ROBERTSON 



ROBESPIERRE 



747 



See the short account of his life by Dugald Stewart ; 

 Carlyle's Autobiography; Brougham (a grand-nephew, 

 who, a boy of fifteen, had stood beside the historian's 

 grave ), Lira of Men of Letters of the Time of Geonie III. ; 

 auJ Lord Cockbur Ys Memorials of his Life and Times, 

 for an interesting sketch of his appearance and conver- 

 sation in his last years. 



Robertson, REV. WILLIAM BRUCE, D.D. 

 (born 24th May 1820, died 27th June 1886), always 

 called 'of Irvine' his first and only charge 

 was ordained to the United Presbyterian church 

 there in 1843. As a student he had spent many 

 hours with De Quincey, and largely owing to 

 liis advice had finished his theological course 

 at Halle, chiefly under Tholuck. Serious ill- 

 ness in 1871 incapacitated him from ever resum- 

 ing regular work. Between 1871 and 1878 he 

 was much in Italy. Thereafter he was able to 

 undertake occasional preaching, his sermons and 

 week-day lectures at Cambridge, 1879-81, being 

 the most memorable. Possessed of a strong sense 

 of humour, he could make it serve the highest ends, 

 or could pass at once without effort or jar to the 

 most solemn subjects. Gifted with a striking pres- 

 ence and a sonorous, well-regulated voice, Calvinist 

 in doctrine, but catholic in sympathy ; a staunch 

 Presbyterian, but with a keen eye to the artistic 

 Ijeauty of cathedrals ; an ardent admirer of Luther, 

 but a loving student of the liturgy and hymns of 

 the Roman Church ; a seer rather than a theologian, 

 he made music and painting, sculpture and archi- 

 tecture all minister by illustration and analogy to 

 the evangelical setting forth of the gospel and cross 

 of Christ. Unfortunately he published nothing 

 beyond a translation of the Dies Iras and one or 

 two sacred songs. 



For other poems and jottings of a few of his sermons, 

 see his Life, by Rev. James Brown, D.D. (1889); and 

 RaktrUon of Irvine, the Poet Preacher, by A. Guthrie 

 (1889). 



Robes MISTRESS OF THE. See HOUSEHOLD. 



Robespierre, MAXIMILIEN MARIE ISIDORE, 

 was born of a legal family, originally of Irish 

 origin, at Arras, 6th May 1758. His mother died 

 in 1767, his broken-hearted father two years later, 

 and the four children were brought up by their 

 maternal grandfather, an Arras brewer. Maxi- 

 milien, the eldest, early showed unusual promise, 

 and was educated at Arras and at the College 

 Louis-le-Grand at Paris, where Camille Desmoulins 

 was a fellow-student. He was admitted avocat in 

 1781, and next year was named criminal judge by 

 the bishop of Arras, but resigned bis place soon 

 after to avoid passing a sentence of death. AH 

 through life a fanatical devotee of the gospel 

 according to Rousseau, his sentimentality and 

 taste for verses made him popular among the 

 Rosati at Arras. He drew up the collier or list of 

 grievances for the guild of cobblers, and was 

 elected to the States-general in 1789 as one of 

 the deputies for the tiers etat of Artois. He 

 soon attached himself to the extreme Left the 

 ' thirty voices,' and though his first speeches excited 

 ridicule, it was not long before his earnestness and 

 his high-sounding phrases commanded attention. 

 'That young man believes what he says; he will 

 go far/said Mirabeau, forecasting his future with 

 the divination of genius. Indeed his influence 

 grew daily, both in the Jacobin Club and in the 

 Assembly, and thousands amongst the mob of 

 patriots outside became fanatical in their admira- 

 tion of his sincere cant and his boasted incorrupti- 

 bility. Three days after the death of Mirabeau he 

 called upon the Assembly to prevent any deputy 

 from taking office as minister for four years, and in 

 the following month (May 1791) carried the motion 

 that no member of the present Assembly should be 

 eligible for the next. This policy grew out of the 



narrow and acrid suspiciousness of his own nature, 

 and reveals the inherent meanness of his aims and 

 his failure to grasp that grand idea of real parlia- 

 mentary government by a responsible ministry, 

 which had been the dearest dream of Mirabeau. 

 Next followed Robespierre's appointment as public 

 accuser, the king's flight to Varennes (June 21st), 

 Lafayette's last effort to control the sacred right of 

 Insurrection on the Champ-de-Mars (17th July), 

 the abject terror of Robespierre, his sheltering him- 

 self in the house of Duplay, a carpenter, his hyster- 

 ical appeal to the Club, the theatrical oath taken 

 by every member to defend his life, and his beinjj 

 crowned with chaplets, along with Petion, and 

 carried home in triumph by the mob at the close 

 of the Constituent Assembly (30th September). 



After seven weeks of quiet he sold his small 

 patrimony and returned to Paris, to the house of 

 Duplay, where he remained to the last day of his 

 life. He was much beloved in the family, and 

 a passion quickly sprung up betwixt himself and 

 his host's eldest daughter Eleonore, a romantic girl 

 of twenty-five. His room was a humble chamber 

 in which he worked and slept ; its decorations, a 

 few busts and portraits of himself. Alone amongst 

 the patriots he was noted for the carefulness of his 

 dress, which never varied in the slightest powdered 

 hair, a bright blue coat, white waistcoat, short 

 yellow breeches, with white stockings and shoes with 

 silver buckles. Small and feeble in frame, solitary 

 and reserved in habits, he ever wore an anxious 

 look upon his straitened and spectacled face ; his 

 complexion was atrabilious, even verdCttre ; and he 

 retained to the last the sobriety of the cynic, drink- 

 ing only water. 



Meantime the Girondist party had been formed 

 in the new Legislative Assembly, its leaders the 

 loudest, Brissot eager for war. Robespierre, who 

 ever feared and disliked war, offered a strenuous 

 opposition in the debates of the Jacobin Club, and 

 sometimes, if seldom, in his endless and windy 

 harangues rose into the region of real eloquence. 

 Fundamentally an empty pedant, inflated with 

 words which he mistook for ideas, in his orations 

 he is ever riding in the air on theories, his foot 

 never on the solid ground of the practical. In 

 April 1792 he resigned his post of public prosecutor. 

 He was invisible during the crisis of the JOth 

 August, but he joined the H6tel-de-Ville faction, 

 and on the 16th August we find him presenting 

 to the Legislative Assembly its petition for a Revo- 

 lutionary Tribunal and a new Convention. It does 

 not appear, however, that he was in any sense 

 directly responsible for the atrocious September 

 massacres in the prisons, or more than a mere 

 accessory after the fact. For his reward he was 

 elected first deputy for Paris to the National Con- 

 vention, which opened on the 21st September. 

 The bitter attacks upon him by the Girondists 

 were renewed only to throw Robespierre into a 

 closer union with Danton and his party, but the 

 final struggle was interrupted for a little by the 

 momentous question of the king's trial. Robes- 

 pierre opposed vigorously the Girondist idea of a 

 special appeal to the people on the king's death, 

 and his execution (21st January 1793) opened up 

 the final stage of the struggle, which ended in a 

 complete triumph of the Jacobins on the 2d June 

 of the same year. The first Committee of Public 

 Safety a permanent Cabinet of Revolution 

 was decreed in April 1793, but Robespierre was 

 not elected till the 27th July. He was now for 

 the first time one of the actual rulers of France, 

 but it is open to question whether for the whole 

 twelve months from this time to the end he was 

 not merely the stalking-horse for the more resolute 

 party within the Twelve. His vaunted respect- 

 ability, his great popularity with the mob, and liis 



