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> future doctor in psychology!! I am Hypergraphia incarnate
> personal info in link hub (red text above then the last spinning vinyl)
> mostly rants with the occasional historical / analysis posts; I'm not a historian, history is ultimately a group effort!
> wip intro post, to be edited...
> should i mention that i love my bf..
Augustin Robespierre Regarding the Women Around Him (or: the man who valued women's opinions as long as it didn't cost him anything)
Something I keep coming back to is the gap between how Augustin treated women in the abstract and how he handled them in his actual personal life: Because those are two genuinely different things, and both are documented, and neither fully cancels out the other.
What He Was Capable Of: The Mercy He Extended to Strangers
(or, The Ladies' Man and the Jacobin Jam)
Heh.. Not to uhm,. toot my own horn or anything but.. toot tooottt.. The decree timeline is a useful starting point.. He freed pregnant prisoners: "Citoyenne Delisle: Freed because she is pregnant and has 5 small children." He released women arrested for "simple religious opinions that have never disturbed public order." He freed a man specifically because his sister was blind and depended on him entirely â asking, in his own words, "is he guilty for listening to the voice of nature and holding out his hand to his brother whom he saw thus dying without means of support?" He granted a pension to Widow Barbot. He freed women arrested on the word of jealous neighbors, women whose only crime was wearing a cross.
When women came to him as petitioners â with documented need, with pleas, and with petitions â he almost always listened. The women of Besançon crowded around his carriage as he left, weeping. The women of Vesoul filled the inn courtyard waiting to present petitions as he prepared to depart. "I will come back," he told them, "with an olive branch or I will die."
You could very well say, given the decrees and all, that the warmth was genuine.
And then there's the Besançon Jacobin club.
The La Saudraye Paradox
Augustin brought La Saudraye to the meeting: One would find he'd apparently been bringing her everywhere â to Jacobin club sessions in Vesoul, into daily policy discussions, and into the administrative work of the mission. Suspects had learned to petition her directly, knowing that going to her was going to him. He wrote to Maximilien asking him to receive her and hear what she had to say: "necessary information to come to know certain characters who play a role in the Revolution." He explicitly trusted her political judgment enough to send her to his brother as an emissary.
At Besançon, a tinsmith who was a Bernard de Saintes loyalist stood up immediately as Augustin mounted the tribune, before Augustin even had a chance to establish himself in the room at all:
"Citizens, the regulations of our club prohibit the entry of women. I am married and a father, but I have never dreamed of bringing either my wife or my daughter here. Robespierre, neither husband nor father, has brought his woman here. I ask that she be made to leave, and I ask that it be noted in the minutes that at least one Republican has protested against Robespierre's aristocracy."
Augustin was furious. He signaled to her to leave, and she walked out.
Nodier records that as she crossed the room every eye followed her. He claimed to find her neither beautiful nor even pretty, yet her face nevertheless made a powerful impression on him: there was, he wrote, something penetrating, caustic, almost infernal in both her smile and her gaze. He also repeated the rumor circulating among those present â that she possessed an almost supernatural ability to read souls, and that Augustin had brought her with him as part of a "mystery of redemption," charged with distinguishing the good from the bad. The rumor was absurd, but its existence is revealing. Her presence in political spaces had become conspicuous enough that people felt compelled to invent explanations for it..
And here's where it gets interesting, because we know from Nodier's (dubious as is) account exactly what Augustin was capable of when he actually wanted to fight. That same evening, at that same meeting, he gave a long caustic speech about Bernard de Saintes that Nodier describes as "delivered with a terrifying calm â I was about to say a cruel one." He mocked Bernard's thinness, his smallness, his very physical existence. He said he believed "someone of that name had slipped into the National Convention through the keyhole." He said "narrow and light as Bernard's head may be, mine will weigh no more than his in the scales of justice." He descended from the tribune "amid fresh bursts of laughter and new acclamations, crossed the hall, rejoined his companion, and went to his post chaise."
He rejoined the woman he had just allowed to be expelled.
He was not a man who backed down from confrontation in general. That night he did it deliberately and skillfully and to considerable applause. He chose, specifically, not to fight for her.
