Rousseau and Revolution

Rousseau and the Terror 63
Notes
1 Cf. ibid., 1:217 and 3:iii–iv; and Taine, 1876, 202. Louis Mortimer-Ternaux
(1862– 81, 4:345n) wrote in his magisterial study of the Terror that ‘Robespierre
and his followers were [ . . . ] very fervent disciples of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.’ Lord
Acton said that Rousseau was Robespierre’s ‘master’ (Acton, 1910, 279). Daniel
Mornet (1933, 355) later observed that Rousseau’s ‘very optimism, that naive confi
dence in the good will of men’ was a more general ‘illusion’ that could be found
in all times. Edgar Quinet (1845, 63–4) made the incisive comment that Joseph de
Maistre pursued a ‘terrorism of the Church’ that amounted to ‘Robespierre without
Rousseau, the means without the ends’.
2 Those familiar with Ernst Kantorowicz’s (1957) classic work on medieval political
theology and the ‘king’s two bodies’ will see the baseline here as self-evident. The
medieval notion of the church’s ‘mystical body’ was a template for earthly sovereignty.
When particular kings died, kingship as a transcendental presence
nevertheless endured, as in the phrase, ‘The king is dead, long live the king’.
Such a model, involving the incarnation of the social body in the king’s person,
remained operative in 1789.
3 The issue points back to Max Weber’s defi nition (1946, 78) of a state as ‘a human
community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical
force within a given territory’.
4 Gazette nationale, ou Le Moniteur universel 192 (11 July 1793); 108 (7 January 1794);
234 (13 May 1794); 324 (11 August 1794); 338 (25 August 1794); 13 (4 October
1794).
5 Le Moniteur 44 (4 November 1793); 234 (13 May 1794); 338 (25 August 1794); 24
(15 October 1794).
6 Le Moniteur 39 (30 October 1793); 197 (6 April 1794); 247 (26 May 1794); 259
(7 June 1794); 312 (30 July 1794); 20 (11 October 1794).
7 Le Moniteur 223 (11 August 1793); 258 (15 September 1793); 278 (5 October
1793); 97 (27 December 1793); 116 (15 January 1794); 255 (3 June 1794); 12
(3 October 1794); 19 (10 October 1794); 20 (11 October 1794); 39 (30 October
1794).
8 Le Moniteur 33 (24 October 1793); 48 (8 November 1793); 112 (11 January
1794).
9 Le Moniteur 8 (29 September 1794); 8 bis. (29 September 1794); 12 (3 October
1794); 19 (10 October 1794); 20 (11 October 1794).
10 Le Moniteur 207 (16 April 1794).