The End of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror
Maximilien Robespierre
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OVERVIEW
Maximilien Robespierre was the man most closely identified with the bloody Reign of Terror
during the French Revolution. Thousands were executed on the vague pretense of being
"enemies" of the revolution, including many French citizens viewed by Robespierre as a
political threat. Finally, however, the tide of opinion turned against Robespierre’s harsh rule.
The following speech before the National Convention on July 26, 1794, marked his lastditch attempt to remain in power by denouncing unnamed enemies. The attempt failed, and
Robespierre was guillotined two days later.
GUIDED READING As you read, consider the following questions:
• What is meant by the phrase, “Death is the beginning of immortality!”?
• What language does Robespierre use that indicates he is a desperate man?
W
hen I see the mass of vices the torrent of the Revolution has rolled pellmell with the civic virtues, I have sometimes trembled for fear of
becoming tainted in the eyes of posterity by the impure vicinage of those
perverse men who mingled in the ranks of the sincere defenders of humanity;
but the overthrow of the rival factions has, as it were, emancipated all the vices
...
I conceive that it is easy for the league of the tyrants of the world to
overwhelm a man; but I also know what are the duties of one who can die in
defending the cause of humanity. I have seen in history all defenders of liberty
overcome by ill fortune or by calumny; but soon their oppressors and their
assassins also met their death. The good and the bad, the tyrants and the
friends of liberty, disappear from the earth, but under different conditions.
Frenchmen, do not allow your enemies to degrade your souls and to unnerve
your virtues by a baleful heresy! No, Chaumette, no, Fouchet, death is not an
unending sleep. Citizens, efface from the tombstones this impious maxim
which throws a funeral crape upon all nature and flings insults upon death.
Rather engrave that: "Death is the beginning of immortality!" My people,
remember that if in the republic justice does not reign with absolute sway, and
if this word does not signify love of equality and of country, then liberty is but
a vain phrase! O people, you who are feared—whom one flatters! you who are
despised; you who are acknowledged sovereign, and are ever being treated as a
slave—remember that wherever justice does not reign, it is the passions of the
magistrates that reign instead, and that the people have changed their chains
and not their destinies!
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The End of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror
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Remember that there exists in your bosom a league of knaves struggling
against public virtue, and that it has a greater influence than yourselves upon
your own affairs—a league that dreads you and flatters you in the mass, but
proscribes you in detail in the person of all good citizens!
Also recall that, instead of sacrificing this handful of knaves for your
happiness, your enemies wish to sacrifice you to this handful of knaves—
authors of all our evils and the only obstacles to public prosperity!
Know, then, that any man who will rise to defend public right and public
morals will be overwhelmed with outrage and proscribed by the knaves! Know,
also, that every friend of liberty will ever be placed between duty and calumny;
that those who cannot be accused of treason will be accused of ambition; that
the influence of uprightness and principles will be compared to tyranny and
the violence of factions; that your confidence and your esteem will become
certificates of proscription for all your friends; that the cries of oppressed
patriotism will be called cries of sedition; and that, as they do not dare to
attack you in mass, you will be proscribed in detail in the person of all good
citizens, until the ambitious shall have organized their tyranny. Such is the
empire of the tyrants armed against us! Such is the influence of their league
with corrupt men, ever inclined to serve them.
Thus the unprincipled wretches impose upon us law to force us to betray
the people, under penalty of being called dictators! Shall we subscribe to this
law? No! Let us defend the people at the risk of becoming their victims! Let
them hasten to the scaffold by the path of crime and we by that of virtue. Shall
we say that all is well? Shall we continue to praise by force of habit or practice
that which is wrong? We would ruin the country. Shall we reveal hidden
abuses? Shall we denounce traitors? We shall be told that we are unsettling the
constituted authorities, that we are endeavoring to acquire personal influence
at their cost. What are we to do? Our duty! What objection can be made to
him who wishes to tell the truth and who consents to die for it? Let us then say
that there exists a conspiracy against public liberty; that it owes its strength to
a criminal coalition that is intriguing even in the bosom of the Convention;
that this coalition has accomplices in the Committee of General Safety and in
the offices of this committee, which they control; that the enemies of the
republic have opposed this committee to the Committee of Public Safety and
have thus constituted two governments; that members of the Committee of
Public Safety have entered into this scheme of mischief; that the coalition thus
formed tries to ruin all patriots and the fatherland.
What is the remedy for this evil? Punish the traitors, renew the offices of
the Committee of General Safety, weed out this committee itself, and
subordinate it to the Committee of Public Safety; weed out the Committee of
Public Safety also, constitute the unity of the government under the supreme
authority of the National Convention, which is the center and the judge, and
thus crush all factions by the weight of national authority, in order to erect
upon their ruins the power of justice and of liberty. Such are my principles. If
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The End of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror
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it be impossible to support them without being taken for an ambitious one, I
shall conclude that principles are proscribed and that tyranny reigns among us,
but not that I should remain silent! For what can be objected to a man who is
in the right and knows how to die for his country?
I was created to battle against crime, not to govern it. The time has not
come when upright men may serve their country with impunity! The
defenders of liberty will be but outlaws so long as a horde of knaves shall rule!
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The End of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror
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