Reading William Wordsworth before heading to the Conciergerie prepared me with an image that encapsulates my ethical response to what I have learned about the Committee of Public Safety. Wordsworth wrote of his feelings towards the destruction of the Bastille in his Prelude:

 

The shock of these concussions, unconcerned, 

Tranquil almost, and careless as a flower 

Glassed in a greenhouse, or a parlour-shrub, 

When every bush and tree the country through, 

Is shaking to the roots—indifference this 

Which may seem strange, but I was unprepared 

With needful knowledge, had abruptly passed 

Into a theatre of which the stage 

Was busy with an action far advanced.

                                                                                                        (88-95)

 

Though Wordsworth “gathered up a stone” from the rubble of the destroyed Bastille, he recognized—probably stemming from his Englishhood—a distance from and ambivalence towards the enthusiasm the demolition of the prison brought to the French Revolution (65). 

I felt much of the same while making my way through the Conciergerie. Before seeing the prison, I felt somewhat confident in my distaste for Maximilien Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety, who for me spoiled everything great the French Revolution could have been. However, I learned from the Conciergerie how very difficult it must have been to rule France during the time of the revolution. France was struck with war not only by its neighbors who detested the new republic but by itself. Royalists in France sought to regain control of the country and thus began uprisings throughout the country. Robespierre thus had to find a way to handle both violent outsiders and insiders while also ensuring that the law of France would be enforced in a way that would protect constituents’ rights.

While I don’t agree with the way Robespierre ended up handling the predicament he was in, I can at the very least empathize with the man. I can now see how he felt the need to rule with an iron fist to ensure the crystallization of his dream for a republican government in France when he had to worry about Royalists and the hostility of other nations who detested what the French Revolution stood for. I think that prior to visiting the Conciergerie, I was much too distant from the Revolution as Wordsworth was to truly understand the gravity of everything that happened in France at the end of the eighteenth century, and I thus found it easy to condemn someone like Robespierre. But now that the Conciergerie has grounded me, I am instead ambivalent like Wordsworth and am able to better understand the mindsets of the revolutionaries.

P.S. Except for this guy: Fouquier-Tinville. He was plainly evil. He took pride in the hard work he did, which consisted of lying in court and getting as many death sentences passed upon defendants as he could.