One of the leading figures in the French Revolution and also the Reign of Terror that came after
was Maximilien Robespierre.
Robespierre was a brutal man who championed the executions of over 17,000 people who were
marched into public squares in France where they were executed on the guillotine.
His idea was that using terror and fear would stop people from questioning the new order,
and Robespierre wanted to stamp out all of the notions and feelings of monarchy that
could be found within the French civilians.
But despite the guillotine blade falling dozens of times a day across the country, Robespierre
himself would fall from grace and he was executed himself.
People got tired of the fear, and Robespierre was executed on the same guillotine as King
Louis XVI in Paris at the Place de la Revolution.
But after his death, his head was then subjected to a cast by Madame Tussaud, and this shows
the harrowing final moments of the man regarded by many as a despotic tyrant.
But what is the story of the head of Robespierre?
Maximilien Robespierre was born at Arras on the 6th May 1758.
As a young man he would study law, but he then took a leap into politics and local government
inside of his hometown.
He would join the Estates General, but across the nation many people were getting fed up
with the monarchy and the King and Queen.
There was a huge amount of suffering inside of France as prices rose and people began
to starve, but King Louis XVI and his Queen Marie Antoinette were living very lavish lifestyles.
They were having huge banquets and spending a huge amount of money from the treasury on
furniture and renovating their palaces.
People in France needed help, but Marie continued to spend a lot of money on jewellery, clothing
and she would also gamble lots of it away at her parties.
Robespierre then emerged as a leading figure with the ideas of revolution, and he became
a figure who championed democracy and was regarded as a radical.
He hated and loathed the King and Queen, and he would oversee the Jacobins, a group who
promoted the ideas of Revolution in France, and they also championed the overthrow and
abdication of the French Monarchy.
Robespierre would call upon people in the nation to rise up and rebel against the military
defeats and the fact they were starving.
But Robespierre campaigned following the King’s arrest for the monarch to be placed on trial
for treason, and he would then push further for the King to be executed.
He would eventually get this, but inside of Paris he was a man who was very popular.
Robespierre’s statements and rhetoric continued to attack the monarchy and he would call for
Reform, but he was then in August 1792 elected the first deputy for Paris to the National
Convention.
The Convention would abolish the monarchy and declare France a republic.
The King as mentioned was then placed on trial and Robespierre supported this and the King
would then be dragged to the Place de la Revolution in January 1793 where he lost his head on
the guillotine.
But there would then be a significant struggle for power within the National Convention following
this, and there was tension between the Jacobins and the Girondins as to who would spearhead
the new government.
The groups wanted different things, and the Jacobins would then order the arrests of the
Girondins and they would use mob rule to do this.
But the control of France then passed to the Committee of Public Safety, of which Robespierre
was a part of and he would then emerge as a powerful part of this committee.
However in France, there was a huge threat from foreign invasion and many including the
Austrians and Persians were angry with the fact the King and soon to be Queen were attacked
and were executed.
The monarchs of these countries were mostly concerned that the ideas of revolution could
spread to their countries.
But because of this Robespierre then began to call for strong answer, and there was a
huge amount of lawlessness and disorder across the country.
The Committee then sought to eradicate anyone who was an enemy of the revolution, or who
was suspected of doing this.
This was known as ‘The Reign of Terror,’ and Robespierre was a powerful figure who
was in charge of this.
He would state this was necessary and spoke to the crowds and said, ‘‘If the basis
of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution
is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which
virtue is powerless.
Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation
of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle
of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the homeland.’
The Terror was a brutal and barbaric time, and many people who were just suspected of
being dissident to the new regime were dragged to the guillotine and were executed.
France was being ruled by terror, and everyone had to be careful about what they said for
fear of execution.
A huge number of laws were brought in the carried a capital charge, including cutting
down a tree of liberty, or speaking out for the former King and Queen.
There were accounts of women whose husbands would be taken to the guillotine, and when
they lost their heads the wives would cry.
This was interpreted by the officials as an act of sympathy for the old regime, and because
of this seconds later the women were beheaded on the guillotine.
The streets would run red with the blood of the condemned on the guillotine, but eventually
Robespierre would fly too close to the sun, and he too would be executed.
As he became more powerful, and more like a dictator his popularity would fall.
He would state to the National Convention that they should bring a new religion for
the nation, the Cult of the Supreme Being.
However Robespierre was now a symbol of hatred due to the brutality of the Terror and many
said he was acting like a tyrannical monarch, and they’d just got one of these on the
guillotine.
