On this day in 1794 Maximilien Robespierre and twenty-two other revolutionary leaders were guillotined in Paris.

The reign of terror was the bloodiest period of the French Revolution during which tens of thousands were executed. On 5th February 1794, Robespierre stated succinctly, that, “Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.” Less than six months later, he experienced it himself. Today’s quote is an account of that very moment, in the inimitable writing of Thomas Carlyle whose History of the French Revolution is still a definitive work: “All eyes are on Robespierre’s Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead brother and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered, their “seventeen hours” of agony about to end. The Gendarmes poi...

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