History UsefulNotes / MaximilienRobespierre

* FrenchRevolution: Obviously.

* ScaryShinyGlasses: Because of poor eyesight he had to wear green tinted glasses, a fact that most depictions ignore. This eventually led him to have an aura of fear with one colleague, Merlin de Thionville, who was part of the Thermidorian Reactionary faction stating, "If you had seen those green eyes of his".'

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: However dubious his actions were, he was a consistent abolitionist, anti-war, anti-expansionist, anti-racist and radical democrat. As stated by Alfred Cobban:
--> ''"No one at the time of the Revolution, went as far as Robespierre in stating what were later to be recognized as the essential conditions of the democratic state... Universal franchise, equality of rights regardless of race or religion, pay for public service to enable rich and poor alike to hold office, publicity for legislative debates, a national system of education, the use of taxation to smooth out economic inequalities, recognition of the economic responsibilities of society to the individual...religious liberty, local self-government - such were the some of the principles for which he stood, and which are now taken for granted in democratic societies."''

* TheExtremistWasRight: The Marxist defense of it. Objectively, towards the end of the Reign, the economy was stabilizing, largely due to the assignat system of fixed bread prices he placed in and the wealth redistribution measures were coming in as well. The Army which he was controlling via Committee Overseers Saint-Just and his brother Augustin was becoming professional despite featuring a mass of raw recruits and rookies, largely thanks to the organization of Lazare Carnot but also on account of Robespierre's rigid demands of meritocracy. This resulted, ironically, in Napoleon's first major appointment (a fact which he was always grateful for to Robespierre, though he kept his praises private). After Thermidor, the Directory government saw rapid inflation and widespread unpopularity and the continuation of the French Revolutionary Wars via military adventurism, creating the climate for Napoleon to take over.

** The Terror was well underway before Robespierre joined. The legal instruments (the Commitees, the Revolutionary Tribunal) were put in place by none other than Danton himself. The reams of paperwork that survived from the period shows that Robespierre's signature is quite rare on official executions (much rarer than the supposedly moderate Carnot).

* MisBlamed: He actually vehemently opposed a lot of the actions that were attributed to him (like the drownings in Nantes) and was by no means the main instigator of The Terror originally. He wasn't even the one who signed the most execution orders among the Committee. In his final speeches in the Assembly and the Jacobin Club, he started criticizing the excesses of the Terror, and implicitly warned against Fouche and Tallien who were much worse than him. Both of them betrayed Robespierre and the Terror and started a posthumous smear campaign against him.

The mismanagement of the war by the Girondins and the subsequent chicanery on the part of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette created a chaotic situation, culminating in the mass killings of the September Massacres where instigators called for the deaths of criminals, political prisoners and other saboteurs. Robespierre and the Jacobins subsequently manage to take a majority in the National Convention and ousted the Girondins, after which they found themselves charged with the program of simultaneously advancing the principles of the Revolution and aiding the French war effort, fixing the messes left behind by the Girondins and clamping down on counter-revolutionaries and internal threats.

A highly controversial person, the level of sympathy allotted to him depends on the work. Compare with RichardOfGloucester, the English king similarly known for falling anywhere between a villain and a SilentScapegoat depending on the author's perspective. He also has a number of similarities with UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin.

* IDidWhatIHadToDo: The common defense he has to this day, including opposing what he believed was more than what ''had'' to be done. More precisely, Robespierre was paranoid about [[NapoleonBonaparte the rise of a military dictatorship]] and [[FullCircleRevolution the return of monarchy]] and justified the reign and his program of "civic virtue" on the same theme.

--> Republican virtue can be considered as it relates to the people and as it relates to the government. It is necessary in both. When the government alone is deprived of it, there remains a resource in the virtue of the people; but when the people themselves are corrupt, liberty is already lost. Happily virtue is natural to the people, despite aristocratic prejudices to the contrary. A nation is truly corrupt when, having gradually lost its character and its liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or to monarchy; this is the death of the body politic through decrepitude...Demosthenes thundered in vain against [[AlexanderTheGreat Philip [of Macedon] ]], Philip found more eloquent advocates than Demosthenes among the degenerate inhabitants of Athens. There was still as large a population in Athens as in the times of Miltiades and Aristides, but there were no longer any true Athenians. And what did it matter that Brutus killed [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar a tyrant]]? [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire Tyranny still lived in every heart]], [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic and Rome]] existed only in [[DoomedMoralVictor Brutus]].

