Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

by Ruth Scurr

Since his execution by guillotine in July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre has been contested terrain for historians. Was he a bloodthirsty charlatan or the only true defender of revolutionary ideals? The first modern dictator or the earliest democrat? Was his extreme moralism a heroic virtue or a ruinous flaw?

Against the dramatic backdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre's evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.

Written with epic sweep, full of nuance and insight, Fatal Purity is a fascinating portrait of a man who identified with the Revolution to the point of madness, and in so doing changed the course of history.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, France, French Revolution, Politics, European History

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Dr Ruth Scurr (born 1971, London) is a British writer, historian and literary critic. She is a Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. She was educated at St Bernard's Convent, Slough; Oxford University, Cambridge University and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. She won a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2000.

Her first book, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (Chatto & Windus, 2006; Metropolitan Books, 2006) won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize (2006), was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize (2006), long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize (2007) and was listed among the 100 Best Books of the Decade in The Times in 2009. It has been translated into five languages.

Scurr began reviewing regularly for The Times and The Times Literary Supplement in 1997. Since then she has also written for The Daily Telegraph, The Observer, New Statesman, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New York Observer, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal.

She was a judge on the Man Booker Prize panel in 2007, and the Samuel Johnson Prize panel in 2014. She is a member of the Folio Prize Academy.

Scurr is Director of Studies in Human, Social and Political Sciences for Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where she has been a Fellow since 2006. Her research interests include: 17th and 18th century history of ideas; biographical, autobiographical and life writing; the British and French Enlightenments; the French Revolution; Revolutionary Memoir; early Feminist Political Thought; and contemporary fiction in English.

She was married to the political theorist John Dunn between 1997 and 2013. She has two daughters and a stepson.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

PARIS, CITY OF LIGHT


Andrew Neil, a BBC political tv journo, took off into a magnificent rant last week after the Paris bombings. It was a week, he said,

In which a bunch of loser jihadists slaughtered 132 innocents to prove the future belongs to them rather than a civilization like France. Well I can’t say I fancy their chances. France, the country of Descartes, Boulez, Monet, Sartre, Rousseau, Camus, Renoir, Berlioz, Cézanne, Gauguin, Hugo, Voltaire, Matisse, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Bizet, Satie, Pasteur, Molière, Frank, Zola, Balzac, Blanc. Cutting edge science. World class medicine. Fearsome security forces. Nuclear power. Coco Chanel, Château Lafite, coq au vin, Daft Punk, Zizou Zidane, Juliette Binoche, liberté, égalité, fraternité, and crème brûlée.

Versus what?

Beheadings, crucifixions, amputations, slavery, mass murder, medieval squalor, a death-cult barbarity that would shame the Middle Ages.
Well, IS, or Daesh or ISIS or ISIL—whatever name you’re going by, I am sticking with IS, as in Islamist scumbags.

I think the outcome is pretty clear to everybody but you. Whatever atrocities you are currently capable of committing, you will lose. In a thousand years’ time, Paris, that glorious City of Light, will still be shining bright, as will every other city like it, while you will be as dust, along with the ragbag of fascists, Nazis, and Stalinists that have previously dared to challenge democracy, and failed.

How instructive, then – how cruelly instructive – it has been to read the biography of Robespierre, at this time, and to descend into the gruesome maelstrom that was the French Revolution, and rediscover that no nation, however cultured, is immune from the belief that the death of a few thousand of the right people is not only necessary but good.

Jean-Paul Marat : “I believe in the cutting off of heads”.

10 June to 27 July 1793 : 1,376 people guillotined in Paris.

THE GUILLOTINE : A HUMANITARIAN INVENTION

In 1791 Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin speaking in the National Assembly, was promoting a new device, not yet perfected:

Now, with my machine, I’ll knock your head off [je vous fait sauter la tete] in the twinkling of an eye, and you’ll never feel it.

Ruth Scurr comments : “At this the deputies collapsed in helpless mirth."

As the acerbic historian John Croker pointed out:

Amongst the laughers there were scores who were destined to be early victims of the yet unborn cause of their merriment.

ROBESPIERRE THE SOCIALLY PROGRESSIVE VISIONARY, NO. 1

Interestingly, at this point Robespierre was arguing for the abolishment of the death penalty, rather than its mechanical improvement.

He was against the death penalty for two reasons : first, its injustice; second, its ineffectiveness as a deterrent. “Someone who butchers a perverse child that he could disarm and punish seems monstrous”.

At the same time he was arguing for the end to all forms of censorship, even for pornography, which was a flourishing underground trade. He also wanted the National Assembly to be housed in a building which would have facilities for up to ten thousand spectators. Ruth Scurr comments

In this way, he anticipated by two hundred years the televising of parliaments in the democratic world.

Nice one, Ruth.

WHO THE HELL WAS ROBESPIERRE?

Robespierre’s life was an odd one. For 31 years he was a provincial buried in a small town called Arras. He became a lawyer. He was quite poor and socially awkward. He was no ladies man. Then he buzzed around and got himself elected to the new Estates General which was where the King had run out of money and has to call this parliament as we might put it to ask them to bail him out.

They bailed his ass all right.

So this shy provincial lawyer arrived in France and after doing very little for 31 years he did everything in the next four years, to the point where he became the living personification of the Revolution.
Ruth Scurr, our biographer, gives us two characteristics of Maximilien which eventually turned him into a monster – an “intoxicating paranoia” and a conviction that he was always right about political issues (“He will go far because he believes everything he says” – Mirabeau). Perhaps this is not saying a great deal. Richard Nixon was paranoid, Stalin was paranoid, I dare say Pol Pot was too. If you’re in power, it surely comes with the territory. And well, why would you be in the grisly business of politics in the first place if you didn’t think you were right about the great issues of the day?

DESPERATE TIMES DEMANDED OVER THE TOP PONCING AROUND IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

the painter David ran into the middle of the hall, ripped open his shirt and pointing to his bare breast cried “Strike here! I propose my own assassination! I too am a man of virtue! Liberty will win in the end!”

And our guy would say stuff like

I have nothing more to say to you, and I have decided that, unless there is a revival of public spirit, unless the patriots make one last effort, I will wait in the chair of senatorial office, to which the people have raised me, for the daggers of the counter-revolution!”

Boy, you can hear the eye-rolling from here.

ROBESPIERRE WAS NOT A DICTATOR

There was no single person who ruled during the Revolution. But he was so influential, and busy in so many capacities – head of this and that Committee, president of the Jacobins club, constantly speechifying and writing – that he was perceived as a dictator.

