History UsefulNotes / MaximilienRobespierre

* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: The common portrayal of a destructive idealist who would kill to achieve his perfect world, an archetype that really took off in the Romantic era (as a scapegoat of the Enlightenment-inspired man) was highly inspired by memories of Robespierre and the Terror, which remains a byword for excessive idealism well into the 21st Century. This also inspires most fictional depictions, including Neil Gaiman's ''Thermidor'' where Johanna Constantine accuses him of being ready to kill everyone in the world if they don't meet his ideals.

A highly controversial person, Robespierre became in the 19th and early 20th Century, the personification of the KnightTemplar radical for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, combining personal probity (he was called "The Incorruptible" and it wasn't ironic in any way) with a vindictive, self-righteous streak. He became in Lord Acton's words, "the most hateful character in the forefront of history since [[UsefulNotes/NiccoloMachiavelli Machiavelli]] reduced to a code the wickedness of public men." Later critics argue that Robespierre set a precedent for the likes of UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin and one of his most recent biographies is entitled "[[PureIsNotGood Fatal Purity]]." Other critics have questioned this reading and argue that his life and actions was subject to a smear campaign in the vein of UsefulNotes/RichardIII, making him the TheScapegoat for revolutionary excesses. There are groups of historians and organizations who hope to rehabilitate his reputation to a more balanced level. The vast majority of fictional depictions, however, subject him to a HistoricalVillainUpgrade.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter
** HistoricalVillainUpgrade in many works.

-> ''"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."''
-->-- '''François Furet''', ''Interpreting the French Revolution''

-->-- '''Maximilien Robespierre'''

* [[TabletopGame/7thSea]], while not having the actual person as a character, has an obvious {{expy}} in Arnaud du Charouse, who plays much the same role in the Montaigne Revolution.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter - HistoricalVillainUpgrade in most works.

Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a major figure of UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution. To this very day, he remains one of the most controversial and debated figures in the history of France and Europe.

* ''[[Film/LesVisiteurs The Visitors: The Revolution]]''

* ''[[Films/LesVisiteurs The Visitors: The Revolution]]''

Maximilien Robespierre was a major figure of UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution. To this very day, he remains one of the most controversial and debated figures in the history of France and Europe.

* [[Films/LesVisiteurs The Visitors: The Revolution]]''

[[TabletopGame/7thSea]], while not having the actual person as a character, has an obvious {{expy}} in Arnaud du Charouse, who plays much the same role in the Montaigne Revolution.
----

When UsefulNotes/LouisXVI convened the meeting of the Estates-General, Robespierre (a scholarship boy and rising attorney who had taken "pro-bono cases") became one of the many young deputies who found a career in political office open to them for the first time. Later he was among the signatories of the Tennis Court Oath. In the National Assembly, Robespierre became notable for criticizing limited suffrage and for condemning a constitutional defense of slavery. He became popular among Parisian Radicals for advocating universal male suffrage, rights for minorities (Jews, Protestants, Blacks), abolition of slavery and the death penalty. He also attained prominence in the newly formed Jacobin Club and played a major role in taking the nominally bi-partisan club to a radical direction after the Champs des Mars massacre. 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 but his position was a minority at the time, and war was declared and fully backed by the King and Queen (which Robespierre pointed out was enough reason to be skeptical of the entire project). He regained prominence after the August 10, 1792 Insurrection against the King, when he became one of many deputies elected, for the first time via universal male suffrage, to the National Convention.

[[caption-width-right:350: ''[[ArmorPiercingQuestion Do you want a Revolution without a Revolution?]]'']]

[[quoteright:170:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/170px-Robespierre03.jpg]]

* ''ComicBook/RequiemChevalierVampire''

A highly controversial person, Robespierre became in the 19th and early 20th Century, the personification of the KnightTemplar radical for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, combining personal probity (he was called "The Incorruptible" and it wasn't ironic in any way) with a vindictive, self-righteous streak. He became in, Lord Acton's words, "the most hateful character in the forefront of history since [[UsefulNotes/NiccoloMachiavelli Machiavelli]] reduced to a code the wickedness of public men." Later critics argue that Robespierre set a precedent for the likes of UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin and one of his most recent biographies is entitled "[[PureIsNotGood Fatal Purity]]." Other critics have questioned this reading and argue that his life and actions was subject to a smear campaign in the vein of UsefulNotes/RichardIII, making him the TheScapegoat for revolutionary excesses and there are groups of historians and organizations who hope to rehabilitate his reputation to a more balanced level. The vast majority of fictional depictions subject him to a HistoricalVillainUpgrade.

