Maximilien de Robespierre

“ The wretched man opens his eyes, glued together with blood; a shade of deadlier hue passes over his livid, sea-green face; he shudders, but utters no sound. The tumbrel reaches the Place de la Revolution. The furies of the guillotine rush round it, and execute a dance of fiendish joy, the crowd making room for them and applauding. Now the cart stops, and the condemned alight. In the first are the two Robespierres, Couthon, Henriot, and Lebas. Maximilien Robespierre is the only one who has strength left in him to ascend the scaffold without help. ”

“ It is this love for the Incorruptible that caused Coblenz, London and Vienna—in their desire to assail him and wound him—to speak of the armies of the Republic in no other terms than as the armies of Robespierre, to stamp him the bugbear of the entire continent; and yet, without propaganda, without a press, without friendly parties, to the furthest corner of the colonies—down-trodden humans recognized that the Incorruptible was the man in whose hands their principle was being defended. ”

“ They die under the swords of the foe, with the shout, "Long live the Republic!" on their lips; their last words are pæans to liberty, their last gasps are exclamations of homage to their country. If the leaders of the army were as valiant as our soldiers, Europe would have been defeated long ago. ”

“ It is self-evident that the domination of the Jacobins, as well as the domination of Robespierre, embraced within it the entire illusion of the petty bourgeoisie. But it also bears within it the elements of a new society. The Revolution shot beyond its goal, and that which lay beyond its goal is not mere insanity; this advance is rather the beginning of the new revolutionary principle, namely, it is that which the proletariat has inherited from the French Revolution. ”

“ Weaknesses, vices, prejudices are the road to monarchy. Carried away, too often perhaps, by the force of ancient habits, as well as by the innate imperfection of human nature, to false ideas and pusillanimous sentiments, we have more to fear from the excesses of weakness, than from excesses of energy. The warmth of zeal is not perhaps the most dangerous rock that we have to avoid; but rather that languour which ease produces and a distrust of our own courage. Therefore continually wind up the sacred spring of republican government, instead of letting it run down. ”

“ I will tell what the salvation of my fatherland and the triumph of freedom depend upon. If the same perfidious ones who guide the rage of the assassins aren’t yet visible to all eyes, I will leave to time the task of lifting the veil that covers them, and I will restrict myself to recalling those truths that alone can save this Republic. Yes, no matter what lack of seriousness with its lack of foresight might think, whatever perfidious counter-revolutionaries might say! The destiny of the republic is not yet fixed, and the vigilance of the people’s representatives is more than ever necessary. ”

“ Attested to by the entire revolution, this virtue would not alone suffice to reassure us against the factions who attempt without cease to corrupt and tear apart the republic. What is the reason for this? It’s that there are two peoples in France. The one is the mass of citizens, pure, simple thirsting for justice and friends of liberty. It is this virtuous people that spills all its blood to found the republic that is imposing to internal enemies and shakes the thrones of tyrants. ”

“ I do not believe that the Republic is a word that can be trifled with, I do not believe that the Republic exists to be made sport of. The thing that is now being done is the best method of restoring the monarchy.
The Constitution is invoked in defense of Louis. I shall not take up all the arguments; let me simply say: to be sure, the Constitution forbids everything you have done so far. Be sure of that, in fact, you have no right to hold the King a prisoner; on the other hand, he has the right to demand his immediate liberation, not to mention compensation. The Constitution condemns you! ”

“ To make war on crime is the path to the tomb and to immortality; to favor crime is the path to the throne and the scaffold. Perverse beings managed to throw the Republic and human reason into chaos. It’s a matter now of pulling them from this in order to create the harmony of the moral and political worlds. The French people have two guarantors of the possibility of executing this heroic enterprise: the current principles of representation and its own virtues. The moment in which we find ourselves is favorable, but it is perhaps unique. ”

“ It is also time for our allies to feel confidence in our caution and in our fate, and it is time that all our enemies may no longer have any doubts as to our might or our courage.
The French Revolution has shaken the world; the soaring flight to liberty of a great people was naturally displeasing to the kings who live about us. But to proceed from such displeasure to a declaration of war, to an establishment of the monstrous alliance of powers hostile to us, this was indeed a long journey. ”

“ If they were to reign one day the Fatherland would be lost. In saying these things I sharpen daggers against myself, and it is precisely for this that I say them. You will persevere in your principles and in your triumphal march. You will put down crime and you will save the fatherland... I have lived long enough... I saw the French people rise up from degradation and servitude to the heights of Glory and Freedom. ”

“ Roland the formidable accusation (M. Roland, the husband and Minister, was only the wife's shadow; she was the leader of an entire party and ended on the guillotine) that they had declared war in order that the Emperor of Austria might be freed from the necessity of declaring war himself, in other words, to give the Emperor the pretext he wanted, thus committing a great crime against the Revolution. Robespierre was wrong in believing that the men of the year 1792 were acting in understanding with the Austrians; we must lay something to the account of rhetorical exaggeration. ”

“ In affording an audience to the lawyer of Louis XVI you are opening the struggle of despotism against liberty, you are organizing the right of calumny and blasphemy against the Republic. For, the right to defend the overthrown despot involves also the right to say anything in his favor that may be desired. You are giving a new lease of life to all the defeated factions; you encourage them, you inspire the defeated monarchism with new energy, you recognize the right to take sides for or against the King without let or hindrance. ”

