francebeforepants1789:

How political cartoons and Revolutionary artwork contribute to vilifying Robespierre today: 

i. Bringing Robespierre to the forefront. 

Many engravings and paintings include titles, such as those above, attaching Robespierre’s name to the entire body of government or to the Revolution itself – “the regime of Robespierre”, “Robespierre’s government.” The numerous legislative bodies existing during the period are left out so as to deem Robespierre responsible for five years of political upheaval and, more specifically, for the Terror itself.

ii. Connotations of death.

The figure of death, depicted in the cartoon on the left, or in the piles of disembodied heads on the right, is shown to represent revolutionary excess.  By attaching it to Robespierre’s name, even in a single image such as these, the effect comes across as though Robespierre was directly responsible for it. This also overemphasizes the “darkness” of the years 1793-94 (thus contributing to the skid theory mentioned by Albert Soboul in Understanding the French Revolution, a theory separating Robespierre into ‘the Robespierre of 1789-1791′, or the ‘good Robespierre,’ and ‘the Robespierre of 1792-1794′, the Robespierre who ‘tragically slid into fanaticism’). By romanticizing ‘darkness’, posthumous viewers are conditioned to despise the years of the Terror without question, viewing the period though a strictly moral (and, in our case, 21st century) lens, a lens devoid of context.

iii. Notions of anarchy. 

Certain paintings, namely the one I show below, depict the Revolution as chaotic and hellish, demonizing specific revolutionaries.  These depictions teach us to once again morally condemn the Revolution without context.

iv. The notion of blood and violence.

By romanticizing and emphasizing the bloodiness of the Terror and placing it in direct line of Robespierre, as though it were his single-handed creation, we are trained to automatically connect Robespierre with bloodshed.  Works of literature can be notorious for this kind of portrayal (Charles Dickens, I’m looking at you).  

v. Creating myths. 

As not all works are visual, certain media, such as poetry, can be notorious for propagating myths about figures like Robespierre or even the Revolution itself.  An example of a myth is the notion that Robespierre seduced women (a more Thermidorian myth, but still, to this day it contributes to detracting Robespierre), highlighted in Mehee de la Touche’s poem La queue de Robespierre:

Robespierre’s tail is most in fashion

To soothe and still the ladies’ passion

When his tail and his sharp blade

Penetrate some charming glade,

I hear a young virgin’s plea:

O how this knife stabs me!

This Robespierre of a tail

With blood will gorge and swell;

Squeeze it if you dare

Till pleasure wakes up there.

The murderer’s huge tail

Makes the whole world quail;

This tail bears a deep stain

Of pleasure, love, and pain. 

Again, combined with sexualizing Robespierre, this poem emphasizes the notion of blood and violence.

vi. Portraying Robespierre as… *spins wheel* cold-hearted, bloodthirsty, tyrannical, emotionally detached, etc. 

Both written and visual works contribute to this image.  Many engravings or portraits depict Robespierre to be very stoic or stiff in posture; his facial features seem to sharpen in parallel with the artist’s dislike.  There have also been mentions of his “green complexion,” dramatizing his appearance (or occasional leave of illness?) to make him appear inferior and an object worthy of hatred.  An engraving goes as far as to depict Robespierre squeezing blood out of a heart; again, the sharp-and-stoic combination of facial features are present. 

Antoine de Saint-Just also receives this frigid representation.  A quote sums up the attitudes of these artists quite well: 

“As to Robespierre himself, he was never a dictator, and there is no reliable evidence to suggest that it was his aim…men called him a dictator because they feared his moral inflexibility in one who had power.”

–William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution 

vii.  Attaching Robespierre to religious fanaticism.

As I mentioned in the use of the skid theory before, many historians, authors, and even artists equate Robespierre’s efforts in the Revolution to that of a religious crusade or religious fanaticism, emphasizing the Revolutionary calendar or the festival of the Supreme Being without placing it in context with political maneuvering or the circumstances under which Robespierre and his contemporaries were placed (especially their responsibility to help maintain public spirit).  Many of the Terror’s excesses, such as the drownings (noyades) at Nantes committed by Jean-Baptiste Carrier and summary executions at Lyons committed by Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, 1) fail to mention the names of the deputies-on-mission actually involved in these atrocities and 2) instead slap Robespierre’s name on the label and make it appear as though he himself was party to abusing the Terror (when in fact he heavily condemned such abuses!).  Robespierre is mistakenly labeled as an atheist as well, when in fact nothing could be less true, as Robespierre openly opposed the abuses of the dechristianization movement and publicly stated his belief in God, equating the harm of priests, clergy, and Christians (some of which was carried out in the aforementioned abuses of terror) on par with that of the Catholic church’s lack of religious tolerance in previous centuries.  He also condemned atheism as “aristocratic.”  That is not to say that Robespierre necessarily despised atheists either; he simply did not like that other revolutionaries were infringing on others’ rights to freedom of worship.  

Robespierre is also frequently implicated in the notion that he himself created the Revolutionary calendar when in fact a man by the name of Gilbert Romme is known to have created it, and Fabre d’Eglantine to have named the months.