!!Works featuring Robespierre:

!!Provides examples of:

* AccidentalMisnaming: At the beginning of his political career, journalists chronicling the goings-on at the National Assemby called him everything from Robespierrot to Robests-piesse, Robertz-Pierre to Rabesse-Pierre.
* AffablyEvil: Most people didn't consider him evil until the very end, but everyone noted that he was personally highly kind, polite and had impeccable manners.
* AGodAmI: His advocacy of Civic Deism and a religion on the same, culminated in the notorious Festival of the Supreme Being. The event was personally overseen by Robespierre and Creator/JacquesLouisDavid and ended with him, coming down the top of a cardboard mountain in a Blue Outfit and NiceHat. The event was strangely enough, a public successs (a turnout of 500,000, spontaneous celebrations across France) but fellow deputies saw it as incredibly arrogant and far too personal for their liking. One deputy, Jacques-Alexis Thuriot, echoed the general sentiment: "Look at the bugger; it's not enough for him to be master, he has to be God."
* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: In different works ''and among historians to this very day''.
** No one's quite sure if he's a sincere democrat in difficult circumstances(Pro) or a fanatical blood-thirsty KnightTemplar(Con), the author Norman Hampson famously wrote a book[[note]]The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre[[/note]] that focuses on the sheer impossibility to resolve his character, noting that on one hand he was incorruptible, dedicated, sincere and even a nice man on a personal level but he was also ambitious, shrewd as a parliamentary tactician and became quite comfortable with using violent tactics for achieving high democratic ideals.
** Other historians, such as Furet, R. R. Palmer and Richard Cobb raise doubts about Robespierre's role altogether, pointing out that he was never really an originator of policy; he tended to be quite reluctant and moderate until the situation called for decisive action, that the people who plotted his fall deliberately scapegoated him by exaggerating his "dominance" in the Committee of Public Safety and he was never as popular among the people as Mirabeau or Danton. In this view, Robespierre by sheer accident became the embodiment of the Revolution, a position out of proportion to his talents and meager achievements.
* AntiVillain [=/=] AntiHero: Type III during the first years of the revolution, type IV after the murder of [[TheLancer Marat]] and type V during his last year.
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: He issued a famous real-life one during a speech defending himself from accusations by the Girondins. After defending himself spiritedly, he called the Girondins out for not doing enough to uphold the needs of the common people:
--> ''"I will not remind you that the sole object of contention dividing us is that you have instinctively defended all acts of new ministers, and we, of principles; that you seemed to prefer power, and we equality... Why don't you prosecute the Commune, the Legislative Assembly, the Sections of Paris, the Assemblies of the Cantons and all who imitated us? For all these things have been illegal, as illegal as the Revolution, as the fall of the Monarchy and of the Bastille, as illegal as liberty itself... '''Citizens, do you want a revolution without a revolution?''' What is this spirit of persecution which has directed itself against those who freed us from chains?"''
* {{Asexuality}}: One popular theory. However, historians have suggested that he was in a relationship with Eleonore Duplay, a young woman who was the daughter of the Duplay family which had given Robespierre housing. The two were often seen walking in gardens during the early 1790s and upon his death, she dressed in black all her life, earning the label, "la Veuve Robespierre"(Robespierre's Widow).
* BrainyBrunette: He mostly wore the highly powdered white wig for all public appearances, but underneath that he had brown hair. And he was an intellectual, fairly smart and well read. This can be seen in one of the rare depictions of him without the wig, in Jacques-Louis David's [[http://rabaut.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/img_0131.jpg ''Serment du Jeu de Paume'']](he's extreme right, in the golden brown outfit).
* BrieferThanTheyThink: Robespierre was part of the Committee of Public Safety from 27th July 1793 to 27th July 1794, which means he was part of government for exactly one year. Before, he was just a politician among others, albeit a quite influential one.
* CassandraTruth: One of Robespierre's most famous speeches, often quoted by pacifist French politicians (such as Jean Jaures who later opposed UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne) was against the Girondin drive for War against Austria in 1792, in the altruistic aim of "spreading the Revolution". He was one of the few to oppose it, pointing out that the war would destabilize the consolidation of the Revolution, pave the road for military dictatorship and even fail in its aim of sprading democracy by force of arms. It anticipated the fact that in the course of the Revolutionary and NapoleonicWars, France WonTheWarLostThePeace:
--> ''"The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies."''
* CivilWarcraft: Spent most of the Revolution engaged in it to one degree or another, and it was one of the major reasons why he was slowly pushed towards the terror.
