♝ ROBESPIERRE JEUNE

I. The Man Who Defined Himself Through His Brother's Fate

The earliest version of this is from 1790, years before any of the events that made it famous:

"I cannot hide my fears from you, dear brother, you will seal the cause of the people with your blood, perhaps even these people will be so unfortunate as to strike you, but I swear to avenge your death and to deserve it like you."

Augustin here was a whopping twenty-six years of age, and Maximilien wasn't yet famous: The guillotine hadn't been invented yet as an instrument of the Terror. And Augustin was already writing about avenging his brother's death and deserving the same fate.. "Deserve it like you" is the phrase that catches me — not just that he'd share the danger but that he'd earn it. That he'd be worthy of the same end.

This thread runs all the way to 1794. At the Jacobins on July 11, sixteen days before Thermidor:

"In vain would they try to separate me from him: as long as he remains the proclaimer of morality and the terror of villains, I aspire to no other glory than that of sharing the grave with him."

And then the Convention declaration on July 27:

"I am as guilty as my brother: I share his virtues; I want to share his fate."

And then the medical deposition, hours before his death, still defining himself in terms of Maximilien: That he never stopped doing his duty well at the Convention, like his brother.

Even dying, with a shattered pelvis and a brain bleed, the frame of reference is: like his brother. His final political testimony named Carnot as a conspirator and defended both of them in the same breath.

If there was any doubt, it becomes clear here that this is not performance; the consistency across a decade is too complete for performance (or atleast a performance NOT grounded in genuine conviction.. The repeated declarations are probably both authentic and rhetorical at the same time). One quote can be rhetoric. Two can be coincidence. A decade of repetition becomes self-concept. He genuinely understood his own life as running parallel to Maximilien's — and his own significance as deriving from that parallel.

II. The Almost-Great-Man: He Said, Modestly

But there's another register, and it's much funnier!! I promise!! No bone breaking required!!

After his speech of April 20, 1793 — the one that helped set the stage for the Girondin purge — he wrote to Buissart:

"Since Saturday I am almost a great man, I receive congratulations from all sides for my speech in favor of the Municipality of Paris, in support of measures denounced by a leader of the faction. Do not be surprised then if I put on airs, the incense actually risks suffocating me, if you do not come and dissipate the fumes that are going to my head."

Aw Shucks, Another Triumph! The self-irony is from The People's Princess over here doesn't make it any better. He's mocking himself for being flattered. But he also wrote it down and sent it, which means he wanted Buissart to know he'd done something worth mocking himself about. The modesty and the pride are operating simultaneously..

The Toulon letter does the same thing. After the fall of Fort Balaguier:

"I am astonished to be a hero. They assure me I am one, though I wasn't thinking about it at all. I was in the ranks; during the action I saw neither bullets, nor cannonballs, nor bombs; I only saw the small fort that had to be taken. To the fort! It is ours, let's go, courage, my friends! I reached its base without even realizing it."

This is charming and probably mostly genuine — but it's also extremely aware of how charming it is. The man who wrote "I am astonished to be a hero" knew exactly what kind of letter he was writing: Astonished to Be a Hero, Delighted to Report It ( ˶ ͡°ヮ ͡°) !!

III. Local Man Understands Revolution Better Than Revolution

This is the self-image I find most interesting, and the one that gets least attention. From Aix-en-Provence, August 1793, writing to Maximilien:

"You do not know the situation of these unhappy regions well. Heads are overheated, incapable of reasoning."

Here, he's twenty-nine, writing to the de facto head of the Committee of Public Safety, telling him he doesn't understand what's actually happening in France. And he's right! But the confidence, brother or not, is rather remarkable.

From Franche-Comté, February 1794, after releasing hundreds of prisoners:

"Rest assured that I have made the Mountain adored, while there are still areas that only fear it, that do not know it, and that only lack a representative worthy of his mission, who educates the people instead of demoralizing them."

(you can sense the living embodiment of the tiktok proud emoji in his words, but ok)

From Lyon, same month, defending his actions against criticism from fellow Montagnards:

"It is given to so few to feel that one cannot and must no longer revolutionize a country that has been revolutionized."

And perhaps the most striking of all, from a letter to Maximilien about provincial conditions:

"Nothing is easier than preserving a revolutionary reputation at the expense of innocence."

This is clear-eyed to the point of being almost brutal. He saw exactly how the Terror was functioning as a reputation machine, and he said it plainly: He seems genuinely to have believed that he was one of the few people who understood this — that his months on the road had given him access to truths that the Paris revolutionaries, including his brother, couldn't access from inside their committees.

He wasn't wrong about this: The tragedy is that being right (and incredibly handsome) didn't really translate into power.

IV. The Unconscious Competitor

Strap in.

This is Mary Young's reading, and I think she's right, and I also think Augustin would have found it completely incomprehensible:

October 29, 1792. Louvet has just accused Maximilien in the Convention, the first serious open attack on him. Augustin rushes to the Jacobins, agitated, his speech confused and jumping from point to point. And in the middle of all of it, he says:

"I am ashamed to be speaking to you, because the brother of Robespierre should be calumniated and he is not."

Young's commentary goes as follows: "It is an interesting statement because it forces us to face the possibility that, just below the surface of Augustin's devotion, there was an envy of which he was probably never once conscious. To be threatened, libelled and become, possibly, the target of murderers means fame; to be ignored means oblivion. I do not for a moment think that Augustin would have accepted my interpretation of his words. He might well have said that he wanted to be seen to be as good a Republican as his brother, one equally ready to die for liberty."

And I agree he would have said exactly that, in fact, I couldn't put my interpretation to any better words. The 1790 letter proves it: "I swear to avenge your death and to deserve it like you." The desire to deserve the same fate. Not to be Maximilien, but to be worthy of standing next to him. To be equally threatened, equally in danger, equally significant. If Maximilien bears the burden alone, then Augustin feels he has not yet paid the same price: If calumny is the tax paid by virtue, then not being calumniated may imply one has not yet proven oneself sufficiently.

But the word he used was ashamed. Not proud of his brother, not indignant on his behalf — ashamed for himself. Ashamed that he was not the target..

The desire to deserve the same fate and the shame at not yet having it are not the same as envy. But they're not entirely separate either..

The three motives in Augustin's choice of wording stick out when one chooses to inspect them.. Envy of prominence, desire for equal sacrifice, and republican honor culture; I suspect all three motives may coexist. As human motives usually do. It is difficult when, even in a time where things are much bigger than oneself — to not feel personally implicated, and assessed on your worth:

If Maximilien is attacked and I am not, what does that say about me?

Have I done enough?

Have I sacrificed enough?

Am I actually as committed as he is?

Am I worthy of standing beside him?

