May 6, 1758—Son and grandson of attorneys, an opponent of capital punishment early in his public career, lawyer and politician Maximilien Robespierre, born on this date in Arras, France, led the call for summary, sanguinary justice for enemies of his country’s revolution, before meeting a similar fate himself.
Robespierre was reputed to be of Irish descent. Who’d have thought it? Can anyone tell me when he ever cracked a joke? It seems that some ancestor fled the Emerald Isle during the Reformation, when the island became caught in the sectarian violence fomented by England’s Tudor Dynasty. Whatever these Celtic elements were leeched, they must have been leeched out of the family DNA a long time before he came on the scene.
I don’t know why the 12-man Committee of Public Safety that became Robespierre’s ultimate power vehicle isn’t as much a term of opprobrium in France as the House Un-American Activities Committee here in the U.S. The latter example of Cold War paranoia was, of course, a misnomer; by inquiring into people’s political beliefs, it was the committee, not those it publicly pummeled, that was un-American.
Likewise, Robespierre’s committee of 12 made French citizens very, very unsafe, with thousands guillotined and 200,000 arrested in a mere nine months. Talk all you want of “Amerika,” of McCarthyism, of Guantanomo Bay—all horrible, mind you—but for systematic abuse of the legal process in a concentrated period, we can no more compete with the French than we can with the quality of their cheese or wineries.
Robespierre has fascinated me ever since I read one of his most significant addresses, on “Terror and Virtue,” for my college Contemporary Civilization class. The central paragraph is this:
“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 all sounds so reasonable—and all the more chilling for that. There’s not even a hint of irony in the notion that “terror” can be allied to something good.
More recently, as I pondered the phrase “virtue and terror,” another phrase twinning two different concepts came to mind, one that gave hope to the best impulses of abolitionist Americans during the antebellum era: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” Millions of American schoolchildren once knew this phrase from Daniel Webster by heart, and a smaller group, for several generations, thrilled to the oration from which it came—the senator’s “Second Reply to Hayne,” in 1830. It’s useful to compare these two lawyer-politicians with an uncanny ability to persuade their countrymen, Robespierre and Webster, the Frenchman’s junior by nearly a quarter century.
Let’s stipulate this right now: the comparison is not as one-sided as one might at first suspect. Human nature is messier than we’d like it to be, and virtue (we’re going to re-appropriate Robespierre’s favorite word for our own purposes) rarely resides all on one side or with one individual. So it was here.
1) Poverty and corruption – Both lawyers grew up poor. Webster’s struggle to live it down led him into chronic indebtedness to public officials that would now be considered at best conflict of interest and at worst downright bribery, including a baldfaced reminder to Nicholas Biddle, the head of the Second National Bank of the United States, that his retainer by the bank had not yet been renewed, and that it should be. In contrast, from an early age Robespierre was known as “the Incorruptible.” It was one of the major sources of his reputation. (Characteristically, it was also something of which he couldn’t stop boasting.)
2) Personal habits – Webster had such an unquenchable appetite for food and drink that they might well have contributed to his death. In the home of a cabinetmaker who admired him, Robespierre lived quietly and simply for the last three years of his life.
3) Appearance and style – Webster sounded as grand as he looked, with a basso profundo voice coming out of a large, barrel-chested frame, particularly in his younger years, before his appetite made him more rotund. Like the American Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards, the impact of Robespierre’s quiet, even sweet tone was inversely proportional to the hysteria it created. A lingering pause, to allow the effect of what he said sink into listeners’ minds, was about the only flourish he permitted himself. That is, unless you don’t count his apparel, because surprisingly enough, the arch-revolutionary, according to historian Robert Darnton’s The Kiss of Lamourette, “always dressed in the uniform of the Old Regime: culottes, waistcoast, and a powdered wig.”
4) Facing the mob – “Hold on to the Constitution,” Webster warned, “for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.” That fear led the rising young politician to become a Federalist, then a Whig. Robespierre, on the other hand, held no such fear; he guided what others viewed as the rabble. Nobody could get past his left flank in political combat.
5) Dealing with war – Like other New England Federalists, Webster opposed the War of 1812, rightly fearing its devastating impact on New England shipping. In his brief period as Secretary of State under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty settling a dispute with Great Britain over the Canadian-American border. The final act of his career involved an attempt to stave off civil war between the North and South, which he regarded as a mortal threat to the Union. Robespierre urged his country on to war in order to save the gains of the French Revolution, one of the first modern efforts to mobilize (and put at risk) an entire nation behind a war effort. France would remain at arms against its neighbors, whether under the banner of the Revolution or of Napoleon, for the next 20 years. In the end, it lost.
6) Compromise – Webster saw his quest for the Presidency end when his support for the Compromise of 1850 undercut support in his traditional base in the Northern anti-slavery movement. However odious he regarded the omnibus bill’s provision for a fugitive slave law, he thought it was a last chance to preserve the Union. The decade won by passage of the bill was turbulent, but during that period another four free states—and no slave states—were admitted to the Union, providing a larger force to withstand the South during the war. Robespierre could brook no compromise. Again, the hallmark of his “Terror and Virtue” formulation was its inability to bend and adapt. In foisting on his country Rousseau’s theories of nature and government, Robespierre did incalculable damage.
