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anotherhumaninthisworld · 2 years ago

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Since today is Charlotte Robespierre’s 163’th birthday, I thought I’d attempt something I’ve not seen anyone else yet do, which is to write a mini biography over her entire life. I’ve already translated a study from the 1960s which deals with Charlotte, but since it’s a bit all over the place and spends almost more time describing the people Charlotte had any sort of connections with rather than Charlotte herself, I decided to try to make some more sense of things by a more chronological approach.

Marie Marguerite Charlotte de Robespierre was born in Arras on February 5 1760, around half past two in the afternoon. Her baptism record, written three days later, goes as follows:

”Today is the eighth day of the month of February, the year 1760. We priests of the parish of Saint-Étienne of towns and Diocese of Arras, have supplemented the ceremonies of the baptism for a girl born around half past two in the afternoon in said parish in the legitimite marriage of maître Maximilien-Barthélemy-François de Robespierre, lawyer at the Provincial Council of Artois, and of demoiselle Jacqueline-Margueritte Carraut, her father and mother; she was delivered by us parish priest the day after her birth, six of the same month and year as above, with the permission of the bishopric dated the same day signed by Le Roux, vicar general, and below, by ordinance Péchena. The godfather was master Charles-Antoine de Gouve, adviser to the King and his attorney for the town and city of Arras, subdelegate of the intendant of Flanders and Artois, in the department of Arras, of the parish of Saint-Jean in Ronville, and the godmother demoiselle Marie-Dominique Poiteau, widow of Sieur François Isambart, procurator to the said provincial council of Artois, of the parish of Saint-Aubert, who gave her the name Marie-Marguerite-Charlotte, and who signed with us the parish priest, and the father here present, the same act on the day and year mentioned above. The child was born on the fifth. Marie Dominique Poiteau De Gouve Derobespibrre Willart, parish priest of Saint-Etienne.”

That Charlotte wasn’t baptisted until three days after her birth may be a sign that her parents for a moment feared for her life, considering Charlotte’s three siblings — the older Maximilien (born 1758), and younger Henriette (1761) and Augustin (1763) — all were baptised the same days they had been born.

Charlotte would later recall the memory of her mother Jacqueline (1735) with fondness. ”Oh! Who would not keep the memory of this excellent mother!” she wrote in her memoirs. ”She loved us so! Nor could Maximilien recall her without emotion: every time that, in our private interviews, we spoke of her, I heard his voice alter, and I saw his eyes soften. She was no less of a good wife than a good mother.” But they did not get to keep her for long — on July 4 1764 Jacqueline gave birth to a baby who didn’t make it past his first twenty-four hours alive, and was buried in the Saint-Nicaise cemetery without having received a name. She was not to survive him for much longer, twelve days later she died as well, a few days before her twenty-ninth birthday. The funeral held the following day was, according to the mortuary act, attended by Jacqueline’s brother Augustin and Antoine-Henri Galbaut, Knight of Saint-Louis, assistant major of the Citadel, but not by her husband. In her memoirs, Charlotte reported that Jacqueline’s death had been ”a lightning strike to the heart” for him — ”He was inconsolable. Nothing could divert him from his sorrow; he no longer pleaded, nor occupied himself with business; he was entirely consumed with chagrin. He was advised to travel for some time to distract himself; he followed this advice and left: but, alas! We never saw him again; the pitiless death took him as it had already taken our mother.”

Different documents tell us that the father actually didn’t leave Arras until December 1764, five months after Jacqueline’s death, after which he sporadically appeared in his hometown, sometimes for months at a time. The last known stay is from 1772. It is nevertheless probable that he no longer was in a state to look after his children after the death of his wife, and therefore, as Charlotte recounts in her memoirs, quickly handed them over to different relatives. Charlotte and Henriette, seperated by an age gap of less than two years, were therefore sent to live with their two unmarried paternal aunts, Henriette and Eulalie de Robespierre. According to contemporary Abbé Proyart, who knew the family, the aunts ”lived in a great reputation for piety.” Maximilien and Augustin, the latter still with his wetnurse, were in their turn taken in by their maternal grandparents. According to Charlotte, the loss of their parents had left a big mark on the former:

”He was totally changed. Before that point he had been, like all children of his age, flighty, unruly, rash; but since from this time he saw himself, in the quality of eldest, as the head of the family, he became poised, reasonable, laborious; he spoke to us with a sort of imposing gravity; if he joined in our games, it was to direct them. He loved us tenderly, and there were no caresses that he did not lavish on us […] He had been given pigeons and sparrows which he took the greatest care of, and close to which he often came to pass the moments which he did not consecrate to his studies.”

The children were reunited every Sunday, during which Maximilien would show his sisters his drawings and place his sparrows and pigeons into their cupped hands. One time, Charlotte and Henriette begged him to let them have one of his birds, and after much hesitation he gave in, much to their joy. Unfortunately, some days later the girls forgot the pigeon in the garden during a stormy night, by which it perished. When he found out about it Maximilien’s tears flowed, and he rained reproaches on Charlotte and Henriette and refused to give his birds to them when he left to study in Paris. ”It was sixty years ago,” Charlotte writes in her memoirs, ”that by a childish flightiness I was the cause of my elder brother’s chagrin and tears: and well! My heart bleeds for it still; it seems to me that I have not aged a day since the tragic end of the poor pigeon was so sensitive to Maximilien, such that I was affected by it myself.”

On December 30 1768, Charlotte was sent off to Maison des Sœurs Manarre, — “a pious foundation for poor girls, who may be admitted from the age of nine to eighteen, to be fed, brought up under some good mistress of virtue and to improve oneself in lacing and sewing or in another thing which one will judge useful; to learn to read and write until they are able to serve and earn a living,” situated just across the border in Tournai (modern-day Belgium). She was actually a few months too young to be enrolled, but an exeption was made in her favor, obtained by the influence of her godfather Charles-Antoine de Gouve. Two years later Charlotte was joined at the convent school by Henriette, who in her turn was enrolled without yet having a scolarship. Perhaps this is a sign that their relatives were struggling to provide for the four orphans and thus had to send them away as quickly as possible. On October 1769, Maximilien was enrolled at the College of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, his taste for study having awarded him with a scholarship to the prestigious school, while Augustin in his turn was sent off to the College of Duoai. The children were thus dispersed and no longer saw anything of each other, except for in the summers when they were reunited in Arras. According to Charlotte these were days of great joy that passed too quickly, even if many of these years were also ”marked by the death of something cherished.” In 1770, their paternal grandmother died, in 1775 their maternal grandmother and in 1778 their maternal grandfather. 1777 saw the death of their father, who at that point was living in Munich, but it’s unknown if Charlotte and her relatives actually found out about it or not. Finally, on March 5 1780, Henriette was buried, a little more than two months after her eighteenth birthday. According to Charlotte, the death of the sister had a big impact on Maximilien, it rendered him ”sad and melancholy” and he wrote a poem in her honor. She does not, on the other hand, report how the death affected her, Henriette undeniably being the family member she had spent the most time together with… Nevertheless, she did not get a chance to say goodbye, as the names of neither her nor her brothers feature on the mortuary act of Henriette or any of the other dead relatives.

One year after Henriette’s death, Maximilien graduated from Louis-le-Grand, nine days after his twenty-third birthday. Now a fully trained lawyer, he returned to Arras to work as such. We don’t know when Charlotte left the convent school, but she soon enough joined her older brother. Augustin, however, Charlotte continued to see very little of, as Maximilien arranged for him to take over his scholarship and started his studies at Louis-le-Grand on November 3 1781. He didn’t return until 1787.

The siblings had obtained half of the 8242 livres from when their late grandfather’s brewery was sold to their maternal uncle Augustin in 1778, but they were still in a rough financial situation. In 1768 their father had resigned from any inheritance whatsoever from his mother ”both for me and my children,” a wish he had then repeated both in 1770 and 1771. In 1766, he had also borrowed seven hundred livres from his sister Henriette which he never paid back, leading to some tension between Henriette, her husband and Maximilien in 1780.

Charlotte and Maximilien at first moved into a house on Rue du Saumon, but their stay there was short — already in late 1782 they were forced to leave the house to instead move in with aunt Henriette on Rue Teinturiers. According to the memoirs of Maurice-André Gaillard, Charlotte told him in 1794 that she and Maximilien weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms by Henriette’s husband — ”It’s strange that you didn’t often notice how much [his] brusqueness and formality made us pay dearly for the bread he gave us; but you must also have noticed that if indigence saddened us, it never degraded us and you always judged us incapable of containing money through a dubious action.”

Eventually, Charlotte and Maximilien moved again, to Rue des Jésuites, and finally, in 1787, they moved from there Rue des Rapporteurs 9. There they were soon enough joined by Augustin, by now too a qualified lawyer. According to Charlotte’s memoirs, the bond between the three siblings was strong — ”good harmony would not have ceased for a sole instant to reign among us.” While her brothers worked, Charlotte took care of the house. We know the name of one of her domestics — Catherine Calmet, who helped Charlotte out for six months. When Calmet was arrested in Lille in 1788, Maximilien wrote a letter pleading in her favour: ”[Calmet’s] conduct appeared to me faultless during the time she stayed with me; I rejoice in her slightest recovery. As for the certificate you’re speaking to me about, my sister has told me that the girl brought it with her.”

The siblings had many friends. One of them was mademoiselle Dehay, who in 1782 gave Charlotte and Maximilien a cage of canaries which they both appriciated a lot. ”My sister asks me, in particular,” Maximilien wrote to her on January 22, to show you her gratitude for the kindness you have had in giving her this present, and all the other feelings you have inspired in her.” Mademoiselle Dehay would later also do other animal related favors for the two. ”Is the puppy you are raising for my sister as sweet as the one you showed me when I passed through Béthune?” Maximilien asked her in 1788. ”Whatever it looks like, we receive it with distinction and pleasure.”

Charlotte leaves a long list of Maximilien’s closest friends in her memoirs. Of those included there, important for her story as well is her brother’s fellow lawyer Antoine Buissart, ”intensely estimable savant” and his wife Charlotte. The couple lived on rue du Coclipas, a ten minute walk from Rue des Rapporteurs, and would become close with all three siblings. Another one of Maximilien’s colleagues that would play an important role in Charlotte’s life was Armand Joseph Guffroy, who, like Charlotte, witnessed Maximilien’s uneasiness when it came to the death penalty while the two worked as judges together.

