Maximilien Robespierre

Early 1791 freedom of defense became the standard; any citizen was allowed to defend another.[91][92] From the beginning, the authorities were concerned about this experiment without future. Derasse suggests it was a "collective suicide" by the lawyers in the Assembly.[93] In criminal cases, the expansion of the right ... gave priority to the spoken word.[94] In 1791 Robespierre held 328 speeches almost once a day.

On 28 January Robespierre discussed in the Assembly the organisation of the National Guard;[95] for three years a hot topic in French newspapers.[96] Early March provincial militias were abolished and the Paris département was placed above the Commune in all matters of general order and security. According to Jan ten Brink it had the right to suspend the Commune's decisions and to dispose of the army against her in case of emergency. On 27 and 28 April 1791, Robespierre opposed plans to reorganize the National Guard and restrict its membership to active citizens.[97][98] It was regarded as too aristocratic. He demanded the reconstitution of the National Guard on a democratic basis.[99] He felt that the National Guard had to become the instrument of defending liberty and no longer be a threat to it.[100]

On 9 May, the Assembly discussed the right to petition.[101] Article III specifically recognised the right of active citizens to meet together to draw up petitions and addresses and present them to municipal authorities.[102] On Sunday 15 May the Constituent Assembly declared full and equal citizenship for all free people of color. In the debate Robespierre said: "I feel that I am here to defend the rights of men; I cannot consent to any amendment and I ask that the principle be adopted in its entirety." He descended from the rostrum in the middle of the repeated applause of the left and of all the tribunes.[103] On 16–18 May when the elections began, Robespierre proposed and carried the motion that no deputy who sat in the Constituent assembly could sit in the succeeding Legislative assembly.[104] The principal tactical purpose of this self-denying ordinance was to block the ambitions of the old leaders of the Jacobins, Antoine Barnave, Adrien Duport, and Alexandre de Lameth,[105] aspiring to create a constitutional monarchy roughly similar to that of England.[106][lower-alpha 10] On 28 May, Robespierre proposed all Frenchmen should be declared active citizens and eligible to vote.[108] On 30 May, he delivered a speech on the abolishment of the death penalty but without success.[109] According to Hillary Mantel: It is perfectly constructed, a brilliant fusion of logic and emotion, as much a work of art as a building or a piece of music could be.[110] The following day, Robespierre attacked Abbé Raynal, who sent an address criticising the work of the Assembly and demanding the restoration of the royal prerogative.

On 10 June, Robespierre delivered a speech on the deplorable state of the police and proposed to dismiss officers.[100] The next day, Robespierre accepted the function of "public accuser" in the criminal tribunal preparing indictments and ensuring the defence.[111][lower-alpha 11] Two days later, L'Ami du Roi, a royalist pamphlet, described Robespierre as a "lawyer for bandits, rebels and murderers".[83] On 14 June, the abolition of the guild system was sealed; the Le Chapelier Law prohibited any kind of workers' coalition or assembly. (It concerned in the first instance as much collective petitioning by the political clubs as trade associations.[113]) Proclaiming free enterprise as the norm upset Jean-Paul Marat, but not the urban labourer nor Robespierre.[114] On 15 June, Pétion became president of the "tribunal criminel provisoire", after Duport refused to work with Robespierre.[115][116]

After Louis XVI's failed flight to Varennes, the Assembly decreed that the king be suspended from his duties on 25 June until further notice. Between 13 and 15 July, the Assembly debated the restoration of the king and his constitutional rights.[117] Robespierre declared in the Jacobin Club on 13 July: The current French constitution is a republic with a monarch.[118] It is therefore neither a monarchy nor a republic. She is both.[119] Meanwhile Tout-Paris was irritated by a decree to prevent the gathering of 20,000 armed men outside the city walls to celebrate 14 July.[120] The crowd on the Champ de Mars approved a petition calling for the king's trial. Alarmed at the progress of the Revolution, the moderate Jacobins in favour of a constitutional monarchy founded the club of the Feuillants on the next day, taking with them 264 deputies. In the evening, the King was restored in his functions.

On Saturday 17 July, Bailly and Lafayette declared a ban on gathering followed by martial law.[121][122] After the Champ de Mars massacre, the authorities ordered numerous arrests. Robespierre, who attended the Jacobin club, did not dare to go back to the Rue Saintonge where he lodged, and so asked Laurent Lecointre if he knew a patriot near the Tuileries who could put him up for the night. Lecointre suggested Duplay's house and took him there.[123] Maurice Duplay, a cabinetmaker and ardent admirer, lived at 398 Rue Saint-Honoré near the Tuileries. After a few days, Robespierre decided to move in permanently, although he lived in the backyard and was constantly exposed to the sound of working.[124] He was motivated by a desire to live closer to the Assembly and the Jacobin club. In September 1792, his younger sister and brother joined him and lived in the front house, but Charlotte insisted on moving to 5 Rue St Florentin because of his increased prestige and her tensions with Madame Duplay.[73] According to his friend, the surgeon Joseph Souberbielle, Joachim Vilate, and Duplay's daughter Élisabeth, Robespierre became engaged to Duplay's eldest daughter Éléonore, but his sister Charlotte vigorously denied this; also his brother Augustin refused to marry her.[125][126][127]

On 3 September, the French Constitution of 1791 was accepted; ten days later by the King also. Former "advocates" lost their title, their distinctive form of dress, their status, and their professional orders and adapted their practices to the new political and legal situation.[94] The Penal Code is dated 25 September. On 29 September, the day before the dissolution of the Assembly, Robespierre opposed Jean Le Chapelier, who wanted to proclaim an end to the revolution and restrict the freedom of the clubs. Robespierre had been carefully preparing for this confrontation and it was the climax of his political career up to this point.[128] Pétion and Robespierre were brought back in triumph to their homes.[lower-alpha 12] On 16 October, Robespierre held a speech in Arras; one week later in Béthune, a small town he wished to settle. Robespierre noticed the inns in Pas de Calais were filled with émigrés.[129] On 28 November, he was back in the Jacobin club, where he met with a triumphant reception. Collot d'Herbois gave his chair to Robespierre, who presided that evening. On 11 December 1791 Robespierre was installed as "accusateur public".[130]

On 1 August the Assembly voted on Carnot's proposal and ordered the municipalities that pikes should be issued to all citizens, except vagabonds, etc.[170][171][172] On 3 August the mayor and 47 sections demanded the deposition of the king. On 4 August the government planned to evade; during the night volunteers from Marseille led by Charles Barbaroux moved into the Cordeliers Convent.[173] On 5 August Robespierre announced the uncovering of a plan for the king to escape to Château de Gaillon.[174] On 7 August Pétion suggested to Robespierre to contribute to the departure of Fédérés to appease the capital.[175] The Council of Ministers suggested arresting Danton, Marat and Robespierre if they visited the Jacobin club.[176] On 9 August, when the Assembly refused to impeach LaFayette, the tocsin called the sections into arms.[177] In the evening the "commissionaires" of several sections (Billaud-Varenne, Chaumette, Hébert, Hanriot, Fleuriot-Lescot, Pache, Bourdon) gathered in the town hall. At midnight the municipal council of the city was dissolved. Sulpice Huguenin, head of the sans-culottes of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, was appointed provisional president of the Insurrectionary Commune.

