#fall of robespierre

[secondjulia]

"People do notice that Robespierre rarely seems cheered by victories at the front: he is too worried about impending military despotism to relish battlefield success."

Ahaha. What a paranoid weirdo, right?!

Quote from p. 230 of Fall of Robespierre by Colin Jones

[secondjulia]

"...it's very easy for us to look back and construct their lives as a series of stepping stones, some sort of inexorable progress toward their eventual demise, when in fact their lives might have been lived in uncertainty and confusion. They had no idea where their choices might take them." —Peter McPhee, @ 1:35

An interesting & fairly reasonable conversation between an author I like and an author I like somewhat less. Just watched it for the 3rd time after re-starting Jones's Fall of Robespierre.

I love how McPhee always seems like he's trying not to be a Robespierre fangirl, which honestly I can appreciate because he can be appropriately academic & scientific, while providing solid research for the fandom.

It's interesting to see their diverging approaches to Robespierre's health and psychological state in 1794. McPhee is cautious about attributing his actions & decisions to mental illness, but he points out that historians tend to treat him "as if he's a brain on stilts" (@ 35:11) despite the fact that he's had these long periods of illness & it's true that he (and everyone) is terrified & fed up & these are relevant factors in understanding the situations.

I bristle at Jones kind of diminishing this factor, which he does in the book, too.

"He certainly talks the language of illness all the time, as others do, but he's always done that." —Colin Jones, @ 37:50

Even if you can't or shouldn't use illness (physical or mental) to completely explain or excuse someone's behavior, I don't think its a factors that should be ignored. To me, the fact that he's spoken the language of illness before doesn't remotely rebut the point. That's a feature of chronic problems. [Having several myself,] it's perfectly believable to me, especially since he seemed to have health problems since the Estates General (and maybe for his whole life), that both the physical and psychological strain was one factor that was impacting him in 1794. It was probably a factor for everyone, to be honest, because they were all scared and confused and running on no sleep. But the fact that a problem is common doesn't make it less of a problem for any particular individual.

Anyway, it's an interesting conversation. You can tell where they sort of disagree, but they're thoughtful about discussing the different perspectives and the various confusing factors.

[secondjulia]

The farcical irony of 9 Thermidor rears its ugly head again:

"[Robespierre] long defended Hébert. He angrily assailed Billaud when he first started to attack Danton."

From The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary France, by Colin Jones, 2021, Chapter: 12.00/Midday, p. 196

No citation, but Choosing Terror by Marisa Linton, 2013, Chapter 10, gives the same account of Billaud's speech:

"[Billaud-Varenne] then accused Robespierre and his friends of having refused to abandon Hébert for as long as possible, and Robespierre in particular of having tried to protect Danton"

And her footnote cites Le Moniteur, 21:332, which I think refers to this in entry in the bibliography: [Moniteur (Le)], Réimpression de lʼancien Moniteur, 31 vols (Paris, Plon Frères, 1847). (So 21:332 = volume 21, page 332?)

...And, yes there it is on p. 332 of this edition on Google Books (it's p. 342 in the pdf), in Billaud's own words:

"And those who abandoned Hébert only when it was no longer possible for them to support him will be considered virtuous men! The first time I denounced Danton to the Committee, Robespierre rose like a madman, saying that he saw through my intentions, that I wanted to destroy the best patriots. All this made me see the abyss that has been dug beneath our feet. One must not hesitate either to fill it with our corpses or to triumph over the traitors."

And yet Robespierre is the blood-drinker, the terrorist, the tyrant who sent anyone who disagreed with him to the guillotine...

Whoever shouted The blood of Danton chokes him! should've better aimed their rage.

[secondjulia]

The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary France [which I have some mixed feelings about but am re-listening to it so I can put my thoughts together] calls Brount a mastiff, but I don't know what the original source of this is; there aren't any footnotes in the audiobook & it looks like there might not be one in the print book either.

Wikipedia lists at least 40 breeds of extant & extinct mastiffs, so I don't know which is the most realistic for Max to have had. This one is called the French mastiff or Dogue de Bordeaux, though it was apparently more common in southern France:

Poor Brount 😔

I seem to remember there being confusion over this; I... cannot clarify anything and am still confused. But I kinda like imagining him with this big pensive wrinkly dog that trudges along beside him or flops heavily on the hearth and watches dolefully as he thinks and writes and would definitely have torn out Tallien's throat if only he'd been alerted to the proceedings.

[secondjulia]

Was just looking for this quote & found it in my drafts, where apparently, for unknown reasons, I have been storing quotes instead of posting them...

