion had not been destroyed by the realities of life, and without the experience which might have taught the futility of idle dreams and theories, he was elected to the states-general. At Paris he was not understood till he met with his audience of fellow-disciples of Rousseau at the Jacobin Club. His fanaticism won him supporters ; his singularly sweet and sympathetic voice gained him hearers; and his upright life attracted the admiration of all. As matters approached nearer and nearer to the terrible crisis, he failed, except in the two instances of the question of war and of the king's trial, to show himself a statesman, for he had not the liberal views and practical instincts which made Mirabeau and Danton great men. His ad mission to the Committee of Public Safety gave him power, which he hoped to use for the establishment of his favourite theories, and for the same purpose he acquiesced in and even heightened the horrors of the Reign of Terror. It is here that the fatal mistake of allowing a theorist to have power appeared : Billaud Varenne systematized the Terror because he believed it necessary for the safety of the country; Robespierre intensified it in order to carry out his own ideas and theories. Robespierre's private life was always respectable : he was always emphatically a gentleman and man of culture, and even a little bit of a dandy, scrupulously honest, truthful and charitable. In his habits and manner of life he was simple and laborious; he was not a man gifted with flashes of genius, but one who had to think much before he could come to a decision, and he worked hard all his life.