Augustin Robespierre

• 1. Introduction

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  Augustin Robespierre stood up in the hall of the National Convention on the 27th of July 1794 and said, "I am as guilty as him; I share his virtues, I want to share his fate. I ask also to be charged." His brother Maximilien had just been voted for arrest. The deputies had turned on the most powerful man in France, and Augustin chose that moment to volunteer for the guillotine. He was thirty-one years old. Who was this man, known to his friends by the nickname "Bonbon," who walked into his own execution rather than walk away? And how did a lawyer from Arras, living in his famous brother's shadow, find himself at the center of one of history's most terrifying political unravelings?

• 2. A Scholarship Passed Down

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  Augustin was born on the 21st of January 1763 in Arras, the youngest of four children. His mother died when he was just one year old. His father, a lawyer named Maximilien-Barthelemy-François de Robespierre, abandoned the family in grief and traveled to Bavaria, where he died in 1777. Augustin was raised by his grandparents.

  Maximilien, the older brother, had won a scholarship from the Abbey of St. Vaast to study law at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He proved so exceptional that upon graduating he went to Cardinal de Rohan, the Abbot, and asked him to transfer that scholarship to Augustin. The Cardinal agreed. Augustin effectively inherited his brother's place in the world before he had a chance to build his own.

  Despite sharing Maximilien's radical political views, Augustin was his brother's opposite in temperament. He was handsome, fond of good food, gaming, and the company of women. The nickname "Bonbon" followed him through his political career. Before the Revolution, he served as prosecutor-syndic of Arras, and together with Martial Herman he founded a local political club and wrote to Maximilien to secure its affiliation with the Jacobins in Paris. By 1791 he had been appointed administrator of the département of Pas-de-Calais.

• 3. Paris and the Mountain

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  Robespierre first tried to win election to the Legislative Assembly in August 1791 in Arras, but the town found his views too extreme. The voters chose another young lawyer, Sixte François Deusy, instead. Paris proved more receptive. On the 16th of September 1792, he was elected to the National Convention, finishing 19th out of 24 deputies, with 392 votes out of 700 cast. He joined his brother in The Mountain and the Jacobin Club.

  When Augustin arrived in Paris to take his seat, his sister Charlotte came with him. They lodged with Maximilien at the house of Maurice Duplay in the Rue Saint Honoré. Like Maximilien, Augustin declined to marry Duplay's daughter Éléonore. Charlotte eventually persuaded Maximilien to move with them to new lodgings in the nearby Rue Saint-Florentin, partly due to tensions with Madame Duplay, but the arrangement did not hold.

  At the Convention, Augustin made his mark through the sharpness of his attacks on the royal family and on aristocrats. During the trial of Louis XVI, he voted for the death penalty to be applied within 24 hours. His radicalism was not merely an echo of his brother's; it had its own edge.

• 4. Mission to the South

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  At the end of July 1793, the Convention sent Augustin south to suppress the Federalist revolt in Alpes-Maritimes, alongside deputy Jean François Ricord. Much of southeastern France was in open rebellion against the Republic. The two men barely survived an attack by counter-revolutionaries in Manosque on the 12th of August 1793. Charlotte had come along for the mission.

  By September they had reached Nice, where they felt secure enough to attend the theatre. On their third visit, the audience pelted them with rotten apples. During this southern posting Robespierre came across a pamphlet called Le souper de Beaucaire, or The supper at Beaucaire, written by a young artillery officer named Napoleon. He was impressed by its revolutionary content and used his influence to advance Napoleon's career, helping him gain promotion to the position of senior gunner at Toulon. On the 17th of December, Augustin was in Ollioules. Two days later, on the 19th of December 1793, the military action led by Dugommier and Napoleon retook Toulon from the British. Augustin did not take part; he appears to have left a few hours before or the day after the assault, and was absent when Fréron took revenge on the population.

  He returned to Paris estranged from Charlotte. They were no longer on speaking terms. In early January he was struck by the changed atmosphere in the Jacobin club. By then, the revolutionaries had begun to fear one another. He went to live with Ricord and his wife.

• 5. La Saudraye and the Army of Italy

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  At the end of January 1794, Augustin was dispatched again as a representant en mission, this time to the Army of Italy in Haute-Saône. He brought with him his mistress, referred to in the sources as La Saudraye, described as the creole wife of a literary man. She accompanied him to the local Popular Society in Besançon. The members reacted with indignation, both at the active role she played in political debates and at the fact that Augustin openly listened to and respected her political opinions.

  He again used his position to advance Napoleon's interests. When he returned to Paris he served as a secretary to the Convention. Maximilien, sick, had returned to the Duplays' house in February 1794. The two brothers moved in overlapping orbits but in separate households as the Terror reached its most dangerous phase.

• 6. 9 Thermidor and the Scaffold

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  On the 9th of Thermidor, Year II (the 27th of July 1794), the Convention voted to arrest Maximilien Robespierre, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, and Georges Couthon after a heated session. Augustin's declaration that he wished to share his brother's fate brought Philippe-François-Joseph Le Bas to his side as well. Five men were taken and held in the rooms of the Committee of General Security.

  The Commune of Paris, loyal to the Robespierres, issued orders forbidding all city prisons from accepting any prisoner sent by the Convention. Augustin was refused at Prison Saint-Lazare and taken to La Force, while Maximilien was brought to the Luxembourg. Because of the Commune's orders, both were eventually released and made their way to the Hôtel de Ville. Augustin arrived first, escorted by two municipal officers. Through the rest of the evening the group attempted to organize an insurrection. It went nowhere.

  In the early morning of 10 Thermidor, forces under Paul Barras broke in and took most of them alive. Le Bas shot himself. Jean-Baptiste Coffinhal escaped but turned himself in a week later. Trying to avoid capture, Augustin removed his shoes and jumped from a ledge. He landed on the steps, or on bayonets, suffering a pelvic fracture and several serious head contusions. Barras had him carried back to the Committee of General Security rooms. After a few hours the prisoners, four of them on stretchers, were moved to the Conciergerie prison. Following identification at the Revolutionary Tribunal under the Law of 22 Prairial, the twenty-two convicts were sent to the scaffold on Place de la Révolution in the early evening. Couthon was executed second, Augustin third, Hanriot ninth, and Maximilien tenth. Augustin Robespierre died on the 28th of July 1794, thirty-one years after he was born in Arras.