A selection based on that by Jean Poperen, which is the most convenient to use:
ROBESPIERRE Maximilien, Ecrits, notes and introduction by Claude Mazauric, Paris, Editions sociales, 1989.
Two recent selections:
ROBESPIERRE Maximilien, Pour le bonheur et pour la liberté. Discours, selected and edited by Y. Bosc, F. Gauthier, S. Wahnich, Paris, La Fabrique, 2000.
ROBESPIERRE Maximilien, Discours sur la religion, la République, l’esclavage, Paris, Editions de l’Aube, 2006.
BIOGRAPHIES:
BOULOISEAU Marc, Robespierre, Paris, PUF, Que sais-je?, 1987.
JORDAN David P., The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre, New York, Free Press, 1985.
MASSIN Jean, Robespierre, Aix-en-Provence, Alinéa, 1988.
SCURR Ruth, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution, London, Chatto and Windus, 2006.
STUDIES ON ROBESPIERRE AND THE TERROR:
ANDRESS David, The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France, New York, Strauss and Giroux, 2006.
BRUNEL Françoise, Thermidor, la chute de Robespierre, Brussels, Editions Complexe, 1989.
GUENIFFEY Patrice, « Robespierre » in FURET F., OZOUF M., Dictionnaire critique de la Révolution française, Paris, Flammarion, 1988.
HAYDON Colin and DOYLE William (eds.), Robespierre, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
LABICA Georges, Robespierre. Une politique de la philosophie, Paris, PUF, 1990.
MATHIEZ Albert, Etudes sur Robespierre, Paris, Messidor, 1988.
MAYER, Arno, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions, Princeton, PUP 2002.
MAZAURIC Claude, « Robespierre », in SOBOUL A., Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française, Paris, PUF, 1989.
SOBOUL Albert (ed.), Actes du colloque Robespierre, Paris, Société des etudes robespierristes, 1967.
WAHNICH Sophie, La liberté ou la mort: essai sur la Terreur et le terrorisme, Paris, La Fabrique, 2003.
Accapareurs: term used to refer to figures hated by the populace who could either be the administrators responsible for food supplies, or those who supported free trade in grain, and especially those who preferred to hoard their produce rather than to bring it to market (the latter could be sentenced to the death penalty from July 1793 onwards).
Committee of General Security: created under the Convention on 2 October 1792. Responsible for general and interior police matters, it entered into conflict with the Committee of Public Safety dominated by Robespierre.
Committee of Public Safety: created under the Convention on 6 April 1793, it was charged with taking measures of general internal and external defence. Robespierre began to sit on it from 27 July 1793 and continued to do so until his arrest. The powers of the Committee became more and more extensive, a process which created conflict with the Committee of General Security.
Constituent Assembly: founded at the Estates-General on 9 July 1789 and lasted until 30 September 1791. Robespierre was a member of this Assembly.
Convention: assembly elected by quasi-universal male suffrage, it succeeded the Legislative officially on 21 September 1792 with the beginning of the First Republic; first influenced by the Girondins (until 2 June 1793), then by the Montagnards with Robespierre playing a preponderant role (until 9 Thermidor Year II—27 July 1794), and finally by the Thermidorians (until 26 October 1795).
East India Company Affair: the decree of 24 August 1793 dissolved all joint stock companies. The liquidation of the East India Company was supposed to have been carried out by the state; when the decree was announced it emerged that the minutes had been been falsified with the complicity of Fabre d’Eglantine, who was then accused of corruption.
Federalism: designation for the delegates from the Girondin départe-ments who were hostile to the authority of the Convention at the end of 1792—beginning of 1793.
Fédérés: the armies of the Revolution included battalions of fédérés who comprised a volunteer revolutionary force often mobilized to intervene against internal subversion. They played a decisive role in the fall of the monarchy on 10 August 1792.
Feuillants – Feuillantisme: the Feuillants Club was a split from the Jacobins at the time of the Champ-de-Mars affair (17 July 1791); it grouped together supporters of the constitutional monarchy, including La Fayette.
Girondins (‘Brissotins’): ‘Girondins’ was the name given by the historiography of the nineteenth century to the supporters of Brissot and Vergniaud. During the Revolution they were known as ‘Brissotins’ or ‘Rolandins’ and they constituted the right wing of the Convention, favourable to economic liberalism and hostile to interventions by the popular movement.
Jacobin Club: first representing a moderate tendency, this society included a range of political figures in 1789: Mirabeau, La Fayette and Robespierre, among others. After a split away by the more moderate elements in 1791, the Club increasingly moved towards republican positions. The Girondins left it after the September Massacres of 1792 and thereafter it became a powerful centre for the Montagnards (see below). Closed after 9 Thermidor, it was reconstituted several times until its definitive dissolution in 1799.
Journées: The great journées of the Revolution were often synonymous with popular insurrections. The main ones were: 14 July 1789 (storming of the Bastille); 5–6 October 1789 (march of women on Versailles); 17 July 1791 (Champ-de-Mars Massacre); 10 August 1792 (fall of the monarchy); 31 May–2 June 1793 (fall of the Girondins), 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794, fall of Robespierre).
Law of Suspects: the law of 17 September 1793 defined those suspected of being agents of the counter-revolution, principally priests, nobles and foreigners.
Maximum: the sans-culottes demanded a maximum price limit (to fight against speculators).
Montagnards: name given to the deputies sitting on the higher benches (the ‘Mountain’) of the Legislative Assembly and then of the Convention. They differed from the Girondins in drawing their support from the popular movement, by showing their support for regulation of the economy and finally by an equalizing vision of social relations. Robespierre was one of their most eminent representatives.
Paris Commune (also known as the Insurrectionary Commune): on 10 August 1792 an insurrectionary commune composed of members of the far left (Chaumette, Hébert) was formed. It took part in the great journées of the revolution but at the end of 1793 its power was supplanted by that of the Committee of Public Safety under the influence of Robespierre. Purged by the elimination of the Hébertists, it tried unsuccessfully to mobilize Paris to save Robespierre on 9 Thermidor.
Représentants en mission: members of the Convention who, from spring 1793 onwards, were sent alongside the armies and to the départements; they often played an important role in the local application of the Terror, although in a manner that varied greatly from individual to individual.
Revolutionary Government: on 10 October 1793 a report by Billaud-Varenne proclaimed the government as ‘revolutionary until peacetime’ (a decree specified the modalities on 18 November), meaning that the 1793 Constitution should only be applied in times of peace. This latter constitution was not put into practice and another – less democratic – one, that of Year III, succeeded it