Augustin Robespierre’s letter to the Comité de Surveillance of Arras (22 April 179
Augustin Robespierre’s letter to the Comité de Surveillance of Arras (22 April 1793)
Republicans,
You just gave me an unequivocal proof of your esteem, by instructing me about your active surveillance ; I will neglect nothing in order to accelerate the progress of your revolutionary operations. I promise by duty and by gratitude to write you at least once per week. I am convinced that our correspondence will be able to serve the common weal, and as the traitors to the patrie have a rapid communication among themselves, it is necessary that the good citizens are not isolated and that they present a mass of lights and of forces [that are] capable of intimidating and of annihilating the enemies of the republic. The patrie in danger raises the courage of free men, the blind rage of the royalists and of the fanatics will die soon and our common efforts will purge the soil of liberty, of all those who do not have enough virtues in order to live in it.
I currently do not know what the powers of the patriot Brune are, I will desire that they are extensive enough in order to carry out all the good which he desires. He is an excellent republican who has rendered services in the revolution, and who, I believe, is always in the same dispositions. I will inform myself of the latitude and the nature of his powers and I will instruct you at once.
Paris is always calm and proud, in spite of the means employed in order to arouse (or incite) disordered movements in this immortal city. The Parisians [who are] informed on the intrigues that surround us denounce the traitors, and as these conspirators are powerful, they employ all means in order to divert the eyes away from their crimes and their conspiracies, in order to only occupy the nation with supposed conspiracies of the Jacobins and of the Commune of Paris, but the Jacobins and the Commune of Paris are the friends of the republic
This is their crime in the eyes of the royalists. The society of the Jacobins is incorruptible by its nature. It debates in the presence of four thousand persons, it therefore cannot betray the interests of the people because [its] only power lies in the opinion of the people. Read what I have said at the tribune of the Convention last Saturday, if the Moniteur has rendered it exactly, and you will have an idea of the enemies which we have to fight.
Robespierre the Younger