They call me a tyrant. If I were one, they would grovel at my feet. … To the nobles they say “He alone persecutes you”. To the patriots they say “Robespierre protects the nobles”. To the clergy they say “He’s the one persecuting you”. To the fanatics they say “He’s the one who destroyed religion”. … “He did all of it!” – “He won’t prevent it!” – “Your fate is in his hands alone!”

THE TERROR

The revolution went through major convulsions and became ever more paranoid. On 17 September 1793 the Convention passed the Law of Suspects – you could now be guillotined if your conduct, words or writings showed you to be a supporter of tyranny, of federalism or to be an enemy of liberty. So if some patriot didn’t like the cut of your jib, tough on you. That was when the Terror began in earnest and the tumbrils began rolling every day. During the 9 months which followed around 16,000 people were condemned to death, mostly not in Paris, and there were many lynchings too.

He initiated the law that menaced absolutely everyone, on the most spurious grounds, and without recourse to any form of defence.

Usual amount of time taken between denouncing a citizen for a crime and the execution of the citizen: three days.

ROBESPIERRE THE SOCIALLY PROGRESSIVE VISIONARY, NO. 2

At the very same time as heads were rolling into baskets at the rate, on occasion, of over 60 a day in Paris, to the point where they had to move the guillotine because the amount of blood was becoming offensive to the local citizens and was polluting the water supply, at the same time as all that, Robespierre was setting out his vision of how education should be organised in France :

Free centralised state education of all girls aged 5 to 11 and all boys aged 5 to 12, followed by free secondary education for all who wanted it, the costs to be met by progressive taxation.

Well, he was only around 120 years ahead of his time.

ROBESPIERRE = THE REVOLUTION

He could speak about himself so often because he identified so completely with the Revolution – the two were not separate in his mind. Even more peculiarly, he was surrounded by others who also believed in this coincidence between Robespierre and the Revolution. …The strange combination of his self-centred rhetoric, clean living, clear principles and passionate political commitment made him seem like the Revolution incarnate… and now that the Revolution had become the Terror, he found himself identified with that too

HE WAS NOT AN ATHEIST

Some revolutionaries were, but he was a passionate believer. Here he is denouncing atheist propagandists - you can’t deny he had a way with words:

Who commissioned you to announce to the people that God does not exist? How does it help a man if you persuade him that blind force presides over his destiny, and strikes at random, now at the virtuous, now at the criminal? Does it help him to believe his soul is nothing but a thin vapour that is dissipated at the mouth of the tomb? Will the idea of annihilation inspire him with purer and higher sentiments than that of immortality?... If the existence of God and the immortality of the soul were nothing but dreams, they would still be the most beautiful conceptions of the human spirit.

THE END CAME FAST

He and his faction denounced the Girondists, they were guillotined. They denounced the Dantonists, their heads rolled. The deputies left alive in the National Assembly could see that their number would be up at some point so they got their retaliation in first and denounced Robespierre’s faction. And it was that easy.

Old woman to Robespierre on the way to the guillotine :

Monster spewed up from hell – the thought of your punishment intoxicates me with joy.

Well, Robespierre was a curious beast. You can’t warm to him. You can be amazed at his progressive ideas and then chilled at his ruthlessness. No one was spared, no one was pitied if they got in the way of what he thought the Revolution was. It was to be entirely for the poor, not the rich. His whole political dream was to make life bearable for the poor. It was a good intention and it was one of the many roads to a particular type of hell.



Caption : Robespierre, having guillotined everyone in France, now guillotines the guillotiner.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ruth Scurr manages to sidestep the polemics that seem natural to a subject like hers. She has that most valuable gift of the historian: implacable impartiality. Her equanimity goes a long way to give her book credibility; if all you know of Robespierre comes from "The Scarlet Pimpernel", this will complicate the issue- in a good way.

As with many such impartial books, however, Scurr's greatest failing is that she tends to vagueness. No substantial analysis of contemporary political doctrine is provided- a real handicap, especially if you're new to this period of history. It is often easy, throughout the course of the book, to forget why Robespierre did what he did, what ideology drives the events of the narrative. Robespierre was responsible for the deaths of many, and he saw mercy as traitorous to his radically democratic views; that we are never given a clear understanding of the ideas that inspired such deadly devotion is a major failing of this book. The prose, likewise, manages to be colorless and dry, though perhaps this is a result of her impartiality. The book, on the whole, is too general and broad to stand on its own. I would recommend this to a reader already well-grounded in pertinent history; unfortunately such a reader is likely already familiar with this material.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Regarding the bloody aftermath of Robespierre's most terrifying law that basically granted the Revolutionary Tribunal license to arrest and condemn anyone as a subversive opponent who uttered even the slightest criticism of the Revolution and those running it, Scurr writes, "[Robespierre] can be accused of insanity and inhumanity, but certainly not of insincerity." Small comfort to thousands of innocents who lost their heads in the process. Fatal Purity, indeed. Fatal for its victims, which in the end included Robespierre himself.

This quote is testament to the Scurr's determination to take an even-handed approach in assessing Robespierre's role in the Revolution. The man was a true believer in the power of terror to preserve a larger good of democracy and equality for all. When does a virtue become a crime is one big question Scurr poses. When you start executing folks for criticism expressed in private, I'd say you've gone way over the line.

Scurr is an excellent story-teller, but at times the book bogs down in describing all the committees and tribunals and the constant infighting among them in endless detail. What separates a Girondist from a Jacobin from Mountain member, among others? You'd have to draw a flow-chart to keep them all straight. Scurr is best is portraying the personalities of all the major figures.

[Karen Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book I've ever read on the French Revolution that actually explains what happens in what order. I've read a lot of history of this period, but most of the books start with the assumption that the reader knows what a Girondist is or that the Holy Roman Emperor invaded France in 1791. Not only does Scurr explain Robespierre, she also gives the most succinct description of the events between the calling of the Estates General and the rise of Napoleon that I've ever read.

[booklady · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bitter irony about Robespierre is the dichotomy of how the world viewed him and how he saw himself. His own hometown, northern French city of Arras, barely acknowledges him now, yet they were only too proud when they sent him off to Paris as their representative to the Estates General and when he first returned. Pale, restrained and fragile, Robespierre was an anxious man, often hesitant, yet highly principled. Before the Revolution he earned his living as a young lawyer who sided consistently with the victimized and fiercely opposed the death penalty. Eloquent in person and on paper, formal in manner, he always worked assiduously at his prose and speeches, often taking days to compose important ones. His goal was the pursuit of ‘vertu’, for himself and for French society: ‘The soul of a republic is vertu—that is, the love of the fatherland and the high-minded devotion that resolves all private interests into the general interest.’ (p. 282)

And yet, in the eyes of the world, Robespierre, the so-called “Incorruptible” is the French equivalent of Hitler or Stalin. How can these two opposing views of the same man be reconciled? The author, Ruth Scurr does her best to present a matter-of-fact biography of Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794), an enigma if there ever was one.

