Robespierre 1792 Prospectus for Le Dfenseur de la Constitution

Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004. Reason and the public interest began the revolution; intrigue and ambition have halted it. The vices of tyrants and slaves have changed it into a painful state of trouble and crisis. The majority of the nation wants to rest under the auspices of the new Constitution, on the breast of freedom and peace. What causes have deprived it of this double advantage up till now? Ignorance and division. The majority desires the good, but it neither knows the means to reach this goal nor the obstacles that distance them from it. Even the best intentioned of men differ on the questions most strictly related to the general happiness. All the enemies of the Constitution borrow the name and language of patriotism to spread error, discord and false principles. Writers prostitute their venal pens in this odious enterprise. It is thus that public opinion is excited and becomes disorganized; the general will becomes powerless and invalid and patriotism, without a system, without a plan, and without a determined objective, acts slowly and fruitlessly, or sometimes seconds, through blind impetuosity, the evil projects of the enemies of our freedom. In this situation one means alone is left to us to save the public thing, and thats the enlightenment of the zeal of good citizens in order to lead them towards a common goal. To rally all of them to the principles of the Constitution and the general interest; to bring into broad daylight the true causes of our ills and to indicate the remedies; to develop in the eyes of the Nation the reasons, the general view, and the consequences of the political operations that have an influence over the fate of the State and its liberty; to analyze the public conduct of the personalities who play the principle roles in the theatre of the revolution; to cite before the tribunal of opinion and truth those who with ease escaped from the tribunal of the laws and who can decide the destiny of France and the Universe. This is without a doubt the greatest service a Citizen can render the public cause. A periodical that would fulfill this project seemed to me to be the occupation most worthy of friends of the Fatherland and humanity. I dare to undertake this. The spirit that guides it is announced by its title: The Defender of the Constitution. Placed since the beginning of our revolution at the center of political events, I saw from up close the tortuous march of tyranny. I saw that the most dangerous of our enemies are not those who openly declared themselves such, and I will work to see that this knowledge be made useful for the salvation of my country. I need not say that only the love of justice and truth will guide my pen: its on this condition alone that, having descended from the tribune of the French Senate one can still climb to that of the universe and speak, not to the assembly which can be agitated by the shock of diverse interests but to humankind, whose interest is that of reason and general happiness. Perhaps when once one has left the theatre to sit among the spectators one can better judge the stage and the actors. At the very least it seems that once having escaped the maelstrom of affairs one breathes in an atmosphere more peaceful and pure, and one has a more certain judgment on men and things, much like he who flees the tumult of the city to climb to the summit of the mountain feels the calm of nature penetrate his soul, and his ideas expand with the horizon. I have seen well-known members of the legislature, who bring together two functions of almost equal importance, recount and appraise in their writings the next day the operations in which they participated the day before in the National Assembly. Though this last occupation sufficed in keeping me completely occupied when it was confided to me, I nevertheless applauded those legislators who rendered that striking homage

to the necessity for and the dignity of the ministry of philosophical and political writers. I even believe that they have a double right to the esteem of their fellows if they fulfill both tasks with the same integrity. He who declares himself the censor of vice, the apostle of reason and truth must be neither less pure nor less courageous than the legislator himself. The errors of the latter leave a great resource to public spirit and opinion. But when opinion is degraded, when public spirit is twisted, the last hope of freedom is annihilated. The writer who prostitutes his pen to hatred, to despotism or corruption betraying the cause of patriotism and humanity is more vile than the prevaricating magistrate, more criminal than even the representative who sells out the rights of the people. Such is my profession of faith; such will be the spirit and objective of the work that I consecrate to the freedom of my country. This work will appear every Thursday; each issue will be three or four pages long.

Robespierre February 1794 Justification of the Use of Terror

Source: Modern History SourceBook, Paul Halsall August 1997; First Published: Robespierre: On the Moral and Political Principles of Domestic Policy. Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) was the leader of the twelve-man Committee of Public Safety elected by the National Convention, and which effectively governed France at the height of the radical phase of the revolution. 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. 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 counterrevolutionare all those men less guilty or less dangerous than the tyrants whom they serve?

