Robespierre : une vie révolutionnaire (Peter McPhee)

Peter McPhee, professeur d’histoire à l’Université de Melbourne en Australie et docteur honoris causa de l’Université de Perpignan, fait des recherches et écrit sur la Révolution française depuis plus de 40 ans. Sa biographie fait revivre Robespierre dans toute son humanité : le jeune orphelin, le boursier, l’avocat et le poète, ainsi que l’homme politique. Maximilien est charmant et intelligent, courageux, mais aussi fragile, sa santé de plus en plus minée par le surmenage, comme en témoigne le contraste entre son portrait de 1792 et le dernier dessin émouvant de Parseval-Grandmaison. Enfin, il devient le ‘bouc émissaire’ des Thermidoriens.

Ce livre est d’une grande importance pour l’anglophonie, car il remet en question des hypothèses ancrées dans la propagande de Pitt, des Thermidoriens, et de Carlyle, qui ont continué à être recyclées au niveau populaire en anglais. Il est bon de le voir mis à la disposition des lecteurs français. J’espère également que nous verrons davantage d’études françaises modernes disponibles en anglais.

Peter McPhee’s lively, erudite and moving biography of Robespierre was published in English in 2012, at the beginning of an important new wave of scholarship about him. I read it in 2017, as I began to rediscover Robespierre and the history of the Revolution. Everything I had learned at school, 35 years previously, was overturned.

Peter McPhee, Professor of History at the University of Melbourne in Australia and doctor honoris causa of the Université de Perpignan, has researched and written on the French Revolution for over 40 years. His biography brings Robespierre to life in his full humanity : the young orphan, the scholarship boy, the lawyer and poet, as well as the politician. Maximilien is charming and intelligent, brave, but also fragile. His health was increasingly undermined by overwork, as seen in the contrast between his portrait in 1792 and the last moving drawing by Parseval-Grandmaison. Finally, he becomes the scapegoat of the Thermidorians.

This book is highly important in Anglophone scholarship, challenging assumptions rooted in the propaganda of Pitt and of the Thermidorians, and of Carlyle, which have continued to be recycled at popular level. It is good to see it made available to French readers. I hope, too, that we will see more modern French scholarship made available in English.