7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

preference for secession if threatened with any mandatory
plan for abolition.
Apart from slavery, the other shadow that darkened
Monticello during Jefferson’s twilight years was debt.
Jefferson was chronically in debt throughout most of
his life, in part because of obligations inherited from his
father-in-law in his wife’s dowry, but mostly because of
his own lavish lifestyle.

Maximilien de Robespierre

(b. May 6, 1758, Arras, France—d. July 28, 1794, Paris)

M

aximilien de Robespierre was one of the principal
figures in the French Revolution. He was part of
the Committee of Public Safety, the principal organ of the
Revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror.
Robespierre received a law degree in 1781 and became
a lawyer in Arras, where he was noted for his ability and
honesty. In March 1789 the citizens of Arras chose him as
one of their representatives to the National Assembly. In
April 1790 he presided over the Jacobins, a political club
promoting the ideas of the French Revolution, and in
October he was appointed a judge of the Versailles tribu-
nal. Robespierre nevertheless decided to devote himself
fully to his work in the National Assembly, where a new
constitution was being drawn up. Grounded in ancient
history and the works of the French philosophers of the
Enlightenment, he welcomed the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which formed the pre-
amble of the French constitution of Sept. 3, 1791, and he
insisted that all laws should conform to it. He became
notorious as an outspoken radical in favour of individual
rights. When the National Assembly dissolved itself, the
people of Paris organized a triumphal procession for