A leading member of the leftwing Jacobin Club, he was not disturbed by the massacres of imprisoned aristocrats and priests in Paris in and he demanded the execution of Louis XVI. From he was the most prominent figure in the Committee of Public Safety, which introduced the Terror and the cult of the Supreme Being.
Concern for justice and equality had turned into tyranny and terror. More recent historians have been kinder to Robespierre than Carlyle was, but his combination of high principles and ruthlessness roused fear and in his enemies denounced him and he was sent to the guillotine to which he and his colleagues had consigned so many others.
He was thirty-six. The Birth of Robespierre. Richard Cavendish charts the life of Robespierre, who was born on May 6th, French Revolution Political. Related Articles. Robespierre and the Terror. Popular articles. The pressure of fighting two wars, international and civil, along with the ever-present possibility of government upheaval, led to the creation of the state that became known as the Reign of Terror.
During the Reign of Terror, Robespierre systematically convicted and guillotined members of rival factions in the name of bringing his utopian democratic ideal to life.
Opposition arose, however, and in late July of , members of the Convention voted for his arrest. Robespierre was imprisoned, but then released. He tried to rally the sans-culottes in his support again, but the opposition leaders marshaled their forces in time to capture Robespierre and his associates. Having been designated an outlaw, Robespierre was put to death the next day. In the process of being captured, Robespierre suffered a gunshot wound to the jaw, likely from his own hand.
From the beginning he made his mark, speaking articulately over times in the National Assembly in behalf of the lower classes, defending the rights of Jews, black slaves, actors, opposing the royal veto and religious discrimination. In he became closely identified with a left-wing political club, the Jacobins, named for their meeting place, a ancient Catholic monastery. The Jacobins acted something like a political party or radical pressure group within the National Assembly and along with their confederates sat high on the left side of the Chamber.
Soon Robespierre and his allies came to be called montagnards or the Mountain. In King Louis and his family tried to flee the country and then was proven to be plotting with the foreign enemies of France.
After the outbreak of war with Austria and the so-called Second Revolution in , Robespierre successfully argued for the King's execution. In the Spring of , France faced a series of problems that would have broken any other power. A coalition of European armies threatening the border, food riots in Paris, a peasant revolt in the southwest, the City of Lyon in rebellion and the Mediterranean naval base at Toulon surrendered to the British. A Committee of Safety was formed and by summer it was led by Robespierre, but for the first time since Louis XIV, France had a government determined to rule.
Leading the Committee was Maximilien Robespierre, a north country lawyer turned radical politician. He faced a set of daunting challenges. A coalition of European armies were massed on the border determined to crush the Revolution.
Peasants were in revolt, the City of Lyon had rebelled and the Mediterranean naval base at Toulon had been surrendered to the British. To deal with the external threat, the Committee called the entire nation to arms, the so-called levee en masse.
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