Augustin and Joseph Lebon: A Political Relationship in Five Acts
The Lebon story is one of the longest continuous threads in Augustin's life — starting before the Revolution in Arras, running through the Convention period, climaxing during the final weeks before Thermidor, and ending with Lebon's execution afterward. It's also one of the clearest illustrations of the difference between Augustin's instincts and Maximilien's, and of what happened when those instincts came into direct conflict.
Act One: The Presbytery Dinner (1791)
Joseph Lebon appears in Augustin's life at a dinner. Maximilien has returned briefly to Arras in late 1791, and Lebon — then a constitutional curé in a nearby parish, prominent in the Arras Jacobins, devoted admirer of Maximilien — invites both brothers to his presbytery. The meal is cooked by his parish clerk, a man named Morel, who would later tell the historian Paris this about the evening:
"Morel never included Robespierre the Younger in the same reprobation as his brother. He was a man of peace who only asked to dine quietly; when he saw [Maximilien] Robespierre and Lebon getting excited he tried to calm them and lead them to other thoughts."
Young finds this slightly surprising given Augustin's "extreme views" at the period, and suggests an alternative reading: "another explanation might be that Augustin had already begun to dislike and distrust Lebon and was not pleased to see Maximilien talking openly to him." Which fits rather well with everything that follows.
(coughs jealousy much /j)
Young's description of Lebon at this stage is pointed: "He had a fund of unclerical language and critical people such as Augustin might have found him to be vulgar, treacherous and pushy." The word "critical" is doing a lot there. Lebon in 1791 is a man performing revolutionary enthusiasm, calculating advancement, trying to attach himself to the Robespierre name. Augustin, who had been watching local Arras politics closely for two years and had a particular sensitivity to people who performed ideology for career purposes, clocked this early.
Act Two: The Jason and Legray Affair (September 1792)
By the fall of 1792, Lebon is Mayor of Arras and Augustin has become provisionally Procureur General. The relationship is structurally collegial but personally difficult. When two commissioners from Paris — Jason and Legray — arrive in Arras and claim to have found financial irregularities, Lebon arrests them: Augustin takes the commissioners' side in the municipal assembly, arguing that since they came from Paris, interfering with them endangered "the progress of the legislative power."
Young's reading of this episode is interesting: she thinks Lebon arrested the commissioners primarily for local political reasons — to establish himself in Arras — and that Augustin's defense of them was about Parisian authority rather than personal loyalty to Lebon. Both men were positioning, using different arguments, for different reasons. The episode shows them capable of operating in the same space without being on the same side.
What's also visible here: Lebon, according to his biographer Jacob, emerged from this episode having "rendered an immense service not only to the town but to humanity." He was very good at getting credit. Augustin, who helped resolve the situation, features mostly as a procedural voice: The dynamic of Lebon absorbing political benefit from situations involving both of them is already present.
Act Three: The July 1793 Letter (July 1793)
By summer 1793, Lebon has become a suppliant to the Convention — an understudy who stepped into a vacant seat. Augustin writes to Buissart, and what he writes is worth reading carefully:
"You mention the new deputy; I've suspected him for a long time; he knows more about intrigue than delicacy or good faith; he will harm the Republic by his extravagances; he's too original for me. I wish you would tell me if it is true that he wishes to convoke the primary assemblies to elect a new Convention... We need to know what is behind the mask."
Three things are notable here. First, "I've suspected him for a long time" — this is retrospective, but credible given the 1791 dinner dynamic. The distrust predates the Convention period. Second, "knows more about intrigue than delicacy or good faith" — a political rather than personal charge. He is describing a man who performs loyalty instrumentally, which is exactly what Lebon was doing. Third, and most revealing: "what is behind the mask." He is asking Buissart to investigate, to gather intelligence: Not venting but rather an attempt to build a case.
Meanwhile, Lebon was still publicly treating Augustin as a dear friend. When admitted to the Paris Jacobins, he made a speech calling it "the happiest day of his life, the anniversary of the day the reactionaries of Arras had sought to arrest Augustin and himself." He was performing intimacy with the Robespierre name for an audience. Augustin, who had just privately described him as a masked intriguer, had to sit through this.
Louis Jacob, Lebon's biographer and defender, claimed Augustin's antipathy was "base jealousy" — that Lebon was surpassing him in the Convention and he couldn't stand it. Young is skeptical, and I think correctly. It's true that Augustin got one vote when he stood for the Colonial Committee that summer (Lebon ironically signed the voting results), which was humiliating: But the distrust predates Lebon's rise and is articulated in substantive terms — intrigue, extravagance, bad faith — rather than in terms of competition.
Act Four: The Pas-de-Calais Crisis (Floréal — Messidor Year II)
Lebon's mission in the Pas-de-Calais became one of the most extreme provincial terror operations in Year II. The statistics are documented: 392 executions in a department that had seen no significant federalist revolt. People guillotined to the sound of martial music. Families destroyed for "comic opera crimes" — including one man whose parrot cried "God save the King," though Young notes with grim amusement that the parrot itself was spared (thank god/j).
Buissart wrote increasingly desperate letters to Maximilien. Mme Buissart came to Paris in person, staying at the Duplay house, practically in Maximilien's antechamber. The letters made clear what was happening:
"We are so longing to see Bonbon. When is he coming? Only he can calm the ills that are making your country desolate."
