Maximilien Robespierre lost control of the Reign of Terror and was executed due to political alienation
the verdict
SUPPORTED
the evidence backs this
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
3 sources for · 0 against
AS REPORTEDno primary record reached; this is what the reporting says
Historical reference sources report that Maximilien Robespierre alienated political colleagues through his enforcement and radicalization of the Reign of Terror, leading to a conspiracy against him and his execution during the Thermidorian Reaction.
Jean-Lambert Tallien
Jean-Lambert Tallien (23 January 1767 in Paris – 16 November 1820 in Paris) was a French politician of the revolutionary period. Though initially an active agent of the Reign of Terror, he eventually clashed with its leader, Maximilien Robespierre, and is best known as one of the key figures of the Thermidorian Reaction that led to the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror.
Jean-Lambert Tallien (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ lɑ̃bɛʁ taljɛ̃], 23 January 1767 – 16 November 1820) was a French politician of the revolutionary period. Though initially an active agent of the Reign of Terror, he eventually clashed with its leader, Maximilien Robespierre, and is best known as one of the key figures of the Thermidorian Reaction that led to the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror. == Early life and journalism == Tallien was born in Paris to Lambert Tallien, the maître d'hôtel of the Marquis de Bercy, and Jeanne Lambert. The marquis, noticing his ability, had him educated, and got him a place as a lawyer's clerk.
He was sent as representative on mission to the department of Indre-et-Loire in March 1793, and after returning to Paris took an active part in the insurrection of 31 May, which resulted in the overthrow of the Girondists. For the next few months he kept a low profile, but on 23 September 1793 Tallien was sent with Claude-Alexandre Ysabeau on a mission to Bordeaux. This was the month in which the Reign of Terror was organized under the superintendence of the Committees of Public Safety and Committee of General Security. On 6 October he arrived in Saint-Émilion to arrest suspect deputies.
Not long after the introduction of the Law of 22 Prairial, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve and Francois Buzot committed suicide; Marguerite-Élie Guadet and Charles Barbaroux were guillotined. Tallien was one of the most notorious envoys sent over to establish the Terror in the departments, and soon established a revolutionary grip on Bordeaux. The young Tallien, who was not yet 27, became notorious for his administration of justice in Bordeaux through his bloody affinity to "feed la sainte guillotine".
Tallien's methodology of subjugation at Bordeaux has been described as "fear and flour": the guillotining of Girondist leaders and exploitation of food shortages by withholding bread from the already-hungry province. However, after the initial days of his mission in Bordeaux, Tallien began to shift away from his bloody Terrorist tendencies. This tendency may be due to his romantic involvement with Thérésa Cabarrús, the daughter of Francisco Cabarrús and former wife of the émigré Marquis de Fontenay. Tallien not only spared her life but fell in love with her.
Tallien was elected president of the Convention on 24 March 1794 until 5 April and had to deal with the trial of Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins. == Thermidorian Reaction == Tallien was recalled to Paris from Bordeaux after being
Thérésa stated, "I die in despair at having belonged to a coward like you." In Prairial (May–June) he was expelled from the Jacobin Club by Robespierre, and from then on Tallien became a leading conspirator for his overthrow, allying himself with other opposers of the Terror. Robespierre's own political ideas implied his readiness to strike at many of his colleagues in the committees, and Tallien was one of the men condemned. Robespierre's rivals were determined to strike first.
During a session at the National Convention on 9 Thermidor (27 July), Tallien interrupted Robespierre helper Louis Antoine de Saint-Just and, after going up to the tribune: "Yesterday a member of the government was left quite isolated and made a speech in his own name; today another one has done the same thing. Tallien continued: "Need I recall to you that expression addressed [by Robespierre] to the journalists in one of the last sittings of the Jacobins?
"I prohibit you from inserting my discourses in your papers till you have previously communicated them to me." He brandished a dagger and threatened to stab Robespierre in the chest if the Convention did not decree his accusation, calling him "the new Cromwell". The movement was successful: Robespierre and his closest allies were arrested and guillotined on the next day. Tallien, as the leading Thermidorian, was elected to the Committee of Public Safety.
Tallien's actions and his motivation behind his shifting loyalties have been described thus: "His only claim to a place in history was to have realized that people were sick of the terror, that the inevitable reaction was imminent, and that it was better to be a part of it than to be crushed by it." In all these months he was supported by Thérèse, whom he married on 26 December 1794, and who became the leader of the social life of Paris. This cemented Tallien's transition from the infamous Terrorist at Bordeaux to the "reformed terrorist" of the Thermidorian reaction.
Tallien was held responsible and lost support from the jeunesse dorée and Thermidorians. His political influence were thus greatly reduced. == Council of Five Hundred and Egyptian campaign == After the beginning of the French Directory, Tallien's political importance came to an end, for, although he sat in the Council of Five Hundred, the moderates viewed him as an enforcer of the Terror, and the extreme party as a renegade. Madame Tallien also rejected him, and became the mistress of the rich banker Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard.
Napoleon Bonaparte, however, who is said to have been introduced by him to Paul Barras, took him on to his military expedition to Egypt of June 1798 as part of the political economy section of the Institut d'Égypte, and after the capture of Cairo, he edited the official journal there, the Décade Égyptienne. General Jacques François Menou sent him back to France. On his passage, he was captured by a British cruiser and taken to London, where he had a good reception among the Whigs and was received by Charles James Fox.
