Speculating About Bonbon: Relationships with peers Including Ones I Can't Quite Confirm
Okay, quick note before we start: I'm way too lazy to rewrite this because I originally wrote it as if I were talking to myself. So, if you see me accidentally say "we," assume it's the royal "WE," not "we" as in. the fandom. This is just the extent of my knowledge.
A companion piece to the Allies and Adversaries posts, but explicitly speculative — these are the figures from the wider frev world whose relationship with Augustin falls somewhere between "definitely something there" and "we literally have no idea." The methodology here is: here's what we know, here's what's documented, here's what can be reasonably inferred, and here's where the inference runs out.
Philippe Lebas: The Closest Thing to a Peer Friendship We Have
Starting here because this one has more documented warmth than almost any other relationship in the file;
Lebas — deputy from Nord, idolizer of Maximilien, eventually Élisabeth Duplay's husband — meets Augustin through the Convention in spring 1793. The oranges-in-the-gallery scene from Young is the first documented moment of them together: Marat's trial day, Charlotte and Élisabeth in the gallery, Lebas and Augustin accompanying them, the oranges being shared, the shy flirtation beginning. Augustin and Élisabeth presumably talked while Lebas tried to work out how to speak to her. (dork)
Then Lebas falls ill and he's confined to his room for weeks. Maximilien comes to visit but Lebas is too. sshhyyy to ask for news of Élisabeth. Then Augustin comes, and Lebas tells Élisabeth later:
"Robespierre the Younger came to see me. What joy for me! I was more familiar with him. We were the same age."
"We were the same age" — they were born within a year of each other, which Lebas is giving as an explanation for why he felt easier with Augustin than with the Incorruptible. With Maximilien he was formal and couldn't ask what he needed. With Augustin he could be "more familiar." Augustin then, apparently unprompted, praised Élisabeth at length — a service to his friend, delivered without being asked.
This is the most relaxed documented interaction Augustin has with any fellow deputy outside his brother. No politics, and no mission logistics, just two young men roughly the same age, one of them visiting the other in illness, the conversation landing on a mutual friend and a woman one of them is falling for. Young doesn't make much of it but I think it matters — it's one of the few moments in the record where Augustin seems to be functioning as someone's friend rather than someone's brother or someone's representative.
Lebas, of course, died on 9 Thermidor, shooting himself rather than submit to arrest. He was 20. On July 25, four days before, he had dinner with Augustin, Maximilien, Saint-Just, and David in a restaurant on the Champs-Élysées.
Saint-Just: Buddies-in-Law, With Complications
The simplest framing: they were probably friendly because they were both Maximilien's people, and that's probably most of it. But there are a few specific things that complicate or texture the picture.
Saint-Just, as far as the record (i have) shows, did something genuinely useful for Augustin during the Army of Italy period: when a general who had fallen foul of Saint-Just had to be reassigned from the Rhine, Saint-Just apparently helped smooth over the complications this created for the Army of Italy operation. Young mentions this briefly. It's a small practical thing, but it's the kind of thing that builds goodwill between political allies.
The July 25 dinner — four days before Thermidor, possibly the last time most of them were together — has Saint-Just at the same table as Augustin. Young says it "is said" (so: reported but not certainly confirmed?) that they dined together at a restaurant on the Champs-Élysées.
The more complicated piece: Saint-Just was working throughout summer 1794 for a reconciliation between Maximilien and the rest of the Committee, trying to prevent an open rupture: Augustin, who was simultaneously trying to build a case against Carnot and push his brother toward confrontation rather than compromise, may have been working at cross purposes to this — or at least operating on a different strategic calculus. Young notes: "Augustin may have feared that his brother might be talked into some sort of compromise." If Saint-Just was the one doing the talking, that's a tension worth noting, even if it never broke into open conflict.
What I don't have: any direct correspondence between them, any recorded conversation, any moment where Saint-Just speaks about Augustin or vice versa in documented form: The relationship is inferred from proximity, shared political position, and the July 25 dinner. Friend-in-law with possible strategic divergence at the end. That's the version..
Couthon: The Complicated One
Couthon is more interesting than Saint-Just for Augustin-watching purposes, because there are two specific documented moments that don't quite go together.
First: Augustin wrote to Couthon in the late spring of 1794 about the treatment of Saliceti, calling him "the true conqueror of Oneglia" and asking Couthon to intervene on behalf of the Army of Italy's operations. This is cordial, professionally warm correspondence — Augustin is using Couthon as a channel to the Committee, which implies a basic trust in his. willingness to be helpful.
Second: Young notes, in the context of the decree governing the armies in spring 1794 (the one where Augustin was trying to support his plans he made with Napoleon, and it got shot down), that it was "also signed by Couthon, Robespierre's friend, but Couthon was a man of independent mind." The qualifier is Young flagging that Couthon signed things Maximilien wouldn't have wanted — meaning he didn't simply follow the Robespierre position. He was an ally but not a satellite.
Third: The Gaillard account of Charlotte's visit in May 1794 includes a scene where she takes Gaillard to see Couthon. The conversation goes badly, Couthon apparently makes a move toward his guards, Charlotte physically stops him like an overly eager TSA agent at the airport (good thinking girl), and Gaillard flees. This is Charlotte's mess rather than Augustin's, but it shows the Robespierre adjacent circle's relationship with Couthon had edges as well as warmth.
