The Rest Is History - 712. The Terror: The Fall of Robespierre (Part 6)

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Why did the Terror reach unprecedented levels of bloodshed in 1794? Who was running France by this point? And, how was Robespierre finally destroyed, and dragged to the guillotine by his former allies…?   Join Dominic and Tom as they reach the terrifying, climactic conclusion to their series on the Terror, as well as the French Revolution, with the gory execution of one of its most infamous players: Maximilien Robespierre.  Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠⁠restishistory.com⁠⁠. To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠⁠ _______ This episode is sponsored by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Try Claude for free today at http://Claude.ai/restishistory. _______ Advertise with us: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton  Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill   Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked. Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realizes, or rather everybody else realizes, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution

really goes well for ordinary people? So they asked over 100,000 people. And what came back wasn't just fear. There was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions. Ask yours at clodd.aI slash rest is history. And keep thinking. They call me a tyrant. If I were, they would crawl at my feet. I would stuff them with gold. I would give them the right to commit all the crimes they liked,

and they would thank me for it. What is the faction I belong to? It is you, yourselves. What is the faction that since the beginning of the revolution has struck down so many traitors, It is you. It is the people. This is the only faction to which I am devoted. Who am I? I who have been accused. Why, a slave of liberty, a living martyr of the Republic, both the victim and the enemy of crime. Men who know me are slandered. Other men's felonies are forgiven, but my zeal is treated as a crime. If you take away my conscience, I am the unhappiest of all men. I do not even enjoy the rights of a citizen.

I am not even allowed to fulfil the duties of a representative of the people. I was made to combat crime, not to govern it. The time has not yet come when good men can freely serve the fatherland. For as long as this horde of rogues is in control, the defenders of liberty will be outcasts. So that's a brilliant speech. Maximiliena Ropes-Pierre addressing the National Convention on 26th of July 1794. He's combating crime. He's defending the revolution.

He is sneering at the very suggestion that he's a tyrant. Of course he's not a tyrant. And yet, Dominic, you have written here a characteristically rambling, self-pitying speech. Yeah, it is a rambling and self-pitying speech. I've actually read the whole thing. You can find the whole thing online. and to try to find a bit for you to read was a Herculean undertaking

that probably took longer than preparing the notes for the episode because it's so wordy, so rambling, so self-indulgent his speech. Historians, I have to say, have given it an absolute pasting by and large. It is worse than a bad speech, as we will discover. It is a terrible political mistake by Rob Spieth.

Worse than a crime than mistake. Exactly. So, and what is more? This is his en voire to the French Revolution and to this podcast. This is the last speech he ever made. Well, as we will see, there was a later speech that he makes, but actually no one could hear what he was saying. Yeah, he didn't have any strepsels.

Exactly. So, ladies and gentlemen, we are at the climax of this series. This is the 24th episode of the French Revolution. Now, initially we did it in one. Yeah, we did. We did it in one 45-minute episode. And I think the average length of these episodes is about, what, four hours now? Twice as long as that episode.

Yeah, exactly. Back then it was kind of 40 minutes, wasn't it? So let's hope this isn't like the climax of Game of Thrones or something, that people say, it was poor, they threw it away and the wrong person won. So happily, the French Revolution, as it's commonly told, ends with a narrative banger. Like the fall of the Bastille, like the flight to Varen, like the murder of Mara, like the executions of Louis XVIth and Marianne Tuanette or the Fall of Dantan. It is a fantastic story and there is lots of narrative, drama, loads of twists.

What is interesting about this story is that we know more about what happened on the 26th and 27th of July 1794. There are almost any other points in the revolution. Because the people who ended up winning commissioned detailed reports from across Paris from all the different sections, which were the kind of neighbourhoods of Paris, as well as hundreds of different individual police reports. A great historian Colin Jones wrote a book a couple of years ago called The Fall of Hormspier based on all these reports reconstructing almost minute by minute the events of those two days. And yet, as he points out, the paradoxes, we know what people did, but we don't know what they said

or what they thought. And so much of this is a mystery because it happened behind closed doors. It happened. There were whispers in the shadows. And basically, as soon as it was all over, People started making up stuff about why they'd behaved as they did. They started inventing things. And the truth became obscured behind this kind of great fog of propaganda. But two things right at the beginning. Number one, what happens in today's episode is not inevitable. I don't think any historian thinks it's inevitable.

This is your classic case in history of a very dramatic event in which things could have turned out very differently. So often the way of political crises. And that's the genius of Colin Jones' book, isn't it? that he makes what is a very familiar story seem exciting, unexpected. You don't know what, as you turn the pages, you don't know what's going to happen. He has a nice, it's a very simple trick. But by telling it in the present tense, he gives it a sense of immediacy like Carlisle. Exactly.

The grand old man of British writers on the French Revolution. There was a sense in his book that the end is not yet written. The end is not predetermined, which is as it should be. The other thing I think which his book reinforces, this really is a story about individuals and individual decision making. It's actually so often in sort of textbooks about the French Revolution that you'll see the lines. You know, this couldn't last forever. There was inevitably going to be a backlash and when it came, Robespier Felt.

But actually, in this case, it becomes very clear. This is not about a backlash against the terror, or at least if there is a backlash against the terror, it's not the sole cause. There was a nice line, I thought, from a Montenier deputy called Mark Antoine Boudou, which probably sums the whole thing up. Bodo said, the struggle of the ninth of Thiermidor, which is the date attributed to this, was not a matter of principles. it was a matter of killing.

And we will see how true that is. I suppose an obvious point would be that accusing someone of having the wrong principles is an excellent way of killing them. Exactly so. So let's get straight into it. Let's set the scene. We're in Paris.

It is the 15th of June, 1794. It's a week after the festival of the supreme being and the reign of terror is at its height. So if you listen to the last episode, you will recall Tom describing the law of Preriel, which was passed five days ago on the 10th of June. And Prairieal created this new category of enemies of the people. So these are, if you mislead the people, if you spread false news,

you deprave public morals, you speak ill of the Republic, all of this. And these political criminals would be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal with no legal representation, no witnesses, no evidence, and there's no need for evidence. The jurors can rely on their consciences and their love of the fatherland. And if the verdict is guilty, then the only possible sentence is death. Now, at the time, there was a tiny bit of resistance in the convention, but Hobbesbier made the argument successfully that only people with something to hide

could possibly be against this law. D'Ago. Yeah. Fahor in that case. And what happens in the next few weeks is that the terror reaches unprecedented levels. Now, onto the centralisation agenda, which has always been a huge part of the terror,

all suspects in the provinces are now being brought to Paris to be tried and guillotined. Probably as a result of that, the conviction rate rises from 50% to 80% and the rate of killing rises tenfold. This is very deliberate. One prosecutor says at the time, with this new law,

we will purge the prisons in a single blow and ridge the soil of liberty of this garbage, these dregs of humanity. And so in the seven weeks after the 10th of June, so that's between the 10th of June and 27th of July, and that's based on the period of today's episode, about 1,400 people are guillotines. So that's more thin in the whole of the previous 14 months.

So the law of Prairieal, if you're a Rob Speer is really working. And some of the victims, I mean, the victims include some people we've talked about in the podcast. So, for example, the lawyer who defended Louis XVI. Melserb, I remember you, you were quite a fan of his, weren't you, Tom? Well, he's very widely admired. I mean, he's seen almost as a kind of conscience of the early stages of the revolution.

So to lose him is really quite something. People who like science, Francis Greatest Chemist, Antoine Lavoisier. He's for the chop as well. If you like poetry, Francis Greatest, It's poet André Chigny. He's also guillotined. As are, of course, hundreds of ordinary men and women, as one historian puts it, who had muttered too loudly about the price of bread.

And to revolutionary behavior. So that summer, so many people are killed that there is a problem with the guillotine. The guillotine, as we described last time, for the festival of the supreme being, it had been moved away. It had been moved to from Plaster la Revolution to Place de la Bastille. But at the Plastel de Bastille, the shopkeepers complain that this is bad for business. They don't like the tumbrills rattling.

and they definitely don't like the guillotine. They don't like the pools of blood in the square and they don't like the rotting bodies, especially in the summer heat. So on the 14th of June, the government moved the guillotine out of the city, well, they moved it basically into the suburbs to a square on the edge of the city to the east beyond the walls.

But Dominic, just to say that it will be brought back to the Place de la Revolution about six weeks for reasons that we will be coming to. Exactly right. Now, even at this point, there are people who say this has definitely gone too far now. There's a Republican bookseller called Nicola Rueau. I think we've quoted him a few times in earlier series.

He's often quoted in histories of the revolution because he's such a great source. He wrote letters to his brother. He wrote loads of letters to his brother about what was going on in Paris. And he said, our leaders are now making themselves hated because of the horror. No citizen can be sure that he will be alive in two days' time. So talking of the leaders, let's focus in on them. And let's, if you imagine, if the rest of history were an HBO series or a film, there's one day, surely it will be.

The camera is swooping over Paris and it zeroes in on one building in particular in one room in that building. And the building is the royal palace of the Twiliery and the room is in what were once Marie Antoinette's apartments. So if you imagine the camera swooping in, we're in a room with rich carpets, tapestries on the walls, this big chandelier. And in the middle is a huge oval table, which is covered with green bays, like a kind of snooker table. And the table is piled with papers. and there are 10 men around the table and these are the members of the Committee of Public Safety. Now, by law, there are meant to be 12.

One of them, a guy called Ereux de Cichel, was guillotined for corruption when Danton fell. Another one, the youngest member, man we've talked about Aloufébert, Louis-Ontoine de Saint-Just. He is away in what's now Belgium, visiting the army. He's having a lovely time, very jolly.

