For some historians and biographers, Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94) was a great revolutionary martyr who succeeded in leading the French Republic to safety in the face of overwhelming military odds. For many others, he was the first modern dictator, a fanatic who instigated the murderous Reign of Terror in 1793-94. This masterful biography combines new research into Robespierre's dramatic life with a deep understanding of society and the politics of the French Revolution to arrive at a fresh understanding of the man, his passions, and his tragic shortcomings.

Peter McPhee gives special attention to Robespierre's formative years and the development of an iron will in a frail boy conceived outside wedlock and on the margins of polite provincial society. Exploring how these experiences formed the young lawyer who arrived in Versailles in 1789, the author discovers not the cold, obsessive Robespierre of legend, but a man of passion with close but platonic friendships with women. Soon immersed in revolutionary conflict, he suffered increasingly lengthy periods of nervous collapse correlating with moments of political crisis, yet Robespierre was tragically unable to step away from the crushing burdens of leadership. Did his ruthless, uncompromising exercise of power reflect a descent into madness in his final year of life? McPhee reevaluates the ideology and reality of "the Terror", what Robespierre intended, and whether it represented an abandonment or a reversal of his early liberalism and sense of justice.

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Read an article by Robespierre author Peter McPhee on Yale's blog

Peter McPhee is a professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne, where he was the university's first provost. He has published widely on the history of modern France, including most recently Living the French Revolution, 1789-1799. He lives in Abbottsford, Australia.

"Peter McPhee’s fine new life of Robespierre relies on the first hand, day-to-day accounts rather than the posthumous vilification and hagiography, and in it emerges a quite different portrait of the man."—Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman

"This book is a valuable addition to that process of interpreting Robespierre, not as the man who ruined the revolution but the man ruined by the revolution."—Gwyn Griffiths, Morning Star

"McPhee brilliantly evokes the weaknesses as well as the strengths of this thin-skinned, diminutive figure, who suffered recurrent bouts of nervous exhaustion and withdrew from the fray at vital moments. As this stimulating book shows, those who come to play a leading part in times of upheaval are shaped by events rather than controlling them."—Malcolm Crook, BBC History Magazine

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