Excerpted from Adam Gopnik's New Yorker review of "The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France," by David Andress and "Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution," by Ruth Scurr.
Robespierre was never a Rationalist...It was Rousseau's vision of the workings of a mystical general will, not Voltaire's vision of toleration achieved through popular education that moved him...[over] the course of the next eighteen months [Robespierre] oversaw the execution of almost two thousand men and women in the Place de Revolution. Trials were held in which no defense witnesses were called and the jury had only to be persuaded that there was "moral proof" of the accused's opposition to the Revolution...Andress recounts, succinctly, the feuds and rivalries among the bewildering sects and sub-sects of the revolutionaries...this sense of beleaguerment helps explain a central mystery of the Terror regime: not how the ideologues kept their hold on the other ideologues but how, despite obvious signs of looniness, they kept their hold on the apparatus of power...
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Prof, wlecome, and please be aware that this blog observes a disclosure policy with respect to poster identity. If you wish to post using this screen name, please go to the New Albanian's profile, use the e-mail link there, and let me know who you are. I'll keep your identity confidential if this is your wish.
I've often considered that New Albany's intrigues are like a Southern-fried version of the court of Louis XVI.
We know what happened to Robespierre . . .
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