Title: Off with their heads! 5 French Revolution executions that changed history
Headings: Off with their heads! 5 French Revolution executions that changed history
Off with their heads! 5 French Revolution executions that changed history
“Louis must die so that the nation may live.”
Maximilien Robespierre
King Louis XVI
Marie Antoinette
Jean Sylvain Bailly
The Drownings at Nantes
Maximilien Robespierre
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Content: The message this sent to the people of France was brutally clear; there was no longer any room for argument, let alone dissent, the nation must stand behind Revolution as one, or face the consequences. Maximilien Robespierre
It’s really amazing that Robespierre didn’t see this one coming or, if he did, didn’t find a way to escape his inevitable fate. It was, of course, Robespierre who presided over the most famed prosecutions of the Terror. As a symbol of the revolutionary cause he wielded enormous power and made a lot of influential enemies as he sent those who had once been his trusted friends to the guillotine. Robespierre once declared starkly that “terror is justice” but when he found himself on trial, he attempted suicide and shot himself in the head. The attempt failed and a hideously wounded Robespierre went to the guillotine on 28th July 1794. From monarchy to republic and beyond, the French Revolution was a time of enormous instability. As the guillotine blade fell and the Revolutionary Wars raged, a soldier began to make his mark on the battlefield, emerging to lead his country and become a military legend in his own right. That man’s name was Napoleon, but his is a story for another day.