FRANÇOIS-MAXIMILIEN-JOSEPH-ISIDORE DE, a political fanatic of the French Revolution, was born in the town of Arras in 1758. His family is reported to have come from Ireland at a very early period, and, according to a plausible conjecture of his biographer G. H. Lewes, the original name was in all probability Spiers. His father was a successful advocate at Arras, who seems to have deserted his four children in infancy, shortly after the death of their mother. Maximilian was the eldest of this household; and at the age of ten or eleven he found himself the guardian of his brother and sisters. Having given marks of ability at the college of Arras, the bishop placed him on the foundation of the college of Louis-le-Grand. Robespierre repaired to Paris in 1770. Here he had for his class-fellows the fierce, vehement, and generous Danton, the witty, prompt, and reckless Desmoulins, afterwards destined to run the same terrible race with himself, and whom by his craft he was to overthrow; besides Fréron, who was one day to become the people's orator. Headless as yet of Jacobin or Gironde, these generous boys played beneath the dismal college walls, and made the whole region echo to their loud and happy voices. The sunlight was slow to welcome them behind those high, dingy buildings; but could not they dispense with this privilege, when they could illuminate their inclosure with the rosy laughter of health and youth? Robespierre, who was bilious and melancholy, was more given to study than play. Especially did he devote great attention to the languages and history of Greece and Rome. His master Hérviaux called him "the Roman." After spending eight years at this institution, he commenced the study of jurisprudence at L'Ecole de Droit. Here he led a life of honourable poverty, seclusion, and study, heedless of the aristocracy, who danced there far into the morning, and whose ladies "violated," according to Sydney Smith, "all the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers;" heedless of the atheists, with their endless jargon about "eternal progress;" heedless, likewise, of the sceptics, with their wild enthusiasm about charity, fraternity, and equality.

The Contrat Social of Rousseau (1762) was the bible of the Revolution. Assumed at first as the richer field for displaying "eloquence and philosophy," Rousseau gradually consummated his metaphysical paradox, and appeared in this work as the earnest expounder of a thoroughly earnest creed. Its fundamental idea, that society is a contract made by all for the good of all, is probably the most revolutionary dogma ever enounced. Yet this was the dogma which Robespierre, and thousands with him, embraced with enthusiasm; this was the major premise which he spent his life in ardently evolving. His was not a circumspect mind; once he had satisfied himself of the truth of his preliminaries, he afterwards held on his course with the most logical and even fatal pertinacity. His term completed, Robespierre returned to Arras, and began practice. In 1783 a landed proprietor had erected a lightning-conductor on his property, much to the scandal of the discreet citizens of Arras. "Deistical philosophy; away with it." Robespierre was chosen the advocate to plead this case; and he had the gratification, when the trial came on, to find himself completely triumphant. This cause tended materially to extend the fame of the young advocate. He was admitted a member of a poetical society called "Les Rosatis;" actually aspired to be a poet, and seems to have fallen (not very desperately) in love. Meanwhile he became a member of the criminal court, an office which he shortly afterwards resigned from opposition to capital punishment; took a very decided part against the clergy and the lords of Artois concerning the Artisan Third Estate; chose rather to lose the friendship of the Bishop of Arras than prove false to Rousseau and his own blind logic. The peasantry already came to him as to the friend of the people. The Tiers-Etat of Artois chose him as their deputy to the States-General. In 1789 he again betook himself to the French capital, and enjoyed the pleasure of beholding the poor, feeble, good-natured king enter the States-General emblazoned in all the splendour of royalty. Robespierre even ventured to make a motion before this assembly of the notables; but who could listen to this obscure individual, with his cracked voice and uncomely aspect? He had neither the advantages of birth, of genius, or of exterior, to arrest men's notice. His figure was small; his limbs feeble and angular; he walked with an irresolute step; bore himself with affected attitudes and ungraceful gestures; his forehead was small and projecting; his blue eyes were soft, sinister, and sunken; his complexion "sea-green;" and his temperament "atrabilier." His whole features, like the whole of his mind, converged incessantly on a point. It was on this point, and around this point, that his faculties ceaselessly played; and, as his career subsequently proved, he was ready to sacrifice heaven and earth to his convictions. He was the very embodiment of the Revolution in principles, in passions, and in impulses. The States-General would not at present listen to his shrill logic; but the day was not far distant when its harsh sounds should reach their ears. Meanwhile Robespierre was a royalist, as indeed were the whole of the Assembly. The Third Estate gained its point; the States-General became the National Assembly; and all men ran to and fro in the streets of Versailles the whole of the last night of June with shouts and jubilation.