He is having a good time. When it's going well, as we will discover. Now, of the others, these are the men who are running France in the summer of 1794. And very roughly, you can divide them into three groups. On one side, you have Robespierre and his friends. So that's Robespierre, Saint-Jus, the Archangel of Terror or Archangel of Death,

and their friend, Georges Couton, who's the bloke, who's been too much sex. Yeah, he's in a wheelchair. He says he's been having too much fun. I think historians generally think there are other reasons. To the public, these three men, Robespier, St. Just and Couton, are the faces of the Committee of Public Safety. they are the spokesmen for the terror, the champions of the terror. And that's actually how lots of sort of popular histories treat them to this day.

Then you have the men who actually make things work. The technocrats, the bureaucrats who know how the machine works and are basically in charge of it. So three of them in particular, there is a guy called Lazar Garneau, who was a mathematician and military engineer. He's effectively the minister of war. He's the guy who's in charge of the army. There is a guy called Claude Antoine, Pran. another military engineer. He's the Minister of Munitions. And a guy called Robert Lindy, who's the oldest member of the committee. He's a lawyer. And he is, you might call him the

Minister of Supply. He's in charge of food supplies, the economy, infrastructure, all that. So you've got Robespier & Co. You've got the technocrats. And then there's a more radical group who, if you're doing it left and right, would be on Robespier's left. And in particular, two friends, very important players in this story. There's a guy called Jean-Marie Colley Colour. Colo de'Ebois, he was called. So Colo used to be an actor and a theatre director, and he still has very dramatic kind of mannerisms, and it's got a sort of slightly lovely style to him.

And then there's a lawyer who's a great friend of his called Jacques Nicola, Bio Verene. Bio was a lawyer. These two guys, Collo and Bio, were economic radicals. They were appointed initially to please the Sonsculotte, the masses on the streets. They were big fans of the terror. Kolo had in fact been involved with the massacres in Lyon.

So he's got a lot of blood on his record. Both of them are atheists. Now, last time we talked about the tension between Robespierre and the atheists. These guys, Kolo and B.O, are very keen on the de-Christianisation campaign. They are not impressed by Rob Spier's enthusiasm for the supreme being, which they regard as bonkers. And in recent months, Kolo and Bio have become increasingly close to one other person we should talk about on the committee, who is called Bernard Barreier. He's the guy who proposed

demolishing all the royal iconography in San Deney. Exactly. Absolute trimmer. Barre is the longest serving member of the committee. He's a fixer. He's the sort of Peter Mandelson figure, I suppose, isn't he? He's an operator. But unlike Peter Mandelson, he's a survivor.

Yes, yes. He doesn't keep having to resign in disgrace. He is the oldest living surviving member of the... He dies in kind of 1883 or something. Yeah. Yeah. He advised Chard of Gaul in 1940. Yeah.

He's the eternal advisor. He's probably there advising Macro now. So Barreire has become close to Kolo and Buro, the two radicals. In terms of what they actually do, these guys. Their workload is intense. The only thing I think it possibly compares to is producing a history podcast. Wow, they must be shattered. Yeah, they're exhausted.

On average, the Committee of Public Safety send out between 800 and 900 letters and decrees every day, and each decree requires multiple. signatures. Some of them start work at 7 o'clock in the morning. They work all morning. Then they go to the convention in the afternoon for the debates. Some of them will go to the Jacaband Club to listen to the speeches in the evening. Others will just go straight back to work at the Committee of Public Safety's Room in the Twiliery. By 10 o'clock in the evening, most of them are back at the table doing their paperwork. They'll often work until two or three in the morning. And some of them, they're working so hard, they don't even bother going home. They just sleep in kind of makeshift camp beds

that are put up in the committee room. So the fact that the guys who are basically running the French Revolution are getting by on three-hour sleep is perhaps an understated factor, the lunacy of what's going on. Exactly. I mean, they are fraught. This is why they keep having nervous breakdowns, physical collapses and so on and so forth. But who actually is doing all of this work?

I mean, this is a key part of the story. We actually have, I think, 608 surviving Committee of Public Safety orders from May and June from the month of Praireale, as it was called. And 90% of these were drafted by the three technocrats, by Kano, Linde, and Priya. So these are the guys who are basically running the war effort and they are working effectively with a couple of hours sleep here,

a couple of our sleep there, and they're just constantly replying to letters, writing orders and all this. Also very hardworking are the radicals, Bio and Kolo. We know this from the records. They are always there. They're very regular.

They do loads of signatures on the papers, and they're handling a lot of the boring, routine correspondence. Now, now, Maximilio, Robespierre. A slightly different story. He only drafted 14 degrees of these 608 and his mate Couton only drafted eight. Saint-Just is a bit of a no-go because he's, of course, away with the army. So you can't really blame him. So these guys are not really doing the heavy lifting. Now, it's true that Robespier is a way a lot because of ill health, but as Colin Jones says, actually even before that, he wasn't really pulling his weight. He has provided the soundtrack but his actual input has been minimal.

There are a few people listen to this who have not worked with somebody like that who does a lot of, you know, he seems very enthusiastic in meetings or whatever, but actually when it comes to the heavy lifting, they're nowhere to be seen. Given how little sleep they've got and the pressure they're under, it's not surprising that cracks have emerged. So the tentocrats are basically drowning in paperwork. They are sick of the factional squabbles. They are exhausted of Rob Spier's lectures about virtue,

and they are baffled and bored by the cult of. of the Supreme Being. So when they're forced to troop along to the cult of the supreme being, they're like, I have so much work to do. How long do I have to stay on this Papiameshae Mountain? Is it urgent? Exactly. And they have become increasingly arrestive in recent months.

So when the arrest warrant was drawn up for d'Anton, Robert Linde refused to sign it. Kano has had these blazing rouse with Robespier and St. St.Sius. At one point, he called them ridiculous dictators. Now, anybody else who did this would risk heading to the guillotine. But these guys are so essential to the war effort and to the machine, they are effectively untouchable. You know, within reason, they can say what they like.

The other people who are sick of Robespierre are Kolo and Biuvarin. And for them, I think it's not so much political. Although there is the issue about atheism and de-Christianization, a lot of this is personal. They find Robespier haughty and sanctimonious. He clearly doesn't like them and doesn't trust them. And Bio really hates Robespier. So when Robespier comes into the room,

Bio will fall silent, he will sort of sulk. and brood and he kind of mutters under his breath while Rob Spierre is talking. Now, I said it was the 15th of June. They've got a meeting today, and it's going to be especially tense. Everyone knows that because they've got a joint meeting in the diary with the Committee of General Security, which is the other big committee. It runs the police and the Revolutionary Tribunal.

And on this committee, General Security, the two dominant figures are called Mark Guillaume Vadier and Andre Amar. And Vadier and Amar, effectively secret policemen, are very keen on the terror. They are very keen on the de-Christianisation campaign, and they were very scornful of the festival of the Supreme Being. They have no time for it at all. And just generally, the Committee of General Security has become very resentful in recent months.

They feel that the Committee of Public Safety are taking over a lot of their powers and responsibilities, that they're treating them as underlings, not as equals, and Robespier and Sanss have even set up their own independent police bureau, reporting directly to them, which the General Security people are. not happy. It's your classic kind of FBI-C-I-C-I-Turf war. But today, when they come in, Vadier and Amar seem very pleased with themselves. And Vadier says, well, I've got a long report to present. And he starts reading his house and he says, there is a new conspiracy threatening the republic. My agents have uncovered an eccentric old woman called Catherine Teu, who lives

in the Latin quarter. This woman, Teo, for years, claimed that she was the mother of God. It was unclear whether she was a separate mother of God or whether she was the Virgin Mary in some form. Just to be clear, she is 80. Yes, exactly. So it would be a miracle. It would be a miracle. So for years before the revolution, she was held in the Sulpetriere Hospital. She was let out. She's now been hanging around of the Latin Quarter and she's been saying that she is about to give birth to a new Messiah and that Robespierre is his prophet. And this woman, Teo, has a small following. A few kind of semi-aristocratic women, but mostly poor local women from the neighbourhood. Some of these women are informants for the Committee of General Security.

I think what is pretty clear is that Vadier is hoping to use this against Robespierre. He is probably planning to forge correspondence or to coerce witnesses to state that Robespierre put this Katowintio up to it, that he is using this in order to get himself named as the son of God. This is such a kind of ludicrous expedient. It illustrates just how incorruptible Robespierre. is that they're reduced to peddling it. If you think that Dantan was in that situation, there'd be no problem in finding some murky example of corruption.

But they just haven't got anything on Robespier. Having to make mad stuff up, exactly. And when Robespier hears this, of course, Robespier has no sense of humour. I think an important element, actually, the story we're going to be telling. Robespier has no sense of humour. Somebody else could have laughed it off or made a joke about it.

Robespier is very offended. He's furious, in fact. And it's clear to him that since this comes just a week after the festival of the supreme being, which you described as the happiest moment of his life. He's really offended by the... He's outraged. They have a massive argument. Vadier says, I would like to open a case against Catea in the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Let's have this out in open court. And Robespier goes mad. And he says to all the other people on the committees, this is insane. You have to block this. Robespier wins. They do block it. But the mood is very bitter. From that day, relations between the two committees are pretty close to breaking down completely.

And what is particularly offensive to Robespier is that the two radical atheists on his own committee, Colo and Bio, sided with Vardier, so this is something he will not forget in a hurry. So two weeks go by, if we fast forward to the 29th of June. On the 29th of June, St. Jus returns to Paris. And he is coming in the wake of incredible news. I mean, literally, bombshell news.