A sans-culotte with his pike

Early in the morning on (Friday, 10 August) 30,000 Fédérés (volunteers from the countryside) and Sans-culottes (militants from the Paris sections) led a successful assault upon the Tuileries;[178] according to Robespierre a triumph for the "passive" (non-voting) citizens. The frightened Assembly suspended the king and voted for the election of a National Convention to take its place.[179] On the night of 11 August Robespierre was elected to the Paris Commune as one of the representatives for the "Section de Piques", the district where he lived.[180] The governing committee called for the summoning of a convention chosen by universal male suffrage,[181] to form a new government and reorganize France. Camille Desmoulins thought that everything was over and that they could finally rest, but Robespierre overruled this by pointing out it could only be the beginning. On 13 August Robespierre declared himself against the strengthening of the départements.[182] The next day Danton invited him to join the Council of Justice. Robespierre published the twelfth and last issue of "Le Défenseur de la Constitution", both an account and political testament.[183][184]

On 16 August, Robespierre presented a petition to the Legislative Assembly from the Paris Commune to demand the establishment of a provisional Revolutionary Tribunal that had to deal with the "traitors" and "enemies of the people". The next day Robespierre was appointed as one of eight judges. When Robespierre refused to preside over it he was criticized.[lower-alpha 14] Robespierre himself preferred to represent the commune,[186][187] and Fouquier-Tinville was appointed as president. The Paris commune decided to install the guillotine permanently.[188]

The Prussian army crossed the French frontier on 19 August. The Paris armed sections were incorporated in 48 battalions of the National Guard under Santerre. The Assembly decreed that all the non-juring priests had to leave Paris within a week and the country within two weeks.[189] On 27 August, in the presence of almost half the population of Paris, a funeral ceremony was held on Place du Carrousel for the victims who were killed during storming the Tuileries.[190]

The passive citizens still strived for acceptance and the supply of weapons. Danton proposed that the Assembly should authorize house searches 'to distribute to the defenders of the "Patrie" the weapons that indolent or ill-disposed citizens may be hiding'. The section Sans-culottes organized itself as a surveillance committee, conducting searches and making arrests all over Paris.[191][192] On 28 August, the assembly ordered a curfew for the next two days.[193] The city gates were closed; all communication with the country was stopped. At the behest of Justice Minister Danton, thirty commissioners from the sections were ordered to search in every (suspect) house for weapons, munition, swords, carriages, and horses.[194][195] "They searched every drawer and every cupboard, sounded every panel, lifted every hearthstone, inquired into every correspondence in the capital. As a result of this inquisition, more than 1,000 "suspects" were added to the immense body of political prisoners already confined in the jails and convents of the city."[196] One of the prisoners was Beaumarchais, who spent under a week in prison for criticising the government. Marat and Robespierre both disliked Condorcet who proposed that the "enemies of the people" belonged to the whole nation and should be judged constitutionally in its name.[197] A sharp conflict developed between the Legislative and the Commune and its sections.[198][199] On 30 August the interim minister of Interior Roland and Guadet tried to suppress the influence of the Commune because the sections had exhausted the searches. The Assembly, tired of the pressures, declared the Commune illegal and suggested the organization of communal elections.[200]

Robespierre was no longer willing to cooperate with Brissot, who promoted the Duke of Brunswick, and Roland, who proposed that the members of the government should leave Paris, taking the treasury and the king with it. On Sunday morning 2 September the members of the Commune, gathering in the town hall to proceed the election of deputies to the National Convention, decided to maintain their seats and have Rolland and Brissot arrested.[201][202] Madame de Staël who tried to escape Paris was forced by the crowd to go to the town hall. She noted that Robespierre was in the chair that day, assisted by Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne as secretaries.[203]

Louis stands trial before the convention, as Robespierre watches from the first row. Engraving by Reinier Vinkeles

The convention's unanimous declaration of a French Republic on 21 September 1792 left the fate of the former king open to debate. A commission was therefore established to examine the evidence against him while the convention's Legislation Committee considered legal aspects of any future trial. Most Montagnards favoured judgment and execution, while the Girondins were more divided concerning how to proceed, with some arguing for royal inviolability, others for clemency, and others advocating lesser punishment or banishment.[230] On 13 November Robespierre stated in the Convention that a Constitution which Louis had violated himself, and which declared his inviolability, could not now be used in his defence.[231] Robespierre had been taken ill and had done little other than support Saint-Just, a former colonel in the National Guard, who gave his first major speech to address and argue against the king's inviolability. On 20 November, opinion turned sharply against Louis following the discovery of a secret cache of 726 documents consisting of Louis's communications with bankers and ministers.[232] At his trial, he claimed not to recognize documents signed by himself.[233]

With the question of the king's fate now occupying public discourse, Robespierre delivered on 3 December a speech that would define the rhetoric and course of Louis's trial.[234] All the deputies from the Mountain were asked to attend. Robespierre argued that the dethroned king could now function only as a threat to liberty and national peace and that the members of the Assembly were not to be impartial judges but rather statesmen with responsibility for ensuring public safety:

Louis was a king, and our republic is established; the critical question concerning you must be decided by these words alone. Louis was dethroned by his crimes; Louis denounced the French people as rebels; he appealed to chains, to the armies of tyrants who are his brothers; the victory of the people established that Louis alone was a rebel; Louis cannot, therefore, be judged; he already is judged. He is condemned, or the republic cannot be absolved. To propose to have a trial of Louis XVI, in whatever manner one may, is to retrogress to royal despotism and constitutionality; it is a counter-revolutionary idea because it places the revolution itself in litigation. In effect, if Louis may still be given a trial, he may be absolved, and innocent. What am I saying? He is presumed to be so until he is judged. But if Louis is absolved, if he may be presumed innocent, what becomes of the revolution? If Louis is innocent, all the defenders of liberty become slanderers. [235]

In arguing for a judgment by the elected Convention without trial, Robespierre supported the recommendations of Jean-Baptiste Mailhe, who headed the commission reporting on legal aspects of Louis's trial or judgment. Unlike some Girondins (Pétion), Robespierre specifically opposed judgment by primary assemblies or a referendum, believing that this could cause a civil war.[236] While he called for a trial of Queen Marie-Antoinette and the imprisonment of the Dauphin of France, Robespierre advocated that the king be executed despite his opposition to capital punishment:

Yes, the death penalty is, in general, a crime, unjustifiable by the indestructible principles of nature, except in cases protecting the safety of individuals or the society altogether. Ordinary misdemeanours have never threatened public safety because society may always protect itself by other means, making those culpable powerless to harm it. But for a king dethroned in the bosom of a revolution, which is as yet cemented only by laws; a king whose name attracts the scourge of war upon a troubled nation; neither prison nor exile can render his existence inconsequential to public happiness; this cruel exception to the ordinary laws avowed by justice can be imputed only to the nature of his crimes. With regret, I pronounce this fatal truth: Louis must die so that the nation may live.[237]

On a proposal of Claude Bazire, a Dantonist, the National Convention decreed that Louis XVI be tried by its members.[238] The next day on 4 December the Convention decreed all the royalist writings illegal.[239] 26 December was the day of the last hearing of the King. On 14 January 1793, the king was unanimously voted guilty of conspiracy and attacks upon public safety. Never before the convention was like a court.[240] On 15 January the call for a referendum was defeated by 424 votes to 287, which Robespierre led. On 16 January, voting began to determine the king's sentence; the session continued for 24 hours. Robespierre worked fervently to ensure the king's execution. The Jacobins successfully defeated the Girondins' final appeal for clemency.[241] On 20 January half of the deputies voted for immediate death. The next day Louis XVI was guillotined.

