Maximilien de Robespierre

"It is wisdom, above all, that our guilty enemies want to drive from the Republic. To wisdom alone does it belong to consolidate the prosperity of empires. It is for her to guarantee the fruits of our courage."

- Maximilien de Robespierre in a speech during the Festival of the Supreme Being, 1794.

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758 – 1794) was a French lawyer, politician and notable figure of the French Revolution

Initially a provincial lawyer, he was elected a deputy at the Estates-General of 1789. As the French Revolution broke out, he aligned himself with the increasingly radical Jacobin Club and was recruited into the Templar Order by Grand Master François-Thomas Germain. In late 1793, Robespierre and the newly-founded Committee of Public Safety started the Reign of Terror, persecuting and often executing thousands of perceived counter-revolutionaries. Due to the rising tyranny of Robespierre, he and his supporters were overthrown and executed by guillotine in the Thermidorian Reaction of 1794.

Early life
"The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."

- Robespierre.

Robespierre was born in in 1758 as the eldest of four children. His mother died when he was six, and his father abandoned the family afterwards, forcing Robespierre to take on the responsibility of raising his siblings. In the meantine, he himself was raised in large part by the teachers at the Oratorian College of Arras which he attended. A hard-working pupil, he acquired a passion for Roman history, to which he would refer almost obsessively in his later speeches. At the age of 11, he was given a scholarship at the, the most prestigious university in France. He would become influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers such as Denis Diderot.

Revolutionary beginnings
"Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all. [...] Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil."

- Robespierre, 1793.

After completing his education as a lawyer, Robespierre was admitted to the Arras bar. Although he was seemingly destined for a modest life as a provincial lawyer, a financial crisis broke out in France, leading King Louis XVI to convene the Estates-General. On 20 April 1789, Robespierre was elected the fifth out of eight Third Estate deputies for the province of. He became a critic of the monarchy and advocated societal reform, and founded the National Assembly along with other deputies such as the Comte de Mirabeau, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès and the Marquis de Lafayette. During this period, he was also recruited into a radical faction of the Templar Order, led by François-Thomas Germain.

On 5 May 1789, Robespierre and his fellow Templars attended a private party at the Palace of Versailles. The party was secretly to host the induction of the daughter of the Order's Grand Master, François de la Serre, into the Order. On that same night however, de la Serre was murdered in a coup d'etat led by Germain. Germain's Templars plotted to instigate a widespread revolution across France. They sought to empower the middle class instead of the nobility, and by creating a capitalist society, it would be more easy for the Templars to control humanity.

Robespierre took up residence in Paris, and would only return to Arras once. He became a regular patron at intellectual establishments such as the Café Procope and the Café de la Regence. He joined the newly-founded Jacobin Club and became noted for his unflinching principles and conviction, earning the title of "the incorruptible". He was also known for being a talented speaker who frequently appeared at various galleries, in spite of his harsh voice and Artois accent. He spoke over 5000 times at the National Assembly and gave eloquent arguments against the king's right to veto legislation and religious discrimnation, while also defending the rights of the common people. Mirabeau, who was briefly president of the Jacobin Club, said of him, "He will go far. He believes everything he says". Little is known of Robespierre's private life, other than the fact that he had an elegant, but unluxurious lifestyle, preferring to study frequently and maintain good company. His extreme distrust often offended supplicants, although his disinterest in popularity only made him more respected as a political figure.

In April 1791, the Templars met at the Hôtel de Beauvais, where Robespierre spoke to fellow Jacobins and called for the abolition of capital punishment. After the Templars had finished their meeting, Robespierre met up with Germain and Aloys la Touche. La Touche was placed under Robespierre's services, where he was tasked with spreading revolutionary terror in Versailles once the revolution had grown sufficiently radical and Robespierre had gained power.

Rising power
"We are being watched by all nations; we are debating in the presence of the universe."

- Robespierre on the revolution.

In April 1792, the revolutionary government of France, dominated by the Jacobins' chief rivals, the Girondists, declared war on the kingdoms of Austria and Prussia. Robespierre was one of the first politicians to criticize the war, which the French appeared to be losing. The war also led to increasing distrust towards King Louis and the royal family, and Robespierre called for the abolition of the monarchy. On 10 August 1792, revolutionaries and forces of the insurrectionary Paris Commune stormed the royal residence at the Tuileries Palace, ending the monarchy and marking the birth of the French Republic. Robespierre celebrated the Republic's proclamation at the Café Février.

