Maximilien de Robespierre facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Maximilien Robespierre
|
|
|---|---|
c. 1790 (anonymous), Musée Carnavalet
|
|
| Member of the Committee of Public Safety | |
| In office 27 July 1793 – 27 July 1794 |
|
| Preceded by | Thomas-Augustin de Gasparin |
| Succeeded by | Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne |
| In office 25 March 1793 – 3 April 1793 Member of the Commission of Public Safety |
|
| 24th President of the National Convention | |
| In office 4 June 1794 – 19 June 1794 |
|
| Preceded by | Claude-Antoine Prieur-Duvernois |
| Succeeded by | Élie Lacoste |
| In office 22 August 1793 – 7 September 1793 |
|
| Preceded by | Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles |
| Succeeded by | Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne |
| Deputy of the National Convention | |
| In office 20 September 1792 – 27 July 1794 |
|
| Constituency | Paris |
| Deputy of the National Constituent Assembly | |
| In office 9 July 1789 – 30 September 1791 |
|
| Constituency | Artois |
| Deputy of the National Assembly | |
| In office 17 June 1789 – 9 July 1789 |
|
| Constituency | Artois |
| Deputy to the Estates General for the Third Estate |
|
| In office 6 May 1789 – 16 June 1789 |
|
| Constituency | Artois |
| President of the Jacobin Club | |
| In office 31 March – 3 June 1790 |
|
| In office 7 August – 28 August 1793 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
6 May 1758 Arras, Artois, France |
| Died | 28 July 1794 (aged 36) Place de la Révolution, Paris, France |
| Cause of death | Execution by guillotine |
| Political party | The Mountain (1792–1794) |
| Other political affiliations |
Jacobin Club (1789–1794) |
| Alma mater | |
| Profession | Lawyer and politician |
| Signature |  |
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (French: [maksimiljɛ̃ ʁɔbɛspjɛʁ]; 6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794) was a French lawyer and statesman who became one of the best-known, influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution.
Contents
Early life
Maximilien de Robespierre was baptized on 6 May 1758 in Arras in the old French province of Artois. His father, François Maximilien Barthélémy de Robespierre (1732–1777), was a lawyer at the Conseil d'Artois who married Jacqueline Marguerite Carrault (1735–1764), the daughter of a brewer, on 3 January 1758.
Maximilien was born five months later as the eldest of four children. His siblings were Charlotte (1760–1834), Henriette (1761–1780), and Augustin (1763–1794).
When his was only six years old, his mother died at the age of 29. Devastated by his wife's death, François de Robespierre left Arras around 1767. His two daughters were brought up by their paternal aunts, and his two sons were taken in by their maternal grandparents.
Already literate at age eight, Maximilien started attending the collège of Arras (middle school). In October 1769, on the recommendation of the bishop fr:Louis-Hilaire de Conzié, he received a scholarship at the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris.
In school, he learned to admire the idealised Roman Republic and the rhetoric of Cicero, Cato and Lucius Junius Brutus. In 1776 he was awarded first prize for rhetoric. He also studied the works of the Genevan philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau and was attracted to many of the ideas in his Contrat Social. His study of the classics prompted him to aspire to Roman virtues.
Early politics
Robespierre studied law for three years at the Sorbonne. Upon his graduation on 31 July 1780, he received a special prize of 600 livres for exemplary academic success and personal good conduct. On 15 May 1781, Robespierre gained admission to the bar.
On 15 November 1783, he was elected a member of the literary Academy of Arras. In 1784 the Academy of Metz awarded him a medal for his essay on the question of whether the relatives of a condemned criminal should share his disgrace, which made him a man of letters. He and Pierre Louis de Lacretelle, an advocate and journalist in Paris, divided the prize.
Robespierre attacked inequality before the law. He became acquainted with the lawyer Martial Herman, the young officer and engineer Lazare Carnot and the teacher Joseph Fouché, all of whom would play a role in his later life.
In August 1788, King Louis XVI announced new elections for all provinces. On 26 April 1789, Robespierre was elected as one of 16 deputies for Pas-de-Calais to the Estates-General. On 6 June Robespierre made his first speech of note, attacking the church hierarchy. On 13 June, Robespierre joined the deputies, who would call themselves the National Assembly representing 96% of the nation. On 9 July, the Assembly moved to Paris. It transformed itself into the National Constituent Assembly to discuss a new constitution and taxation system.
As a frequent speaker in the Assembly, Robespierre voiced many ideas in support of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) and constitutional provisions for the Constitution of 1791.
Since the end of 1789, Robespierre associated with the new Society of the Friends of the Constitution, commonly known as the Jacobin Club. On 31 March 1790 Robespierre was elected as their president.
Career
As a member of the Estates-General, the Constituent Assembly, and the Jacobin Club, Robespierre campaigned for universal manhood suffrage, the right to vote for people of color, Jews, actors, domestic staff and the abolition of French involvement in the 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 actions that led to 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.