He was an attractive man if his pictures are any indication and had numerous female admirers, though he never married. He had ‘a woman’ when he first came to Paris but when he realized such a relationship could compromise his position as a revolutionary, he put the revolution first and unceremoniously dumped her, leaving his servant to handle the ‘details’. Robespierre suffered regular rebukes from ugly Danton for his chaste lifestyle, Danton who swore he could not live without a woman and his life choices seemed to bear that up.

The facts about Robespierre’s life are simple enough but getting them to all fit is the challenge. He believed passionately in the French Revolution, in his country and the changes which he was working toward. He loved Rousseau, had read his works and internalized them like a bible, so one would have to understand the philosophe to fully comprehend Robespierre. For example: ‘Rousseau had a profound love of individual liberty and a fear of coercion so intense that he was almost allergic to power. Robespierre identified with the victims of injustice—those misunderstood, isolated, denied, or despised. What the two men shared was compassion for the vulnerable and a fierce censoriousness toward those less principled in their attitudes to power than they were confident of being themselves.’ (p. 38)

As the revolution went on, he saw that revolutions required things he had not anticipated when he first began. He was known to say: “Citizens, do you want a revolution without a revolution?” To people who complained that the Insurrectionary Commune of 10 August had done illegal things, he replied, “The Revolution is illegal: the fall of the Bastille and of the monarchy were illegal—as illegal as liberty itself!” (p. 293).

And yet it all aged him, as leadership always does. He became identified with the ‘Terror’ because he was the power across the three most important organizations (Committee of Public Safety, Convention and Jacobins) driving the Revolution in Paris which was the force leading the rest of France. When his downfall came, he was a victim of his own rule (the Law of 22 Prairial*, enacted on June 10, 1794). With his death and that of his supporters, the deadly Terror came to an end.

All I can say at the end is that I am glad that I read this book and that God is his judge and not me. I felt much more sympathy for him than I expected to. His brother loved him and voluntarily chose to die with him. Those who knew him best loved him, but he let very few people get close to him.


* The Law of 22 Prairial, significantly altered the French revolutionary justice system, leading to the acceleration of the Great Terror and the execution of thousands.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The number of French Revolution themed books on my goodreads is getting embarrassing...This book is one of the more serious offerings on the subject which was regularly popping up as a suggested read, so I decided to give it a go. Like, (I suspect) many others, I've been kind of deeply fascinated by Robespierre since I read Hilary Mantel's characterization of him in "A Place of Greater Safety," and this biography only solidified my fascination. Scurr does a pretty good job of making him out to be extremely empathetic, without turning him into a totally sympathetic character and rightly so, since he was more or less directly responsible for a few thousands state sanctioned murders. Scurr's Robespierre starts life as a politically ambitious country lawyer, who is as deeply sensitive to perceived slights against himself as he is to injustices suffered by the poor. He is also, very much against the death penalty. Scurr chronicles his rise to power and increasing isolation and paranoia, which leads him to make more and more extraordinary and extra-legal decisions in the name of keeping the Revolution alive.

At the heart of it, Scurr's book-and Robespierre's life is a study of idealism gone horribly astray and ultimately, completely detached from reality. As many people have said, much more articulately than I can in a late night goodreads review, his is really the first in a series of modern experiments with social restructuring that may have started in a lofty place, but which finished with a blood bath. As an unashamedly romantic leftie/total history
nerd, I'm totally fascinated by stories of people who have attempted something radical in the name of the public good, and what the consequences of those actions were.

[Alex Sarll]

In some ways the most interesting parts of this book are the earliest chapters, Scurr more openly a presence in her own book as she weighs the sparser evidence of Robespierre's childhood and life in Arras, balancing sources which mostly have an axe to grind one way or the other and at times coming close to casting doubt on the whole idea of a fair biography of a controversial figure; even when the facts are agreed, which is by no means always, they're frequently susceptible to diametrically opposed interpretations depending on whether the contemporary saw Robespierre as future martyr in the cause of liberty or the boyhood of a superfiend. But as the ancien regime starts to falter, and young Maximilien strives to get himself elected to the assembly that will decide its future, we move into a more conventional account of the Revolution. Yes, it has a particular focus on one figure, but hardly one who's sidelined in the standard version – though it is fascinating the extent to which he wasn't seen as a leading light from the off, was by no means considered one of the more popular or notable delegates, but then more and more became considered – to the public, his peers, and most of all to himself – as the living embodiment of the Revolution, a position from which neither his own ignominious demise nor the centuries since have yet dislodged him.

As for the Reign of Terror he would play such a key role in unleashing, the contortions he would go through in refusing to admit that he might ever have made a mistake, even as he entirely shifted his position on numerous key issues such as whether the monarchy could retain a role in the new regime...well. Scurr says in her introduction that Fatal Purity "is motivated by the open-minded interest Robespierre deserves. It tries, whenever possible, to give him the benefit of any rational doubt." But the more blood on its subject's hands, the more he insists that personal matters are irrelevant in the face of revolutionary principles while exempting himself because he is the Revolution, the harder that gets and the greater her revulsion. True, she doesn't ever fall for the sillier criticisms; I had never realised how unfair it was to lump him in with the Revolution's atheist faction (even if his cult of the Supreme Being, just like his general attitude to the moral reform of the nation, sounds a lot like opium of the people except it won't even get you high). And not once does she find any evidence that he was other than the Incorruptible his nickname suggests, though she points out the ways in which that carries its own dangers, such as being almost proud to condemn former friends and thereby prove his own unshakable rectitude.
(Though, gods know, it's not like most of them were any loss. Few characters in this account come across much more appealing than Robespierre, and a couple definitely worse – especially the pantomime ghoul Marat, so much more openly bloodthirsty, boasting of getting by on two hours' sleep a night and, accordingly, 2 1/2 times more bonkers than Thatcher. His incitatory newspaper (and they all had one – these pricks would have bloody loved Twitter) was called The People's Friend, which to anyone familiar with its modern namesake can't help recalling Psmith's makeover of Cosy Moments)

I think I went into this expecting it to complicate my mental image of Robespierre – who in my head is always as played by the late, great Ronan Vibert in the REG Pimpernel, a study in sinister fastidiousness. If anything, it turns out that portrayal might have been toned down; it wasn't exactly subtle, but even so I think they'd have considered incessant fiddling with two pairs of spectacles excessive. As for his political legacy... even more so than the hypocrisies and joylessness of Cromwell and his vile crew, the French Revolution has always seemed like a type specimen of why revolutions are so much less desirable than they can sometimes seem, the frequency with which they install a crew of idealistic psychos whose high principles, even when honestly held, end up crucifying exactly the people they were supposedly there to help. There's a particularly bleak and absurd stretch here where the revolutionaries spend ages debating a new constitution, their second, determined it should truly enshrine human rights and dignity – only to immediately suspend it, because it's wartime. And when the war is over? Oh, but there are still enemies within, and there always would have been, no actually existing citizenry worthy of the perfect – and perfectly boring – future commonwealth Robespierre could see burning on the far horizon. I end this gladder than ever that he's dead, yet sadder than ever how little has been learned from the whole sorry business: every time the haves resist gentler reforms, every time the have-nots or their appointed tribunes devolve into purity tests, venomous factionalism and a grand utopian scheme bearing no relationship to the people who are supposedly going to inhabit it, humanity seems determined for one more go-round in the charnel house because surely it'll work out differently this time.