Robespierre 1794 On the Enemies of the Nation

Speech given from the tribune of the Convention; 7 Prairial, Year II (May 26, 1794); Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004. Citizens: It would be a beautiful subject for conversation for posterity; its already a spectacle worthy of heaven and Earth to see the Assembly of the peoples representatives placed upon the inexhaustible volcano of conspiracies bring to the feet of the Eternal Author of all things the homage of a great people with one hand, and, with the other, with the lives and the wrath of tyrants gathered against it, found the first republic in the world and recall exiled freedom, justice and nature among mortals. They will perish, all of the tyrants armed against the French people! They will perish, all the factions that rely upon their power in order to destroy our freedom. You will not make peace, but you will give it to the world, taking it from the hands of crime. This approaching prospect offered itself to the sight of the frightened tyrants, and they decided with their accomplices that the time had come to assassinate us; we, that is, the National Convention, for if they attack you now en masse and now individually you still recognize the same plan and the same enemies. Without a doubt they are not foolish enough to believe that the death of a few representatives can assure their triumph. If they believed, in fact, that in order to destroy your energy, or to change your principles, it was enough to assassinate those to whom you have especially confided the care of overseeing the salvation of the republic; if they believed that in throwing us into the tomb the spirits of Brissot, Hebert and Danton would emerge triumphant to deliver you a second time to discord, to the empire of factions and to the mercy of traitors, they were wrong. When we will have fallen under their blows, you would either complete your sublime enterprise or share our fate. Or rather, there is not one Frenchmen who would not want to stand over our bloody corpses to swear to exterminate the last of the enemies of the people. Nevertheless, their impious delirium attests both to their hope and their despair. They once hoped to succeed in starving the French people; the French people still lives and will survive all its enemies. Subsistence was assured, and nature, faithful to Liberty, already presents it abundance. What resource then remains to them? Assassination. They hoped to exterminate the national representation by bribed revolt, and they so counted on the success of this attack that they didnt blush to announce it in advance to the wrath of Europe and to confess it in the English parliament. This project failed. What remains to them? Assassination. They thought they could overwhelm us by the efforts of their sacrilegious league, and especially by treason. The traitors tremble or perish, their artillery falls into our power, their satellites flee before us, but assassination remains to them.

They sought to dissolve the National Convention by degradation and corruption. The Convention punished their accomplices and rose triumphant on the ruins of factions and under the aegis of the French people. But assassination remains to them. They attempted to deprave public morality and to extinguish the generous sentiments of which the love of freedom and of the fatherland are composed by banishing from the republic good sense, virtue and divinity. We proclaimed the divinity and the immortality of the soul; we commanded virtue in the name of the republic. Assassination remains to them. Finally, slander, treason, arson, poisoning, atheism, corruption, famine, assassinations. They were lavish with these crimes: assassination and yet more assassination still remain to them. Let us then rejoice and give thanks to heaven since we have so well served our country as to have been judged worthy of the daggers of tyranny. We thus have glorious dangers to run! The city offers as many such dangers as the battlefield. We have nothing to envy our brave brothers in arms; we pay, in more than one way, our debt to the fatherland. Oh kings and valets of kings! It is not we who will complain of the kind of war you make, and we recognize that it is worthy of your august prudence. In fact, it is easier to take our lives than to triumph over our principles and our armies. England, Italy, Germany, and France itself will furnish you soldiers to execute these noble exploits. When the powers of the earth league together to kill a feeble individual he must not insist on living; it is thus that living a long time doesnt enter into our calculations. Its not in order to live that we declare war on all tyrants and, what is even more dangerous, on all crimes. What man on earth has ever defended the rights of humanity with impunity? A few months ago I said to my colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety: If the armies of the Republic are victorious, if we unmask the traitors, if we put down factions, they will assassinate us. And I was not in the least astonished to see my prophecy realized. I myself find that the situation in which the enemies of the republic have placed me is not without its advantages, for the more uncertain and precarious are the lives of the defenders of the fatherland, the more independent they are of mens evil. Surrounded by assassins I have already put myself in the new order of things where they want to send me. I only hold to fleeting life by the love of the fatherland and the thirst for justice and, separated more than ever from any personal considerations, I find myself better disposed to attack with energy the villains who conspire against us and humankind. The more they hurry to terminate my career down here, the more I hasten to fulfill those actions useful to the happiness of my like. At least I will leave a testament whose reading will make tyrants and their accomplices tremble. I will perhaps reveal redoubtable secrets that a pusillanimous prudence would have pushed me to hide. I will tell what the salvation of my fatherland and the triumph of freedom depend upon. If the same perfidious ones who guide the rage of the assassins arent yet visible to all eyes, I will leave to time the task of lifting the veil that covers them, and I will restrict myself to recalling those truths that alone can save this Republic. Yes, no matter what lack of seriousness with its lack of foresight might think, whatever perfidious counter-revolutionaries might say! The destiny of the republic is not yet fixed, and the vigilance of the peoples representatives is more than ever necessary. It is not the pomp of denominations, not victory, nor riches nor fleeting enthusiasm that constitute the republic; it is the wisdom of laws and especially the goodness of mores; it is the purity and the stability of the maxims of government. The laws are to be made, the maxims of government to be assured, and the mores to be regenerated. If one of these things is missing there is in a state naught but errors, pride,