Then there was the family — maternal uncle Augustin Carraut who with his wife Catherine Sabine (1740) had had four children — Augustin Louis Joseph (1762), Antoine Philippe (1764), Jean-Baptiste Guislain (1768) and Sabine Josephe (1771). The two paternal aunts Eulalie and Henriette had married in 1776 and 1777 respectively — Henriette to Gabriel-François Durut, doctor of medicine in Arras at the College d’Oratoire, Eulalie to Robert Deshorties, merchant and royal notary in Arras. Deshorties had five children from his previous marriage — two sons and three daughters. One of the daughters had according to Charlotte been courting Maximilien since 1786 or 1787. ”She loved him and was loved back. […] Many times it had been talk of marriage, and it is very probable Maximilien would have wedded her, if the the suffrage of his fellow citizens had not removed him from the sweetness of private life and thrown him into a career in politics.” However, if such plans existed, they were soon broken up by the revolution, and the step-cousin instead got engaged to another lawyer, Léandre Leducq, who she married on August 7 1792.

Charlotte was perhaps also finding love. Joseph Fouché was a science professor from Nantes, a year older than herself, who had joined her uncle Durut at the College of Arras in 1788. ”Fouché”, Charlotte writes in her memoirs, ”was not handsome, but but he had a charming wit and was extremely amiable. He spoke to me of marriage, and I admit that I felt no repugnance for that bond, and that I was well enough disposed to accord my hand to he whom my brother had introduced to me as a pure democrat and his friend.” But somehow, this engagement too ran out into the sand, and Fouché got married to Bonne Jeanne Coiquaud in 1792.

Life changed on April 26 1789, when Maximilien was elected as a deputy for the Estates General and settled for Paris for an indefinite period of time. Letters from Augustin to the family friend Antoine Buissart reveal that the he went to visit his brother in September 1789, as well as from September 1790 to March 1791. Charlotte may not have been so fond of Augustin’s trips, ”My sister must be very cross with me,” Augustin wrote to Buissart on November 25 1790, ”but she easily forgets, that consoles me, I will try to bring her what she wants.” Charlotte herself couldn’t or wouldn’t join him — ”I did not see [Maximilien] for the duration of the Constituent Assembly,” she affirms in her memoirs. In November 1791, after the closing of said assembly, Maximilien made a visit back to Arras, Charlotte, Augustin and Charlotte Buissart meeting him at the coach depot in Bapaume. In her memoirs, Charlotte could still remember the pleasure of getting to embrace her brother after not having seen him for two years. However, Maximilien’s stay was short, and on November 27 he was back in Paris to never see his hometown again.

Maximilien, like Augustin, frequently wrote long letters to Buissart, telling him about the situation developing in the capital. He did however never ask him to say hello to his siblings in them, nor do we have any conserved letters adressed from him to them. Charlotte still affirms that ”we wrote to each other often, and [Maximilien] gave me the most emphatic testimony of friendship in his letters. “You (vous) are what I love the most after the patrie,” he told me.” According to Paul Villiers, who claimed to have been Maximilien’s secretary for seven months in 1790, the latter also sent part of his deputy’s salary to ”a sister in Arras, whom he had a lot of affection of for.”

But despite the extra money, Charlotte and Augustin were having a hard time. “We are in absolute destitution,” the latter wrote to Maximilien in 1790, ”remember our unfortunate household.” Joseph Lebon, a former priest soon to be mayor of Arras, wrote to Maximilien on August 28 1792 that “the bearer of this letter, Démouliez, has planned arrangements with your brother, to procure for him the execrable silver mark.” They also had to deal with the loss of some more loved ones, as Henriette and Eulalie, the aunts that had had the raising of Charlotte and her sister, both died in 1791.

Even if Charlotte was unable to go to Paris with her younger brother, she was still politically active on a local level. This is shown through a letter dated April 9 1790 which she sent Maximilien:

”We’ve just received a letter from you, dear brother, dated April 1, and today it is the 9th. I don’t know if this delay is the fault of the person to whom you gave it. Please send it to us directly next time. At the moment, I’ve just learned that one is happy with the patriotic contribution. M. Nonot, always a good patriot, has just told me this news with this one which he has from M. de Vralie and which greatly formalizes those who love liberty. I don't know if you know that a whip-round was made about four months ago for the relief of the poor in the town. Each citizen contributed to it according to his faculties. Today the municipal officers are of the opinion that the whip-round should continue for another three months. There are many people who no longer want to pay. They give the reason that the poor should not be fed idle, that they should be made to work demolishing the rampart of the town. The mayor, who apparently knew that one would refuse to pay, said that if one refused to pay, he would obtain authorization from the National Assembly and tax himself what must be payed. If M. Nonot is not mistaken, for the remark is so ridiculous that I cannot persuade myself that it is true, M. de Fosseux will be busy, for there are those who will refuse on purpose in order to see what that will result in. I don't know if my brother has forgotten to tell you about Madame Marchand. We fell out with her! I took the liberty of telling her what the good patriots must have thought of her paper, and what you thought of it. I reproached her for her affectation of always putting infamous notes for the people, etc. She got angry, she maintained that there were no aristocrats in Arras, that she knew all the patriots, that only the hotheads found her paper aristocratic. She says a lot of nonsense to me and since then she no longer sends us her paper. Take care, dear brother, to send what you promised me. We are still in great trouble. Farewell, dear brother, I embrace you with the greatest tenderness. If you could find a position in Paris that suits me, if you knew one for my brother, because he will never be anything in this country. I am not sending you this letter by post in order to give the person who gives it to you the opportunity of getting to know you, which he has long wanted.”

However, contrary to her prediction that Augustin ”would never be something,” her younger brother was in fact elected to the council of administration of Pas-de-Calais in 1791, and in August 1792 prosecutor-syndic of the commune of Arras and president of les Amis de la Constitution. Finally, one month later, on September 16, Augustin was elected to fill a seat in France’s new government body the National Convention.

Thus, Charlotte’s hopes of going to Paris were finally coming true, as this time she was not left behind when Augustin once again set off for the capital. The first evidence of their arrival is from October 5, when Augustin’s name is first mentioned in the debates of the Jacobin Club in Paris. However, it’s possible Charlotte went to Paris still earlier, as she in her memoirs claims to have stood witness to a conversation between her older brother and his friend Jérôme Pétion ”a few days” after the Paris prison massacres between September 2-4. Maximilien would have reproached Pétion for not having interposed his authority to stop the excesses, to which the latter dryly would have replied: ”All I can tell you is that no human power could have stopped them.” Pétion also mentioned a meeting between him and Maximilien on the subject, but in his version it was rather he who accused Maximilien of doing a lot of harm — ”your denunciations, your alarms, your hatreds, your suspicions, they agitate the people; explain yourself; do you have any facts? Do you have any proof?”

Regardless, Augustin and Charlotte settled in the front of an apartment on 366 Rue Saint-Honoré, where their brother lodged since 1791. Owner of the house was one Maurice Duplay (1738), who lived there with his wife Françoise-Éleonore (1739) and their unmarried daughters Éleonore (1767/1768), Victoire (1769) and Élisabeth (1772), son Maurice (1778) and nephew Simon (1774). According to the memoirs of the youngest daughter, Élisabeth, Maximilien had become something of an additional family member — ”He was so nice! […] He had a profound respect for my father and mother; they too regarded him as a son, and we as a brother.” The letters Maximilien wrote to Maurice while on the short trip in Arras reveal that the feelings seem to have been mutual — ”Please present the testimonies of my tender friendship to Madame Duplay, to your young ladies, and to my little friend.”

Charlotte on the other hand, soon found herself on second thoughts regarding the family, or, to be more exact, Françoise Duplay. ”I should tell the whole truth,” she writes in her memoirs, ”I have nothing but praise for the demoiselles Duplay; but I would not say the same for their mother, who did me much wrong; she looked constantly to put me in bad standing with my older brother and to monopolize him.” According to Charlotte, the family exercised an ascendancy over Maximilien — ”founded neither on wit, since Maximilien certainly had more of it than Madame Duplay, nor on great services rendered, since the family among whom my brother lived had not for some time been in a position to render them,” which her older brother was simply too kind to stand against. Before, no one had interfered with Charlotte’s management over the domestic square, but now she was subordinate to Françoise, who treated Charlotte badly — ”if I were to report everything she did to me I would fill a fat volume” — and sometimes even drove her to tears. Françoise’s daughter Élisabeth, on the contrary, wrote in her memoirs that her mother loved Charlotte a lot, never refused her anything that could please her and even treated her as a daughter of her own.

Charlotte also had a hard time getting along with Éleonore, Françoise’s oldest daughter. According to Élisabeth and Maximilien’s doctor Joseph Souberbielle, she had been ”promised,” to the latter, something which Charlotte believed to be as false as later claims of Éleonore being her brother’s mistress. ”But”, she added, ”what is certain is that Madame Duplay would have strongly desired to have my brother Maximilien for a son-in-law, and that she forget neither caresses nor seductions to make him marry her daughter. Éléonore too was very ambitious to call herself the citoyenne Robespierre, and she put into effect all that could touch Maximilien’s heart.” All of this was once again to much distress for Charlotte, and, according to her, Maximilien as well, as he had no interest whatsoever in any type of marriage.

Charlotte was however on good terms with Éleonore’s two younger sisters — Victoire and, especially, Élisabeth. ”I have nothing but praise for [Élisabeth], she was not, like like her mother and older sister, stirred up against me; many times she came to wipe away my tears, when Madame Duplay’s indignities made me cry.” Élisabeth reported back that ”I was good friends with [Charlotte], and it was a pleasure to go see her often; sometimes I even pleased myself with doing her hair and her toilette. She too seemed to have much affection for me.” Charlotte often asked Françoise for permission to bring Élisabeth with her to the Convention, something which she agreed to. It was there, on April 24 1793 that Élisabeth met her future husband Philippe Lebas, who came up and asked Charlotte who Élisabeth and her family were, after which he urged the two to come to another session. They did so, bringing sweets and oranges, Élisabeth asking Charlotte if she could offer Lebas one. During yet another session, Lebas gave Charlotte and Élisabeth a lorgnette, while Charlotte showed Lebas Élisabeth’s ring, which the latter unfortunately brought with him without returning it. Charlotte consoled Élisabeth, telling her to be calm and that she would explain to her mother of how it had happened if she was to ask. But Élisabeth didn’t get her ring back until two months later, when she and Lebas also professed their love for one another. Françoise and Maurice agreed to let them marry, however, the engagement was soon complicated by Maximilien’s old collegue Armand Joseph Guffroy.