Still, if nothing else, at least this account of an erstwhile human rights lawyer who goes very wrong in government makes Starmer look good. Gods know something has to.

[Ozymandias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best kind of popular history: one that passes over most of the historiographical debates and source conflicts to focus on questions of character and motivation. The story of the Revolution unfolds through Robespierre’s limited perspective as we pull back the layers of his life to discover how he turned from a principled man who stood against the death penalty and couldn’t stand the sight of blood to one of the leading architects of the Terror: a policy of executing en masse all perceived as insufficiently patriotic.

I have to admit I was a bit worried about reading a biography of a single revolutionary. The French Revolution is not the sort of event that can be confined to individuals. Robespierre, for all that he tried to embody the Revolution, was not the voice of it. The Revolution had twenty million voices, of which his was merely one of the loudest. For most of the deeds recounted in here Robespierre played only a minor part. For many of the atrocities his biggest crime was merely a failure to speak out. A willingness to accept brutal street violence as the voice of the people. He was never the dictator his enemies claimed he was. How could he be? The Republic had no office for one. It was ruled by the Committees for Public Safety and General Security, of which Robespierre was merely one man in twelve on one and played no role in the other. So identifying which actions can reasonably be blamed on him and which ones merely were is tough. But I think this book really succeeds at making it clear the limits and reality of his power. Best of all, it makes the question interesting rather than merely necessary.

Having read the book, I suspect I would have found Robespierre as dull and colorless as many of his contemporaries did, but Scurr manages to make him fascinating. A bizarre contradiction that can be explained rationally. The focus at all points is on where he is in his intellectual journey and how he got there. And what really impresses me is how consistent she makes his character appear, although it was never as unchanging as he believed. He was always passionate, sensitive, compassionate, unforgiving, paranoid, unworldly, humorless, sincere, bitter, priggish, dedicated, hardworking, self-righteous, incorruptible, sentimental, vindictive, idealistic, arrogant, squeamish, spiteful, histrionic, hysterical, narcissistic, cowardly, and tenacious. And yet his journey took him from an idealistic boy who treasured pet birds he raised from chicks to a lawyer who opposed the death penalty to one of the most infamous mass murderers in history.

What changed, essentially, was the world around him. Louis XIV famously said, “L'état, c'est moi” (I am the state). Well Robespierre could just as well have said,  “La Révolution, c'est moi”. For, like many people before him, he came to associate so strongly with his cause that he couldn’t distinguish between the two. Unlike most in that situation, this didn’t lead to him profiting from the Revolution under the justification that he was essential to the state. Rather the opposite occurred: he abandoned his own sense of identity for the sake of the cause. The People can never be wrong, so if they did something he could not approve of then he must be mistaken. He identified so strongly with the cause he believed that nothing done in its name could be wicked. When he executes people for no cause he isn’t committing horrific abuses, abuses he fought valiantly against in the Old Regime, he’s turning the enemy’s weapon against him. An Us vs. Them populism that’s depressingly common nowadays and depressingly lethal in those days.

His principled nature remained the same throughout his life, which seems an odd thing to say about a mass murderer. But while Scurr repeatedly shows him stating his principles proudly she’s also very observant on what he doesn’t say. He demands equal rights for all citizens, but he also envisions equal obligations and severe social restrictions. He considers government to derive from the will of the People, but also considers their summary justice and mob violence a part of this will. He speaks up for freedom of the press, but argues that libel should be based on a man’s character and commitment to the cause rather than mere facts.

His need to be the Incorruptible (which is what people called him) turned out to be a trap. He felt that bad rule came from corrupt ministers and only the pure of heart and selfless could truly serve the state. And he sought to embody that. But if he could never be wrong then how could people have an honest difference of opinion with him? It meant that only treason could explain their behavior. Any personal enemy was thus a public enemy. As such, he jumped right to the most extreme solutions for minor problems. He wasn’t the first to have his political opponents killed, but he was the first to try and when he began he purged them all rather than just a few, and their wives and relatives as well if he could.

His intense and unworldly idealism also played a key role in his ruthlessness. As a man supervising crime reports and informant statements he was horrified at the impurity of the populace. To achieve his perfect republic such impure people had to go, for they had no place there. I especially enjoyed seeing how Scurr took us from his never trusting his sister with his birds again after she let one die as a child to his incapacity to forgive any weakness in friends or enemies. His paranoia was out of this world. His harshly idealized vision of the People’s goodness meant that he couldn’t explain their foibles or failures as anything but deliberate treason. And the obsession with the question of how to tell whether men were speaking the truth or hiding behind false principles never ceased to consume him.

By the end of the book the principled lawyer’s become a mad dog who needs to be put down. The ramping down of the war and imminent return to constitutional elections was actually the impetus to increase executions sans defence since if he didn’t purge them all now he’d never get the chance. This is the point where I had to question Scurr’s comments about his political genius. It seems a limited gift to me. His skill seems to have been at using his unquestioned incorruptibility as a blunt hammer against his opponents. But he had no ability to understand other people. If he was the Revolution any disagreement could only mean collusion with aristocrats. Compromise meant treason. If he was always absolutely right then to bend was to corrupt perfection. He was a terrible public speaker, although he had some natural ones on his team (before he executed most of them). Basically, he just outbutchered everyone before they thought to do the same to him. Not a brilliant strategy.

And in his last appearance at the Assembly, when he’s revealed that he’s planning to have certain committee members liquidated but doesn’t reveal who, he seems a moron of the most egregious sort. What could he have been thinking? Warning people you’re going to have some of them killed is basically forcing them to strike first for their own survival. And by not identifying the targets he left everyone feeling the blade over their head. I feel like this is literal insanity. He always entertained delusions about his constancy and how he was always right on every subject, but the more decisions he had to make the harder it was to convince even himself of that. And he needed to hold onto that self-image of human perfection at all costs.