The contradiction became even starker moments later, as this is where, according to Nodier, the courtyard outside the inn was crowded with women who had been waiting impatiently to present petitions to him. He could do little for them â his mission technically ended at the departmental border â but he addressed them anyway, promising that he would return with an olive branch or die for them: Women he had never met received a public declaration of devotion from him almost immediately after the woman he trusted enough to carry political intelligence to Maximilien Robespierre had been left to walk out of the Jacobin club alone.
Luzzatto reads the club scene as "proof that the Revolution of men did not always correspond, or did not correspond at all, to a Revolution of women." Which is accurate but also slightly lets Augustin off the hook â it frames it as a general structural failure rather than a specific choice he made. He trusted her observations enough to route them to Maximilien, but he did not trust that trust publicly when defending it would cost him something.
Robespierre enters â mounts the tribune â tinsmith immediately speaks up before he's even said anything â La Saudraye is expelled â "le tumulte s'apaisa" (the tumult calmed) â Robespierre gives his speech (general points first, then Bernard mockery) â president tries to intervene with the "illustration d'une famille" remark â Robespierre attacks both Bernard AND the president â famous tinsmith line â descends, rejoins La Saudraye, carriage â women with petitions at the inn courtyard â "rameau d'or" speech â carriage departs.
The Charlotte/Marguerite Triangle, or: How to Avoid a Problem Using Other People
!!! ohohohoh ain't this what we were all waiting for!!! Everybody knows the horseback ride incident is where the pattern gets explicit.
Charlotte's version: Marguerite suggested the ride. Charlotte reluctantly went. Augustin reproached Charlotte. Charlotte called on Marguerite to testify. Marguerite said it was Charlotte's idea and she'd been taken against her will. Augustin believed Marguerite.
Charlotte: "My brother knew I was incapable of lying. Why then did he not want to believe me?"
We don't actually know whose version is accurate and historians have gone back and forth on it. That's almost beside the point. What's interesting is the mechanism: Augustin accepted one woman's word over another's without investigating, without confronting either of them directly, and importantly without sitting Charlotte down and asking her to explain. He decided â unilaterally â and then acted on the decision by withdrawing rather than engaging.
When he came back to Paris in December 1793, he lodged with the Ricords rather than seeing Charlotte. He used Marguerite's household as a physical reason not to have the confrontation. Charlotte was in the city and he very well consciously chose to sleep somewhere that made seeing her logistically implausible.
Then in spring 1794 he wrote to Maximilien:
"My sister does not have a single drop of blood that resembles ours. I have seen and learned so much about her that I regard her as our greatest enemy. She abuses our spotless reputation to lay down the law on us and threatens to take a scandalous step in order to compromise us. We must take a decisive stand against her. We must make her leave for Arras."
He escalated directly to the maximum available authority rather than having a direct conversation. Charlotte didn't know what she was supposed to have done: He went from silent withdrawal to writing to Maximilien asking to have her removed from the city â without, apparently, telling Charlotte herself what the problem was.
Even if Charlotte were entirely wrong about the ride, Augustin still:
avoided her,
stayed elsewhere,
complained to Maximilien,
sought her removal,
never answered the final letter.
The behavioral pattern survives regardless of who won the original dispute.
Napoleon cultivated Marguerite Ricord specifically because, per Barras's memoirs, she exercised great influence over Augustin. This was apparently visible enough from the outside that a man calculating his career moves concluded that going through her was a viable route to Augustin. Which tells you something about how legible the pattern was even to people who barely knew him, even if Barras isn't the best source here..
Return to Sender: Neither Snow nor Rain nor Sisterly Devotion: The Most Frictionless Goodbye
On July 6, 1794, Charlotte wrote to him:
"Your aversion for me, my brother, far from diminishing, as I flattered myself, has become the most implacable hatred, to the point that the mere sight of me inspires horror to you; also, I must not hope that you will ever be calm enough to listen to me, which is why I will attempt to write to you."
She wrote because she had already given up on him being willing to hear her directly. She was doing the emotional labor of finding the medium he might tolerate â a letter he could read without having to respond in real time, without having to face her. She acknowledged the money dispute. She said she would leave. She said she would forgive him. She said wherever she ended up, even across the seas, if he needed her she would come back immediately.
He didn't respond. And they never spoke again.
What gets me about this is that Charlotte's letter already shows she'd internalized his avoidance. She wasn't demanding a confrontation â she was offering him the most frictionless version of contact she could construct. She'd already adapted her approach to his pattern.
He still didn't answer.