The lawyer had stayed in Arras at the outbreak of the revolution, authoring many pamphleths in support of the new developments. In them he often displayed radical ideas — among others things that women should have the right to be included as both electors and representatives in the new regime. He had also frequently corresponded with Maximilien about the situation in Arras (we have nine letters from 1791 conserved), before being elected to the National Convention on September 9 1792 and, like Augustin, heading to Paris in order to take a seat in the new government. Now he slandered Élisabeth to Lebas, saying that she had multiple love affairs. Élisabeth and Lebas soon discovered that he had only said so in order to get Lebas to marry his own daughter, Louise Reine, at that point already pregnant with the baby of her father’s printer. ”This malicious man was known less than favorably on more than one account,” Élisabeth bitterly stated in her memoirs, ”he knew only how to bad-mouth everyone; he was despised by all and viewed negatively by his colleagues. The Robespierre brothers had a great contempt for him…”

Six months before the marriage between Lebas and Élisabeth, Charlotte and her two brothers had dinner together with Rosalie Jullien, mother of the young Convention deputy Marc-Antoine Jullien. On February 2 1793, she wrote to her son: ”Robespierre, his brother and his sister are to dine with us today. I shall get acquainted with this patriotic family whose head has made so many friends and enemies. I am most curious to see him close up…” Eight days later, Rosalie could report that she had not been unhappy with the result: ”I was very pleased with the Robespierre family. His sister is naive and natural like your aunts. She came two hours before her brothers and we had some women’s talk. I got her to speak about their home life; it is all openness and simplicity, as with us. Her brother had as little to do with the events of August 10th as with those of September 2. He is about as suited to be a party chief as to clench the moon with his teeth. He is abstracted, like a thinker; dry, like a man of affairs; but gentle as a lamb; and as gloomy as the English poet, Young. I see that he lacks our tenderness of feeling, but I like to think that he wishes well to the human race, more from justice than from affection. Robespierre the younger is livelier, more open, an excellent patriot; but common for the spirit and of a petulance of humor which makes him make a noise unfavorable to the Mountain.”

On July 19 1793, a decree from the Committee of Public Safety tasked Augustin with the mission of going to the Army of Italy. ”It’s a painful mission,” Augustin wrote to Buissart the following day, ”I have accepted it for the good of my country; I’m convinced that I will serve it with utility, if only by destroying the calumnies with which my name has been nourished.” Perhaps Charlotte saw this mission as an opportunity also — an opportunity to escape the circumstances which her conflict with Madame Duplay had put her in and get to see new parts of the country. She asked to be brought along, which her younger brother joyfully agreed to, and the two departed together with Jean François Ricord, another representative on mission, and his wife.

Augustin was right in that the mission would be painful, something which Charlotte too would go on to carefully describe in her memoirs. On their way to the army, they made a stop in Lyon, which was currently in insurrection. Augustin and Ricord went into the Hôtel de Ville to talk to some municipal officers, while Charlotte and Madame Ricord remained in the carriage. They were soon surrounded by a growing crowd, showing them their national cockades as proof of their patriotism and asking what was said of the lyonnais in Paris. The two women answered that they knew nothing about it. Meanwhile, Augustin and Ricord conversation with the municipal officers had erupted into a quarrel, and the two representatives decided it was best both to leave Lyon as well as abandoning the main route when doing so. They set out for Manosque where they remained for two days, but their stay there, as Charlotte admitted, ”was not without danger.” They were badly regarded by the people who reconized them and had two soldiers brought along for protection. When it was time to resume the journey, said soldiers they went ahead in order to scout out the country. As the group was preparing to cross the banks of Durauce, the soldiers returned in a hurry to tell them about Marseillais armed with canons on the opposite bank. They therefore returned to Manosque from which they then went to Forcalquier without misfortune, where they were offered services and supper. But hardly had they sat down at the table after not having eaten since morning when an express from the mayor of Manosque came to tell them to take flight immidiately as the Marseillais were once again in pursuit of them. It was eleven o’clock in the evening, and the only course to take was to reach the mountains between Forcalquier and the department of Vaucluse. They took horses, since a carriage would prove useless in the mountains, and walked the whole night on horrible roads, scaling uneven cliffs where the animals had difficulty carrying them and were constantly making false steps. The next morning the group reached a village where the pastor showed them hospitality, and after having taken a few hours rest, they were on the road again, reaching Sault in the evening. After three pleasurable days spent there, they returned to Manosque, lying about being followed by six thousand troops in order to keep the situation under control. Finally, after a troublesome journey, they reached Nice in the beginning of September.

Public spirit in Nice was no better than in all of Provence, but there they at least had no counter-revolutionaries after them. The general in chief, Dumerbion, and his general staff protected Charlotte and Madame Ricord while Augustin and Jean François made frequent outings. But there was still unsafety to be reckoned with. Charlotte remembered that she and Madame Ricord stopped attending the theater after having hostile locals attempt to throw apples at them. They instead kept occupied by making shirts for the soldiers, and in the evenings they went for walks and horseback rides in the countryside. But soon, ”several journals paid by the aristocracy” back in Paris started accusing them of acting like princesses with their equestrian outings, and Maximilien wrote to let his siblings know. Augustin vetoed any more horse back rides, and Charlotte promised to abstain from riding from then on. But not long after, Madame Ricord, who according to Charlotte ”was the most frivolous and inconsiderate person in the world,” proposed they should go on yet another one. Charlotte reminded her of what her brothers had said, but Madame Ricord just laughed it off. As the coach and the horses were already prepared, Charlotte resigned and joined her on the ride.

Two days afterwards Augustin returned. When he didn’t reproach Charlotte for the carriage ride she assumed he was aware of the fact she had been forced into it. But the following day he did call her out for it, and Charlotte, feeling the need to explain herself, called Madame Ricord to testify that the ride had been her idea. To her ”surprise and indignation”, Madame Ricord, instead of telling the truth, enforced the lie that it was Charlotte that had wanted the ride and taken her with her against her will. Augustin chose to believe her, much to Charlotte’s distress. ”[Augustin] knew I was incapable of lying. Why then did he not want to believe me?” Charlotte wept much over the scene when she was alone, but refused to show anything to her brother, who didn’t speak more about the incident but kept a certain coldness in regards to Charlotte which caused her more despair.

Then, Madame Ricord suggested to Charlotte that they should go to Grasse together, which she agreed to. But hardly had they arrived when a letter was brought to Madame Ricord. Madame Ricord told Charlotte that the letter was from Augustin and that he prayed her to return as promptly as possible to Paris. Charlotte was shocked, but nevertheless obeyed, the next morning she got into a private coach and went back to Paris.

Charlotte would later refuse to believe that Augustin had actually asked her to leave — according to her, Madame Ricord must have forged the letter and afterwards slandered her to her brother, saying that she didn’t care about him and that this was the reason for her brusque departure. But Charlotte also hints at there being something more between Madame Ricord and Augustin:

”How should one esteem a woman who knows so little of the rules of propriety and her duties as a wife to commit the gravest offenses against them? How should I have loved a person who continually compromised my younger brother with her advances, to which he believed it essential to his honor and duty not to respond? In truth, if modesty did not hold back my pen, I would say some things which would not be to Madame Ricord’s advantage.”

The memoirs of Paul Barras (1895), him too a representative to the Army of Italy at the same time as Augustin, lean in the same direction:

”Fully convinced that women constituted a powerful aid, [Bonaparte] assiduously paid court to the wife of Ricord, knowing that she exercised great influence over Robespierre the younger, her husband's colleague. […] Robespierre the younger was particulary attached to Madame Ricord.”

If Charlotte is right and both she and Augustin fell victim to a trap set up by Madame Ricord, or if Augustin consciously sent his sister away so she wouldn’t be in the way of his love affair is something we can never know for sure…

Regardless, Charlotte returned to Paris somewhere in the fall 1793 (Mary Young, biographer of Augustin, fixes the date for her departure somewhere around October 26). According to Mauricé-André Gaillard’s memoirs, it was now that Charlotte’s grapple with Françoise and Éleonore became too much to bear, and she started persuading Maximilien that, occupying such a high rank in politics, he ought to have a home of his own. ”Maximilien recognized the fairness of my reasons,” Charlotte writes, ”but long fought my proposition that he should separate from the Duplay family, fearing to distress them.” In the end, he agreed, although hesitantly, to move into an apartment on rue Saint-Florentin. Being interrogated after thermidor, Simon Duplay revealed that Augustin too went to live there after his return from the army of Italy, although, according to Charlotte’s memoirs, he didn’t want to see his sister during his stay. Already in mid-January he was sent off on another mission. As for Maximilien, he soon enough fell ill (given his periods of illness, this most likely happened in February 1794). When Françoise came to visit, she made a great fuss over not having been informed about it. ”She said some very disobliging things to me,” writes Charlotte, ”she told me that my brother had not had all necessary care, that he would have been better cared for with her family, that he would lack nothing.” She managed to convince Maximilien into moving back to her house. ”My brother at first refused weakly; she redoubled her insistences, I should say, her obsessions. Robespierre, despite my protests, decided finally to follow her.”

Charlotte stayed behind at rue Saint-Florentin, probably feeling bitter and unloved. ”At the end of the day, should he not have considered that his preference for Madame Duplay distressed me as much at least as his refusal could have afflicted this lady? Between Madame Duplay and me should he have hesitated? Should he have sacrificed me to her?” She still went to see her brother quite assiduously — the new apartment after all only a five minute walk from the one on Rue Saint-Honoré — and sent him jams, fruit comfits or other sweets. Françoise always received her in a disgraceful (I could not use another term, Charlotte writes) manner. One time, Charlotte charged her domestic (possibly madame Delaporte) to bring Maximilien a few jars of jam. But Françoise stopped her and told her angrily: “Bring that back, I don’t want her to poison Robespierre.” Receiving news of this, Charlotte, like in the case of Augustin, chose not to tell her brother, in fear of causing him pain and provoking a scene, and instead swallowed in sadness her grief and indignation. Eventually, she too moved back to Rue Saint-Honoré, but her relationship with the Duplays hardly got any better.

But there were more things than family affairs occupying Charlotte’s mind. In an undated, anonymous letter the sender asked the receiver to inform her brother (these two are undoubtly Charlotte and Maximilien) about some pieces deposited at the Committee of Public Safety concerning Dorfeuille and Merle, two hébertists of Commune Affranchie (Lyon) and Ain and their relations with Collot d'Herbois. “The impunity still enjoyed by the counter-revolutionaries in the department of Ain raises fears that knowledge of it has been taken away from him,” the sender writes, undoubtly thinking Charlotte could have some influence over Maximilien and get him to do something about the situation.

