the road to hell is paved with good intentions

⋆ #Bonbon.txt – my informative / analytical posts regarding Augustin Robespierre

⋆ #Fabre.txt – my informative / analytical posts regarding Fabre d'Églantine

⋆ #Murat.txt – my informative / analytical posts regarding both Joachim Murat and Caroline Bonaparte

⋆ #Bernadotte.txt – my informative / analytical posts regarding both Bernadotte (no first name) and Désirée Clary

⋆ #DonQuxiote.txt – lighter musings

⋆ #Raskolnikov.txt – rants + vents etc

⋆ #my art – what do you think

⋆ #my music – gee i wonder

⋆ #my writing – hmmm what could it be!!

⋆ #my analysis – basically a short cut for all of my info things i think

Camille Desmoulins, who sat opposite him, was completely different—the very opposite of Danton. Small, slender, restless, and constantly in motion, a perpetual nervous twitch hovered over his pale face. His black eyes changed direction every minute (??what a mental image), while he continued speaking in an unceasing whisper. Whenever he fell silent for a moment, a deep line formed around his finely cut mouth, revealing that he must be the slave of very violent passions.

Danton now took the floor and launched into a lengthy explanation, while Camille repeatedly shrugged his shoulders or shook his head.

"Here is my plan, Camille! I have very good reasons for remaining calm and neutral for the time being. Today the virtuous Maximilien has been elected to the Committee of Public Safety. Of the nine men who now sit on it, he is the best speaker—that I will readily admit—but otherwise he is a maker of fine phrases, a lawyer of impossible causes, an idealist without practical sense, without judgment! Couthon and Saint-Just are even less to be feared—men with a small stock of ideas in their heads, which they apply to everything and thereby usually spoil everything.

"As for the other members, our friend Hérault de Séchelles has a heart of gold, but he lacks all the seriousness of which Saint-Just possesses far too much! Barère and Thuriot are skillful intriguers, but they always attach themselves to whichever majority seems likely to win. Prieur de la Marne, Robert Lindet, and Jean-Bon Saint-André are excellent workmen who will accomplish much in the governmental tasks assigned to them, but not one of the three is a genius.

"Now that the Mountain has succeeded, a few months ago, in driving out the ablest and most talented members of the Convention—the Girondins..."

"Yes, but the enemies of Paris and of our Parisian ideas!" Camille interrupted.

"Let that be as it may! They alone could have formed a strong government. Now the Convention drifts like a helpless ship without a rudder in the midst of a storm. That cannot continue!

"In a few days I shall propose abolishing our utterly insignificant ministers and transforming the Committee of Public Safety into a provisional government. You know how serious the situation is! Defeat after defeat in Belgium; Mainz lost together with our entire army, including Kléber and Merlin de Thionville; the Vendée grows ever bolder and more dangerous; the Girondins preach rebellion everywhere; the departments are breaking away; and only a fortnight ago the clever Charlotte Corday came from Caen to Paris to murder the filthy Marat, as the Nemesis of the Girondins!

"For that reason the Committee must be invested with unlimited powers."

"But I do not understand you! You are risking the Republic itself. Either the Committee will remain completely powerless, or the most relentless Terror will be introduced. Saint-Just and the Incorruptible are capable of anything."

"You are mistaken! The Committee will work diligently. Today it was decided that it shall meet every morning precisely at eight o'clock; that the secretary shall first present a report on incoming correspondence; that all measures concerning public safety shall then be discussed; that at one o'clock in the afternoon the members shall proceed to the Convention and remain there until the end of the session; and that an evening meeting shall be held at seven o'clock. There will be no lack of industry and zeal!

"That is precisely why I shall propose abolishing the ministers and elevating the Committee into the organ of executive power. Fear nothing! Neither Saint-Just nor Robespierre are equal to the countless difficulties of the present moment. Saint-Just is a gloomy fool..."

"...a man who seems to regard his own head as the keystone of the Republic, and therefore carries it upon his shoulders with the utmost reverence, as though it were a holy sacrament..."

"Bravo, Camille! And Robespierre is a foolish pedant who solemnly declaims his lawyer's phrases in the conviction... that the future of Europe rests in his hands. Damn it! Sometimes I feel like putting him on my little finger and spinning him around like a top!"

A burst of laughter from Camille attracted the attention of those around them. But the two friends resumed their conversation in whispers, so that no one dared disturb them.

Camille continued:

"But now I still don't understand you!"

"Listen! I expect that the Committee will soon be enlarged. This morning I spoke about it in the Convention with several friends. They all agree with me: Carnot and Prieur de la Côte-d'Or must be brought into the Committee! The interests of the war urgently require that military men come into government. Carnot and Prieur are excellent engineer officers. You understand that Robespierre and Saint-Just will not remain at peace with them for long. They will have to step down, and the Jacobins will lose their principal influence over affairs. The military element will gain strength, and then it will be our turn to watch our step!"

"Yes, but what if the Jacobin lawyers, supported by their club and their popularity, seize the dictatorship?"

"In that case I am counting on you, Camille!"

"On me? You speak in riddles!"

"Not at all! Let us suppose that the Jacobins prove more stubborn than I expect. Then I possess an excellent means of keeping them in check. Together, or perhaps you alone, we shall publish a newspaper that will scourge all the errors and shortcomings of the Jacobin government with bloody lashes. Every day I am irritated by that accursed dog Hébert, who dares bark at everyone in his Père Duchesne. His scoundrel's head should long ago have tumbled into old Father Sanson's basket, but they do not dare—the cowards! You, Camille, are exactly the man to write a devastating criticism of those villains.

We could call our paper Le Vieux Cordelier. What do you think?"

"The plan is splendid! There must be a newspaper that tells the truth to everyone. The verdicts of the Tribunal are inspired only by the politics of cowardice. Atrocities occur every day... But forgive me! First I must ask you something!"

"Go ahead!"

"What makes you sit still now and leave everything in the hands of the Jacobins? Why do you not act boldly, as in the old days? The fatherland needs all our strength!"

Danton seemed very embarrassed. He shook his gigantic head, sighed, closed his eyes, and said very softly:

"I can do no other!"

Camille looked at him in utter astonishment. Immediately Danton regained his composure. He stretched out his hand and took that of his friend. Then he whispered, almost inaudibly:

"I am in love!"

A strange smile curled on Desmoulins' pale lips. He looked at the giant with a curious mixture of pity and alarm. But he remained silent, hoping to draw out further confidences. Danton released his hand and continued:

"You may know it. Everyone will hear of it soon enough. I am going to marry again! Her name is Louise Gély! I met her at Arcis-sur-Aube when, a few weeks ago, I sought a few days' rest at my country estate. She is still very young, but oh, Camille! What power that heavenly creature exercises over me! How dependent I am on a single glance from those sparkling eyes! She is so beautiful, so tall, so regal! More than an angel! I have made an impression on her, ugly as I am. She does not wish to hear of politics! I may not speak of them—only of my love may I talk!"

"So, a former aristocrat?" Camille whispered.

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.