Maximilien Robespierre

**Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre** (French: [maksimiljɛ̃ ʁɔbɛspjɛʁ]; 6 May 1758 – 10 Thermidor, Year II [28 July 1794]) was a French lawyer and statesman who became one of the most widely known, influential, and controversial figures of the French Revolution.

As a member of the Estates-General, the Constituent Assembly, and the Jacobin Club, he campaigned for the right to vote of all men, especially for the excluded passive citizen and for the abolition of the death penalty in times of peace and the abolition of Atlantic slave trade. In 1791, Robespierre was elected as "public accuser" and became an outspoken advocate for male citizens without a political voice, for their unrestricted admission to the National Guard, to public offices, and to the commissioned ranks of the army, for the right to petition and the right to bear arms in self defence. Robespierre played an important part in the agitation which brought about the fall of the French monarchy on 10 August 1792 and the convocation of the National Convention. His goal was to create a one and indivisible France, establish equality before the law, abolish prerogatives, and defend the principles of direct democracy.

Originally a lawyer, he became involved with politics as one of the representatives of the Estates-General in 1789. As one of the leading members of the 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. In April 1793, Robespierre urged the Jacobins to raise a *sans-culotte* army to enforce revolutionary laws and sweep away any counter-revolutionary conspirator, leading to the armed Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793. Because of his health, Robespierre announced he was to resign but on 27 July he was appointed as a member of the powerful Committee of Public Safety. This allowed him to successfully promote a reorganisation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, a war cabinet, and worship of a Supreme Being.

Although Robespierre always had like-minded allies, the politically motivated violence that the Montagne faction often promoted disillusioned others. Both members of the Convention and the French public eventually turned against him. In the middle of the night he and his allies were arrested in the Paris town hall on 9 Thermidor. Robespierre was wounded in his jaw, but it is not known if it was self-inflicted or the outcome of the skirmish. About 90 people, including Robespierre, were executed in the days after, events that initiated a period known as the Thermidorian Reaction, and the left wing in the convention was decimated.

A divisive figure during his lifetime due to his views and policies, Robespierre remains controversial to this day. Perhaps no one divides France more than Robespierre. His legacy and reputation continue to be subject to academic and popular debate. To some, Robespierre was the Revolution's principal ideologist and embodied the country's first democratic experience, marked by the often-revised and never-implemented French Constitution of 1793. To others, he was the incarnation of the Terror itself.