Robespierre
A Revolutionary Life
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $23.99
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
For some historians and biographers, Maximilien Robespierre (1758–94) was a great revolutionary martyr who succeeded in leading the French Republic to safety in the face of overwhelming military odds. For many others, he was the first modern dictator, a fanatic who instigated the murderous Reign of Terror in 1793–94. This masterful biography combines new research into Robespierre's dramatic life with a deep understanding of society and the politics of the French Revolution to arrive at a fresh understanding of the man, his passions, and his tragic shortcomings.
Peter McPhee gives special attention to Robespierre's formative years and the development of an iron will in a frail boy conceived outside wedlock and on the margins of polite provincial society. Exploring how these experiences formed the young lawyer who arrived in Versailles in 1789, the author discovers not the cold, obsessive Robespierre of legend, but a man of passion with close but platonic friendships with women. Soon immersed in revolutionary conflict, he suffered increasingly lengthy periods of nervous collapse correlating with moments of political crisis, yet Robespierre was tragically unable to step away from the crushing burdens of leadership. Did his ruthless, uncompromising exercise of power reflect a descent into madness in his final year of life? McPhee reevaluates the ideology and reality of "the Terror," what Robespierre intended, and whether it represented an abandonment or a reversal of his early liberalism and sense of justice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian and professor McPhee (Living the French Revolution, 1789-1799) adds to his volumes on French history with a comprehensive biography of the controversial, diminutive, outspoken, and ambitious man who overcame adversity to become a lawyer, who argued for the rights of children born out of wedlock and freedom of the press in 18th-century France, and whose name is inextricably linked with the French Revolution for better or worse. McPhee maintains that Maximilien Robespierre "was seeking to make sense of the chaos of a world in revolutionary upheaval and to use his talents to create stability and certainty for a new order" but at the end of his short life, he was "reviled as thoroughly as he had once been idolized." McPhee succeeds in his goal of illuminating Robespierre's early life and career (as well as his ideological and political development), and continues with thorough detail to his execution in 1794; his view is sympathetic to Robespierre, downplaying his fanaticism and dictatorial tendencies that other biographers describe. McPhee includes a detailed chronology of Robespierre's life, as well as extensive endnotes and a bibliography, which documentation will allow readers to determine whether they agree with McPhee's assertion that, "Far from the emotionally stunted, rigidly puritanical and icily cruel monster of history and literature, this was a passionate man." This fast-moving and thorough exploration of Robespierre's life and death will interest devotees of French history, particularly those looking for a fresh take on the Revolution. Illus.
