Maximilien Robespierre

Maximilien Robespierre was born in Ireland, but he later became a liberal lawyer in France, not to mention the eventual leader of the French Revolution. In 1789, he was admitted into the Estates General as a representative 3rd estate and as the public accuser. However, in 1793, he left the Assembly and was elected into the Committee of Public Safety as the leader. The Committee of Public Safety was a political group who initially and subtly promoted the idea of rebellion and revolution. This title and place on the committee virtually named Robespierre as a side-ruler of France along with 12 other members of the group.

Robespierre provided a major voice to the French population in questioning the authority and efficiency monarchy. As his popularity increased, more of the French middle and lower class were more encouraged to question the monarchy and therefore started to rebel. For instance, the seize of Versailles and the attack on the Bastille symbolized Robespierre's successful oratorial effect, such that the people of France resorted to violence to show signs of independence and disapproval.

As he continued to preach the concept of revolution, Robespierre gained political power over the Nation along with his Committee of Public Safety. After Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed under the Guillotine (national public beheading contraption), the Committee of Public Safety considered itself the new true rulers of France, with Robespierre as its primary voice. Out of suspicion towards potential revolutionary enemies, Robespierre and the committee ordered the executions of tens of thousands of people.

Robespierre's immense amount of power soon placed him in a similar position as a monarch; he pictured himself as a prophet and executed whomever he pleased. As the revolution progressed, many people began to realize Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety's hypocracies and madness. The Committee had become the very type of government it had set out to abolish forever. Robespierre was soon found out, and was kidnapped by his own people. He attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head before he was seized, but his attempt failed and he went to prison and soon became exiled from France with a hole in his jaw. Eventually, he was decapitated under the Guillotine in France.

From observing the timeline of Robespierre's reign, we see the irony in how his philosophies and his actual governing methods operate with one another. The French Revolution as a horrendous time that essentially provided France with little benefit in the end. However, other countries observed how a total reversal in government and tradition can occur within a nation. The power of revolution and an angry population proved to be immense during the French Revolution. Questioning the monarchy was a blasphemous notion before the revolution occurred in France. Therefore, the French Revolution changed the rest of the world by questioning the authority of an unjust government. Separate countries used this philosophy to shape their nation today by learning how to rebel against corruption. Robespierre is the source of this new way of thinking during the 18th and 19th centuries, and although his actions were twisted at times and his reputation is considered somewhat infamous, his philosophy on a nation's government and social structure has helped shape the world today.