Of course. Couthon dies on 9 Thermidor alongside Maximilien and Augustin. Whatever the tensions, they ended up on the same side at the end — whether by shared conviction or by structural inevitability of having been associated with the Robespierre platform.
So. The speculative summary: Augustin probably had a working relationship with Couthon built on genuine shared politics and some practical mutual usefulness, without it being the tight personal bond Maximilien had. Couthon's independence of mind would, I think, have been both useful (he wasn't predictable in a way Augustin could manipulate) and occasionally frustrating (he signed things Augustin didn't want signed).
The Indulgents: Shared Conclusions, Completely Different People
The interesting thing about Augustin's relationship with the Dantonist/Indulgent circle is that he and they arrived at roughly the same political position — the Terror has gone too far, mercy is now the patriotic argument — through completely different routes and from completely different political cultures.
Danton's circle was urban, loud, socially. whats the word. gregarious, financially compromised in ways that gave them complicated motives for wanting the Terror to stop. Camille Desmoulins was Danton's closest friend, a journalist using wit and brilliance to make political arguments that sometimes aimed at actual reform and sometimes aimed at 'protecting people he personally liked'. Their "indulgence" was partly genuine and partly self-interested, and Camille himself — as Young quotes Thompson — was motivated more by mischievousness than by systematic conviction. His aim, in the end, was allegedly to 'not to moderate the government but to destabilize it'.
Now what i can speak for: Augustin's moderation had completely different roots: five months in the departments watching what the Terror actually produced in practice, a body of administrative decisions freeing people from prison, a set of letters to Maximilien articulating a specific theory about what the Revolution had passed the point of needing. He got to "indulgence" through observed consequences rather than through. personal loyalty networks. or journalistic wit.
Does this mean he sympathized with the Dantonists? Young is careful here: "it may be thought that a plea for clemency would greatly appeal to Augustin, but though his opposition to the crude anti-clericalism of Hébert's newspaper continued unabated, he does not seem to have felt much interest in Hébert's journalistic rival."
This is worth sitting with. Augustin's moderation and the Vieux Cordelier's moderation were making similar arguments, but he apparently didn't find Camille's version particularly compelling. Young speculates he may have "mingled at times in the same circles" — Mme Sainte-Amaranthe's gaming house is specifically named as a place where both Augustin and Danton's friends might have turned up — but notes no friendships seem to have grown from these encounters (especially as Augustin himself was banned from going there by Big Brother).
Camille Desmoulins specifically:
Camille made fun of Augustin. The Courtois-quoted Desmoulins line — "the very sound of young Robespierre's voice is foolish" — is hostile, dismissive, and delivered by someone with a nasty wit. Camille was also, as noted, tangled up in Maximilien's orbit in ways that generated complicated feelings all around: He was not someone Augustin had reason to like.
the April 1794 letter where Augustin congratulates Maximilien on Danton's arrest and announces he "had always known Danton was a traitor" is very revealing. Young describes this as "an astounding insight" — meaning she finds it implausible as a long-held genuine view rather than a retroactive claim designed to demonstrate loyalty to Maximilien's position. It reads (to me) like Augustin performing the correct response to news he hadn't wanted to hear, by going further than the situation required. "Naturally, he was always a traitor" is what you say when you need to demonstrate you're not sad about it.
guillotined with Danton by the time Augustin comes back from his missions. Young notes his seat on the Committee was never filled, creating a gap that affected the Army of Italy operations. Augustin would have had opinions about Hérault, since Hérault had Committee responsibilities that overlapped with areas Augustin cared about, but those opinions aren't. well. preserved.
And then Fabre d'Églantine himself is just too peripheral to Augustin's specific story to speculate usefully on.
Looking at all of these together: Augustin's closest documented warmth is with people in his immediate physical orbit (Lebas, the Duplay family) rather than with the broader political circles. He was not, apparently, someone who formed friendships through the Convention or the Jacobin Club in any casual networked way. The sociability that gets attributed to him — the gaming house visits, the "fond of the company of women," the bon vivant reputation — doesn't map onto documented Convention friendships the way it might for someone like Danton or Desmoulins, who operated through dense social networks.
His alliances were mostly functional, mediated through Maximilien's connections, or formed on the road during missions among people he was working alongside intensively. Which tracks with what we know about him more broadly: he formed attachments through sustained proximity and shared practical work, not through the salon or the club.
And with figures like Couthon and Saint-Just, where there was enough shared politics to create a working relationship, it stayed at that level — working relationship, ally of the project, person at the same dinner table four days before the end. Not the kind of warmth Lebas's letter captures. Not the kind of enmity Bernard's denunciations capture. Just: people operating in the same political structure, with occasional friction and occasional mutual usefulness, until they died together.
Young, Mary. Augustin: The Younger Robespierre. London: Core Publications, 2011. (Lebas illness passage chapter 8; Desmoulins/January 5 passage chapter 10; Couthon and the committee decree chapter 16; the July 25 dinner chapter 20; Danton arrest congratulation letter chapter 14.)
Michon, Georges, ed. Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1926. (April 1794 letter congratulating Maximilien on Danton's arrest; Couthon correspondence.)
@anotherhumaninthisworld compilations — the Courtois-quoted Desmoulins line; Lebas's letter to Élisabeth quoted in Hamel.
Luzzatto, Sergio. Bonbon Robespierre. Translated by me, 2025.
