Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) was one of the leaders and orators of the French Revolution of 1789, best known for his involvement in the Reign of Terror that followed.

As a young man, he studied law and had a reputation for honesty and compassion. He sought to abolish the death penalty and refused to pronounce a required death sentence after becoming a judge.

But as the revolution approached, Robespierre became head of the powerful Jacobin Club, a radical group advocating exile or death for France's nobility. In 1792, after Paris mobs stormed the palace of the Tuileries and dethroned King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, Robespierre helped organize the new revolutionary governing body, the Commune of Paris.

Robespierre now developed great love for power along with a reputation for intolerance, self-righteousness and cruelty.

He used his considerable oratory skills to successfully demand the execution of the king and queen, saying Louis XVI "must die that the country may live." In January 1793, the king was executed, followed ten months later by the queen.

The Committee of Public Safety then took over the rule of France and began a three year Reign of Terror during which it brutally put down royalist uprisings, conducted wholesale murder of families with royal ancestry and sent thousands to the guillotines without proper trials.

At one point during the Reign of Terror, Robespierre sent an atheist, Jacques-Rene Hebert, to the guillotine after Hebert had closed the Catholic churches and started pagan-style worship of the goddess of Reason. Robespierre then introduced the Reign of Virtue and the Festival of the Supreme Being from which he had a speech.

Not long after his speech, Robespierre himself was arrested by his political enemies. A rescue attempt followed, during which part of his jaw was shot off. On July 28, 1794, Robespierre and 19 of his comrades were guillotined. After his death, the Reign of Terror subsided, with Robespierre subsequently blamed for much of its horrors.