What Pattern Is This, Actually
It's not that he didn't value women or thought them unimportant. The decree timeline argues against that. His trust in La Saudraye's political intelligence, his warmth toward Ălisabeth Duplay, the Vesoul women weeping as his carriage drove away â all of that argues against it.
The pattern is more specific. Women who needed something from him â who came to him as petitioners, who needed mercy or justice or advocacy â got his full attention and usually got what they needed. Women who complicated his life â who witnessed things he'd rather not have witnessed (Charlotte watching the Ricord situation), who challenged his public self-presentation (La Saudraye's presence as an accusation of "aristocracy"), who asked him to account for himself (Charlotte's letter) â got avoidance, deflection, or escalation to a higher authority.
He was comfortable dispensing justice to strangers. He was not comfortable being accountable to people he was close to.
My "Not So Sweet Bonbon" post calls this emotional outsourcing, which is right. I'd add that it's not really passive. The Besançon speech is proof he could fight when he wanted to. He chose not to extend that capability to the women in his personal life. He slandered Charlotte to Maximilien rather than talking to her. He let Marguerite's word stand over Charlotte's rather than investigating. He let La Saudraye walk out humiliated rather than defending her.
He was not afraid of confrontation. He was specifically afraid (or, more accurately, avoidant) of the confrontations that would require him to be wrong, or accountable, or responsible for someone else's pain.
The Rosalie Jullien Footnote
Rosalie Jullien observed him at dinner in February 1793 and wrote to her son: "Robespierre jeune is livelier, more open, an excellent patriot; but with a common mind and a contented temper."
The "contented temper" is,, in all honesty,,, the phrase that stays with me. He coasted on goodwill: He was warm, open, charming â probably genuinely those things most of the time. The patterns in this post aren't incompatible with being genuinely warm, they just show what happened when warmth wasn't enough, when the situation needed something harder than charm.. He couldn't do harder. And certainly not with the people who knew him.
Sources:
Luzzatto, Sergio. Bonbon Robespierre: Il Terrore dal volto umano. Translated by me, 2025. Original Italian edition: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2009. (Especially "Stories of Women" and "Your Brother is No Longer the Same.")
Charlotte Robespierre to Augustin Robespierre, 18 Messidor Year II [July 6, 1794]. Cited in Michon, Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre, vol. 2.
[looking at people younger than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at people older than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at myself] its over
happy pride! remember that being a transgender is everything but fiction. there are so many real historical figures from every century about whose transgenderism we aren't even aware of
on this picture i drew Alexandr Andreevich Alexandrov - cavalry officer of the russian imperial army that participated in napoleonic wars. people persistently keep on misgendering mispronounsing deadnaming and calling him a crossdresser although alexandrov clearly stated that he didn't want to be called by his deadname and being treated like anything but a man. that's an interesting historical figure and i wanted to draw attention to his person. i can't tell everything about him in only one post so i recomend you to read about alexandrov by yourself
also be proud of yourself and remember that you're valid! đłïžâđđłïžââ§ïž
"Florelle" appears â once, in 1790 â used by Saint-Just himself. Anne Quennedey notes that it was almost certainly a nom de fantaisie, something with poetic consonances he pulled out for a single occasion, probably to maintain ambiguity about his age. that's it. one time. used it. moved on..
Dommanget's source for this claim is an article by Gustave Laurent on the Reims law faculty. and when you go find that article â which, to be clear, is the kind of work most historians don't bother doing and frankly I respect anyone who does â Laurent does not mention Saint-Just's life in Paris at the page Dommanget cited. OR anywhere else in the article.
the source is just. not there. Dommanget either misread it, misremembered it, or cited something that simply did not say what he needed it to say
do I think this means you're evil and wrong for using it?? imo no.
there's a meaningful difference between archival fact and anecdote, and sometimes anecdotes are all we have â and sometimes we choose to believe them because they fit, because they feel true, because the alternative is giving up a detail we love: I do this with figures I'm attached to constantly and I will not pretend otherwise
The obvious companion to the adversaries post. If knowing who hated Bonbon helps paint a picture of who he was, knowing who stood by him â or walked alongside him, or fell for him, or genuinely loved him â might paint an even more vivid one.
Charlotte and Maximilien are not listed here as the sibling situation is genuinely too complicated to squash into a section. Everyone else is fair game.
