When They Go Low, We Go High

by Philip Collins

  Fearful of foreign invasion and with disorder in France rising, the Committee began to designate and eliminate enemies of the revolution. Tens of thousands of people were executed during what became known as the Reign of Terror. In the speech that follows, Robespierre tries to provide a philosophical justification for the terror he is practising. This speech is his attempt to purloin the revolutionary principles for degraded practice. It is hard to find any traces of liberty, equality or fraternity within it. By the time of this speech, the Federalist revolt and the Vendée uprisings had been pacified. The threat of invasion by the Austrians, British and Prussians had receded. Robespierre nevertheless conjures the threat of internal and external enemies to justify the terrible beauty of his prose.

  There is a scholarly dispute about the extent to which Robespierre can be held to personal account for the Terror. As Orwell points out in his essay on Dickens, the average English reader’s notion of the French Revolution as an unceasing frenzied massacre is owed to A Tale of Two Cities. In fact, fewer people were killed in the Terror than died in any one of Napoleon’s battles in the quest for la gloire. There were also others, more brutal than Robespierre, whose guilt is lost because of their obscurity. This is the sort of unresolvable conflict between structure and agency that bedevils too much historical explanation. It might be better to read Robespierre’s own words which, alas, condemn him well enough.

  It is time to mark clearly the goal of the revolution, and the end we want to reach; it is time for us to take account both of the obstacles that still keep us from it, and of the means we ought to adopt to attain it: a simple and important idea which seems never to have been noticed. For ourselves, we come today to make the world privy to your political secrets, so that all our country’s friends can rally to the voice of reason and the public interest; so that the French nation and its representatives will be respected in all the countries of the world where the knowledge of their real principles can penetrate; so that the intriguers who seek always to replace other intriguers will be judged by sure and easy rules. We must take far-sighted precautions to return the destiny of liberty into the hands of the truth, which is eternal, rather than into those of men, who are transitory, so that if the government forgets the interests of the people, or if it lapses into the hands of the corrupt individuals, according to the natural course of things, the light of recognised principles will illuminate their treachery, and so that every new faction will discover death in the mere thought of crime.

  A sinister tone is established from the opening. Robespierre has barely even bothered to set out the principles upon which the government is based before he is excoriating the corrupt individuals who will scupper the revolution. The argument is confidently stated and, on the page, betrays none of the nerves with which Robespierre shook before he had to speak. His voice was not strong, so he always struggled to command the attention of an audience. Early in his career, he was often shouted down. He lacked oratorical flourish or any great sense of theatre. His skill here is that of the lawyer, picking his way expertly, albeit somewhat aridly, through a case.

  Whatever Robespierre’s limitations as a speech-giver, he was a fine speechwriter. This section seeds everything that is to come. It is an accurate guide to what follows, both in content and mood. Or rather, moods, because this is a speech in which one ethos competes with another. Robespierre is speaking in an uplifting spirit of optimism about the virtues of the Revolution, a mood regularly undermined by the grisly insinuation that unnamed conspirators are threatening the promise of the future.

  It is important to recall that Robespierre came to power in a context of violence on the streets. When, in September 1793, the sans-culottes invaded the Convention under the slogan ‘make Terror the order of the day!’ the Jacobins responded by passing the Law of Suspects. This gave sweeping powers of arrest to the ruling committees. The next month the Convention passed the Decree on Emergency Government that authorised the suspension of ordinary rights and the adoption of violence. Girondist leaders and Marie Antoinette were sent to the guillotine. In the last phrase of his opening – ‘the light of recognised principles will illuminate their treachery’ – Robespierre captures the paranoia of the times and anticipates what is to come. He is able to say something so abominable because of an important distinction, which he introduces in this opening. Truth is eternal but men are transitory. Truth is a property of the world, to which men must conform. This is the non-divine form of religious reasoning that revolutionaries everywhere have adopted.

  What is the goal toward which we are heading? The peaceful enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice whose laws have been inscribed, not in marble and stone, but in the hearts of all men, even in that of the slave who forgets them and in that of the tyrant who denies them. We seek an order of things in which all the base and cruel passions are enchained, all the beneficent and generous passions are awakened by the laws; where ambition becomes the desire to merit glory and to serve our country; where distinctions are born only of equality itself; where the citizen is subject to the magistrate, the magistrate to the people, and the people to justice; where our country assures the well-being of each individual, and where each individual proudly enjoys our country’s prosperity and glory; where every soul grows greater through the continual flow of republican sentiments, and by the need of deserving the esteem of a great people; where the arts are the adornments of the liberty which ennobles them and commerce the source of public wealth rather than solely the monstrous opulence of a few families. In our land we want to substitute morality for egotism, integrity for formal codes of honour, principles for customs, a sense of duty for one of mere propriety, the rule of reason for the tyranny of fashion, scorn of vice for scorn of the unlucky, self-respect for insolence, grandeur of soul over vanity, love of glory for the love of money, good people in place of good society. We wish to substitute merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for glamour, the charm of happiness for sensuous boredom, the greatness of man for the pettiness of the great, a people who are magnanimous, powerful, and happy, in place of a kindly, frivolous, and miserable people – which is to say all the virtues and all the miracles of the republic in place of all the vices and all the absurdities of the monarchy. We want, in a word, to fulfil nature’s desires, accomplish the destiny of humanity, keep the promises of philosophy, absolve providence from the long reign of crime and tyranny. Let France, formerly illustrious among the enslaved lands, eclipsing the glory of all the free peoples who have existed, become the model for the nations, the terror of oppressors, the consolation of the oppressed, the ornament of the world – and let us, in sealing our work with our blood, see at least the early dawn of the universal bliss – that is our ambition, that is our goal.

