Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

by Ruth Scurr

  Brissot, whose father was an innkeeper in Chartres, was thirty-five when the Revolution began, just four years older than Robespierre. Thirteenth in a family of seventeen children, he had used his outstanding memory to educate himself and escape from his lowly background into the worlds of law and journalism. Rather pretentiously, he had adopted the name of a neighboring village, calling himself “Brissot de Warville” under the old regime. He was not elected to Versailles in 1789 but nevertheless somehow managed to inveigle his way onto the assembly’s Constitutional Committee and into Paris’s Municipal Assembly. Before 1789 he had founded a society to campaign for the abolition of slavery (Ami des noirs) and a newspaper called the Patriote français. Now that he was a revolutionary, Brissot dropped the aristocratic sounding “de Warville.” However, when he came to write his self-portrait—a popular genre at the time—he followed the fashion for doing so under an assumed name and called himself Phédor:

  Phédor is not very tall: at first glance there is nothing uncommon about him; but one can see in his eyes and face, particularly when he speaks, the active temper of his soul… He sacrifices his family to the cause of humanity. He is too credulous, too confiding. He is a stranger to revenge, as he is to self-interest. To judge from some of his writings, he might be compounded of bile and vengeance, whilst, in fact, he is too weak to hate anyone. He has friends, but not always of the heart-to-heart kind. He is as pleasant and easygoing in society and verbal argument as he is difficult and cantankerous in controversy. Phédor is one of those men who are at their best alone, and who are less useful to the world when they live in it than when they dwell in solitude.38

  Brissot thought of himself as unworldly, but he kept up with fashion. He attached great importance to dressing the part of a revolutionary. He was a prominent member of the Jacobin Club and one of the first to stop powdering his hair and start wearing the bonnet rouge. Active as he was in radical circles, Brissot had recently met and introduced to Pétion the fascinating Mme Roland, a staunch patriot who would soon preside over her own salon. Mme Roland had arrived in Paris early in 1791 on a business trip with her husband, an inspector of manufactures in Lyon. The business completed, he was ready to leave, but she insisted on staying and attending the Jacobin Club, where she could meet and socialize with radical revolutionaries. Manon Phlipon was the daughter of a Parisian artisan, a master engraver who had his workshop on the quai de l’Horloge, very close to Pont-Neuf. Her six siblings had all died at birth or in infancy. Precociously intellectual—she claimed Plutarch had been a major influence before she was nine years old—Manon grew up devouring books, teaching herself foreign languages, memorizing the Bible, and impressing the local parish priest with her knowledge of theology. Whomever would her parents find to marry her? In the end it was Jean Marie Roland, twenty years her senior, who asked for her hand when she was twenty-five. Like Brissot, she composed a self-portrait:

  At fourteen, as today, I was about five feet tall, fully developed, with a good leg, very prominent hips, broad-chested and with a full bust, small shoulders, an erect and graceful posture and quick, light step…. There was nothing special about my face apart from its fresh softness and lively expression. If one simply added together the individual features one might wonder whether there was any beauty there…. The mouth is rather large; one may see hundreds prettier but none with a sweeter or more winning smile. The eyes, on the other hand, are smallish and prominent. The irises are tinged with chestnut and grey. The impression they convey is of openness, vivacity and sympathy, reflecting the various changes of mood of an affectionate nature. Well-moulded eyebrows of auburn, the same colour as the hair, complete the picture. It is on the whole a proud and serious face that sometimes causes surprise but more often inspires confidence and interest. I was always a bit worried about my nose; it seemed to me too big at the tip.39

  By the summer of 1791, the Rolands, Brissot, and Pétion had become firm friends, so when the king’s flight to Varennes was discovered, it was natural for them to meet to discuss the implications for the Revolution. Yet for all the fervent ideas that flew around in their circle, Brissot and his friends were not at all sure how to react to the king’s flight. Over lunch chez Pétion on 21 June there was much agonizing. Was this the end of the monarchy? And what about a republic—was it necessary, or even possible, to have one in France? According to Mme Roland, “Robespierre, with his habitual grimace, and biting his nails, asked: ‘What is a Republic?’”40 He suspected a plot to assassinate the patriots and did not expect to survive another twenty-four hours. Nothing was clear. While Pétion later volunteered to go and fetch the king back from Varennes, Robespierre was more preoccupied with what was going on in the Jacobin Club in Paris. It was here, the same evening, that he made the most flamboyant speech of his career so far.