Journées des 31 Mai, 1er et 2 Juin 1793, an engraving of the Convention surrounded by National Guards, forcing the deputies to arrest the Girondins and to establish an armed force of 6,000 men. The insurrection was organized by the Paris Commune and supported by Montagnards.

The uprising of the Parisian sans-culottes from 31 May to 2 June 1793. The scene takes place in front of the Deputies Chamber in the Tuileries. The depiction shows Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles and Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud.

After the execution of the king, the influence of Robespierre, Danton, and the pragmatic politicians increased at the expense of the Girondins who were largely seen as responsible for the inadequate response to the Flanders Campaign they had themselves initiated. On 24 February the Convention decreed the first, but unsuccessful Levée en Masse as the attempt to draft new troops set off an uprising in rural France. The Montagnards lost influence in Marseille, Toulon and Lyon. At the end of February, more than a thousand shops were plundered in Paris. Protesters claimed that the Girondins were responsible for the rising and high prices.[242]

On 10 March 1793, a provisional Revolutionary Tribunal was established; five days later the Convention appointed Fouquier-Tinville as the "accusateur public" and Fleuriot-Lescot as his assistant. On 12 March Dumouriez criticized the interference of officials of the War Ministry which employed many Jacobins.[243] He attacked not only Pache, the new mayor, but also Marat and Robespierre.[244] The Jacobin leaders were quite sure that, after the Battle of Neerwinden (1793), France had come close to a military coup mounted by Dumouriez and supported by the Girondins. On 18 March Barère proposed to establish a Committee of Public Safety. On 22 March Dumouriez urged the Duke of Chartres to join his plan to dissolve the convention, to restore the French Constitution of 1791, the restoration of a constitutional monarchy and to free Marie-Antoinette and her children.[245][246] On 25 March Robespierre became one of the 25 members of the Committee of General Defence to coordinate the war effort.[247] He demanded that relatives of the king should leave France, but Marie-Antoinette should be judged.[248] He spoke of vigorous measures to save the convention but left the committee within a few days. Marat began to promote a more radical approach, war on the Girondins.[249] He would be arrested a few weeks later.

On 3 April Robespierre declared before the Convention that the whole war was a prepared game between Dumouriez and Brissot to overthrow the First French Republic. On 5 April the Convention substantially expanded the power of the Tribunal révolutionnaire; the Montagne raised the stakes by sending out a circular from the Jacobin Club in Paris to all the sister Jacobin clubs across France, appealing for petitions demanding the recall – that is, the expulsion from the convention – of any deputés who had tried to save the life of 'the tyrant'. On 6 April the Committee of Public Safety was installed with deputies from the Plaine and the Dantonists but no Girondins or Robespierrists.[250] Robespierre who was not elected was pessimistic about the prospects of parliamentary action and told the Jacobins that it was necessary to raise an army of Sans-culottes to defend Paris and arrest infidel deputies, naming and accusing Brissot, Isnard, Vergniaud, Guadet and Gensonné.[251] There are only two parties according to Robespierre: the people and its enemies.[252] One of them was Charles Barbaroux, a leader of the Fédérés and popular in the South.

Robespierre's speeches during April 1793 reflect the growing radicalization. "I ask the sections to raise an army large enough to form the kernel of a Revolutionary Army that will draw all the sans-culottes from the departments to exterminate the rebels..."[253] "Force the government to arm the people, who in vain demanded arms for two years."[254] Suspecting further treason, Robespierre invited the convention to vote the death penalty against anyone who would propose negotiating with the enemy.[255] Marat was imprisoned calling for a military tribunal as well as the suspension of the convention.[256] On 15 April the convention was stormed by the people from the sections, demanding the removal of those Girondins who had defended the King. Till 17 April the convention discussed the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1793, a political document that preceded that country's first republican constitution. On 18 April the Commune announced an insurrection against the convention after the arrest of Marat. On 19 April Robespierre opposed article 7 on equality before the law; on 22 April the convention discussed article 29 on the right of resistance.[257] On 24 April 1793 Robespierre presented his version with four articles on the right of property.[lower-alpha 16] He was in effect questioning the individual right of ownership,[260] and advocated a progressive tax and fraternity between the people of all the nations.[253]

On 27 April the convention decreed (on the proposal of Danton) to send 20,000 additional forces to the departments in revolt.[261] According to François Mignet the commune was destined to triumph over the convention. Pétion called for the help of supporters of law and order.[262]

On 1 May, according to the Girondin deputé Dulaure 8,000 armed men prepared to go to the Vendée surrounded the convention and threatened not to leave if the emergency measures (a decent salary and maximum on food prices) demanded were not adopted.[263][264] On 4 May the convention agreed to support the families of soldiers and sailors who left their home to fight the enemy. Robespierre pressed ahead with his strategy of class war.[265] On 8 and 12 May in the Jacobin Club, Robespierre restated the necessity of founding a revolutionary army to be funded by a tax on the rich and would be intended to defeat aristocrats and counter-revolutionaries inside both the convention and across France. He said that public squares should be used to produce arms and pikes.[266] Mid May Marat and the Commune supported him publicly and secretly.[267] After hearing these statements, the Girondins became concerned. On 18 May Guadet called for the closing of all the political institutions in Paris and to examine the "exactions" and to replace municipal authorities.[268][269][270] Within a few days, the Convention decided to set up a commission of inquiry of twelve members, with a very strong Girondin majority.[271] On 24 May the Twelve proposed reinforcing the National Guard patrols round the convention.[272] Jacques Hébert, the editor of Le Père Duchesne, was arrested after attacking or calling for the death of the 22 Girondins. The next day, the Commune demanded that Hébert be released. The president of the Convention Maximin Isnard, who had enough of the tyranny of the Commune, threatened with the destruction of Paris.

