Robespierre built his political dominance on solemn, unyielding moral righteousness, but Marc-Guillaume Vadier dismantled his aura on the convention floor through mockery. By parodying Robespierre's self-pity and highlighting his connection to the eccentric prophetess Catherine Théot, Vadier prompted widespread laughter. Having no sense of humor, Robespierre was completely unable to respond, losing his composure and his voice as the assembly turned against him.
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.
Emergency regimes justify extraordinary powers and state terror through the imminent threat of existential destruction. Following the decisive French victory at Fleurus in June 1794, the threat of Austrian invasion evaporated. With external security restored, deputies and citizens quickly questioned why dictatorial committees and mass guillotine executions remained necessary, paving the way for the repeal of the Terror's legal mechanisms.
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.
Maximilien Robespierre's fatal miscalculation before the National Convention was threatening an unstated list of corrupt deputies without naming them. Rather than cowing his targets into submission, this ambiguity forced every deputy who had taken bribes or overstepped during the Terror to assume they were on his hit list. Driven by fear of execution, disparate rivals united to pre-emptively shout him down and demand his arrest.
While technocrats on the Committee of Public Safety drafted hundreds of decrees on three hours of sleep, Robespierre retreated home for six weeks, periodically reappearing only to lecture colleagues on morality. As historian R.R. Palmer noted, isolating oneself virtuously while leaving the grinding operational burden to others fatally undermines a leader's authority. His colleagues came to see his moralizing as self-indulgence rather than leadership.
The Commune expected Paris's working-class sans-culottes to rise up in Robespierre's defense as they had in previous crises, but the streets remained quiet. The government had alienated ordinary citizens by enforcing harsh wage caps, prosecuting striking workers, and even banning celebratory neighborhood street parties as counter-revolutionary. When ideological leaders impose severe economic austerity and suppress everyday community life, grassroots loyalty inevitably evaporates.
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.
François Henriot arrived at the Tuileries Palace with 3,000 armed men and 30 cannons aimed directly at an undefended National Convention. Rather than capitalizing on this decisive advantage to arrest the deputies, he hesitated, became confused, and ordered his forces to retreat to City Hall to regroup. This single delay surrendered the initiative, allowing the opposition to mobilize loyal forces and capture the Commune virtually unopposed.
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.