* CrusadingLawyer: He built his reputation as "L'Incorruptible" for defending the poor in pro-bono work, because of which he was not as wealthy as other lawyers (such as Danton), until his election to the National Convention.
* TheDandy : He is definitely the most flamboyantly dressed of all revolutionaries, he wore coats of green, blue and pink, wore a powdered white wig and was known to wear blue-green tinted spectacles at all time. He even had the spirit of a "dandy l'originale" in that he was critical of revolutionaries trying to be BourgeoisBohemian and SlummingIt by taking on sans-culotte fashion, rather than [[AtLeastIAdmitIt openly telling your constitutency which class you come from]].
* DarkMessiah: The real-life poster boy.
* {{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 that religious sentiment itself, as opposed to organized religion, could be used to direct public virtue and democratic values. He famously justified this quoting Voltaire:
--> ''"If God does not exist, it is necessary to invent him."''
* 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.
** Even in France, Robespierre remains highly controversial. He is the only major Revolutionary without a street name in Paris and any attempts to give him honour are often met with strong reactions from conservatives, left-wingers and other moderates who regard him as anathema. Even in his hometown in Arras, residents are known to feel ashamed of their most famous son. However, even among his local critics, Robespierre gets a fairer shake than in America and England where he's put in the same breadth as Stalin or Pol Pot, whereas they regard him as a self-righteous fanatic or a tragic instance of JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope.
** The Soviet Union and other communists regarded him as a hero for most of the 20th Century, with a sordid tendency to idealize the Reign of Terror. 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 critics such as Trotskyite Daniel Guerin point out that Robespierre actually neutralized the sans-culottes by depriving them a voice during the Revolution and he was not as popular a leader as Danton and Hebert. Robespierre to them symbolizes the beginning of authoritarian Marxism (Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc) that creates a forced unity in the name of "the people".
** Robespierre is more favorably looked at in Haiti and Africa (for his abolitionism), and even in Vietnam where the Viet-Cong(who were raised in the French colonial period) regarded Robespierre as a true revolutionary as compared to Napoleon, who they felt betrayed all its principles.
* 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.
** Also, he was the best Latin student at his school. This meant he was supposed to give a welcoming speech to the newly crowned....King Louis XVI.
* TheExtremistWasRight: 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."''
* FamousLastWords: Robespierre's jaws were shattered by a gunshot so he did not have conventional last words. But the last things he said in public was during the Thermidor Reaction, where his former allies and fellow participants in the ReignOfTerror, some of whom had more blood on his hands than him, mocked the fact that he was silenced by outrage, remarked:
--> '''Man in Crowd''': ''"It is Danton's blood that is choking you!"''
--> '''Robespierre''': ''"Danton! It is Danton then you regret? Cowards! Why did you not defend him?"''
* FourEyesZeroSoul: Zero Soul is probably an overestimation, but by the end he was no innocent.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: Who would have thought a pale, meek milquetoast would become one of the most feared revolutionaries in history? Comte de Mirabeau certainly thought so
--> '''Mirabeau''': ''This man will go far, he believes what he says.''
* FullCircleRevolution: His downfall was related to one. So much so that Marxists often called this a "Thermidorian Reaction".
** Several years later, many of the people who turned on him, both on the Committee of Public Safety and otherwise, regretted his downfall, including Billaud-Varenne, Barere and Paul Barras.
--> '''Paul Cambon''': We did not realize that in killing Robespierre we would kill the Republic.
* GoodIsNotNice / PureIsNotGood : (depending on one's perspective).
* GreenEyes: Was stated to have had eyes of sea-green, he augmented the effect with green tinted glasses that he wore.
* 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 Jean-Paul Marat, an influential newspaper writer and politician known for advocating direct and often violent action by the general public, was murdered by a supporter of the rival Girondin Club. Marat himself noted Robespierre's initial reluctance to violence and extremism:
--> ''"Robespierre listened to me with terror. He grew pale and silent for some time. This interview confirmed me in the opinion that I always had of him, that he unites the knowledge of a wise senator with the integrity of a thoroughly good man and the zeal of a true patriot but that he is lacking as a statesman in clearness of vision and determination."''
* HistoricalBeautyUpdate [=/=] BeautyEqualsGoodness: Well averted mostly.