From the date of Robespierre's speech on the declaration of the rights of man we may date his republicanism. Rousseau's philosophy was now beginning to operate; and in pursuing its conclusions, Robespierre found that it carried him quite beyond the bounds which time and circumstance had assigned to royalty. The eagle eye of Mirabeau had already scanned him, and seized upon the ruling element in his character. "He will go far," says Mirabeau, "for he believes all he says."

On the 19th of October the Assembly was transferred from Versailles to Paris; and "Le Club Breton," of which Robespierre was a member, on taking up its abode in the convent of the Jacobins, was henceforth known as the Jacobin Club. Some 1300 chosen patriots, among whom were Barnave, Mirabeau, and the two Lameths, here met to deliberate. This was the theatre on which the peculiar power of Robespierre was subsequently to be displayed. Meanwhile his speeches are by no means striking. His language, unrelieved by any play of fancy, was pedantic and heavy; he was a logician and not an orator; what he said has the merit of consistency, and it hangs well together. He gradually, in his stern advocacy of justice, had constituted himself the protector of the oppressed. His great vanity was immensely flattered by the congratulatory letters which followed his endeavour to do away with the celibacy of the clergy. Speaking of those letters, he remarked to Villiers, "People talk of there being no poets; you see I can make some." This thirst for popular applause was fatal to him. It led him to flatter the mob; it led him to spice his convictions to the taste of his auditory; it led him to cringe when he ought to have ruled, and to deal in adroit enigmas when he should have enlightened. The Jacobin newspapers, those journals that daily bespattered him so thickly with praise, styled him "the incorruptible;" but they forgot that there was even a worse, because a more subtle, corruption than that engendered by the love of gold,—the corruption which consists in not having courage to be true. Robespierre was very frugal, and had scarcely money enough to purchase clothes. When the Assembly decreed a general mourning for the death of Franklin, he was obliged to borrow a black stuff coat, which was so large for him that "it dragged on the ground."

Mirabeau was now dead. A vacancy was left for Robespierre in the Assembly, which he no sooner occupied than he addressed himself to its members in a tone that was new, audacious, and almost imperious. "Here is the essential instruction which I lay before the Assembly," was the authoritative language adopted by the timid deputy. Robespierre had now become what Foucoulid, in the earlier stages of his career, had sarcastically called him,—"the tribune of the people." On the 10th of May he proposed, and caused to be decreed, that "the members of the present Assembly cannot be elected for the next legislature." Shut out by his own act from the National Assembly, he directed his sole attention to the Jacobin Club. The tribune of the people knew well where the life and strength of the legislature rested,—where the thunders of the populace securely lay. Robespierre is now a rising man, and he must of course walk warily. A curious discussion took place in the National Assembly on the 30th of May regarding the momentous question, the punishment of death, where Robespierre made a very important speech, in which he tried to prove that such an institution was essentially unjust. And let it not be supposed that in so doing he played the hypocrite; it was a serious conviction with him, dating pretty far back. And when such are the patriot's opinions,—nay convictions,—can it be wrong in an assembly to appoint him public accuser? Dupont and Bigot refused office under Robespierre, assigning as their reason that he was a violent man (un homme sans mesure). But is he not an "incorruptible" patriot, firm in his principles, and deaf to all considerations? So reasoned Brissot.

The work of the Constituent Assembly finished, and its successor, the Legislative Assembly, chosen, Robespierre, in the month of October 1791, resolved to improve the interval by a visit to his native town of Arras. His entry was an ovation. Old men with civic crowns, attended by maidens robed in spotless white, and troops of children scattering flowers, stood ready to receive the cortege. Thus rode the proud and bilious patriot into his natal city, from which, not many years ago, he had gone forth an obscure provincial lawyer. On his return to the Jacobin Club, he had a disagreeable quarrel with the Girondins, to whom he, from that hour to the day of their fall, entertained the very strongest dislike. Men began now to be painfully aware of his ambition, and accused him of aspiring to a dictatorship. The 10th of August closed with the dethronement of the king, and the formation of the National Convention. A revolutionary tribunal was formed, and Robespierre was appointed one of the judges. He was not, however, as he has been constantly accused of being, a sharer in the horrors of that fearful massacre. Robespierre was essentially a timid man, and ventured on no occasion to oppose a riot, however he might choose to oppose an idea. All that he can be charged with on that September massacre is, that he withheld his enormous influence with the people to arrest that terrible riot of blood and vengeance. Robespierre could flatter the people to fury; but when it came to action, he skulked out of sight, and allowed Danton to control them.

