In his final convention speech, Robespierre unnecessarily attacked Pierre-Joseph Cambon, the respected head of the finance committee who managed the national debt without engaging in factional intrigue. Denouncing an unaligned, effective operator provoked Cambon into taking the rostrum to declare that Robespierre was paralyzing the legislature. His open defiance encouraged fearful, fence-sitting deputies to break their silence and join the rebellion.

A key legal tool of the Terror, this law radically broadened who could be arrested. It targeted those who, "by their conduct, relations or language spoken or written have shown themselves partisans of tyranny." This vague standard effectively criminalized dissent, association, and even a perceived lack of revolutionary zeal.

Immediately after Robespierre's fall, the deputies and secret policemen who had enthusiastically executed thousands coined the term 'the Reign of Terror' and attributed every atrocity solely to him. As British observer Watkin Tench noted, subordinate tyrants who previously prostrated themselves before Robespierre framed him as a solitary monster to screen themselves from public odium, recasting their own active complicity as forced submission.

Figures like Fabre invented a vast foreign conspiracy, telling Robespierre exactly what he wanted to hear. This fictional narrative provided the perfect pretext to eliminate both corrupt officials and political opponents like Hébert and Danton under the guise of protecting national security.

Radicals like Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne overthrew Robespierre expecting to control the Committee of Public Safety and maintain the Terror without him. However, eliminating Robespierre dismantled the fear holding the Convention captive. Moderate deputies quickly abolished emergency measures, stripped the committees of their powers, closed the Jacobin Club, and ultimately arrested the very conspirators who initiated the coup, illustrating how removing a figurehead can trigger uncontrollable systemic collapse.

Although Robespierre viewed revolutionary dictatorship as a temporary measure until the hyper-democratic 1793 Constitution could take effect, he could never declare the emergency over. He trapped himself in an ideological bind where terror was required to enforce virtue. Because he suspected that those displaying outward virtue were likely the most insidious counter-revolutionaries, no standard of civic purity could ever be achieved to justify releasing executive control.

To reconcile his personal opposition to capital punishment with his role in the Terror, Robespierre argued that revolutionary times were exceptional. He believed the existential threat to the state meant normal legal and moral principles had to be suspended, allowing the "end to justify the means" for national survival.

Robespierre operated through a binary lens where any policy disagreement was treated as existential corruption and treason. While this absolute conviction initially intimidated rivals, it reduced his political playbook to a single predictable maneuver: moral denunciation followed by purges. Once opponents recognized that he could neither compromise nor alter his tactics, worldly politicians coordinated easily to counteract his speeches and strip away his advantage of surprise.

By repeatedly threatening an unspecified cabal of conspirators in the Jacobin Club and the Convention without naming individuals, Robespierre made every deputy feel directly endangered. Politicians who previously shared little common ground—corrupt deputies, ultra-left de-Christianizers, and moderates—became convinced they were marked men. This collective terror incentivized them to coalesce around operators like Fouché to strike preemptively against Robespierre before he struck them.