** The historical record during his active career when he was highly popular and respected describes him as an elegantly dressed dandy, who was while generally austere regarded proper grooming as his sole luxury. The portraits such as the one on top from 1790 even makes him quite handsome which might have overemphasized his reputation as "The Incorruptible" but more objective portraits show that he was not exactly ugly either. The same applies for sculptures and busts which make his facial features to be quite youthful, and he was in his early 30s during the Revolution. After his death, he was constantly denounced as a "pygmy" and frequently made more unattractive in depictions in the years to come.
** This controversy showed itself even more after a 2013 [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/20/robespierre-death-mask-makeover-diagnosis-photo_n_4481018.html 3D facial reconstruction]] that supposedly shows his features at the time of his death, which many critics denounce for being excessively demonic and completely differing from the historical record. The researchers stated they used Madame Tussaud's death mask as a basis for reconstruction but critics have noted that the death mask by Tussaud has long been regarded as a joke among professional historians since it lacks the widely reported jaw injury at the time of his execution and that the circumstances and manner in which Robespierre died make it next to impossible for Tussaud to have gotten access to Robespierre's head, since the Thermidorians immediately sought to dispose of his body and his remains and would certainly not have allowed comemoration of a man they just upgraded into a tyrant.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter - HistoricalVillainUpgrade in most works.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: He was eventually executed via guillotine, the fate he and his regime assigned to so many others.
* 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 [[UsefulNotes/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.
** In his famous speech, ''Report on the Principles of Public Morality'', he cites several examples describing his utopian belief in a Republic of Virtue:
--> 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 [[UsefulNotes/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 [[Creator/GaiusJuliusCaesar a tyrant]]? [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire Tyranny still lived in every heart]], [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic and Rome]] existed only in [[DoomedMoralVictor Brutus]].
** Needless to say, after Thermidor and the fall of Robespierre, the conspirators stopped the reform program of the revolution and successively brought into power, Napoleon made France an Empire and later re-installed Constitutional Monarchy. Of course, if Robespierre's fears were justified and ultimately vindicated, his methods were less than effective and in retrospect self-destructive.
* {{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 to win a war that he had opposed from the very start (and was nearly alone, save for Marat, in doing so).
* 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.
** Indeed, Robespierre did not start out as an extremist. He was initially considered a moderate and supported the Constitutional Monarchy and was even friendly with the Girondins. His idealism, self-righteousness and genuinely sincere belief in the Revolution's opportunity to give people a better future, forced him to take increasingly extreme positions at the constant betrayal and defections by the King and increasing corruption around him. By the time when he decided to moderate the Revolution, he ended up alienating some of his support base on the left and in Napoleon's words, ended up dying, "not worth a sou".
* JustTheFirstCitizen: Deputy and Member of the Committee of Public Safety.
* KnightTemplar
* MisBlamed: Historians from England, France and America when writing about the Revolution devote considerable space to disclaiming why Robespierre is not a baby-eating psychopathic dictator, since the popular memory of the Revolution in the Anglophone is devoted to associating Robespierre and the Terror with the Revolution:
** Robespierre did not have any official capacity in the government until his election to the Committee of Public Safety in June 26 (one year to the day before his death), he was merely one member of a 12 Member Committee. That Commitee was not entirely run by the Jacobins, but comprised of Jacobins, radical extremists (Billaud-Varenne, Collot d'Herbois), Moderates (Barere) and the technocrats (Carnot, Lindet) who were not politically aligned but had vital skills to direct the war effort.
** 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) and nonexistent in the period of the Great Terror. The Great Terror ''did'' result of a law drafted by his friend Georges Couthon, and passed with Robespiere's help, but he did not attend any meetings of the Committee during that time (he was sick and confined to his room) and had no direct overseeing capacity in the escalation of executions during that period, that fell to the same Commitee members who were supposedly horrified at his "excess".
** Its also neglected that there are many occassions, documented in memoirs and historical record, where Robespierre personally intervened and saved people's lives. Despite instigating the insurrection agianst the Girondins, he continually agitated against a KillEmAll Purge that would have finished 75 deputies. He was personally responsible for the recalling of brutal representatives such as Carrier (responsible for the Noyades in Nantes), Barras, Tallien, Freron and personally expelled Joseph Fouche from the Jacobin club for his atrocities in Lyon. These representatives conspired agianst him on his downfall and successfully mounted a smear campaign to destroy his reputation.
* OffWithHisHead: The Terror regime he served sent many, ''many'' people to the guillotine. And it was his ultimate fate.