In that reading, the shame comes less from wanting Maximilien's fame than from fearing that the difference between them might be deserved. Whether Augustin experienced the feeling as a problem of worthiness, or, as Young interprets it, as a problem of recognition, isn't the question when it could very easily be both at once..

I don't believe Augustin consciously wanted Maximilien's place (especially as he repeatedly places himself parallel or even beneath him). But I do think he desperately wanted the same moral significance.

If Augustin had said:

"I wish I were calumniated too,"

that would suggest ambition. But he says:

"I am ashamed."

Shame is a peculiar emotion. You feel shame when a situation seems to reveal something about your worth: If I fail an exam, I might feel disappointed. If I believe the failure reveals that I'm stupid, I feel ashamed. Shame is almost always connected to self-evaluation. So 'If Maximilien is receiving the attacks reserved for important revolutionaries and I am not, what does that say about my own commitment?' Ambition says: Why don't people notice me? While shame says: Why haven't I earned what he has earned?

A revolutionary imposter syndrome, and a hidden syllogism: Maximilien is attacked because he serves the Republic. I serve the Republic too. Why am I not attacked? Because If the enemies of the Revolution hate you, you must be doing something right..

Where Young becomes more provocative is in suggesting that Augustin may not have fully understood the nature of his own feelings. This is not an impossible reading. Consider the structure of his devotion: he repeatedly expresses desires such as wanting to share Maximilien's fate, share his grave, and share in his virtues.

On the surface, these declarations appear wholly self-sacrificing. Yet psychologically there may be another dimension at work. Every one of these statements, while framed as acts of devotion, also serves to keep Augustin alongside Maximilien. The relationship remains the central axis of his identity and self-definition.

In that sense, even self-sacrifice can function as a means of preserving proximity. The underlying impulse may not be, "Let me become greater than him," but rather, "Do not separate our stories, and do not leave me behind."

If so, the dynamic is not one of competition for dominance, but of competition for significance — the struggle to ensure that one's life remains inseparable from the life that gives it meaning.

Basically.. Augustin's devotion to Maximilien was genuine. But because he measured his own worth against Maximilien, every attack on his brother became, indirectly, a measure of himself. He wanted not merely to share Maximilien's cause, but to prove that he deserved to share its costs. The resulting feeling contains traces of envy, ambition, loyalty, insecurity, and republican ideals all at once.

In practice, Augustin was not merely an extension of his brother: But in his self-conception, he repeatedly returned to the role of companion, defender, witness, and fellow martyr.

There is almost a tension between the man he was and the man he imagined himself to be:

The man who was an influential representative-on-mission, independent political actor, regional power broker, and experienced revolutionary administrator.

Versus his self concept as the one standing beside Maximilien.

I'm rambling so i'm ending this section.. whistles

What He Would Have Said

If you'd asked Augustin how he viewed himself, I think he would have thought something like (in his deep, dreamy, saucy and stoic voice): I am a man who saw the Revolution clearly, who tried to make it humane, who was loyal to his brother and to the people without sacrificing one for the other, and who chose to share his brother's fate when the moment came..

And it's interesting, because Augustin himself often linked his identity own to Maximilien. That's not merely something historians imposed on him..

He probably wouldn't have mentioned the shame at not being calumniated: He wouldn't have framed the grave-sharing as the central aspiration of his adult life, even though the letters show it was. He wouldn't have acknowledged that his confidence in his own clear vision sometimes shaded into a belief that he alone understood — while the man he defined himself against, the one he swore to deserve, was in the next room making the decisions.

He was more self-aware than most people give him credit for. He was less self-aware than he thought he was. That gap between the two is where most of the interesting things about him live.

Sources:

Michon, Georges, ed. Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre. 2 vols. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1926. (Letters directly consulted in the 1926 edition.)

Young, Mary. Augustin: The Younger Robespierre. London: Core Publications, 2011. (The "I am ashamed" analysis, chapters 7–8.)

Luzzatto, Sergio. Bonbon Robespierre: Il Terrore dal volto umano. Translated by me, 2025. Original Italian edition: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2009. (Toulon letter, Franche-Comté letters, July 11 Jacobins speech.)

Augustin at the Jacobins, October 29 1792. Cited in Young, chapter 7.

Augustin at the Jacobins, July 11 1794. Recorded in Mercure français, no. 32 (July 18).

Augustin at the Convention, July 27 1794. Reported in Le Moniteur Universel, no. 311 (July 29).

What He Was Capable Of: The Mercy He Extended to Strangers

(or, The Ladies' Man and the Jacobin Jam)

Heh.. Not to uhm,. toot my own horn or anything but.. toot tooottt.. The decree timeline is a useful starting point.. He freed pregnant prisoners: "Citoyenne Delisle: Freed because she is pregnant and has 5 small children." He released women arrested for "simple religious opinions that have never disturbed public order." He freed a man specifically because his sister was blind and depended on him entirely — asking, in his own words, "is he guilty for listening to the voice of nature and holding out his hand to his brother whom he saw thus dying without means of support?" He granted a pension to Widow Barbot. He freed women arrested on the word of jealous neighbors, women whose only crime was wearing a cross.

When women came to him as petitioners — with documented need, with pleas, and with petitions — he almost always listened. The women of Besançon crowded around his carriage as he left, weeping. The women of Vesoul filled the inn courtyard waiting to present petitions as he prepared to depart. "I will come back," he told them, "with an olive branch or I will die."

You could very well say, given the decrees and all, that the warmth was genuine.

And then there's the Besançon Jacobin club.

The La Saudraye Paradox

Augustin brought La Saudraye to the meeting: One would find he'd apparently been bringing her everywhere — to Jacobin club sessions in Vesoul, into daily policy discussions, and into the administrative work of the mission. Suspects had learned to petition her directly, knowing that going to her was going to him. He wrote to Maximilien asking him to receive her and hear what she had to say: "necessary information to come to know certain characters who play a role in the Revolution." He explicitly trusted her political judgment enough to send her to his brother as an emissary.

At Besançon, a tinsmith who was a Bernard de Saintes loyalist stood up immediately as Augustin mounted the tribune, before Augustin even had a chance to establish himself in the room at all:

"Citizens, the regulations of our club prohibit the entry of women. I am married and a father, but I have never dreamed of bringing either my wife or my daughter here. Robespierre, neither husband nor father, has brought his woman here. I ask that she be made to leave, and I ask that it be noted in the minutes that at least one Republican has protested against Robespierre's aristocracy."

Augustin was furious. He signaled to her to leave, and she walked out.

