Louise Saint-Just and The Republic

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Louise Saint-Just and The Republic Louise Saint-Just once said, “The Republic consists of the

extermination of everything that opposes it.” Being the right-hand man

of Robespierre, the leader of the Terror, Saint-Just is obviously

referring to the First Republic of France from 1792-1795. What he

means by this, is that the essence of the sovereignty of the Republic

was that it literally wiped out anyone, or anything that had opposing

ideas to it or that posed any threat to itÂ’s power. One would have to

agree with his statement because the Republic literally did kill

everyone that opposed to it. As soon as some people who opposed the

policies of Robespierre werenÂ’t killed, the Terror was ended and

Robespierre himself was killed. This proves that the essence of the

Republics power truly was in exterminating the opposition, because as

soon as they slipped up a bit, the Republic was overthrown. However

they had managed to completely suppress any opposition to the Republic

for almost two years before and there are many examples of this brutal

suppression, which support Saint-JustÂ’s statement and demonstrate the

extermination of opposition.

From day one, the First Republic of France (which will now simply

be referred to as: the Republic) exercised a policy of the

extermination of all that opposed it. One of the first things the

Jacobins did was to depose Louise. They were no longer giving the

Constitutional Monarchy a chance, and so simply removed all his power.

This occurred in late September of 1792. However, the Republic clearly

felt that merely removing Louise fro...

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...unced, to the downfall of Robespierre in the

summer of 1794, the Republic, although having passed several notably

progressive laws mainly about the equality of man, basically destroyed

any resistance to itÂ’s policies. Although they kept justifying their

actions by saying that it was all just to calm the counter

revolutionary forces before establishing a true democracy, I truly

believe that had the Terror not ended when it did, it may have been a

long time before it ended at all. The government appeared to abuse

their power more and more as time went on and I donÂ’t think that if

there had been no more opposition, they simply would have dropped

their policies. Therefore I whole-heartedly agree with Saint-JustÂ’s

statement. I believe that the Republic truly did consist of the

extermination of everything that opposed it.

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