Still more relevant is this letter, penned down on April 25 1794 and sent off to Charlotte :

”We passed through Arras without stopping; while we relayed, I acquitted myself of your commission. What has been said of your country is true; for six weeks one hundred and fifty people have been guillotined and about three thousand imprisoned. Citizens went to find a friend of your brother (Buissart); he was told: ”Only you can make the truth heard. Robespierre trusts you.” He answered them: ”How could I write, since every evening we already witness the departure of letters?” Saint-Just's report and the decree that those accused of conspiracy will be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris (the decree of 27 Germinal Year II/April 16, 1794) had given rise to some hopes; but yesterday it was published that throughout the Republic, the city of Arras alone would not enjoy the sagression of this law. It has long been agreed that a man invested with great powers does more harm than good when he is sent to his country. For a long time, we have agreed on the moral virtues of priests. What is the use of being such good theoreticians? I do not doubt that there existed in Arras counter-revolutionaries and fanatics; but terror must weigh on them alone, and the patriot must be able to rely on the impassivity of the judges and the freedom of debate and opinion. I'll spare you other details that are too atrocious to be believed, when you haven't been an eyewitness. If I had more time, I could have given you more detailed facts; I cannot tell you what I have heard from different people without having had the time to verify it. We go into the countryside tomorrow. I forgot to tell you that the prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal is arrested and the revolutionary commissar broken. Adieu, salut et fraternité. Bruslé, employed by the citizen Richard.”

Charlotte’s hometown Arras, situated near the Belgian border with several enemy armies just a few dozen kilometers away, had since a few months back been the target of severe repression. On October 29 a Committee of Public Safety decree written by Maximilien had entrusted Joseph Lebon, Arras’ former mayor who had now become a Convention deputy, to serve as representative on mission to the department of Pas-de-Calais (of which Arras is the capital). Lebon showed great severity in dealing with offences against the revolution. Around 500 death sentences were passed in Cambrai and Arras, of which two-thirds were handed out in the latter town between March and July 1794 — a high number for an area that, unlike places like Lyon and Toulon, had never risen in revolt against Paris. One of the people most active in the repression was none other than Charlotte’s cousin Antoine-Philippe Carraut, who, according to Louis-Eùgene Poirier, amused himself with stripping, plundering and threatening the prisoners. The law of 14 frimaire had stated that all future suspects were to be tried in Paris, however, a few exceptions were made with the prisoners of Arras being one of them. It was once again Maximilien who had been the author behind the decree informing the authorities of Arras about this, dated April 19. On the same day, Lebon had issued arrests against members of the former Revolutionary Tribunal of Arras: its president Beugniet, the public prosecutor Démouliez (who, as seen above, had helped Charlotte and Augustin out financially before they moved to Paris), Gabriel Leblond, Denton and his wife. The five were taken to Paris by gendarmes on May 4 to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal. This affair had caused great emotion in Arras. The Buissart couple had initially been positive in regards to Lebon, as shown through a letter written to Maximilien on February 2 1794, but as winter turned to spring their feelings started to cool, and on April 25 Antoine wrote to Maximilien to reproach him for his silence, claiming to have attempted to warn him for three months about what was going on in Arras.

Someone else who wasn’t fond of Lebon was Armand Joseph Guffroy, who’s position had diminished since his arrival to the Convention. On the fourth anniversity of the revolution, July 14 1793, he had founded a newspaper called le Rougyff ou le Frank en vedette, in which he had violently demanded the guillotine for anyone threatening the republic. But on March 3 1794, he had been expelled from the Jacobins after being denounced by the deputy Chasles, who called the Rougyff ”the tomb of common sense.” At the same time he had also been forced to resign from his functions as member of the Committee of General Security. Guffroy was accused of having connections with the former Marquis de Travanet, and of forcing the Revolutionary Committee of the Picques section to release Dumier, Louis XVI’s former locksmith. English letters were also found in his papers.

Guffroy, at the same time as he was expelled from the Jacobins, boldly attacked Joseph Lebon in his journal and pamphlets which he edited, printed and published himself. He was denounced by Darthé, the public prosecutor of Arras, but still wasn’t worried. On May 7, Guffroy tried to get into contact with Maximilien to try to persuade him to do something about Lebon — ”You said the other day at the Jacobins that in wanting to make virtues reign we did not want to be persecutors,” he wrote that day. ”I think you mean what you say. Why then do you protect the persecuting priest Joseph Lebon, who killed patriotism in Arras, and who made scum and crime reign there? He advised him to quickly recall Lebon and in his place send ”a firm and prudent man to restore confidence in Arras, Florent Guiot for example.” The very same day, Buissart wrote a letter to Guffroy, from which we learn that Charlotte had been in contact with both the former and the latter: “We salute the citoyenne Robespierre; my wife has just received her letter; tell her as soon as possible that I will immediately give her the clarifications she requests.” Guffroy claimed in his Secretes de Joseph Lebon et ses complices (1795) that Charlotte, along with other women, attempted to take steps in favor of the arrested deputies mentioned above:

”I was not discouraged; Leblond's sister, Demeulier's (sic) daughter, Buissart's wife, Robespierre's sister, to whom he was also almost invisible, took every means to reach him.”

Furthermore, Marc-Antoine Gaillard (1757), a friend of Charlotte’s brothers and former suitor Fouché (the latter of which he had worked together with at the College of Arras) claimed in his memoirs to have met Charlotte somewhere in May 1794 (given what we know it must have been early in the month). Gaillard had by then taken steps in favor of the magistrates of Melun, denounced by the Popular Society of the city for having signed an address to Louis XVI denouncing a demonstration of June 20, 1792. He had gone to Charlotte to hear her opinion on the subject. Charlotte would have named with great bitterness the prodigious number of very honest people dragged to the scaffold by Lebon and asked Gaillard to tell her how he had been able to save himself from prison. After Gaillard asked her for help, she raged against the Duplays:

”When my younger brother passed through Melun, the three of us were living together; I still hoped to be able to bring back Maximilien, to snatch him from the wretches who obsess over him and lead him to the scaffold. They felt that my brother would eventually escape them if I regained his confidence, they destroyed me entirely in his mind; today he hates the sister who served as his mother… For several months he has been living alone, and although lodged in the same house, I no longer have the power to approach him… I loved him tenderly, I still do… His excesses are the consequence of the domination under which he groans, I am sure of it, but knowing no way to break the yoke he has allowed himself to be placed under, and no longer able to bear the pain and the shame of to see my brother devote his name to general execration, I ardently desire his death as well as mine. Judge of my unhappiness!… But let’s return to what interests you. The addresses to the king on the events of 1792 are already far from us; it seems to me that the signatures of these addresses are persecuted less than those who protested against the day of May 31. Try to see Maximilien, you will be content; he was very glad that our younger brother saw you at Melun. On this occasion he spoke with interest of the exercises of your pupils and of the attention you had in entrusting him with presiding over them. I won’t introduce you to him, I would not succeed; I even advise you not to speak to him about me. You will be told he is out, don't believe it, insist on your visit.”

Gaillard went to the Duplays, where he was greeted by what he called ”the son of the family” (could be both Jacques-Maurice or Simon). Indeed, the first thing he was told was: ”the representative isn’t home.” Gaillard insisted and gave Jacques-Maurice/Simon a paper for him to pass to Robespierre, on which he reminded him of their former relation. After a short time, Jacques-Maurice/Simon returned, saying ”the representative didn’t know you” before violently shutting the door. Meeting up with Charlotte again, Gaillard reports her as saying:

“I prepared you for it. No one can approach my brother unless he is a friend of those Duplays, with whom we are lodging; these wretches have neither intelligence nor education, explain to me their ascendancy over Maximilien. However, I do not despair of breaking the spell that holds him under their yoke; for that I am awaiting the return of my other brother, who has the right to see Maximilien. If the discovery I just made doesn't rid us of this race of vipers forever, my family is forever lost. […] Maximilien, who makes me so unhappy, has never given a hold, as you know, in terms of delicacy. Imagiene his fury when he learns that these miserable Duplays are using his name and his credit to get themselves the rarest goods at a low price from the merchants. So while all of Paris is forced to line up at the baker's shop every morning to get a few ounces of black, disgusting bread, the Duplays eat very good bread because the Incorruptible sits at their table: the same pretext provides them with sugar, oil, soap of the first quality, which the inhabitant of Paris would seek in vain in the best shops... How my brother's pride would be humiliated if he knew the abuse that these wretches make of his name! What would become of his popularity, even among his most ardent supporters? Certainly my brother is very proud, it is in him a capital fault; you must remember, you and I have often lamented the ridicule he made for himself by his vanity, the great number of enemies he made for himself by his disdainful and contemptuous tone, but he is not bloodthirsty. Certainly he believes he can overthrow his adversaries and his enemies by the superiority of his talent.”

Afterwards, Charlotte arranged for an interview between Gaillard and Couthon. While the two men discussed the situation at hand, Charlotte and Couthon’s wife Marie stood by a window overlooking the Tuileries. But the cordial interview turned to tragedy once Gaillard exclaimed: ”Today, we are leading to the scaffold seventy unfortunates whose condemnation has no other reason than the signature of this address (to the king regarding the demonstration of June 20 1792).” Charlotte, seeing Couthon burst into fury at Gaillard’s words, threw herself upon him and held him still in the armchair he was sitting while yelling at Gaillard to escape from there and meet her up later. The two found each other at the Orangerie and walked from there to Place de la Révolution. Charlotte told Gaillard that he was a victim of the profound hypocrisy of Couthon who wanted to get to the bottom of his thoughts. But, she added, Couthon doesn’t know that he doesn’t live in Paris and probably doesn’t remember the name of the city where the accused judges sit. She therefore urged him to flee, which Gaillard also did.

If Charlotte supposed that things between her and Augustin would have patched themselves up, and that Augustin would even come to take her side in her struggle against the Duplays, as shown in Gaillard’s account, she was very wrong. In a letter to Maximilien, her younger brother wrote the following:

“My sister does not have a single drop of blood that resembles ours. I have seen and learned so much about her that I regard her as our greatest enemy. She abuses our spotless reputation to lay down the law on us and threatens to take a scandalous step in order to compromise us. We must take a decisive stand against her. We must make her leave for Arras, and thus take her away from us, a woman who causes our common despair. She would like to give us the reputation of bad brothers, her calumnies spread against us aim at this goal. I would like you to see the citoyenne La Saudraie (Augustin’s mistress), she would give you certain information on all the masks that it is interesting to know in these circumstances. A certain Saint-Félix seems to be from the clique.”