  This is a comprehensive list of what Robespierre sees as the virtues of the republic. The best of it is desirable and most of the rest is unobjectionable. There is a hint, at times, of the Lucky Jim axiom that nice things are nicer than nasty ones. Coming from another speaker, in a context not spattered with violence, much of this passage might stand as a banal litany of the democratic virtues.

  But there are three verbal clues to alert the attentive listener. The first is the chiliastic language. The justice that will reign is ‘eternal’. As long as France commands the right ideas, providence itself will be absolved from a reign of tyranny. The bliss on offer will be universal. The second clue is the call of destiny. Politics is cast as if it were the fulfilment of natural desire. It is a basic rule that whenever a speaker starts to confuse politics with nature it is time to run for the hills. That speaker will always be trying to smuggle in something undesirable in which other human beings are regarded as not worthy of equal consideration. The third tip-off comes at the end of the passage. After all the ambitions have been specified Robespierre lets slip that the universal bliss will come sealed in blood. Not his blood, but perhaps yours. Strip out those three clues to the oppressive nature of Robespierre’s politics,
perform a light edit, and you have an account of utopian hope. As they stand they are laced with threat.

  Robespierre meant both sides of the Faustian bargain he struck. He read Rousseau’s Social Contract as if it were a biblical text and his commitment to the ideals of the Revolution was total. He was a passionate and consistent opponent of slavery and played an instrumental role in abolishing it in France and her territories. He was regarded within France as a great defender of the poor and a man who spoke on behalf of oppressed minorities such as Jews, black people and (it was a different age) actors. He was the man who sought to rewrite the Declaration of Rights to limit private property and enshrine the right to life and subsistence for all.

  And in a sense it was exactly this reasoned consistency that is the key to his tragic advocacy of terror. Robespierre’s ardent republicanism was rooted in a genuine, even noble distaste for privilege. He really did believe that the cause was high enough to warrant the methods. He was an ideologue with political reflexes and no boundaries. It is a reminder that dark things can be done by people who believe they alone are walking in light.

  What kind of government can realise these wonders? Only a democratic or republican government – these two words are synonyms, despite the abuses in common speech, because an aristocracy is no closer than a monarchy to being a republic. Democracy is a state in which the sovereign people, guided by laws which are of their own making, do for themselves all that they can do well, and by their delegates do all that they cannot do for themselves. Now, what is the fundamental principle of popular or democratic government, that is to say, the essential mainspring which sustains it and makes it move? It is virtue. I speak of the public virtue which worked so many wonders in Greece and Rome and which ought to produce even more astonishing things in republican France – that virtue which is nothing other than the love of the nation and its law. But as the essence of the republic or of democracy is equality, it follows that love of country necessarily embraces the love of equality. But the French are the first people of the world who have established real democracy, by calling all men to equality and full rights of citizenship; and there, in my judgment, is the true reason why all the tyrants in league against the Republic will be vanquished.

  Robespierre was renowned for his animus against the monarchy. The king and queen had been captured in August 1792 and by September France had become a republic and the king had been put on trial for treason. On 3 December 1792 Robespierre had spoken to the National Convention as it deliberated on the fate of the king. The Girondists were seeking to have the king tried in a ceremonial fashion, as an example of the true spirit of the revolution. Robespierre disdained clemency and the court and called on the revolutionary justice of the people: ‘Louis must die in order for the Revolution to live’. He wrote in Défenseur de la Constitution, his own journal, that Louis could not plead in mitigation to a constitution that he had himself violated. Louis was found guilty and went to the blade on 21 January 1793 in the Place de la Révolution.

