I'm delighted to be speaking with Dr. Marissa Linton from Kingston University in London. Marissa is one of the eminent historians of the, of the French Revolution. An earlier book was called the Politics of Virtue in Enlightenment France, a study of a key concept in, enlightenment thinking and also in thinking during the, the French Revolution. Most recently, she published a book with the intriguing title of Choosing Terror, and it's that that I'm going to be discussing with Dr. Linton now. So, Marisa, how would you summarize the key arguments of Choosing Terror? >> Okay. Oh, well, I started with a premise, which was why should somebody like Robespierre, who started out as a humanitarian, an idealist, a man who was opposed to the death penalty, which he thought was barbaric, why should such a man, choose terror, at a certain point, in the revolution, how did that come about? There'd be many ways in which people try to explain that talking about it in terms of, of hypocrisy or of, of paranoia, all sorts of things that are sort of centered on, Robespierre himself as an individual. But I thought it was about much more than one individual's journey. It was a journey of many people. And, so if I'm asking an initial question I wanted to widen out my search to look at other revolutionary leaders and how they were collectively choosing terror. What was that experience like for them? How did they come to do that? So that was how I began as it were with the, with the quest. And I wanted to approach the subject really from the point of view of seeing them in a very kind of contemporary way as politicians, politicians of their time. And in a sense, what I was arguing is that the French revolutionists were the first politicians in our modern sense - in that they weren't answerable to the king, they were answerable to public opinion. And this was a major, major deal. Everything they did was in the public eye. They had to put on a performance every time they spoke. They had to be very careful and guarded about what they said. And they put on a certain kind of public front and presented themselves in a certain way - as men of virtue, men of integrity, morality, who put the public good first. They were always thinking of the public good, never thinking of themselves, that was how they were supposed to speak, and that was part of their ideology, their public identity. But then behind that of course there were other layers of what they were doing. There's a whole sort of layer of tactics, political tactics just as you see in politics today. People manoeuvre, they make deals, they, they strike accords, they, they have tactics that they pursue in their clubs, in the assemblies and so forth. So all that kind of politics was going on as well. And there's another level, which I found deeply interesting, and that's the personal level of politics. And this is the kind of, the unspoken thing, but that's going on as well, that's very important. These are men who have whole complicated personal lives, they have relationships of friendship with one another, that sometimes turn into enmity. They have very strong emotions, positive and negative, and these are all part of who they are. So that they operate on these three levels at once, really as politicians, and that was how I wanted to put that together. >> Yes, one of the most interesting themes I found was was about friendship and the way in which the great dilemmas, the great crises of, of that period, 1792 through 1794, can really confront what seemed to be close friendships with terrible choices. I mean, the most famous one I, I suppose is Robespierre and Danton and Desmoulins, but there were many others presumably where friends fall out with fatal consequences. >> Yes. Absolutely. And that was something that struck me as I was doing this research into these leaders of the, of the Jacobins, in that I was surprised at how close their connections were. Many of them started out friends, some of them were friends actually before the Revolution, people you wouldn't think. You know, Marat and Brissot were friends. There was a time before the Revolution when those men were friends, which, seems to be forgotten. All sorts of people had these connections with one another, worked together as colleagues and yet at a certain point along the way, many of them fell out with one another. And the awful thing about that I think, is when friends fall out it's worse than when, when people are always enemies. The, the worst dangers that you face are the ones that come from behind you because your friends know where, know where the bodies are buried, as it were, they know how to do the dirty on one another. >> And particularly when the issue is, as they put it at the time the survival of the French Revolution or death, victory or death, that if friends fall out, it can be fatal. >> Very interesting. >> One, one of the most powerful explanations of the terror of course has been the, if you like, the force of circumstance argument, very popular among pro-revolutionary historians, Jacobin historians, Marxist historians that, that we call a terror, is really something that's imposed on, the national convention, on the committees of public safety and general security, on Robespierre, and his allies, really by the, the military crisis, of 1793, that they really, have no choice, if the revolution is to survive. Are you saying that that's not a good enough explanation of what happens? >> The terror has to be explained by many different things. There's no single explanation for why the terror happens. So, I think now, nowadays historians are really looking, complex, multiple