Robespierre rethinks resistance in the July crisis, 1793

The constitution passed on 24 June 1793 inscribed ‘resistance to oppression’ as one of the rights of man. The phrase represented Robespierre’s political stance since the earliest days of the Revolution: he had used it previously against a wide range of ‘oppressors of the people’ (king, aristocracy, émigrés, foreign powers, counter-revolutionaries and Girondins). The purge of the latter group in the journées of 31 May and 2 June 1793 placed him in a quandary. For the Revolution was faced by a wide panoply of forms of political agitation – including Federalist revolt, the Vendée uprising and Enragé demands in Paris – that might easily be represented as ‘resistance’. Robespierre’s growing acceptance in these summer months of the need to strengthen the executive, embrace Revolutionary Government and deploy terror and intimidation involved rethinking the nature of resistance. This paper will examine Robespierre’s writings and speeches at this pivotal moment, in the shadow of Corday’s assassination of Marat, as he wrestled to come to terms with the fact that ‘resistance’ appeared to have turned from good to bad.