Three days earlier, at a village called Flourouse, near Chalois in Belgium, The French army under General Jordan has fought this big battle against the Austrians under the Prince of Coburg and the French won a big victory. This is a great victory for their new citizen army, for their new guns that the manufacturers

have been working so hard to make. And actually for their new technology, this is the first battle in history that used aerial observation in the form of a hot air balloon. Brilliant fact. So they sent people up in a hot air balloon. They could see where the Austrians were.

Massive result for the French. In fact, such a massive. result. The Austrians decide the low countries are lost and they're going to pull out of the low countries. So with this win, basically two things. The road to Amsterdam is open, so the French are going to take over the Netherlands as well as Belgium. But also it is clear now the France is not going to lose this war. The war of the first coalition is called. Yeah, the war is not over, but it will end on terms favourable to the French at some point. That is clear they're not going to be invaded. So whether you need the terror, it's an interesting question. Anyway, so,

San Jose's come back, he goes straight to the committee of public safety. When he walks in, he's horrified by what he finds, because they're in the middle of another ferocious argument, Robespier and some of the others. We don't know what the argument was about. It was probably still about this Katowinteyo business. At one point, Kolo and Bio shout at Robespier, and they call him a dictator.

And the technocrat, Linday, also shouts at Robsby, and he shouts, the nation is not just one man. You know, so effectively, they are sick of him, and they're sick of his talk of virtue and they're sick of him talking as though his own personal fortunes and those of the Republic are identical, I suppose. I mean, that is a trend in his thinking, isn't it?

He's kind of done that all his life. Exactly. Robespier is shaking with anger and he storms out and he is followed by a horrified St.Just. And after this, Robespier is so outraged that he stays away from both the committee and the convention for the next six weeks. And so he is not hunting after his enemies.

He's not kind of going after Foucher or whatever. He is at home, the house of the DuPlaix family, licking his wounds and thinking. And what he's thinking, we don't know. Colin Jones in his book, I think most historians think this. What Rob's fair is probably thinking is that the Committee of Public Safety have unfortunately let him and France down, that they are probably infected by the same corruption, possibly the same taint of treachery, that Dantan and Ebert and so many people before were infected by. And there's only one way to deal with infection like that.

Yeah, cut it out. Exactly. The, what was it, the National Razor? Shaved by the National Razor. And the author we've talked about a lot, R.R. Palmer in his book 12, who ruled, is very good on the optics of this. That Robespier cannot see that, quote, by sitting virtuously at home or making self-righteous speeches at the Jacoban Club,

he reduced himself in the eyes of, men who continue to bear the burden of office. I mean, here's a way to think about it. Imagine you're part of a committee, a group of people who had so much work to do under so much pressure. And one of your number decides he's going to go off home for six weeks, and he will surface occasionally to make speeches accusing you in a sort of failed way of letting everybody down. But he's not actually going to do any of the work himself. This is what a lot of the people on the Committee of Public Safety start to think. And of course, to the public, it looks as though Rob's fear of setting. himself against the government of which he is a part.

That basically he's an individual separate from the convention and the committees, which is a very, very dangerous role, I think, to try to play. Anyway, do you know who this reminds me of actually Tony Ben in the 1970s? It's exactly what Tony Ben did. I'm not the first person to make that comparison, so don't give me any credit. I was going to give you credit, and now I feel that I've been tricked. You have been tricked? I worked hard.

connived at that and I've got the results I wanted. You didn't have to tell me that. I would have just sat here thinking how brilliant you are. And now it's all crumbled to dust. Yeah, but it would have been hollow. It would have been inauthentic. It would have been meaningless. I wouldn't have taken any pleasure in it. Now, Robespierre going away for six weeks, what makes this so dangerous is that he does have enemies in the convention. So just on the convention. Convention in theory has 749 members, but it's been purged. And a lot of them have gone away as deputies on mission. So it's often half empty.

Of the members, 200 of them are Montagnar. They're the kind of governing faction. Most of them, however, just are in the centre, they're sort of woolly. They're hanging around. And it's a classic case, familiar to anybody who knows anything about like student politics or something, of a very fanatical, organised minority, imposing their will on a majority who don't really care as much as they do. But the mood in the convention is very anxious at this point. So late June, early July 1794.

There are rumours that Rob Spierre is planning another purge of deputies. There are a lot of deputies who have taken the odd bribe here or there. They got involved in the de-Christianisation campaign. They went out to the provinces and they might have overstepped the mark a little bit by killing some priests. Mowing people down with grape shot. Exactly. Talking of which, we met one of these last time. So the world's most ruthless physics teacher, Joseph Fouchet.

Foucher, as we heard last time, has offended Robespierre on multiple levels, slaughtering thousands of people with cannons, attacking churches, he's very corrupt, he has been rude about the festival of the Supreme Being, and he stood for the presidency of the Jacoban Club and actually won it to Robespier's horror. Robespier then had him kicked out, didn't he? But Fusha is determined that he's going to, if he's going to go down, he's going to go down fighting.

And so Fusha has been going around in the early summer of 1794, saying to people, other deputies, Do you know, Rob Spare has got this list of people he's going to purge? A little list. Yeah, I think you're on it, actually. How do you feel about that? So Foucher is very good at politics. Whether Rob Spier is good at politics has been an interesting grey area.

Foucher is exceedingly good at politics. Now, there's another man, probably on Robespier's list, who's also very good at politics. He is a deputy who'd been at the recapture of Toulon. Recaptured it, of course, from the British, which is unfortunate. This guy's called Paul Barras. he has been also accused to going too far of having rather let himself down

with some mass executions and Barras is going to be a massive figure in the politics of the late 1790s in part because he has made friends with a certain young Corsican an artillery officer an artillery officer who catches scabies doesn't he

in the course of the siege and Barras and this corsican artillery officer will in due course share a mistress or at least Barras will give this bloke's mistress would this mistress be called Josephine Josephine, poor teeth. Yes.

There's Barras, there's Foucher, and there's even more significant for Astoria, third person who's probably on Robespier's list. This is a young man, and he's called Jean-Lombard Tallion. Talion is 27. He used to be a printer. He was very big in the Paris Commune. He was a mate of Dantan.

He was a radical deputy. And in late 1793, he was sent to Bordeaux to establish the terror in Bordeaux. And he got stuck in. He loved it. He was very zealous in feeding the guillotine. But then... Cupid's arrow struck.

He fell in love with this Spanish-born woman who'd married a local aristocrat. She's rich, she's very sexy. Her name is Teresa de Cabarousse. And she was said to bathe in strawberry juice. She's a hot dollar. Yeah, I think that would be sticky, personally. You have to have someone to lick it off.

Surely. And that man is dallying. Yeah. So they started an affair. He lost interest in the guillotine once he met, Theresa and has become lax in his duties. So he's gone from one extreme to the other. He was guillotining people left right and centre.

He met Theresa and then he said, oh, well, actually forget that. I found something much more fun. He was summoned back to Paris. She followed him. Robespierre had her arrested and she is now in the prison of La Force. She is facing trial as an aristote and probable execution. And she has been sending Tallien, her lover, increasingly desperate letters. To quote one, she says, I had a dream in which Robespier no longer exists.

and the prisons were open. But thanks to your obvious cowardice, there will soon be no one left in France capable of making my dream come true. Are you a man or not? She's a spitfire. She is. She's tremendous,

and she's obviously playing a lot on Talion's mind. On the other hand, Talion is very frightened for his life. He knows that Robespier thinks it's corrupt. Of course, he did used to be a friend of Dantans. Robespierre has kicked him out of the Jacquemain club as well. And Talion has been tailed by the secret police,

which he knows. So these men, Fuché, Barras, Tallien, form a little kind of anti-Robspeer alliance. Are they an organised conspiracy with a blueprint to bring him down? Not really. Probably they're all trying to save themselves. They are whispering to other deputies. But I don't think they had a very clear plan of what they were going to do. There is a market for anti-Robspeer sentiment.

There are a lot of deputies who think, you know, Robespier does like purging people. And I'm not perfect. You know, I haven't been squeaky clean. I've probably dabbled and with the freebie. brown envelopes. I've probably executed a few people just for the fun of it. I don't want to be the next d'enton. So that's the convention. And we should just say a word about the public as well. What do the people of Paris think? Well, actually, the committees are not terribly popular in June 1794. And the first reason actually paradoxically goes back to that military victory at Flores.

So when the news of the battle broke, people in Paris were understandably delighted. You know, brilliant. We're actually winning some battles. And they organise these big street parties, evening street parties, everyone would bring their own food and drink and they would toast their army and the Republic and all this kind of thing. And you would think the Committee of Public Safety would love this. But actually the Committee of Public Safety down like this at all. Why are people organising themselves without our approval?

Without us saying, without following the rules, what's going on? Without having followed the rules, they're having fun and what is worse. The different classes are mixing freely. The working classes, better off people. And they're talking about peace and looking forward to peace. this is very not on brand. The Committee of Public Safety actually sent Bernard Barre, the Fixer,

to denounce the street parties and the convention. He said, fraternity does not consist of meals in the streets. There can be nothing in common between the opulent egoist who sighs for inequality in kings and the son culot who loves only the Republican equality. These people should not be sitting together at trestle tables

eating coronation chicken sandwiches. This is an outrage. They're like all those councils that ban jubilee celebrations. Exactly. what it is. So the street parties have been banned as counter-revolutionary, which is absolutely bonkers, but even more significant, is the thing that kicked off the revolution in the first place. And if people remember, what really kicked off the French Revolution was the price of bread. Now, they've got this paper money, the Assigneur, and that's been tanking again. The

shops are running out of food. The bread prices have gone up. There's been a wave of strikes and protests in Paris by the artisans who have always been the driving force of the revolution, pushed by the Committee of Public Safety. The government of Paris, the municipal government, which is called the Commune, has been cracking down on public discontent. So they've been suppressing strikes. They've been enforcing wage controls. They've been banning meetings of the local section assemblies.