1. The Arras Foundation: Loyal From Before the Revolution
Antoine-Joseph Buissart
The single most consistent thread of loyalty in Augustin's life outside his immediate family. Buissart was a highly respected lawyer and scientist in Arras â one of those solid, principled pre-revolutionary figures who raised Maximilien almost like a ward and extended the same affection to Augustin. Throughout the brothers' time in Paris, Buissart served as their postal intermediary when they feared their famous surname would cause their letters to be intercepted. He kept the Arras end of the line open for years, and Augustin â who wasn't always great at writing â genuinely loved the man, writing warmly to him about everything from Pas-de-Calais politics to "the little marmots" (the Buissart children)
By the summer of 1794, with Maximilien barricaded in the Duplay house and refusing to answer anyone's letters about Lebon's atrocities, Buissart had essentially given up on the elder Robespierre. It was Augustin he wrote about with desperate hope: "the arrival of Bonbon [...] is the hope of true patriots, the terror of those who dare to persecute them." His wife was staying at the Duplay house at the time â practically in Maximilien's antechamber â and Buissart wrote: "hug him for me, until I can do it myself."
That last line gets me every time honestly
*The caveat that has to go here: Buissart, for all his warmth toward both brothers, did not exactly cover himself in glory after Thermidor. He hastened to denounce them almost immediately (much like a lot of Bonbons other pals). Which is understandable given the terrifying circumstances â but still!!
Of all the Duplay daughters, Augustin was warmest toward Ălisabeth, who married the Conventionnel Philippe Lebas. It was Ălisabeth who confirmed, in a note written around 1847, that Augustin's nickname "Bonbon" came from his middle name Bon-Joseph â and the fact that she remembered this specific detail fifty-odd years later and chose to record it suggests she held onto memories of him with some care. Augustin apparently told Lebas that he had "the friendship of a brother" for her, that she was "cheerful and good," and that he liked her best of the sisters.
Philippe Lebas
Primarily known as Maximilien's closest companion, but genuinely close to Augustin too. He chose to die with the Robespierre brothers on 9 Thermidor â shooting himself rather than submit to arrest. His son, Philippe Lebas Jr., later published a testimony about Augustin that includes the famous anecdote about the three of them â Augustin, Simon Duplay, and Jacques Maurice Duplay â going one evening after the opera to the house of salonniĂšre Jeanne-Louise-Françoise de Sainte-Amaranthe, "and this escapade was so severely criticised by Maximilien that, despite all the attraction of such a house for men, the oldest of whom was barely twenty-nine years old, they were careful not to return there."
This is VERY funny if you think about it for a second.. Classic Bonbon behavior honestly
3. Partners on the Road: The Midi Missions
Jean-François Ricord
Augustin's most sustained professional companion and the person he worked most closely with during the most formative period of his political life. Ricord was the deputy for Var, assigned alongside Augustin to the Army of Italy from July 1793 onward. They traveled together, fled federalists together (abandoning their carriage to the Marseille section members in the process), helped engineer the siege of Toulon together, and spent months navigating the violent and chaotic politics of the Midi side by side.
*Post-Thermidor: Ricord's behavior was... not great. Within days of the news reaching Nice, he wrote to the Committee that he "blushed to have been the friend of Robespierre the Younger" and claimed he was Augustin's "most implacable enemy" from the moment of "his treason." He'd also suppressed a Committee decree ordering Haller's arrest and given Haller a passport to flee to Genoa, which then became its own problem. Mary Young is quietly devastating about this: "It is a vain speculation to ask what Ricord really thought of Augustin. But Augustin had probably cuckolded him." Anyway.
*The Ricord-Augustin relationship gets complicated fast once you introduce Madame Ricord. See below.
The group that set out for Vesoul in January 1794 consisted of Augustin, Viennot (a chemist from Vesoul), Sauli, and La Saudraye, and they all lodged together at Humbert's house in the rue du CollĂšge. The day after their arrival in Vesoul, Sauli was elected a member of the People's Society. The following evening he gave a speech that is frankly one of the most extravagant pieces of public praise Augustin ever received, apostrophizing him directly in front of the assembled club:
"And you, Robespierre! You who have so many titles to my esteem, my admiration, my friendship! You in whom the rarest talents are joined to a modesty that makes them the more precious! You at once legislator and soldier, by your example you give a model for a courageous man, by your justice that of a man of integrity, by your philanthropy that of a good man..."
