7 Maximilien de Robespierre 7Robespierre. Although he had excluded himself and his
colleagues from the new Legislative Assembly, Robespierre
continued to be politically active. Henceforth, he spoke
only at the Jacobin Club, where he was to be heard about
100 times, until August 1792.
That year, Paris mobs stormed the palace of the Tuileries
and dethroned King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie
Antoinette. Robespierre helped organize the new revolu-
tionary governing body, the National Convention. From
the first sessions of the new body, a faction known as the
Girondins, who favoured political but not social democ-
racy and who controlled the government and the civil
service, accused Robespierre of dictatorship. Robespierre
was a leading member of the faction known as the
Montagnards, the deputies of the extreme left. On May 26,
1793, Robespierre called on the people “to rise in insurrec-
tion.” Five days later he supported a decree of the National
Convention indicting the Girondin leaders. On June 2 the
decree was passed against many of them.
After the fall of the Girondins, the Montagnards were
left to deal with the country’s desperate position. In April
1793 the Committee of Public Safety had taken over the rule
of the country to suppress royalist uprisings and to repel
the Prussian-Austrian invaders on its borders. The com-
mittee employed harsh measures against those suspected
of being enemies of the Revolution. The bloody three-year
rule of this body was known as the Reign of Terror, during
which some 300,000 suspects were arrested. About 17,000
were executed, and many others died in prison. Robespierre
took his place on the committee in June.
Robespierre was not entirely to blame for the excesses
of the Committee of Public Safety. He was not a man of
action. He rarely attended its sessions and had almost no
part in its routine work. His love of power and narrow