Title: Robespierre and the Reign of Terror
Headings: Robespierre and the Reign of Terror
Robespierre and the Reign of Terror
Content: Robespierre and the Reign of Terror
Robespierre and the Reign of Terror
One of the more fascinating people to emerge from the French Revolution was Maximilien Robespierre. In the 1790s he rose to wield great power in the revolutionary government. As an extreme radical leftist, he was instrumental in instituting the Reign of Terror. This was a period where anyone who opposed Robespierre's idealism was judicially murdered, generally by use of the guillotine. Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was born 6 May 1758 in Arras. His father was a lawyer or as the French say avocate. Maximilien followed suit in 1781 after attending some impressive schools including a stint at the Lycee de Louis le Grande, for which he had a scholarship. His early law career including several cases where he argued not just the legal aspects of the case, but the struggle of his clients, "victims in a Manichaean struggle between virtue and vice, freedom and tyranny." 1


Like many great figures of the French Revolution, Robespierre was taken with the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau. He believed not only in the "rights of man", but that in his natural state man was virtuous.