Nodier records that as she crossed the room every eye followed her. He claimed to find her neither beautiful nor even pretty, yet her face nevertheless made a powerful impression on him: there was, he wrote, something penetrating, caustic, almost infernal in both her smile and her gaze. He also repeated the rumor circulating among those present — that she possessed an almost supernatural ability to read souls, and that Augustin had brought her with him as part of a "mystery of redemption," charged with distinguishing the good from the bad. The rumor was absurd, but its existence is revealing. Her presence in political spaces had become conspicuous enough that people felt compelled to invent explanations for it..

And here's where it gets interesting, because we know from Nodier's (dubious as is) account exactly what Augustin was capable of when he actually wanted to fight. That same evening, at that same meeting, he gave a long caustic speech about Bernard de Saintes that Nodier describes as "delivered with a terrifying calm — I was about to say a cruel one." He mocked Bernard's thinness, his smallness, his very physical existence. He said he believed "someone of that name had slipped into the National Convention through the keyhole." He said "narrow and light as Bernard's head may be, mine will weigh no more than his in the scales of justice." He descended from the tribune "amid fresh bursts of laughter and new acclamations, crossed the hall, rejoined his companion, and went to his post chaise."

He rejoined the woman he had just allowed to be expelled.

He was not a man who backed down from confrontation in general. That night he did it deliberately and skillfully and to considerable applause. He chose, specifically, not to fight for her.

The contradiction became even starker moments later, as this is where, according to Nodier, the courtyard outside the inn was crowded with women who had been waiting impatiently to present petitions to him. He could do little for them — his mission technically ended at the departmental border — but he addressed them anyway, promising that he would return with an olive branch or die for them: Women he had never met received a public declaration of devotion from him almost immediately after the woman he trusted enough to carry political intelligence to Maximilien Robespierre had been left to walk out of the Jacobin club alone.

Luzzatto reads the club scene as "proof that the Revolution of men did not always correspond, or did not correspond at all, to a Revolution of women." Which is accurate but also slightly lets Augustin off the hook — it frames it as a general structural failure rather than a specific choice he made. He trusted her observations enough to route them to Maximilien, but he did not trust that trust publicly when defending it would cost him something.

Robespierre enters → mounts the tribune → tinsmith immediately speaks up before he's even said anything → La Saudraye is expelled → "le tumulte s'apaisa" (the tumult calmed) → Robespierre gives his speech (general points first, then Bernard mockery) → president tries to intervene with the "illustration d'une famille" remark → Robespierre attacks both Bernard AND the president → famous tinsmith line → descends, rejoins La Saudraye, carriage → women with petitions at the inn courtyard → "rameau d'or" speech → carriage departs.

The Charlotte/Marguerite Triangle, or: How to Avoid a Problem Using Other People

!!! ohohohoh ain't this what we were all waiting for!!! Everybody knows the horseback ride incident is where the pattern gets explicit.

Charlotte's version: Marguerite suggested the ride. Charlotte reluctantly went. Augustin reproached Charlotte. Charlotte called on Marguerite to testify. Marguerite said it was Charlotte's idea and she'd been taken against her will. Augustin believed Marguerite.

Charlotte: "My brother knew I was incapable of lying. Why then did he not want to believe me?"

We don't actually know whose version is accurate and historians have gone back and forth on it. That's almost beside the point. What's interesting is the mechanism: Augustin accepted one woman's word over another's without investigating, without confronting either of them directly, and importantly without sitting Charlotte down and asking her to explain. He decided — unilaterally — and then acted on the decision by withdrawing rather than engaging.

When he came back to Paris in December 1793, he lodged with the Ricords rather than seeing Charlotte. He used Marguerite's household as a physical reason not to have the confrontation. Charlotte was in the city and he very well consciously chose to sleep somewhere that made seeing her logistically implausible.

Then in spring 1794 he wrote to Maximilien:

"My sister does not have a single drop of blood that resembles ours. I have seen and learned so much about her that I regard her as our greatest enemy. She abuses our spotless reputation to lay down the law on us and threatens to take a scandalous step in order to compromise us. We must take a decisive stand against her. We must make her leave for Arras."

He escalated directly to the maximum available authority rather than having a direct conversation. Charlotte didn't know what she was supposed to have done: He went from silent withdrawal to writing to Maximilien asking to have her removed from the city — without, apparently, telling Charlotte herself what the problem was.

Even if Charlotte were entirely wrong about the ride, Augustin still:

avoided her,

stayed elsewhere,

complained to Maximilien,

sought her removal,

never answered the final letter.

The behavioral pattern survives regardless of who won the original dispute.

Napoleon cultivated Marguerite Ricord specifically because, per Barras's memoirs, she exercised great influence over Augustin. This was apparently visible enough from the outside that a man calculating his career moves concluded that going through her was a viable route to Augustin. Which tells you something about how legible the pattern was even to people who barely knew him, even if Barras isn't the best source here..

Return to Sender: Neither Snow nor Rain nor Sisterly Devotion: The Most Frictionless Goodbye

On July 6, 1794, Charlotte wrote to him:

"Your aversion for me, my brother, far from diminishing, as I flattered myself, has become the most implacable hatred, to the point that the mere sight of me inspires horror to you; also, I must not hope that you will ever be calm enough to listen to me, which is why I will attempt to write to you."

She wrote because she had already given up on him being willing to hear her directly. She was doing the emotional labor of finding the medium he might tolerate — a letter he could read without having to respond in real time, without having to face her. She acknowledged the money dispute. She said she would leave. She said she would forgive him. She said wherever she ended up, even across the seas, if he needed her she would come back immediately.

He didn't respond. And they never spoke again.

What gets me about this is that Charlotte's letter already shows she'd internalized his avoidance. She wasn't demanding a confrontation — she was offering him the most frictionless version of contact she could construct. She'd already adapted her approach to his pattern.

He still didn't answer.

What Pattern Is This, Actually

It's not that he didn't value women or thought them unimportant. The decree timeline argues against that. His trust in La Saudraye's political intelligence, his warmth toward Élisabeth Duplay, the Vesoul women weeping as his carriage drove away — all of that argues against it.

The pattern is more specific. Women who needed something from him — who came to him as petitioners, who needed mercy or justice or advocacy — got his full attention and usually got what they needed. Women who complicated his life — who witnessed things he'd rather not have witnessed (Charlotte watching the Ricord situation), who challenged his public self-presentation (La Saudraye's presence as an accusation of "aristocracy"), who asked him to account for himself (Charlotte's letter) — got avoidance, deflection, or escalation to a higher authority.

He was comfortable dispensing justice to strangers. He was not comfortable being accountable to people he was close to.

My "Not So Sweet Bonbon" post calls this emotional outsourcing, which is right. I'd add that it's not really passive. The Besançon speech is proof he could fight when he wanted to. He chose not to extend that capability to the women in his personal life. He slandered Charlotte to Maximilien rather than talking to her. He let Marguerite's word stand over Charlotte's rather than investigating. He let La Saudraye walk out humiliated rather than defending her.