* OverlyLongName: See Unfortunate Names below.
* PromotionToParent: After the death of his mother and his father running away, Robespierre, the eldest of a family of five became this to them. He was especially close to his brother Augustin, who got executed alongside him, and his sister Charlotte who later wrote memoirs of growing up Robespierre...
* 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 Douai, who was part of the Thermidorian Reactionary faction stating, "If you had seen those green eyes of his".'
* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: For all his flaws, he was genuinely ''incorruptible''.
* ShroudedInMyth:
** Robespierre's personal papers were burnt by the government after Thermidor. Consequently, we only know him through his speeches, letters and other people's testimonies. This widely explain the contradictory views about him, since we have no way to know him "from the inside". In 2012-2013, long-suppressed manuscripts of his activity as a lawyer were rediscovered and after a petition by historians, purchased by the French government from Sothebys.
** Another thing that remains debated is his jaw injury on the night of his arrest. Some say it was a BungledSuicide attempt (since many of his friends and his own brother tried to kill themselves and only one, Philippe Lebas succeeded). However, a National Guardsman Gendarme Merda claimed to have [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace shot him in the face]], and there are many coins commemorating his "achievement".
* ReignOfTerror: A participant in the original; notably, he and his allies actually called it by that name. He also defined its conditions and describes its function in a February 1794 speech:
--> ''"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."''
* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Robespierre accepted this but came to believe that it can be civilized if "Terror" was wed with virtue.
* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: However dubious his actions were, he was a consistent abolitionist, anti-war, anti-expansionist, anti-racist and radical democrat.
* ToxicFriendInfluence: The jury is still out if he was this to Saint-Just or Saint-Just was this to him. The two of them were pretty much the only best friends either had at the end.
* UnfortunateNames: Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre.
** Justified in context as most 18th Century French names were like this. Compare Lafayette's real name: Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette.
** Robespierre defied this in that he dropped the "de" particle very early in his career (a family tradition of pretense at petty nobility) and identified himself as Citizen Maximilien Robespierre.
* [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans The Republic of Virtue Justifies The Means]]
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: A very accurate description of the Revolutionaries as a whole, and France in general at the time.
* WeUsedToBeFriends: In the course of the Revolution, Robespierre often split from several people he was friendly with. His willingness to sacrifice friendship for patriotism, while seen as an embodiment of Roman stoicism in the Revolutionary era, understandably strikes modern observers as callous.
** Initially he was close friends with the people who came to be called Girondins -- Jerome Petion (both of them were called "the incorruptibles"), was a regular visitor to Madame Roland's salon. The Girondins felt betrayed when Robespierre opposed them on the war because they had otherwise had similar ideas. Robespierre for his part was upset that the Girondins used their political press to start a smear campaign against him, even calling him a royalist and enemy spy, which considering his self-righteous patriotism would have been hard to take.
** Camille Desmoulins and Danton were also friends and political allies until 1794. Robespierre was godfather to Camille's son and out of personal friendship he defended both of them from the more zealous Committee members. Later he willingly supplied evidence to Saint-Just to denounce Danton at the Convention. Danton famously issued a DyingCurse on the day of his death, announcing to Robespierre as he passed by his house, "You will follow us shortly."
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Napoleon Bonaparte himself said it best in his years of exile on Saint Helena:
--> '''Napoleon''': ''" Robespierre was by no means the worst character who figured in the Revolution. He was a fanatic, a monster, but he was incorruptible, and incapable of robbing, or causing the deaths of others, either from personal enmity, or a desire of enriching himself. He was an enthusiast; but one who really believed that he was acting right, and died not worth a sou."''
* {{Workaholic}}: Robespierre was a hard-worker who slept short hours, ate very frugally and extensively wrote all his speeches. Indeed he actually suffered from over-worked and regular illnesses which left him incapacited from the Committee of Public Safety, especially the final month before Thermidor.