threats of explanation. The circumstances thesis, what you're outlining there, the, the idea that, it was all about defense, it was necessary to defend France, that these terrible things were done - yes, that's an argument that has a long history. There's a lot about it I think, that's still very relevant and important because, war changes people. War has a deep impact upon every layer of the French revolution, yes that's certainly the case. But it doesn't explain everything. And it doesn't explain, I think, some of the levels of fear that the revolutionary leaders were suffering from. And this is what I call the politician's terror, when they turn on one another. And this bears only a marginal relation, really, to the war. Because, the people, they seem to be more afraid of, are their colleagues, rather than, you know, the enemy, the British, or the Prussians, or what have you. It's actually their own, their own sort of fellow revolutionaries who seem to be against them. And they link in their minds the betrayal of friends and colleagues with developments abroad. So that they're people who are the, become the enemies within France, the enemy within, they're supposed to be involved in a conspiracy with the foreign invaders. So it's linked. But it's something else, it takes on life of its own, and fear is a very, very powerful emotion. And you can't see a sort of neat link there necessarily between those fears and what is happening as a consequence of the war. There are other impulses that are very important. You know, it's long been said, you know, why didn't the terror end immediately after the Battle of Fleurus that's 26th of June, which showed that the, the French forces were winning military victories. Why then did terror continue for another month after that? A month in which many people died, the height of what they called the great terror in Paris. And that really has a lot to do with fear, fear of prison plots, fear of assassination all sorts of things were going on there. >> And to use one of the words that's in the subtitle of your book Choosing Terror how do you know that someone is authentic? How do you know, when someone says I am a patriot, I'm a revolutionary, how can you be sure finally, that they're telling the truth or are they part of some conspiracy? Are they dissimulating? And, I was struck by the link then, with your earlier book about virtue, which is such a, a powerful term, isn't it right through the 18th century and into the French Revolution because these are men and some women who in public life who proclaim that in some sense they are the embodiment of virtue and are creating a society of virtue. But how can you tell that they're authentic? And that seems to me to be the great dilemma. >> Yeah, it, it's really a problem. We don't use the term virtue now, so perhaps it seems a bit odd. But when people are talking about politics now, they still talk about morality, corruption, duplicity, the demarcation between public and private, so actually it's not such a very archaic idea I think, it's something that still continues for us. We worry about our politicians, we worry now about what our politicians are really up to, whether they're ambitious, so we share some of the concerns that the french revolutionaries had. However, when our politicians turn out to have failings we don't cut their heads off. And that really comes out of the, the circumstance situation where they take it that extra mile. Really, yeah. >> One, one final question. You refer to the Battle of Fleurus in June 1794 which as you said is the moment when really the republic, and the revolution itself are safe, from the enemy, the foreign troops have been expelled, and that's the moment where, of course, a lot of historians say, if only, Robespierre, and the committee of public safety had been able to chart, a pathway back to constitutional government, to peace, they would now be French heroes rather than people who are vilified in memory. You're implying, I think that they were incapable, or they would have been incapable of doing that, because by then they'd become embroiled in, this nightmare of conspiracy and plots, and all the rest of that, that in fact, they would have been unable to wind down the terror, so to speak. >> I think it's very hard to talk about what might have been always, but I certainly think the psychological dimensions, are very, very important for a man like Robespierre, yes, I think he's very much someone on the edge by that point. And he is psychologically incapable, by that point of turning back. I think that's something that really happens after he agrees to the execution of his friends, of Danton and Desmoulins, he takes a certain step, he hardens his views and he will not step back. It's almost as though he had a kind of death wish, that he couldn't see a way for himself to be other than what he was. And in the end, he becomes a kind of sacrifice which enables the others to, to, the other revolutionaries, many of them, terrorists, themselves, to rehabilitate themselves by, by destroying him. Yeah, that just happened. >> Yes, and I very much agree. I believe that when Robespierre becomes involved in the the trial of Danton and Desmoulins that he has a period of illness immediately after that, from which he never really recovers psychologically. So I think that's a very powerful argument that you make and I want to thank you very much for the insights that you've given us and congratulations on the book, which I also understand is in paperback now. >> Soon, soon. >> Soon in >> paperback. Yes. >> As it should be. Thank you very much Marissa.