He kept going. The Society voted to print both his speech and La Saudraye's.
The aftermath was bleak: Sauli was arrested almost immediately upon returning to Genoa, "perhaps too ingenuous to make a really good spy," per Mary Young. After Thermidor, the village of Jussey â one of the towns Augustin had administered â went so far as to expunge not only Augustin's name from the minutes but Sauli's too, because he had been "close to odious conspirators." The village then burned mannequins of the Robespierres for good measure. This is the French Revolution for you.
Claude-François Humbert
An old college friend of Maximilien's (from Louis-le-Grand) who hosted Augustin in Vesoul. The house in the rue du CollĂšge accommodated Augustin, Sauli, and La Saudraye for the duration of the mission â Nodier called it a "humble abode," though it had to be reasonably large to fit them all. Mary Young notes, somewhat dryly, that Humbert had "supposed Royalist sympathies" which Augustin "apparently was not realising, or choosing to ignore." Humbert ultimately decided to stay in Paris rather than accompany the group south.
The proof of this came after Thermidor. When Viennot was arrested by Bernard's people, Augustin wrote one of his most impassioned letters in his defense: "Frank, energetic, disinterested, honest, such is the character of Viennot, apothecary of Vesoul... Viennot is an ardent friend of liberty, an honest man who fights intrigue." And then Viennot repaid this loyalty when it actually mattered. After Thermidor, the local Jacobin Boizot tried to get Viennot to co-sign a letter condemning Augustin as a tyrant and claiming they'd both "resisted him when he had power." Viennot refused to sign it. Boizot had to send the letter with only his own name on it. Viennot "always maintained that Augustin was worthy of a better fate."
In a world full of Ricords, Viennot behaved like a Viennot. Good for him!!
4. The Women of the Missions
A note upfront: both Luzzatto and Mary Young discuss these relationships with appropriate uncertainty, and the primary sources â mostly Charlotte's memoirs and various hostile Thermidorian accounts â all have obvious axes to grind. Calibrate accordingly.
*What's genuinely interesting here is that Barras's memoirs (liar that he is) describe Napoleon as "assiduously" paying court to Marguerite specifically because of her influence over Augustin. If he is to believed, she was apparently politically proximate enough that Napoleon thought cultivating her was worth his time.
*Post-Thermidor note from Mary Young, who does not let anyone off easy: "Augustin had probably cuckolded [Ricord]. He had also made his colleague's life difficult by prolonged absences in Vesoul and Paris; he had always been a law unto himself. Certainly, Ricord may finally have concluded, he owed nothing to the memory of his friend." See above re: Ricord's letter.
*though most of what we know about Saudraye is through Nordier who was, again, 12 years old.. take the whole thing with grains upon grains of salt
*Augustin's letter to Maximilien asking him to meet with La Saudraye and hear from her firsthand about conditions in the departments is one of the more interesting windows into how he thought about knowledge. He described it as "necessary information to come to know certain characters who play a role in the Revolution." He genuinely seemed to believe that what she had seen and heard mattered, and that Maximilien â barricaded in Paris â couldn't understand conditions on the ground without hearing from people who had actually been there.
The most famous entry on this list by some distance. Their relationship is documented from so many angles â Charlotte's memoirs, Madame Junot's, Barras's, Napoleon's own accounts at Saint Helena, Lucien Bonaparte's memoirs â that it's almost unusually well-evidenced by the standards of Augustin's life.
The basics: they met properly around the time of the siege of Toulon, where Napoleon commanded the artillery. Augustin identified him early, writing to Maximilien in April 1794 about "citizen Buonaparte, general head of the artillery of transcendent merit" â noting his Corsican origin and that he could be trusted because he'd resisted Paoli's overtures when it would have been profitable to do otherwise. That's the only surviving letter in which Augustin mentions Napoleon directly.
By the spring of 1794, according to Napoleon's own much-later accounts, the friendship was intimate enough that Augustin consulted him on virtually everything: "Robespierre would never sign anything to do with the army or the supplies without consulting me. He would say to Haller who was then administrator: 'That's good, but I must speak to Bonaparte.'" He also believed that Augustin asked Maximilien to make him Commander of the Army of Italy â and that Carnot blocked it.
