Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution
Page 1
To John
Death is the beginning of immortality
Robespierre’s last speech, 26 July 1794
Contents
Chronology
Map: Revolutionary Paris
Preface
Introduction
Part I. Before the Revolution (1758–1788)
1 Child of Arras
2 The Lawyer-Poet Back Home
Part II. The Revolution Begins (1788–1789)
3 Standing for Election in Arras
4 Representing the Nation at Versailles
Part III. Reconstituting France (1789–1791)
5 The National Assembly in Paris
6 The Constitution
Part IV. The Constitution Fails (1791–1792)
7 War
8 The King’s Trial
Part V. The Terror (1793–1794)
9 The Pact with Violence
10 Robespierre’s Red Summer
Coda
Bibliography
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Chronology
1758
Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre, born in Arras, May 6
1763
End of the Seven Years War 1764 Death of Robespierre’s mother, July 14
1769
Robespierre goes to boarding school in Paris at the Collège Louis-le-Grand
1772
Disappearance of Robespierre’s father
1774
Death of Louis XV and accession of his grandson as Louis XVI
1775
Coronation of Louis XVI in the cathedral at Reims, June 11
1778
France supports the American war of independence
1781
Robespierre returns to Arras to practice law
1788
The Lamoignon Edicts fail, May
Louis XVI agrees to the convocation of the Estates General, August
1789
Robespierre campaigns for election and is chosen as a representative of the third estate, April
The Estates General meet in Versailles, May
The third estate claims the right to represent the nation and renames itself the National Assembly, June 17
Tennis Court Oath, June 20
Storming of the Bastille, July 14
Abolition of feudal rights and privileges, August 4
Louis XVI and the National Assembly move from Versailles to Paris, October
Robespierre rents rooms in the rue Saintonge
The Jacobin Club established in Paris
1790
Proliferation of a network of political clubs throughout France affiliated to the Parisian Jacobin Club
Threat of war over Nootka Sound
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, July
Festival of Federation on the first anniversary of the Bastille’s fall, July 14
1791
Death of Mirabeau, April 2
Pope Pius VI condemns the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, April 13
Royal family’s flight to Varennes, June 20
Massacre on the Champ de Mars, July 17
Robespierre moves to new lodgings in the rue Saint-Honoré
The Jacobin Club splits and moderate members leave to establish the Feuillants Club
Louis XVI accepts the new constitution, September
National Assembly closes and Robespierre revisits Arras
Pétion becomes mayor of Paris, November 14
Robespierre returns to Paris and opposes war-mongering at the Jacobin Club, November 28
1792
Fall of Louis XVI’s Feuillant ministry and appointment of friends and associates of pro-war leader Brissot
Death of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, March 1
Festival in honor of the Châteauvieux soldiers, April 15
France declares war on Francis II (Leopold II’s son and successor as Holy Roman Emperor), April 20
The guillotine is used for the first time, April 25
Prussia joins Austria in the war against France, June 13
The Duke of Brunswick issues a manifesto threatening Paris if Louis XVI is harmed, July 25
Paris’s 48 Sections declared in permanent session, July 27
Fall of the monarchy, August 10
Robespierre elected to municipal Commune governing Paris, August 12
General Lafayette flees France
Longwy falls to Prussia, August 20
Establishment of the first Revolutionary Tribunal
Verdun falls to Prussia, September 2
Prison massacres, September 2–6
Robespierre elected to new National Convention, September 5
French victory over Prussia at Battle of Valmy, September 20
National Convention meets in Paris, September 21
Declaration of the Republic, September 22
French victory at Battle of Jemappes, November 6
Trial of Louis XVI, beginning with his indictment, December 11
Dissolution of the first Revolutionary Tribunal
1793
Execution of Louis XVI, January 21
France declares war on England and the Dutch Republic, February
Enragés food riots
France declares war on Spain, March 7
Revolt in the Vendée
Failed insurrection in Paris, March 9–10
Establishment of the second and infamous Revolutionary Tribunal, March 10
Defection of General Dumouriez after Battle of Neerwinden, March 18
Establishment of the Committee of Public Safety, April 6
Revolt in Lyon, May
Insurrection in Paris, May 31
Expulsion of Girondin deputies from the National Convention, June 2
Jacobin Republican constitution accepted by referendum and adopted, June 24
Danton voted off Committee of Public Safety, July 10
Marat assassinated, July 13
Robespierre voted into the Committee of Public Safety, July 27
Siege of Lyon begins, August 8
Smashing of royal tombs at Saint-Denis, August 10