This letter is unfortunately undated, but the context allows us to fix at April-May 1794. By then, Augustin would not have seen Charlotte since January, or, if what Charlotte writes in her memoirs is true and he didn’t want to meet her during his short stay in Paris either, October. What had caused him to think this ill of his sister? Had he found out about her contacts with men that, in his and Maximilien’s eyes at least, were to be considered ”unpatriotic?” That is what Guffroy believed — ”Robespierre, speaking about me with someone, treated me like an aristocrat; he reproached his sister for frequenting a conspirator” he wrote in Secretes de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices (1795). On another occasion the same year he claimed that ”[The brothers] drove her out of their house because she did not think like they did, because she came to see my wife and because she met citizens who were sincere friends of justice and truth.”

Even if an account dated post-thermidor deserves to be treated with caution, it can nevertheless be observed that the Saint-Félix Augustin believed to have belonged to Charlotte’s ”clique” was Emmanuel Musquinet (Saint-Félix was his alias), since February 19 1794 under loose house arrest for being compromised in a case of false assignats. The arrest had caused great indignation for Hébert who spoke of “vile merchants who arrest a fine person like the friend Saint-Félix for having made the enemies of the people known.” Saint-Félix also had been a frequent visitor to the imprisoned hébertist Ronsin before the latter’s execution. His brother Musquinet-Lapagne had, according to a report dated October 24 1793, denounced Marat and Robespierre to the Popular Society of Le Havre of which he was the president. He had then been arrested in November 1793 and guillotined on March 16 1794, accused of having tried to ignite civil war between the communes of Ingouville and Le Havre, abused his functions as mayor to make home visits to the citizens of the commune and use these occasions to steal precious objects, as well as for arbitrary kidnappings. A copy of a letter written by Musquinet-Lapagne on September 6 1793, in which he attempted to justify himself, bore at the bottom the following text: ”for certified copy: Guffroy.”

On May 14, the Committee of Public Safety recalled Joseph Lebon from Arras. Robespierre was the author of the decree, but judging by its tone and content it would not appear like he was cross with Lebon after what people like Guffroy and Buissart had told him about his conduct:

”Dear Colleague, The Committee of Public Safety needs to confer with you important objects, it does justice to the energy with which you have suppressed the enemies of the revolution, and the result of our conference will be to direct it in an even more useful way. Come as soon as possible, to return promptly to the post where you currently are.”

Lebon came back, and, after having justified his conduct, quickly set off for Arras once again, this time bringing with her none other than Charlotte. According to Guffroy, this decision was made the following way:

”Lebon returned to Paris for 24 hours. He spoke to the committee, to Lebas, to Saint-Just and to Robespierre. He was very diligent with the latter. His sister, worthy of the esteem of all good citizens, reproached him for his cruelty, he denied it, and under the pretext of making her an eyewitness, he brought Robespierre’s sister with him. Robespierre wanted to get rid of her: his correspondence proves it.”

While Guffroy’s account probably deserves to be nuanced, we can still ask ourselves if the ”more useful way” Maximilien had hinted Lebon should use his energy for was in fact the mission of bringing Charlotte back to Arras, considering how little time passed between his arrival to and departure from Paris. Was it willingly or forcibly that Charlotte boarded a carriage together with a man who she, according to Gaillard and Guffroy, had deplored of and accused of bloodlust a few days earlier? We don’t know. Nevertheless, Charlotte and Lebon reached Arras on May 17, as announced in a letter written by the deputy Darthé two days later:

”Lebon returned from Paris the day before yesterday, the Committee of Public Safety has rendered him all the justice that he deserved and his slanderers were covered with contempt. […] He also brought with him citoyenne Robespierre.”

Charlotte’s uncle Deshorties had died in December 1792, not long after her departure for Paris, but waiting for her in Arras were Deshorties’ son Régis, brother of Maximilien’s old fiancée Anaïs, and of course Antoine and Charlotte Buissart. According to Robespierre (1935) by J.M Thompson, the house on Rue des Rapporteurs had been sold, so it’s probable Charlotte stayed with one of her friends or relatives instead.

Charlotte didn’t make known how bad the relationship with her brothers had gotten to her friends. It’s also probable she spoke ill of the Duplays once again, as a letter from Buissart to Maximilien, dated June 28, contains mistrust of them: ”This letter will be delivered to you under the address of my wife, because I do not have the greatest confidence in your secretary and in many other people that surround you. It is still friendship that makes me speak like this.” In the same letter Buissart also told Maximilien that since a month back, he, his wife and Charlotte had been insulted by one Carlier, who called the first one a conspirator and the two latter his accomplices.

Eventually Charlotte set out for Paris once again, promising step-cousin Régis Deshorties to inform him once Augustin arrived there too. She first went to Lille, where she met up with a man who then escorted her back to the capital. This was Florent Guiot, who Guffroy had suggested Robespierre should replace Lebon with in the letter cited above. Guiot had been sent to Arras by the Committee of Public Safety on November 22 1793, where he too had quickly become an enemy of Lebon.

Charlotte’s motivation for leaving Arras is unknown, but given Buissart’s letter it is possible she felt threatened. Guffroy goes further than that and claims it was in order to evade arrest — ”Lebon had [Charlotte] denounced to the popular society of Arras, by his cutthroats, as an aristocrat. Her apparent crime, and at least the pretext for her arrest, was to have been with Payen de Neuville la Liberté, an estimable farmer, whom Lebon had guillotined, and brother of another Payen, member of the constituent assembly who had served as father and friend to Robespierre, and whom Lebon likewise had guillotined.”[…] Without Florent Guyot (sic), who brought her back to Paris, she would have been imprisoned there.” While his statement should again be treated with a grain of salt, it can nevertheless be observed that the execution date for the two mentioned Payen brothers (June 21 and 26) actually matches rather well with the time Charlotte would have departed from Arras…

She was nevertheless back in Paris by at least July 1, as a letter from the same date written by Buissart to his wife attests — ”embrace [Augustin] for me, render the same service to Maximilien and his sister.” Charlotte Buissart had she too gone to Paris together with her son in order to try and convince Maximilien to get Lebon recalled. According to Guffroy, they lived with Charlotte during their time there, although the above cited letter from Antoine is still adressed to Rue Saint-Honoré.

Charlotte had however no plans to return there, nor to go live on Rue Saint-Florentin again. Augustin was back from his last mission since at least June 28, when he’s listed as speaking at the Jacobins, and clearly had the intention of moving back into the house. We don’t know if there was a final confrontation between the two, but nevertheless, on on July 6, Charlotte sat down and authored this letter to Augustin:

”Your (votre) aversion for me, my brother, far from diminishing, as I flattered myself, has become the most implacable hatred, to the point that the mere sight of me inspires horror in you; also, I must not hope that you will ever be calm enough to listen to me, which is why I will attempt to write to you. Crushed under the weight of my sorrow, incapable of connecting my thoughts, I will not undertake my apology. Yet, it would be so easy for me to demonstrate that I have never deserved in any way to excite this fury which blinds you, but I abandon the task of my justification to time, which unveils all perfidies, all darknesses. So, when the blindfold which covers your eyes will be torn apart, if you can distinguish the voice of remorse in the disorder of your passions, if the cry of nature can make itself heard, returned from an error which is so fatal to me, do not fear that I will ever reproach you for having guarded it for so long; I will only occupy myself with the joy of having rediscovered your heart. Ah! if you could read at the bottom of mine, you would blush for having insulted it in such a cruel manner, you would see there, with the proof of my innocence, that nothing can erase the tender attachment from it which ties me to you, and that this is the only emotion to which I relate all of my affections; without complaining about your hatred, what does it matter to me that I am hated by those who are irrelevant to me and who I despise? Their memory will never come to trouble me, but being hated by my brothers, I, for whom it is a necessity to cherish them, this is the only thing which can render me as unhappy as I am. This passion of hatred must be atrocious, since it blinds you to the point of bringing you to slander me among my friends. Nonetheless, do not hope in your delirium to be able to make me lose the esteem of a few virtuous persons, which is the only good which remains to me, along with a pure conscience ; full of a just confidence in my virtue, I can defy you to detract it and I dare to tell you that, beside the good people who know me, you will lose your reputation rather than harming mine. Thus, it is important to your tranquillity that I am far away from you, it is even important, as they say, to the public sake that I do not live in Paris! I still do not know what I have to do, but what seems the most urgent to me is to clear you of the sight of an odious object, also, as from tomorrow, you can return to your apartment without fearing to meet me there. I will leave from today unless you formally oppose it. My stay in Paris should not bother you, I take care not to connect my friends to my disgrace, the misfortune which persecutes me has to be contagious, and your hatred for me is too blind in order not to fall on everyone who shows interest for me. Also, I only need a few days in order to calm the disorder of my thoughts, to decide on the place of my exile, because, in the obliteration of all of my faculties, I am in no state to take a course of action. Therefore, I leave you since you demand it, but, in spite of your injustices, my friendship for you is so indestructible that I will not retain any bitterness from the cruel treatment which you make me endure. When, being disillusioned sooner or later, you will come to hold the feelings for me that I deserve, when shyness does not prevent you from informing me that I have recovered your friendship and, wherever I may be, may I even be beyond the seas, if I can be useful to you in anything, know how to inform me of it and I will soon be by your side. I send you the exact summary of the expenditures which I have made since your departure for Nice. Sorrowfully, I have learned that you have singularly degraded yourself through the manner in which you have spoken of this affaire d'intérêt. Because of this, I oblige you to observe that, in all of these expenditures, there are debts for the shoemaker, the tailor, a washtub, and powder, prior to my return from Nice, you will also observe that the money that was returned to Madame Delaporte had been lent by her to René during my stay in Nice, that the 200 livres given to René are for his wages which had not been paid to him in the last year, finally, you will also distinguish postage for letters, and if you still have any doubts after this, you can share them with me, I will elucidate them, I will give all of my remaining money to you, and it this does not match my expenditures, this can only be because I have forgotten a few items. Robespierre PS: You will observe that the polisher is not paid, nor is the locksmith who has made a key for your secretary. PS: You have to think that, while leaving your apartment, I will take all necessary precautions in order to not compromise my brothers. The quarter where citoyenne Laporte lives, to whose home I plan to retreat temporarily, is the place of the entire republic where I can be ignored the most.”