François Hanriot chef de la section des Sans-Culottes (Rue Mouffetard); drawing by Gabriel in the Carnavalet Museum

On 26 May, after a week of silence, Robespierre delivered one of the most decisive speeches of his career.[273] He openly called at the Jacobin Club "to place themselves in insurrection against corrupt deputies".[274] Isnard declared that the convention would not be influenced by any violence and that Paris had to respect the representatives from elsewhere in France.[275] The Convention decided Robespierre would not be heard. (During the whole debate Robespierre sat on the gallery.) The atmosphere became extremely agitated. Some deputies were willing to kill if Isnard dared to declare civil war in Paris; the president was asked to give up his seat. On 28 May a weak Robespierre excused himself twice for his physical condition but attacked in particular Brissot of royalism. He referred to 25 July 1792 where their points of view split.[276][277] Robespierre left the convention after applause from the left side and went to the town hall.[278] There he called for an armed insurrection against the majority of the convention. "If the Commune does not unite closely with the people, it violates its most sacred duty", he said.[279] In the afternoon the Commune demanded the creation of a Revolutionary army of sansculottes in every town of France, including 20,000 men to defend Paris.[280][274][281] The 29 May was occupied in preparing the public mind. Robespierre admitted he almost gave up his career because of his anxieties since he became a deputy.[282] The delegates representing 33 of the Paris sections formed an insurrectionary committee.[283] Henriot was elected as "Commandant-Général" of the Parisian National Guard. Saint-Just was added to the Committee of Public Safety; Couthon became secretary. The next day the tocsin in the Notre-Dame was rung and the city gates were closed; the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June began. Hanriot, was ordered to fire a cannon on the Pont-Neuf as a sign of alarm. Danton rushed to the tribune: "Break up the Commission of Twelve! You have heard the thunder of the cannon. Robespierre urged the arrest of the Girondins.[284] Around ten in the morning 12,000 armed citizens appeared to protect the Convention against the arrest of Girondin deputies. On Saturday 1 June the Commune gathered almost all day and devoted it to the preparation of a great movement. The "Comité insurrectionnel" ordered Hanriot to surround the Convention 'with a respectable armed force'.[285] In the evening 40,000 men surrounded the building to force the arrest. Marat lead the attack on the representatives, who had voted against the execution of the King and since then paralyzed the Convention.[286][287] The Committee of Public Safety postponed decisions on the accused deputies for three days; Marat demanded a decision within a day.[288]

Unsatisfied with the result the commune demanded and prepared a "Supplement" to the revolution. Hanriot offered (or was ordered) to march the National Guard from the town hall to the National Palace.[289] The next morning a large force of armed citizens, some estimated 80,000 or 100,000, but Danton spoke of only 30,000,[290] surrounded the Convention with artillery. "The armed force", Hanriot said, "will retire only when the convention has delivered to the people the deputies denounced by the Commune."[291] Two pieces were directed upon the convention, who, retiring to the gardens, sought an outlet at various points, but found all the issues guarded. Confronted on all sides by bayonets and pikes, the deputies returned to the meeting hall. The Girondins believed they were protected by the law, but the people in the galleries called for their arrest. Twenty-two Girondins were seized one by one after some juggling with names.[292] They finally decided that 31 deputies were not to be imprisoned,[lower-alpha 17] but only subject to house arrest;[293] scarcely half of the assembly taking part in the vote.

The Montagnards now had unchallenged control of the convention; according to Couthon the citizens of Paris had saved the country.[294] The Girondins, going to the provinces, joined the counter-revolution.[295] Within two weeks and for three months almost fifty departments were in rebellion.

During the insurrection Robespierre had scrawled a note in his memorandum-book:

What we need is a single will (il faut une volonté une). It must be either republican or royalist. If it is to be republican, we must have republican ministers, republican newspapers, republican deputies, a republican government. ... The internal dangers come from the middle classes; to defeat the middle classes we must rally the people. ... The people must ally themselves with the Convention, and the Convention must make use of the people.[296][297]

On 3 June French the convention decided to split up the land belonging to Émigrés and sell it to farmers. On 12 June Robespierre wanted to resign lacking strength.[298] On 13 July Robespierre defended the plans of Le Peletier to teach revolutionary ideas in schools.[299] On the following day the convention rushed to praise Marat – who was murdered in his bathtub – for his fervor and revolutionary diligence. Opposing Pierre-Louis Bentabole Robespierre simply called for an inquiry into the circumstances of his death. He did not pronounce his surname as they were never friends.[300] On 17 or 22 July the Émigres were expropriated by decree; proofs of ownership had to be collected and burnt.

Triumvirate of : (L-R) Saint-Just, Robespierre, and Couthon

Print representing a fr:Comité de surveillance of the Parisian section of the year II, after Jean-Baptiste Huet. (National Library of France, Paris.)

On 5 December the journalist Camille Desmoulins launched a new journal, Le Vieux Cordelier. He defended Danton and warned not to exaggerate the revolution. He compared Robespierre with Julius Caesar and argued that the Revolution should return to its original ideas en vogue around 10 August 1792.[347][348] In the fourth issue Desmoulins took up the cause of the 200,000 defenceless civilians and that had been detained in prisons as suspects.[349] A Committee of Grace had to be established. Desmoulins addressed Robespierre directly, writing, "My dear Robespierre... my old school friend... Remember the lessons of history and philosophy: love is stronger, more lasting than fear."[350] On 8 December, Madame du Barry was guillotined. On receiving notice that he was to appear on the next day before the Revolutionary Tribunal Étienne Clavière committed suicide. On 12 December Robespierre attacked the wealthy foreigner Cloots in the Jacobin club of being a Prussian spy. Thomas Paine lost his seat in the convention, was arrested, and locked up having been friendly with Brissot. (Robespierre denounced the "dechristianizers" as foreign enemies.) The Indulgents mounted an attack on the Committee of Public Safety being murderers.[351] On 17 December Vincent and Ronsin were arrested. On 21 December Collot d'Herbois declared: "...if I had arrived two days later I would perhaps have been put under indictment myself."[352] Under intense emotional pressure from Lyonnaise women, Robespierre suggested that a secret commission be set up to examine the cases of the Lyon rebels, to see if injustices had been committed. This is the closest Robespierre came to adopting a public position against the use of terror.[353]

Desmoulins counselled Robespierre not to attempt to build the Republic on such a rare quality as virtue. On the next day, 25 December, thoroughly provoked by Desmoulins' insistent challenges, Robespierre produced his Report on the Principles of Revolutionary Government.[348] Robespierre replied to the plea for an end to the Terror, justifying the collective dictatorship of the National Convention, administrative centralization, and the purging of local authorities. He said he had to avoid two cliffs: indulgence and severity. He could not consult the 18th-century political authors, because they had not foreseen such a course of events. He protested against the various factions [Hébertists and Dantonists] that threatened the government.[354][355] Robespierre strongly believed that the Terror was still necessary; "the Government has to defend itself" [against conspirators] and "to the enemies of the people it owes only death."[356][357][358] According to R.R. Palmer and Donald C. Hodges, this was the first important statement in modern times of a philosophy of dictatorship.[359][360]

In his Report on the Principles of Political Morality of 5 February 1794, Robespierre praised the revolutionary government and argued that terror and virtue were necessary:

If virtue is 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.[361]