Toulon surrenders to the English, August 29
Terror becomes the order of the day, September 5
Law of Suspects, September 17
Law of General Maximum, September 29
Adoption of the Republican calendar (backdated to 22 September 1792), October 5
Year I
Fall of Lyon, Vendémiaire 18 (October 9)
Execution of Marie Antoinette, Vendémiaire 25 (October 16)
Execution of the Girondin deputies, Brumaire 10 (October 31)
Festival of Reason in Notre-Dame, Paris, Brumaire 20 (November 10)
Commune decrees closure of Parisian churches, Frimaire 3 (November 23)
Constitution of Revolutionary Government, Frimaire 14 (December 4)
First issue of Desmoulins’s Le vieux Cordelier, Frimaire 15 (December 5)
French recapture Toulon, Frimaire 29 (December 19)
Rebels in the Vendée crushed, Nivôse 2 (December 22)
Year II
Robespierre ill, Pluviôse 22–Ventôse 22 (February 10–March 12)
Execution of Hébertistes, Germinal 4 (March 24)
Recall of Fouché from Lyon, Germinal 7 (March 27)
Execution of Dantonistes, Germinal 16 (April 5)
Robespierre runs the Police Bureau after Saint-Just leaves on mission to the army, Floréal 9 (April 28)
Cécile Renault attempts to assassinate Robespierre, Prairial 4 (May 27)
Festival of the Supreme Being, Prairial 20 (June 8)
Reorganization of Revolutionary Tribunal, Prairial 22 (June 10)
French victory at Battle of Fleurus, Messidor 8 (June 26)
Fraternal banquets to celebrate the anniversary of the Bastille’s fall, Messidor 26 (July 14)
Robespierre’s last speech to the National Convention, Thermidor 8 (July 26)
Arrest of Robespierre, Thermidor 9 (July 27)
Execution of Robespierristes, Thermidor 10 (July 28)
Preface
MY DEAR CROKER,
I wish you would think seriously of the History of the Reign of Terror. I do not mean a pompous, philosophical history, but a mixture of biography, facts and gossip: a diary of what really took place with the best authenticated likenesses of the actors.
Ever yours,
ROBERT PEEL1
Soon after he received this letter from his friend Sir Robert Peel, the once and future Tory prime minister, John Wilson Croker packed his bags for a seaside holiday. Although he was a prominent literary and political journalist and was hoping to work as he sat on the beach, Croker packed none of his collection of rare and fascinating books about the French Revolution that are now one of the glories of the British Library. He took with him only the list of those condemned to death during the Reign of Terror.2 He perused it against the rhythmic sound of waves breaking on the shore.
Twenty-two impoverished women, many of them widows, convicted of forwarding “the designs of the fanatics, aristocrats, priests and other agents of England,” guillotined.
Nine private soldiers convicted of “pricking their own eyes with pins, and becoming by this cowardly artifice unable to bear arms,” guillotined.
Jean Baptiste Henry, aged eighteen, journeyman tailor, convicted of sawing down a tree of liberty, guillotined.
Henrietta Frances de Marbœuf, aged fifty-five, convicted of hoping for the arrival in Paris of the Austrian and Prussian armies and of hoarding provisions for them, guillotined.
James Duchesne, aged sixty, formerly a servant, since a broker; John Sauvage, aged thirty-four, gunsmith; Frances Loizelier, aged forty-seven, milliner; Mélanie Cunosse, aged twenty-one, milliner; Mary Magdalen Virolle, aged twenty-five, hairdresser: all convicted for writing, guillotined.
Geneviève Gouvon, aged seventy-seven, seamstress, convicted of “various conspiracies since the beginning of the Revolution,” guillotined.
Francis Bertrand, aged thirty-seven, convicted of producing “sour wine injurious to the health of citizens,” guillotined.
Mary Angelica Plaisant, another seamstress, guillotined for exclaiming, “A fig for the nation!”
Relaxing into his holiday, Croker continued reading through the long list of dubious charges against the several thousand victims of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, from its institution on 10 March 1793 until the fall of Maximilien Robespierre on 27 July 1794. He compiled some grimly fascinating statistics: in the last five months of Robespierre’s life, when he supposedly secured tyrannous power over France and the Revolution, 2,217 people were guillotined in Paris; but the total condemned to death in the eleven months preceding Robespierre’s Reign of Terror was only 399. On the basis of these statistics, Croker concluded that the executions “grew gradually with the personal influence of Robespierre, and became enormous in proportion as he successively extinguished his rivals.”3 In awed horror he recalled, “These things happened in our time—thousands are still living who saw them, yet it seems almost incredible that batches (fournées—such was the familiar phrase)—of sixty victims should be condemned in one morning by the same tribunal, and executed the same afternoon on the same scaffold.”