According to Hector Fleischmann and Albert Mathiez, Charlotte must have had someone help her write this letter, given as there are typos only in the first half of it. Both identify this person as Guffroy. Whatever the case, Charlotte left the letter in her old apartment and went to live on 200 Rue de la Réunion (today rue Beaubourg?) with Madame Delaporte (Laporte), who, as shown through the letter to Augustin, had been the siblings’ domestic while on Rue Saint-Florentin. Her husband, François Sébastien Christophe Delaporte, had recently been appointed judge for the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, whose sessions he participated in since July 9 and forward. In his memoirs, he only had the following to say regarding Charlotte and her brothers:

”I never had relations with any member of the former government, nor with Robespierre, my wife having gotten to know his sister took her into our home, when she was proscribed by him because of her feelings which were quite opposed to his. Certainly, one could not be the friend of this implacable man, when one welcomed his enemies.”

According to the memoirs of Charlotte, she never saw her younger brother again. She found herself with Maximilien one or two more times; but then in the presence of several others, so that it was impossible for her to speak to him of personal things. She met Joseph Fouché from time to time on the Champs-Elysées, where the latter went for walks almost every day. Fouché adressed Charlotte like nothing had happened between him and Maximilien, but once Charlotte found out that he was her brother’s declared enemy she didn’t want to speak with him anymore.

Back in Arras, step-cousin Régis Deshorties wondered why Charlotte lingered with giving him information about her younger brother’s whereabouts. Confused, he wrote to Augustin on July 18 telling him: “Charlotte Robespierre had promised to inform me immediately of your arrival to the capital. Not receiving a letter from her either on this subject or on any other letter of which she should have acknowledged receipt, I imagined (as several people had assured me) that you were going to come to Arras and that this was the reason for your sister's silence.” But Charlotte was not the only person Deshorties was thinking about:

”I left Citoyenne Charlotte a memoir for you. If you see Isabelle Canone before I write to her, tell her that she will soon receive a letter from me. I must, no doubt, be very busy, since I can't find the time to reply to her last two epistles. This would be the place to tell you about my trip to Paris, if I were not quite sure that care will have been taken to inform you about it and that a citoyenne, who alone is worth more than a committee, will have attached some commentary of a half-dry playfulness to it. Be that as it may, I gave Citizene Canone a great proof of devotion, such that none of her friends, I dare say, would have wanted to do the same in the circumstances in which she found herself. However, I was sad to see that of all the people who knew of my precedent, she was the one who felt it the least. This incontestable indifference will not prevent me from being useful to her and serving her with the same zeal on all occasions, for it is in my heart to oblige the unfortunate to the fullest extent of my power. By the way she announces to me that she intends to return to Arras, I believe that she does not enter into the very business where they would have the right to express their opinion and where their advice could be of any use to her.”

And Deshorties ended by asking Augustin to ”embrace Charlotte Robespierre and her friends for me and receive the tender greetings of your devoted fellow citizen and cordial friend.”

If Augustin received the letter, it must have been one of the very last. Nine days after it was penned down he volunteered to share his brothers fate when the latter’s arrest was issued by the Convention. The following day the two were executed along with 19 others.

This was bad news for anyone who had been allied with the brothers. The following day saw the execution of a total of 71 people declared to have been their ”accomplices.” Men were also quickly sent out to arrest other people close to the brothers — among the very first was the Duplay family, whose members were arrested on thermidor 10, 13 and 14 respectively. The person in charge of arresting Sophie and Victoire Duplay was none other than Florent Guiot, the man who had brought Charlotte back to Paris.

Charlotte herself was arrested three days after her brothers’ execution. She was by then hiding out under her mother’s name Carraut at Rue du Four, No 482 at the home of one Vincent Pierre Béguin, secretary for the commission of the representatives of the people of the Army of Italy, and his wife Marie-Joséphine. Vincent Pierre had previously been appointed by Augustin when he was in Antibes. It is likely that Charlotte got to know him during her stay in the South and that she after her return to Nice also had made made acquaintance with his wife.

The warrant states Charlotte was arrested together with many others:

”13 thermidor. Citizens Laporte, Canone, Gérard, Widow Gérard, Carraut, the Robespierre sisters. Arrest.”

The citoyenne Canone could very well be the Isabelle Canone mentioned by Régis Deshorties in his letter to Augustin.

Brought before her interrogators, Charlotte admitted who she was, while at the same time lying about her age:

”Section du Contrat-Social. The 13th of Thermidor, Year II. There was brought before us Citoyenne Carraut, who was found at Citoyenne Béguin’s in the Rue du Four, No 482, Section du Contrat-Social. She was asked her name, age, rank and residence. She replied that she was called Marie Marguerite Charlotte Robespierre, twenty-eight years of age, living on her income, and residing for about a month past at Citoyenne Laporte’s, No. 200, Rue de la Réunion.”

When interrogated, Charlotte claimed that she had been obliged to leave rue Saint-Honoré on the orders of her brothers and Madame Duplay. Madame Duplay had also reproached her for seeing revolutionaries among which was ”Guffroy, representative of the people.“ Charlotte said that ”her older brother resented her because she had the courage to let him know the danger he ran in being surrounded so badly,” and that “the men around him were trying to deceive him.” She further added that "if she had suspected the infamous plot that was brewing, she would have denounced it rather than see her country lost.” She herself also denounced a man named Jean-Baptiste Didier, “who was for a period of time secretary to her elder brother, and that after that was appointed as juror to the Revolutionary Tribunal.” As for Delaporte, Charlotte claimed to have been unaware of the fact that he had been an appointed member of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Others arrested together with Charlotte were more blunt:

”Section du contrat social Comité révolutionnaire 13 Thermidor, Year 2 of the Republic There appeared before us citoyennes widow Girard, residing on rue du Doyéné, section of Thulieries n. 289, and Canone, residing in the same house, arrested at the home of citoyenne Béguin, residing on rue du four Honoré. When asked what had urged them to go to citoyenne Béguin, they replied that they had learned that citoyenne Robespierre was with citoyenne Béguin and that they were going to congratulate her on the happiness she was currently enjoying when she was finally free from the infamous tyrants Robespierre who had never had another purpose but to sacrifice their sister. When asked to tell us if they knew people who more usually frequented Robespierre, they responded that they did not know the people who habitually associated with the infamous Robespierre, that they had never seen him, that they only knew their unfortunate sister; Reading to them the protocols made of their requests and answers, they said that they contained the truth and signed: Cannone Widow Girard”

When Madame Béguin was interrogated, she claimed that Daillé and the juror Lebrun (Topino Lebrun) had told citoyenne Lavaux and Mérimey (Mérimet) that she should stop seeing Robespierre’s sister ”as Lebrun knew that anyone who saw her would be guillotined,” and that Fouquier-Tinville frequently went to Robespierre the older and “that one sent lists of those that one wanted to guillotined.”

We don’t know when Charlotte was released, but she was soon once again having a hard time. On November 18 1794, she wrote to her uncle Durut back in Arras the following letter. She evidently still had contacts with Antoine Buissart, who had hurried to denounce her older brother after thermidor.

28 Brumaire, year three of the French Republic My dear uncle, I have instructed Citizen Buissart, who left here yesterday, to see you on my behalf in order to give you my news. If I had known of his departure an hour earlier I would have asked him to give you a letter which would have contained all the affections he promised to give you from me. He told me that you were in good health, and that his hasty departure from Arras had not left him time to warn you about it: I easily believed him when I did not see a letter from you, I hope you use the facility of the post office to give me news about you. Providence always serves me very badly my dear uncle, the 400 livres note you sent me was found to be fake, a person I know who had changed it for me in time brought it back to me yesterday very affected by the affront that she had experienced; it had only been a slight accident if I had been able to give change for the note, however, the person did not want to bother me with it: she had the honesty to tell me that she would wait for the one who gave it to me to return the sum; I send it back to you in this letter so that you give it to the person who deceived you, I urge you, my dear uncle, to be very careful not to receive these counterfeit notes; and as I believe that you know them no more than I do, to have them examined before receiving them; because one is exposed to many inconveniences when one has the misfortune to present oneself with a counterfeit note and it is a loss which is very disturbing when one is not rich. I hope you won't be long in giving me news of you. I expect from your friendship the consolations that my misfortune requires, you say yourself that one cannot expect much from men, which proves that you are of the small number of those who honor misfortune. It is in vain that I confide in Providence before making it sensitive to my pain; why leave me so mistreated by fate that there has never been on earth such a terrible position as mine, foreign to everything, I want to see my sad existence end and if I can I will drag it beyond the seas. Farewell my dear uncle, give me your news, spare your health and remember your niece who embraces you wholeheartedly.”

At some point, Charlotte was asked by Guislain Mathon (1759) commissioner of transport, to move in at his place. Mathon was him too from Arras, had been a friend of Charlotte’s brothers, and featured on ”a list of patriots with more or less talent” written by Maximilien somewhere in 1793. At first Charlotte refused his offer, but, once her situation got so bad that she lost all means of existence, she accepted it. But Mathon had him too been implicated after thermidor — the very same day as the execution of Augustin and Maximilien, a certain Godard had accused him of having “accompanied this rascal of the great Lacroix on a mission to Brussels” and to have been appointed to this position ”thanks to his childhood friend Robespierre the older.” To save her friend from the denounciation he was facing, on March 14 1795 Charlotte picked up her pen and wrote to the Committee of General Security the following letter:

”…Alas, calumny is so active, so ingenious in forging its appearances; innocence has been its victim so many times and I am so unhappy that I must suspect myself even of the most unnatural events. I will not undertake the apology of Citizen Mathon. I will only tell you that, forced to leave my brothers, unjustly irritated against me, he had the courage to offer me an asylum with him in spite of their protests. He did not incite me into accepting it. I went to live with him when my misfortunes became greater and made me too burdensome to those who had first taken me in. If I hadn't lost all my means of existence, I would never have exposed anyone and preferred to die rather than associate my friends with my disgrace. This is now what redoubles the horror of my situation. It is to get rid of this idea which overwhelms me that I conjure you citizens, in the name of humanity and justice, not to tolerate that those who have lavished on me the generous care of friendship are for that exposed to an unjust proscription. Seek further information from citizen Mathon and you will only find the purest patriotism and the virtues of a good man in his entire conduct. Salut, fratérnité, Robespierre.”

