REPORT ON THE EXTERNAL SITUATION
OF THE REPUBLIC
Robespierre became a member of the Committee of Public Safety on July 26, 1793. A few months later he was instructed to report to the Convention on the external situation of the Republic. This speech was translated as a manifesto into almost every European language, was distributed in great quantities and read aloud in all the communes of France, as well as to the army. In this speech, Robespierre maintained that the Girondiste cabinet had intentionally involved France in a war with all of Europe for the purpose of destroying the Republic. There was no doubt that Robespierre was wrong in this opinion. The Gironde has many sins and mistakes on its conscience; many of its members were outright traitors; but to speak of a desire on the part of the Gironde to sell France would not be a mere exaggeration but an absolute untruth. Robespierre was in the opposition to war at first, and denounced the war, but later, precisely at the time when he delivered this speech, he was the soul of the national resistance against the foreign enemy, and the real deliverer of France, the Republic, and the Revolution.
It is now time to tell all those so weak in intellect that they will not understand, and all the simpletons who pretend to be ignorant of the facts, that the French Republic is a fact and that the victories and the nations of despotism are only temporary phenomena. It is also time for our allies to feel
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