passions, factions, ambitions and cupidity. Far from repressing vices the republic would then only allow them freer expansion, and vice necessarily returns us to tyranny. Whoever is not master of himself is made to be the slave of others. This a truth that applies to peoples as well as individuals. Do you want to know who are the ambitious? Examine who they are who protect the rogues who encourage counterrevolutionaries, who execute attacks, who hold virtue in contempt, who corrupt public morals: it was the march of the conspirators who fell under the mailed fist of the law. To make war on crime is the path to the tomb and to immortality; to favor crime is the path to the throne and the scaffold. Perverse beings managed to throw the Republic and human reason into chaos. Its a matter now of pulling them from this in order to create the harmony of the moral and political worlds. The French people have two guarantors of the possibility of executing this heroic enterprise: the current principles of representation and its own virtues. The moment in which we find ourselves is favorable, but it is perhaps unique. In the state of equilibrium in which things are it is easy to consolidate liberty, and it is easy to lose it. If France were to be governed for a few months by a corrupted legislature, freedom would be lost. Victory would fall to the factions and immorality. Your concert and you energy have astonished and defeated Europe. If you come to know this as well as your enemies you will easily triumph. I spoke of the virtue of the people. Attested to by the entire revolution, this virtue would not alone suffice to reassure us against the factions who attempt without cease to corrupt and tear apart the republic. What is the reason for this? Its that there are two peoples in France. The one is the mass of citizens, pure, simple thirsting for justice and friends of liberty. It is this virtuous people that spills all its blood to found the republic that is imposing to internal enemies and shakes the thrones of tyrants. The other is a mass of the ambitious and intriguers, its the chatting, charlatan, artificial people who show themselves everywhere, who persecute patriotism, who grab onto the tribunes and often the public functions; who abuse the learning that the advantages of the ancien regimegave them in order to fool public opinion. Its this people of rogues, of foreigners, of hypocritical counter-revolutionaries who place themselves between the people and their representatives in order to fool the one and slander the other; to block their operations, to turn against the public good the most useful laws and the most salutary truths. As long as this impure race exists the Republic will be unhappy and precarious. Its up to you to deliver it by an imposing energy and an unalterable concert. Those who seek to divide us, those who stop the march of the government, those who slander it every day among you by perfidious insinuations, those who seek to form against it a dangerous coalition of all the evil passions, of irascible pride, of all the interests opposed to the public interest are your enemies and those of the fatherland. They are foreign agents. They are the successors of Brissot, of Hebert, of Danton. If they were to reign one day the Fatherland would be lost. In saying these things I sharpen daggers against myself, and it is precisely for this that I say them. You will persevere in your principles and in your triumphal march. You will put down crime and you will save the fatherland... I have lived long enough... I saw the French people rise up from degradation and servitude to the heights of Glory and Freedom. I saw the chains broken and the guilty thrones that weigh upon the earth near to being overthrown by triumphant hands. I saw a yet more astonishing marvel, a marvel that monarchical corruption and the experience of the first period of our Revolution barely allowed to be seen as possible: an assembly invested with the strength of the French nation, marching with a rapid and firm step towards public happiness, devoted to the cause of the people and to the triumph of equality, worthy of giving to the world the signal of Liberty and the example of all the virtues.

Accomplish, Citizens, accomplish your sublime destiny. You have placed us in the vanguard to bear up under the first efforts of the enemies of Liberty; we will be worthy of this honor, and with our blood we will trace the route of immortality. May you constantly deploy that unquenchable energy which you need to put down the monsters of the universe that conspire against you, and to then enjoy in peace the benedictions of the people and of the fruits of your virtues.

Robespierre 1793 For the Defense of the Committee of Public Safety

Source: Robespierre, Discours et rapports a la Convention. Union Gnrale d'Editions, Paris, 1988; Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004. In 1793 the Committee of Public Safety replaced many generals, reorganized headquarters and carried out military operations in secret. Briez, representative on mission with the Armies of the North attacked Robespierre, who defended himself and the actions of the Committee. If my quality as member of the Committee of Public Safety must prevent me from explaining myself with entire independence on what has happened, then I must abdicate it this instant. And after having separated myself from my colleagues, who I esteem and honor (and its well-known that I am not prodigal in the sentiment) I will tell my country the necessary truths. The truth is the only weapon that remains in the hands of the intrepid defenders of freedom in order to bring down the perfidious agents of aristocracy. He who seeks to debase, to divide, to paralyze the Convention is an enemy of the fatherland, whether he sits in this hall or is a foreigner (applause). Whether he acts by stupidity or perversity he is of the party of the tyrants who make war upon us. But this project of debasement exists in the very places where patriotism should reign, in the clubs that claim to be more than patriotic. War is made on the Convention in the persons of all the defenders of freedom. And what is most deplorable is that this cowardly system has partisans here. For a long time the Committee of Public Safety has put up with a war made on it by several members who are more envious than just. While it is busy day and night with the great interests of the Fatherland, written denunciations, presented with guile, are brought here. Can it then be that the Citizens you have charged with the most difficult functions have lost the title of imperturbable defenders of freedom because they've accepted this burden? Are those who attack them more patriotic because they havent received this mark of confidence? Do you claim that those who defended freedom here at the risk of their lives, in the midst of daggers, should be treated like vile protectors of aristocracy? We will brave calumnies and intrigues. But the Convention is attached to the Committee of Public Safety; your glory is tied to the success of those who you have garbed in national confidence. We are accused of doing nothing, but has our position been thought on? Eleven armies to direct, the weight of all of Europe to bear; everywhere there are traitors to unmask, emissaries bribed by the gold of foreign powers to foil, unfaithful administrators to watch over, to pursue; everywhere we must level the obstacles and hindrances to the execution of the wisest measures; all the tyrants to combat, all the conspirators to intimidate, those who can almost always be found in a caste once so powerful because of its riches, and even more by its