The book makes this character journey plausible. Robespierre seems the same person at the beginning of the book that he does at the end, although by that point you’ve lost most of your sympathy with him. I accept her vision of him as a deeply flawed compassionate man. Someone with essentially good motives who needed to be kept away from power at all costs. Power didn’t so much corrupt him as bring out the worst of his characteristics: his inability to empathize with others and his rampant paranoia. I can’t say I particularly liked him by the end, but he wasn’t the monster in human form that people make out. He was deeply principled to the end. A man eager, even desperate to do good. But with such tunnel vision that his cure became worse than the disease. I think ultimately I’d still use the same single word to describe him that I’d have used before: fanatic. But I appreciate that there was more to it than that as well.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a historian attempts a work on a "person in his/her times," a balance between the biographical and historical parts of the book are usually very difficult to balance. I think Scurr falls on the side of focusing on the times (at least the revolutionary part of it). But I think that both sides lost out to some extent by giving cursory treatment. Perhaps the book should simply have been longer so Scurr had more time to fill in the historical and biographical details and do justice to both. The book is very readable and interesting and it is a shame that Scurr couldn't have spent more time on both participants in the actions of the book--Robespierre and the Revolution.

[Iset · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt prompted recently to pick up this book. The French Revolution is a subject I’ve studied before, as a student, but being years ago now and not at a deeply complex level, I felt my knowledge wanting, particularly when discussing Maximilien Robespierre. The very brief picture of the man painted by the simple overview of previous study told me that Robespierre was an authoritarian tyrant, but in conversation with others it was clear that some people even today view him as an enlightened figure of liberty and ethical character. I was puzzled by the seeming contradiction, and questioned just how accurately I had been taught. Time to pick up a biography of Robespierre and tackle this mystery.

First thing’s first; the quality of the biography itself. Fatal Purity probably isn’t the most in-depth or detailed biography of Robespierre ever written. I’m sure there must be reams of academic literature tearing apart every tiny piece of surviving evidence, discussing every word of every speech. This is not one of those. It is content to highlight that which the author considers to be the most relevant points and leave the rest to be sought out by the enquiring reader. The text is fairly well-referenced throughout, and a bibliography clearly directs readers to Robespierre’s own writings, various Revolutionary journals and publications, and plenty of books and articles on the subject written by later historians. If you already know your stuff in regards to Robespierre and the Revolution, you’d be better advised to consult other works. If, on the other hand, you’re a relative beginner, Fatal Purity is a good place to start, covering the major points, placing them in context, and explaining them in clear and accessible language.

As for Robespierre himself, a portrait begins to emerge of a complex, contradictory man – a flawed human being, in other words. Having received a very simplistic portrayal of him before, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he had substantial virtues. A dedicated advocate for the rights of the poor, a sincere believer in equality, he was well-known for being immune to bribery. He even staunchly opposed the death penalty. But Robespierre appears to have been undone by a failure in logic driven by egotism – he assumed that his sincerity and incorruptibility meant that he was always right.

“It was this peculiar combination of acute political suspicion and personal animosity towards anyone who disagreed with him which carried Robespierre to his lonely and eccentric destination in the Revolution. Tellingly, he quoted directly a politically pregnant phrase of Rousseau’s: le peuple veut le bien, mais il ne le voit pas toujours (the people want what is good, but they do not always see it). Robespierre was very sure of himself as an astute interpreter of what was, or was not, in the interests of the people. And so those whose opinions differed from his were instantly suspect.”

Robespierre appears to have lacked an awareness of his own fallibility, leading him to the false conclusion that anyone who personally disagreed with him must have nefarious motives and be a threat to the Revolution. Worse, he had little understanding or forgiveness for the fallibility of others. The stress and scale of the challenge of the Revolution took a toll on him, fuelling a degree of paranoia; on more than one occasion he suspected a wide range of counter-revolutionary conspiracies but was completely unaware of actual instances of corruption. Fear that all the good that had been accomplished was about to be swept away provoked him to the conclusion that saving the Revolution was worth any cost, any moral compromise (such as suggesting that libel suits ought to be decided purely on the character of the slandered individual rather than the evidence, and this despite nominally supporting a free press).

The problem is that nothing is ever worth it 'at any cost' and the ends do not justify the means. A progressive movement must practise what it preaches, else it cannot bring about the world it seeks to create. It seems to me that Robespierre's tragedy was that he was an intelligent, genuinely considerate man, who failed to see his own fallibility, refused to tolerate it in others, and let his fear dictate his actions while failing to recognise how this warped the ethics he cherished. A life story of great promise, and fatal mistakes.

8 out of 10

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Though Robespierre died over two hundred years ago, he still makes new friends and enemies among the living. I have tried to be his friend and to see things from his point of view.'

The road to hell is paved with good intents, right? Well, if there's an historical figure who can incarnate such a saying to perfection it's Robespierre, the man whose name ultimately became infamously associated with the Terror. Indeed, modest lawyer not foreign to philanthropic and humanitarian deeds, once his fervent idealism and fanatic obsession with virtue got sucked up into the turmoil of the French Revolution it's a great deal of the French revolutionary ideals themselves that went down to hell with his regime! How to make sense of all that? Utopia hand in hand with dystopia, ruled over by the same man? 'Fatal Purity', a gripping read and a surprisingly well-balanced account of the events that shaped Robespierre's life, tries and brings some sort of insight.

Ambitious and cynical, possessed by a will to serve the weakest and poorest but animated by unforgiving and blind self-righteousness, endowed with a strong reputation for being incorruptible yet playing willingly with mob violence and political dissensions to better his career and accrue his power, the man was far from easy to understand! Sadly, we don't get out of this book anymore enlightened about his motives and true character than upon opening it. Whatever your opinion about such an elusive man indeed (idealist do-gooder who lost it in trying to set an utopia in motion or, bloodthirsty tyrant at the head of a terrorist regime) chances are, 'Fatal Purity' is so well-balanced it will not challenge it much. What it does very well though, is to narrate through Robespierre's ascension to power the unstoppable and chilling descent of France into tyranny -the September massacres, the death of the king, the Law of 22 Prairial and the spreading Terror engulfing the country... This in itself makes for an enthralling read.

Now, the Terror is still an era up for debates (let alone Robespierre!) and the raging controversies, most being the products of our own contemporary political zeitgeist (e.g. Ruth Scurr is pretty clear in not seeing in him a proto-Communist…) make it difficult to navigate through such an historical minefield! Such a balanced yet straightforward account is therefore more than welcome to put things back into perspective. If you have any sort of interest in the French Revolution, you cannot miss this book!

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

No kidding: I put Fatal Purity aside in October thinking, "I will return to this after Clinton's been elected."