In fact, they've got a load of pottery workers who wanted higher pay, and these pottery workers are going to be hauled before the Revolutionary Tribunal as an example to the others. And what is worse, the Committee of Public Safety, to deal with this, inflation have drawn up what they call a wage maximum, basically wage controls. And this is going to come into effect in Paris towards the end of July. How many people is that going to affect? Oh, everybody.

It's going to affect, you know, it's a cap on wages. It's going to affect a lot. If you're a carpenter, your daily pay is about to be cut by half. If you're a blacksmith working in these big arms factories they've set up, your pay is going to be cut effectively by two-thirds, your living standards. On the streets, there is not much love for the commune or in the market. indeed for the committees. Now that said, if you're a smart politician, you can capitalize on this. It's not as though these people are desperate to jump into bed with Rob Spier's opponents. By and

large, they don't really know who Robespier's opponents are. At any given point in history, most people have never heard of half of the politicians who think they're terribly important. Clearly, there is a sense of discontent here, but if Robespier plays his cards right, he can exploit that and turn that against some of his enemies. So this wage maximum is due to come into effect on the 23rd of July. And that same day, Rob Spierreux returns to the Committee of Public Safety for the first time in six weeks. And his colleague, Barreier, the great trimmer, has been saying to people, come on, there's

been too much squabbling. Let's all come together. And let's advertise our unity to the world. So Rob Spier comes back, sort of all, everyone's a bit sheepish. Saint-Just greets him, says it's brilliant to have the martyr of liberty back with us. And Rob Spier, as is his want, gives this incredibly self-pitying speech. He says, well, I've been for you. thinking about the revolution. You've also been bitching about me behind my back. Don't think I don't

know what you've been doing. Some of them are clearly not really that pleased to see him like Karno and the bureaucrats, but the radicals, Kolo and Bio, try to reassure him. They say to him, we're your friend, we've come so far together. Come on, let bygones be bygones. And they agree that in four days' time, so on the 27th, San Jus will give a big speech in the convention and unveil a big report on the situation facing France. He will reassure the convention, your two committees are united, they're working together, we're going to win the war and build a better world. But the very next evening, which is July the 24th, there is a very bad sign for the people who want unity. Robespierre and Couton in his wheelchair go to the Jacquemann Club.

Couton sort of wheels himself up to the front and he gives a blazing speech attacking the Committee of General Security. He says they're out of control, these policemen, they're making corrupt and arbitrary decisions something has to change. He says there are people among us, so-called comrades, whose hands are full of riches and who reek with the blood of their innocent victims, impure individuals who seek to corrupt public morality

and to build a throne of crime on the tomb of virtue. Now what Couton doesn't actually say, these people who clearly have not been obeying the rules, he doesn't say who they are. It could be Foucher in Tallien, could be Vadier and Amar and the Committee of General Security, could be the bureaucrats, Kano and Linde, could be Kolo and Bueuveren.

Could be all of them. Could be all of them, right? Could be anybody. So no one knows. Meanwhile, Chubbsbier, unbeknown to a lot of these people, has actually been working on a big speech of his own. It's the speech, Tom, that you regard as an absolute banger, and everybody else regards us rambling and self-pitying.

He is going to come back to the convention, where he hasn't been for weeks. He's going to come back with a bang. And that moment is scheduled for the 26th of July, two days later. It's a key turning point in this story and it proves to be one of the most dramatic twists in French history. Well, I don't know about you, ladies and gentlemen, but I am massively looking forward to hearing more about this sensational speech and to finding out how it secures Robsb-Pierre and Command of the French Revolution for the next decade. So don't miss it. This episode is supported by Anne.

Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps, many of them started as hard questions that people didn't want asked. Yeah, there's a classic example of that, Tom, at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus, great pioneering voyage of discovery, and it is, of course, the Americas.

So, Anthropic knows the importance of questions, and it's why Anthropic is founded on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people? Anthropic asked 100,000 people. And what came back wasn't just fear. There was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions.

Ask yours at clod.a.ai slash rest is history. And keep thinking. The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess a prime minister. With high confidence, it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex.

Got an ask. yourself, you want to play, or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing! We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, and disseminated into an operation order, or Fraggo. A Fraggo that says to kill the president of Russia.

Yes. New from Goulheimer. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy. An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. Devised as a technically rigorous, geopolitical action thriller. We have two-times-friendly key-a-eat.

Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Rest is in. history where it is the 26th of July 1794 or it's some mad revolutionary date which I can't work out. We are in Paris, of course, and we're in the old court theatre, the Sal Demichin of the

Twilery Palace, which is now the venue for the National Convention. And it is obviously a very theatrical setup. You've got a wooden stage structure with chairs for the president and for clerks and it's adorned with captured enemy flags, speakers Rostrum. You've got that Ark of the Covenant, haven't you, with the, with the Constitution inside there. And looking down to it, you've got bank seating for 749 deputies, and you've got public galleries for almost 1,500 spectators. And in the chair is the radical atheist Kolo from the Committee for Public Safety.

And Dominic, he is not a Robespierre fan, is he? We've established this. and will this have any significance in the proceedings that are to follow? It may well do. Because Robespierre has come here, hasn't he, to give a speech, this banger of a speech. Yeah. So, as you say, a very theatrical setting, Collo, a former actor is perhaps a little trace of makeup on his features, a little flourish as he sits down in the president's chair.

And he's not a Robespierre fan because Collo is a very keen atheist, not a fan of the supreme being, among other things. I call Robespierre. Exactly. In the Dantant film, the Jeeratapagio film, there was a guy who I assume is meant to be Collo, who is absolutely chewing the scenery. He's made up like a clown or something.

Brilliant. Anyway, so Robespierre stands to deliver this tremendous banger of a speech. It's two hours long, and it is absolute textbook Robespierre, bingo. So loads of virtue and loads of terror. which he describes as the thunderbolt of retribution launched by the hand of liberty. I always thought to like.

I mean, the thing about the French Revolution, the French Revolutionary rhetoric is terrible metaphors. What did we have a second ago? On Couton? The throne of virtue on the blood of traitors or something. Anyway. So Rob Spierre, I mean, people have heard this now a thousand times. But there are a couple of things worth noting about this speech,

which I know you love. Even by Robert Speer's own standards, this speech is crazily self-pitying. So he says, you know, I'm the martyr of liberty. If it weren't from my conscience, I should be the unhappiest man alive. As he goes on, you know, as he enters the sort of 27th hour of the speech, it's obvious how suspicious and paranoid he really is. He has not a good word to say about anybody, only these veiled and sometimes not so veiled criticisms. Again and again, he talks about the criminal conspiracy facing the Republic. He says there

are monsters in our midst. He points a finger at the convention's finance committee, which, you know, has been not part of this story at all in all the episodes we've done, because they've just been doing stuff with debt, public debt. He says the finance committee is a sink of corruption. He's probably not wrong, though, is he? There's a little bit of corruption, I think, but actually, To be fair, I think the Finance Committee have done quite a good job. Yeah, okay. As I'll explain in the second. The Committee of General Security, the secret police, he says they've been infiltrated by

aristocrats and criminals. Even the Committee of Public Safety are no longer doing their job properly. So my colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety, they spend more time criticizing me than they do fighting the enemy within. And at the end of his speech, this very sort of, this very almost tear-stained rhetoric that people love in the 1790s, he says, People have accused me of wanting to be a dictator. But how can they criticise me?

How can they object to a man like me? Who wants to tell the truth and is willing to die for it? How can they object to a reasonable man who knows how to die for his country? How indeed? Well, what's Robespier thinking with this speech? So Colin Jones has great analysis of this. He basically says,

Rob Spier has been in the DuPlaid's house, shut up in his bedroom for six weeks and he's been brooding about all the slights and the criticisms and he has come to the conclusion struck him like a revelation that all along he's been even more right than he thought

what a brilliant conclusion to come to yeah it's a conclusion that so often strikes me actually yeah um god I'm actually even better and wiser than I imagined so Rob's fear thinks the Republic of Virtue, it's not too far away now. You know, we've won that battle. The Revolt in the Vonde has been defeated.

You know, Leon has been brought back into the fold. But of course, that means that our enemies, you know, they will stop and nothing now. Their conspiracy must be reaching its absolute peak. So this is not the time to relax. It's time to intensify the terror. Let's double down to get to the promised land. Because compromise is corruption. and compromises corruption completely.

So what he's looking to do with this speech, I think, is to establish the ground for, in a few weeks, a purge of the convention, he would probably have thought to use the Sonsculotte, the commune, the municipal government, to do that much as he had done against the Gendar a year before. And this is, I think, what most of his listeners thought. So the very first professional historian in France

to write about the revolution was called Alphonse Olaar. And he had this wonderful line that, for all the talk of martyrdom, Robespierter, his listeners, sounded less like a man determined to die for the cause than a man who wanted to kill for it. But his great mistake, same as Couton at the club before the break, he's made some very vague threats

and allegations about monsters and conspirators and stuff, but he hasn't really named many names. He hasn't said who he's talking about. What if he had? I think it could have worked. I think if he had picked on a couple of people, that everybody, and prepared the ground, as a politician does. Foucher, Tallien.

