Waking up suddenly after 4 hours of sleep with my mind rotating references and analyses to piece together a rebuttal to the cynical revisionist explanation of Thermidor. You gotta love the academic AuDHD brain.
I might elaborate more later but here's the gist of it so I don't forget:
Robespierre's speech on the 8 thermidor is "bad" only if you examine it in terms of basic political self-preservation. Same with Saint-Just's decision not to read his speech to the other members of the Committee(s).
I already talked about this but I didn't elaborate enough on this aspect: these are bad strategies if you're playing the game, but they weren't playing the game. They were running on a completely different script, one the Girondins, the Martyrs of Prairial, and the Babouvists knew as well: it was the Stoic refusal to engage with a world they cannot communicate with, argue with, debate with.
They were raised on Plutarch's tales and Cato the Younger was one of their greatest model of political integrity. When Cato realized the Roman Republic was dead and that living under Caesar's tyranny would require compromising his principles or accepting a counterfeit existence, he chose death. He stabbed himself, but missed. Doctors tried to save him by stitching his wounds. The moment they stopped looking, he tore them open.
It shows that this wasn't just a cold manifestation of clinical depression. It was the passionate answer to existential despair. When all civic space for truth and virtue has been erased, dying on your own terms is the ultimate assertion of political autonomy. It is a deliberate choice to step off the board entirely rather than legitimize a broken, corrupt system by trying to "play politics" within it.
And they believed in that. You might not. But they truly believed in this. It's fundamental to understand this.
Thus I also sincerely believe that Robespierre and Saint-Just went to the Convention on the 8 and 9 to speak the truth and list their honest grievances.
They went to appeal to men speaking the language of moral principles in order to save the Republic from the rot they were witnessing. Instead they found men who devolved into rage and hysteria, acting out of self-preservation, fear, and personal ambition. They were no longer speaking the same language. So Saint-Just simply stopped arguing. There was no debate to be had when the shared moral vocabulary was destroyed and the two sides were no longer inhabiting the same moral reality. It was the principled refusal to engage in a world that chose power, self-preservation and optics.
When you view their actions from Robespierre's speech to the inaction at the Hôtel de Ville from this perspective, you realize none of this was a "disaster"; it went exactly the way they had planned. They didn't go to the Convention to play politics. They went to deliver an ultimatum for the soul of the Republic. When the Convention rejected it, they accepted the answer. They did not fall because their strategy failed; they accepted their fate because they refused to compromise the core principles of their political vision.
(Please classicists, feel free to add your thoughts.)
(This is why I took a minor in classical studies during my undergrad. Because knowing the cold utilitarian bureaucratic politics of the 19th century that rose from the ashes of Thermidor is completely useless to understand 18th century classical idealists raised on Plutarch.)