  “For me, the flight of the first public functionary ought not to appear a disastrous event. This could have been the best day of the Revolution, and it might still be,” Robespierre began. He told the Jacobins, calmly, directly, right at the beginning of his speech, that the assembly had been wrong to present the king’s flight as a kidnapping and to reaffirm its faith in his ministers. The assembly had not listened to him and had disregarded his cautionary words. It was obvious, Robespierre continued, that the king had chosen to desert his post at a crucial juncture in the Revolution. The constitution was nearly finished and there was lots wrong with it, not least the ridiculous divisions between citizens who could vote or stand for election and those who could not. Throughout France’s eighty-three new departments, treacherous priests were rejecting the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Foreign powers (Prussia and Austria) were preparing an invasion to end the Revolution, and on top of everything else, the harvest, though ready, was still in the fields: it would take only a small band of brigands to set it alight and starve the whole country. There could be no mistake: Louis XVI—or the prime public functionary, to give him the less glamorous title Robespierre preferred—had chosen to abandon revolutionary France at its most vulnerable. But that was not the worst of it:

  What scares me, gentlemen, is precisely that which seems to reassure everyone else. Here I need you to hear me out. I say once again, what scares me is what reassures all the others: it is that since this morning all our enemies speak the same language as us…. Look about you, share my fear, and consider how all now wear the same mask of patriotism.41

  The real enemy, as he saw it, was right there, in Paris, mingling with the true patriots. “Share my fear” was his invitation to the Jacobins to join him in the next stage of the Revolution. Here he took the dramatic step of turning not only against the king and his ministers but also against the assembly that had affirmed its faith in them earlier in the day. The assembly was wrong—Robespierre dared say it. For the public good, he would take the dangerous step of accusing almost all his colleagues in the assembly of being counterrevolutionary out of ignorance, terror, resentment, pride, or corruption. Let the press term him the new Nostradamus, prophesying the future in apocalyptic mode: he was, he assured the Jacobins, ready to sacrifice his life to truth, liberty, and the fatherland (la patrie). At this (according to his own newspaper), Camille Desmoulins leapt to his feet and cried, “We would all give our lives to save yours!” and the audience of eight hundred Jacobins, crammed inside the old monastery, joined in an impromptu oath to defend Robespierre’s life. It seems unlikely that Robespierre was genuinely in more danger than any of the other radical revolutionaries, who feared that the forces of counterrevolution might be galvanized into action by the king’s flight. Even so, the Jacobins in Marseille wrote to say they would come to Paris and defend him if the need arose. And the Cordeliers Club sent an armed guard to protect him in the rue Saintonge.

  Later that night, before going to bed, Robespierre made his will. The assembly and General Lafayette had issued orders for the royal family to return to Paris. But though they could still issue orders and be obeyed, as far as Robespierre was concerned, the assem
bly and General Lafayette were mutually discredited by the king’s flight: neither could be relied upon in the continuing struggle to provide France with a legitimate constitution. In his attempt to persuade the Jacobins of this, Robespierre succeeded in creating a schism at the club: 264 of the members who were also deputies in the assembly left to form the Feuillants, in a disused monastery of that name across the street from the Jacobins. The Feuillants Club, led by Antoine Barnave (a Protestant advocate from Grenoble), was committed to defending the king’s role in the forthcoming constitution, despite the discredit brought upon him by the flight to Varennes. Robespierre remained behind in the Jacobins with a handful of radical deputies, dedicated to curtailing the king’s powers under the new constitution. Robespierre’s break with his more moderate colleagues was decisive; from this point on his political future rested on his influence over what remained of the Jacobin Club and its network of affiliates throughout France. If the king had not fled, Robespierre would probably have settled down to his job as public prosecutor under the proposed constitutional monarchy. It would have been a more glamorous life than he ever hoped for in Arras, but not so very different in kind. However, the king had fled, and Mirabeau, who might have turned the situation around and rescued the monarchy despite everything, was dead. The configuration of power in Paris was changing very fast.

  The flight to Varennes had taken one day, yet the return of the royal family to Paris took four; during this time, Marie Antoinette’s hair turned gray.42 They were halfway back by the time deputies from the assembly (Pétion and Barnave) arrived to take charge of the dismal procession and protect it from the mob. Pétion and Barnave climbed into the carriage and the royal children sat on the other adults’ laps for the rest of the journey. Despite the presence of the deputies, violent incidents continued to plague the exhausted travelers, including a near miss with brigands in the notorious forest of Bondy. Inside the coach, Barnave did his best to befriend the king, assuring him that it would still be possible to save the constitutional monarchy. Robespierre’s friend Pétion was much less ingratiating, but it is hard to tell if his rudeness was deliberate or inadvertent. Afterward he claimed that Louis XVI’s sister had fallen in love with him by the time they reached the Tuileries, which seems unlikely, to say the least.

  THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY of the fall of the Bastille was nothing like the first. Thursday, 14 July 1791, was a beautiful summer’s day without a spot of rain, but the spirit of festive unity that had characterized the celebrations on the Champ de Mars a year earlier was nowhere in evidence. The king and queen did not attend. And the assembly, instead of turning out en masse as it had before, sent a delegation of just twenty-four deputies—one of them Robespierre. General Lafayette remained prominent on his white charger, but even he could scarcely ignore the suspicion and open hostility with which many in Paris now regarded him because of his continued support for the king. On the Champ de Mars the stadium had been expanded to hold more spectators than the year before, and the Altar of the Fatherland had been remodeled. In 1790 its dedication read, “the Nation, the Law, the King”; in 1791 it read, “the Nation, the Law, the——”: the last word was effaced.