Robespierre was reputed to be of Irish descent. Who’d have thought it? Can anyone tell me when he ever cracked a joke? It seems that some ancestor fled the Emerald Isle during the Reformation, when the island became caught in the sectarian violence fomented by England’s Tudor Dynasty. Whatever these Celtic elements were leeched, they must have been leeched out of the family DNA a long time before he came on the scene.
I don’t know why the 12-man Committee of Public Safety that became Robespierre’s ultimate power vehicle isn’t as much a term of opprobrium in France as the House Un-American Activities Committee here in the U.S. The latter example of Cold War paranoia was, of course, a misnomer; by inquiring into people’s political beliefs, it was the committee, not those it publicly pummeled, that was un-American.
Likewise, Robespierre’s committee of 12 made French citizens very, very unsafe, with thousands guillotined and 200,000 arrested in a mere nine months. Talk all you want of “Amerika,” of McCarthyism, of Guantanomo Bay—all horrible, mind you—but for systematic abuse of the legal process in a concentrated period, we can no more compete with the French than we can with the quality of their cheese or wineries.
Robespierre has fascinated me ever since I read one of his most significant addresses, on “Terror and Virtue,” for my college Contemporary Civilization class. The central paragraph is this:
“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 all sounds so reasonable—and all the more chilling for that. There’s not even a hint of irony in the notion that “terror” can be allied to something good.
More recently, as I pondered the phrase “virtue and terror,” another phrase twinning two different concepts came to mind, one that gave hope to the best impulses of abolitionist Americans during the antebellum era: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” Millions of American schoolchildren once knew this phrase from Daniel Webster by heart, and a smaller group, for several generations, thrilled to the oration from which it came—the senator’s “Second Reply to Hayne,” in 1830. It’s useful to compare these two lawyer-politicians with an uncanny ability to persuade their countrymen, Robespierre and Webster, the Frenchman’s junior by nearly a quarter century.
Let’s stipulate this right now: the comparison is not as one-sided as one might at first suspect. Human nature is messier than we’d like it to be, and virtue (we’re going to re-appropriate Robespierre’s favorite word for our own purposes) rarely resides all on one side or with one individual. So it was here.
1) Poverty and corruption – Both lawyers grew up poor. Webster’s struggle to live it down led him into chronic indebtedness to public officials that would now be considered at best conflict of interest and at worst downright bribery, including a baldfaced reminder to Nicholas Biddle, the head of the Second National Bank of the United States, that his retainer by the bank had not yet been renewed, and that it should be. In contrast, from an early age Robespierre was known as “the Incorruptible.” It was one of the major sources of his reputation. (Characteristically, it was also something of which he couldn’t stop boasting.)
2) Personal habits – Webster had such an unquenchable appetite for food and drink that they might well have contributed to his death. In the home of a cabinetmaker who admired him, Robespierre lived quietly and simply for the last three years of his life.
3) Appearance and style – Webster sounded as grand as he looked, with a basso profundo voice coming out of a large, barrel-chested frame, particularly in his younger years, before his appetite made him more rotund. Like the American Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards, the impact of Robespierre’s quiet, even sweet tone was inversely proportional to the hysteria it created. A lingering pause, to allow the effect of what he said sink into listeners’ minds, was about the only flourish he permitted himself. That is, unless you don’t count his apparel, because surprisingly enough, the arch-revolutionary, according to historian Robert Darnton’s The Kiss of Lamourette, “always dressed in the uniform of the Old Regime: culottes, waistcoast, and a powdered wig.”
4) Facing the mob – “Hold on to the Constitution,” Webster warned, “for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.” That fear led the rising young politician to become a Federalist, then a Whig. Robespierre, on the other hand, held no such fear; he guided what others viewed as the rabble. Nobody could get past his left flank in political combat.
5) Dealing with war – Like other New England Federalists, Webster opposed the War of 1812, rightly fearing its devastating impact on New England shipping. In his brief period as Secretary of State under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty settling a dispute with Great Britain over the Canadian-American border. The final act of his career involved an attempt to stave off civil war between the North and South, which he regarded as a mortal threat to the Union. Robespierre urged his country on to war in order to save the gains of the French Revolution, one of the first modern efforts to mobilize (and put at risk) an entire nation behind a war effort. France would remain at arms against its neighbors, whether under the banner of the Revolution or of Napoleon, for the next 20 years. In the end, it lost.
6) Compromise – Webster saw his quest for the Presidency end when his support for the Compromise of 1850 undercut support in his traditional base in the Northern anti-slavery movement. However odious he regarded the omnibus bill’s provision for a fugitive slave law, he thought it was a last chance to preserve the Union. The decade won by passage of the bill was turbulent, but during that period another four free states—and no slave states—were admitted to the Union, providing a larger force to withstand the South during the war. Robespierre could brook no compromise. Again, the hallmark of his “Terror and Virtue” formulation was its inability to bend and adapt. In foisting on his country Rousseau’s theories of nature and government, Robespierre did incalculable damage.
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