Aulard sums up the Jacobin train of thought, "All politics, according to Robespierre, must tend to establish the reign of virtue and confound vice. He reasoned thus: those who are virtuous are right; error is a corruption of the heart; error cannot be sincere; error is always deliberate."[362][363] From 13 February to 13 March 1794, Robespierre had withdrawn from active business on the Committee due to illness.[364] On 19 February, Robespierre decided, therefore, to return to the Duplays.[365] Saint-Just was elected president of the convention for the next two weeks. Early March in a speech at the Cordeliers Club, Hébert attacked Robespierre on the violation of human rights and Danton on being too soft. Hébert, the voice of the Sans-culottes, used the latest issue of Le Père Duchesne to criticize Robespierre. He managed to acquire a small army of secret agents, which reported to him.[366] (There were queues and near-riots at the shops and in the markets; there were strikes and threatening public demonstrations.) Some of the Hébertistes and their friends were calling for a new insurrection.[367] On the night of 13–14 March, Hébert and 18 of his followers were arrested as the agents of foreign powers. On 15 March, Robespierre reappeared in the convention.[lower-alpha 21] Subsequently, he joined Saint-Just in his attacks on Hébert.[26] The leaders of the "armées révolutionnaires" were denounced by the Revolutionary Tribunal as accomplices of Hébert.[369][370][lower-alpha 22] Around twenty people, (Cloots and De Kock) were guillotined on the evening of 24 March; their death of was a sort of carnival, a pleasant spectacle according to Michelet's witnesses. On 25 March Condorcet was arrested as he was seen as an enemy of the Revolution; he committed suicide two days later.

On 29 March Danton met again with Robespierre privately; afterwards, Marat's sister urged him to take the offensive.[375] On 30 March the two committees decided to arrest Danton and Desmoulins after Saint-Just became uncharacteristically angry.[376] On 31 March Saint-Just publicly attacked both. In the convention, criticism was voiced against the arrests, which Robespierre silenced with "...whoever trembles at this moment is guilty."[377] Legendre suggested that "before you listen to any report, you send for the prisoners, and hear them." Robespierre replied "It would be violating the laws of impartiality to grant to Danton what was refused to others, who had an equal right to make the same demand. This answer silenced at once all solicitations in his favour."[378] From 21 March – 5 April Tallien was president of the convention,[379] but could not prevent the final triumph of Robespierre. No friend of the Dantonists dared speak up in case he too should be accused of putting friendship before virtue.[380]

On 2 April the trial began on charges of conspiracy with the Duke of Orléans and Dumouriez. Corruption and a financial scandal involving the French East India Company provided a "convenient pretext" for Danton's downfall.[381] Hanriot had been informed not to arrest the president and the "public accuser" of Revolutionary Tribunal.[382] The Dantonists were not serving the people. They had become false patriots, who had preferred personal and foreign interests to the welfare of the nation.[383] "Danton had been a traitor from the beginning of the Revolution and the emergency law voted to stifle his resounding voice make this one of the blackest moments in the whole history of the Revolution."[384][385] Fouquier-Tinville asked the tribunal to order the defendants who "confused the hearing" and insulted "National Justice" to the guillotine. The defendants, of whom nine were députés of the convention, were removed from the room before the verdict was delivered. Desmoulins struggled to accept his fate and accused Robespierre, the Committee of General Security, and the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was dragged up the scaffold by force.

On the last day of their trial Lucile Desmoulins was imprisoned. She was accused of organizing a revolt against the patriots and the tribunal to free her husband and Danton. She admitted to having warned the prisoners of a course of events as in September 1792, and that it was her duty to revolt against it. Remarkably Robespierre was not only their eldest friend but also witnessed at their marriage in December 1790, together with Pétion and Brissot.[386][387]

Cartoon showing Robespierre guillotining the executioner after having guillotined everyone else in France.

On 1 April Lazare Carnot proposed the provisional executive council of six ministers be suppressed and the ministries be replaced by twelve Committees reporting to the Committee of Public Safety.[388] The proposal was unanimously adopted by the National Convention and set up by Martial Herman on 8 April. Carnot becoming more powerful argued with both Robespierre and St Just.[366] When Barras and Fréron paid a visit to Robespierre, they were received in an extremely unfriendly manner. (Robespierre was without the spectacles he usually wore in public.) At the request of Robespierre, the Convention orders the transfer of the ashes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Panthéon. On 16 April, it was decreed to centralize the investigation of court records and to bring all the political suspects in France to the Revolutionary Tribunal to Paris; the two committees received the power to interrogate them immediately. On 17 April foreigners were no longer allowed to travel through France or visit a Jacobin club; Dutch patriots who had fled to France before 1790 were excluded.[389] On 22 April Malesherbes, a lawyer who had defended the king and the deputés Isaac René Guy le Chapelier and Jacques Guillaume Thouret, four times elected president of the Constituent Assembly were taken to the scaffold. On 23 April the triumvirate set up a General Police Bureau, independent of the Committee of General Security, tasked with gathering information and mostly reporting directly to Robespierre,[390][391] as he took over the running and expanded its remit within a week when Saint-Just left Paris for the army in the north.[392]

In May, the Convention decreed, that the death penalty should be inflicted on any person convicted of "having asked, before a bargain was concluded, in what money payment was to be made."[393] On 5 June François Hanriot ordered the detention of every baker in Paris who sold his bread to people without (distribution) card or from another section.[394] On 10 June Georges Couthon introduced the Law of 22 Prairial. The law would free the Revolutionary Tribunals from control by the Convention and would greatly strengthen the position of public accusers by limiting the ability of suspects to defend themselves. Furthermore, the law broadened the sorts of charges that could be brought so that virtually any criticism of the government became criminal.[395] The legal defence was sacrificed in favor of efficiency and centralization by banning any assistance for defendants brought before the revolutionary tribunal.[396] "If this law passes," cried a deputy, "all we have to do is to blow our brains out." According to Fouquier-Tinville after Amar, Vadier proposed to change a few articles. The despotism of Robespierre made this project impossible to be carried out, for he wrested all the decrees he wanted. Fouquier, who feared to be incapable to deal with the number of trials sent him a letter, but Robespierre didn't reply. Not long after the committee decided to organize batches of 50 people.[397] The Tribunal became a simple court of condemnation refusing suspects the right of counsel and allowing only one of two verdicts – complete acquittal or death and that based not on evidence but on the moral conviction of the jurors.[398][399] The courtroom was renovated to allow sixty people to be sentenced simultaneously. Within three days, 156 people were sent in batches to the guillotine; all the members of Parliament of Toulouse were executed.[400][401] The guillotine was moved to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in order to stand out less. According to François Furet, the prisons were overpopulated; they housed over 8,000 "suspects" at the beginning of Thermidor year II.[402] The amount of death sentences doubled.[403] The commune had to solve serious problems in the cemeteries because of the smell. Mid-July two new mass graves were dug at Picpus Cemetery in the impermeable ground.[404][405]

On 1 July, Robespierre spoke in the Jacobin club: "In London, I am denounced to the French army as a dictator; the same slanders have been repeated in Paris."[388] On 3 July he left a meeting of the Committee slamming the door and shouting "Then save the country without me".[470][471] The next day he admitted: "As for me I have one foot in the tomb; in a few days the other will follow it." He attacked Tallien and had him excluded from the Jacobins on 11 July.[472] On 14 July Robespierre had Fouché expelled. To evade arrest, which usually took place during the night, about fifty deputies avoided staying at home. (In early July, a group of 60 people, aged between 17 and 80 was arrested as "enemies of the people" and accused of conspiring against liberty.[473])

