The Fall of Robespierre: Thermidor
How the architect of the Terror was destroyed by the very machinery he had built, and what his fall reveals about revolutionary extremism.
The Incorruptible at His Peak
By the spring of 1794, Maximilien Robespierre had become the most powerful figure in France. As the dominant voice on the Committee of Public Safety — the twelve-man body that effectively governed the republic — he had guided France through its most desperate crisis. The foreign armies had been repelled. The federalist revolts had been crushed. The Vendee uprising, though not fully suppressed, was contained.
But the Terror, which Robespierre had justified as a temporary emergency measure, showed no sign of ending. The Law of 22 Prairial (June 10, 1794) accelerated the machinery of death by stripping defendants before the Revolutionary Tribunal of the right to legal counsel and allowing conviction on moral rather than material evidence. In the six weeks following the law's passage, 1,376 people were guillotined in Paris alone — more than in the entire preceding fourteen months of the Terror.
Robespierre had already purged both the right and the left of the revolutionary movement. In March 1794, he destroyed the Hebertistes — the ultra-radicals who wanted to push the Revolution further toward de-Christianization and economic leveling. In April, he executed the Dantonistes — the 'Indulgents' led by Danton, who had called for an end to the Terror. This left the surviving deputies with a terrifying question: if Robespierre had killed those to his left and those to his right, who was next?
