for carrying the Terror beyond the interests of national defence and public safety.[1]
Although Robespierre disapproved of the more barbaric excesses of indiscriminate executions and juridical frame-ups, it was his own policy that prepared the way for them. The Terror, to the point that Robespierre approved it, did not save France from the flames of counter revolution. It supplied fuel to those flames. By terrorizing tens of thousands of Frenchmen who were genuinely hostile to despotism, it made easier Napoleon’s usurpation. An incidental distinction of Robespierre is that by charging his opponents, even when they were as far apart as Danton and Anarchisis Cloots, with being spies in English pay, he set a fashion that was to be followed in the Russian Revolution. It was bad enough that Robespierre proclaimed: “The Republic owes its enemies nothing but death.” It was historically fatal when he began to regard the enemies of Robespierre as the enemies of the Republic.
The disproportion between the ordinary capacities which the eventful man brings to history and the extraordinary effects of his actions is best illustrated by the personality of the Emperor Justinian and the place he fills in history. The great military achievements under his reign, won by Belisarius, the codification of Roman law, the closing of the philosophic schools at Athens, his intervention in theological affairs, his vast architectural works, had a profound influence on European culture. But at no point did Justinian rise above the level of mediocrity. Although he made the decisions that moved much abler men than himself into action, he showed no clear purpose in what he was doing or any conception of the effects his decisions would have on what he thought he was doing.
Justinian’s most eventful act, according to Fisher, was the destruction of the heretical Arian Goths in Italy in the middle of the sixth century and the resulting desolation of the whole Italian peninsula. The rulers of the Goths had pursued a policy
- ↑ Seven out of every ten persons guillotined or shot during the French terror were workers, peasants, and members of the lower middle class. The most recent studies show that of the approximately 17,000 victims, i. e. those sentenced after “trial,” not counting those shot out of hand or those among the 500,000 political prisoners who succumbed to horrible prison conditions, 31½ per cent. were workers, 28 per cent. peasants, and 10¼ per cent. belonged to the lower middle class. See Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation, p. 166, Cambridge, 1935.