Although Peel pressed his friend to write a popular and accessible book about the French Revolution, Croker never did so. When he got back from his holiday in 1835 he published his seaside musings in an article for the Quarterly Review. Here he acknowledged the enormity of the problem Robespierre still poses biographers: “The blood-red mist by which his last years were enveloped magnified his form, but obscured his features. Like the Genius of the Arabian tale, he emerged suddenly from a petty space into enormous power and gigantic size, and as suddenly vanished, leaving behind him no trace but terror.”4
Introduction
No backdrop can match the French Revolution. It teems with life and burns with human, historical, intellectual, and literary interest. More than haunting, it obsesses, because it will not lie down and die. When François Furet, its most famous French historian of recent years, proclaimed in 1978, “The French Revolution is over,” he provoked great waves of revisionist scholarship across France, beyond the Channel, and on the other side of the Atlantic, proving that it was still alive. With the Revolution’s bicentenary in 1989, and the collapse of Communism across Europe the same year, new scholarship brought a young generation face to face with the vivid hopes of 1789—liberty, equality, fraternity, popular sovereignty, representative democracy, rights, and happiness. Hopes that issued, after just four years, in the Terror, the system of emergency government and summary execution with which no one was more closely identified than Maximilien Robespierre.
A pale and fragile man, Robespierre was anxious, hesitant, and principled. Before the Revolution he earned his living as a young lawyer in the northern French city of Arras. He sided consistently with the victimized and fiercely opposed the death penalty. Eloquent in person and on paper, but in a restrained and formal manner, he crossed a great deal out, nervously perfecting his prose, and had difficulty projecting his voice in public. His appearance was meticulously unflamboyant. His eyes were weak, his mind sometimes vague, and his routines colorlessly orderly. He should have drowned in the Revolution’s flood of epoch-shattering events and personalities. Instead Robespierre became the living embodiment of the Revolution at its most feral and justified the Terror as an emanation of republican virtue, a necessary step on the path to the ideal society that he was determined to establish in France. However hopelessly utopian, politically misguided, or historically premature Robespierre’s vision of this ideal society may have been, he made a unique contribution to events that shaped the future of Europe. To understand him is to begin to understand the French Revolution. It is also to cast light on the uneasy coincidence of democracy and fanaticism present at the birth of modern European politics.
Political turmoil can foster unlikely leaders. The mediocre figure, strutting and fretting on the historical stage in the midst of a revolution, is always more riveting than the one who merely inherits power or gets elected to it in quieter times. But Robespierre’s mediocrity is only incidental, a weapon—of sorts—in the hands of his detractors and enemies but never the key to the personal and historical mystery that shrouds him. There were more intellectually gifted revolutionaries. There were better writers and speakers, and more sympathetic characters. Many disagreed politically with Robespierre every step of the way, from his election to the Estates General on the eve of the Revolution in 1789 to his death beneath the guillotine in 1794—often with good reason. But he cannot be explained by what he lacked, or failed to see and do.
Robespierre’s private self and his public contribution to the events that inaugurated modern European politics are complex—by all accounts, he was remarkably odd, and the French Revolution was spectacularly complicated. No sooner were his severed remains collected, tossed into an unmarked grave, and covered with quicklime than the struggle began to grasp the connection between Robespierre’s personality and his role in the Revolution. While his short career in politics was long enough to win him a lasting place in world history, it was not long enough to show conclusively whether his is rightly a place of honor, one of shame, or something more inscrutable in between.
To his enemies—living and dead—he will always be colored blood red: the first of the modern dictators, the inventor and perpetrator of the Terror who sent thousands to their deaths. One enemy, lucky enough to survive him, predicted, “History will say little about
this monster; it will confine itself to these words: ‘At this time, the internal debasement of France was such that a bloodthirsty charlatan, without talent and without courage, called Robespierre, made all the citizens tremble under his tyranny. Whilst twelve hundred thousand warriors were shedding their blood on the frontiers for the republic, he brought her to her knees by his proscriptions.’”1
Vilification and belittlement were inevitable in the aftermath of the Terror, but “bloodthirsty charlatan” is hardly a satisfactory description of the fastidious lawyer who opposed the death penalty before the Revolution and afterward became France’s most articulate pacifist when war loomed with the rest of Europe. On the other hand, the subtler shades with which his friends paint him—reserved, enigmatic, highly principled, the first of the modern democrats—do not suffice either. To them he was an unjustly maligned prophet of the political order of the future. Almost fifty years after his death, one of them wrote: “I would have given my life to save Robespierre, whom I loved like a brother. No one knows better than I do how sincere, disinterested, and absolute his devotion to the Republic was. He has become the scapegoat of the revolutionists; but he was the best man of them all.”2 A sympathetic biographer went so far as to insist: “The more godlike I prove Robespierre’s conduct to have been—the greater will be the horror in which his memory will be held by the upper and middle classes.”3
By the left in France and elsewhere, Robespierre has been cast primarily as the defender of the republic and the ideal of social democracy: a passionate witness to the grievances of the poor and the virtues of the meek or oppressed whom history betrays. He was, after all, the revolutionary who tried to change the Declaration of Rights to limit private property and enshrine the right to life and subsistence for all. It was Robespierre who said, “When will the people be educated? When they have enough bread to eat, when the rich and the government stop bribing treacherous pens and tongues to deceive them…. When will this be? Never.”4