Most people think of Robespierre (1758-1794) simply as a bloody-handed mass murderer. But there was another side to the master of the Terror.
Born in Arras to a family of the minor nobility, when he was 11 he received a scholarship from his bishop, Hilaire de Conzié, to study at the prestigious Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris, followed by four years at the university there.
Upon his graduation in 1781, Robespierre’s episcopal benefactor made him a judge. What the reverend gentleman did not know was that his protégé’s admiration of classicism during his schooldays had turned him into an admirer of the Roman Republic; nor did he know that the young jurist had become a disciple of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Although the bishop appointed Robespierre a judge, the latter soon resigned to avoid giving death sentences, and became a defence attorney.