intrigues, these are our functions. Do you believe that without unity in action, without secrecy in its operations, without the certainty of finding support within the Convention that the government could triumph over so many obstacles and so many enemies? No. Only the most extreme ignorance, only the most profound perversity could claim that in such circumstances those who play the cruel game of vilifying those who are at the helm of affairs, of hindering their operations, of slandering their conduct are not enemies of the fatherland. It is not with impunity that you will leave aside the necessary force of opinion. No other proof is necessary than the discussions that have just taken place. The Committee of Public Safety sees treason in the midst of a victory. It dismisses a general still garbed in the splendor of an apparent victory, and his very courage is called a crime! It expels traitors and casts its gaze on the officers who showed the most civisme. It chooses them after having consulted the representatives of the people who had particular knowledge of the characters of each of them. This operation required secrecy in order to be completely successful, the safety of the fatherland demanded it. We took all the necessary measures so that secrecy should be guarded, even if it was only in relation to other armies. And now, at the moment in which we are impatient to know the result of these measures, we are denounced at the National Convention, our work is criticized without knowledge our motives, they want us to divulge the Republics secrets, that we give traitors the time to escape; it is hoped to strike with disfavor the new choices, doubtless in order to prevent the reestablishment of confidence. The nobles are ceaselessly declaimed against; it is said that they must be dismissed and, by a strange coincidence, when we execute this great revolutionary measure, and we bring to it all possible consideration, we are denounced. We have just dismissed two nobles, that is, one of the men of this proscribed caste, those must suspect by their former relations with the court, and another known for his ties and his zeal with foreign nobles, the one and the other pronouncedly aristocratic. So we're accused of disorganizing everything. We're told that we wanted to see only true sans-culottes at the head of the armies. We chose those whose new exploits in the affairs at Bergues and Dunkirk designated them for national recognition, who won despite Houchard, who deployed the greatest talent, for the attack of Hondschoote should have wiped out the French army. Its principally to Jourdan that the amazing success that honored that army is due, which forced the raising of the siege of Dunkirk. It is that officer who, at the moment when the army didnt expect to find 18,000 wellentrenched men, and where it was surprised by the discharge of a frightening artillery, it is Jourdan who at the head of a battalion took off into the enemy camp, which made his courage pass to the rest of the army, and the taking of Hondschoote was the effect of his able dispositions and the ardor he knew how to inspire. The head of headquarters being justly suspect, we replaced him by a man whose talents and patriotism were attested to by all the commissioners; a man known by exploits that signaled him at the very time when the most odious treasons sacrificed that army. His name is Ernould. He distinguished himself in the last affair and was even wounded. And we are denounced! We have made the same changes in the armies of the Moselle and the Rhine. All of our choices were made for men of the character of he I just depicted to you. And we are still accused! If there are some moral presumptions that can guide the government and serve as rules for legislators, it is certainly those which we have followed in these operations.

What is then the cause for this denunciation? I dare say that that day was worth three victories for Pitt. What success can he claim if it is not the annihilation of the national Government established by the Convention, dividing us, and making us tear ourselves apart with our own hands? And if in Europe we pass for imbeciles or traitors, do you think that they will have more respect for the Convention that chose us, that they will even be disposed to respect the authorities that you will afterwards establish? It is thus important that the government be consistent, and that you replace a committee that has successfully been denounced in your midst (No! No! the assembly cries out with unanimity). Its not a question here of individuals; its a question of the fatherland and of principles. I declare this: in the current state of affairs, it is impossible for the Committee to save the public thing. And if I am contested on this I will remind everyone how perfidious, how widespread is the system to vilify and dissolve us; how many paid agents foreigners and internal enemies have to this effect; I will recall that the faction is not dead, that it conspires in the depths of its cells, that the serpents of the Marais have not yet all been crushed (applause.) The men who perpetually declaim, whether here or elsewhere, against those men who are at the head of the government have themselves given proof of lack of civisme and baseness. Why then do they want to debase us? Which of our acts have deserved this ignominy? I know that we cannot flatter ourselves that we have attained perfection. But when one must support a republic surrounded by enemies, arm reason in favor of freedom, destroy prejudices, render void individual efforts against the public interest, moral and physical forces are necessary that nature has perhaps refused both to those who denounce us and those we combat. The Committee has earned the hatred of kings and rascals; if you dont believe in its zeal, in the services it has rendered to the public thing, smash this instrument. But before doing so, examine the circumstances in which you find yourselves. Those who denounce us have themselves been denounced to the committee. From the accusers they are today, they are going to become the accused (applause). But who are these men who rise up against the conduct of the Committee, who in this session have worsened your reverses in order to worsen their accusations? The first declared himself the partisan of Custine and Lamorlire. He was the persecutor of patriots in an important fortress, and lately he dared to advise the abandonment of a territory united with the republic, whose inhabitants, denounced by him, defend themselves with energy against the fanatics and the English. The second has not yet repaired the shame with which he covered himself in returning from a place whose defense was confided in him after having surrendered it to the Austrians. Without a doubt, if such men manage to prove that the Committee isnt composed of good men, then liberty is lost, for it will doubtless not be to them that enlightened opinion will give its confidence and hand over the reins of government! And dont think that it is my intention to render imputation for imputation. Jep commits to never dividing the patriots, but I dont