He was not afraid of confrontation. He was specifically afraid (or, more accurately, avoidant) of the confrontations that would require him to be wrong, or accountable, or responsible for someone else's pain.

The Rosalie Jullien Footnote

Rosalie Jullien observed him at dinner in February 1793 and wrote to her son: "Robespierre jeune is livelier, more open, an excellent patriot; but with a common mind and a contented temper."

The "contented temper" is,, in all honesty,,, the phrase that stays with me. He coasted on goodwill: He was warm, open, charming — probably genuinely those things most of the time. The patterns in this post aren't incompatible with being genuinely warm, they just show what happened when warmth wasn't enough, when the situation needed something harder than charm.. He couldn't do harder. And certainly not with the people who knew him.

Sources:

Luzzatto, Sergio. Bonbon Robespierre: Il Terrore dal volto umano. Translated by me, 2025. Original Italian edition: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2009. (Especially "Stories of Women" and "Your Brother is No Longer the Same.")

Young, Mary. Augustin: The Younger Robespierre. London: Core Publications, 2011. (Chapters 13–14.)

Nodier, Charles. Souvenirs, Portraits, Épisodes de la Révolution et de l'Empire. 2 vols. Paris: Charpentier, 1856. Pages 302–304.

Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835).

Charlotte Robespierre to Augustin Robespierre, 18 Messidor Year II [July 6, 1794]. Cited in Michon, Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre, vol. 2.

Mémoires de Barras, membre du Directoire (1895), vol. 1, pp. 148–149.

Rosalie Jullien to her son, February 2–3, 1793. Cited in Young, chapter 10.

1. The Arras Foundation: Loyal From Before the Revolution

Antoine-Joseph Buissart

The single most consistent thread of loyalty in Augustin's life outside his immediate family. Buissart was a highly respected lawyer and scientist in Arras — one of those solid, principled pre-revolutionary figures who raised Maximilien almost like a ward and extended the same affection to Augustin. Throughout the brothers' time in Paris, Buissart served as their postal intermediary when they feared their famous surname would cause their letters to be intercepted. He kept the Arras end of the line open for years, and Augustin — who wasn't always great at writing — genuinely loved the man, writing warmly to him about everything from Pas-de-Calais politics to "the little marmots" (the Buissart children)

By the summer of 1794, with Maximilien barricaded in the Duplay house and refusing to answer anyone's letters about Lebon's atrocities, Buissart had essentially given up on the elder Robespierre. It was Augustin he wrote about with desperate hope: "the arrival of Bonbon [...] is the hope of true patriots, the terror of those who dare to persecute them." His wife was staying at the Duplay house at the time — practically in Maximilien's antechamber — and Buissart wrote: "hug him for me, until I can do it myself."

That last line gets me every time honestly

*The caveat that has to go here: Buissart, for all his warmth toward both brothers, did not exactly cover himself in glory after Thermidor. He hastened to denounce them almost immediately (much like a lot of Bonbons other pals). Which is understandable given the terrifying circumstances — but still!!

Régis Deshorties

Augustin's step-cousin — Régis's father had married Augustin's aunt and godmother, Eulaie de Robespierre, as his second wife. Mary Young describes a genuine friendship dating from the Arras years: "a sensitive young man, with Rousseau and Fénelon among his favourite authors." He and Augustin shared jokes about the family, especially about the brewer uncle (Augustin's uncle on the Carraut side), whom they'd nicknamed "Sheltonien" and were, apparently, a bit scared of. Small domestic affections like that.

Régis's sister Anaïs was said to have been an early love interest of Maximilien's — which came to nothing, but didn't seem to damage the friendship between the cousins. His one surviving letter to Augustin, written in July 1794, is touching in its obliviousness: he'd been expecting Charlotte to write and tell him about Augustin's return to Paris, and when he heard nothing, simply assumed everyone was going to come to Arras instead. He ended by asking Augustin to "embrace Charlotte Robespierre and her girlfriends for me" — blissfully unaware, apparently, that the sibling relationship had catastrophically collapsed.

2. The Parisian Household: The Duplays

The Duplay Family

When Augustin and Charlotte arrived in Paris in September 1792, they moved into the Duplay household on Rue Saint-Honoré, where Maximilien had already been lodging for a year. Maurice Duplay was a carpenter; his household included his wife Françoise-Éléonore, three(?) unmarried daughters, son Jacques Maurice, and nephew Simon. Whatever Charlotte's various grievances about Madame Duplay, Augustin's relationship with the family was genuinely warm. He reportedly described Maurice as "the most worthy and generous of men," praised Françoise-Éléonore's housekeeping, and told Philippe Lebas the household "recalled the golden age" — breathing "virtue and pure patriotism." Which is very sweet and also very Bonbon.

Élisabeth Duplay (later Lebas)

Of all the Duplay daughters, Augustin was warmest toward Élisabeth, who married the Conventionnel Philippe Lebas. It was Élisabeth who confirmed, in a note written around 1847, that Augustin's nickname "Bonbon" came from his middle name Bon-Joseph — and the fact that she remembered this specific detail fifty-odd years later and chose to record it suggests she held onto memories of him with some care. Augustin apparently told Lebas that he had "the friendship of a brother" for her, that she was "cheerful and good," and that he liked her best of the sisters.

Philippe Lebas

Primarily known as Maximilien's closest companion, but genuinely close to Augustin too. He chose to die with the Robespierre brothers on 9 Thermidor — shooting himself rather than submit to arrest. His son, Philippe Lebas Jr., later published a testimony about Augustin that includes the famous anecdote about the three of them — Augustin, Simon Duplay, and Jacques Maurice Duplay — going one evening after the opera to the house of salonnière Jeanne-Louise-Françoise de Sainte-Amaranthe, "and this escapade was so severely criticised by Maximilien that, despite all the attraction of such a house for men, the oldest of whom was barely twenty-nine years old, they were careful not to return there."

This is VERY funny if you think about it for a second.. Classic Bonbon behavior honestly

3. Partners on the Road: The Midi Missions

Jean-François Ricord

Augustin's most sustained professional companion and the person he worked most closely with during the most formative period of his political life. Ricord was the deputy for Var, assigned alongside Augustin to the Army of Italy from July 1793 onward. They traveled together, fled federalists together (abandoning their carriage to the Marseille section members in the process), helped engineer the siege of Toulon together, and spent months navigating the violent and chaotic politics of the Midi side by side.

Barras and Fréron — who had every reason to discredit the pair — described Ricord as manipulating Augustin completely, "moving him at will without the latter even realizing it." But given the source, this reads more as a political smear than an accurate portrait. What the record actually shows is two men with a compatible political outlook: both more pragmatic and moderate than the ultraradical faction, both committed to stabilizing the regions they administered rather than devastating them. After Thermidor, Saliceti ordered Napoleon's arrest partly on the grounds that he had carried out a mission on Ricord's orders — which says something about how central Ricord remained to the whole Midi operation even after Augustin was gone.