There were a number of French successes with the army, but Robespierre was now in danger.
He was arrested along with his friends and allies on the 27th July 1794, after rebels
conspired against him.
He was injured in the arrest and struggle, and a bullet hit him in the law.
But the following day he would be dead.
Eyewitnesses would see his brutal downfall, and one of them wrote a detailed account of
his final moments.
He wrote, ’At four in the afternoon, the sinister procession moved out of the courtyard
of the Palais de Justice.
No crowd of such a size had ever been seen in Paris.
The streets were choked with people.
Spectators, men and women of all ages, filled every window, and men had climbed on to the
rooftops.
There was universal jubilation coupled with popular fury.
The long-suppressed hatred against these criminals now exploded with doubled force.
Everyone applauded wildly and seemed to be sorry they could not do more.
Most of the watchers fixed their gaze on the cart in which Robespierre, his brother, Caution
and Henriot were riding.
These miserable creatures were all mutilated and covered with blood.
They looked like a band of brigands the gendarmes had surprised in the forest and were unable
to arrest without inflicting serious wounds upon them.
It would be difficult to describe the appearance of Robespierre.
His face was wrapped in a bandage of dirty, bloodstained linen; his features were horribly
disfigured.
A pale pallor made it even more repulsive.
He kept his eyes downward and almost closed; whether that was from the pain of his wounds
or an awareness of his misdeeds, one cannot say.
Just before arriving at the place of execution, Robespierre was shaken out of his lethargy
by a woman who forced her way through the crowd and rushed up to the cart carrying this
cannibal.
She grasped the cart rail with one hand and threatened Robespierre with the other, saying
“Monster spewed from Hell.
The thought of your punishment intoxicates me with joy”.
Robespierre opened his eyes and looked at her sadly as she said: “Go now, evildoer,
go down into your grave carrying the curses of the wives and mothers of France!”
When the cart had reached the foot of the scaffold, the executioners carried the tyrant
down and laid him out prone until it was his turn for execution.
While his accomplices were being beheaded, Robespierre appeared not to be taking notice;
he kept his eyes shut and did not open them until he himself was carried up the scaffold.
Some said that when he saw the instrument of death, he heaved a sigh of pain, but before
dying he had to endure bitter suffering.
After having thrown down his coat, the executioner roughly tore away the bandage and splint which
the surgeon had put on his wounds.
This unhinged his lower jaw from the upper jaw and caused the blood to flow in torrents.
The wretched man’s head was now no more than an object of horror and repulsion.
When at last it was severed from his body and the executioner held it by the hair to
show to the people, it presented an indescribably horrible sight.
Thus perished the fiercest of the savage beasts, the most monstrous criminal that nature ever
conceived.
On the two days that followed, 83 other rebels were put to death, mainly members of the Commune
or their outlawed accomplices.”
But at some point Madame Tussaud would craft a death mask and a head of Robespierre.
She had done this before with Marie Antoinette as she would whilst the gravediggers were
having lunch sneak in to the graveyard and would take a cast off her head.
She would mould the head of Robespierre following his execution and in some versions of the
events she moulded the head of Robespierre at the foot of the guillotine.
She would do this in a sense to stay loyal to the government.
There were efforts to prevent access to the corpse of Robespierre to stop relic hunters,
and it was said that they tried to inter his body quickly.
It was not easy to cast a death mask and wax cast of a guillotined head.
It was said, ‘"In order to create a death mask, there was a specific process: First,
the deceased’s hair and eyebrows were covered with clay or oil so that the plaster would
not stick to it.
Next, plaster was ladled over the head of the individual.
Sometimes this meant propping them up into a sitting position as seen in the picture
or carefully doing it lying down.
Next a thread was placed from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead in this
thinner plaster.
Fourth, thicker plaster was added and the string was removed to create a mask in two
halves for easier removal.
Once hard, the mould was removed, and then placed back together.
Before a mask could be made, the plaster cast was cleaned and then filled with modelling
clay or new plaster to make the mask.’
The head of Robespierre which was made by Madam Tussaud shows his face looking gaunt,
and it does not show the injury to the jaw that he had before his guillotining.
It was said of the casting that, ‘After the execution of Robespierre, Madame Tussaud
took a cast from his mutilated head, but it was not the first time his featured had been
submitted to her skilful hands, he having expressed a wish that his portrait should
be introduced.’
But the head of Robespierre is a harrowing and brutal image of the man who brought so
much terror to France, and it shows him in his final seconds following the guillotine
blade being released upon him.
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