You're picking off the stragglers. Yeah. If he could bring down Ebert and d'Anton. I mean, it's a question about how often you can, of course, pull off the same trick. But if you'd got an organized support, if it appears that you have bayonets behind you and the streets behind you, you know, are that many people who are going to go to the guillotine to defend Foucher or Talion or whoever? Well, not if the risk of standing up for them is that you then become an object of suspicion yourself. Yeah.

I mean, as we'll see in the next half hour or so, you know, there are moments in parliaments or in assemblies or whatever where the outcome is uncertain and people could jump one way or another and they make individual decisions on the spur of the moment based on who they think is going to win. And that's going to happen this time. But actually the way that Robespier has done this by not naming names, everybody in the convention thinks, well, could it be me? And instead of intimidating them into silence, he's actually scaring them into answering back. So the classic example is the guy who was the head of the convention's finance committee. And he was somebody who actually Robespier did name. I mean, this was mad from Robespier, such a mistake. He names this guy, Pierre Joseph Combon, his name is.

Comborne, who's just been sitting on the sidelines throughout, it's like, what, me? He can't believe he's being dragged into this. Combon was a businessman from Montpellier, a Protestant businessman, actually, rich businessman. He'd come in, he'd said, I'll sort out France's national debt, he's been doing it, everyone thinks he's brilliant at this job, he's got no enemies, he's not even that corrupt, he's respected on every side of the sort of political spectrum, and now when he's his robespair's slacking him off, He's like what? And he goes and he demands the Rostrum and he says, this is absolutely outrageous that my committee are being dragged into this by Robespierre.

It is time to tell the truth. One man is paralysing the will of the convention. And that man has just been speaking. It is Robespierre. Blimey. For somebody who is not, you know, in the sort of in the thick of the factional struggle to be doing this is quite a big moment. So he's like the little boy saying the emperor has no clothes, to a degree? A little bit, yeah, I think he is. There is unexpectedly enthusiastic applause at this, and some of Robespier's enemies in the committees think, oh. So, Bio gets up from the Committee of Public Safety.

And he says to Robespier, he says, well, if Robespier had bothered to turn up for the last six weeks and actually do some work, he would know better than to make so many wild allegations. And then Vadier and Amar from the Committee of General Security, they pile in as well. it's disgraceful for Robespier to make these allegations against people on the committee without naming them and without giving them

the right of reply. So there's a big argument and eventually they agree that very unusually the convention will not immediately print Robespier's speech

and have copies sent out to all the different communes across the country because it's too contentious. So they will be denied this banger of a speech? Yes. Exactly. Imagine that was a, what a fun evening that would be for somebody else to be reading

out Robespier's speech to you, your local jacobank club. Come children, gather around. I have to read it. So Robespierre is very shaken and shocked by this. One deputy said afterwards he saw him slumped in his chair muttering darkly to himself in a rage. I'm lost, I'm lost, all this kind of thing. Now that evening, of course the jacquemang club are meeting as they always do. And they meet in Rousseau. Santonore, which is just down the road, right in the centre of Paris. It's just down from Robespierre's house. And Robespierre turns up and he says, you know, fellow club members, I'm among friends. I'd actually like to read my speech to you if that's okay. And Collo, the actor, he's already heard it once. He's like, what? Are you joking? And

Collo says, no, it's too divisive. You're not reading the speech. And Robespier says very coldly, we can all see who's afraid of being unmasked in the presence of the people. And the crowd say, yes, yes, we want to hear the speech. Sir Robspere gives the speech, and at the end there are huge cheers. And at that point, Robespier's great friend, Couton, says, I want to speak too, and he is carried to the Rostrum, of course, because he's paralyzed. Couton says, citizens, I'm convinced of the facts that Robespier has enunciated. We are witnessing the deepest of all conspiracies yet.

Yes, there are pure men in the committees of government, but it's certain there are villains as well. And he points very dramatically at Kolo and Bio. He says, we shall see the conspirators at this rostrum. We shall examine them. We shall catch them out. They will grow pale in their presence of the people. They shall be convicted and they shall perish. And everyone's shouting and whooping and they're pointing and screaming at Kolo and Bio. Al-a-Giludin.

Al-Giludin. Basically, it's a lynch mob. And Kolo and Bio have to run for the exit. They leave the Shackamang Club, and they go back to the office of the committee at the Twellery Palace. Both the committees, as usual, are working late. Saint-Just is in the committee room at the table,

and he's working on this big report that he's going to unveil to the convention tomorrow. The report that just show everybody how united they all are. And St. Jost, I actually don't really like San Jens, but I feel a time. tiny bit sorry for him with this conversation because he of course doesn't know what's going on. And he says to them, they come in

and he says, oh, what's new at the Jacques Club? Fun evening. Yeah, how's it going? How's it go? And Collo went mad at him. He said, you really don't know. Aren't you great friends with the man who's behind all this, the man leading us to civil war? You, you're a coward and a traitor. You're scoundrels, the three of you, determined to lead the fatherland

to ruin. And when people hear Collo this is your classic sort of I don't know boys boarding school or girls boarding school even worse everybody finds that they discover there's new scapegoat and they're like yeah let's pile them so everybody else piles in a guy

called Eli Lacoste from the Committee of General Security says yes there are tramber of the rogues Robespier Couton Saint-Just plotting against the country and Bahreir who's the trimor who can see where the wind is blowing says to Saint-Just yeah you insolent pigments

is a cripple, a child and a scoundrel. You couldn't even run a farmyard. I mean, that's an ominous moment, isn't it? God, if Barreira is swinging round. Exactly. The wind really is changing. San Jose has been working on this report, just kind of looks up, and he's pale, and he doesn't know what to say, stammering.

Because it's come from nowhere. He's come absolutely nowhere. He just asked them how they had a fun evening. Yeah. And Collo says, I expect you're planning to have us killed, are you, tonight or tomorrow? well, we're going to stay at our post and we'll unmask you. I expect you're making plans against us right. I expect that's what you're doing with all these papers.

You're the enemy. You're the conspirator. And Sanchez is so stunned. He can't get his words out. He tries to show Kolo what he's been writing. Kolo says, I don't want to look. You can take our lives. You can have us killed.

But you will never delude the virtue of the people. This is the former actor, of course. He's having a brilliant way. Oh. Oh. What wrong is. are this. Exactly.

Infernal villain. I can't take someone called Kolo seriously though. Why not? We've got a guy in our cricket team is called Kolo. That's his nickname. Okay.

He's very much not a kind of revolutionary figure. Okay, well, that explains it. So anyway, Kolo, like an actor, like a sort of volcano returning to its slumbers. He eventually subsides.

Oh. Enough. Yeah, exactly. Avant. And we will meet in Chester, something like Henry the fourth type scene. Anyway, he calms down.

Sanjus finally gets a word in. He says, listen, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll finish this. I'll bring it to the committee tomorrow. You can all read it, approve it, and only if you approve it, I will present it to the convention. Yeah, come on, let's be friends. Because Sanjus, I mean, he is better at compromise than Rosfayor by this point. You know, he can see the problem brewing.

I think he is, actually. I think he is, but he will make a terrible mistake, as we will see. He goes back to his report on which he's been working very hard, the poor fellow. He finishes his report at 5 o'clock in the morning. Probably he went to see Robespierre after that, which is why he changed his mind. We don't know. Now, while all this has been going on, clearly some of the people on Robespier's potential enemies list have also been going around the city.

The most obvious candidate to be on that list is probably Jean-Lanbert Tallion, the guy whose girlfriend is in prison. Yeah, Spanish girlfriend who bathing in strawberry jam. Who's been sneering, sending him mocking letters saying, you're no man at all. You know, all this. Talion has been going around visiting moderate deputies. Now, most of the deputies live near the Twiliuri Palace or on the Rue San Donore.

So you can go and visit a lot of them. And he's said, look, Rob Spierre is totally out of control. He's clearly planning a coup against us. We've got to stand up to him. That's what Talion's been doing overnight. So dawn on Sunday, the 27th of July, which is the ninth day of Dermidor. The Committee of Public Safety meet as normal at 10 o'clock at the Twilery, and they're waiting for San Jus to come and show them this famous report.

San Jus does not show up. He's very hurt by what happened last night, and he has decided he's not going to show them the report after all. He's going to go to the convention, and he will open his heart to them. he will explain, you know, just how much Robespier means to him. He will, and Robespier means the revolution. Oh, folly of follies. Exactly.

What a falling off with the... Yeah. The pygmies that have been sniping at Robespierre. He's going to, you know, say it's very unfair. So the committee wait for him. He doesn't turn up. Eventually they go across to the Tuileries theater just before midday. And the deputies have been gathering for a couple of hours.

at the theatre for the convention meeting. The convention meeting would always start at 11 with a very boring reading of correspondence. So people will arrive during that. Colo, the actor, is going to be in the chair again, the president. And as they go in, Tallion is there. He's outside. He's whispering to potential allies in the corners.

I'm sure Foucher is doing much of the same. And Talion is saying to them, I'm going to speak up. I'm going to seize the moment. It has claimed that he said, by this evening, Rob Spier will be no more. more. So the bell strikes noon midday. And Sanjust, this is his moment. He comes in with his

speech, big pile of papers, he goes up to the Rostrom. And he starts, very Robespier like, he says, I belong to no faction. I am against all factions. And just a couple of words later, he embarks on this very convoluted metaphor about the Tarpian rock. Now you will know this, Tom. Traitors are flung off it in ancient Rome. Yeah. So you're a traitor, you're thrown off this rock, that's the end of you. And he's just embarked on his tarpeian rock metaphor, which is so beautifully crafted. And at that point, Talion jumps to his feet and he says, I have a point of order. This has got to end. I'm going to have to really restrain myself from doing it all in this sort of ludicrous actor's voice.