*Post-Thermidor: Ricord's behavior was... not great. Within days of the news reaching Nice, he wrote to the Committee that he "blushed to have been the friend of Robespierre the Younger" and claimed he was Augustin's "most implacable enemy" from the moment of "his treason." He'd also suppressed a Committee decree ordering Haller's arrest and given Haller a passport to flee to Genoa, which then became its own problem. Mary Young is quietly devastating about this: "It is a vain speculation to ask what Ricord really thought of Augustin. But Augustin had probably cuckolded him." Anyway.

*The Ricord-Augustin relationship gets complicated fast once you introduce Madame Ricord. See below.

Gasparin Sauli

One of the most interesting figures in Augustin's story and the most unjustly obscure. A young Genoese noble and committed republican patriot who attached himself to Augustin after the capture of Toulon — "laid his friendship and his services before him," as Mary Young puts it — and then traveled with him through the entirety of the Franche-Comté mission:

The group that set out for Vesoul in January 1794 consisted of Augustin, Viennot (a chemist from Vesoul), Sauli, and La Saudraye, and they all lodged together at Humbert's house in the rue du Collège. The day after their arrival in Vesoul, Sauli was elected a member of the People's Society. The following evening he gave a speech that is frankly one of the most extravagant pieces of public praise Augustin ever received, apostrophizing him directly in front of the assembled club:

"And you, Robespierre! You who have so many titles to my esteem, my admiration, my friendship! You in whom the rarest talents are joined to a modesty that makes them the more precious! You at once legislator and soldier, by your example you give a model for a courageous man, by your justice that of a man of integrity, by your philanthropy that of a good man..."

He kept going. The Society voted to print both his speech and La Saudraye's.

He was with Augustin throughout the Franche-Comté mission — including the dramatic departure from Besançon, where Nodier describes crowds of women filling the courtyard waiting to present petitions as the carriage drove away. Sauli stayed on through Lyon and then traveled with Augustin back to Nice before returning home to Genoa at the beginning of March. Augustin wrote to him afterward asking for military intelligence about Piedmont and Sardinia, and signed off the letter's last line in Italian — "Si a Oneglia se troaro dei salicie" — which Mary Young suggests (charmingly) was written to show Sauli he hadn't forgotten what he'd been teaching him during their months on the road together.

The aftermath was bleak: Sauli was arrested almost immediately upon returning to Genoa, "perhaps too ingenuous to make a really good spy," per Mary Young. After Thermidor, the village of Jussey — one of the towns Augustin had administered — went so far as to expunge not only Augustin's name from the minutes but Sauli's too, because he had been "close to odious conspirators." The village then burned mannequins of the Robespierres for good measure. This is the French Revolution for you.

Claude-François Humbert

An old college friend of Maximilien's (from Louis-le-Grand) who hosted Augustin in Vesoul. The house in the rue du Collège accommodated Augustin, Sauli, and La Saudraye for the duration of the mission — Nodier called it a "humble abode," though it had to be reasonably large to fit them all. Mary Young notes, somewhat dryly, that Humbert had "supposed Royalist sympathies" which Augustin "apparently was not realising, or choosing to ignore." Humbert ultimately decided to stay in Paris rather than accompany the group south.

Viennot

The apothecary of Vesoul and arguably the loyalest friend Augustin made on the missions. He and Humbert came to Paris together to tell Maximilien about the disastrous situation in the Haute-Saône under Bernard de Saintes — which is how the whole Franche-Comté detour came about in the first place. Viennot showed Augustin his study when they arrived in Vesoul, which turned out to be full of copies of Maximilien's speeches. Mary Young says Viennot "at least was sincere in his liking for Augustin, and would seem to have been trustworthy."

The proof of this came after Thermidor. When Viennot was arrested by Bernard's people, Augustin wrote one of his most impassioned letters in his defense: "Frank, energetic, disinterested, honest, such is the character of Viennot, apothecary of Vesoul... Viennot is an ardent friend of liberty, an honest man who fights intrigue." And then Viennot repaid this loyalty when it actually mattered. After Thermidor, the local Jacobin Boizot tried to get Viennot to co-sign a letter condemning Augustin as a tyrant and claiming they'd both "resisted him when he had power." Viennot refused to sign it. Boizot had to send the letter with only his own name on it. Viennot "always maintained that Augustin was worthy of a better fate."

In a world full of Ricords, Viennot behaved like a Viennot. Good for him!!

4. The Women of the Missions

A note upfront: both Luzzatto and Mary Young discuss these relationships with appropriate uncertainty, and the primary sources — mostly Charlotte's memoirs and various hostile Thermidorian accounts — all have obvious axes to grind. Calibrate accordingly.

Marguerite Ricord

Jean-François Ricord's wife, who traveled south with the mission because Ricord was from Grasse and the assignment was effectively a homecoming for him. She was, by Charlotte's account, "young and seductive" with coquetry "at least equal to her beauty." Charlotte's version of the story — the one that most flatters Augustin — is that Marguerite made advances on him which he nobly resisted out of a sense of honor toward his colleague. The version "more accredited by students of la petite histoire," as Luzzatto puts it, is that he yielded entirely. Either way, the relationship caused the lasting rupture with Charlotte, and Barras and Fréron — AS MENTIONED BEEFOORREEE — found the whole dynamic politically useful — weaponizing Augustin's attachment to discredit him as a puppet of the Ricords' domestic influence when reporting back to Paris.

*What's genuinely interesting here is that Barras's memoirs (liar that he is) describe Napoleon as "assiduously" paying court to Marguerite specifically because of her influence over Augustin. If he is to believed, she was apparently politically proximate enough that Napoleon thought cultivating her was worth his time.

*Post-Thermidor note from Mary Young, who does not let anyone off easy: "Augustin had probably cuckolded [Ricord]. He had also made his colleague's life difficult by prolonged absences in Vesoul and Paris; he had always been a law unto himself. Certainly, Ricord may finally have concluded, he owed nothing to the memory of his friend." See above re: Ricord's letter.

Guillodon La Saudraye

Augustin's mistress during the Franche-Comté mission — a "much-talked-about ex-marchioness" who accompanied him openly through the Haute-Saône. Far from discreetly kept in the background, she was apparently genuinely involved in political decisions: suspects petitioned her directly, asking her to intercede with Augustin for their release. Michelet described her in characteristically overheated terms as "extremely equivocal" and blamed her influence for all manner of things. The scene at the Besançon Jacobin club, where a Bernard de Saintes loyalist (a tinsmith, per Luzzatto) stood up mid-meeting and loudly demanded she be removed, noting that "Robespierre, neither husband nor father, has brought his woman here" — is one of the more vivid small moments of Augustin's story. He apparently took the insult, signaled to her to leave, and she walked out.