The most dramatic episode comes from Lucien Bonaparte's memoirs: Napoleon was apparently offered the job of replacing Henriot as commandant of Paris, through Augustin's connections, and turned it down. Lucien records him saying: "The young Robespierre is an honest fellow; but his brother is not to be trifled with: he will be obeyed. Can I support that man?! No, never." He then announced that the only honorable place for him was the army, that they must have patience, and that "I shall command Paris hereafter!" The younger Robespierre solicited him in vain.
Charlotte adds an almost unbelievable detail in her memoirs: that after 9 Thermidor, Napoleon proposed to the remaining representatives on mission with the Army of Italy that they march on Paris to punish the Thermidorians and avenge the brothers. The representatives were apparently so terrified by this that they hurried to reject it. No other source confirms this but it sounds exactly like the Napoleon of 1794.
His letter to Tilly after Thermidor: "I was a little affected by the tragedy of the younger Robespierre, whom I loved and believed to be pure, but, had he been my father, I would have stabbed him myself if he aspired to tyranny." He loved him well. He also spent several weeks under arrest anyway for his association with the Robespierres, which is perhaps the Revolution's form of dark comedy. And years later, he received Charlotte at the Consulate and gave her a pension â speaking of her brothers "in very flattering terms."
Charlotte, for her part, describes Napoleon's admiration for Maximilien and friendship with Augustin as straightforwardly genuine: "Bonaparte was sincerely a republican; I would even say that he was a montagnard republican; at least he had that effect on me." Madame Junot's memoirs add that Augustin was "what might be called an agreeable young man, animated by no bad sentiments."
Haller ("Papa Haller")
The Swiss banker put in charge of army supplies in Nice from October 1793 onward. Tall, thin-faced, blue-eyed, with â somewhat eccentrically for the period â a red beard. The kind of man who "gets things done": highly intelligent, a bit sharp, with extensive connections in Genoa. Ricord's report introducing him to the Committee was "slightly defensive," as Mary Young notes â his civisme was "not quite above question" â but they couldn't do without him. He was popular enough with the officers that they called him "Papa Haller."
Mary Young describes him as performing "the overwhelming task of feeding the town and army where honesty would not have sufficed." His relationship with Augustin was close enough to become a liability after Thermidor: the Thermidorians accused him of being "the principal agent" in Augustin's supposed crimes, demanded his arrest, and discovered that Ricord had already quietly given him a passport to flee to Genoa. He made it to Switzerland. Years later Napoleon employed him â which tracks.
A Note on Monvoison
I'd be leaving something out if I didn't mention the frankly suspicious school friend. Monvoison was a wealthy man Augustin spent time with during his Paris interlude in December 1793 â January 1794. A police report noted that "he had been educated with Robespierre the Younger (at Louis-le-Grand) and that is the cause of the intimacy between them." He was, per the same report, suspected of making money on the side and "said to have had friends who had been guillotined." He talked of going back to Nice with Augustin and making a great deal of money there. Mary Young observes dryly that Augustin "probably had no intention of taking him, but the fact that he associated with such a doubtful character showed his usual carelessness over his acquaintances." He is a figure in the post-Thermidor accusations against Augustin â the claim that "all his friends had been aristocrats" gestures at exactly this kind of association.
Bonbon's complete inability to vet his social circle is extremely on-brand.
ANYWAYS
The rough chronology:
Pre-revolutionary loyalties: Buissart, the Arras circle
The Parisian interlude: the Duplay household, Lebas
The missions: Ricord, Marguerite, La Saudraye, Napoleon, Sauli etc.,
And the post-Thermidor picture is stark. Among everyone listed here: Ricord denounced him. Haller fled. Napoleon distanced himself (while remaining under arrest anyway). Viennot refused to denounce him. Sauli's name was expunged from minutes. The village of Vesoul â in June 1795, ten months after his death â was still saying "he treated us as good citizens; he simply gave us justice."
Sources:
The same sources as the adversaries post carry this one equally, with the heaviest weight falling on Luzzatto's chapters "Stories of Women," "Your Brother is No Longer the Same," and "Only Bonbon," plus Mary Young throughout..
Luzzatto, Sergio. Bonbon Robespierre: Il Terrore dal volto umano. Translated by me, 2025. Original Italian edition: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2009.
Young, Mary. Augustin: The Younger Robespierre. London: Core Publications, 2011. (Chapters 10â16 and 20 especially.)