Just to add to this, it still blows my mind how quickly this happened. The French went from overthrowing the royals to guillotining their neighbours within 5 years, and in the same short timespan Robespierre went madder than any Sun King had ever been. "La Terreur" was total madness.

My country went from 1000 years of Christian hegemony to atheist in a span of approximately 20 years. Don't underestimate the capacity for humans to change.

On top of that he was a tremendous speaker. Tyrants don’t usually bother to justify their actions much beyond “because I can and I want to.” (Cf. current US administration’s discourse over Greenland.)

But Robespierre was a believer in capital-R Reason, and he had to face the National Assembly all the time. So his speeches are a fascinating gradual slippery slope from “it would be good if Jews and actors would get to vote too” to “only Terror will purify the world.”

I’ve got a little book of them, aptly titled “Les plus beaux discours de Robespierre” — his most beautiful speeches. It would be an odd adjective to use about almost any other political monster’s output (excepting Antiquity and the distance we have to them).

> French went from overthrowing the royals to guillotining their neighbours

The irony being the elites after the French Revolution were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped with so much money and wealth that it’s actually debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos [1].

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/650023