*though most of what we know about Saudraye is through Nordier who was, again, 12 years old.. take the whole thing with grains upon grains of salt

*Augustin's letter to Maximilien asking him to meet with La Saudraye and hear from her firsthand about conditions in the departments is one of the more interesting windows into how he thought about knowledge. He described it as "necessary information to come to know certain characters who play a role in the Revolution." He genuinely seemed to believe that what she had seen and heard mattered, and that Maximilien — barricaded in Paris — couldn't understand conditions on the ground without hearing from people who had actually been there.

5. The Italian Connection

Napoléon Bonaparte

The most famous entry on this list by some distance. Their relationship is documented from so many angles — Charlotte's memoirs, Madame Junot's, Barras's, Napoleon's own accounts at Saint Helena, Lucien Bonaparte's memoirs — that it's almost unusually well-evidenced by the standards of Augustin's life.

The basics: they met properly around the time of the siege of Toulon, where Napoleon commanded the artillery. Augustin identified him early, writing to Maximilien in April 1794 about "citizen Buonaparte, general head of the artillery of transcendent merit" — noting his Corsican origin and that he could be trusted because he'd resisted Paoli's overtures when it would have been profitable to do otherwise. That's the only surviving letter in which Augustin mentions Napoleon directly.

By the spring of 1794, according to Napoleon's own much-later accounts, the friendship was intimate enough that Augustin consulted him on virtually everything: "Robespierre would never sign anything to do with the army or the supplies without consulting me. He would say to Haller who was then administrator: 'That's good, but I must speak to Bonaparte.'" He also believed that Augustin asked Maximilien to make him Commander of the Army of Italy — and that Carnot blocked it.

The most dramatic episode comes from Lucien Bonaparte's memoirs: Napoleon was apparently offered the job of replacing Henriot as commandant of Paris, through Augustin's connections, and turned it down. Lucien records him saying: "The young Robespierre is an honest fellow; but his brother is not to be trifled with: he will be obeyed. Can I support that man?! No, never." He then announced that the only honorable place for him was the army, that they must have patience, and that "I shall command Paris hereafter!" The younger Robespierre solicited him in vain.

Charlotte adds an almost unbelievable detail in her memoirs: that after 9 Thermidor, Napoleon proposed to the remaining representatives on mission with the Army of Italy that they march on Paris to punish the Thermidorians and avenge the brothers. The representatives were apparently so terrified by this that they hurried to reject it. No other source confirms this but it sounds exactly like the Napoleon of 1794.

His letter to Tilly after Thermidor: "I was a little affected by the tragedy of the younger Robespierre, whom I loved and believed to be pure, but, had he been my father, I would have stabbed him myself if he aspired to tyranny." He loved him well. He also spent several weeks under arrest anyway for his association with the Robespierres, which is perhaps the Revolution's form of dark comedy. And years later, he received Charlotte at the Consulate and gave her a pension — speaking of her brothers "in very flattering terms."

Charlotte, for her part, describes Napoleon's admiration for Maximilien and friendship with Augustin as straightforwardly genuine: "Bonaparte was sincerely a republican; I would even say that he was a montagnard republican; at least he had that effect on me." Madame Junot's memoirs add that Augustin was "what might be called an agreeable young man, animated by no bad sentiments."

Haller ("Papa Haller")

The Swiss banker put in charge of army supplies in Nice from October 1793 onward. Tall, thin-faced, blue-eyed, with — somewhat eccentrically for the period — a red beard. The kind of man who "gets things done": highly intelligent, a bit sharp, with extensive connections in Genoa. Ricord's report introducing him to the Committee was "slightly defensive," as Mary Young notes — his civisme was "not quite above question" — but they couldn't do without him. He was popular enough with the officers that they called him "Papa Haller."

Mary Young describes him as performing "the overwhelming task of feeding the town and army where honesty would not have sufficed." His relationship with Augustin was close enough to become a liability after Thermidor: the Thermidorians accused him of being "the principal agent" in Augustin's supposed crimes, demanded his arrest, and discovered that Ricord had already quietly given him a passport to flee to Genoa. He made it to Switzerland. Years later Napoleon employed him — which tracks.

A Note on Monvoison

I'd be leaving something out if I didn't mention the frankly suspicious school friend. Monvoison was a wealthy man Augustin spent time with during his Paris interlude in December 1793 – January 1794. A police report noted that "he had been educated with Robespierre the Younger (at Louis-le-Grand) and that is the cause of the intimacy between them." He was, per the same report, suspected of making money on the side and "said to have had friends who had been guillotined." He talked of going back to Nice with Augustin and making a great deal of money there. Mary Young observes dryly that Augustin "probably had no intention of taking him, but the fact that he associated with such a doubtful character showed his usual carelessness over his acquaintances." He is a figure in the post-Thermidor accusations against Augustin — the claim that "all his friends had been aristocrats" gestures at exactly this kind of association.

Bonbon's complete inability to vet his social circle is extremely on-brand.

ANYWAYS

The rough chronology:

Pre-revolutionary loyalties: Buissart, the Arras circle

The Parisian interlude: the Duplay household, Lebas

The missions: Ricord, Marguerite, La Saudraye, Napoleon, Sauli etc.,

What strikes me comparing this list to the adversaries one is how heavily the friends cluster around the mission period too — just like the enemies. Almost everything that mattered to Augustin personally (outside family and the Duplay household) was forged on the road, in the chaos of the Midi and Franche-Comté, far from Maximilien and far from Paris. Buissart and Deshorties are the great exceptions, the long roots from before the Revolution.

And the post-Thermidor picture is stark. Among everyone listed here: Ricord denounced him. Haller fled. Napoleon distanced himself (while remaining under arrest anyway). Viennot refused to denounce him. Sauli's name was expunged from minutes. The village of Vesoul — in June 1795, ten months after his death — was still saying "he treated us as good citizens; he simply gave us justice."

Sources:

The same sources as the adversaries post carry this one equally, with the heaviest weight falling on Luzzatto's chapters "Stories of Women," "Your Brother is No Longer the Same," and "Only Bonbon," plus Mary Young throughout..

Luzzatto, Sergio. Bonbon Robespierre: Il Terrore dal volto umano. Translated by me, 2025. Original Italian edition: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2009.

Young, Mary. Augustin: The Younger Robespierre. London: Core Publications, 2011. (Chapters 10–16 and 20 especially.)

Michon, Georges, ed. Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre. 2 vols. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1926.

