Maximilien de Robespierre

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758–1794) was a French lawyer, statesman, and radical democratic theorist who became the central and most controversial figure of the French Revolution. A disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robespierre was elected to the Estates-General from Arras in 1789, earning the moniker 'The Incorruptible' (L'Incorruptible) for his refusal to accept bribes and his fierce defense of universal male suffrage, abolition of slavery, and rights of the poor.

As leader of the Jacobin Club and the Committee of Public Safety in 1793–1794, Robespierre mobilized France to repel invading royalist coalitions while instituting the Reign of Terror to purge perceived internal traitors, arguing that 'terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue'. He instituted the Cult of the Supreme Being before being overthrown in the 9 Thermidor coup and guillotined on the Place de la Révolution.