[David McGrogan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a quote from Simon Schama on the front cover of my edition of this book, in which he says that the author is "a truly remarkable writer" and "one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive". God knows how much he had been drinking that day - or perhaps he just owed Ruth Scurr a favour - but she is in fact a rather bland, insipid and amateurish writer, and this is a rather bland, insipid and amateurish biography. Scrupulously avoiding the making of judgments about its subject, it ends up painting in the vaguest of brush-strokes, so the reader is left none the wiser; one gets the sense not that Scurr is trying to be fair, but that she is simply incapable of nailing her colours to the mast - she is in other words an academic historian, rather than a biographer. What was Robespierre like? After reading this book, I honestly couldn't tell you.

[J Onwuka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Explicitly stated in the foreword, Ruth Scurr attempts in this biography to present an unbiased documentary of the life of Maximilien Robespierre, one of the principal architects of the French Revolution. This key period in his life is a short eternity, just five years from the Revolution's inception to his execution, but packed with extremely dramatic events such that the entire makeup of the Revolution seems to change from week to week and day to day. The story of this period and of this man was as thrilling as I thought it would be. However, I do not agree with the project of this book or the essential idealistic way in which Scurr presents Robespierre's story.

I feel like this trend of "unbiased history" is a new one and in most cases, as here, it is mislabeled. Rather than unbiased I would say that this book is very anxious about presenting itself as impartial and objective. What this results in is Scurr questioning Robespierre's complicity in terrible actions while never giving solid evidence of his clemency. The most she can muster in his defense are things he said or things he was supposed to have said. If Robespierre ever actually opposed the atrocities of the Terror he never did anything effective about it, and despite Scurr's desire to assure us that Robespierre was not a tyrant or a dictator, he certainly had the influence to curtail these excesses had he believed it necessary. I find Robespierre, rather than being a noble champion of justice, to be a consummate coward and a reprobate. A clear theme throughout this book, one that Scurr does not try to hide but instead to explain away, is Robespierre's tendency to set dangerous lines of thought in motion but keep his hands out of the blood. He preferred to control from removed positions of influence such as the Jacobin Club rather than to acquire meaningful powers that required his direct application. Scurr makes much out of Robespierre's reluctance to attend the executions he ordered, but I find nothing admirable about a man who is squeamish about his own justice.

I make these points because these are things that I believe Scurr does her best not to face. She sets up conjecture, obvious biased reporting, and rhetoric on the same level as documented fact because without that the case that Robespierre was a good person/politician/leader becomes remarkably slim. And in saying this I think that her unfortunate stand hurts the prose of this book, which is the strongest part of it by far. Scurr does not attempt to be an "artist" but she refrains from dryness and memorization. She ebbs and flows as needed by her topic, keeping a general temporal sensibility but making sure details that are necessary are always at hand. It's a very well-compiled book and, in seeing the lengths to which she's tried to exonerate Robespierre, I have no doubt that it is a very good history of Robespierre's part in the French Revolution. The only thing I'd say is read between the lines.

[Daniel Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The American "Revolution" was a really a colonial rebellion; pieces of a larger empire that banded together to break away and become independent. But the French Revolution was an actual revolution, a body of representatives from all over France declaring themselves a "National Assembly" and taking charge of things, putting the king under supervision and virtual house arrest, and finally executing him a few years later. At the center of things was Maximilien Robespierre, who in the name of absolute virtue, purity, and the freedom of the people, helped prosecute mass guillotining of everyone suspected of not being committed enough to the Revolution. Because to achieve such a great thing as utopia, it is morally necessary to suspend human rights and just steamroll anyone or anything that gets in the way. That was the perverse logic, anyway, and in the end it swallowed up Robespierre himself paved the way for Napoleon and two decades of ruinous war in Europe. This book doesn't get into that second part of the story, though.

Robespierre was a rather small, frail figure in person. But the self-confidence he projected made him a really terrifying type of person. The author describes him like this: "The strange combination of his self-centered rhetoric, clean living, clear principles, and passionate political commitment made him seem like the Revolution incarnate"—In his own mind, he embodied the revolution, and so everything he thought, said, and did by definition had to be just and right. Such thinking lead him to help instigate laws like the "Law of Suspects," which held that:

"[A]nyone could now be arrested and punished with death who “either by their conduct, their contacts, their words, or their writings, showed themselves to be supporters of tyranny or of federalism or to be enemies of liberty.” Under the Law of Suspects everyone—not just foreigners, as had previously been the case—was obliged to carry a certificate of civisme, which was both an identity card and a stamp of civic virtue in one. Anyone without one of these cards could be arrested, and many thousands were.”

This kind of thing is a warning for our own time, when universal digital IDs and "social credit scores" are becoming real possibilities.

One thing I thought was interesting was that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, often caricatured and made to look silly, actually come off here as rather dignified and admirable, and even martyrs, in a way that Robespierre, despite evident sincerity in his convictions, was not.

Robespierre was executed at only 36, only a few months older than I am now. Not everyone that young is as self-righteously self-deluded and destructive as he was, and certainly many have been who were older. But as I get older myself I do think I'm seeing the reality in the expression "foolishness of youth" more clearly.