Help was coming, from none other than Guffroy who at the bottom of Charlotte’s letter wrote: ”The Committee of General Security orders that she should be left alone, as should citizen Mathon with whom she is staying, who is known by several members.” Guffroy had since the execution of Charlotte’s brothers been reinstated to the Committee of General Security. This was not the only help he would provide Charlotte with, in another, undated decree, he wrote the following:

”Guffroy, member of the Committee of General Security to his collegues: The French people honor the unhappiness. It is to obtain one of these acts of justice which would honor the nation, that I present the following claim: I know that the citoyenne Caroline (sic) Robespierre, sister of the two deputies whom the sword of national justice has struck, is plunged into a state of dependence which makes her truly free soul groan. Friendship, however, has sought to soften her sorrows, but the state of destitution in which she finds herself, the deterioration of her health, caused by long sorrows, does not allow her to devote herself to assiduous work. I am well aware of the ingratitude and injustice of her brothers towards her, while she did everything for them in the just belief that they would not abandon her. The ties of blood made it their duty, and those of gratitude made it more imperative; because I know that the Robespierres, from their mother, only had an income of 100 livres, their father who had abandoned them died in a hospital at... (the name has been left blank in the original); well, the two brothers after studying at the college of Louis Legrand (sic) sold the capital of their income to support themselves, and their generous and imprudent sister, despite the prediction of an aunt, also sold for them the capital of her 400 pounds income when it was a question of helping them get to Paris. They drove her out of their house because she did not think like they did, because she came to see my wife and because she saw citizens who were sincere friends of justice and truth. She even exposed herself to prosecution when Lebon took her to Arras, and without Florent Guyot, who brought her back to Paris, she would have been imprisoned there, because Lebon's accomplices had denounced her in their infernal club which they called popular society. The citoyenne Robespierre had the delicate idea of giving her brothers about a thousand pounds which she had saved and six silver spoons and forks, two of which, at least, belonged to her, but she didn’t even want to be suspected. She has no wealthy relative who can take her in, her good uncle, Durut, a doctor, has sent her some help. At the moment she is staying with one of our mutual friends. She owns nothing aside from her clothes. Her sagging life, her bosom altered by grief, prevent her from making lace, on which she could make a living. She could work, but the little she does is far from procuring her even so much as bread. It seems to me to be part of the dignity and part of the justice of the Convention, to anticipate misfortune and to honor virtue in the sister of a conspirator. The nation should, in my opinion, offer her help so that she can procure furniture and a pension capable of sustaining her in the state of infirmity and languor to which grief has reduced her. GUFFROY I ask that the Committee of General Security be good enough to refer this memorandum to the Committee of Support with recommendation.”

A few months later, Guffroy also wrote the following decree, which was counter-signed by none other than Edme-Bonaventure Courtois, the man behind the (im)famous Rapport fait au nom de la commission chargée de l’examen des papiers de Robespierre (1795).

”24 germinal, year 3 (April 13 1795) After having received the most exact information on the patriotism of citoyenne Caroline (sic) Robespierre, the Committee declares that the results are all in her favor, that it knows that this citoyenne was persecuted by her brother and forced to leave him; that the Supervisory Committees of the sections of Paris, and the Committee of General Security have already rendered her justice, that the purity of her conduct and her civic principles stems from the Rapport de la Commission de Papiers de Robespierre made for the National Convention by the representative of the people Courtois; it therefore declares that wherever citoyenne Robespierre wishes to travel and retire, she deserves the confidence of good citizens and the protection of the constituted authorities, who are invited to lend her the aid and assistance that the purest and most civil good citizenship deserves and French loyalty must grant. The members of the Committee of General Security: Sevestre, Mathieu, Guffroy, Auguis, Thibaudeau, Lemartin, Delecloy, Perrin, Gauthier, Courtois, Monmayou, Chénier, Rovère, Clauzel.”

We don’t know if Guffroy’s idea of providing Charlotte with a pension was followed up or not. But on September 24 1803, two years after his death, we find on the other hand the following request made by ”Mademoiselle Robespierre, then residing on Rue Jacob 26”, give rise to the following decision:

“The Grand Judge will give her 600 francs once paid and 150 francs a month. Bonaparte.”

This is supplemented by a story recorded in Charlotte’s memoirs, but there the sum is much bigger. According to it, Charlotte was advised to ask for an audience with Napoleon after the latter became first consul. ”Bonaparte received me perfectly, spoke to me of my brothers in very flattering terms, and told me that he was prepared to do anything for their sister: “Speak, what do you want?” I exposed my position to him; he promised me to take it into consideration; in effect, some days later I received a certificate for a pension of 3,600 francs.” Charlotte had earlier also been friends with Napoleon’s wife Joséphine, the future empress even giving her a portrait of her in 1790 as a token of friendship. They continued to see one another after thermidor, until one day, they broke entirely, Charlotte meaning Joséphine had ”showed all the insolence of a grande dame of the court of Louis XV.”

Besides the money given by Napoleon, from an archival document we also learn that Charlotte received a “relief” of 150 francs three times during the first six months of the year XII (1803) and a relief of 200 francs on several occasions during the year XIII (1804). Finally, from February 8 1805, we find this decree, written by none other than Charlotte’s former suitor Joseph Fouché, by then Minister of Police:

Madame Collot (d’Herbois) their titles are common Mademoiselle Robespierre as well as their distress. Per month: 200 livres. Per year: 2400 livres. for special help.

With this pension, or to be more exact, matter of relief, Charlotte was set to live for another 29 years on Rue de la Fontaine (later rue de la Pitié and today Rue Larrey) with her ”excellent and respectable friend” Mathon and his daughter Reine-Victoire (born 1785), the latter of whom, according to Laponneraye, ”loved Charlotte like a mother.” Reine-Victoire stayed by Charlotte’s side after her father’s death in 1827. According to Pierre Joigneaux, in the 1830s, the two women occupied themselves with making underclothing together.

Perhaps Charlotte continued to hide under her mother’s lastname Carraut. According to Joigneaux and Laignelot (letter dated 1825) she also took the pseudonym of Caroline Delaroche during the Restoration. Delaroche was the name of a relative who had served as mentor for Maximilien during his first few years as a student in Paris.

Charlotte was far from universally loved. Albertine Marat, when asked about Robespierre in 1835, exclaimed: ”Oh! His sister, his sister, his bad sister!” Her hostility was confirmed by Pierre Joigneaux who wrote in Souvernirs historiques (1891) ”I recollect that, about 1833 or 1834, a sister of Marat lived on the top floor of a house on the Place Saint-Michel […] Mlle Marat disliked Robespierre’s sister, who was also still alive and in Paris, and did not associate with her. Mlle Marat had character: Charlotte Robespierre was absolutely lacking in strength of mind.” François-Vincent Raspail, the man interviewing Albertine, wrote that ”everyone knows today that [Charlotte] was the Charlotte Corday of her brothers, minus the selflessness and courage.” Likewise, Élisabeth Lebas, once Charlotte’s friend, reproached her for her name change: ”Yes, I preferred to go take in wash on a boat rather than ask assistance of our poor friends’ assassins. I feared neither death nor persecution. I was not the one who repudiated my name; it pains me to say it, but Mlle Robespierre was the one who took her mother’s name, Charlotte Carreau (sic).” Élisabeth’s son Philippe wrote in his Dictionnaire encyclopédique de l’Histore de France (1840-1845) that Charlotte ”does not blush to receive from the assassins of her brothers a pension of 6000 fr. at first, then reduced successively to 1500, which was given to her by all the succeeding governments until her death. She left memoirs which contain curious information, but where the false is too often mixed with the true.” As for the conflict between Charlotte and her mother, Élisabeth had only this to say: ”Poor mother, she thought Charlotte was as pure and sincere as her brothers. Good God, that was not the case."

By May 24 1830, it would however appear that Charlotte had gone back to her original surname, the particle included, as she used it when writing the following letter to the editor of the journal l’Universel:

”Monsieur, In your issue of the 5th of this month, you contest the authenticity of the Memoirs of Maximilien Robespierre. In general there can be no reply to the rightness of your reasoning; but there is in this article a phrase conceived thus: “Yet the editor sought faithful documents, and, if what I have been told is true, he could have found them. An elder sister of Robespierre vegetates in Paris, in the most obscure corner of a Faubourg, and this woman is overwhelmed by age, poverty, and the weight of her dreadful name. Having bought a few rescued souvenirs from her, it was not difficult to compensate for what other biographers have omitted to rectify, errors in facts, errors in dates, etc. etc.” What you have been told, Monsieur, is not only inexact, but it is false. It is true that Maximilien Robespierre’s sister, not his eldest, but his junior by twenty months, vegetates, overwhelmed with poverty, age, and, you could have added, serious and painful infirmities, in an obscure corner of the patrie that gave her birth; but she has constantly repulsed the offers of intriguers who, for the past thirty-six years, have tried numerous times to traffic with her name; but she has sold nothing to anyone; but she had had no relation direct or indirect with the editor of her brother’s so-called Memoirs; and those who have said that Maximilien Robespierre had known need in his childhood, and that he was a choirboy in the cathedral of Arras are imposters. I regard, Monsieur, as injurious to my honor and my probity, the idea that anyone could have bought any rescued souvenirs from me. I belong to a family which has not been reproached with venality. I will bring to the tomb the name that I received from the most venerable of fathers, with the consolation that no one on earth can reproach me with a single act, in the long course of my life, which does not conform to the prescriptions of honor. As to my brothers, it is for history to pronounce definitively on them; it is for history to recognize one day whether Maximilien is really guilty of all the revolutionary excesses his colleagues accused him of after his death. I have read in the annals of Rome that two brothers were also outlawed, massacred in the public square, their bodies cast into the Tiber, their heads paid for in their weight in gold; but history does not day that their mother, who survived them, was ever blamed for having believed in their virtue. Monsieur, I have the honor of saluting you, De Robespierre” (when this letter was published within Charlotte’s memoirs, the particle was removed).

We don’t know if Charlotte wrote this letter under the influence of Albert Laponneraye (1808). This young man had moved to Paris in 1828 to work as a private teacher, but already in 1831 he was in prison along with other republicans. He there wrote le Cours public d’Histoire de France depuis 1789 jusqu’à 1830 which appeared in 1831 and where particular tribute to Robespierre. Laponneraye was released the same year, only to again be arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. On June 27, 1833, Laponneraye was again sentenced by the Seine Court of Assizes to three months in prison and fined 50 francs for a letter written to the Proletarians from the Sainte-Pélagie on February 1, 1833.

