ABSTRACT
Maximilien Frangois Marie Isidore de Robespierre was born in Arras, the capital of the northern province of Artois, on 6 May 1758, into a m odest and declining legal family. Shortly before his birth, in November 1757, at the battle of Rossbach, a French army had been destroyed by Frederick the Great of Prussia. The defeat was the worst for France since Agincourt and led to decades of military reform which only served to lower morale. In 1759, a year after Robespierre’s birth, France suffered de feats still greater overseas at the hands of Frederick’s ally and France’s competitor for empire, Britain. France’s losses included India, Canada, and some immensely profitable West Indian sugar islands. 1759 was Britain’s annus mirahilis bu t France’s annus horribilis. The sense of national decline under Louis XV was intensified in 1772 when Russia, Prussia and Austria seized territory from one of France’s oldest allies in the first partition of Poland. Russia and Prussia and indeed Britain had recently acceded to the ranks of the Great Powers, to the obvious dis advantage of France and Austria, who in consequence replaced their centuries-old enmity in 1756 with an uneasy alliance.