  Gossec composed some music for the occasion: something less mournful than for Mirabeau’s funeral and aptly entitled La prise de la Bastille (The Fall of the Bastille).43 During the ceremony there were occasional cries of “No more king!” And back in the Manège the Assembly, meeting for business as usual despite the celebrations, heard a petition—one of many—from Danton’s Cordeliers Club, demanding a national referendum on the fate of the king who had tried to abandon the Revolution. In his newspaper, Marat wrote that he suspected the assembly had included Robespierre in the delegation to the Champ de Mars to keep him away from the tribune. While his back was turned it might try to exonerate the king, that “crowned brigand, perjurer, traitor, and conspirator, without honor and without soul.” Vigilance, vigilance, screamed the Ami du peuple.44

  Robespierre wanted to put Louis XVI on trial. Submitting to the rule of law could degrade no one, he insisted, not even the king. But more moderate deputies were concerned about the impact such a trial would have on the constitutional monarchy, which, after two long years of discussion and disagreement, was at last ready to come into effect. The moderates were helped by the unexpected arrival of a letter from General Bouillé taking the blame for the flight to Varennes on his own shoulders, from the safe distance of Luxembourg. “I arranged everything, decided everything, ordered everything. I alone gave the orders, not the king. It is against me alone that you should direct your bloody fury.”45 This was the excuse the assembly deputies who advocated exonerating the king needed. The day after the Festival of Federation, inside the Manège, they made a case for leniency, for putting the past behind and allowing Louis XVI to assume the role allotted him under the forthcoming constitution. But the Cordeliers Club was outside, banging on the door, again demanding a referendum. Robespierre and Pétion went out to negotiate. They told the petitioners it was too late. They gave them a discouraging letter to take back to their club: petitions like this were not a helpful contribution; please could they stop.46 This letter—signed by both Robespierre and Pétion—did not have its intended effect. Instead, it inspired the Cordelier and Jacobin Clubs to unite behind a new petition calling for the deposition of the king. This was drafted by Brissot in terms that cleverly avoided calling for a republic by demanding the “replacement of Louis XVI by constitutional means.”

  Standing at the Altar of the Fatherland, where General Lafayette had stood two days before to celebrate the fall of the Bastille, Danton read the text aloud to crowds assembled on the Champ de Mars on 16 July. The same day, the deputies in the Manège voted to suspend the king, but only until he had approved the new constitution. The petition for his dethronement was therefore now illegal, since it contravened the assembly’s decree. Realizing this, the Jacobins rapidly withdrew their support and canceled the printing of the petition before it left the printer’s shop. The Cordeliers were less cautious. Reassembling the following day at the Altar of the Fatherland, they drew up yet another petition, demanding the trial of the king. There was a disturbing incident early in the morning, before the crowds arrived: two men were found hiding under the altar, assumed to be spies, and summarily hanged à la lanterne. However, since it was Sunday, many of the petitioners arrived later in the day with their wives and children, and the prevailing atmosphere that afternoon was peaceful and festive. By early evening over six thousand people had signed the petition and the crowds showed no sign of dispersing. At around seven, General Lafayette and Mayor Bailly arrived at the Champ de Mars. Authorized by the assembly, they came accompanied by armed National Guardsmen, ready to suppress the demonstration. About fifty of the signatories were shot on the steps of the altar; their blood splattered across what was left of its dedication: “the Nation, the Law, the——” was illegible now. A matching red mark of terror and repression appeared simultaneously above the Hôtel de Ville—the red flag of martial law was flying and the prominent revolutionaries ran for their lives.

  Eighty years later, in the middle of another revolution in 1871, a fire in the Hôtel de Ville destroyed the soiled petition of 17 July 1791. Reputedly, Danton’s name was not on it, nor was Robespierre’s. After the petition on dethronement was outlawed, Danton had had nothing to do with organizing the next one. He may not even have been on the Champ de Mars that Sunday. Nonetheless, on learning that his enemy, General Lafayette, had taken charge of Paris, he fled to Arcis-sur-Aube (where he had been born), then to London, where he lived in Soho on Greek Street for a month, until it was safe to return. Robespierre spent the evening of 17 July in the Jacobin Club. Hearing the news of bloodshed on the Champ de Mars, he wept unapologetically:

  Let us weep for those citizens who have perished: let us weep even for those citizens who, in good faith, were the instruments of their death. Let us in any case try to find one ground of consolation in this great disaster: le
t us hope that all our citizens, armed as well as unarmed, will take warning from this dire example, and hasten to swear peace and concord by the side of these newly dug graves.47

  Was this perhaps ignoble? Given that he had supported—if not actually initiated—the idea of putting the king on trial for his flight to Varennes, why wasn’t Robespierre there among the men, women, and children on whom the National Guard opened fire? Why was he weeping at the Jacobins, instead of with the wounded at the Altar of the Fatherland? Like Danton, Robespierre had had nothing to do with the petition that had caused the bloodshed. Critical of the Assembly as he was, he recognized the legal force of its decision on the king and the forthcoming constitution. In his speech to the Jacobins it was right and responsible to point out that the National Guardsmen were citizens too—volunteer soldiers following orders. Those who gave the orders, not those who carried them out, were the proper objects of the people’s anger.