Today, all of these countries have abolished (legally stopped) the death penalty. The guillotine is no longer used. French Revolution
The guillotine was the main instrument of execution. Thousands of people in the French Revolution died by the guillotine, including King and Queen Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Maximilien Robespierre executed them and about 16,000 other people with the guillotine in the Reign of Terror. On July 28th 1794, Robespierre himself became the last victim.[1]
The invention of the guillotine
Joseph Guillotin
The guillotine is named after a French medical doctor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Guillotin was against the death penalty. Realising he could not stop the death penalty, Guillotin instead tried to think of a quicker, less painful way of executing people. On October 10, 1789, he suggested using a machine to do all the executions. The actual guillotine was designed by another doctor, Antoine Louis. Guillotin did not help much with the design, but his name went down in history. Against Guillotin's wishes, the new machine quickly became known as the Guillotine. Guillotin regretted this until death in 1814.
A guillotine ( GHIL-ə-teen GHIL-ə-TEEN GHEE-yə-teen) is an apparatus designed for effectively carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with a pillory at the bottom of the frame, holding the position of the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, swiftly and forcefully decapitating the victim with a single, clean pass; the head falls into a basket or other receptacle below.
The guillotine is best known for its use in France, particularly during the French Revolution (1789-1799), where the revolution's supporters celebrated it as the people's avenger and the revolution's opponents vilified it as the pre-eminent symbol of the violence of the Reign of Terror. While the name "guillotine" dates from this period, similar devices had been in use elsewhere in Europe over several centuries. Use of an oblique blade and the pillory-like restraint device set this type of guillotine apart from others. Display of severed heads had long been one of the most common ways European sovereigns exhibited their power to their subjects.
The design of the guillotine was intended to make capital punishment more reliable and less painful in accordance with new Enlightenment ideas of human rights. Prior to use of the guillotine, France had inflicted manual beheading and a variety of methods of execution, many of which were more gruesome and required a high level of precision and skill to carry out successfully.
After its adoption, the device remained France's standard method of judicial execution until the abolition of capital punishment in 1981. The last person to be executed by a government via guillotine was Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian murderer, on 10 September 1977 in France.
Louis Collenot d'Angremont was a royalist famed for having been the first guillotined for his political ideas, on 21 August 1792. Before and during the Reign of Terror (between September 1793 and July 1794) about 17,000 people were guillotined, including former Queen Marie Antoinette, who was executed at the guillotine on October 16, 1793; her husband Louis Capet (former King Louis XVI) was guillotined on January 21, 1793. Towards the end of the Terror in 1794, revolutionary leaders such as Georges Danton, Saint-Just and Maximilien Robespierre were sent to the guillotine. Most of the time, executions in Paris were carried out in the Place de la Revolution (former Place Louis XV and current Place de la Concorde); the guillotine stood in the corner near the Hôtel Crillon where the City of Brest Statue can be found today. The machine was moved several times, to the Place de la Nation and the Place de la Bastille, but returned, particularly for the execution of the King and for Robespierre.
For a time, executions by guillotine attracted great crowds of spectators, with vendors selling programs listing the names of the condemned. Moreover, the guillotine symbolized revolutionary ideals: equality in death equivalent to equality before the law; open and demonstrable revolutionary justice; and the destruction of privilege under the Ancien Régime, which used separate forms of execution for nobility and commoners. The Parisian sans-culottes, then the popular public face of lower-class patriotic radicalism, thus considered the guillotine a positive force for revolutionary progress.
After the French Revolution, executions resumed in the city centre. On 4 February 1832, the guillotine was moved behind the Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, before being moved again, to the Grande Roquette prison, on 29 November 1851.
In the late 1840s, the Tussaud brothers Joseph and Francis, gathering relics for Madame Tussauds wax museum, visited the aged Henry-Clément Sanson, grandson of the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson, from whom they obtained parts, the knife and lunette, of one of the original guillotines used during the Reign of Terror. The executioner had "pawned his guillotine, and got into woeful trouble for alleged trafficking in municipal property".
On 6 August 1909, the guillotine was used at the junction of the Boulevard Arago and the Rue de la Santé, behind the La Santé Prison.
The last public guillotining in France was of Eugen Weidmann, who was convicted of six murders. He was beheaded on 17 June 1939 outside the prison Saint-Pierre, rue Andre Mignot 5 at Versailles, which is now the Tribunal Judiciaire de Versailles. The proceedings caused "disgusting" and "unruly" behaviour among spectators. The "hysterical behavior" by spectators was so scandalous that French president Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions.
Marie-Louise Giraud (17 November 1903 – 30 July 1943) was one of the last women to be executed in France. Giraud was convicted in Vichy
Unlike Stalin, however, Robespierre was a brilliant orator who ultimately was destroyed on the guillotine by the very terror he had created to eliminate his rivals.In Robespierre: The Voice of Virtue, Otto J. Scott has created an ironic ...
It is a perverse but almost inescapable phenomenon in the history of violent revolutions that after the first heroic days a colorless bureaucrat will inherit the mantle of leadership. In the Russian Revolution, Lenin was followed by a plodding Stalin rather than a dazzling Trotsky. Even after the American Revolution the celebrated Jefferson barely made it into office as president between two party regulars.The French Revolution was no exception. After the genius and idealism of Mirabeau, Danton, and others who had created the Revolution, it fell into the hands of an unscrupulous and sententious bourgeois lawyer who had been lost among the back benches of the first Estates-General. Like Stalin, Robespierre rose through tireless party service and meticulous attention to detail and finally th
Everything we examined (3) — 2 independent sources
This check searched the claim as stated. It did not run a separate search for evidence against it.