Poupé, Edmond. "Robespierre Jeune et Gasparin Sauli." Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française (1962). [Primary source for Sauli; Mary Young draws on this directly.]

For Napoleon specifically:

Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835)

Mémoires de la Duchesse d'Abrantès [Madame Junot] (1832)

Mémoires de Barras, membre du Directoire (1895)

Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (1823)

Mémoires de Lucien Bonaparte, prince de Canino (1836)

1. The Local Rivals: The Arras & Pas-de-Calais Factions

Before making waves on the national stage in Paris, Augustin spent plenty of energy battling provincial conservatives and moderate factions right in his own backyard.

Beaumetz:

The president of the Conseil d'Artois who weaponized a clever pamphlet campaign against Maximilien during the election of the Third Estate. He preyed on the credulous peasantry by spreading rumors that the elder Robespierre actively wrote against religion. (Or. in a more neutral way: He participated in a pamphlet campaign against the Robespierres during the Estates-General elections, including allegations that Maximilien was hostile to religion.)

The Departmental Council / The Feuillants:

This moderately Royalist majority in the Pas-de-Calais council constantly clashed with Augustin over his fierce demands to hold departmental sessions in public: Their Procurer-General even openly attacked Augustin as a calumniator, prompting Augustin to strike back with the "firmness of an incensed Roman".

2. Estranged Allies

Joseph Lebon:

Though initially a close ally, a local curé, and the helpful Mayor of Arras who helped secure Augustin's provisional post as Procurer General, the relationship was fraught. Early on, Augustin showed an underlying distrust of Lebon’s pushy, volatile nature. This structural rift deepened during the affair of the Parisian commissioners Jason and Legray, where Lebon prioritized local popularity over strict adherence to Parisian Jacobin mandates — a foreshadowing of the bloody divergence in their later revolutionary missions.

*Lebon and Augustin certainly had tensions, especially by 1794, but they were not consistent enemies in the same way Barras, Bernard, or Carnot were: Mary Young repeatedly portrays their relationship as one of growing divergence rather than outright hostility. Augustin increasingly disliked the methods that made Lebon infamous, but there is little evidence of a personal vendetta comparable to what developed with Barras or Bernard.

Antoine Christophe Saliceti:

A fellow Jacobin deputy on mission with the Army of Italy. Though they initially worked together alongside the young artillery general Napoleon Bonaparte, deep ideological and personal rifts opened between them over military authority and regional administration. While never as openly hostile as figures like Barras or Bernard de Saintes, the relationship grew noticeably strained as Augustin's moderation deepened: Saliceti’s hardline political maneuvering frequently clashed with Augustin’s increasingly pragmatic, anti-terror stance, fracturing their alliance in the critical months leading up to Thermidor.

*if it wasn't clear: Saliceti is also less clearly an "enemy" than Barras or Bernard.. Maybe the same situation with Leblond applies here

3. The Big League Enemies: The Girondins (Brissotins & Rolandins)

Once Augustin joined the National Convention, the factional warfare between the Montagnards and the Girondins became his primary fixation, pulling him into aggressive, hardline political stances.

Jean-Marie Roland:

The Minister of the Interior who used public funds to print and distribute thousands of copies of anti-Robespierre speeches. Roland tried desperately to corrupt the public spirit in the Pas-de-Calais, though Augustin took immense pride in the fact that his family successfully unmasked these plots.

Jean-Baptiste Louvet:

The Girondin who dramatically pointed a finger at Maximilien in the Convention and shouted, "I accuse you". Rushing to his brother's defense, Augustin became deeply agitated and claimed to have personally overheard Louvet’s supporters plotting to murder Maximilien: Augustin had to be held back from physically attacking these would-be assassins.

Jean-Denis Lanjuinais:

A prominent Girondin supporter whose memoirs highlighted the extreme volatility of the Convention. He explicitly noted that Augustin and other deputies on both sides of the aisle were known to wave pistols around during their explosive debates.

The Advocates for Catherine Clere:

During the height of the factional war in the spring of 1793, several Girondin deputies attempted to secure a reprieve for Catherine Clere, a woman sentenced to death for a food-supply disturbance, arguing she was merely drunk and politically ignorant. Locked into a fanaticized anti-Girondin stance, Augustin ruthlessly opposed the motion, declaring, "We have passed a law against Royalism, and those who speak against the law are Royalists," helping defeat attempts to spare her from execution — an act starkly out of character with his later moderation.

4. The Radicals & True Enemies

The relationship with hardline radicals is one of the most fascinating layers of Augustin's political trajectory, showing how quickly the shifting tides of the Revolution turned allies into executioners.

Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron:

In the spring of 1793, Augustin was actually closely identified with these extremists, joining them on the benches to aggressively heckle Girondin speakers. Hostile observers even lumped them together as ferocious "aboyeurs" (hecklers). However, Augustin’s later missions to the South completely shifted his outlook; he began adopting moderate policies, releasing prisoners, and realizing that terror was actively damaging the Jacobin cause. This sudden moderation deeply alienated hardline radicals who embraced terrorist tactics, turning former political allies into the very men who would ultimately pull the Robespierre brothers down in Thermidor. Despite later assumptions that the two were close friends, they appear better understood as political allies of convenience during the struggle against the Girondins. By 1794 they found themselves on opposite sides of the question of revolutionary repression.

*Additionally: In the spring of 1793, Augustin was closely identified with these extremists. However, the mission to the South (the Midi) proved to be the breaking point. The close tie between Augustin and the Ricords — specifically his infatuation with Madame Ricord — deeply alienated their fellow Conventionals on mission. Fréron and Barras explicitly feared that the "Ricord-Robespierre jeune" pair would act as "moderates" and obstruct their plans for the bloody extermination and destruction of Toulon. While Barras and Fréron orchestrated mass executions and enriched themselves, Augustin and Ricord advocated for a more pragmatic approach to stabilize the region. In response, Fréron and Barras weaponized this dynamic by mocking Augustin as a puppet easily manipulated by the Ricords' domestic influence, using this characterization to discredit his political authority and report him as weak-willed to the central government. This eventually forced a permanent split, with Augustin later facing their active hostility as he attempted to advocate for justice and release political prisoners

Paul Barras:

Alongside Fréron, Barras served as a representative on mission in the South who epitomized the brutal, blood-drenched excesses of the Terror that Augustin came to despise. While Barras and Fréron enriched themselves and enacted mass executions at Toulon and Marseille, Augustin openly split from them, advocating for justice over indiscriminate slaughter. This earned him the permanent, lethal enmity of Barras, who viewed Augustin's moderation as a direct threat to his own survival and corruption, making Barras a key architect of the Thermidorian coup.

