page_title: Maximilien Robespierre
section_title: The "enemy within"
hierarchical_section_title: Maximilien Robespierre / Reign of Terror / The "enemy within"
caption_attribution_description: Estampe
context_page_description: Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer and statesman who was one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. As a member of the Constituent Assembly and the Jacobin Club, he campaigned for universal manhood suffrage and the abolition both of celibacy for the clergy, and slavery. In 1791, Robespierre became an outspoken advocate for the citizens without a political voice, for their unrestricted admission to the National Guard, to public offices, and for the right to carry arms in self-defence. He played an important part in the agitation which brought about the fall of the French monarchy on 10 August 1792 and the summoning of a National Convention. His goal was to create a united and indivisible France, equality before the law, to abolish prerogatives and to defend the principles of direct democracy.
  As one of the leading members of the insurrectionary Paris Commune, Robespierre was elected as a deputy to the French Convention in early September 1792 but was soon criticised for trying to establish either a triumvirate or a dictatorship.
context_section_description: 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 arguing that the Revolution should return to its original ideas en vogue around 10 August 1792. In the third issue he change tone.  Robespierre made a counterproposal, to set up a Committee of Justice to examine some of the cases under the Law of Suspects. In the fourth issue Desmoulins took up the cause of the 200,000 defenseless civilians and had been detained in prisons as suspects. 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." Desmoulins counselled Robespierre not to attempt to build the Republic on such a rare quality as virtue. On the next day, December 25, thoroughly provoked by Desmoulins’ insistent challenges, Robespierre produced his Report on the Principles of Revolutionary Government. 
   
  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. Robespierre strongly believed that the Terror should be increased in intensity, rather than diminished; "the Government has to defend itself" [against conspirators] and "to the enemies of the people it owes only death.” According to R.R. Palmer and Donald C. Hodges, this was the first important statement in modern times of a philosophy of dictatorship. 
  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.
  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." From 13 February to 13 March 1794, Robespierre had withdrawn from active business on the Committee due to illness. (On 19 February, Maximilien decided therefore to return to the Duplays.)  In a speech at the Cordeliers Club, Hébert attacks both the factions of Danton and Robespierre. On 15 March, he reappeared in the convention.   Subsequently, he joined Saint-Just in his attacks on Hébert.  Hébert, the voice of the Sans-culottes, had been using the latest issue of Le Père Duchesne to criticize Robespierre. (There were queues and near-riots at the shops and in the markets; there were strikes and threatening public demonstrations; and some of the Hébertistes and their friends were calling for a new insurrection.) On the night of 13–14 March, Hébert and 18 of his followers were arrested on charges of complicity with foreign powers and guillotined on 24 March. The leaders of the "armées révolutionnaires" were denounced by the Revolutionary Tribunal as accomplices of Hébert.  Their death 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 Revo
caption: Cartoon showing Robespierre guillotining the executioner after having guillotined everyone else in France.
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