“ If the revolutionary government is not supported by the intelligence and the patriotism and by the benevolence of all the representatives of the people, where else should it draw the strength enabling it to face the efforts of a united Europe on an equal plane? The authority of the Constituent Assembly must be respected by all Europe. The tyrants are exhausting the resources of their politics, and sacrificing their treasures, in order to degrade this authority and destroy it. ”

“ Yet it is perfectly apparent that no men were ever obliged to govern a country in a more difficult situation, a more terrible plight, and that no leaders ever brought any nation, under such a catastrophe of the most elementary forces, to such real successes in so short a period of time, as did the dictators of the Committee of Public Safety, first under the leadership of Danton, and then under that of Robespierre. ”

“ When the powers of the earth league together to kill a feeble individual he must not insist on living; it is thus that living a long time doesn’t enter into our calculations. It’s not in order to live that we declare war on all tyrants and, what is even more dangerous, on all crimes. What man on earth has ever defended the rights of humanity with impunity? A few months ago I said to my colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety: “If the armies of the Republic are victorious, if we unmask the traitors, if we put down factions, they will assassinate us.” ”

“ The National Assembly, however, prefers its government to the cabinets of London and all the other courts of Europe. Either we shall rule, or the tyrants will rule us. What are the resources of our enemies in this war of treachery and corruption waged by them against the Republic? All the vices fight for them; the Republic has all the virtues on its side. The virtues are simple, poor, often ignorant, sometimes brutal. They are the heritage of the unhappy, the possession of the people. ”

“ But, when, by prodigious effects of courage and of reason, a whole people break asunder the fetters of despotism to make of the fragments trophies to liberty; when, by their innate vigor, they rise in a manner from the arms of death, to resume all the strength of youth when, in turns forgiving and inexorable, intrepid and docile, they can neither be checked by impregnable ramparts, nor by innumerable armies of tyrants leagued against them, and yet of themselves stop at the voice of the law ”

“ They were the true executors of the Revolution, whose aid was at first necessary to the bourgeoisie, but against whom the bourgeoisie was then obliged to set very definite limits on the Left, and ultimately to proceed with great bruality. Between these two extreme classes were the petty bourgeoisie, represented in the Convention by the petty bourgeois intelligentsia led by Robespierre and Danton. They are the vacillating figures of the Revolution; they stand between the parties; they have no sharply defined economic strata behind them. ”

“ The deputies take their respective places. Then in the deep and awful silence which follows, under the strained gaze of the mob in the gallery, the president speaks—
"Citoyens, I put to the vote, by standing and sitting, the arrest of Maximilien Robespierre, of Augustin Robespierre, of Couthon, of Saint-Just, and of Lebas. Let those who vote for these arrests stand up."
A hundred deputies rise. They are those of the Mountain.
Seeing the men of the Plain remain motionless, a ray of hope cheers Robespierre's despair. ”

“ If we spare them, they will conspire publicly; if we threaten them, they will conspire secretly or under the mask of patriotism. Yesterday they murdered the defenders of liberty; to-day they mingle in the procession of mourners and weep for their own victims. Blood has flowed all over the country on their account, but we need this blood in the struggle against the tyrants of Europe. The foreigners have set themselves up as the arbitrators of public peace; they have sought to do their work with money ”

“ The entire world is united, all wear the same countenance, and yet it is evident that when a king with an income of forty millions annually, still in possession of all the resources of the country, bearing the fairest crown of all the world—that when such a king leaves everything in the lurch in this manner, it must be because he feels certain that he will be able to return soon. And this feeling of sympathy cannot be based on the Emperor alone, or on the King of Sweden, or on the Army of the Rhine, the army of our enemy, or on all the brigands of Europe, who are united against us. ”

“ Even the aristocracy is now attempting to make itself popular. It conceals its counter-revolutionary pride, it hides its dagger under its rags and filth. Royalism is trying to overcome the victories of the Republic. The nobility, having learned from past experience, is ready to clasp liberty in a sweet embrace, in order to stifle it in the act. ”

“ How far should we get if every man unknown to the Revolution thus far, every man who has done nothing for the Revolution, may accuse men like Danton? If Danton is accused, I consider myself also as accused." Any one defended by Robespierre in such terms was safe. The affection of the Club of the Jacobins for Maximilien may be judged by the occasion of his illness, during which period no session of the Jacobins was opened without a preliminary report on Robespierre's health. ”

“ France was a country of peasants, and the exaggerated anti-clerical policy of Hébert, the violent declamations of the rabid former Prussian citizen Anacharsis Klotz, who declared himself to be a "personal enemy of Jesus Christ," could do nothing else than throw the peasants into the camp of the counter-revolution. Maximilien said that any one attempting to use force in order to prevent religious worship was a more dangerous fanatic than the priest who carries out a ceremony. He was obliged to fight Hébert, and in those days a fight meant life or death. ”

“ They are wounded and bleeding, masses of flesh rather than men. The hangman has very little to do. This cart on its way to the guillotine is a symbol. The men of the Committee of Public Safety, the friends of Robespierre, died fighting; they accepted death as they had accepted the blows of fate—serious and fighting to the last breath.
All the homes of the wealthy in Paris revealed their wealth on the day of 9 Thermidor. ”

“ The leaders of the party of the Girondistes, being the representatives of the commercial and industrial cities of France, of the rising third estate in the state, which was waging a struggle of many decades against the forces allied with the king, declared, once they had attained power, that the Revolution was over. But they beheld the violently surging forces of the country, the newly arising problems, and they believed that they might consolidate their rule and the existing stage of the Revolution by resorting to the war against Austria, which was inevitable in any case. ”