----

When UsefulNotes/LouisXVI convened the meeting of the Estates-General, Robespierre (a scholarship boy and rising attorney who had taken "pro-bono cases") became one of the many young deputies who found a career in political office open to them for the first time. Later he was among the signatories of the Tennis Court Oath. In the National Assembly, Robespierre became notable for criticizing limited suffrage and for condeming a constitutional defense of slavery. He became popular among Parisian Radicals for advocating universal male suffrage, rights for minorities (Jews, Protestants, Blacks), abolition of slavery and the death penalty. He also attained prominence in the newly formed Jacobin Club and played a major role in taking the nominally bi-partisan club to a radical direction after the Champs des Mars massacre. 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 but his position was a minority at the time, and war was declared and fully backed by the King and Queen (which Robespierre pointed out was enough reason to be skeptical of the entire project). He regained prominence after the August 10, 1792 Insurrection against the King, when he became one of many deputies elected, for the first time via universal male sufffrage, to the National Convention.

-> ''"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."''

Robespierre's notoriety begins with his participation in the debate on the trial of King UsefulNotes/LouisXVI. He famously reversed his former protest against the death penalty citing the King's treason as grounds for immediate summary execution and his death justifiable as a war measure. The mismanagement of the war and the mounting paranoia among Parisian street radicals led to bitter factionalism, culminating in a second insurrection against the Girondins, which made the Jacobins the majority party in the Convention. In the fifth year of his political career, Robespierre finally entered political office, as one of the 12 members (and the most publicly known and prominent) of the Committee of Public Safety. Citing wartime conditions, they suspended the newly written 1793 Constitution (the most radical document of UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment era) and instituted a policy they called [[ReignOfTerror "the Terror"]]. Robespierre was never actually the dictator or in any way the sole leader of France. He ''was'' the intellectual and moral backbone for the Committee while it ran the country; however, his influence within the Committee was subject to the machinations of other members and tended to ebb and flow. While he 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. He also played a role in recalling brutal and corrupt mission representatives such as Joseph Fouche, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, Jean-Lamber Tallien and Paul Barras. 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. His 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.

His paranoid, fastidious, self-righteous nature, increasing fanaticism and advocacy of a thin narrow path between extreme and moderate tendencies, led to a schism and fall-out with erstwhile Jacobin Allies such as Hebert and in the case of Danton and Desmoulins, close personal friends, all of whom he sent to the guillotine. His downfall was the result of the fact that he had alienated virtually all his former allies -- moderates, extremes, the National Convention, even the radical Paris Sections. The events of his downfall (occuring on 9 Thermidor of the French Revolutionary Calendar) has since become proverbial as FullCircleRevolution. While it marked the end of the radical and violent phase, it also ended the reform and progressive initiatives undertaken in the same period (which included price ceilings, widespread government participation, meritocracy and the abolition of slavery). The largest mass execution in the Revolution happened the day after Robespierre's death, when 77 loyalists were guillotined in a single day. In the aftermath, Thermidorians gave him and other radicals (which had formerly included themselves) subjected him to a HistoricalVillainUpgrade as a "bloodthirsty dictator" that endures to this day. Already in the post-revolutionary era, later observers, from Cambaceres to Napoleon, (including the ones who turned on him such as Barere and Billaud-Varenne) questioned this narrative and noted how his reputation and influence was greatly exaggerated. Others such as Gracchus Babeuf, a Hebertist who had initially welcomed the "death of the tyrant" lamented how PoorCommunicationKills, noting, "To awaken Robespierre is to awaken democracy itself."

A highly controversial person, Robespierre became in the 19th and early 20th Century, the personification of the KnightTemplar radical for whom UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, or in Lord Acton's words, "the most hateful character in the forefront of history since [[UsefulNotes/NiccoloMachiavelli Machiavelli]] reduced to a code the wickedness of public men." Later critics argue that Robespierre set a pattern for the likes of UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin, combining personal probity (he was called "The Incorruptible" and it wasn't ironic in any way) with a vindictive, self-righteous streak. One of his most recent biographies is entitled "[[PureIsNotGood Fatal Purity]]." Other critics have questioned this reading and argue that his life and actions was subject to a smear campaign in the vein of UsefulNotes/RichardIII, making him the TheScapegoat for revolutionary excesses and there are groups of historians and organizations who hope to rehabilitate his reputation to a more balanced level.