* ''Literature/TheScarletPimpernel''
* ''Literature/LookToTheWest'' (Though it's actually an AlternateHistory "brother", Jean-Baptiste Robespierre)

* Creator/VictorHugo's ''93''
* ''A Place of Greater Safety''

* ''Danton'' (1921)
* ''The Danton Case''
* ''The Snow Palace''
* ''The Gods are Thirsty''
* ''ComicBook/TheSandman'', "Thermidor"

--> ''"No one at the time of the Revolution, went as far as Robespierre in stating what were later to be recognized as the essential conditions of the democratic state... Universal franchise, equality of rights regardless of race or religion, pay for public service to enable rich and poor alike to hold office, publicity for legislative debates, a national system of education, the use of taxation to smooth out economic inequalities, recognition of the economic responisibilities of society to the individual...religious liberty, local self-government - such were the some of the principles for which he stood, and which are now taken for granted in democratic societies."''

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: However dubious his actions were, he was a consistent abolitionist, anti-racist and radical democrat. As stated by Alfred Cobban:

--> ''""No one at the time of the Revolution, went as far as Robespierre in stating what were later to be recognized as the essential conditions of the democratic state... Universal franchise, equality of rights regardless of race or religion, pay for public service to enable rich and poor alike to hold office, publicity for legislative debates, a national system of education, the use of taxation to smooth out economic inequalities, recognition of the economic responisibilities of society to the individual...religious liberty, local self-government - such were the some of the principles for which he stood, and which are now taken for granted in democratic societies."''

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: A lot of the reason why Robespierre is still contentious and respected even by liberals is that a lot of the positions he was advocating, and regarded as extreme then, such as rights for Jews, Men of Colour, Welfare program, wealth redistribution and abolition of slavery eventually came to be taken for granted by most liberal democracies, though on a more gradual level.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: in different works.

Robespierre's own political position, while radical left, favored the emerging middle class of artisans and small businessmen (who he subsidized during the Terror), geared towards wealth redistribution and what we would call, today, the welfare state. When Robespierre went against extreme leftists Hebert and radical moderates, Danton, he actually alienated his own support among the people in Paris' sections. During Thermidor, Robespierre's downfall partly resulted from the fact that none of the sections would rise ''for'' him against the ''Convention''(which comprised of moderate left and extreme left) because they didn't see any difference between them. Years later, Gracchus Babeuf, who would later be described as "the first Communist" and a former Hebertist felt that this was a great example of PoorCommunicationKills as, "To awaken Robespierre is to awaken Democracy". A lesser known fact of Robespierre is that, under his authority during the ReignOfTerror, France abolished slavery. Robespierre had consistently argued against slavery throughout his political career, famously denouncing a proposal to install a defense for slavery in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This law passed by the National Convention in February 1794, with prime support from Danton (for perhaps the last time they were on the same page), was done in a time where Haiti was in rebelling against the French government and completely changed the nature of Toussaint L'Ouverture's revolution. Later, Robespierre's police force shut down the French Slaver's Lobby, the Club Massiac and arrested many of its members, most of whom were freed after his downfall (and later successfully lobbied to Napoleon to bring slavery back). For this reason, Robespierre is highly respected by the people of Haiti even today, and in other African nations. Though, abolition was set back when Napoleon came to power, he re-instituted slavery in the colonies and it was only in 1848 that slavery in France's remaining colonies completed his original commitment.

* {{Deism}}: He tried to establish the ''Cult of Reason and the Supreme Being''. That is, state deism. He did so because while he saw Christianity (especially the Church) as a threat for the Revolution, he also disapproved of atheism which was promoted by hard-liners revolutionaries (like Hébert) in the Cult of Reason.
** Robespierre was initially opposed to de-Christianisation because he felt that the people of France were not ready and it would reject people for taking it too far.

* GodIsDead: He took part in the de-Christianisation of France when he tried to establish the ''Cult of Reason and the Supreme Being''. That is, state deism. He did so because while he saw Christianity (especially the Church) as a threat for the Revolution, he also disapproved of atheism which was promoted by hard-liners revolutionaries (like Hébert) in the Cult of Reason.
** Robespierre was initially opposed to de-Christianisation because he felt that the people of France were not ready and it would reject people for taking it too far.