To escape the heat, he occasionally went to Maisons-Alfort, 12 km outside of Paris, and stayed on a farm owned by François-Pierre Deschamps, his courier.[474] Robespierre walked through the fields or along the Marne. According to Vilate, Robespierre went for a 2-hour walk each day with his Danish dog, called Brount. On 22 and 23 July, the two committees met in a plenary session. The Commune published a new maximum, limiting the wages of employees (in some cases halving them) which provoked a sharp protest in the sections.[475] Almost all the workers in Paris went on strike.[476] Saint-Just declared in negotiations with Barère that he was prepared to make concessions on the subordinate position of the Committee of General Security.[477][478] Couthon proposed his resignation "rather than be suspected of taking part in measures" against his colleagues.[479] He agreed to more cooperation between the two committees. For Robespierre, the Committee of General Security had to remain subordinate to the Committee of Public Safety. He wanted to take away the authority of the Committee of General Security, as the committees were acting as two governments.[480][481] The next day Robespierre was compared to Catiline; he himself preferred the virtues of Cato the Younger.[482]

Robespierre was obliged to commence the attack in the convention itself. He decided to make himself clear in a new report. On Saturday 26 July, Robespierre reappeared at the convention and delivered a two-hour-long speech on the villainous factions.[483] Dressed in the same sky-blue coat and nankeen trousers which he had worn on the proclamation of the Supreme Being, he defended himself against charges of dictatorship and tyranny and then proceeded to warn of a conspiracy against the Committee of Public Safety. Calumny, he charged, had forced him to retire for a time from the Committee of Public Safety; he found himself the most unhappy of men. He gave the impression that no one was his friend, that no one could be trusted.[484] He complained of being blamed for everything;[485] and that not only England but also members of the Committee of General Security were involved in intrigue to bring him down. (When he was interrupted, Robespierre accused Collot of limiting the freedom of speech.[486]) Specifically, he railed against the bloody excesses he had observed during the Terror.[487] "I'm made to fight crime, not to govern it", he declared.[488] He addressed the moderate party, by reminding them that they were indebted to him for the lives of the 73 Girondins. Intoxicated with his virtue,[452] Robespierre announced a new wave of purification. "Punish the traitors, purge the bureau of the Committee of General Security, purge the Committee itself, and subordinate it to the Committee of Public Safety, purge the Committee of Public Safety itself and create a unified government under the supreme authority of the Convention".[489][481] Fréron suggested to revoke the decree which gave the committee power to arrest the representatives of the people, but his motion to dissolve the two committees was rejected.

When called upon to name those whom he accused, he simply refused. Joseph Cambon flew to the rostrum. "One man paralyzes the will of the National Convention".[490] His vehemence changed the course of the debate.[491] At length Lecointre of Versailles arose and proposed that the speech should be printed. This motion was the signal for agitation, discussion, and resistance. The Convention decided not to have the text printed, as Robespierre's speech had first to be submitted to the two committees. It contained matters sufficiently weighty that it needed to first be examined.[492] Robespierre was surprised that his speech would be sent to the very deputies he had intended to sue. According to Couthon, not his speech, but the conspiracy had to be examined.

In the evening, Robespierre delivered the same speech, which he regarded as his last will, at the Jacobin Club, where it was very well received.[493] "Who am I, whom they accuse? A slave of Liberty, a living martyr of the Republic, the victim as well as the enemy of crime."[494] He spoke of drinking hemlock, and David, the painter, cried out: "I will drink it with you." Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne were driven out because of their opposition to the printing and distribution of the text. Billaud managed to escape before he was assaulted, but Collot d'Herbois was knocked down. They set off to the Committee of Public Safety, where they found Saint-Just working. They asked him if he was drawing up their bill of indictment. Saint-Just promised to show them his speech before the session began.[495][496]

Gathering in secret, nine members of the two committees decided that it was all or nothing; to protect themselves, Robespierre had to be arrested. Barras said they would all die if Robespierre did not die. According to Barère: "We never deceived ourselves that Saint-Just, cut out as a more dictatorial boss, would have ended up overthrowing him to put himself in his place; we also knew that we stood in the way of his projects and that he would have us guillotined; we had him stopped."[497] (The Convention lost 144 delegates in 13 months; 67 were executed, committed suicide, or died in prison.) Now extremists and indulgents joined against him. Laurent Lecointre was the instigator of the coup,[498] assisted by Barère, Fréron, Barras, Tallien, Thuriot, Courtois, Rovère, Garnier de l'Aube and Guffroy. (Fouché was no longer involved and had hidden.)[499] Each one of them prepared his part in the attack. They decided that Hanriot, his aides-de-camp, Lavalette and Boulanger,[500] the public prosecutor Dumas, the family Duplay and the printer Charles-Léopold Nicolas had to be arrested first, so Robespierre would be without support.[498]

Proclamation by the Commune, found in the pocket of Couthon. Couthon was invited by Robespierre, etc. for which they used official police writing paper.

The troops of Convention Nationale attack the Commune. Print by Pierre-Gabriel Berthault and Jean Duplessis-Bertaux (1804)

Apprehension of Robespierre ... who on being seized by a Gendarme fired a pistol into his mouth, but did not wound himself mortally.

Valery Jacobi's painting showing the wounded Robespierre

Lying on a table, wounded, in a room of the convention, Robespierre is the object of the curiosity and quips of Thermidorians, painting by Lucien-Étienne Mélingue (Salon de 1877)(Musée de la Révolution française)

Closing of the Jacobin Club by Louis Legendre, in the early morning of 28 July 1794. Four days later it was reopened by him.[501]

Around noon on Sunday 27 July, the weather was stormy.[502] The workers of Paris organized a demonstration against the Maximum on wages.[503] Saint-Just went straight to the convention, prepared to place blame on Billaud, Collot d'Herbois and Carnot.[504] (Robespierre occupied a seat in front of the tribune.) He began: "I am from no faction; I will contend against them all."[370] After a few minutes, Tallien — having a double reason for desiring Robespierre's end, as, on the evening before, Robespierre refused to release Theresa Cabarrus — interrupted him and began the attack. "Yesterday a member of the government was left quite isolated and made a speech in his own name; today another one has done the same thing.[370] Need I recall to you that expression addressed to the journalists in one of the last sittings of the Jacobins?[lower-alpha 24] Lebas attempted to speak in defence of the triumvirs; he was not allowed to do so, and Billaud continued. "Yesterday, the president of the revolutionary tribunal [Dumas] openly proposed to the Jacobins that they should drive all impure men from the Convention." Billaud-Varennes complained about how he was treated in the Jacobin club on the evening before and that Saint-Just had not kept his promise to show them his speech before the meeting. Since March, they had organized a spy system among the representatives in the Convention whom they wanted to destroy. He better stop talking about justice and virtue. Tallien would use his dagger if Robespierre was not arrested.[506] Tallien demanded the arrest of Dumas, Hanriot and Boulanger. According to Barère, the committees asked themselves why there still existed a military regime in Paris; why all these permanent commanders, with staffs, and immense armed forces? The committees have thought it best to restore to the National Guard its democratic organization.[507]

