Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 08.djvu/98

LEFT ROBESPIERRE 72 ROBESPIERRE mandant, Staff College. In 1913-14 he was Director of Military Training at the War Office. In the World War he com- GENERAL SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON manded the 1st Infantry Division and Chief of General Staff 1915-18, General Officer, Commander-in-Chief Eastern Command, 1918, Great Britain, 1918-19. ROBESPIERRE, MAXIMILIEN MA- RIE ISIDORE, a French revolutionist; born of a family of Irish origin, in Arras, May 6, 1758. His mother died in 1767, his broken -hearted father two years later, and the four children were brought up by their maternal grandfather, an Arras brewer. Maximilien, the eldest, early showed unusual promise, and was edu- cated at Arras and at the College Louis- le-Grand at Paris. He was admitted avo- cat in 1781, and next year was named criminal judge by the Bishop of Arras,
 * jut resigned his place soon after to avoid

passing a sentence of death. All through life a fanatical devotee of the Gospel ac- cording to Rousseau, his sentimentality and taste for verses made him popular among the Rosati at Arras. He drew up the cahier or list of grievances for the guild of cobblers, and was elected to the States-General in 1789 as one of the depu- ties for the tiers etat of Artois. He soon attached himself to the extreme Left— the "thirty voices," and though his first speeches excited ridicule, it was not long before his earnestness and his high sound- ing phrases commanded attention. In- deed his influence grew daily, both in the Jacobin Club and in the Assembly. Three days after the death of Mira- beau he called on the Assembly to pre- vent any deputy from taking office as minister for four years, and in the fol- lowing month (May, 1791) carried the motion that no member of the present Assembly should be eligible for the next. Next followed Robespierre's appointment as public accuser, the king's flight to Varennes (June 21), Lafayette's last ef- fort to control the sacred right of In- surrection on the Champ-de-Mars (July 17), the abject terror of Robespierre, his sheltering himself in the house of Duplay, a carpenter, his hysterical appeal to the club, the theatrical oath taken by every member to defend his life, and his being crowned with chaplets, along with Petion, and carried home in triumph by the mob at the close of the Constituent Assembly, Sept. 30. He went to Arras, where he sold his small patrimony and returned to Paris, to the house of Duplay, where he re- mained till the last day of his life. He was much beloved in the family, and a passion quickly sprung up betwixt him- self and his host's eldest daughter, Ele- nore, a romantic girl of 25. Alone among the patriots he was noted for the care- fulness of his dress — powdered hair, a bright blue coat, white waistcoat, short yellow breeches, with white stockings and shoes with silver buc lies. Meantime the Girondist party had been formed in the new Legislative Assembly, its leaders — the loudest, Brissot — eager for war. Robespierre, who ever feared and disliked war, offered a strenuous op- position in the debates of the Jacobin Club. Fundamentally an empty pedant, inflated with words which he mistook for ideas, in his orations he is ever riding in the air on theories, his foot never on the solid ground of the practical. In April, 1792, he resigned his post of public prose- cutor. He was invisible during the crisis of August 10, but joined the H6tel-de-Ville faction, and on August 16 he presented to the Legislative Assembly its petition for a Revolutionary Tribunal and a new Con- vention. He was elected first deputy for Paris to the National Convention, which opened on Sept. 21. The bitter attacks on him by the Giron- dists were renewed only to throw Robes- pierre into a closer union with Danton and his party, but the final struggle was interrupted for a little by the momentous question of the king's trial. Robespierre