The new republic was governed by the National Convention, in which Robespierre served as a deputy and represented Paris. He continued agitating revolutionaries to rise up against aristocrats and reversed his stance on capital punishment, now calling for the execution of the deposed King Louis. When the Convention tried Louis for a number of offenses, Robespierre and his fellow Templar Louis-Michel le Peletier voted for execution, and the King was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793.

Tensions grew in the Convention, and Robespierre became obsessed with conspiracies against the revolution, particularly among political opponents such as the Girondists, whose power diminished as they suffered numerous political defeats. His faction in the Convention, consisting of radicals such as Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, was named "the Mountain" due to their position in the upper galleries of the meeting hall. The Girondist accused Robespierre and Danton of plotting to form a dictatorship, an accusation that was strongly denied by the Jacobins.

In March 1793, the Convention founded the Committee of Public Safety to protect the republic from both internal and external threats. As the Committee began executing people on increasingly dubious charges, the Girondists spoke out against Robespierre and the Committee. In response, Robespierre ordered the arrest of all Girondists, alienating his ally and friend Danton. Under the command of François Hanriot, the National Guard and the Paris Commune brought about the downfall of the Girondists, whose leaders were executed a few months later, serving as one of starting points of the Reign of Terror. Following the restructuring of the Committee in July 1793, Robespierre became a leading member along with Saint-Just, and. Around this period, Robespierre also read le Peletier's draft on education before the Convention and denounced the radical priest Jacques Roux, whom he had thrown out of the Cordeliers Club. When the drummer boy Joseph Bara was killed by royalists, Robespierre said of him, "Only the French have thirteen-year-old heroes".

Heading the Committee
"Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice."

- Robespierre during a speech, 1794.

Having reached the peak of his power, Robespierre shed his previously moderate public image as well as his opposition to the death penalty, and used terror and revolutionary extremism to maintain his influence. Already having praised the educational aspect of theatrical arts, he collaborated with the painter Jacques-Louis David, who was also his friend and fellow Jacobin, to use culture and art as a political tool. . When David was mocked by André Chénier in the satirical poems known as Le Jeu de Paume, the infuriated painter called in favors with Robespierre, who had several thugs take over Chénier's house and guard the poems, only for them to be stolen by the Assassin Arno Dorian. Dorian had previously killed a group of Robespierre's allies at the Café Procope, where they met to plan an overthrow of the Legislative Assembly.

Although the artillery officer Napoleon Bonaparte had been supported by Robespierre's brother, Augustin, Robespierre himself had a falling out with the commander, and plotted with Saint-Just to end Bonaparte's career. Saint-Just had tricked workshops into using defective materials in the manufacture of armamants, which would then be delivered to the commander. However, Dorian also managed to foil this plot.

In September 1793, Robespierre and the Committee introduced the, sparking a new level of paranoia and broadening the grounds for prosecution of suspected counter-revolutionaries. During this period, Robespierre personally received information on suspected counter-revolutionaries from the spy Didier Paton, who eventually discovered the existence of the Templar Order and its influence in the revolutionary government, listing Templars in his notebook. Unaware of Robespierre's membership within the Order, Paton presented this information to him, only for Robespierre to have him arrested and sentenced to death. However, Dorian and a group of Assassins were able to recover the notebook and rescue Paton.

Eliminating Danton
"You follow us shortly, Robespierre! Your house shall be beaten down and sowed with salt!"

- Danton to Robespierre on the way to the guillotine, 1794.

Although Robespierre had grown highly powerful and even abolished slavery in France and its colonies in February 1794, he faced growing opposition. Danton and his allies, whom Robespierre and Saint-Just accused of excessive moderatism, had begun opposing the Terror by early 1794, and prints were published depicting Robespierre as a Roman dictator. The Committee decided to take action against Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Fabre d'Églantine and several other "indulgents" opposed to the Terror, and had them arrested and tried before the. Robespierre used the previous corruption of Danton and d'Églantine to his advantage. He had already accused d'Églantine of fiddling with army supplies and said of him, "Talented, but with no soul. Skilled in the art of depicting men, even more skillful in deceiving them". Danton was accused of implication in d'Églantine's previous fraudulent affairs with the, and he and his allies were sentenced to death.

