Maximilien Robespierre also known as the incorruptible during his time in the French revolution, he was a very influential figure. He was born in Arras, north of France, on the 6th of May 1758, raised by his maternal grandparents after his mother died and his father had run away. He studied law and received a law degree from the Collge Louis-le-Grand in Paris, at the age of 21 years; he was also well respected by his peers for his high academic rates. He was devotee to the French social philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, intrigued by the idea of a virtuous man who stands alone accompanied only by his conscience. He was well known for defending the poor and for his long speeches at the local academy. Robespierres private life was conducted like a man of virtue. He didnt live in palaces or buried in treasure or allied himself with royalty. Robespierre lived a celibate life, living in a simple room in the house of a master carpenter. Robespierre was totally against the death penalty and slavery. He envisioned a new Republic of Virtue, where the people had different life values than the people of the Ancient Regime. He understood it as a civic virtue. Citizens dedication, work and sacrifice should go towards the one goal, revolution. Every citizen was to take part in the revolution and if not then it was punishable by death. Robespierre was motivated by Rousseaus work on social contract, which believed that society has a right to remove and execute a person that was violating the social norms and that if it was to benefit the majority a citizen was required to sacrifice his own life. Robespierre enhanced these ideas towards a bloody rule, where any difference from the civic virtue must be punished by death. There was no mercy because mercy was a treason. There was no room for a different opinion, it was either dedicate your life towards the republic or die. He was a man of speeches and no action. He was basically the mastermind behind the terror and justified the massive killing as a necessary sacrifice towards the higher goal. Any criticism directed against him, he saw as an attack against the revolution, which was a treason. By 1794 spring, he had already killed off the radicals, the moderates and royalists. The terror was the only way he could stay in power and rule. He couldnt come up with any ideas that would improve the economy or guarantee civic rights, but he could silence the opposition on the Guillotine. The killing of so many people made Robespierre paranoid and he could not manage. He withdrew from the government seven weeks before his death. During the Terror, Robespierre was confronted by many people why he does not stop it, but he only said that there is nothing what can be done. He did not believe that people sent by batches to scaffold were innocent because in his view the republic was not making any mistake. He gave a power to sadistic representatives causing massacres in Lyon or Vendee, but refused to acknowledge that they made mistakes in the name of revolution.Robespierre has made many achievements in his time as leader of the Jacobin club. He gained enough followers and made them realise that they had power as well, not just the King and Queen. He was the main prosecutor of the King of France. He started the revolution and made people come to realise that absolute monarchy isnt always the best way. He abolished monarchy, transformed the society of France where wealth and property was distributed more equally within the country.

"The French Revolution had opened an era of intense politicization. Perhaps the most significant characteristic of the dawning modern world, and in this respect it was a true child of Rousseau, was the tendency to relate everything to politics. In Latin America, every would-be plunderer or ambitious bandit now called himself a "a liberator"; murderers killed for freedom, thieves stole for the people."Paul Johnson