Title:  Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852

Author:  Various

Editor:  Robert Chambers and William Chambers

Release Date:  October 27, 2005 [EBook #16953]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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Chambers’Edinburgh journal

Conducted by William and Robert Chambers, editors of ’Chambers’s
information for the people,’ ‘Chambers’s educational course,’ &c.

No. 426.  New series.  Saturday, February 28, 1852.  Price 11/2_d_.

TIME’S REVIEW OF CHARACTER.

Robespierre.

Some characters are a puzzle to history, and none is more so than that of Robespierre.  According to popular belief, this personage was a blood-thirsty monster, a vulgar tyrant, who committed the most unheard-of enormities, with the basely selfish object of raising himself to supreme power—­of becoming the Cromwell of the Revolution.  Considering that Robespierre was for five years—­1789 to 1794—­a prime leader in the political movements in France; that for a length of time he was personally concerned in sending from forty to fifty heads to the scaffold per diem; and that the Reign of Terror ceased immediately on his overthrow—­it is not surprising that his character is associated with all that is villainous and detestable.  Nevertheless, as the obscurities of the great revolutionary drama clear up, a strange suspicion begins to be entertained, that the popular legend respecting Robespierre is in a considerable degree fallacious; nay, it is almost thought that this man was, in reality, a most kind-hearted, simple, unambitious, and well-disposed individual—­a person who, to say the least of it, deeply deplored the horrors in which considerations of duty had unhappily involved him.  To attempt an unravelment of these contradictions, let us call up the phantom of this mysterious personage, and subject him to review.

To understand Robespierre, it is necessary to understand the French Revolution.  The proximate cause of that terrible convulsion was, as is well known, an utter disorder in all the functions of the state, and more particularly in the finances, equivalent to national bankruptcy.  That matters might have been substantially patched up by judicious statesmanship, no one doubts; but that a catastrophe, sooner or later, was unavoidable, seems to be equally certain.  The mind of France was rotten; the principles of society were undermined.