Henry Abbott

This week, we’re going to derail a bit from our usual shenanigans of airing various historical figures’ dirty (and bloody) laundry. Instead of exposing the blemishes on someone’s character, we’ll be talking about a leader with a bad rep who doesn’t deserve nearly as much hate as he gets. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m talking about Robespierre. What’s so redeemable about Maxie Robespierre, the tiny tyrant, “guillotine guy,” bloodthirsty leader of the French Terror? Well, strap in, because this’ll be a wild ride.

The French Revolution (1789–1794) was, to put it elegantly, a mad crazy time. Even professional historians are still arguing about a lot of the details that they probably should have figured out by now. How many were killed by the guillotine? Did Robespierre commit political suicide on purpose? When did the Reign of Terror even end? That’s not even getting into the subjective things, like whether Robespierre was actually a radical, how Napoleon Bonaparte fits into the Revolution and what impact the Revolution even had. I see why most high school teachers choose to make generalizations. Unfortunately, the simplified version of the French Revolution happens to mostly come down to “the moderate Revolution was okay; the Reign of Terror, which was enforced by the Committee of Public Safety (CPS), was bad.” Robespierre guillotined all of his enemies until his enemies finally guillotined him because they were scared of being guillotined. Napoleon took over.” In this way, my tenth-grade history education was … lacking. And based on the type of rhetoric going around about Robespierre, I suspect that many others had the same propaganda fed to them.

In truth, Maximilien Robespierre was a small, nervous, overly formal man. He believed strongly in equality of rights and equality of condition, universal voting rights and direct elections. He advocated for Jews to be granted citizenship and demanded the liberation of slaves in Haiti, considering their struggle inherently the same as that of the peasants for land rights. During the Moderate Revolution, he stood alone on almost all of these issues, but not once did he back down. Robespierre held every other official to the same standard of loyalty, arresting corrupt and insubordinate politicians as a part of his Committee role of purging traitors from the government. Certainly it was wrong to try and execute individuals for objecting to the legal actions of the Convention, but Robespierre did not do so thoughtlessly: He was revolted by death and often became ill for weeks after executions.

Robespierre’s undying fervor for his ideals was an infamous trait that gained him the respect of the Paris Commune and the urban populace, allowing him to become the most influential member of the executive CPS for the duration of the Jacobin period. Robespierre never sat on the Revolutionary Tribunal, which was responsible for executions, making it completely ridiculous that he is blamed for every death during the Revolution.

Had it not been for the conspiracies against him, Robespierre would have remained beloved by the revolutionary masses. Carrier, Tallien and Fouchet, the lead conspirators, had rightful reason to fear being guillotined by Robespierre: They had just spent the past several months in rural France, committing atrocities in an attempt to subjugate the counter-revolutionary smaller towns and cities. When Robespierre heard of their actions, he was horrified and demanded their recall. These men knew their time was running out, so they allied with a moderate faction within the Convention and forcibly arrested and executed Robespierre and up to 100 of his followers. In doing so, they wiped out the foundation of their party. With the executions continuing daily, the balance of power was completely altered and an incompetent Directory took control. The rest is history: 1799 saw Napoleon’s coup and the beginning of European imperialism.

Robespierre was not a dictator. He was never even president or nominal leader of the CPS. He was not bloodthirsty, he was not a demagogue and he especially was not corrupt. To claim any of these things demonstrates nothing more than poor reading comprehension and a lack of sufficient research. Yet so few of us are willing to put in the work to question and re-evaluate the rigid narrative we were taught at the age of sixteen. Revolutionary history deserves better. Revolutionaries themselves deserve better.

(If you’re at all interested in Robespierre or the Reign of Terror, please reach out to me—I would be more than happy to discuss it with you and/or share the variety of other academic materials I’ve found educational. This is one of my favorite topics, if it wasn’t already evident!)