Leader of the French Revolution Maximilien Robespierre is often portrayed as a crazed fanatic. It’s thanks to the work of his equally revolutionary sister Charlotte Robespierre that the egalitarian basis of his legacy survived.
n 1789, French society rose up against a corrupt feudal order. Republican fervor on the streets and in the assemblies abolished the monarchy, confiscated the church’s property, and kick-started an ambitious restructuring of constitutional and daily life.
By 1793, the Reign of Terror — the mass arrest and execution of real and imagined counterrevolutionaries — was in full swing. With Jacobin Club leader Maximilien Robespierre at the helm, the Terror ostensibly aimed to shift revolutionary zeal from the unruly streets to the orderly guillotine. Fearful for their heads, a temporary alliance of nervous elites seized an opportunity to overthrow and kill Robespierre and his allies. The so-called Thermidorian Reaction had begun.
From the moment of his execution in 1794, commentators have been relentlessly reshaping Robespierre’s legacy to fit their political purposes, and he remains an ambiguous figure today. He is by turns cast as an anti-totalitarian bogeyman, a totem against aristocratic privilege, a case study in why not to pursue elite corruption too vigorously, or an egalitarian leveler.
Robespierre’s sister Charlotte — who worked at various points as his secretary, a Jacobin emissary to the regions, and a kind of revolutionary wartime agent — took it upon herself to ensure that the egalitarian vision of Robespierre survives to this day. She survived the decades after Thermidor, joined forces with the first communists, and went on to shape future revolutions in Europe.
Fraternité
The Robespierre children — Maximilien, Charlotte, and Augustin — were close in age. As young adults from regional Arras, they lacked the money and social networks that guaranteed success and lived fairly modestly. Maximilien achieved success as a lawyer thanks to his talents and some generous benefactors, though his reputation as a somewhat annoying bleeding heart marked him as an outsider in the elite circles of Arras. Elected to the Estates General in 1789, Robespierre set off for Paris and plunged himself into revolutionary debate, politics, intrigue, and the Jacobin Club.
As the revolution widened its ambitions to destroy the aristocracy, Charlotte became a sort of unofficial Jacobin delegate in Arras. She organized a campaign against Barbe-Thérèse Marchand, a bourgeois newspaper owner in the city. Marchand’s Affiches d’Artois supported exiled aristocrats and clergy; she had also successfully bankrolled the election of a conservative Girondin candidate from Arras serving in the newly formed Legislative Assembly. Charlotte’s campaign culminated in a large rally in 1791 outside Marchand’s home in defense of the revolution. Affiches d’Artois ridiculed the demonstration for including theater ushers and laundrywomen. Less than a year later, Marchand’s delegate in Paris was attacked as a closet royalist by a sansculotte crowd, and Marchand herself fled France.
Buoyed by the success of the revolutionary project, Charlotte moved to Paris. She lived on and off with her brothers, both now elected to the National Convention. She participated in meetings and discussions with some of the most prominent figures of the revolution. These included Joseph Fouché, whose courtship of Charlotte ended when the Robespierres lambasted him for committing bloody and indiscriminate massacres in Lyon. In 1793 she was sent on a mission with her brother Augustin to help suppress a Federalist revolt in Nice. Physically attacked by Girondins and under extreme pressure, Charlotte had a ferocious falling out with Augustin. She ultimately returned to Paris on her own.
In 1794 Robespierre’s enemies orchestrated their coup against him. After fierce fighting, Maximilien and Augustin were executed. Charlotte was beaten by soldiers and arrested. Her female cellmate, who Charlotte later realized was probably a Thermidorian agent, convinced her to sign a document she never read — presumably a denunciation of her brothers. Charlotte was released from prison and sought refuge with her few remaining supporters.
Source: Jacobin