include among the patriots those who only wear the mask, and I will unmask the conduct of two or three traitors who have here been the artisans of discord and dissension (applause). I thus think that the fatherland is lost if the Committee doesnt enjoy unlimited confidence, and if it isnt composed of men who deserve it. I demand that that the Committee of Public Safety be renewed (No! No! is cried out throughout the assembly) Interventions by Briez, Jeanbon Saint-Andr and Billaud Varenne. The order of the day is demanded. To pass to the order of the day is to open the door to all the misfortunes that I just exposed. The Convention cannot be silent on that which tends to paralyze the government. The explanations that have been given are insufficient. The only result is that the members of the Committee of Public Safety who have spoken seemed to be defending their cause, and you havent pronounced. It means giving the advantage to those men who slandered it, not always here, but secretly, in a way all the more perfidious for having seemed to applaud it before you when it made its reports. For I say to you that the most painful sentiment I felt was having seen Barre applauded by the very men who have never ceased indiscriminately slandering all the members of the Committee, by those very men who would perhaps like to see us with a dagger in the breast (applause). A member has said that everyone should be able to give his opinion on the operations of the Committee of Public safety; I dont disagree. The functions of the Committee of Public Safety are arduous, and it is because of this that it cannot save the fatherland without the Convention. In order to save the fatherland one must have a great deal of character, great virtues. Men are needed who have the courage to propose strong measures, who even dare to attack the pride of individuals (applause). Without a doubt everyone is free to express his opinion about the Committee. But this freedom should not go so far that a deputy recalled from the depths of the departments because he has been judged to have ceased serving the people well should go on the attack and accuse the Committee (applause). Citizens, I promised you the whole truth and I'm going to tell it; in this discussion the Convention has not shown all the energy it should have; a report was delivered to you about Valenciennes, the apparent goal of which was to instruct you on all the circumstances surrounding the surrender of that place, but the real object of which was to indict the Committee of Public Safety. As price for his vague accusation, the author of this report is an assistant on the Committee he denounces. Well I say to you, he who was at Valenciennes when the enemy entered there is not fit to be member of the Committee of Public Safety (lively applause). This member will never respond to this question: Are you dead? (applause repeated several times). If I had been in Valenciennes under those circumstances I would never have been in a position to deliver a report on the events of the siege. I would have wanted to share the fate of the brave defenders who preferred an honorable death to a shameful capitulation (applause). And since one must be republican, since one must have energy, I say to you that I wouldnt be member of a committee in which such a man could participate. This might seem harsh, but what is harsher still for a patriot is that for two years, 100,000 men have been killed by treason or weakness; it is weakness before traitors that harms us. We are tender towards the most criminal men, towards those who deliver the fatherland to the enemys steel. I only know how to be moved by the fate of a generous people who are slaughtered with so much villainy (applause).

I add a word on our accusers: it cannot be that, on pretext of the freedom of opinion, a committee that serves the fatherland well should be slandered with impunity by those who, being able to crush one of the hydra heads of federalism, did not do so due to an excess of weakness, nor any of those who, at this tribune, coldly proposed the abandonment of MontBlanc to the Piedmontese. (applause.) As for the proposal of Billaud-Varenne, I attach no importance to it, and I dont find this impolitic. If the 50 million put at the disposal of the Committee could fix the attention of the Convention one instant it wouldnt be worthy of working for the salvation of the fatherland. I say that it is not necessary to believe in probity in order to suspect the Committee of Public Safety (applause). That the tyrants who hate us, their salaried slanderers, the journalists who serve them so well spread those falsehoods to vilify us, this I can conceive. But its not up to us to ward off such charges and respond to them. Its enough that I feel in my heart the strength to defend unto death the cause of the people, which is great and sublime. Its enough for me to hold in contempt all the tyrants and the rascals who second them (applause). I summarize and I say that all the explanations that have been given are insufficient. We can hold the slanderers in contempt, but the agents of the tyrants who surround us observe us and gather all they can to vilify the defenders of the people. Its for them, its to ward off their impostures, that the National Convention must proclaim that it maintains its confidence in the Committee of Public Safety.