Almost thirty-five deputies spoke against Robespierre that day, most of them from the Mountain.[508] As the accusations began to pile up, Saint-Just remained silent. Robespierre rushed toward the rostrum, appealed to the Plain to defend him against the Montagnards, but his voice was shouted down. Robespierre rushed to the benches of the Left but someone cried: "Get away from here; Condorcet used to sit here". He soon found himself at a loss for words after Vadier gave a mocking impression of him referring to the discovery of a letter under the mattress of the illiterate Catherine Théot.[lower-alpha 25] Robespierre foamed at the mouth, and his utterance was choked. When Garnier witnessed his inability to respond, he shouted, "The blood of Danton chokes him!"[513] Robespierre then finally regained his voice to reply with his one recorded statement of the morning, a demand to know why he was now being blamed for the other man's death: "Is it Danton you regret? ... Cowards! Why didn't you defend him?"[514]

At some time Louis Louchet called for Robespierre's arrest; Robespierre the Younger demanded to share his fate. The whole Convention agreed, including the two other members of the triumvirate, Couthon, and Saint-Just. Le Bas decided to join Saint-Just. Robespierre shouted that the revolution was lost when he descended the tribune. The five deputies were taken to the Committee of General Security and questioned. Not long after, Hanriot was ordered to appear in the convention; he or someone else suggested to only show up accompanied by a crowd. (Dumas was already arrested at noon and at four o'clock taken to Sainte-Pélagie Prison, as well as members of the family Duplay.)[515] (The story about Marie Thérèse de Choiseul who would be one of the last guillotined in the afternoon, is not well known.)[369] On horseback, Hanriot warned the sections that there would be an attempt to murder Robespierre, and mobilized 2,400 National Guards in front of the town hall.[516][517][518] What had happened was not very clear to their officers; either the convention was closed down or the Paris Commune. Nobody explained anything.[519] Around six o'clock the city council summoned an immediate meeting to consider the dangers threatening the fatherland.[520] It gave orders to close the gates and to ring the tocsin. For the convention, that was an illegal action without the permission of the two committees. It was decreed that anyone leading an "armed force" against the convention would be regarded as an outlaw. The city council was in league with the Jacobins to bring off an insurrection, asking them to send over reinforcements from the galleries, 'even the women who are regulars there'.[229]

In the early evening, the five deputies were taken in a cab to different prisons; Robespierre to the Palais du Luxembourg, Couthon to "La Bourbe" and Saint-Just to the "Écossais". Augustin was taken from Prison Saint-Lazare to La Force Prison,[521] like Le Bas who was refused at the Conciergerie.[522][523][124] Around 8 p.m., Hanriot appeared at the Place du Carrousel in front of the convention with 40 armed men on horses,[524] but was taken prisoner. After 9 p.m., the vice-president of the Tribunal Coffinhal went to the Committee of General Security with 3,000 men and their artillery.[525] As Robespierre and his allies had been taken to a prison in the meantime, he succeeded only in freeing Hanriot and his adjutants.[526][527]

How the five deputies escaped from prison was disputed. According to Le Moniteur Universel, the jailers refused to follow the order of arrest, taken by the convention.[528] According to Courtois[522] and Fouquier-Tinville, the police administration was responsible for any in custody or release.[529] Nothing could be done without an order of the mayor.[530] Escorted by two municipals, Robespierre the younger was the first to arrive at the town hall.[531][532] An administrator of the police took Robespierre the older around 8 p.m. to the police administration on Île de la Cité as Robespierre refused to go to the town hall and insisted on being received in a prison.[533] He hesitated for legal reasons for possibly two hours.

At around 10 p.m., the mayor sent a second delegation to go and convince Robespierre to join the Commune movement.[534] Robespierre was taken to the town hall.[535][536] At around 11 p.m., Saint-Just was delivered,[537] after which LeBas and Dumas were brought in.[522] (Couthon arrived as the last one in the town hall, but after midnight.[538][539]) The Convention declared the five deputies (plus the supporting members) to be outlaws. It then appointed Barras and ordered troops (4,000 men) to be called out.[540]

After a whole evening spent waiting in vain for action by the Commune, losing time in fruitless deliberation, without supplies or instructions, the armed sections began to disperse. According to Colin Jones, apathy prevailed, with most of them drifting back to their homes.[532] A widely repeated account claims that heavy rain dispersed Robespierre's supporters but detailed metrological records from the nearby Paris Observatoire show that conditions were warm and dry that night.[541] Around 400 men from three sections seem to have stayed on the Place de Grève, according to Courtois.[542][543] At around 2 a.m., Barras and Bourdon, accompanied by several members of the convention, arrived in two columns. Barras deliberately advanced slowly, in the hope of avoiding conflict by a display of force.[543][540] Then Grenadiers burst into the Hôtel de Ville; 51 insurgents were gathering on the first floor. Robespierre and his allies had withdrawn to the smaller "secrétariat".[544]

There are many stories about what happened next, but it seems in order to avoid capture, Augustin Robespierre took off his shoes and jumped from a broad cornice. He landed on some bayonets and a citizen, resulting in a pelvic fracture, several serious head contusions, and in an alarming state of "weakness and anxiety".[545][546] LeBas killed himself with a pistol, handing another to Robespierre.[547] According to Barras and Courtois, Robespierre wounded himself when he tried to commit suicide[548][549][550] by pointing the pistol at his mouth, but the gendarme Méda prevented this.[551][552] (This change in orientation might explain how Robespierre, sitting in a chair, got wounded from the upper right in the lower left jaw.[553][554][523][lower-alpha 26]) According to Bourdon, Méda then hit Couthon's adjutant in his leg.[556][557][558][559][560] Couthon was found lying at the bottom of a staircase in a corner, having fallen from the back of his gendarme. The unperturbed Saint-Just gave himself up without a word. According to Méda, Hanriot tried to escape by a concealed staircase to the third floor and his apartment.[561] Most sources say that Hanriot was thrown out of a window by Coffinhal after being accused of the disaster. (According to Ernest Hamel, it is one of the many legends spread by Barère.[562]) Whatever the case, Hanriot landed in a small courtyard on a heap of glass.[519] He had strength enough to crawl into a drain where he was found twelve hours later and taken to the Conciergerie.[519] Coffinhal, who had successfully escaped, was arrested seven days later, totally exhausted.[563][564]

Robespierre on the day of his execution; Sketch by Jacques Louis David

The execution of Couthon; the body of Adrien Nicolas Gobeau, ex-substitute of the public prosecutor Fouquier and member of the Commune, the first who suffered, is shown lying on the ground;[519] Robespierre {#10} is shown holding a handkerchief to his mouth. Hanriot {#9} is covering his eye, which came out of its socket when he was arrested.

