To publish the Works of Robespierre is to rehabilitate a name around which so many unjust prejudices have gathered; it is, at the same time, to provide the people with an abundant source of enlightenment and instruction. How many men who have never so much as glanced at Robespierre’s writings or speeches are convinced, on the authority of the aristocracy’s paid writers, that Robespierre was a villain. Let them read his works, and they will arrive at a fairer judgement of his feelings and his heart.

Robespierre’s works are the best answer to the frenzied declamations of his equally frenzied detractors. To slander, insult and shriek is not to reason. Those who, for want of better arguments, heap insult upon slander against a man prove one thing: that there is not a single fact in that man’s life which might support a reasonable and conscientious attack upon him.

Did Robespierre err? That is what I shall examine in the historical notice with which I shall preface his works. But it is above all through those works themselves, by reading and reflecting upon them, that one may become convinced that Robespierre was cruelly slandered. It is by closely examining his conduct and his political actions from 1789 until 9 Thermidor that one will recognise in him the purest defender of the rights of humanity.

Whoever reads Robespierre is inwardly consumed by a more ardent love of country and liberty, and by a deeper hatred of the tyrants who crush humankind. Whoever reads him sees a new universe unfolding before his eyes. He feels, touches and understands his rights; he identifies himself with them; he becomes worthy of the noble name of man, worthy of the great title of citizen.

As it turns out, there was such a thing as Culturally/Politically Topical Embroidery on Men’s Waistcoats. It started post-1783, but, for obvious reasons, gained steam post-1789. Some had a bust of Rousseau (or Voltaire, depending on which side in that particular argumentative fandom one took) embroidered on theirs, some had scenes from the theatrical comedies they liked, some had symbols of the unity of three estates of the nation against the royal despotism, such as the episcopal crook, the sword, and the spade bundled together in a sheaf.

Some just went for slogans, such as “vaincre ou mourir” (victory or death).

The decline and fall of this fashion craze came in about 1792, when the Journal de la mode et du goût reported men's waistcoats had become almost universally red ("gilets presque tous rouges"), and that the journal had virtually stopped describing men's fashion because it had ceased to change.

Rating: Cute!

MEANWHILE NEY:

I just discovered that this existed and I had to do it, I couldn't resist

me but with philip ii of spain:

And it’s not just a painting!! She actually wore men’s attire to hunts and everyone was horrified!!! And furthermore this wasn’t even the FIRST painting of her like this!!!! This painting was done by Louise-Auguste Brun in ~1781; however there was an earlier painting of Marie on horseback in men’s attire that she commissioned in 1771 which has since been lost and I will FOREVER BE MAD ABOUT THIS-

*deep breath*

Writing in Queen of Fashion, she compares it to this painting of Louis XIV:

Quoting Weber:

At a time when her [Antoinette’s] failure to conceive an heir was causing speculation, Marie Antoinette scandalized many courtiers by dressing in trousers and riding astride ‘like a man.’ This form of rebellion may have been inspired by her ancestor Louis XIV…who had used equestrian finery to enhance his own authority.