Robespierre 1791 On the Kings Flight

Speech given at the Jacobin Club, June 22, 1791; Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004. Its not to me that the flight of the first public functionary should appear to be a disastrous event. This day could have been the most beautiful of the revolution; it could still become so, and the gain of 40 million in support that the royal individual cost would be the least of the benefits of this day. But for this other measures must be taken than those adopted by the National Assembly, and I seize a moment where they are not in session to speak to you of the measures it seems should have been taken and that I wasnt permitted to propose. The king chose the moment to desert his post when the opening of the primary assemblies was going to awaken all ambitions, all hopes, and all parties, and arm half the nation against the other by the application of the decree of the marc d'argent, as well as through the ridiculous distinctions established between full citizens, half citizens and quarter citizens. He chose the moment when the first legislature, at the end of its labors, sees approaching it with the eye one uses to look on an heir the legislature that is going to chase it and exercise the national veto in reversing some of its acts. He chose the moment

when treacherous priests have, by orders and bulls, stirred up fanaticism, and provoked against the constitution all that philosophy has left behind of idiots in the eighty-three departments. He waited for the moment when the emperor and the king of Sweden would have arrived at Brussels to receive him, and when France would be covered with harvests so that a small band of brigands, torch in hand, could have starved the nation. But these arent the circumstances that frighten me: let all of Europe league against us and Europe will be defeated. What frightens me, Messieurs, is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone. And here I need to be listened to until the end. Once again, what frightens me is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone else: its that since this morning, all of our enemies speak the same language as us. Everyone is united; everyone has the same face, and nevertheless its clear that a king who had a pension of 40 million, who still disposed of all places, who still had the most beautiful and the most secure crown on his head, could not have renounced so many advantages without being sure of recovering them. So he couldnt have based his hopes on the support of Leopold and the King of Sweden and on the army from beyond the Rhine: let all the brigands of Europe league together and they will again be defeated. It is, then, in our midst, its in this capital, that the fugitive king left those supports upon which he counts for his triumphal re-entry. Otherwise his flight would be too foolish. You know that 3 million men armed for freedom would be invincible; he thus has a powerful party of great intelligence in our midst. But look around you and share my fear in considering that everyone wears the same mask of patriotism These are not conjectures that I am making; these are facts of which I am certain. I am going to reveal all to you, and I defy those who will speak after me to respond to me. You know the memorandum that Louis XVI left on departing; you noted how he marks in the constitution those things that wound him and those that have the happiness of pleasing him. Read that protest by the king and you will grasp the entire plot. The king is going to reappear on the frontiers, assisted by Leopold, by the King of Sweden, by d'Artois, by Cond, by all the fugitives and all the brigands whose ranks the common cause of kings would have swollen. In their eyes the ranks will be even more swelled. A paternal manifesto will appear, like that of the emperor when he re-conquered Brabant. The king will say in it: My people can always count on my love. The sweetness of peace and even that of liberty will be vaunted in it. A transaction will be proposed with the migrs: eternal peace, amnesty, fraternity. At the same time the chiefs in the capital and in the departments, with whom this project is coordinated, on their side will paint the horrors of civil war. Why kill each other in a war between brothers who all want to be free? For Bender and Cond will speak of themselves as more patriotic than us. If, when you had no more harvests to preserve from arson, nor enemy armies on your frontiers, the Constitutional Committee had you tolerate so many nation-icide

