Maximilien Robespierre - Virtude e Terror

This work brings together excerpts from some of Robespierre's most striking speeches, a controversial but fundamental figure in the evolution of events that followed the French Revolution.

An advocate of unprecedented rigor, Robespierre's desire to assert a radical break with the past is very clear; this break would culminate in the revolutionary Terror. In his words: "If the driving force of popular government in peace is virtue, the driving force of popular government in revolution is at the same time virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is, therefore, an emanation of virtue: it is less a particular principle than a consequence of the principle of democracy applied to the most pressing needs of the Fatherland."