But they are all playing parts, aren't they? So it's appropriate. And Talion says, Rob Spierre and San Jus say they don't belong to any faction. But they're the most divisive people in the convention. They have come here to assail the fatherland to aggravate its troubles, to hurl it into the abyss. Talian says, do you know what?

Until today, I was frightened of the tyrant Robespierre. And he compares him actually to Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell, who he regards bizarrely as a bad man. And Talion pulls out a dagger. And he says, but this morning, I armed myself with a dagger to pierce Robespier's breast, if the convention does not have the courage to vote for his arrest. And people start clapping, and, you know, these are clearly Italian's mates, clapping and cheering. And Sanjus, I mean, I was about to say the first time in his career, I mean, this happened last night, but the first time in public.

He's always normally a very good debater. But he doesn't have an answer. He's so shocked to have been interrupted. I mean, also, he was working until 5 a.m. So he's absolutely exhausted. He seems to lose his nerve, and he just sort of slumps into his seat in shock while Tanyan is speaking. Now, at this point, Rob Spear jumps to his feet, says, I want a right of reply. And this is where it really matters that the person in the president's chair is Kolo, who hates Ropoebosper.

Yeah. And Kolo says, no, not you. Surely he says, no, yes. He would, no, I say no, the time has not yet come. Thou shalt not darken the podium with thy presence. So he calls for Beio, Beio gets up and Beio says, San Jose and Robsbeer are the worst people in the world. Sanchez used us, he would come and show us in the committee his speech.

He's a liar, he's a cheat, he didn't turn up. They spent all their time in the committee, us. They've been plotting actually to use the National Guard against us all. They're terrible people. Rob Spier is horrified. He jumps to his feet. He's trying to get to the Rostrum. But actually, there are now people shouting, down with the tyrant. You know, get rid of the tyrant. And Kolo says, I now call Mr. Situam Vadier from the Committee of General Security. Now, Vadier, who hated Robespierre. This is his, you know, the best thing that's ever happened to him. he goes to the

Rostrum and he says, well, I remind everybody about this woman that I found. This prophetess. Oh, yeah, the 80-year-old woman. Yes. They can't leave that alone. This woman,

have I not been telling you that this woman claims to be the mother of God and that Robespier is the Messiah? This mad woman had a letter under her mattress telling Robespierre that his divine mission had been predicted by Ezekiel. and at this everybody starts laughing

because they know this is obviously ridiculous and this is the one time that anyone actually really in a speech in the French Revolution I think used humour very effectively because they're not great laugh for minute people the French Revolutioners and Vadier really twists the knife now he says oh yes well to hear Robespier speak

you would think he was the only defender of freedom are he so modest isn't he I'm so oppressed I'm not allowed to speak so and so is conspiring against me me and I am the best friend of the Republic. I mean, that's not a bad parody. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

It's good. Stand-up, revolutionary stand-up. And I suppose the fact that it's all happening on a stage. Of course. Means that people are judging it as a kind of theatrical performance. Absolutely they are. And I mean, you're right. So and so is conspiring against me.

I'm so oppressed. I'm so miserable. And everybody starts laughing at this. Robespier cannot deal with this at all. So at this point, he is shouting at them and he's really losing it. he's losing his voice, I think, because of stress, you know, the shock of it and whatnot. Well, he's given his two-hour speech twice in a row. That's true, actually.

Oh, God. God of all speech. So he's shouting hoarsely and he's drowned out. His voice at this point breaks. And one of the deputies shouts at him, the blood of d'anton is choking you. Amazing. What a moment. What a moment.

And everyone's howling and all of this. at last another deputy, an absolute nobody called Luchet, shouts, I demand an arrest warrant against Robespierre. And a few people start clapping, and then the clapping spreads, people have sensed where the wind is blowing, and the clapping becomes universal. They vote to arrest Robespierre,

to arrest the head of the Paris National Guard, who's a guy called Francois-enrio, who is a Robespier loyalist. At this point, Robespierre's young, younger brother, Augustine, who's a bit of a nobody, really. He'd been at two law, hadn't he? Yeah, he had, exactly. With Napoleon when he does his stuff.

Yes, and he was sort of Napoleon's patron, wasn't he, a little bit? Yeah. So Augustine Robespierre, he gets up and he says, if you are going to arrest my brother, you should arrest me as well. All right. And they say, brilliant. Well, yeah, we will. And another person jumps on this mad bandwagon, who's called Philippe LeBarre,

who was a young friend of Robespierre who had married what was Robespier's landlord Dupley? He'd married one of DuPlaix's daughters and he says, yes, arrest me too. So they're like brilliant, well, we're fine, we didn't like you anyway. They arrest this guy and then they add Saint-Just and they add Couton. And rather cruelly, they save Couton as they arrest him.

Yes, he wanted to use our corpses as a staircase to ascend to the throne. But of course, Couton could not have done that because he can't walk. It's harsh from them. So ushers surround these five deputies, and they take them out of the convention. They take them to a building nearby,

which is called the Hotel de Breon. And the Odel de Breon is the office of the Committee of General Security. And they'll be held here, and then they'll be taken to prison. So by now, it's actually late afternoon. And all the rest of the convention deputies, they're exhausted with the emotional drama of it. but also they're thrilled, they're excited, and they're hungry, they're French,

and they feel like now seems like the obvious time to break for dinner. So they all go off to the kind of local restaurants to have dinner. Now, what they have forgotten, the convention people, is that Robespier still has a lot of support, and in particular in the municipal government of Paris, which is based at the Hotel de Ville, the commune. And as soon as the news about what's happened to Robespierre reaches the commune, the officials there immediately proclaim a state of insurrection

and they send messages to all the neighbourhoods to the sections. Mobilise your local militia battalions, the battalions of the National Guard. And they're doing this, aren't they, by ringing the toxin? Yes, so bells ringing. Which is never a good sign. No, it's always an exciting moment when the toxin rings across Paris. So meanwhile, it's about 4.45 in the afternoon. the National Guard commander, Henriot, of course there's a warrant have for his arrest.

He grabs a load of men and he says, we're going to go straight over to the Hotel de Brien, we're going to rescue our friends. They've got their sabres drawn. They charge into the Hotel de Brien, they break down the doors and they say, give us the five prisoners. But in one of many twists, at this point, another group of guardsmen turn up, and these guardsmen are loyal to the convention. And they surround these guys, they grab their swords,

Enrio is overpowered and he is tied up and he is pushed into another room in the Hotel de Brion. So he's under arrest too now. About an hour later, six o'clock, the Committee of General Security agents take out the five deputies. They go out to take them to prison. They put each one into a different carriage because they're going to split them up and send them to five prisons around the city. So Robespierre, for example, is destined for the Luxembourg prison, which is a mile to the south across the River Sen. Now the carriage rattles off But in the meantime

The commune has sent orders to all the prisons Because the commune is in charge of the prisons technically in Paris Don't admit any new inmates without our written approval So when this carriage arrives at the Luxembourg prison And they try to You know the agents say we've got Robespierre for you The governor says no I can't accept him We've been told not to accept him

And at this point the camera is surrounded by policemen who are loyal to the commune, and they say, we're heading back, we're taking him off. And they take Robespierre and his carriage off, back to the centre of town, to the police headquarters, which is in the Méri on the Isle de la Cite in this very centre of Paris. The sun has just set. It's 8 o'clock, and the carriage rattles into the courtyard of the Maree, the police headquarters, and Rob Spierre, who is now exhausted and pale and bewildered, is helped out of the

by police agents who are wearing tricolour sashes and he's escorted into the building of police HQ. A messenger is sent off from the police headquarters and at 815 he bursts into the Hotel de Ville where the commune are meeting in emergency session and he says I've got brilliant news. Rob Spierre is free we have him and there's great cheers and they say let's get an armed escort to go over to police headquarters, bring him here to the City Hall, the O'Dell de Ville, and we are the legitimate government now. So, while that's been happening, two other important things have been going on. First of all, the commune have sent out from City Hall and appeal a call to arms to the whole of the city.

Situyan, the fatherland is more in danger than it ever has been. Villains are dictating and oppressing the convention. They are persecuting robespier. the man who established the principle of the supreme being and the consoling doctrine of the immortality of the soul. I mean, I think people have mentioned the or the soul before, hadn't they? Yeah, maybe. They're oppressing Saint-Just, the apostle of virtue

who led the armies of the Republic to victory. Again, slight exaggeration. Exactly, my favourite bit. Along with Couton, this virtuous citizen whose only living parts, his head and body burn with patriotism. So poor Couton, who's forever defyce, by the fact that he's disabled. He's sort of very much an afterthought there, I think.

Now, the appeal has gone out, but so far the Songkuot have been very hesitant to rise. And one reason for that, of course, is they're very bitter about their street parties. Of course. Yeah. Because these are the guys who banned them. Yes, exactly.

Fun sponges. They have sought, they have hurt feelings about the street parties, you know, those sausage rolls or whatever that didn't get eaten. Of course, they're very bitter about the wage maximum, about the fact that pay is just facing a colossal cut, and that the commune has basically just been bossing them around

and telling them what to do and all of this. There are a couple of other things. The machinery of street politics is not what it was a couple of years ago. And the reason for that is because, as we've described in this whole series, the terror was all about centralising things and putting power back in the government's hands and actually stopping the sort of anarchic politics of the street. And so the habit of that has faded.