  The puzzle is why Robespierre was so determined on the execution of the king and why he consented to the Reign of Terror. Danton gave one answer when he said ‘Let us be terrible in order to stop the people from being so’, but that was not really Robespierre’s view. If anything, he had an idealised notion of the innate goodness of the French working class. The source of his radicalism is given here in his commendation of the republican form of government. Robespierre had idealised the Roman republic since his time at school. He was a student and an admirer of Cicero and found himself attracted to the idea of the virtuous self, the man who stands alone with only his conscience for guidance, which he also discovered in Rousseau. Robespierre’s conception of revolutionary virtue is owed primarily to Rousseau’s arguments about sovereignty and direct democracy. This passage reveals a kind of excess of commitment. Robespierre is so adamant that the ideals of the Enlightenment must prevail – something he often said during court hearings as a lawyer – that he was prepared to abandon them in his means to secure them in his ends.

  Within the scheme of the French revolution, that which is immoral is impolitic, that which is corrupting is counter-revolutionary. Weakness, vice, and prejudices are the road to royalty. We deduce from all this a great truth – that the characteristic of popular government is to be trustful towards the people and severe towards itself. Here the development of our theory would reach its limit, if you had only to steer the ship of the Republic through calm waters. But the tempest rages, and the state of the revolution in which you find yourselves imposes upon you another task. We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with them. Now, in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people’s enemies by terror. If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, amid revolution it is at the same time both virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue. It is less a special principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most pressing needs. It has been said that terror was the mainspring of despotic government. Does your government, then, resemble a despotism? Yes, as the sword which glitters in the hands of liberty’s heroes resembles the one with which tyranny’s lackeys are armed. Let the despot govern his brutalised subjects by terror; he is right to do this, as a despot. Subdue liberty’s enemies by terror, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime? And is it not to strike the heads of the proud that lightning is destined? To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to pardon them is barbarity. The rigour of tyrants has only rigour for a principle; the rigour of the republican government comes from charity.

  Rhetoric is rarely as unvarnished as this. You might expect some elaborate euphemism or the ransacking of the techniques of classical oratory to disguise the true intent in clever word-play. Not a bit of it. Robespierre gives instead a brutally clear exposition of the philosophy of terror. The passage relies a great deal on the perennial populist opposition between the people and the enemies of the people. The enemies pose such a threat that, though reason is warranted for the people, terror must be applied to the enemies. As the enemies of the republic deserve only terror, that terror is therefore just. It is not really terror at all but ultimate truth in action.

  Again, Robespierre does not seek to disguise what is a truly cruel thought: ‘Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice’. Terror is not vice let loose in the world, it is, in Robespierre’s Manichean logic, ‘an emanation of virtue’. These are not just words either. Robespierre by now is guiding the policy of terror. The practical application of this rhetoric is one of the things that make it so chilling. The other is the certainty of rectitude, the complete absence of doubt or regret. This passage is spoken in conviction rather than in sorrow.

  The revolutionary trinity that Robespierre coined – liberté, égalité, fraternité – once had a fourth element: liberté, égalité, fraternité et la Mort! This was not terrorism committed against an incumbent regime. It was terrorism committed by an incumbent regime. Terror as official government policy. The policy of terror was instituted by the Convention on 5 September 1793 in a proclamation of extraordinary candour: ‘It is time that equality bore its scythe above all heads. It is time to horrify all the conspirators. So legislators, place Terror on the order of the day! Let us be in revolution, because everywhere counter-revolution is being woven by our enemies. The blade of the law should hover over all the guilty.’ The republic was a utopian ideal and Robespierre could not permit anybody to fall short. As Auden wrote in ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’, perfection, of a kind, was what he was after.

  Glance over our true situation. You will become aware that vigilance and energy are more necessary for you than ever. An
unresponding ill-will everywhere opposes the operations of the government. The inevitable influence of foreign courts is no less active for being more hidden, and no less baneful. One senses that crime, frightened, has only covered its tracks with greater skill. You could never have imagined some of the excesses committed by hypocritical counter-revolutionaries in order to blight the cause of the revolution. Would you believe that in the regions where superstition has held the greatest sway, the counter-revolutionaries are not content with burdening religious observances under all the forms that could render them odious, but have spread terror among the people by sowing the rumour that all children under ten and all old men over seventy are going to be killed? … Whence came this sudden swarm of foreigners, priests, noble, intriguer of all kinds, which at the same instant spread over the length and breadth of the Republic, seeking to execute, in the name of philosophy, a plan of counter-revolution which has only been stopped by the force of public reason? Execrable conception, worthy of the genius of foreign courts leagued against liberty, and of the corruption of all the internal enemies of the Republic!

  Robespierre spends a long while setting out the evils to which terror is the only justified response. Time and again in the speech he lists the threat of tyrants of other nations who want to conquer the new republic, the threat of foreign intrusion in the republic. It is notable how contemporary this sounds and how many populists of today say the same thing. Structurally this passage might have been better before the philosophy of terror, so as to lead up to the conclusion in justification, but the effect is clear enough. Repetition of this tedious kind is usually an example of poor composition, but Robespierre is too good a writer to be so charged. His tedium is a tactic. He is creating the platform on which a murderous argument can rest.