The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris by Colin Jones
‘Je suis peuple moi-même,” Maximilien Robespierre claimed. In his many roles within the French Revolution he saw himself not simply as the representative of the people, but as their embodiment.
Known as “the Incorruptible”, he perceived no shades of gray. He lived, Colin Jones writes, “in a black-and-white world in which the pure, the morally upright and the patriotic heroically combat all manner of corrupt men and women”. His downfall came when he discovered that le peuple were not as perfect as he had imagined.