The habit of that and the sectional assemblies have been sort of suppressed. So it's just harder to get people out on the streets. But also, I think to a lot of ordinary people, this now really does seem like a very confusing factional struggle between two sets of Montagnan deputies who hate each other. And they're not really clear. What's at stake here? Who are the goodies?

Who are the badies? Yeah. Who should side are we really on? Yeah. So that's one thing. The appeal has gone out, but it hasn't really been answered. The other thing is better news for Robespier and the Commune. So the National Guard commander, Henrio, remember I said how he'd been tied up and held at the Hotel de Bruin?

But about 8.30 that night, the building is surrounded by 3,000 guardsmen who are loyal to him and to the commune. And they overpower the gendarmes who are guarding him. They find Henriot. They cut his bonds. and now he is free as well. And what happens in the next few minutes is actually the turning point of this whole story. It says 845 in the evening.

Orio has 3,000 armed men who've just rescued him and they've brought 30 cannons with them. And they are in Plastu Carousel. So on one side you've got Hotel de Brion but on the other side you have the Twiliery Palace. And they have trained these cannons on the convention. The convention has no defenders at this point. The deputies have returned from their cocovain,

and they're sort of hanging around, having great chat about how well they've done. But they are at Enrio's mercy. If Enrio gives the order now, his troops will bombard or storm the convention. They could conceivably kill everybody if they wanted to or arrest them. He would win.

He can win the day in the next half hour. That would mean Robespier wins. Robespierre lives and the story of the French Revolution in the 1790s is very different And had it been Napoleon We know what he would do He'd have done it

Surely he'd have done it Of course we know he does Henriot has been locked up for three hours He doesn't know where Robespierre is He doesn't know what's going on in the commune He doesn't really understand what's going on all day To be honest with you And he decides

Hmm I think we should regroup Go back to the commune take stock, find out what's going on. And so he says to his troops, Vive la Republic, my friends follow me, to the commune. And so instead of attacking, they march off to the east towards the city hall,

the Hotel de Ville. And the moment is lost. So by nine o'clock, this is the picture. There are toxins ringing across Paris. There are drums beating across the city. But it is not clear to most people what's going on or who's got the upper hand. The conventioners now, they've now finally got their act together.

They've rallied their own forces. And what are these forces? These are national guards loyal to them by a march. And they place them under the command of the deputy Paul Barras. So he's the guy who'd been at Toulon. And a guy who was actually going to dominate the politics of France for the next five years. He's basically the link between this moment, the Revolution and Napoleon. And Napoleon.

Yeah. On the face of it, you would say the commune is still the favourite. the commune still has the upper hand. So they've tracked down Saint-Jouz to Couton and the other people who had been arrested. They've brought them to the city hall. Ongrio has now turned up with his troops and his cannons, and he's also joined there by hundreds more

those people who have actually answered the call from their sections. The thing is, outside the city hall, Orio and Co, they don't really know what to do. There's no clear lead. There's no one in charge. The minutes go by, but no one's giving any orders. There's no sense of direction. And actually some of Henrio's men are like,

do you know what's quite late? I might actually just, I don't think anything's going to happen. I need a bit of a nightcap. I think I'm just going to go home. I have a sniffter. At 10.30 that night, Rob Spierre is finally, he's been escorted from police headquarters and he's finally brought into the council chamber

at the O'Dell de Ville. And there are great cheers. All his fans are there. Huge cheers. Finally the man of the hour. Finally the man who will give us a lead. And this is a, A fantastic irony.

If Robespierre had been the tyrant of his enemy's claims, if he had been the dictator, if he'd been the power crazed despot that people said he was, this was his moment and he would have seized it. But Robespierre is exhausted, pale, shaken. He can't believe how he's been treated by the convention. He definitely does try to say something to make a speech. But he's lost his voice, hasn't he?

He's lost his voice and nobody could really hear what he was saying. Virtue. It's not my fault. Yeah, poor me, basically. But I think the fact that he's so uncertain tells its own story. Rob Spierre, as we were talking about earlier this week, Rob Spierre is in his own mind is a massive goody-goody. He's the man who always follows the rules.

And, you know, a more ruthless man, a would-be dictator, would say, sod the rules. Let's kill all the deputies in the convention and I will rule France. Robespier doesn't want to do that. He wants to do the right thing. And he now doesn't know what to do. So no clear lead comes from the council chamber.

And outside, you know, more and more of the troops are disappearing. The difference is that back at the convention, Robespier's enemies know exactly what they want to do. It's half an hour after Robespier's, had turned up. Talion gets up in the convention. I mean, he's now cocker hoop. His girlfriend is going to be so

pleased with him after this. And he says, my friends, we must make sure that before the sun rises, the conspirators are flushed out from their lair. We must beat Robespier to it. We will only sleep when the traitors have been annihilated. And there are great cheers, everyone

shouting to arms, to arms, and Barras and some of the other deputies lead the convention's troops off towards the east. At the Hotel de Ville, more and more of Henrios men are drifting away now. Some of the local sections have decided, do you know what, I think we should sit this out? I think we should just sit this out and see who wins. This is not going to be our fight. And so more and more of them are drifting away. By one o'clock, the square is now really visibly emptying. And of course, if you see loads of people going, you decide you want to go as well.

and at 2 o'clock in the morning, which is when the convention troops in two columns under Barras and a guy called Leonar Baudon, when they converge on the square, it's virtually deserted. Do you know what this reminds me of, ironically, is the failure of Lafayette to defend the royal couple at Versailles? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the march of the market women.

He went for asleep, didn't he? But it's that kind of vibe that if you've got passion on your side, your instinct will tell you what to do. And if you don't, we'll either go to sleep or just sit there croaking hoarsely. Yeah, it's true actually. Joe, the whole series, the lesson it teaches me is decisive action. Decisive, always decisive action. Indecision kills you.

I mean, that's the case of the royal couple with Lafayette. Business lessons from the French Revolution. It's so true. If there are any corporate giants out there who would be interested in business essence of the French Revolution. This excellent proposal. So on the way into the square, they meet a commune artillery unit. and this deputy called Bordon shouts,

do you want to fight for the tyrant? And the commune men say, no, actually, no, we don't want to fight with you. So they join him. They literally just walk through the doors of the city hall. They go through the doors. They go up the main staircase. And upstairs they can hear this sort of panicked shouting

from the chamber at the top of the stairs. And a gunshot, right? And gunshots, yeah. Maybe, possibly. Well, I think two gunshots. Comes in a bit later, perhaps. Probably. Yeah.

When they get upstairs, they find a scene of utter chaos. So Augustin Robespierre has fallen out of a window. Either he was trying to kill himself or to escape, jump out. And he's lying at the bottom very badly injured. Enrio, the commander of the National Guard, has also fallen from a window. The general consensus, I think, was the others threw him out, because he, he just panicked, started drinking and they were sick of him and they just threw him out the window.

But he landed in a dung heap, so he's not too badly injured. But it's not been a good evening for him. I mean, let's not beat the other bush. Couton, who people have been kind of insensitive about all through this episode, someone has thrown him down the stairs in his wheelchair, which seems very harsh. So he's lying at the foot of a staircase with blood streaming from his head. Philippe Lebaix, who only entered the story, you know, 20 minutes ago,

he's left it already because he has shot himself, taking his own life. San Jose is just standing there, very pale, very silent, you know, but quite calm. Archangel-like. Yeah. And Robespierre is lying on the ground in agony. His face is covered with blood, and his jaw has been shattered by a pistol shot. Afterwards, some of the convention deputies said, Oh, well, he was shot actually by one of our heroes by a trooper called Charles André Mirda.

But I think it's generally agreed that Robespierre probably tried to, you know, he wanted to be a Roman, didn't he? Yeah, he wanted to be Cato. I mean, he thought the Roman thing to do was to, yeah, to do a Cato, take his own life, that he shot himself, made a mess of it, shot himself in the jaw. I mean, how do you do that? He's not a natural military man, is he? I mean, you're trying to shoot your brains out and you shoot your jaw off. Do you know he who could have given him excellent advice?

Who? Teodros, the emperor of Abyssinia. Yes. Well, but he just grazed his ear, didn't he, the first time he tried to shoot himself. So practice made perfect for him. Yeah. That's a funny dinner party, isn't it? I mean, two people with enormous reserves of self-pity, actually.

Yeah. Who's the real victim in that conversation? Wow. Always rospier. So the prisoners are taken back to the Committee of Public Safety. safety, the place, the room in which this episode began. And Coutin is left lying on a stretcher. Sanchez just stands in the corner in handcuffs.

He's very calm. He's silent. One witness says he looked like a pickpocket caught red-handed. And Robert Speer, who is unconscious, is laid on a table. His chute is searched with blood, his stockings around his ankles. His breeches are kind of unbuttoned. Yeah, for somebody who cared so much about looking. Such a humiliation.

This is a complete humiliation. He wakes up. He's actually only been unconscious for an hour. And then he wakes. And he must have been in excruciating agony, but he doesn't make much noise. So he is playing the Roman. He's doing what Cato would do. They call for a surgeon, and the surgeon took out some teeth that had basically come loose.

And then took Robert Spiers, sort of shattered jaw, and sort of bandaged it up so that it was in. place. And Robespierre, of course, couldn't speak at this point. You can only really communicate by grunts. And there are people standing around him and they're mocking him the whole time. Is your majesty in pain? All of this kind of thing. But you know what? He, I think this is admirable on his part that he does try to keep his dignity because about nine o'clock he sits bolt up right from where he's been lying in agony. And he's wearing his sky blue coat, the one that he wore at the Festival of the Supreme

Being, so he's got it on, smooths it down and he pulls up his stockings and he crosses to a vacant armchair and sits there to preserve his dignity, despite the unspeakable agony that he must have been. That's the been in. Yeah, imagine. But I admire that. And when they carried him out, they carried him out in this armchair.

