French politician. Appointed with the Constituent one, then member of Convention, Robespierre was the most influential man of the Committee of Public Safety of July 1793 to Thermidor year II (July 1794); he can be regarded as one of the main actors of this period of the French revolution.
People and the policy
Resulting from a family of the lower middle class, poor and endowed young man, Robespierre continue studies which lead it to the lawyer trade. He is, in his city and his province, an active member of intellectual companies (in particular the literary company of Rosati, of which Carnot also formed part), where the spirit of the Lights walks on in-depth. He is elected appointed third state with the general states after having made a public campaign (Call to the Artesian nation).
He is essential in the national political life as a representative of the democratic extreme left at the time of an electoral law poll-tax based against which he is one of the only deputies of Constituent to rise. At the beginning of 1791, with the club of the Jacobins, Robespierre is also one of the first to be declared favorable by the vote for all.
Vis-a-vis the corruption of the Components, with their ease with regard to the danger counter-revolutionary, Robespierre seemed the symbol of the rigor and the integrity morals; it was consequently called the Incorruptible one. He affirms that one should not intend to build the nation on an easy minority, but on the values and the enthusiasm of the people.
Impregnated ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robespierre undertakes to put them into practice. He becomes passionately unit, endeavouring to gather around the “modest” people the various aspirations of the Revolution, fighting against the factions, the monopolizers and the “monopolists of the public property”.
The rigor with the service of the State
With the club of the Jacobins, Robespierre is, in 1792, one of rare to denounce the dangers which represents, for the Revolution, the entry in war of France. But the once declared war, Robespierre all will implement to gain it, instituting an exceptional mode. Then, continues the opposition between Girondins and Mountain; Robespierre is elected with the insurrectionary Commune of Paris after August 10th; he enters to Convention as uncontested chief of the Mountain. After the defeat of Of Gironde, Robespierre is elected at the Committee of Public Safety at the end of July 1793; it had the appearance of an head of government there, although work is very collective there. More than that of Terror, Robespierre is the man of the revolutionary government, i.e. of an emergency government in time of war.
The revolutionary government is the government of Convention, and Robespierre fights passionately against what can slacken the authority of this single center; he fights against the federalistic revolt, which constitutes a threat for the national unit, but he also fights against the wild demagogy and expensive agitation with the sections of the sans culottes; he fights even against the excessive anticlericalism of certain representatives on mission which he considers provocative.
With the assistance, in particular, from Saint-Just and Couthon, Robespierre eliminates the various groups from mountain opponents, in favor of a radical revolution around Hébert, and Lenient partisans of the “moderantism” around Danton. He ends however up terrorizing the majority of Conventional, without to manage to join the people, that interests by no means the supreme worship Être which he tries to found. Thermidor 9 year II, its adversaries end up carrying it, preventing it from speaking with Convention and issuing it about charge. Stopped with the Town hall where it had found refuge, it was seriously wounded with the jaw at a stretch of gun, perhaps fired by the Merda gendarme. It was guillotined the following day.
The moral worship of the Nation
The political attitude of Robespierre is basically democratic: the law must fix the limits of the property allotted to each one by the nation, and the right to the existence is higher than the property right.
But cement of its thought is of a “moral” nature: its philosophical and humane designs are inspired by Rousseau, designs very idealistic and extremely far away from the economic and historical analysis. For Robespierre, the Republic is necessarily based on the virtue and the civic worship Être supreme.
From this point of view with the comprehension of Robespierre two great speeches are essential: that of February 5th, 1794 on the principles of political morals which must guide national Convention in the interior administration of the Republic, speech which contains the jacobine definition of the republican nation; that of May 7th, 1794 on the relationships of the religious ideas and morals with the republican principles and on national holidays. When, Thermidor 9, Robespierre is prevented from speaking, and that it feels lost, it can only say: “The brigands triumph. ”, word revealing the importance, at his place, from the moral point of view in the analysis of a political situation.