--> ''Robespierre is an immortal figure not because he reigned supreme over the Revolution for a few months, but because he was the mouthpiece of its purest and most tragic discourse."''

A major figure of the [[TheFrenchRevolution French Revolution]]. A lawyer from the town of Arras, he was an advocate of human rights as defined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom he admired deeply. As a "lawyer for the common people", he gained respect and prominence among the locals, who eventually elected him to represent them in the Estates-General, France's pre-revolutionary representative body. During this period, he distinguished himself by taking pro-bono cases. Shortly after the Estates-General convened in 1789, the Revolution began with the Tennis Court Oath, in which the representatives of the common people decided to push for a constitution and governmental reform for France. Robespierre was influential in the formation of the intended new government and became a prominent member of the radical Jacobin Club (political "clubs" were in some ways parallel to political parties in modern democratic states). Specifically the faction called "The Mountain", called so because they were seated high up in the seats of the Legislative Assembly. He was particularly famous for his speeches which were often printed in newspapers and pamphlets and became MemeticMutation during the Revolution.

During the short lived constitutional monarchy, many revolutionaries including the moderate Girondins advocated going to war in order to spread the ideas of the French Revolution. Robespierre took a hardline stance against the war, warning that, "No one loves armed missionaries." However, despite his protests France declared war a few months later on Austria and Prussia. Robespierre became noted during this time for his integrity, his rousing speeches and as such he became highly popular among the French working classes. He also championed causes such as clamping down on anti-Semitism, increased rights for Protestants, abolition of slavery.

The mismanagement of the war by the Girondins, the subsequent chicanery on the part of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette created a chaotic situation, culminating in the mass killings of the September Massacres where instigators called for the deaths of criminals, political prisoners and other saboteurs. Robespierre and the Jacobins subsequently manage to take a majority in the National Convention and ousted the Girondins, after which they found themselves charged with the program of simultaneously advancing the principles of the Revolution and aiding the French war effort, fixing the messes left behind by the Girondins and clamping down on counter-revolutionaries and internal threats.

--> ''"If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country ... The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny."''

While Robespierre is usually portrayed (and not without reason) as the personification of the worst excesses of the Revolution, he actually fought as ferociously against radicals as he did royalists. While no devout Christian himself, he eventually came to despise the atheistic bent of many in the French government and had quite a few of them guillotined. He later presided over a Festival of the Supreme Being, which celebrated a kind of middle path between old-style Catholicism and atheism; his performance there led many of his enemies to allege that he considered himself a God. Robespierre also ordered the execution of many proto-socialists, who wanted the new France to abolish private property and share all wealth in common. On the other hand, several people regarded Robespierre as a true revolutionary and a champion of the poor. Gracchus Babeuf, who would later be described as "the first Communist" was a supporter and stated, "To awaken Robespierre is to awaken Democracy".

In short, he considered himself a man walking a narrow, winding path through a dangerous forest, with enemies on both left and right plotting the destruction of France. Seeing foreign plots to snuff out the Revolution everywhere, he violently lashed out at those enemies using the power of the Committee. Eventually, as his former colleague-turned-enemy Danton (who he had guillotined) predicted, the machinery of death he set in motion consumed him, and he was himself guillotined in July ( Thermidor) of 1794.

A lesser known fact of Robespierre is that he is in fact the first lawmaker and politician to outright abolish slavery. He did this in February 1794, during the ReignOfTerror, which shows [[GrayAndGreyMorality you how ambiguous he is]]. This action, done in a time where Haiti was in rebelling against the French government completely changed the nature of Toussaint L'Ouverture's revolution. For this reason, Robespierre is highly respected by the people of Haiti even today, and in other African nations and among some African Americans. Though, abolition was set back when Napoleon came to power, he re-instituted slavery in the colonies and it was only in 1848 that slavery in France's remaining colonies completed his original commitment.