We don’t know exactly when or how Charlotte and Laponneraye got into contact with one another. According to the latter, Charlotte wanted to get to know him after getting hold of his writings and reading the positive things he had to say about her brother. ”I will always remember the strong emotion I felt on seeing her for the first time; for her part, she was no less moved, and, unable to speak to me at first, she pressed my hands with an expression that I will never forget.” The two developed a close friendship and had long and frequent conversations. Laponneraye’s imprisonment made the interviews more rare, but Charlotte nevertheless came to visit him in the nursing home to which he’d been transferred. The one letter we have between them displays much affection. It is written by Charlotte on February 20 1834, two weeks after what would turn out to be her last birthday:

”It is not easy for me, my friend, to express to you the feeling of tenderness that you make me feel; the verbal reply I made to your lovely sister proves to you that I appreciate all its grandeur and delicacy. I repeat, you are worthy of making your offer, and you do not deserve to be refused. I therefore accept from the best, from the most human and from the most tender of sons (a thousand times happy the mother of such a son!), I accept a quarter of your offer, because I believe that that will be enough for me, given that I receive two hundred francs a year. This friend didn't promise me anything, but she is so regular in giving me her gift that I think she will continue. I shall therefore receive from him who is willing to have for me the feelings of a son, whom I regard as such, and for whom I had so much affection, I shall receive, not only with gratitude, it is a completely natural thing, but with pleasure. Receive with pleasure! this word contains everything, I believe you will be satisfied with me. A few thoughts come to me which, my friend, I must share with you. The good that you want me to enjoy will cost you trouble, work, perhaps awake hours, finally privations, and I ask you if the heart of a mother does not feel anything from making these reflections? Nevertheless, I do not deny myself of it; you no, you won't refuse me, deprive me of the means, because it is irresistible. Oh! how my brothers would have loved you! Farewell. Receive my regards for all your family, which is mine. Robespierre A thousand kind words from Mademoiselle Mathon.”

The hard work Charlotte says Laponneraye has ahead of him may be an allusion to her memoirs, which he based on notes from and conversations with Charlotte.

Charlotte died on August 1 1834, aged 74. According to Laponneraye, she refused to have a priest visit her, saying that saying that she had practiced virtue all her life, and that she was dying with a pure and calm conscience. Four o’clock in the afternoon, she passed away in Reine-Victoire’s arms. It was the latter who announced Charlotte’s death the very same day:

”Paris, August 1, 1834 Mlle. Reine Louise Victoire Mathon has the honour to inform you of the death of Marguerite Charlotte Robespierre, who died at four o’clock yesterday (sic) afternoon. The obsequies will take place on Sunday afternoon, August 3rd. The funeral procession will leave the house of the deceased, 3, Rue de la Fontaine, at ten o’clock in the morning.”

Charlotte had already been preparing for her death, as her testament was written already in 1828:

”I, Marie-Marguerite-Charlotte de Robespierre, undersigned, enjoying all my intellectual faculties, wishing, before paying to nature the tribute that all mortals owe her, to make known my feelings towards the memory of my eldest brother, declare that I have always recognized him as a man full of virtue. I protest against all the letters contrary to his honor which have been attributed to me. In wanting to dispose of what I will leave after my death, I appoint for my universal heiress mademoiselle Louise-Victoire Mathon, by which I want that all that I will leave on my death be collected in full ownership. In faith, done and written by my hand, in Paris, February 6, 1828. De Robespierre.”

Charlotte left behind a very modest inventory, including the aforementioned portrait of Joséphine, a mahogany bed, three mattresses, a small mahogany table, a small walnut painting, six chairs and an old armchair, three silver cutlery with the family initials, a dozen old napkins, in good condition together with tablecloth, six old pairs of sheets, a dozen worn shirts, a wholesale old dress from Naples, and three other dresses in canvas, twelve aprons and dishcloths, a stove and its pipes, two dozen plates, several dishes and a few black bottles, a decanter and six glasses, various kitchen utensils, and, perhaps most conspicuous of all, a lithographed portrait of her older brother and a painted portrait of her younger. Charlotte died without leaving any debts behind.

The funeral was held on August 3, two days after Charlotte’s death. According to Laponneraye ”a considerable crowd of patriots followed the procession,” a description which was confirmed by Pierre Joigneaux, who wrote that ”a number of people accompanied Charlotte to the field of rest, on Laponneraie's [sic] recommendation.” Laponneraye, being imprisoned, was unable to attend the funeral, but he nevertheless wrote wrote a speech that was delivered by one of his friends. The speech contained nothing but praise for both Charlotte and her brother Maximilien, but also phrases that from an objective point can only be called false:

”[Charlotte] was slandered, she was reproached for having denied her brother, for having made a pact with those who immersed themselves in the blood of the martyr of Thermidor. What a horrible blasphemy! No, virtuous and unfortunate Maximilian, your sister did not deny you, she did not apostatize herself by trampling under her feet the principles which have been the gospel of her whole life.”

Laponneraye published Charlotte’s memoirs the same year she died. And as with most memoirs, the truth was sometimes twisted in them to fit the narrative its author wished portrayed. It’s impossible to know if these distortions were the work of Charlotte, Laponneraye or both.

Perhaps the most blatant lie came when describing the circumstances regarding Charlotte’s arrest — according to the memoirs, on 10 Thermidor, Charlotte would have ran to the Conciergerie prison where her brothers had been imprisoned and begged to see them, only to be repulsed, insulted and struck by the soldiers in front of her. She was led away by a few people, having lost her reason, and once she regained it she was in prison together with another woman. The woman told Charlotte that a lot of people had been arrested at the same time as her and would probably mount the scaffold, their only crime being to have known her before thermidor. For a fortnight she begged Charlotte to write to the members of the committees who had left the last struggle victorious, and implore their pardon. She finally gave in, but asked the woman to actually write and for herself to just put her signature on the paper. They so did, and the next day both were freed. This story easily falls apart when confronted with actual documents regarding Charlotte’s arrest.

Regarding the long letter written on July 6, the memoirs not only felt the need to correctly point out that it had been adressed to Augustin and not, as told by the deputy Courtois when publishing it in his Rapport fait au nom de la commission chargée de l’examen des papiers de Robespierre (1795) Maximilien, but also to falsely claim that it contained apocryphal phrases. An encounter with the fac-simile proves that it in fact did not.

As for the engagement with Fouché, ”Charlotte” now changed the story so that the wedding plans had taken place during the revolution. Fouché had only sought her out because her brother occupied the first place on the political stage, and the engagement had been broken up after Maximilien’s horrified reaction to Fouché’s actions in Lyon. This can hardly have been true considering Foché, as mentioned, was already married by the time Charlotte even arrived in Paris.

Charlotte also took her time to reveal her thoughts on people she thought had wronged her — in particular madame Ricord and the Duplays. She attacked the idea of Éleonore having had anything ressembling a romantic relationship with Maximilien – ”He told me twenty times that he felt nothing for Éléonore; her family’s obsessions, their importunities were more suited to make feel disgust for her than to make him love her. The Duplays could say what they wanted, but there is the exact truth. One can judge if he was disposed to unite himself to Madame Duplay’s eldest daughter by something I heard him say to Augustin: “You should marry Éléonore.” “My faith, no,” replied my younger brother.”

But mostly, Charlotte wanted to use the memoirs to underline her attachment to her two brothers, and sweep under the rug anything that might prove evidence to the contrary. ”I am proud to carry your name;” Charlotte wrote, ”it is glorious to be of your blood, to belong to the great Robespierre, who was the inflexible enemy of all injustice, of all corruption, and who now would be extolled by those who create history to the gages of the aristocracy, if he had made pacts with the people’s oppressors.” That she had been exiled to Arras, very likely on the order of her brothers, she made no allusion to, nor to the connections she had had with people such as Guffroy, Gaillard and Saint-Félix. Laponneraye, when publishing the memoirs, also included a preface in which his love for Charlotte and esteem for her brother truly shines through, but which from an factual point of view sometimes can’t be taken seriously…

”Charlotte Robespierre had received from nature the sweetest and loveliest of virtues. Without gall, without violent and hateful passions, she was always even-tempered, always affable in character. […] The turbulent agitations of politics would have made her flee to the ends of the earth, if the ardent tenderness which tied her to her brothers had not kept her in her homeland. Passionate about the private life, she could never bring herself to leave it, and was always careful not to imitate those women who, forgetting the role that suits their sex, throw themselves madly and ridiculously into a career that is not made for them. So she played no part in the extraordinary events that signaled the time when her older brother was in power. […] Charlotte Robespierre occupied herself with politics only as much as is necessary for her to follow her brothers with her eyes in the arena where they fight hand to hand with crime.”

Sources for this:

Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835)

Charlotte Robespierre et ses amis (1961) part 1, part 2 by Gabriel Pioro and Pierre Labracherie

Charlotte Robespierre et ”ses mémoirs” (1959) by Gabriel Pioro and Pierre Labracherie

Charlotte Robespierre et Guffroy (1910) by Hector Fleischmann

Le Testament de Charlotte Robespierre (1919) by Jean Gaumont

Charlotte Robespierre et le 9 Thermidor (1920) by Albert Mathiez

Une lettre de Charlotte Robespierre (1939) by Louis Jacob

Maximilien et Charlotte Robespierre, article published in Le Petit Temps, May 28 1909 by Maurice Dumoulin, with extracts from La Révolution, la terreur, le Directoire, 1791-1799, d'après les mémoires de Gaillard (1909). Gaillard full memoirs unfortunately can’t be found online.

Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices (1795) by Armand Joseph Guffroy

Correspondance de Maximilien et Augustin Robespierre (1926) by George Michon

La famille de Robespierre et ses origines. Documents inédits sur le séjour des Robespierre à Vaudricourt, Béthune, Harnes, Hénin-Liétard, Carvin et Arras. (1452-1790) (1914) by A. Lavoine

La Jeunesse de Robespierre et la convocation des Etats génétaux en Artois (1870) by J.-A. Paris

#charlotte robespierre #robespierre #maximilien robespierre #augustin robespierre #armand joseph guffroy #joseph lebon #joseph fouché #frev #élisabeth duplay #élisabeth lebas #long post #charlotte’s fight with her brothers definitely deserves to be remembered as more than”she refused to share them with other women”

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