ABSTRACT
CHARACTERISTICS OF ROBESPIERRE’S FACTION W hen Robespierre entered governm ent he exercised power of a m ore conventional kind than he had in opposition and of a kind conventional in terms of eighteenth-century politics: he built up a faction and placed its members in the key institu tions of the Republic. In this respect his faction was similar to one in contem porary Britain. But where em olum ent was the alpha and omega for members of a British faction, members of Robespierre’s faction were financially incorruptible and were picked for their ideological affinity and this im bued all their decisions, at whatever level in the hierarchy they were placed. They were all ‘patriots’ and had all been ‘oppressed patriots’. Patriot may seem a vague term - who would claim not to be one? - but a Robespierrist patriot possessed certain defined characteristics, a mind-set, which will be explored in this sec ond part of the book. And people who possessed it were quick to recognize their own: this made it possible for Robespierre to build up a faction largely on personal recom m endation, which was as well since he was unsociable: someone rem arked that he had few enemies because he knew few people.