*little note here: I can't really tell how adverse I'm making this relationship seem.. So, for clarification, this is less "Augustin and Barras spent months glaring at each other across rooms like anime rivals." and more like political 'allies' turned opponents whose relationship deteriorated significantly during the Midi missions and culminated in their being on opposite sides of Thermidor: I mean, they literally casually greet each other at dinner, while Maxime pouts and refuses to acknowledge Barras; and the fact that they are still exchanging greetings days before Thermidor suggests that whatever hostility existed had not reached the point of open personal warfare: A lot of it just goes back to the footnote under Fréron on Barras's behalf of the relationship with Augustin

Lazare Carnot:

One of the most consequential enemies of the Robespierrist circle during Year II. Carnot's relationship with Maximilien and Saint-Just deteriorated into open warfare inside the Committee of Public Safety, with accusations of dictatorship, threats of prosecution, and explosive personal confrontations. Augustin was drawn into this conflict as both a loyal Robespierrist and an increasingly active participant in investigations into Carnot's conduct, throwing himself into his desperate attempts to destroy Carnot. Only days before Thermidor, Augustin encouraged recently liberated patriots from Arras to brief his brother on accusations against Carnot. After throwing himself from the Hôtel de Ville on 10 Thermidor, Augustin explicitly named Carnot as a conspirator in his final recorded political testimony. Carnot, for his part, later described himself as Robespierre's "most declared enemy." Taken together, the evidence suggests that by the summer of 1794 hostility between Carnot and the younger Robespierre had become both political and deeply personal.

Bernard de Saintes:

Perhaps Augustin's clearest enemy among fellow Montagnards. As representatives on mission in neighboring regions, Bernard and Augustin embodied two increasingly incompatible visions of revolutionary government. Bernard aggressively expanded arrests and repression, while Augustin released prisoners and attempted to soften the application of Terror in the Franche-Comté and Haute-Saône. Their feud became public and vicious. Bernard denounced Augustin to Paris, while Augustin retaliated by attacking Bernard's conduct, accusing him of indecency, vanity, being so skinny he could be swept away by a light breeze, and abuse of authority. The clash became famous enough that decades later Charles Nodier still remembered witnessing Augustin publicly confront Bernard at the Jacobin Club of Besançon. Their conflict was not merely personal; it symbolized the growing divide between Augustin's late-Year II moderation and the hardline revolutionary methods Bernard continued to champion.

5. The Post-Mortem Detractors: Hostile Sources

The animosity didn't stop at the guillotine. After Thermidor, a wave of memoirs and histories sought to thoroughly trash Bonbon's reputation, cementing a highly partisan historical record.

Many of these writers may have disagreed sharply with one another on Maximilien Robespierre, yet remarkably converged on portraying Augustin as intellectually insignificant, creating one of the most persistent legends surrounding his historical reputation.

Le Blond de Neuvéglise:

One of the earliest post-Thermidor biographers who laconically dismissed Augustin in 1795 as a man entirely "without brains, without talent, without character" who possessed only a "brutal, ferocious instinct".

Marc-Antoine Baudot:

A fellow conventionnel who left behind incredibly dismissive historical notes, writing that Augustin had a "narrow and ignorant brain" and was viewed by the Convention as an "absolute fool". Baudot famously and cuttingly summarized him as nothing more than "a jar that echoed whenever his brother rapped on it".

Pierre Villiers:

A commentator who claimed to be Maximilien's secretary and published highly malicious gossip branding Augustin as a "miserable attorney, moneyless, false, drunken and crapulous".

What strikes me most while researching Augustin's opponents is how varied they were. Some were royalists, some Girondins, some fellow Montagnards, some former allies, and some only attacked him after his death. The sheer diversity of these adversaries makes it difficult to reduce Augustin to a single political identity. The man denounced by Beaumetz in Artois, condemned by Louvet in the Convention, feuding with Bernard in Franche-Comté, and mocked by Baudot after Thermidor was not always the same Augustin. I guess the chronology is roughly:

Provincial reformer fighting local conservatives. Radical anti-Girondin deputy. Representative-on-mission. Increasingly moderate critic of Terror. Thermidorian victim. Historical punching bag.

So you can take it as a sense of development rather than just accumulating names.. if you will

Sources & Further Reading:

Core Historiography & Modern Analysis

Luzzatto, Sergio. Bonbon Robespierre: II Terrore dal volto umano. Translated into English by me, 2025. (Original Italian edition: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2009.)

Young, Mary. Augustin: The Younger Robespierre. London: Core Publications, 2011.

Augustin's Correspondence

Michon, Georges, ed. Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre. 2 vols. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1926.

For Arras, Early Career, & Pas-de-Calais

Lavoine, A. Autour de Robespierre en Artois. Unpublished manuscript, Archives du Pas-de-Calais.

Lecesne, E. Arras sous la Révolution. 3 vols. Arras: Sueur-Charruey, 1882.

Paris, A.-J. La Jeunesse de Robespierre et la Convocation des États Généraux en Artois. Arras: Veuve Rousseau-Leroy, 1870.

For Joseph Lebon

Fleischmann, Hector. "Charlotte Robespierre et Guffroy." Annales Révolutionnaires 3 (1910): 321–340.

Paris, A.-J. La Terreur dans le Pas-de-Calais et dans le Nord: Histoire de Joseph Le Bon et des Tribunaux Révolutionnaires d'Arras et de Cambrai. Arras: Rousseau-Leroy, 1864.

For Bernard de Saintes & Franche-Comté

Lods, A. Un Conventionnel en Mission: Bernard des Saintes et la Réunion de la Principauté de Montbéliard à la France. Paris: Fischbacher, 1888.

Mathiez, Albert. "Les Arrêtés de Robespierre Jeune dans sa mission de Franche-Comté." Annales Révolutionnaires 8 (1916): 79–130.

Mathiez, Albert. "Robespierre Jeune en Franche-Comté." Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 7 (1914): 309–337.

Nodier, Charles. Souvenirs, Portraits, Épisodes de la Révolution et de l'Empire. 2 vols. Paris: Charpentier, 1856.

For Barras, Fréron, & Midi Missions

Poupé, Edmond, ed. Lettres de Barras et de Fréron en Mission dans le Midi. Draguignan: Latil Frères, 1910.

Poupé, Edmond. "Robespierre Jeune, Ricord et les Fédéralistes Varois." Bulletin de la Société d'Études Scientifiques et Archéologiques de Draguignan 24 (1902): 427–440.

Poupé, Edmond. "Robespierre Jeune et Gasparin Sauli." Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française (1962).

For Hostile Post-Thermidor Accounts

Le Blond de Neuvéglise [Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart]. La vie et les crimes de Robespierre. Augsburg: Chez Tous les Libraires, 1795.

Villiers, Pierre. Souvenirs d'un Déporté. Paris: Chez l'Auteur, 1802.