robespierres wife

In 1913, François-Léon Sicard created a monumental sculpture for the Panthéon, known as the Autel de la Convention Nationale or The Republican Altar […]. Tellingly, it was not dedicated to the glory of any one man, but to the deputies as a collective. The Republic is personified as a woman and stands at the center. To one side are deputies swearing an oath of loyalty to the Republic: they include Robespierre, Danton and Desmoulins. On the other side, amongst soldiers of the Republic, is a deputy en mission, in military mode, on horseback – Saint-Just. It had taken 119 years, but they had finally achieved the public acknowledgement of a heroic identity, through the apotheosis of the Panthéon.

The fall of Robespierre began a period of transition between the politics of virtue and the politics of glory. Both Saint-Just and Robespierre had warned of the possibility that the escalation of the war and the growth of the French armies might see the emergence of a Julius Caesar rather than a Cincinnatus. Such a man would base his public image not on self-effacing political virtue, but on the traditional military qualities of courage, leadership, and glory. A short distance from the Panthéon stands Les Invalides, within which rests the monumental tomb that commemorates just such a man: a man who did not shrink from taking power in his own hands. Napoleon Bonaparte proved himself not only adept at exploiting the language of the ‘man of virtue’ when it suited his purposes, but also, when the opportunity came, prepared to seize the moment to emerge as France’s ‘man of glory’.

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Honourable mention

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