Nasty subject, but...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of the history books I've read have ever really gone into this, but - presumably, as originally intended, the Thermidor plot was to have Robespierre and co. arrested, imprisoned, and then, presumably, put on trial before the Tribunal. Could they have seriously been confident in a conviction? Some accounts of the day suggest that the Robespierristes were reluctant to be 'freed' because it appears they reckoned a trial was a better option for them, Marat style. It would also have given Robespierre's supporters more time to organise. So, what were the plotters thinking? Just 'it's now or never and we'll work the next bit out when we come to it'? Any thoughts on this?

Another bit of unpleasantness on the same subject - I recently came across an account that suggests there wasn't any lead in the wound in Robespierre's jaw, i.e., that it was a shot from a pistol charged with gunpowder but no lead bullet: that would still cause a fair bit of damage, specially if fired into your mouth, which is the suicide method, but wouldn't smash your skull...sorry, I've had toothache all week so that's the sort of thing I've been wondering about!

Comments

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

The disconnect you mention between the bourgois deputies and the working class parisians is extremely important. Lenin said something to the effect of "the people need bread and justice, but there cannot be justice without bread" (sorry for my terrible paraphrase!) and I think the mistake many revolutionaries and radical reformers(Lenin included)have made is that they somehow combined the two in their rhetoric in a way that resulted in the political classes considering bread an abstraction and the poor expecting justice to bring bread. It's well discribed in Buchner's "Danton's Death" when one of the sans-culottes says something about how the politicians convinced us that killing the King would end our poverity, and then that death of the Girondins would do so, so now maybe killing Danton will do it. It's an over-simplification, of course, but it does illustrate the problem of letting political agendas be confused with basic needs, etc.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

There's another irony that Robespierre is brought on to the CPS to provide a connection with the Jacobins and sansculottes, but by spending his hours and energy there, rather than at the Jacobins, he loses touch at a vital time...(well, that's how I read some of autumn 1793, anyway!)