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. Through it, he was able to execute the king Louis XVI who was convicted of treason. This position also allowed him to successfully promote a reorganization of the Revolutionary Tribunal, a war cabinet, and worship of a Supreme Being. Those who were not actively defending France (modérantisme) became his enemy. During the Reign of Terror, at least 300,000 suspects were arrested; 17,000 were officially executed, and perhaps 10,000 died in prison or without trial.
Although Robespierre always had like-minded allies, the politically motivated violence that he often promoted disillusioned others. Both members of the Convention and the French public eventually turned against him.
Downfall and death
In the middle of the night he and his allies were arrested in the Paris town hall on 9 Thermidor (27 July). About 90 people, including Robespierre, were executed in the days after, events that initiated a period known as the Thermidorian Reaction.
Robespierre and associates were later buried in a common grave at the newly opened Errancis Cemetery near what is now the Place Prosper-Goubaux. In the mid-19th century, their remains were transferred to the Catacombs of Paris.
Legacy
A divisive figure during his lifetime due to his views and policies, Robespierre remains controversial to this day. According to Marcel Gauchet, 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.
Screen portrayals
Over 300 commercial films in French and English have portrayed Robespierre's roles. Prominent examples include:
- Sidney Herbert portrayed Robespierre in Orphans of the Storm (1921)
- Werner Krauss portrayed Robespierre in Danton (1921)
- Edmond Van Daële portrayed Robespierre in Napoléon (1927)
- George Hackathorne portrayed Robespierre in Captain of the Guard (1930)
- Ernest Milton portrayed Robespierre in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
- Henry Oscar portrayed Robespierre in The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1937)
- Leonard Penn portrayed Robespierre in Marie Antoinette (1938)
- Richard Basehart portrayed Robespierre in Reign of Terror (1949)
- Keith Anderson portrayed Robespierre in the Doctor Who episode, The Reign of Terror (1964)
- Peter Gilmore as a character referred to only as "Citizen Robespierre" in Don't Lose Your Head, a Carry On spoof of The Scarlet Pimpernel (1967)
- Christopher Ellison portrayed Robespierre in Lady Oscar (1979)
- Richard Morant portrayed Robespierre in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)
- Wojciech Pszoniak portrayed Robespierre in Danton (1983)
- Andrzej Seweryn portrayed Robespierre in La Révolution française (1989)
- Ronan Vibert portrayed Robespierre in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1999–2000)
- Guillaume Aretos portrayed Robespierre in Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014)
- Nicolas Vaude portrayed Robespierre in The Visitors: Bastille Day (2016)
- Louis Garrel portrayed Robespierre in One Nation, One King (2018)
Public memorials
Street names
Robespierre is one of the few revolutionaries not to have a street named for him in the center of Paris. At the liberation, the municipal council (elected on 29 April 1945 with 27 communists, 12 socialists and 4 radicals out of 48 members), decided on 13 April 1946, to rename the Place du Marché-Saint-Honoré 'Place Robespierre', a decision approved at the prefectorial level on 8 June. However, in the wake of political changes in 1947, it reverted to its original name on 6 November 1950. Streets in the so-called 'Red belt' bear his name, e.g. at Montreuil. There is also a Metro station 'Robespierre' on Line 9 (Mairie de Montreuil – Pont de Sèvres), in the commune of Montreuil, named during the era of the Popular Front. There are, however, numerous streets, roads, and squares named for him elsewhere in France.
Plaques and monuments
During the Soviet era, the Russians built two statues of him: one in Leningrad and another in Moscow (the Robespierre Monument). The monument was commissioned by Vladimir Lenin, who referred to Robespierre as a Bolshevik before his time. Due to the poor construction of the monument (it was made of tubes and common concrete), it crumbled within three days of its unveiling and was never replaced. The Robespierre Embankment in Saint-Petersburg across Kresty prison returned to its original name Voskresenskaya Embankment in 2014.
Arras
- On 14 October 1923, a plaque was placed on the house at 9 Rue Maximilien Robespierre (formerly Rue des Rapporteurs) rented by the three Robespierre siblings in 1787–1789, in the presence of the mayor Gustave Lemelle, Albert Mathiez and Louis Jacob. Built in 1730, the house has had a varied history as a typing school, and a craftsmen's museum, but is now being developed as a Robespierre Museum.
- In 1994, a plaque was unveiled by ARBR on the façade of the Carrauts' brewery on the Rue Ronville, where Maximilien and Augustin were brought up by their grandparents.
- An Art Deco marble bust by Maurice Cladel was intended to be displayed in the gardens of the former Abbey of Saint-Vaast. A mixture of politics and concerns about weathering led to it being placed in the Hôtel de Ville. After many years in a tribunal room, it can now be seen in the Salle Robespierre. Bronze casts of the bust were made for the bicentenary and are displayed in his former home on Rue Maximilien Robespierre and at the Lycée Robespierre, unveiled in 1990.
Paris and elsewhere
- Robespierre is commemorated by two plaques in Paris, one on the exterior of the Duplays' house, now 398 rue Saint-Honoré, the other, erected by the Société des études robespierristes in the Conciergerie.
