Bertrand Barère

They are not impressed by Robespierre's enthusiasm for the Supreme Being, which they regard as bonkers.

And in recent months, Collot and Billaud have become increasingly close to one other person we should talk about on the committee, who is called Bernard Barère.

He's the guy who proposed demolishing all the royal iconography in Saint-Denis.

Exactly.

Absolute trimmer.

Barère is the longest serving member of the committee.

He's a fixer.

He's a sort of Peter Mandelson figure, I suppose, isn't he? He's an operator.

But meanwhile, in the convention, so effectively the kind of, you know, the, the, the government of France, the deputies there are preparing a much more public assault on the legacy of monarchy.

And on the 31st of July, uh, 1793 A lawyer named Bertrand Barère stands up in the, the National Convention, and we have already met him because he is the guy who, in due course, on the 5th of September, will proclaim that terror is the order of the day.

And we didn't really say who he was then, so just a bit of detail on him.

He's a man with a very formidable reputation.

He'd been a lawyer, very celebrated for his eloquence.

Robert Palmer, in his classic book on The Committee of Public Safety: Twelve Who Ruled, gives a fabulous character sketch of him.

"Barère could throw a spell of words over any usual topic: a battle, a conspiracy, a guillotining, a statistical report, a democratic idea.

Always fluent, always forceful, sometimes soberly expository, sometimes passionately excited." And this is a guy who, he'd been on the kind of the outer margins of the aristocracy when the revolution began, so he [laughs] he's adapted himself very fluently and successfully to the new order.