7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

self-righteousness, however, made him feared and hated

by many of his associates.

A deist, Robespierre disapproved of the anti-Christian

movement. In a report to the National Convention in May

1794, he affirmed the existence of God and the immortal-

ity of the soul and strove to rally the revolutionaries around

a civic religion and the cult of the Supreme Being. The

National Convention elected him president June 4, 1794.

Political opposition to Robespierre grew. Meanwhile,

unremitting work and frequent speeches in the Legislative

Assembly and at the Jacobin Club had undermined

Robespierre’s health, and he became irritable and distant.

He stayed away from the National Convention and then,

after June, from the Committee of Public Safety, confin-

ing his denunciations of counterrevolutionary intrigues to

the Jacobin Club. At the same time, he began to lose the

support of the people, whose hardships continued despite

the recent French victories.

Weary of the mounting executions (1,300 in June

alone), on July 27 deputies in the National Convention

decreed the arrest of Robespierre and other members of

the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre was taken to

the Luxembourg prison, but the warden refused to jail

him. Later he went to the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). The

soldiers of the National Convention attacked there and

easily seized Robespierre and his followers. In the evening

of July 28, Robespierre and others were guillotined before

a cheering mob on the Place de la Révolution (now the

Place de la Concorde).

Napoleon I

(b. Aug. 15, 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica—d. May 5, 1821, St. Helena Island)

O

ne of the most celebrated personages in the history

of the West is Napoleon. He was a French general,