The main members of the Committee of Public Safety as described in the book the “Twelve Who Ruled” (read it, it is excellent.)
Louis de Saint Just, Executed (probably one of the few that didn’t deserve it tbh), was just a supporter of Robespierre trying to keep the country afloat militarily.
Jeanbon Saint-André, was trying to keep navy afloat, wasn’t in Paris often so he wasn’t targeted by mobs, got arrested by the ottomans for 3 years somehow a bit later.
Maximilien Robespierre, Executed.
Pierre Louis Prieur, Dispatched to Brittany where he set up his own little execution stuff, but other than that insignificant.
Claude-Antoine Prieur-Duvernois, was too busy being crazy influential to science and other military stuff, just kinda skipped on by the executions somehow.
Jean-Baptoste Robert Lindet, refused to sign on to Danton’s execution so was only moderately punished after the coup against Robespierre, didn’t do much afterwards.
Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles, Executed.
Georges Couthon, Executed
Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, survived initially but later exiled and died of plague.
Lazare Carnot, slipped through the cracks and became a member of the directory which is very good because he appointed Napoleon Bonaparte as commander in Italy, and was his chief backer for a while.
Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, exiled but got to live a crazy life, served the President of Haiti after refusing a pardon from Napoleon.
Bertrand Barère, was supposed to be deported but escaped prison and then kinda just floated around for a while.
So of the 12, 4 were executed on the spot basically, 3 were deported, while the other 5 were either just kind of too busy to be involved with the executions or just slipped through the cracks at just the right time. A few more were forced into hiding, but generally only like 6 people were actually blamed by the Public, those 6 were Robespierre, Hérault de Séchelles, Couthon, Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varenne, and Barère. Saint Just was kinda just swept up in the chaos and got executed because of a bit of bad luck and timing more or less. The Reality of the Committee of Public Safety was much more chaotic and less of a Stalinist sort of purge, it was like getting 12 people who were in government but not in control of too much, and then telling them okay you now have to run an entire country and we are fighting basically on every border we have, go.
The reality of the Committee of public safety was that the revolution was so fractured and dis-organized it never could have worked, the committee was placed in a situation in which they had to act, but they made the wrong choices far too often. This is the problem with violent revolutions, you end up killing a lot of people that knew how to run the country and are left scrambling beyond that. In the chaos of everything they decided that Terror was like the only hope they had and in their desperation they ended up overshadowing every single thing that they had hoped to accomplish.
the_king_of_snipers on
it was so crazy, people lost their heads over it.
Wheres-Patroclus on
‘France had sought to use Revolution as a dagger aimed at Britain’s breast, but succeeded in striking only a glancing blow, before tripping and falling on the weapon themselves.’ – Robert Harvey, War of Wars.
YamPsychological4157 on
The sheer scope of the problems they were dealing with, and the total lack of experience of pretty much everyone on the whole committee does make me wonder how much of their tenure in charge was more a great big screw up rather than an actual crazy/extreme agenda
The economy was in total free fall, the country was getting invaded on three fronts, a lot of fifth columnists were actually conspiring to crash the government, there was rampant misinformation throughout the country and few ways to get any useful intelligence for managing the crises
And the people tasked with total executive power to address it were basically a collection of lawyers and college professors with no managerial experience in any enterprise to speak of
And then you got Robespierre, a guy who (from what little we know) was a pretty principled idealist in his youth but while on the committee was working on the constant verge of a nervous breakdown and under extreme sleep deprivation, clearly he was starting to totally lose it. “I’m starting my own religion, guys, and wouldn’t you know the Supreme Being has the exact same cocktail of libertarianish/socialitish beliefs as me! Let’s cosplay as romans and have a big festival!”
Edit: I did a research paper on Robespierre initially **hating** him, wanting to write about the “culture of authoritarianism and hypocrisy” or whatever, but I think I ended up reading so many Robespierre/St. Just speeches and Jacobin propaganda it’s like I radicalized myself. Professor was like “great paper, but this almost feels like a defense of Robespierre” 🤣
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The main members of the Committee of Public Safety as described in the book the “Twelve Who Ruled” (read it, it is excellent.)