[[hardline]]

* AffablyEvil

* TheDandy

* DracoInLeatherPants: He seems to be fairly popular in France. Or at least much more balanced in view and less disliked than in England and America, where the media portrayal is overwhelmingly negative. That said, he's the only major revolutionary figure to not have a street named after him in Paris or any monument of note, since the French realize that he continues to attract bad publicity.
** Many left-wing intellectuals in France have/had a sordid tendency to idealize the Reign of Terror and Robespierre. To them, anyone who thinks he was tyrannical and/or represented the rising liberal bourgeoisie is labelled... a right-wing bourgeois reactionary, a collaborator of capital, etc. Left-wing criticisms of Robespierre and the French revolution tend to come from the anarchist/left-libertarian tradition, which has a history of clashing with authoritarian Marxism as well (Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc).
** The fact that Robespierre would probably have hated most authoritarian Marxists (with the radical expansionism, totalitarian rule, die hard atheism, and the like) is one of the final ironies.
** Robespierre is truly respected in Haiti and other former French colonies for abolishing slavery at a time when the institution was still profitable for the French government. Indeed, after his death, several years later, Napoleon re-instated it and overturned quite a few of his reforms.
* EveryoneWentToSchoolTogether: Robespierre and his friend-turned-political-enemy Camille Desmoulins were schoolmates, and even classmates. Robespierre then had Camille Desmoulins' head off. Napoleon and Robespierre's younger brother Augustin were friends, as well.
** In fact Robespierre served as best man at Desmoulin's wedding and was godfather to his son.

* FromNobodyToNightmare: Who would have thought a pale, meek milquetoast would become one of the most feared revolutionaries in history?
** Comte de Mirabeau, the original, pragmatic leader of the Revolution, often clashed with the young Robespierre who argued that he was selling out on reforms. His cynical opinion of Robespierre:
--> "[[UnderestimatingBadassery He'll go far]]. [[KnightTemplar He believes what he says]]."

* GodIsDead: He took part in the dechristianisation of France when he tried to establish the ''Cult of Reason and the Supreme Being''. That is, state deism. He did so because while he saw Christianity (especially the Church) as a threat for the Revolution, he also disapproved of atheism which was promoted by hard-liners revolutionaries (like Hébert) in the Cult of Reason.
** Robespierre was initially opposed to dechristianisation because he felt that the people of France were not ready and it would reject people for taking it too far. That said he wanted to cut down on the authority of Church and his solution was to give French priests righs, such as the right to marry, believing that celibacy was a stupid concept.
* GoodIsNotNice / PureIsNotGood : (depending on one's perspective). It's the reason why his bio is called "Fatal Purity".

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: He was actually ''against'' the death penalty in his early years, but during the French Revolutionary Wars he began to use the guillotine against France's enemies, including the royal family. It got worse when Marat was murdered by a supporter of the rival Girondin Club.
** Marat who argued for the ReignOfTerror and constantly wrote in papers calling for executions noted Robespierre's initial reluctance:

* HistoricalDomainCharacter - HistoricalVillainUpgrade in most works.

* IDidWhatIHadToDo: The common defense he has to this day, including opposing what he believed was more than what ''had'' to be done.
* {{Irony}}: Despite the vast number of people he had beheaded, he couldn't stand the sight of blood. His entire life is one major one, since he eventually argued for and put in place the very things he argued against in the beginning of the Revolution, believing it as part of a necessity.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Going from 'lawyer highly respected by the common people' to 'main figure in a ReignOfTerror who winds up being [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Hoisted By His Own Petard]]' would be bad enough, but a little bit of [[VerbalIrony irony]] makes it worse: in the early phases of the Revolution, Robespierre wrote a little pamphlet about ''how the death penalty is wrong, and should not be used''[[note]]He went very quickly from 'maybe it can be justified, in certain extreme circumstances' to 'it is a useful tool', thus ''Jumping Off'' The Slippery Slope[[/note]]. More generally, his actions throughout his revolutionary career were directed at creating a just society and preserving a nation in crisis. He jumped off the slope (according to some) by using terror to achieve this. During the height of the ReignOfTerror, Robespierre and the Committee abolished slavery, so even when he was at his most violent, he still tried to be a progressive voice.

* MisBlamed: He actually vehemently opposed a lot of the actions that were attributed to him (like the drownings in Nantes) and was by no means the main instigator of The Terror originally. He wasn't even the one who signed the most execution orders among the Committee. In his final speeches in the Assembly and the Jacobin Club, he started criticizing the excesses of the Terror, and implicitly warned against Fouche and Tallien who were much worse than him. Both of them betrayed Robespierre and the Terror and started a posthumous smear campaign against him.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: His nickname "L'Incorrupible" became this to his opponents in the Thermidorian Reaction, there was no way he could be bought or won over to any compromise.

