Maximilien Robespierre had worked very hard in the early years of his career to earn the moniker
“The Incorruptible.” A passionate advocate for the poor, Robespierre was unwaveringly
dedicated to the French revolution. His radical stance on eradicating absolutism
and aristocratic privilege to rectify the glaring injustice endured by the common people of France
turned him into something which he may have despised if he could reflect on his actions.
Welcome to Nutty History, and today let’s look at all the brutalities that
were normal for Maximilien Robespierre and Jacobins during the Reign of Terror.
Between September 5 1793 and July 27, 1794, France saw a period of state-sanctioned violence
and mass executions. France’s revolutionary government abandoned the ideals of revolution
and became totalitarian as thousands of people were arrested and sent to the guillotine after
nominal trials. They were punished without getting a fair chance to defend their actions.
In the center of this reign of terror was a French lawyer and statesman Maximilien
Robespierre who would be later charged as the main instigator of this horrific chain of events.
When and why the Reign of Terror began are matters of historical debate.
Some may say it was the execution of King Louis the Sixteenth that triggered the reign of terror
but others may argue that it was the formation of the Revolutionary Tribunal in March 1793. On
September 17, 1793, the Convention passed the Law of Suspects in order to identify and punish
any alleged enemies of the revolution. This law also created the Revolutionary Tribunal, which
would try accused enemies of the state and execute them if found guilty. In just a matter of a year,
this Tribunal was the cause of death of twenty-seven thousand men, women, and children.
Seventeen thousand were executed by the guillotine while nearly ten thousand perished in prison. The
Law of Suspects authorized the arrest of anyone who by their writings had shown themselves
partisans of tyranny. This prevented any criticism of, or opposition to, the Convention.
Furthermore, on June 10, 1794, Maximilien and his Tribunal had the law of 22 Prairial passed and it
abolished the right to have a lawyer for defense during the trial. According to this law, there was
no need to interrogate or present evidence against or for the accused and the only possible verdicts
were acquittal or death. What followed the passing of the Law of Prairial was a six-week period that
is now known as The Great Terror. There were 30 beheadings each day amounting to a total of
thirteen hundred and seventy-six executions. Most of those arrested and executed during the early
Terror were members of the aristocracy, priests, members of the middle class, and anyone accused
of counterrevolutionary activity. One of the most famous victims of the Reign of Terror was Marie
Antoinette, the deposed queen of France. She was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on October 14,
1793, and executed two days later. Mary Antoinette was then a thirty-eight-year-old widow,
showing signs of gray long before her time. But she remained calm as her indictment was read to
her and two days later, she was dragged like an ordinary criminal to the place of execution
for beheading. Estimates of the total number of arrests during this period range from 300,000 to
500,000, but no one knows the exact number. Other well-known victims of the reign of terror were
feminist revolutionaries Olympe de Gouges and Madame Roland, former Jacobin leader Antoine
Barnave, Paris' first mayor Jean-Sylvain Bailly, and the former mistress of Louis
the fifteenth, Madame du Barry. Reign of Terror is the reason why people today associate the
guillotine with French Revolution. Though it was adopted by moderate, enlightenment-minded
revolutionary reformers called Girondins who thought it would give condemned criminals a kind,
swift end, Robespierre and the Jacobins used it with delight. For its part, the public loved it,
and guillotining enemies of the revolution became a public spectacle, ironically starting
with Girondins. But the use of the Guillotine was mostly limited to Paris only, the rest of France
was using different methods to eliminate people who weren’t so enthusiastic about the revolution.
Nantes was another city where mass execution became a trend during the same time when the
Reign of Terror was filling the sewers of Paris with the blood of its victims.
Jean Baptiste Cartier was a representative of the National Convention who was sent to Nantes
to round up counter-revolutionaries and make an example of them. Cartier was captivated by the
zeitgeist of the terror and immediately set up a tribunal on his arrival in Nantes. Cartier acted
as judge, jury, and executioner with a bit of theatrics as he would have prisoners suspected of
anti-revolutionary activity bound and brought into the Loire River on a ship with a trap door. Those
who he would deem guilty would be dumped into the river to die slowly as water would fill in their
lungs. Most of these drowning executions were carried out in winter for efficiency
as freezing water can be extra lethal. Cartier wasn’t just delivering his own brand of justice
but was also getting a kick out of it. Often, he would have a male and female prisoner stripped and
tied together before dumping them in the river just for his personal amusement. Cartier was
rounding up anyone who he or any of his men would suspect of being critical or against revolution
but some were favored among equals. The clergy was especially targeted by Cartier because, in his
opinion, priests and nuns were enjoying a premier spot in the old order and would be in favor of
the revolution’s failure. It is believed Cartier ordered the slaying of 90 clergymen in one night
in November 1793. The total number of victims who end up at the bedrock of the Loire River
during this period is estimated to be at least eighteen hundred but the real figure could be as
high as nearly five thousand. The line between the call for justice and the call for blood was
indistinguishable during the French Revolution, and the Terror period may have been tyrannical
comparatively it was still an improvement over mob justice that happened in its early years.