Louis de Saint Just, Executed (probably one of the few that didn’t deserve it tbh), was just a supporter of Robespierre trying to keep the country afloat militarily.
Jeanbon Saint-André, was trying to keep navy afloat, wasn’t in Paris often so he wasn’t targeted by mobs, got arrested by the ottomans for 3 years somehow a bit later.
Maximilien Robespierre, Executed.
Pierre Louis Prieur, Dispatched to Brittany where he set up his own little execution stuff, but other than that insignificant.
Claude-Antoine Prieur-Duvernois, was too busy being crazy influential to science and other military stuff, just kinda skipped on by the executions somehow.
Jean-Baptoste Robert Lindet, refused to sign on to Danton’s execution so was only moderately punished after the coup against Robespierre, didn’t do much afterwards.
Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles, Executed.
Georges Couthon, Executed
Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, survived initially but later exiled and died of plague.
Lazare Carnot, slipped through the cracks and became a member of the directory which is very good because he appointed Napoleon Bonaparte as commander in Italy, and was his chief backer for a while.
Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, exiled but got to live a crazy life, served the President of Haiti after refusing a pardon from Napoleon.
Bertrand Barère, was supposed to be deported but escaped prison and then kinda just floated around for a while.
So of the 12, 4 were executed on the spot basically, 3 were deported, while the other 5 were either just kind of too busy to be involved with the executions or just slipped through the cracks at just the right time. A few more were forced into hiding, but generally only like 6 people were actually blamed by the Public, those 6 were Robespierre, Hérault de Séchelles, Couthon, Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varenne, and Barère. Saint Just was kinda just swept up in the chaos and got executed because of a bit of bad luck and timing more or less. The Reality of the Committee of Public Safety was much more chaotic and less of a Stalinist sort of purge, it was like getting 12 people who were in government but not in control of too much, and then telling them okay you now have to run an entire country and we are fighting basically on every border we have, go.
The reality of the Committee of public safety was that the revolution was so fractured and dis-organized it never could have worked, the committee was placed in a situation in which they had to act, but they made the wrong choices far too often. This is the problem with violent revolutions, you end up killing a lot of people that knew how to run the country and are left scrambling beyond that. In the chaos of everything they decided that Terror was like the only hope they had and in their desperation they ended up overshadowing every single thing that they had hoped to accomplish.
it was so crazy, people lost their heads over it.
‘France had sought to use Revolution as a dagger aimed at Britain’s breast, but succeeded in striking only a glancing blow, before tripping and falling on the weapon themselves.’ – Robert Harvey, War of Wars.
The sheer scope of the problems they were dealing with, and the total lack of experience of pretty much everyone on the whole committee does make me wonder how much of their tenure in charge was more a great big screw up rather than an actual crazy/extreme agenda
The economy was in total free fall, the country was getting invaded on three fronts, a lot of fifth columnists were actually conspiring to crash the government, there was rampant misinformation throughout the country and few ways to get any useful intelligence for managing the crises
And the people tasked with total executive power to address it were basically a collection of lawyers and college professors with no managerial experience in any enterprise to speak of
And then you got Robespierre, a guy who (from what little we know) was a pretty principled idealist in his youth but while on the committee was working on the constant verge of a nervous breakdown and under extreme sleep deprivation, clearly he was starting to totally lose it. “I’m starting my own religion, guys, and wouldn’t you know the Supreme Being has the exact same cocktail of libertarianish/socialitish beliefs as me! Let’s cosplay as romans and have a big festival!”
Edit: I did a research paper on Robespierre initially **hating** him, wanting to write about the “culture of authoritarianism and hypocrisy” or whatever, but I think I ended up reading so many Robespierre/St. Just speeches and Jacobin propaganda it’s like I radicalized myself. Professor was like “great paper, but this almost feels like a defense of Robespierre” 🤣