WI: Maximilien Robespierre maintains power until the early 1800’s

WI: Maximilien Robespierre maintains power until the early 1800’s

  • He creates a republic based on virtue and classical principles

    Votes: 11 19.3%
  • He just continues the Reign of Terror

    Votes: 21 36.8%
  • He is killed, just later, due to his strange ideas

    Votes: 25 43.9%

  • Total voters
    57
WI: Maximilien Robespierre maintains power until the early 1800’s

Let’s say that Robespierre isn’t pushed from power in 1794 and is able to stay in power longer as a dictator of sorts. He is now given all the time he needs to purge the country of the old order and make his new one. Let’s also, for the debate, pretend that the Cult of the Supreme Being is actually popular and becomes the state religion of the Republic with Robespierre leading it as a sort of demi-god. Will Roberpierre be able to create a country of virtue based on Roman and Greek principles or will the terror just continue? Is there any way he can keep from alienating, and freaking out, everyone through his strange ideas?
 
I try to make myself believe that Robespierre really thought he had what was best for the republic at heart. If we give him enough time, I think-hope- he would restore an effective republic eventually.


That being said, I don't see how the Cult of The Supreme Being will ever be popular.
 
I try to make myself believe that Robespierre really thought he had what was best for the republic at heart. If we give him enough time, I think-hope- he would restore an effective republic eventually.


That being said, I don't see how the Cult of The Supreme Being will ever be popular.

Yeah i agree with what you are saying. I think he just strayed from the path he wanted to be on. You may remember he was against the death penalty earier in his life. I really hope he just was going for the whole you must sometimes destroy a society to save it thing and in the end would make things right.

In regards to the Supreme Being i'm in agreement
 
Wasn't he suffering from a sickness of some dort (tuberculosis I think) ? I don't think he would last long unfortunatly.
 
Well I'm not entirely sure myself. I heard it on a recording of one of Henri Guillemin's conference about Robespierre (I would have give you a link, but it's in French only), staing Robespierre was chronically ill. I'll say more if I found more about it.
 
Sorry but this hypothesis is just absolutely impossible.

It is not a problem of decision making or bad luck.

Robespierre was one of the men who participated in creating the revolutionnary maelstrom and brought it to its worst peak.

In this maelstrom, nobody held power. There was in fact no power. It was some kind of tyrannical anarchy where one minoritary and violent group terrorized the mass of the country and where political competition among members of the ruling group was settled by fear, violence, and physical elimination of the political enemies.

It was absolutely impossible for Robespierre to last in power because the country wanted and needed to come back to some kind of normalcy. And so dit a majority of the ruling group of revolutionaries who no longer wanted to risk their lives.

Robespierre, though not the only one responsible for the terror, had to be the scapegoat. Too many people were afraid of his ruthlesness : the moderate revolutionaries, the non-revolutionaries of course, but also some revolutionaries who were personally more criminal than Robespierre (like Fouché for example) but were (much more than Robespierre) able and ready to make compromises.

At last, to describe Robespierre's power, he was not a man who controled the state. He was for less than one year the dominant figure among the revolutionary leading group. And his power was mainly based on 2 things linked with each other :
- his oratory among the leading group and the assembly (the Committee of public safety and the Convention) because he advocated what he managed to have considered as the pure/absolute revolutionary principles,
- his popularity in a part of the parisian mob which he perfectly knew how to use in order to force his will on the others.

He could not be the lasting leader of a country. He had not the abilities for this. He was very far away from an Oliver Cromwell who was a statesman, and was much more talented and able than Robespierre.
 
Sorry but this hypothesis is just absolutely impossible.

It is not a problem of decision making or bad luck.

Robespierre was one of the men who participated in creating the revolutionnary maelstrom and brought it to its worst peak.

In this maelstrom, nobody held power. There was in fact no power. It was some kind of tyrannical anarchy where one minoritary and violent group terrorized the mass of the country and where political competition among members of the ruling group was settled by fear, violence, and physical elimination of the political enemies.

It was absolutely impossible for Robespierre to last in power because the country wanted and needed to come back to some kind of normalcy. And so dit a majority of the ruling group of revolutionaries who no longer wanted to risk their lives.

Robespierre, though not the only one responsible for the terror, had to be the scapegoat. Too many people were afraid of his ruthlesness : the moderate revolutionaries, the non-revolutionaries of course, but also some revolutionaries who were personally more criminal than Robespierre (like Fouché for example) but were (much more than Robespierre) able and ready to make compromises.

At last, to describe Robespierre's power, he was not a man who controled the state. He was for less than one year the dominant figure among the revolutionary leading group. And his power was mainly based on 2 things linked with each other :
- his oratory among the leading group and the assembly (the Committee of public safety and the Convention) because he advocated what he managed to have considered as the pure/absolute revolutionary principles,
- his popularity in a part of the parisian mob which he perfectly knew how to use in order to force his will on the others.

He could not be the lasting leader of a country. He had not the abilities for this. He was very far away from an Oliver Cromwell who was a statesman, and was much more talented and able than Robespierre.


If having the ability to call your own religious festival that the people of Paris have to attend isn’t power, than I don’t know what is. By saying that no one held power you are actually supporting the idea that Robespierre himself was advocating. Robespierre kept tell every one there was no chief of state, but people just didn’t believe him. If they did he probably would have remained in power.

Robespierre still had the support of the masses and the Jacobins. He may have been hated by some people, but not a majority. What does the common Paris citizen have to fear from Robespierre a majority of the people he had killed were political opponents?

I think Robespierre at the end of his tenure was trying too some what control the terror and the dechristianization efforts. In his last major speech he even spoke against the terror. In all likely hood I hope he would have soon after brought the country back to normalcy and put in place a sense of morality.

On another note Robespierre is much more talented than Cromwell. Cromwell only stayed in power through the armies that supported him. The second he was dead the king came right back into power, nothing was accomplished. Robespierre’s accomplishments had far reaching consequences past his time.
 
I find this desire to believe he would come good in the end a bit sickening. The man was a bloodthirsty tyrant whose death didn't come a moment too soon.
 
But tyrants have lasted longer in history. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam, Gaddafi, Idi Amin, all have carried on for years and years. Once they have cemented their positions, it is not an easy task to pull down a tyrant.
 
Top