Maximilien
Robespierre (1758 1794) was the leader of the twelveman Committee
of Public Safety elected by the National Convention, and which effectively
governed France at the height of the radical phase of the revolution.
He had once been a fairly straightforward liberal thinker - reputedly
he slept with a copy of Rousseau's Social Contract at his side. But
his own purity of belief led him to impatience with others.
The
committee was among the most creative executive bodies ever seen - and
rapidly put into effect policies which stabilized the French economy
and began the formation of the very successful French army. It also
directed it energies against counter-revolutionary uprisings, especially
in the south and west of France. In doing so it unleashed the reign
of terror. Here Robespierre, in his speech of February 5,1794, from
which excerpts are given here, discussed this issue. The figures behind
this speech indicate that in the five months from September, 1793, to
February 5, 1794, the revolutionary tribunal in Paris convicted and
executed 238 men and 31 women and acquitted 190 persons, and that on
February 5 there were 5,434 individuals in the prisons in Paris awaiting
trial.
Robespierre
was frustrated with the progress of the revolution. After issuing threats
to the National Convention, he himself was arrested in July 1794. He
tried to shoot himslef but missed, and spent his last few hours with
his jaw hanging off. He was guillotined, as a victim of the terror,
on July 28, 1794.
Justification
of the Use of Terror
But, to found and consolidate democracy, to achieve the peaceable reign
of the constitutional laws, we must end the war of liberty against tyranny
and pass safely across the storms of the revolution: such is the aim
of the revolutionary system that you have enacted. Your conduct, then,
ought also to be regulated by the stormy circumstances in which the
republic is placed; and the plan of your administration must result
from the spirit of the revolutionary government combined with the general
principles of democracy.
Now, what
is the fundamental principle of the democratic or popular government-that
is, the essential spring which makes it move? It is virtue; I am speaking
of the public virtue which effected so many prodigies in Greece and
Rome and which ought to produce much more surprising ones in republican
France; of that virtue which is nothing other than the love of country
and of its laws.
But as
the essence of the republic or of democracy is equality, it follows
that the love of country necessarily includes the love of equality.
It is also
true that this sublime sentiment assumes a preference for the public
interest over every particular interest; hence the love of country presupposes
or produces all the virtues: for what are they other than that spiritual
strength which renders one capable of those sacrifices? And how could
the slave of avarice or ambition, for example, sacrifice his idol to
his country?
Not only
is virtue the soul of democracy; it can exist only in that government
....
. . .
Republican virtue can be considered in relation to the people and in
relation to the government; it is necessary in both. When only the govemment
lacks virtue, there remains a resource in the people's virtue; but when
the people itself is corrupted, liberty is already lost.
Fortunately
virtue is natural to the people, notwithstanding aristocratic prejudices.
A nation is truly corrupted when, having by degrees lost its character
and its liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or to monarchy;
that is the decrepitude and death of the body politic....
But when,
by prodigious efforts of courage and reason, a people breaks the chains
of despotism to make them into trophies of liberty; when by the force
of its moral temperament it comes, as it were, out of the arms of the
death, to recapture all the vigor of youth; when by tums it is sensitive
and proud, intrepid and docile, and can be stopped neither by impregnable
ramparts nor by the innumerable ammies of the tyrants armed against
it, but stops of itself upon confronting the law's image; then if it
does not climb rapidly to the summit of its destinies, this can only
be the fault of those who govern it.
. . .
From all
this let us deduce a great truth: the characteristic of popular government
is confidence in the people and severity towards itself.
The whole
development of our theory would end here if you had only to pilot the
vessel of the Republic through calm waters; but the tempest roars, and
the revolution imposes on you another task.
This great
purity of the French revolution's basis, the very sublimity of its objective,
is precisely what causes both our strength and our weakness. Our strength,
because it gives to us truth's ascendancy over imposture, and the rights
of the public interest over private interests; our weakness, because
it rallies all vicious men against us, all those who in their hearts
contemplated despoiling the people and all those who intend to let it
be despoiled with impunity, both those who have rejected freedom as
a personal calamity and those who have embraced the revolution as a
career and the Republic as prey. Hence the defection of so many ambitious
or greedy men who since the point of departure have abandoned us along
the way because they did not begin the journey with the same destination
in view. The two opposing spirits that have been represented in a struggle
to rule nature might be said to be fighting in this great period of
human history to fix irrevocably the world's destinies, and France is
the scene of this fearful combat. Without, all the tyrants encircle
you; within, all tyranny's friends conspire; they will conspire until
hope is wrested from crime. We must smother the internal and external
enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the
first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason
and the people's enemies by terror.
If the
spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs
of popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue,
without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless.
Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it
is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle
as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied
to our country's most urgent needs.
It has
been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does
your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that
gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which
the henchmen of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his
brutalized subjects; he is right, as a despot. Subdue by terror the
enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic.
The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny.
Is force made only to protect crime? And is the thunderbolt not destined
to strike the heads of the proud?
. . .
. . . Indulgence for the royalists, cry certain men, mercy for the villains!
No! mercy for the innocent, mercy for the weak, mercy for the unfortunate,
mercy for humanity.
Society
owes protection only to peaceable citizens; the only citizens in the
Republic are the republicans. For it, the royalists, the conspirators
are only strangers or, rather, enemies. This terrible war waged by liberty
against tyranny- is it not indivisible? Are the enemies within not the
allies of the enemies without? The assassins who tear our country apart,
the intriguers who buy the consciences that hold the people's mandate;
the traitors who sell them; the mercenary pamphleteers hired to dishonor
the people's cause, to kill public virtue, to stir up the fire of civil
discord, and to prepare political counterrevolution by moral counterrevolution-are
all those men less guilty or less dangerous than the tyrants whom they
serve?