Maximillian Robespierre was a key figure during the French revolution. He took his first step into the revolution by representing the third estate in the estates general. He took in hand the revolution after the death of the king leading into a bloody revolution. He then lost support in the revolution as he was starting to resemble to a dictator and was the executed by the guillotine.
In 1789 Robespierre had his breakout in his new career. Robespierre was a lawyer who had chosen to represent the third estate instead of the nobles in front of the law. He was then given the great opportunity to represent the third estate in the meeting of the estates general. From the first Robespierre was a radical and a democrat, defending the principle of the “rights of man” should be applied to all men including poor. As a representative of the third estate he joined the meeting and stood up for them and demanded what all the other representatives of the third estate had demanded, equality and justice. He had become a great public speaker and with his power base coming from the Jacobin club he had managed to gain the support of the sans-culottes making him very powerful.
Between 1789-1792, the failure to set up a constitutional monarchy was one of the reasons why Robespierre changed and become a supporter of terror and death. In this period of time Robespierre had completely changed and became the cause of the terror in Paris. Robespierre was giving orders to sans-culottes mobs to go around Paris and spread terror. He had become very powerful and had now changed his views on the death sentence. The fact that the French army was at war and was on the brink of destruction gave even more power to Robespierre as many Parisians were starting to believe that the king was secretly allied with Austria and Prussia, this made the more moderate clubs such as the Girondins unpopular.
After the vote to execute the king had won and the king executed in 1793, Robespierre spread the terror through the sans-culottes. In late 1793 sans-culottes formed armed militias to go and seize grain from the peasants for the army. This was allowed because the in October the convention passed the decree on emergency government, so for the first time in history terror became an official government policy. Violence was spread throughout the country to suppress the “anti-revolutionists” and to create order, these were the first dictator like actions Robespierre used. Throughout the year of the Jacobin rule, it was the sans-culottes who kept in the power through terror and violence.
Robespierre began to lose power because his actions were becoming too violent and because he was proven wrong in his ideas. Desmoulins was a close friend of Robespierre, but he decided to leave Robespierre and support Danton. He then wrote a journal that showed the ideas of Robespierre and showed how far from the original revolutionist ideas these had fallen. The journal was called le Vieux Cordelier and it was issued in three parts. The first two Robespierre agreed with, but in the third one things were written that showed the poor decisions Robespierre had made. He then arrested them and put them in prison. His actions had gone too far as he executed them with Danton's wife. After this incident he started to lose grip, and shut himself in his house not attending to committees or conventions. At this point his power source was at its end. People were not supporting him as they had been shown mistakes he had made and that he could not ignore and that he had now missed the point of the revolution and taken it too far. His actions were seen like the actions of a dictator and the people had now associated the image of a dictator with him.
Robespierre's rule started well and rose to a peek when he was the undisputed leader of the Jacobins, but it then fell apart when he pushed the terror and violence to a point were it was getting out of hand and when he was seen as being a new dictator which was exactly what the revolution had aimed to eliminate.
