Robespierre by Marcel Gauchet

Author:Marcel Gauchet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

Robespierre was plainly under no illusions with regard to the balance of power in the country. But he thought that by acting preemptively, imposing the government’s will in order to preserve existing political institutions and, in this way, strengthening public spirit, it would become possible to tip the balance in favor of the constituted authorities.

In the end it was Saint-Just who was to carry the day, on 10 October, with one of those reports filled with dazzling summaries of events that he alone was able to compose. This one was particularly striking for its combination of hardheaded analysis and willfully unrealistic prognosis, relentless lucidity with regard to problems and almost dreamlike wishfulness with regard to solutions. At all events the guiding principle was succinctly stated: “The provisional government of France will be revolutionary until peace has been achieved.” This program left no room for half-measures: “The Republic will be founded only when the will of the sovereign [people] has crushed the monarchist minority and reigns over it by right of conquest. All possible measures must be taken in combating the enemies of the new order of things; liberty must triumph, no matter what the price may be.” Billaud-Varenne, speaking in the name of the Committee on 18 November, presented a “report on the mode of provisional and revolutionary government.” After two weeks of vigorous and highly revealing debate, this regime was formally decreed on 4 December. A few days before, on 30 November, Merlin de Douai had demanded that “the Committee of Public Safety be called the Committee of Government.” To this Billaud-Varenne objected, “The center of government is in the Convention.” Barère took the argument a step further: “The Convention governs alone and must govern alone.… We are the vanguard of the Convention, we are the arm that it causes to act, but we are not the government.” The decree of 4 December consecrated the principle in these words: “The National Convention is the unique source of governmental impetus.” Three weeks later Robespierre gave the doctrine a fuller statement. On 25 December, in his famous Rapport sur les principes du gouvernement révolutionnaire, he took it upon himself once again to explain to the actors of the Revolution where matters stood. “The theory of revolutionary government is as new as the Revolution that gave rise to it.” At this stage he no longer had any hesitation about saying his role and that of the Committee of Public Safety were bound up with governing. He had openly acknowledged this state of affairs, on 28 November, in his reply to the Hébertist detractors of the Committee at the Jacobin Club:

[C]ome take our places, come, we will cede them to you with pleasure. We will see how well you handle the reins of government, how well you provide for the needs of the interior, how well you protect yourselves from the evils that threaten you within, how well you cast aside slanders on the one hand, and, on the other, impart to the

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