On the 29th of October Louvet hurled his tremendous philippic at the head of Robespierre. "I accuse you," said Louvet, "of having constantly put yourself forward as an object of idolatry; of having suffered yourself to be designated, in your own presence, as the only virtuous man in France who could save the people, and of having said yourself; I accuse you of having aspired to supreme power," &c. But Robespierre, who had the mob on his side, could as yet afford to smile at such charges, and accordingly his reply was a triumph. "What is virtue?" said Camille Desmoulins, "if Robespierre be not its image?"

The poor king, meanwhile, is dragging out his few remaining days in solitary walks about the Temple garden. France loudly demands his trial; and what France really wants, is it to be supposed Robespierre will refuse? On the 21st of January 1793 the head of "the tyrant" accordingly falls; and Robespierre trumpets his own praises loud in the ears of men. Shortly afterwards the Gironde fell; the Committee of Public Salvation was established; and Robespierre was chosen one of the decemvirs. He will now have to act rather than declaim,—to do rather than to criticise. He has now become a minister, almost a dictator; and men are now to see whether he who has theorized so well has any faculty in him for action. "No," he says subsequently, and very significantly, "I was not made to rule; I was made to combat the enemies of the people." Marie Antoinette and Philippe Egalité were among the foremost victims of the Reign of Terror. The guillotine was literally lubricated with human blood. Innocent women, simple boys, and feeble men, all were dragged to satisfy the vehemence of the blood-thirsty populace. Hébert was got rid of at the Commune; Danton, that man of gigantic powers, at the Convention; and Camille Desmoulins had to give over for ever his Vieux Cordelier. Robespierre is now master of the Revolution; but were not these last three who have fallen men also popular? Times are becoming rather critical now even for incorruptible patriots. On the 7th of May 1794 Robespierre gained for himself immense applause by his address on the relation between religious and moral ideas and republican principles. With him the idea of "l'Etat Supreme" had always been fundamental; and now, on the 8th of June, was transacted that piece of colossal folly, so essentially French, known as the Fête de l’Étre Supreme. His part in that feast was very godlike; but it ruined him with the Convention. He became, meanwhile, weary of the Terror, and would have it repealed; but the Convention saw through his policy. Robespierre ceased to frequent their committees, and directed all his efforts towards the Jacobins. The conspiracy of the “Thermidorians,” as it was called, meanwhile, made progress; but Robespierre’s language was vague, obscure, and ambiguous. He vacillated between secret suspicion and open accusation; his mind was evidently ill at ease; but the question was, how could he evade their wrath? He vehemently declaimed against them at the Convention; but it would not do. Again he strove to obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. The Mountain treated him with contempt, the Girondins with bitter scorn. He yelled till he grew hoarse, when some one called out, “The blood of Danton chokes you!” He shrieked, “President of Assassins! will you let me speak?” But his doom was sealed; they would no longer hear him. The decree for his arrest was voted amid shouts of “Vive la République!” He was borne, together with Lebas, St Just, and Couthon, to the Hôtel de Ville. Bourdon and Douai, with gens-d’armes and soldiers, penetrated during the night to where the prisoners lay, when Meda (so goes the story) levelled his pistol at the tyrant, and shot away the left side of his face. In the afternoon of the following day the prisoners were borne on carts to the Place de la Revolution. Robespierre mounted the ladder with a firm step; down clanked the axe, as was its wont; his head rolled into the basket; and thus, on the 28th of July 1794, in his thirty-fifth year, this singular mystery of a man passed away into eternity.

In 1832 Lapponeira published the Œuvres Choisies of Robespierre. Among the numerous biographies and histories which represent the character of this strange being, we may cite the histories of Carlyle, Michelet, Thiers, Mignet, Alison, Louis Blanc, and Lamartine. Probably the most unbiased account of him will be found in the Life of Maximilien Robespierre, by G. H. Lewes, 1849.