* AGodAmI: During the Festival of the Supreme Being, as he came down with the festival procession, Jacques-Alexis Thuriot is quoted as saying "Look at the bugger; it's not enough for him to be master, he has to be God."

* AntiVillain
** AntiHero: Type III during the first years of the revolution, type IV after the murder of [[TheLancer Marat]] and type V during his last year.

* BrieferThanTheyThink: Robespierre was part of the Committee of Public Safety from 27th July 1793 to 27th July 1794, which means he was part of government for exactly one year. Before, he was just a politician among others, albeit a quite influent one.
* CassandraTruth: One of Robespierre's most famous speeches, often quoted by pacifist French politicians (such as Jean Jaures who later opposed UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne) was against the Girondin drive for War against Austria in 1792, in the altruistic aim of "spreading the Revolution". He was one of the few to oppose it, pointing out that the war would destabilize the consolidation of the Revolution, pave the road for military dictatorship and even fail in its aim of sprading democracy by force of arms.

* TheChessmaster: He managed to keep the Jacobin party alive and in the hands of the extreme left after the Royalists and Moderates left it to form their own party. One way he did this was in his first tenure as part of the National Assembly where the terms of office were about to expire. Robespierre asked the committee for a "self-denying ordinance" that ensured that none of the earlier candidates, including himself, would be eligible for the next election. The nature of this ordinance and the public scrutiny forced the assembly to pass it. This ensured that a lot of new blood, including Robespierre loyalists and appointments could enter the legislation next assembly.
** Critics argue that Robespierre's action was highly destabilizing since it prevented experienced politicians from continuing within the engine of government. Supporters argue that Robespierre had wanted to prevent a single party of royalist-business interests from pre-dominating. In any case, it backfired on Robespierre since the Girondins gained majority and agitated for a war that he was virtually alone in opposing with many Jacobins jumping on the band wagon.

* CrusadingLawyer: He built his reputation as "L'Incorruptible" for defending the poor in pro-bono work, because of which he was fairly poor, until his election to the National Convention.
* TheDandy : He is definitely the most flamboyantly dressed of all revolutionaries, he wore coats of green, blue and pink, wore a powdered white wig and was known to wear blue-green tinted spectacles at all time.

Maximilien Robespierre was a major figure of UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution. A lawyer from the town of Arras, he was an advocate of human rights as defined by Creator/JeanJacquesRousseau, 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 and the subsequent chicanery on the part of UsefulNotes/LouisXVI 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.

To do this, the legislative assembly suspended its newly written constitution and formed a de facto emergency government, the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre was chosen to join the committee, and he famously justified its policy of "Terror" as stemming from a wartime necessity:
-> ''"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."''

It was this Committee that instituted the Law of Suspects, which provided the legal justification for [[ReignOfTerror the Terror]], as an emergency measure to bring the country under control. Robespierre was never actually the dictator or in any way the sole leader of France. He ''was'' the intellectual and moral backbone for the Committee while it ran the country; however, his influence within the Committee was subject to the machinations of other members and tended to ebb and flow. A fact which made him extremely paranoid and started feeding his already considerable sense of self-righteousness.

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 came into conflict with many proto-socialists, who wanted the new France to abolish private property and allow franchise exclusively to the sans-culottes. 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.

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.

Personally, Robespierre was a slight, somewhat fastidious man who maintained immaculate dress and cleanliness at all times, although said dress was perpetually worn and out of fashion. His nickname was "The Incorruptible," and it was not ironic in any way. One biography of Robespierre is entitled "Fatal Purity."

A highly controversial person, the level of sympathy allotted to him depends on the work. Compare with [[UsefulNotes/RichardIII 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.

It's worth noting that many of the morality tropes listed here differ in different works/character representations.

* ReignOfTerror: A participant in the original; notably, he and his allies actually called it by that name.

** Another thing that remains debated is his jaw injury on the night of his arrest. Some say it was a BungledSuicide attempt (since many of his friends and his own brother tried to kill themselves and only one, Philippe Lebas succeeded). However, a National Guardsman Gendarme Merda claimed to have [[IShotMarvinInTheFace shot him in the face]], and there are many coins commemorating his "achievement".

* ShroudedInMyth: Robespierre personal papers were burnt by the government after Thermidor. Consequently, we only know him through his speeches, letters and other people testimonies. This widely explain the contradictory views about him, since we have no way to know him "from the inside".

* UnfortunateNames: Maximilien François Marie Isidore Robespierre.