Marie-Louise of Savoy was married to a member of the extended French Royal family who passed away
quite early, leaving her with a considerable amount of wealth and entry into the highest
circles of French society. Being of the same age, Marie Louise and Mary Antoinette found kinship
together and soon they developed a fast friendship making the two nearly inseparable. Officially
titled Princesse de Lamballe, Mary Louise became a lady in waiting for Marie Antoinette when later
became queen. Mary Louise was among the handful of inmates who spent considerable time with her.
When revolution broke out, critics of the monarchy abused their friendship to accuse the two women of
being in an illicit relationship. This accusation was targeted mainly towards Marie Antoinette to
defame her and justify their call for her head. Poor Marie Louise was roped in just for being in
Marie Antoinette’s company. However, she paid for her loyalty. After being imprisoned for a while,
she was brought before a revolutionary tribunal to swear allegiance to the revolution but she
refused to betray her queen. The tribunal instead of carrying out a verdict threw her on the streets
and allowed the angry mob to do as they wished with her. It was a violent end as her body was
desecrated and her head was attached to a pike and carried to Marie Antoinette’s cell where
the mob attempted to subject Marie Antoinette to humiliation with the severed head. Louis
Hercule Timoléon de Cossé-Brissac, or duc de Brissac, met a similar fate as well for being
one of the elite members of the royal court. He was also the known lover of Madame du Barry,
the last mistress of Louis the fifteenth. At the time of the revolution, Louis was
head of the king’s constitutional guard and as a result, the duke met a violent end as well in
1792 at Versailles in the infamous September Annihilations. Like Princesse de Lamballe,
his head too was planted on a pike and used to smash the window at apartments of Madame du Barry,
causing the woman to faint in horror. During the September Annihilations,
it is estimated that nearly twelve hundred people were slain in a matter of only five days
courtesy of the mob justice. A lot of these victims were perhaps part of the Catholic clergy
and mobs didn’t spare their children either. All of them ended up on pikes. A lot of Robespierre’s
opponents had alleged after the shocking turn of events that he was directly responsible for
the anarchy but Robespierre didn’t care for their accusations. Instead, he raised more
eyebrows by exonerating all Parisians who were involved in this barbaric purge of the old order.
It is widely believed now that paranoia had gotten hold of Robespierre,
as his own ideals became twisted in his head and he demanded more and more deaths,
seeing enemies of the state in everyone. In the last month of the Reign of Terror, Robespierre
insisted on suspending trials to increase the flow of execution causing fourteen hundred deaths in a
month. He had no qualms about relying on terror and violence to purge counter-revolutionaries
and establish political virtue throughout France. Anybody who didn’t support the Jacobin club was
a traitor in Robespierre’s eyes. In his own words, "Terror is nothing more than speedy,
severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue." He was so blinded by his own
ideology that he failed to see the irony of what he had become. Once thought to be incorruptible,
Robespierre had an entire family executed on mere suspicion of an assassination attempt.
Cécile Renault, a 20-year-old royalist, showed up at his house. When guards searched the young
woman, they found two small knives. In her defense, this was not a time to travel alone
and unarmed when mobs were hunting royalists on streets like a pack of hungry wolves. Renault was
promptly put on trial and sentenced to death by guillotine, even though her only crime was
coming to Robespierre's house with weapons on her person. But Robespierre wasn’t satisfied by having
her chopped. He had her father, brother, and aunt arrested as well for conspiring with Cécile. “Off
with their heads” Robespierre probably demanded like the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland,
so they were also sent off to guillotine ending their family line. Hubris was another side effect
of power on Robespierre as he tried to replace Catholicism, which wasn’t doing so well at
the time of the French Revolution, with a new religion. Unironically, he called it the “cult
of the supreme being” with himself as the head of this new religion. As bizarre as it sounds,
the religion was surprisingly based on Judeo-Christian and enlightenment values.
But in the end, Karma caught up to him as he demanded more blood from the members of the
Convention on July 26, 1974. He claimed that there was a conspiracy brewing against the government
and demanded more executions but, he failed to name any conspirators or provide any
evidence to support his claim, despite rambling emotionally and aggressively for nearly two hours.
The convention turned against him, perhaps because he made them listen to him for two hours,
and drowned his voice among boos. Frustrated, Robespierre demanded death for himself if he
won’t be allowed to speak and the Convention immediately voted to have him arrested along
with all of the Jacobins. When guards arrived to arrest him, Robespierre panicked and tried to harm
himself and severely wounded his jaw. Robespierre and his followers were executed on July 28, 1794.
When King Louis the Sixteenth was put on trial, Robespierre was the first to voice his concern
over the morality of the death sentence. But then he became the champion of the Guillotine
until he found himself on the chopping block. Tell us in the comments, which other
sovereigns shall we cover in this series, and as always, thanks for watching Nutty History.