[in a Parisian prison, evening of 9 Thermidor:] "The news of Robespierre is arrest is a delight. But what comes next? Is it in fact going to be a triumph for the radicals who have been countenancing a prison massacre? Then again, the Collots, the Billauds, the Barères, the Vadiers of the world are just as enthusiastic for terror as Robespierre seems to be. And indeed in some quarters, aristocratic prisoners, as well as many of the '73' pro-Girondin deputies, have regarded Robespierre as their protector-their God even, in one claim. After Robespierre, what?"

Fall of Robespierre by Colin Jones, p. 295

I guess what comes next is you spend 200+ years forgetting about Collots, the Billauds, the Barères, the Vadiers [+the Talliens, +the Girondins, +...] of the world & pointing at Max & saying He did it!

[secondjulia]

How do we feel about Colin Jones on here?

I haven't gotten around yet to The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, which I think I... borrowed from a peer on here? because it was highly recommended, but I'm currently re-reading The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris by him. It's a nearly 600-page book that focuses nearly exclusively on Thermidor (the title is a little clickbait, though. The first time I read it, I had a hard time keeping track of what was happening because it'll be like 02:00h & then start talking about Saint-Just on 5 Thermidor or something, because it jumps back & forward explaining what happened to lead up to each moment, which is easier for me to understand now, but was intensely confusing when I wasn't familiar enough with the material.)

I like that it includes a wide variety of primary sources & accounts of/from regular people. It presents a rich snapshot of the complexity of Year II. At the same time, it still seems to twist everything around to make it all Robespierre's fault.

For example, he acknowledges the bloodbaths in the provinces & the fact that many of the Thermidorians were implicated not only in the bloodshed but in enriching themselves in the process. But the discussion on this feels weirdly defensive; he emphasizes (tbf, correctly) Robespierre's lack of experience on mission himself, and the description of his encounters with Collot, Fuché, and others make it sound like his disapproval is unreasonable. Obviously, the situation with the wars, the federalist revolts, the literal royalist plots, etc. is intensely complex and you could probably argue all day long about the Convention's policies and how they were carried out, and to be fair, the book doesn't erase the complexity, but the framing sometimes seems like a stretch.

He also refers to the Girondins as moderates, which didn't mean anything to me when I first read it several months ago, but now instantly makes me want to stop, like WAIT LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO MY FRIEND BRISSOT! YOU HAVE CLEARLY NOT MET BEFORE! [Bonus intro to his buddy Vergniaud. And Buzot, who might be relevant to those Federalist Revolts...] It is particularly uncomfortable right after reading Choosing Terror and The King's Trial, both of which went into great detail on the Girondins. I mean, they are quite dead by Thermidor, so in a way "not relevant" to the 24 hours, but absolutely relevant to the lead-up, the apportioning of responsibility, and tracing how things turned out the way they did, which is exactly what this book seeks to do.

And I remember being frustrated the book kind of ended with this conclusion that Paris really came together & rose up to overthrow Robespierre — when that was literally not what the previous ~600 pages had demonstrated. The sense you get from the bulk of the book is that it was a time of intense confusion and extremely uncertain loyalties. The outcome seems far less to lie in a unified movement against the "tyrant" and more somewhere between Barras' ability to organize an impromptu military operation, the communication abilities of the Convention vs. the Commune, Tallien's last-minute wrangling of (& possibly Fuché's outright lying to) the deputies of the right & center, the chance of Collot & Billaud temporarily ending up on the same page as them, Hanriot's decision to mount a doomed rescue, and various section leaders not knowing what exactly was going on and whose side they were supposed to be on. I.e. chaos and confusion. I will have to revisit the conclusion on this second reading, after having much more information than I had the first time.

Anyway, I do like the extensive use & variety of primary sources (although the audiobook is annoyingly devoid of footnotes to investigate further & the preview on Google Books is pitiful, so that sucks.) And I don't think he is twisting things to the extent that, like, Fatal Purity does; his narrative seems more well-supported than that, though it sometimes rubs me the wrong way.

Anyway, I don't have a clear conclusion; I'm just interested in what others have to say on him!

[secondjulia]

"At this moment, Philippe Le Bas also steps forward. His friends, wanting him to retreat from supporting Robespierre (and perhaps mindful too of Le Bas's 6-week old baby son), have surreptitiously been tugging at his coat tails to force him to sit, so firmly in fact that his jacket has torn, but Le Bas is determined..."

💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔

!The torn coat tails!

💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔 💔

From The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris, p. 222. (I got the library book again so I could put page numbers lol). I don't know where he gets this specific detail; I didn't catch it in the Moniteur article.