The Fall of Maximilien Robespierre: Colin Jones (1794)
In this brilliantly analytical episode of Travels Through Time, Professor Colin Jones, one of the finest living scholars of early modern France, takes us back to one of the most dramatic days in all political history. Exactly 227 years ago today, on 9 Thermidor in the Revolutionary Calendar, or 27 July in ours, Maximilien Robespierre fell from power in Paris.
As Jones explains, Robespierre began that day feeling relatively secure. By the time the sun set into the summer horizon, his position was parlous. The next day he would be dead.
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Maximilien Robespierre is remembered as one of the French Revolution’s most charismatic and outstanding politicians. In the early, radical years of the Revolution Robespierre was a powerful and guiding spirit. Utopian and uncompromising, he positioned himself as the conscience of the French people and the enemy of corrupt politicians.
Robespierre’s influence reached its peak in 1793-4, during a period of time that is commonly remembered as ‘The Terror’. During this year Robespierre and his allies such as Saint Juste used violence as a way of purging the young Revolutionary society of its impure components. Day after day carts or tumbrils would be seen rolling through the streets of Paris and other provincial towns, carrying political prisoners – members of the aristocracy, the clergy and other deemed to be counter revolutionaries – to the guillotine.
Portrait of Robespierre, made in the early stages of the Revolution, c. 1790 (WikiCommons)
During the Terror, events moved with astonishing speed. Trail within 24 hours and execution within 36 was commonplace. On 10 June 1794 the Law of 22 Prairial had speeded up the pace of convictions even more. In the six weeks before 27 July, Paris had been haunted by violence. Fifty or more people were being guillotined every day. And now it was not just aristocrats who were led to their fates, but it was also people from humble backgrounds.
Despite the violence, Robespierre spent the summer of 1794 with the conviction that he had the support of the people. This, he believed, was enough to keep him on the front foot and to keep him safe from his enemies.
By character, Robespierre was a curious mix. As Colin Jones explains in this episode he was an intense fanatic, who is often seen as a prototype for the dictators of the twentieth century. But he was also thin-skinned, melodramatic and entirely unpractical. Danton (who Robespierre had guillotined earlier in 1794) once said that ‘he couldn’t boil an egg to save his life.’ To admirers Robespierre was a true celebrity. He received fan mail by the sack load, was recognised in the street and was commemorated in art of all kinds. To most people he embodied the notion of pure and ideal Revolution.
But while Robespierre held great popular support, he was loathed by many of his political contemporaries who thought his lust for power was turning him into a tyrant. On 27 July 1794 they acted in spectacular style. First Robespierre was attacked in the Convention. Later he was captured and wounded by a gunshot that has never been entirely explained. By the next day his fall was complete. On 28 July 1794 he died at the guillotine.
In his new book, The Fall of Robespierre, Colin Jones has set out to tell the story of Robespierre’s dramatic downfall in minute-by-minute detail. In a series of short chapters and vignettes he takes the reader on a panoramic tour through the day, demonstrating that Robespierre’s fall was more than a simple Parliamentary Coup.
Instead he argues that for much of the day the outcome remained uncertain. Only by getting up close and diving down into the infinitely small details of the day can we get to see what was happening.
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Click here to order Colin Jones’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
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Show notes
Scene One: 12 midnight 8-9 Thermidor: Robespierre in his lodgings
Scene Two: Some time in the evening – maybe around 9 pm – in the Place de la Maison Commune (Place de l’Hotel de Ville), a National Guard company discussing what is going on and what decision they should make over who to support
Scene Three: Robespierre at midnight 9-10 Thermidor: reflecting on the day and his and the Revolution’s future,
Memento: Robespierre’s last letter.
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Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Professor Colin Jones
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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About Colin Jones
Colin Jones is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London. He has published widely on French History, particularly on the 18th century, the French Revolution, and the history of medicine. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and Past President, Royal Historical Society.
Revolutionary Paris
Background map: Library of Congress
The French Revolution - some basic chronology
20 June 1789 - The Third Estate takes the Tennis Court Oath
Before the Revolution, French society had operated under a system of absolute monarchy, which was known as the Ancien Régime. With roots that stretched back to the Middle Ages, by the 1780s this form of government had produced a society that was highly unequal. A series of harvest failures in the late 1780s and a financial crisis compelled King Louis XVI to summon the Estates General in the spring of 1789. When it met members of the Third Estate - broadly ‘the Commons’ of France - refashioned themselves as the National Assembly. On 20 June 1789 they voted in defiance of the King ‘not to separate and to reassemble wherever necessary until the Constitution of the kingdom is established.’ This vote was held at a tennis court in the Palace of Versailles, giving it the name by which it is commonly remembered.
14 July, 1789 - The Storming of the Bastille
The great showpiece opening of the French Revolution was the storming of the Bastille Prison in Paris. Following the Tennis Court Oath of the previous months, the people of Paris were said to be ‘intoxicated with liberty and enthusiasm.’ The Bastille was commonly associated with the Ancien Régime as a place of tyranny. On 14 July it was overrun in dramatic fashion.
26 August, 1789 - Déclaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizens
One of the key intellectual moments of the early Revolution was the issuing of the Déclaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizens. This clarified the stuggle from the point of view of the French people and the document was influenced by other important texts such as the 1776 Declaration of Independence in America and by 1215’s Magna Carta. The Déclaration would go further than all of these predecessors, declaring that the rights of all men were ‘natural, universal and inalienable.’
21 January, 1793 - The execution of King Louis XVI
On 21 January 1793, at the Place de la Révolution in Paris, King Louis XVI was guillotined. As the ultimate symbol of the old French society that the Revolution was seeking to replace, the King’s life had always been in peril. This danger only intensified in the aftermath of his failed attempt to escape during the night of 20-21 June, 1791. Four days before his death, the King was tried for crimes of High Treason at the Assembly and found guilty. Before his execution he was heard to say, ‘I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.’
5 September 1793 to 28 July, 1794 - The Reign of Terror
Following the King’s execution the Revolution took an increasingly violent turn. Led by the populist lawyer Maximilien Robespierre, a wave of terror was unleashed on those impure people who were thought to oppose their aims of the Revolution. In Paris and towns across the French nation, aristocrats, members of the clergy and, increasingly, ordinary people were sent to the guillotine for being a part of a counter-revolutionary movement.
27 July 1794 - The Fall of Robespierre
On 9 Thermidor, Year II in the Revolutionary Calendar, Robespierre’s extraordinary political career came to an end in dramatic fashion. Elements of this story are told in this episode of the podcast by Professor Colin Jones.
28 July 1794 - Robespierre and his allies are guillotined in a purge of the radicals
9 Thermidor in art
The Fall of Robespierre in the Convention on 27 July 1794, Charles Monnet
Image: Wiki Commons
Saint-Just and Robespierre at the Hôtel de Ville on the night of 9 to 10 Thermidor Year II. (Jean-Joseph Weerts)
Image Credit: Wiki Commons
The arrest of Robespierre after his failed suicide attempt.
Image: Wellcome Collection
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