"The arrival of Bonbon would no doubt hinder [Lebon]; it is the hope of true patriots and the terror of those who dare to persecute them. He knows the people of Arras too well not to do them justice. His place can't be taken by anyone else."
Meanwhile, Maximilien was receiving letters from Lebas at the front: "Hurry Lebon's return; he has done much good and is worth a garrison in Cambrai." And from Guffroy: "[Lebon] has killed patriotism in Arras... Hébert has not done more harm than he." These two letters directly contradict each other, and Maximilien had to choose which voice to listen to. He chose Lebas. He recalled Lebon to Paris for questioning in floréal, accepted his justification, and sent him back — escorting Charlotte home in the process.
This is the episode that creates what Young calls "a shadow on relations between the two brothers — something the machinations of other intriguers had not managed to achieve." Maximilien's continued support for Lebon against the explicit testimony of Buissart, Guffroy, and eventually Augustin himself, was a genuine rupture in a relationship where Augustin had previously accepted almost every correction without complaint.
Act Five: The Return and What It Might Have Changed (Messidor Year II)
Augustin arrives back in Paris in late June/early July 1794. Mme Buissart is still there, at the Duplays. Guffroy has been trying to reach him. The Arras situation is unresolved..
What happened next is partially documented and partially inference. Luzzatto argues — and it's credited by Young as at least plausible — that Augustin's return was the decisive factor in Lebon finally being recalled definitively. The Committee of Public Safety ordered Lebon's permanent recall on 22 Messidor. That's approximately two weeks after Augustin got back to Paris. Luzzatto writes: "it was only after Robespierre jeune's return from the Midi that the Committee of Public Safety decided to recall Lebon, that is, assumed the responsibility of stopping the slaughter." Young hedges more: she doesn't claim Augustin was definitively responsible, but notes the timing.
Guffroy had written to Augustin directly: "put an end as soon as possible to the pains of those who, in Arras, are true and sincere friends of liberty." We know Augustin agreed to meet the Arras patriots. We know he brought them to Maximilien. We know from Guffroy's own account that Augustin was working the problem. Whether he was the decisive push or one of several converging pressures: the result held. Lebon was recalled. Shortly after, the new revolutionary tribunal in Arras was suppressed. The guillotines that had followed Lebon across the Pas-de-Calais and into Nord were dismantled. A few weeks later, Young notes, the municipal council of Arras ordered the seizure of miniature guillotines — "about two feet high" — that local children had been using to guillotine birds and mice. (yay!)
The petition from Arras asking that Augustin be sent there as representative on mission was reportedly delivered on 10 Thermidor. The day he died.
What the Lebon Story Shows
The long arc from the presbytery dinner to the final weeks makes a few things visible:
Augustin's read on Lebon was correct and early. He flagged him as an intriguer operating behind a mask in July 1793. By summer 1794, Lebon had proven this in the most extreme way imaginable. Being right didn't help — not immediately.
The Lebon situation was one of the very few things where Maximilien and Augustin were genuinely on opposite sides. Not publicly — they never had a public confrontation about it — but structurally. Maximilien accepted Lebas's endorsement. Augustin accepted Buissart's testimony. Both men's information networks were telling them different truths about the same person, and they processed them differently. This is partly a difference in what they prioritized — military effectiveness versus civilian justice — and partly a difference in what they were willing to see.
And there's something specifically interesting in the fact that it was this issue, of all the things Maximilien and Augustin disagreed about, that created what Young calls a genuine shadow between them. Augustin had absorbed the January 5 rebuke in silence. He'd watched his political development be managed and contained through successive missions. But watching Maximilien do nothing about Lebon while Buissart's letters stacked up — watching the people of Arras get destroyed while Maximilien accepted Lebas's cheerful reports at face value — seems to have been the thing he couldn't fully absorb.
The fact that he may have finally moved the needle, in the last weeks of his life, while simultaneously trying to build a case against The Levée en Mass-Murderer Carnot and navigating the most dangerous political crisis of the Revolution — that compression of events is very Augustin. Too much, too late, working too many angles at once, with the clock already running out.
The petition arrives on the day he dies.
Young, Mary. Augustin: The Younger Robespierre. London: Core Publications, 2011. (Chapters 3, 4, 6, 19 — the presbytery dinner via Morel/Paris; the Jason and Legray affair; the July 1793 letter to Buissart; the Pas-de-Calais crisis chapters; the summer 1794 denouement and Vesoul's post-Thermidor defense of Augustin.)
Luzzatto, Sergio. Bonbon Robespierre. Translated by me, 2025. ("Only Bonbon" chapter — the Lebon crisis in full; the 22 Messidor recall timing argument.)
Michon, Georges, ed. Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1926. Vol. I. (Buissart's letters; Guffroy's letter to Augustin; the July 5 1793 letter to Buissart flagging Lebon.)
Guffroy, Armand Joseph. Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices. 1795. (Guffroy's account of approaching Augustin; the Leblond/Maximilien/Carnot meeting; the staircase scene.)
Paris, A.-J. La Terreur dans le Pas-de-Calais et dans le Nord. Arras: Rousseau-Leroy, 1864. (Morel's account of the presbytery dinner; Saint-Pol district statistics.)
Jacob, Louis. Joseph Lebon, 1765–1795. Paris: Mellottée, 1934. (Jacob's "base jealousy" claim; Lebon biographer's perspective throughout.)
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