The wounded Robespierre spent the remainder of the night at the antechamber of the Committee of General Security.[565] He lay on the table, his head on a deal (pine) box, his shirt covered in blood. At 5 a.m. his brother and Couthon seem to have been taken to the nearest hospital, Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, to see a doctor. Barras did not allow Robespierre to be sent there too; the circumstances did not permit it.[566] At ten in the morning according to Sanson a military doctor was invited and removed some of his teeth and fragments of his broken jaw. Robespierre was then placed in the cell in the Conciergerie in which Danton had slept while detained.[519]

On 10 Thermidor (a décadi, a day of rest and festivity) around 12.30 the Revolutionary Tribunal gathered. Verifying their identity Fouquier-Tinville had to solve a problem as 13 of them were members of the insurrectionary Commune.[519] Around 2 a.m. Robespierre and 21 "Robespierrists" were accused of counter-revolution and condemned to death by the rules of the law of 22 Prairial. Around 6 p.m., the convicts, whose average age was 34, were taken in three carts to the Place de la Révolution to be executed along with the cobbler Antoine Simon, the jailer of the Dauphin. A mob screaming curses followed them right up to the scaffold. His face still swollen, Robespierre kept his eyes closed throughout the procession. He was the tenth called to the platform and ascended the steps of the scaffold unassisted.[519] When clearing Robespierre's neck, executioner Charles-Henri Sanson tore off the bandage that was holding his shattered jaw in place, causing him to produce an agonising scream until the fall of the blade silenced him.[567] Sanson's grandson wrote that while his grandfather did this carefully, Robespierre nevertheless roared like a tiger in response.[519] After he was beheaded, applause and joyous cries arose from the crowd and reportedly persisted for fifteen minutes.[568][569] Robespierre and associates were later buried in a common grave at the newly opened Errancis Cemetery near what is now the Place Prosper-Goubaux.[lower-alpha 27]

Over 300 commercial films in French and English have portrayed Robespierre's roles. Prominent examples include:[612][613][614][615][616]

• Sidney Herbert portrayed Robespierre in Orphans of the Storm (1921)
• Werner Krauss portrayed Robespierre in Danton (1921)
• Edmond Van Daële portrayed Robespierre in Napoléon (1927)
• George Hackathorne portrayed Robespierre in Captain of the Guard (1930)
• Ernest Milton portrayed Robespierre in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
• Henry Oscar portrayed Robespierre in The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1937)
• Leonard Penn portrayed Robespierre in Marie Antoinette (1938)
• Richard Basehart portrayed Robespierre in Reign of Terror (1949)
• Keith Anderson portrayed Robespierre in the Doctor Who episode, The Reign of Terror (1964)
• Peter Gilmore as a character referred to only as "Citizen Robespierre" in Don't Lose Your Head, a Carry On spoof of The Scarlet Pimpernel (1967)
• Christopher Ellison portrayed Robespierre in Lady Oscar (1979)
• Richard Morant portrayed Robespierre in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)
• Wojciech Pszoniak portrayed Robespierre in Danton (1983)
• Andrzej Seweryn portrayed Robespierre in La Révolution française (1989)
• Ronan Vibert portrayed Robespierre in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1999–2000)
• Guillaume Aretos portrayed Robespierre in Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014)
• Nicolas Vaude portrayed Robespierre in The Visitors: Bastille Day (2016)
• Louis Garrel portrayed Robespierre in One Nation, One King (2018)

Robespierre is one of the few revolutionaries not to have a street named for him in the center of Paris. At the liberation, the municipal council (elected on 29 April 1945 with 27 communists, 12 socialists and 4 radicals out of 48 members), decided on 13 April 1946, to rename the Place du Marché-Saint-Honoré 'Place Robespierre', a decision approved at the prefectorial level on 8 June. However, in the wake of political changes in 1947, it reverted to its original name on 6 November 1950. Streets in the so-called 'Red belt' bear his name, e.g. at Montreuil. There is also a Metro station 'Robespierre' on Line 9 (Mairie de Montreuil – Pont de Sèvres), in the commune of Montreuil, named during the era of the Popular Front. There are, however, numerous streets, roads, and squares named for him elsewhere in France.

The Soviet Union built two statues of him: one in Leningrad and another in Moscow (the Robespierre Monument). The monument was commissioned by Vladimir Lenin, who referred to Robespierre as a Bolshevik before his time.[4] Due to the poor construction of the monument (it was made of tubes and common concrete), it crumbled within three days of its unveiling and was never replaced.[617] The Robespierre Embankment in Saint-Petersburg across Kresty prison is now called Voskresenskaya Embankment.[618]

• On 14 Octobre 1923, a plaque was placed on the house at 9 Rue Maximilien Robespierre (formerly Rue des Rapporteurs) rented by the three Robespierre siblings in 1787–1789, in the presence of the mayor Gustave Lemelle, Albert Mathiez and Louis Jacob. Built in 1730, the house has had a varied history as a typing school, and a craftsmen's museum, but is now being developed as a Robespierre Museum.
• In 1994, a plaque was unveiled by ARBR on the façade of the Carrauts' brewery on the Rue Ronville, where Maximilien and Augustin were brought up by their grandparents.
• An Art Deco marble bust by Maurice Cladel was intended to be displayed in the gardens of the former Abbey of Saint-Vaast. A mixture of politics and concerns about weathering led to it being placed in the Hôtel de Ville. After many years in a tribunal room, it can now be seen in the Salle Robespierre. Bronze casts of the bust were made for the bicentenary and are displayed in his former home on Rue Maximilien Robespierre and at the Lycée Robespierre, unveiled in 1990.

• Robespierre is commemorated by two plaques in Paris, one on the exterior of the Duplays' house, now 398 rue Saint-Honoré, the other, erected by the Société des études robespierristes in the Conciergerie.
• In 1909, a committee presided over by René Viviani and Georges Clemenceau proposed erecting a statue in the garden of the Tuileries, but press hostility and failure to garner enough public subscriptions led to its abandonment. However, Robespierre is recognisable in François-Léon Sicard's marble Altar of the National Convention (1913), originally intended for the gardens of the Tuileries and now in the Panthéon.
• A stone bust by Albert Séraphin (1949) stands in the square Robespierre, opposite the theatre in Saint-Denis, with the inscription: "Maximilien Robespierre l'Incorruptible 1758–1794".[619]
• Charles Correia's 1980s bronze sculptural group at the Collège Robespierre in Épinay-sur-Seine depicts him and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just at a table, working on the 1793 Constitution and Declaration of Human Rights.[620] A mural in the school also depicts him.[621]
• In 1986, Claude-André Deseine's terracotta bust of 1791 was bought for the new Musée de la Révolution française at Vizille. This returned to public view Robespierre's only surviving contemporary sculpted portrait. A plaster cast of it is displayed at the Conciergerie in Paris, and a bronze cast is in the Place de la Révolution Française in Montpellier, with bronzes of other figures of the time.[622]

In the Second World War, several French Resistance groups took his name: the Robespierre Company in Pau, commanded by Lieutenant Aurin, alias Maréchal; the Robespierre Battalion in the Rhône, under Captain Laplace; and a maquis formed by Marcel Claeys in the Ain.