In 1789, French society rose up against a corrupt feudal order. Republican fervor on the streets and in the assemblies abolished the monarchy, confiscated the church’s property, and kick-started an ambitious restructuring of constitutional and daily life.

By 1793, the Reign of Terror — the mass arrest and execution of real and imagined counterrevolutionaries — was in full swing. With Jacobin Club leader Maximilien Robespierre at the helm, the Terror ostensibly aimed to shift revolutionary zeal from the unruly streets to the orderly guillotine. Fearful for their heads, a temporary alliance of nervous elites seized an opportunity to overthrow and kill Robespierre and his allies. The so-called Thermidorian Reaction had begun.

From the moment of his execution in 1794, commentators have been relentlessly reshaping Robespierre’s legacy to fit their political purposes, and he remains an ambiguous figure today. He is by turns cast as an anti-totalitarian bogeyman, a totem against aristocratic privilege, a case study in why not to pursue elite corruption too vigorously, or an egalitarian leveler.