[Robert Jeens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scurr is an effective chronicler of Maximillien Robespierre, his life, and the tumultuous, great, terrible events of the French Revolution. She describes, she sermonizes, compares and reminds to paint a biographical portrait of one of the architects and directors of the Revolution. She lets you know where her sympathies lie. "News of Louis XVI's execution spread like a stain across Europe." She situates Robespierre where he was, right in the thick of government actions from the start of the Revolution, and tries to see events through his eyes. I am not sure if Scurr’s portrait of Robespierre, his motivations and inner thoughts, are entirely accurate, but to a non-expert like me, they are both accessible and believable.
Robespierre’s contradictions are made clear. "The demands of public responsibility and power...filled him with anxiety. He was, in important respects, constitutionally and temperamentally ill-suited to assume either - but nevertheless intent on pursuing them both.” He was not a great public speaker, with a weak voice, but he knew how to write fiery prose, He had a temper and probably high blood pressure and nosebleeds at night, which left him anemic and his skin pale, Nevertheless, he was a masterful politician, that is, someone adept at pursuing and wielding power. He knew the power of ideas, patronage and the mob. Robespierre was paranoid and saw hidden plots, but this at a time when there were many hidden plots.
It is impossible to make sense of Robespierre without making sense of the French Revolution, and so the author does. She moves through the main events: the bankruptcy of France, the calling of the Estates – Generale, the transformation to the National Assembly, the move from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy to republic and from a kind of democracy to a kind of dictatorship. The storming of the Bastille, the flight of the royal family, the execution of the king. We see the influence of mob violence, clericalism, anti-clericalism and atheism, civil war and foreign war, the different factions, prominent individuals, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen to the Committee of Public Safety. There is much more, a kaleidoscope of events, personalities and ideas, hopes, murders and celebrations.
The main contradiction of any revolution is something that both Robespierre and the author grasp. Robespierre, "Citizens, do you want a revolution without a revolution?" Revolutions are illegal, and to do them successfully, it is necessary to encourage illegality, but at some point, it is necessary to restore a new order and not tolerate illegality anymore. And when you are trying to change the government from a non-democracy, there is no other way but force. Reformers may agree that the old regime is intolerable but may not agree upon the nature of the new regime and thus try to undermine one they do not agree with. And the new regime, without the sanction of time and tradition, may struggle to find legitimacy among the population. There may also be foreign opposition or domestic counter-revolution and anarchy. If the aim is democracy, elections may be difficult to hold or produce results not to the liking of the regime in control of the revolution. And thus more use of force.
Scurr points out that Robespierre worshipped Rousseau and his ideas, and that was part of the problem. The problem of Rousseau's theory of the general will (which is a kind of shared commitment to the common good) is that there is no agreement as to what the general will is. In revolutionary France, there was the Paris mob, National Guards, conservative peasants and priests, members of councils, assemblies, and committees, and so on. None of them agreed with what was best. Robespierre, however, thought he did and that his views represented the general will, so that he was above faction, and that other factions were wicked and wrong. Further, Rousseau and Robespierre shared an unrealistic view of human nature. They both believed in the virtue of the poor, but in reality, the poor need to be helped but they are neither more nor less virtuous than the rich. They are human beings. Scurr is probably more jaundiced than me. She thinks nature is “disgusting and cruel.” I agree with that, but it can also be majestic, awe-inspiring, and lovely. Like human beings.
The great challenge for any biographer of Robespierre is to show how this obscure lawyer from the provinces, this devout believer in democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech and the press, a man known for his incorruptibility and personal scruples, became responsible for so much bloodshed and terror. The author makes him believable by showing that he thought that he was following his principles to the end, whatever the consequences, even when he was completely betraying them. This is a very human situation. In the name of safeguarding the Revolution, Robespierre moved from supporting democracy to government by committee, from the support of freedom of the press to suppression of dissident writing, from freedom of speech to no dissent, and the lawyer moved from the safeguarding of legal process to mob justice and no right to a defense.
The statement that a revolution devours its children comes from the French Revolution. Many of the leaders who first sprang to prominence were executed during its course. They were not innocent. They all had blood on their hands and turn-around is fair play. But many common people were marched to the guillotine for no good reason as well. Robespierre was not a dictator or completely in charge of the Terror. That blame was shared around, but he became the embodiment of it. Many people have embraced Robespierre’s early beliefs - democracy, progressive taxation, freedom of speech and the press, against capital punishment, but he compromised all of them in the name of revolution. And then it was his turn for the guillotine.

[Thomas Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book! Its important to remember that historical figures were real people and Ruth Scurr reminds the reader constantly that Robespierre was quite an unextraordinary person who happened to be part of an extraordinary period of history. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about Robespierre as it is very readable yet full to the brim with detail.

[Jessica Leeper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an intriguing read about a much abused and misunderstood figure in French history. Though Scurr does not forgive Robespierre's part in the Terror, she does not on the other hand point figures, as many "Thermidorean" historians, both new and old, have done. She plays both the friend and the critic to this mysterious man of the Enlightenment, which any political biographer must do. Though Peter McPhee's recent biography is the more rounded regarding the details of Robespierre's personal life, Scurr's is the ideal book for understanding in depth his political life.

I would have liked more details about his upbringing and early years of law work, and the ideologies he formed in those first 31 years of his life, before diving into his unique part in the Revolution. I also would have liked to have seen more on his life with the Duplays, though this is admittedly a minor criticism. More than anything, I wish Scurr had taken a more definitive stance on the "hero or scapegoat" debate, since her analysis of his ethics is often ambiguous. Instead of choosing sides, she opts instead to fairly state different sides of the historiography throughout the book, always relative to individual events and different moral situations. For the astute reader, this will be a welcome aspect of the book, allowing them a chance to form their own opinions about the man, while for others less informed in the scholarship surrounding the French Revolution, it may appear simply confusing.

Nevertheless, what details are lacking at the start of the book are well made up for by the end. The finale of the book (of course, her account of the lead-up to and events of the 9-10th of Thermidor) is especially strong, emotive and descriptive, making this book a perfect addition for any student working to build a basic understanding of the French Revolution, its times and people.

Overall, I would rate this as a 4 out of 5, since it does lack in detail at odd times, but it is overall a solid and usually semi-sympathetic read about a man whom Scurr would agree was not the monster Thomas Carlyle and others have made him out to be. The book is a rarity in that it addresses Robespierre as a flawed human being in difficult times rather than a demonic bloodthirsty tyrant. It is mostly devoid of bias, which is indeed rare in any political biography. In sum, if more detail about his personal life had been included, this would have been a solid A+ biography.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book takes a look at how an awkward, very self conscious, and moralistic individual was transformed by and also greatly changed the French Revolution. Early in his life, Robespierre greatly struggled with harming anyone. An attorney by trade, he became physically sick when he condemned a guilty man to death. Early in the French Revolution, he criticized the individuals whom promoted violent means. However, he justified his change in attitude, when he said that the King must die so that the Republic can live. Later on, it wasn’t just the King but any of the many individuals who could be seen as political enemies.
The French Revolution wasn’t a quick rush to violence. It started as a push for more rights and liberties for the vast majority of the French people. It was a long and drawn out affair that eventually used violence to crush any opposing views.
In the end, Robespierre overstepped his power, and he condemned too many people as enemies. They then turned on him, and he met his end at the guillotine.
Robespierre never compromised his values. However, his values changed along with his life’s work. In many ways, the Revolution reflected Robespierre’s life, and his life became the French Revolution.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scurr ends this volume with a poem by Wordsworth, noting how he is one of the first not to "get' Robespierre. I read this book to find out how to "get" an idealist who morphs into the opposite. This book is not the interpretive narrative I was seeking.

The beginning part that covers MR's childhood provides clues, and this is where the book is at its best. Scurr speculates on how his parental loss, his poverty, his "scholarship", his having to borrow clothes, his relations with his sister and brother might have molded his thinking. She writes about his early law practice and the stands he took. She writes about his election to the 3rd estate and what it might have meant for him and how his confidence grew. After this, the book becomes more narrative than interpretive.

For instance, MR started as an avowed death penalty opponent. Scurr shows his first change of heart was justifying the execution of the king. While she tells us why he said he came to this, she does not demonstrate HOW he came to this, nor his total betrayal his original stance.