decrees, would you hesitate to cede to the insinuations of your chiefs when you are only asked to make slight sacrifices in order to bring about a general reconciliation? I know well the character of the nation. Will the chiefs who had you give votes of thanks to Bouill for the St Bartholomews massacre of patriots in Nancy have any difficulty in the short term in bringing to a transaction a worn out people, one with whom great pains have been taken to wean them of the beauties of freedom, while it was effected to weigh upon them all the charges, and to make them feel all the privations, their preservation impose? And see how everything works together to execute this plan, and how the National Assembly itself marches to this goal in concert. Louis XVI wrote to the Assembly in his own hand; he signs that he is fleeing and the Assembly in a lie that is: cowardly, since it could call things by their name in the middle of 3 million bayonets; crude, since the king had the impudence to write: I am not being abducted, I leave so that I can return to subjugate you; perfidious, since this lie tended to preserve to the king his quality and the right to dictate to us, arms in hand, the decrees that would please him. The National Assembly, I say, has today in twenty decrees called the kings flight an abduction. We can guess for what reason. Do you want any other proofs that the National Assembly betrays the interests of the nation? What measures did it take this morning? Here are the principal ones: The Minister of War will continue in office, under the oversight of the Diplomatic Committee, and the same for the other ministers. And what is the Minister of War? Its a man who I have never ceased denouncing to you, who has constantly followed in the steps of his predecessors, persecuting the patriotic soldiers, and naming aristocratic officers. What is the Military Committee that is charged with watching over him? Its a committee entirely made up of disguised aristocratic colonels and our most dangerous enemies. I need only their works to unmask them. The decrees most fatal for liberty have come from the Military Committee. What is the Minister of Foreign Affairs? Its a Montmorin who, a month ago, two weeks ago, answered you saying that the king adored the constitution. Its to this traitor that you abandon foreign relations! Under whose oversight? Of the Diplomatic Committee, of this committee where reigns an Andr, and where one of whose members told me that a man of good will, a man who wasnt a traitor to his country, could not put his feet. I wont continue this review. Lessart no more has my confidence than does Necker, who left him his coat. Citizens, have I demonstrated enough the depths of the abyss that is going to swallow up our freedom? Do you see clearly enough the coalition of ministers of the king, some of whom, if not all, I will never believe did not know of his flight? Do you see clearly enough the coalition of your civil and military chiefs? It is such that I cant not believe that it didnt favor that escape, which they confess to have known about. Do you see that coalition with your committees, with the National Assembly? And as if this coalition wasnt strong enough, I know that soon a reunion with your best known enemies is going to be proposed to you; in a moment all 89, the mayor, the judge, the general, the ministers, it is said, are going to arrive here! How can we escape? Antony

commands the legions that are going to avenge Caesar! And its Octavian who commands the legions of the republic. They talk bout unity, of the need to gather around the same men. Bur when Antony camped around Lepidus and also spoke of unity there was soon nothing but the camp of Antony, and there was nothing left for Brutus and Cassius but to kill themselves. I swear that all I have just said is the exact truth. You well know you would never hear it in the National Assembly. And here, among you, I feel that these truths will not save the nation without a miracle of Providence, which deigns to better look after freedom than your chiefs. But I wanted to at least depose in your transcript a monument of all that is going to happen. At least I would have predicted everything to you; I will have traced the march of your enemies, and I cannot be reproached for anything. I know that by a denunciation dangerous for me to make but not dangerous for the public thing; I know that in thus accusing almost all of my colleagues, almost all the members of the Assembly of being counter-revolutionary, some from ignorance, others from terror, others from resentment, others by wounded pride, others from a blind confidence, many because they are corrupt, I raise up against me all the prideful; I sharpen a thousand daggers, I offer myself to all the hatred. I know the lot that is reserved for me. But if in the beginnings of the revolution, and when I was barely glimpsed in the National Assembly, if when only my conscience was seen I sacrificed my life to the truth, to freedom, to the fatherland, then today, when the suffrage of my fellow citizens, when universal benevolence, when too much indulgence, recognition and attachment have paid me well for my sacrifice, I would receive death almost as a benefit that would prevent me from witnessing the evils that I see to be inevitable. I have just put the National Assembly on trial. I dare it to do the same to me.

Robespierre 1791 On the Death Penalty

Speech at the Constituent Assembly, June 22, 1791. Translated: for Marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004. The news having been brought to Athens that citizens had been condemned to death in the city of Argos, people ran to the temples, where the gods were called upon to turn Athenians away from such cruel and dire thoughts. I come to ask, not the gods, but legislators who should be the organs and the interpreters of the eternal laws that the divinity dictated to men to erase from the code of the French the blood laws that command judicial murders, and that their morals and their new constitution reject. I want to prove to them: 1- that the death penalty is essentially unjust and, 2- that it isnt the most repressive of penalties and that it multiplies crimes more than it prevents them. Outside of civil society, if a bitter enemy makes an attempt on my life or, pushed away twenty times, he returns again to ravage the field that I cultivated with my own hands; since I

