Synthesize the numerous biographies of the leaders of the French Revolution during the high period of radical Jacobinism, and perhaps the first thought to emerge is what an improbable collection of characters they were.
Nothing here seems remotely foreordained or even moderately predictable. He had a small collection of pictures and engravings that he liked to arrange in exhibitions for his sisters, delighting in their admiration.
But, returning to Arras to practice law in , Robespierre at his beginnings seemed destined for a humdrum existence in a provincial backwater. That it was all to be otherwise rests on a historical joke of which the Cunning of Reason could have been proud.
The deadlock, they suggested, should be broken by the only body that could properly decide the matter, the Estates-General, which had not met since The belief was that, if reconvened, it would proceed as in , with the two most powerful estates, the clergy and nobility, combining electoral forces to block the royal will.
It was thus to be game, set and match to Privilege. Its proponents, however, made one major error of political calculation; they assumed the docility of the Third Estate. As it turned out, game, set and match to the People, though not without substantial retranslations of the Tennis Court Oath further down the road.