There are many books of MR and the French Revolution. Contemporary biographers need to either unearth new facts, present a new interpretation or add dimension.

[Emma DeVere · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a weird biography for me because I didn't feel like I understood Robespierre better once I finished it. I don't regret reading it at all.

Robespierre was a strange historical figure. Parts of his history that I expected long passages on were the king's trial and Robespierre's own, but they seemed so short. Instead much of the focus is on fighting between the factions of the Revolution.

The author's interpretations and editorializing are well done and never feel intrusive.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

The French Revolution is one of those topics I find so utterly fascinating I will read or watch absolutely anything connected to it that I can find. This biography of one of its most intriguing and divisive figures has been on my TBR for far too long, but having finally gotten my hands on it, I devoured it in fairly short order. Detailed, engaging, complex, and unbiased - one of the best books I've read on the subject.

[Janejellyroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would not make this the first book I read about the French Revolution, mostly because Scurr focuses very much on her subject and it's hard to get a more general feel for the era and personalities. However, she did succeed in creating a fascinating, mostly even-handed, and moving biography.

[Stephanie Fleming]

Interesting biography on one of the stranger movers and shakers behind the French Revolution. I've read a few other history books about the times and always found his motivations very inexplicable compared to the others. This helped show some of his likely motivations as well as why he went from advocating against capital punishment to advocating for more executions. In many ways, his reliance on his appearance of being incorruptible (and his rigidity and prejudices) meant that he caused the deaths of many who could have supported him. It also.didn't help that he was (probably rightly) very paranoid as time went on, although he also tempered that with being jealous that other people got to be martyrs to the cause before him. I imagine that he would have been horrified to know that his name was a byword for the horrors of the Terror after his death (which is somewhat fitting considering his focus on keeping a clean reputation in life)

It's a well-written book and delves into some of the points that the larger histories gloss over, such as the time between the collapse of the monarchy and the Terror. I wish there was more information about the personal relationships between Robespierre and the other heads of the revolution- particularly Danton and Desmoulins- but the author could have been stymied by a lack of primary evidence on same.

He's a type of character that you don't often get in (fiction) books- someone who believed so voraciously in his own purity and cult of self that he created enemies wherever he went and executed several of his friends on the grounds that they appeared to act improper. He feels much more human to me now after reading this, however,.rather than some sort of Machiavellian automaton.

[Emma Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

The French Revolution is a really difficult topic to write about because the revolution was not very centralized and did not evolved in anything resembling a linear manner. Paris was essentially in a state of near anarchy for five years. Compounding the difficulty is the fact that people tend to see what they want to find in the Revolution. If you are of a given political bent, you may view the Jacobins as a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs. If you are of another bent, you may view them as the true standard bearers of liberty who were, in the end, crushed by the forces of counter-revolution. Even today, with a distance of more than 200 years, people have difficulty being dispassionate about these events. I think Ruth Scurr did a really good job of addressing one of the more polarizing figures of that time period, Robespierre, without either vilifying him or lionizing him.

My only critique is that even if you have read a bit about the French revolution you are likely still going to be confused by some of the offhand references to "The Commune" or the various other revolutionary bodies that are referred to, but only obliquely, in the book.

Bottom line, if you don't know who Jean Jaques Rousseau is and why he was important, you may want to read a slightly more basic introductory work before tackling this one. If you do know who Rousseau is, then you probably know enough to try this book to get a deeper dive on one of the weirdest life histories of this period, that of Maximilian Robespierre.

[Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A searing portrait of possibly the most misunderstood (and one of the most hated) leaders of the French Revolution. The final few paragraphs of the concluding chapter and the short, bittersweet coda about Wordsworth’s spiteful visit to Arras, Robespierre’s birth-place, were by far my favorites. They summed up the ambivalent, ambiguous legacy of the man most associated with the Terror with such powerful finality.

This ending was extremely surprising to me; because Scurr had studiously attempted to excise pretty much any extraneous commentary for her biography of Robespierre. What remains with that excision is a masterfully researched and briskly ordered account of Robespierre’s life—but one that lacks reflection upon the less tangible and indirect effects of the man’s life, legacy, and character.

Obviously, a biography can’t be everything to everyone; and I admire Scurr’s even-handed attempt at a relatively neutral, laying out of the facts of Robespierre’s life. But, those final sections of the book I mentioned above offer a tantalizing glimpse into a perspective—deeply moved and melancholically drawn to the “fatal purity” Maximilien Robespierre’s radical democratic vision—that I would have loved to see more of.

Even without this though, I still loved this deep dive into the nitty-gritty of the life of one the most important characters of the last 250 years.

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

A briskly written biography of the provincial lawyer turned revolutionary whose name is now a byword for Terror. Even handed (maybe to a fault?) Scurr can’t solve the mystery of why Robespierre came to so fanatically identify himself, the self described Incorruptible, with the Revolution. Her last line - he never saw the ocean - suggests his very narrowness turned to fanaticism once he became successful in Parisian politics. His religious faith turned him messianic. But her judicious assessment - she’s very good on untangling the Revolution’s chaotic factional politics - raises lasting questions about the consequences when the state expects citizens to be virtuous.

Apropos of nothing: I’d like to know if Marat’s debilitating skin condition was really caused by having to hide out for a brief period in the Paris sewers. Seems unlikely. The Revolution brought forth enough damaged and self dramatizing personalities that a psychosomatic cause suggests itself.

[Paithan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is history done right. The author focuses on the personality of Robespierre, rather than the events that occurred during the French Revolution. We can get the events on Wikipedia. We want to see who Robespierre was. Ruth Scurr succeeds in this regard.

Robespierre himself was a fascinating man. He refused to compromise on his beliefs, but was still able to gain political momentum and influence change upon his country. Were other revolutionaries could be corrupted by power and gold, Robespierre only succumbed to physical stress and paranoia. He saw enemies in all the shadows, and because of that he grew too dangerous.

I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn more about the French Revolution. We see it through the eyes of the man branded as a bloodthirsty tyrant, rather than a parade of events without personality or character.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is scrupulous to paint this complicated idealist with all the shades of grey in the pot. Is he an inhuman machine totally the prisoner of his ideology or someone who had empathy but made a conscious & human decision to subsume it for the greater good? He veers between the sentimental & the authoritarian with such ease he fascinates. The book is very good in having a timeline structure for the Revolution as a lot are thematic & lose the reader by event & place hopping. It is easier to do this as a biography though. It left me wanting to dip into more of the other revolutionary characters mentioned in these pages (Danton is well described).

[Bethany Currie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this but loses a star as the chapters were quite long and not particularly broken up, and purely as personal preference I find that style difficult to read in non-fiction. But overall it was a good biography.