have only my individual strength to oppose to his I must either perish or kill him, and the law of natural defense justifies and approves me. But in society, when the force of all is armed against only one, what principle of justice could authorize it to kill him? What necessity can absolve it? A victor who kills his captive enemies is called a barbarian! A grown man who kills a child that he could disarm and punish seems to us a monster! An accused man condemned by society is nothing else for it but a defeated and powerless enemy. Before it, he is weaker than a child before a grown man. Thus, in the eyes of truth and justice these scenes of death that it orders with so much ceremony, are nothing but cowardly assassinations, nothing but solemn crimes committed not by individuals but by entire nations using legal forms. However cruel, however extravagant the laws, do not be surprised: they are the work of a few tyrants, they are the chains with which they weigh down the human race, they are the arms with which they subjugate it, they were written in blood. It isnt permitted to put to death a Roman citizen; this was the law the people passed. But Scylla was victorious and said: All those who bore arms against me are worthy of death. Octavian and his companions in crime confirmed this law. It was a crime worthy of death under Tiberius to praise Brutus. Caligula condemned to death those who were so sacrilegious as to undress before the image of the emperor. Once tyranny invented the crime of lse-majest which were actions either indifferent or heroic who could have dared to think that it merited a penalty more gentle than death without rendering himself guilty of lse-majest? When fanaticism, born of the monstrous union of ignorance and despotism, invented in its turn the crime of divine lse-majest, when it conceived in its delirium the project of avenging god himself, was it not necessary that it offer him blood, and that they bring him down to the level of the monsters who said they were his image? The death penalty is necessary, say the partisans of ancient and barbarous routine. Without it there is no brake strong enough for crime. Who told you this? Have you calculated all the gears by which penal laws can act on human sensibility? Alas, before death how much physical and moral pain can man endure? The desire to live cedes before pride, the most imperious of all the passions that master the heart of man. The most terrible of all punishments for social man is opprobrium, is the overwhelming sight of public execration. When the legislator can strike the citizen in so many sensitive places and in so many ways, why would he reduce himself to employing the death penalty? Punishments arent imposed to torment the guilty, but in order to prevent crime by the fear of incurring them. The legislator who prefers death and atrocious penalties to the gentler means in his power outrages public feeling and weakens the moral sentiment among the people he governs; like a clumsy preceptor who, by the frequent use of cruel punishments, stupefies and degrades the soul of his student; he wears out and weakens the springs of government by wanting to wind them up too strongly. The legislator who establishes this penalty renounces the salutary principle that the must effective way to repress crimes is to adapt the punishment to the character of the different passions that produce it, and to punish them, so to say, by themselves. It confounds all ideas, it troubles all relations, and openly contradicts the goal of penal laws.

The death penalty is necessary, you say. If this is true, then why have several peoples done without it? By what fatality were these people the wisest, the happiest and the freest? If the death penalty is the most apt to prevent great crimes, then they should then have been most rare among the peoples who adopted and used it. But the facts are precisely the contrary. Witness Japan: the death penalty and tortures are nowhere more widely used, and nowhere are crimes so frequent and so atrocious. One might almost say that the Japanese want to dispute in ferocity the barbaric laws that outrage and irritate them. Did the Greek republics, where penalties were moderate and where the death penalty was either infinitely rare or absolutely unknown, offer more crime and less virtue than the countries governed by blood laws? Do you think that Rome was soiled with more crimes when in the days of its glory, the Porcian Laws wiped out the severe laws carried out by kings and decimvirs, than it was under Scylla, who revived them, and under the emperors, who carried their rigor to a point of excess worthy of their infamous tyranny. Has Russia been in turmoil since the despot who governs it entirely suppressed the death penalty, as if by this act of humanity and philosophy he wanted to expiate the crime of holding millions of men in the yoke of absolute power? Listen to the voice of justice and reason. It cries out to you that human judgements are never certain enough to justify a society of men subject to error dealing death to another man. Even if you could imagine the most perfect judicial order, even if you had found the most upright and enlightened judges, there would still remain some room for error or caution. Why forbid yourselves the means of repairing them? Why condemn yourselves to the inability to lend a helping hand to oppressed innocence? What do sterile regrets, illusory reparations matter to a vain shadow, to insensible ash? They are the sad testimony of the barbaric temerity of your penal laws. Take from a man the possibility to expiate his crime by repentance or acts of virtue; pitilessly close off to him any return to virtue, self-esteem, rush his descent, so to speak, into the tomb still covered by the recent stain of his crime is, in my eyes, the most horrible refinement in cruelty. The first obligation of a legislator is to form and preserve public morals, the source of all freedom, source of all social happiness. When in running to a particular goal he turns away from this general and essential goal he commits the most vulgar and dire of errors. The king must thus present to the people the purest model of justice and reason. If in place of this powerful, calm and moderate severity that should characterize it they place anger and vengeance; if they spill human blood that they could spare and that they have no right to spread; if they spread out before the people cruel scenes and cadavers wounded by torture, it then alters in the hearts of citizens the ideas of the just and the unjust; they plant the seed in the midst of society of ferocious prejudices that will produce others in their turn. Man is no longer for man so sacred an object: we have a less grand idea of his dignity when public authority puts his life at risk. The idea of murder inspires less fear when the law itself gives the example and the spectacle. The horror of crime is diminished when it is punished by another crime. Do not confuse the effectiveness of a penalty with the excess of severity: the one is absolutely opposed to the other. Everything seconds moderate laws; everything conspires against cruel laws. It has been observed that in free countries crime was more rare and penal laws more gentle. All ideas hold together. Free countries are those where the rights of man are respected and where, consequently, the laws are just. Where they offend humanity by an excess of rigor this is a proof that the dignity of man is not known there, that that of the citizen doesnt exist. It is a proof that the legislator is nothing but a master who commands slaves and who pitilessly punishes them according to his whim. I thus conclude that the death penalty should be abrogated.