And some people said that he tried to he tried feebly to kind of hit the people who were carrying him while they were carrying him. Well, it's such a, it's a butcher shambles, isn't it? It is. Blood everywhere. I mean, he's physically broken, Kouton's physically broken,

his brother's physically broken. I mean, Sanchez is basically the only person who's all right. What's his name is covered in dung? It's awful. Yes. Blood and shit. Omrio,

who's completely let himself down, I think. He's not had a good evening. It has to be said. He's had a terrible evening. He threw away a brilliant opportunity, and now he's paying the price. So late that afternoon, they're loaded into the tumbrils for the journey to the guillotine.

And you mentioned at the beginning of the episode, the guillotine has been moved back especially to plaster the revolution in the centre of Paris because the winners the convention want to make a big show of this and as the tumble passes

one onlooker said it was a holiday all the elegant people were at their windows to see them pass they cheered and clapped their hands all along the rue Saint-honore the street where Robert Spierre of course had been living

And when they, it says they cheered and clapped, they didn't cheer and clap because they were, you know, it wasn't friendly applause, put it that way. There's a lot of abuse, as always with all executions, there's a lot of abuse, there's a lot of jeering and mockery. Sanson, the executioner, you know, he's had a, he's had a very busy few years. He got to work at about 7.30, and Couton goes first. Couton's body was so, I mean, he's not only, of course, is he disabled, but he's been thrown down the stage. his body at this point is so bent that it apparently takes him fifth takes 15 minutes for the guards to basically straighten him out forcibly straighten them out so he's howling oh he's in unimaginable agony and the crowd we're told are loving every minute of it delighted then saint just who dies like a roman i would expect nothing less not quite like d'antan with his

you know, he quips on the scaffold but he's impassive, he's calm, he's brave, I suppose. And then there's some others, the usual thing where they're thrown in a few people for luck. And then after half an hour of waiting, Robespierre, and he's, you know, he's done his best, but he's still blood smeared, pretty ragged, you know, a wild looking figure. And then a literally jaw-dropping moment. Because Sansaul rips the bandage off, which has been keeping.

his jaw attached to the upper part of his skull. And as they rip it off, the jaw drops and he gives this terrible shriek, which people describe as being like an animal being tortured or something, and then chop, that's it. Yeah. So that's the end of Maximia, Robespier, Robespier, 36 years old, not even that old. And the funny thing is, every sort of popular account you read says Robespier fell because of,

of a backlash against the terror. But that's just not the case. The people who brought him down, if you go through the people who brought him down, the people who have mentioned most, Colo, Biot, Barreux, Tallon, Paul Barras, Foucher and so on. They love it.

These have been enthusiastic and bloodthirsty operatives of the terror. See, this is where I think, it comes back to the question of how good at politics you are. And I said, I think last time, I feel like Robsphere was very good at politics until he wasn't, until he got found out as it were. And this didn't have to happen. He made too many enemies. He was really poor at making friends. And his speech in particular was a catastrophic misjudgment.

I mean, it's easy for me to say unnecessary. I mean, you could say that from Robespier's perspective, it was very, or it was only too necessary. But a more canny politician would surely. have played things differently. I think he is driven mad ultimately by his principles drive him mad. His principles inspire him for so long. And they combine with his native ability for outsmarting his enemies. But in the end, his own sense of virtue leads him to make catastrophic errors, as you say.

Yeah. His sort of manichy and sense of good and evil corruption and purity, virtue and, you know, know, treachery. I think once you're in the world where you see any opposition, any dissent, any disagreement as treachery or as a sort of existential impurity, then it's going to be very difficult to command the allegiance of your, I think there are worldlier men. Of course. I mean, the thing is that he is incredibly effective while he still has the power of surprise

on his side. But once it becomes obvious, he really only has the one strategy. and it's driven by his own deeply held moral principles. Everyone knows what his strategy is going to be. And so it becomes actually possible to outsmart him. Yes, I think that's absolutely right. So after his death, nobody had a good word to say about him. People who just days earlier would have, you know,

counter themselves as his loyalists, his partisans, now say they're against him all along. And it's at this point, it's only after this point, after the coup of Thaumidor, as it becomes called, that people start to use the phrase the regime de la terror, the reign of terror, to describe his ascendancy.

And they say, well, Robespier was the tyrant. Robespier was the dictator, and it was all because of him. In Peter McPhee's book on The Revolution, there is a lovely quote from, it's great to get a British naval officer on the show, especially one with a tremendous name, Captain Watkin Tench.

Captain Tench was held to take him as a prisoner and held as a POWW a couple of months later. And Tench said afterwards, he listened to people talking and he said, Those who prostrated themselves like reptiles before Robespierre are now blaming him for all the assassinations and misery. To screen themselves from odium or the subordinate tyrants fix upon him and attribute to his orders the innumerable butcheries and acts of oppression, which they have perpetuated. And I think there's a degree of truth in that. Robert Speyer was the great spokesman for the terror, its most articulate defender, but he wasn't the sole proponent of it and it probably would have happened. No.

Well, I mean, it's the people coining this phrase terrorist to describe him are people who themselves were more enthusiastic practitioners of terror. Exactly, right. So where's the sleeve of the revolution? And I think this is the biggest irony of the story. So, as we said, none of the men who brought Robespierre down really were that keen to dismantle the terror or to scrap the whole regime. So, Kolo, Biel, Barre on the Committee of Public Safety, they thought, with Robespierre gone, brilliant, we're going to run things, we're going to have things their own way. But actually what's happened is that they have unleashed forces they cannot control. And what this actually reminds me of is the fall of the Soviet Union, where you have unanticipated consequences of.

of political decisions and suddenly without people quite understanding why the whole thing is tumbling down. And the reason is that when the great mass of people in the convention look at the situation, they say, well, hold on, we've had, we actually have beaten all the rebels and we've beaten the Austrians and France is safe from invasion now. So although the war's still going on, it's no longer a massive emergency, the terror, you know, it's kind of done the trick. So why do we need it? Why don't, why do we need to give the committees all? this power. So they start to strip the committees of their power in the next couple of weeks. In August, they repeal the law of Prairieal, so that basically brings the terror to an end. The Revolutionary

Tribunal lasts for another year until 1795, but for the last year of its existence, it's really being used against the terrorists themselves. You know, it's no longer being used to sort of punish, you know, housewives complaining about bad winemakers. Yeah, wine makers and stuff. Colo Bieu Barreux in September, they've been rebranded, not as Robespier's assassins, but as Robespier's accomplices, and they're voted off the Committee of Public Safety. In November, the Jacobin Club is closed down. It's a bit like the moment in, I don't know, 1991 when the Communist Party was outlawed in Russia.

The Jacquine Club has been closed down. In December, the convention scraps all the economic measures, the wage and price controls. So now the value of the Assignia plummets, massive inflation. A few people, well-connected, businessmen and politicians start to make a lot of money. Most people don't, and the second half of the 70-90s will be very tough economically for the French. By the spring of 1795, they've brought back the Gérardin. So those Girondins who they haven't killed are released from prison and they are welcomed back to the convention. Let's bury the hatchet, you know.

You might have overstep the mark a little bit. There are now only about 70 Montagnar left and actually the convention is now dominated really by, I suppose, what you could call the right by the moderates, I guess. And the survivors start having survivors parties, don't they? Yes. where the women wear thin red chokers around their neck to emulate what might have happened to them had they not survived it. We talked about this, I think, in our episodes about the young Napoleon. Did we not?

Episode 383, Dominique. Oh, my word, that's good work. So maybe, I mean, the story of what happened in the late 1790s and the rise of Napoleon, we did do Young Napoleon, but maybe that's a story for another time. But I think the point to stop is March 1795. because that month, Colo, Biot, and Barre, as well as Vardier

from the Committee of General Security, they were arrested as terrorists, and they were convicted, and they were sentenced to be deported to French Guiana. They didn't all end up there. And also put on trial that month, and this is a really ironic moment, was the prosecutor,

the Revolutionary Tribunal, Fouquet Tamville, the man who had sent to the guillotine as prosecutor, Charlotte Corday, Marianne Tuenette, Ebert, and Dantan. He lamented, didn't he, that he felt trailed by ghosts? Yes, he did.

He did. I actually filled a tiny bit, sorry for him. His trial lasted, unlike theirs, it lasted 41 days, and more than 400 witnesses were called. And Fouquier-Tanville defended himself. This will be very familiar to people.

He said, all I was doing, I was doing my job, I was only following orders. And he was sentenced to death nonetheless. And his last words before he headed to the guillotine were as follows. He said, I have nothing to reproach myself for. I have always complied with the laws. I have never been a creature of Robespierre and Saint-Just. I die for my country.

I am satisfied. And one day my innocence will be recognised. And that is the end of the story. So an epical moment. The end, not just of our series on the terror, but our series on the French Revolution. So we hope you have enjoyed it. Next week, we begin a four-part series on something very different, King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, a mystery, a romance that has fascinated people for centuries and centuries and centuries.

and now for the first time on our podcast. First time in history, right? We will be revealing the site of Camelot, the location of the Holy Grail. We will identify where Avalon actually is, where King Arthur lies, are waiting to come and rescue Britain and needs to get a move on.

Incredible. And all four episodes will be available on Monday for The Rest Is History Club members. So if you'd like to get them, go to The Rest Is History.com. But for now, Dominic, thank you very much. Thank you very much, everyone for listening. And au revoir.

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Goodbye.