What I found incredibly fascinating during the tour we took today was that it seemed as if many of the major figures involved in the French Revolution used the movement more so as an outlet for their own ambition rather than for what the revolution stood for. Before I get into my reasoning, I want to admit that all of the participants of the French Revolution did indeed hold strong beliefs about what they believed to be the most humane way of governing their nation. However, I want to explore how some of the actors of the revolution were influenced by their ambition.
Danton, for instance, was of a well-to-do family prior to the French Revolution. Though he was a member of the Third Estate, he was not at the same level of desperation as most of the French people were after war debts and food shortages prior to 1789. Danton thus perplexed me, as he did not seem to have a lot to gain or lose from the revolution other than more political power as a citizen. But then I considered how he changed his name from D’Anton to Danton, spoke cunningly and with wit, and even used his awful looks to be remembered by others, and it became clear to me that Danton desired to also become a politician—someone with not just more political power but power over politics. Thus, for Danton, the French Revolution was an outlet for his ambition, which brings sense to why he so adamantly supported and participated in it.
Maximilien Robespierre is another example of how someone could have used the French Revolution as an outlet for their ambition. Similar to Danton, Robespierre was a lawyer and came from a well-to-do family. Robespierre also cut the “de” from his last name to appeal more to the lower classes as he became a more and more prominent figure in French politics. Eventually, Robespierre became the head of the Jacobin party and the leader of France during the Reign of Terror. During this time, Robespierre had a police force named the Committee of Public Safety, which would arrest anyone suspected of saying anything that wasn’t positive about the revolution in France. Robespierre confused me just as Danton me, for he initially presented himself and acted as someone who wanted to fight for the unheard voices of his nation, but he only became a tyrant that limited the voices that could be heard. When considering Robespierre’s ambition, though, the dissonance between his beliefs and his actions began to make a lot more sense. Anyone that spoke against the French Revolution would not just be speaking against his beliefs but his new position in society. Feeling his power being jeopardized, he thus began to start eliminating anyone who could take it away from him, even his ally Danton, who Robespierre made sure to silence in court.
Charlotte Corday too used the French Revolution for her ambition, albeit in a much different way. Corday assassinated the journalist Jean-Paul Marat in 1793, who supported the Jacobin party. Corday considered her killing of Marat as an act of martyrdom, as she knew she would be sent to the guillotine for her crimes. Her mindset reminded me not of a text we have read in this class but of Sophocles’s play Antigone. In the play, the titular character Antigone buries her brother’s body, an act she knows will result in capital punishment. She repeats to her sister before she goes about the burial process that she will be seen as a martyr who stood up for what is right after she dies. The parallels between Corday and Antigone a very clear; however, Marat ended up being the one seen as a martyr, and Corday—despite her ambition—remains one of the lesser known actors in the French Revolution.
The clearest example of someone using the French Revolution as an outlet for their ambition, though, was Napoleon Bonaparte. Unsuccessful at his attempts at getting the position he wanted in the French military, Bonaparte was planning on leaving France to become a mercenary in Turkey—a clear example of how his interests came before the revolution. However, he was eventually approached by the Jacobins when a group of Royalist attempted to throw a counter-revolution in 1795. In a decision that took him three minutes to make, Bonaparte threw away his dreams of moving to Turkey, set up artillery around France, and became the hero that saved the revolution. Here, one can see that Bonaparte clearly used the revolution for his own gain, as he was not even planning on staying in France until he was suddenly asked to do something of importance.
P.S. On a side note I find it very funny that the Luxembourg prison that Helen Maria Williams was held in during the Reign of Terror ended up becoming a palace where the Senate meets. In her “Letters from France,” she wrote that the prison was the “epitome of the world” because of how is practiced equality: People of all classes and nations (more than likely just the English and French) were set as equals because they all had to deal with the burden of imprisonment (Williams 255). Today, the Luxembourg Palace now hopes to embody Williams’s impression of the prison, as is indicated by the building motto: liberté, egalité, fraternité.