Robespierre also wished to eliminate Danton's friends, however. After Hanriot recovered personal correspondence from the latter's possessions, Robespierre tauntingly showed the letters to him while he was in his cell. As Danton and his allies were driven to the guillotine on 5 April, they passed by Robespierre outside the latter's residence, where Danton said that "his house [would] be beaten down and sowed with salt". Although Danton and his supporters were guillotined, Dorian and a group of Assassins were able to rescue Danton's friends and also recovered the letters from Robespierre's house. At the same time, Robespierre had retired to his rooms, and his guards noted that seemed tired and ill, possibly showing regret at having executed his old friend. He had also scattered the letters across the house. Even though Robespierre had eliminated one of his key opponents with the execution of Danton, his own popularity suffered greatly as a result.

Law of 22 Prairial and other activities
When the Templars discovered incriminating evidence of Mirabeau's correspondences with the deceased King, Robespierre took the opportunity to expose this evidence to the public in May 1794, coupled with other forms of slander. This publicly disgraced Mirabeau, and the Templars infiltrated the Panthéon to claim Mirabeau's relics, hoping to find any information on the Assassins, only to have the operation foiled by Dorian and a group of Assassins who moved the relics.

On 23 May, attempted to kill Robespierre, only to fail and be executed a month later. In response, Robespierre and the Committee introduced the, which effectively doubled the permitted number of executions. In many cases, common necessities such as a public trial and proof of guilt were removed, and Robespierre's popularity suffered even further. Members of the Committee turned against him, some believing that his policies were not radical enough, others regarding him as a deranged tyrant who had killed more of his own people than actual foreign counter-revolutionary enemies.

Cult of the Supreme Being
"Monsieur Robespierre, take care that you do not allow your personal ambitions to come before the Great Work. That which we do, we do not for our own glory, but to remake the world in de Molay's image."

- Germain in a letter to Robespierre, 1794.

On 7 May 1794, Robespierre supported a decree passed by the Convention that established an official religion, known historically as the Cult of the Supreme Being. According to Élise de la Serre, Robespierre's deism was a loose interpretation of the Templar doctrine, serving merely as Templar propaganda. In 1794, Robespierre hosted the Festival of the Supreme Being, attended by many citizens of Paris; it was here that Élise and the Assassin Arno Dorian orchestrated Robespierre's downfall. As he gave a speech to the audience, Élise spiked Robespierre's drink with powdered ergot, causing Robespierre to experience random hallucinations and give the audience the belief that he was insane and unstable.

At the same time, Arno stole letters containing the names of several members of the National Convention, who were to be victims of Robespierre's mass executions. He then snuck these letters to several of Robespierre's critics. Upon the discovery of the lists, the members of the National Convention deemed that Robespierre had gone too far.

Downfall and execution
On 27 July 1794, Robespierre was deposed and arrested by the Convention, who declared him and his followers outlaws, and were thus sentenced to execution. However, soldiers of the Jacobin Club freed Robespierre, allowing him to escape from his captors and flee to his hideout at the Hôtel de Ville with the rest of his collaborators. Unbeknownst to him, he was pursued by both Arno and Élise, who aimed to procure Germain's location from him. At his hideout, Robespierre desperately tried to contact Germain for safety. However, Germain believed that Robespierre and his Reign of Terror had served their purpose, instead abandoning his last follower.

Cornered, Robespierre was confronted by Arno, who attempted to coax the Grand Master's location from him, though Robespierre refused to talk, prompting a vengeful Élise to shoot him in the face with her pistol, shattering his jaw. Staggered and fearful of his life, Robespierre weakly wrote down Germain's location. As Arno and Elise made their escape, the French Army had overpowered the Jacobin soldiers and took the wounded Robespierre into custody once more.

Robespierre was executed the next day by the guillotine, bringing an end to his Reign of Terror.

Trivia

 * The render of Robespierre used in the game is based largely on Madame Tussaud's mask (which also served as the basis of a widely criticized 3D reconstruction, mostly because Tussaud's death masks are generally considered fakes). The actual Robespierre wore green glasses, powdered his face and dressed in flamboyant green and blue outfits.