- In 1909, a committee presided over by René Viviani and Georges Clemenceau proposed erecting a statue in the garden of the Tuileries, but press hostility and failure to garner enough public subscriptions led to its abandonment. However, Robespierre is recognisable in François-Léon Sicard's marble Altar of the National Convention (1913), originally intended for the gardens of the Tuileries and now in the Panthéon.
- A stone bust by Albert Séraphin (1949) stands in the square Robespierre, opposite the theatre in Saint-Denis, with the inscription: "Maximilien Robespierre l'Incorruptible 1758–1794".
- Charles Correia's 1980s bronze sculptural group at the Collège Robespierre in Épinay-sur-Seine depicts him and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just at a table, working on the 1793 Constitution and Declaration of Human Rights. A mural in the school also depicts him.
- In 1986, Claude-André Deseine's terracotta bust of 1791 was bought for the new Musée de la Révolution française at Vizille. This returned to public view Robespierre's only surviving contemporary sculpted portrait. A plaster cast of it is displayed at the Conciergerie in Paris, and a bronze cast is in the Place de la Révolution Française in Montpellier, with bronzes of other figures of the time.
Resistance units
In the Second World War, several French Resistance groups took his name: the Robespierre Company in Pau, commanded by Lieutenant Aurin, alias Maréchal; the Robespierre Battalion in the Rhône, under Captain Laplace; and a maquis formed by Marcel Claeys in the Ain.
Interesting facts about Maximilien Robespierre
- Robespierre's family has been traced back to the 15th century in Vaudricourt, Pas-de-Calais.
- His paternal grandfather, also named Maximilien de Robespierre, established himself as a lawyer. It has been suggested that he was of Irish descent, his surname possibly a corruption of "Robert Speirs".
- He earned the nickname "the incorruptible" for his adherence to strict moral values.
- Robespierre never gave up wearing a culotte and always had his hair powdered, curled and perfumed.
- He coined the famous motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" of the French Revolution by adding the word fraternity on the flags of the National Guard.
Images for kids
-
Portrait of Robespierre (1792) by Jean-Baptist Fouquet. By using a physiognotrace a "grand trait" was produced within a few minutes. This life-size drawing on pink paper was completed by Fouquet.
-
Maximilien Robespierre, physionotrace by Chrétien, the inventor. By adjusting the needles of a pantograph he achieved a reduction ratio. This device was connected to an engraving needle. Thus it enabled the production of multiple portrait copies.
-
Demonstration of 20 June 1792 at the Tuileries
-
Le Défenseur de la Constitution n° 6 (1792)
-
A sans-culotte with his pike
-
Imaginary meeting between Robespierre, Danton and Marat (illustrating Victor Hugo's novel Ninety-Three) by Alfred Loudet
-
Louis stands trial before the convention, as Robespierre watches from the first row. Engraving by Reinier Vinkeles
-
Journées des 31 Mai, 1er et 2 Juin 1793, an engraving of the Convention surrounded by National Guards, forcing the deputies to arrest the Girondins and to establish an armed force of 6,000 men. The insurrection was organized by the Paris Commune and supported by Montagnards.
-
The uprising of the Parisian sans-culottes from 31 May to 2 June 1793. The scene takes place in front of the Deputies Chamber in the Tuileries. The depiction shows Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles and Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud.
-
François Hanriot chef de la section des Sans-Culottes (Rue Mouffetard); drawing by Gabriel in the Carnavalet Museum
-
The Pavillon de Flore, the seat of the Committee of Public Safety and General Police Bureau. Also, Joachim Vilate lived there in an apartment. Drawing in brown ink (1814)
-
Triumvirate of : (L-R) Saint-Just, Robespierre, and Couthon
-
Print representing a fr:Comité de surveillance of the Parisian section of the year II, after Jean-Baptiste Huet. (National Library of France, Paris.)
-
Stage of the Festival of the Supreme Being constructed by Maurice Duplay.
-
The Festival of the Supreme Being, by Pierre-Antoine Demachy (1794)
-
The Committee of General Security was located in Hôtel de Brionne on the right; it gathered on the first floor. (The Tuileries Palace, which housed the convention, is on the left)
-
On 9 Thermidor Tallien threatened in the convention to use his dagger if the National Convention would not order the arrest of Robespierre.
-
Collot d'Herbois
-
The Fall of Robespierre in the convention on 27 July 1794
-
Saint-Just and Robespierre at the Hôtel de Ville on the night of 9 to 10 Thermidor Year II. Painting by Jean-Joseph Weerts
-
Prefecture of Police on the Quai des Orfèvres
-
Robespierre on the day of his execution; Sketch by Jacques Louis David
-
The execution of Couthon; the body of Adrien Nicolas Gobeau, ex-substitute of the public prosecutor Fouquier and member of the Commune, the first who suffered, is shown lying on the ground; Robespierre {#10} is shown holding a handkerchief to his mouth. Hanriot {#9} is covering his eye, which came out of its socket when he was arrested.
_%E2%80%93_Destailleur_Paris_tome_6,_1292_%E2%80%93_Gallica_2013_(adjusted).jpg)
See also
In Spanish: Maximilien Robespierre para niños
