ABSTRACT
Robespierre’s involvement with the Bureau de surveillance administrative et police generale was, in com m on with many of his accretions of power in the spring of 1794, largely accidental. He told the Convention on 8 th e rm id o r/16 July,
Though this statem ent contains spectacular lies, it does also contain a germ of truth. For the police bureau was the brain child not of Robespierre but of Saint-Just and he did only look after it during the ‘absence of his colleague’ on mission with the Army of the N orth - but the absence lasted two months.