* OverlyLongName: See Unfortunate Names below. Though for most of his life he was called Maxmilien Robespierre, even dropping the "de" cognomen to be more republican.

* ScaryShinyGlasses: Because of poor eyesight he had to wear green tinted glasses, a fact that most depictions ignore. This eventually led him to have an aura of fear with one colleague, Merlin de Thionville, who was part of the Thermidorian Reactionary faction stating, "If you had seen those green eyes of his".

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized

* FullCircleRevolution: Was brought down by the former TropeNamer, TheThermidor.

* WeUsedToBeFriends: To Danton and Desmoullins, the latter was his friend from childhood.
* WellIntentionedExtremist


----
!!Works featuring this character:
* ''Manga/RoseOfVersailles''
* ''Anime/LeChevalierDEon''
* ''Literature/TheScarletPimpernel''
* ''Literature/LookToTheWest'' (Though it's actually an AlternateHistory "brother", Jean-Baptiste Robespierre)
* ''ComicBook/RequiemChevalierVampire''
* Creator/VictorHugo's ''93''
* ''A Place of Greater Safety''
* ''The Black Book''
* ''La Revolution Francaise''
* ''Danton'' (1983)
* ''Danton'' (1921)
* ''The Danton Case''
* ''The Snow Palace''
* ''The Gods are Thirsty''
* ''ComicBook/TheSandman'', "Thermidor"
* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial ''The Reign of Terror''
* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' has the Havenite political leader Rob(ert) S.(/tanton) Pierre running the Committee of Public Safety.

*** The fact that Robespierre would probably have hated most authoritarian Marxists (with the radical expansionism, totalitarian rule, die hard atheism, and the like) is one of the final ironies.
* EveryoneWentToSchoolTogether: Robespierre and his friend-turned-political-enemy Camille Desmoulins were schoolmates, and even classmates. Robespierre then had Camille Desmoulins' head off. Napoleon and Robes' younger brother Augustin were friends, as well.
** In fact Robespierre served as best man at Desmoulin's wedding.

** Robespierre was initially opposed to dechristianisation because he felt that the people of France were not ready and it would reject people for taking it too far.

* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Going from 'lawyer highly respected by the common people' to 'main figure in a ReignOfTerror who winds up being [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Hoisted By His Own Petard]]' would be bad enough, but a little bit of [[VerbalIrony irony]] makes it worse: in the early phases of the Revolution, Robespierre wrote a little pamphlet about ''how the death penalty is wrong, and should not be used''[[note]]He went very quickly from 'maybe it can be justified, in certain extreme circumstances' to 'it is a useful tool', thus ''Jumping Off'' The Slippery Slope[[/note]]. More generally, his actions throughout his revolutionary career were directed at creating a just society and preserving a nation in crisis. He jumped off the slope (according to some) by using terror to achieve this.

* OverlyLongName: See Unfortunate Names below.

* DracoInLeatherPants: He seems to be fairly popular in France. Or at least much more balanced in view and less disliked than in England and America, where the media portrayal is overwhelmingly negative.

* GoodIsNotNice / PureIsNotGood : (depending on one's perspective).

* PureIsNotGood: There's a reason his bio was dubbed "Fatal Purity".

--> ''"There are two ways of totally misunderstanding Robespierre as historical figure: one is to detest the man, the other is to make too much of him. It is absurd, of course, to see the lawyer from Arras as a monstrous usurper, the recluse as a demagogue, the moderate as bloodthirsty tyrant, the democrat as a dictator. On the other hand, what is explained about his destiny once it is proved that he really was the Incorruptible? The misconception common to both schools arises from the fact that they attribute to the psychological traits of the man the historical role into which he was thrust by events and the language he borrowed from them. Robespierre is an immortal figure not because he reigned supreme over the Revolution for a few months, but because he was the mouthpiece of its purest and most tragic discourse."''

--> ''"Robespierre is an immortal figure not because he reigned supreme over the Revolution for a few months, but because he was the mouthpiece of its purest and most tragic discourse."''