Fall of Maximilien Robespierre

The National Convention arrests Robespierre and his allies on 9 Thermidor

Augustin Robespierre had not been named in the motion. He stood up and asked to be arrested alongside his brother.

Five arrests, not three

On 9 Thermidor Year II — 27 July 1794 — Saint-Just was interrupted at the tribune of the National Convention as Jean-Lambert Tallien, Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne and other deputies turned on Robespierre and his allies.

Louis Louchet moved for Maximilien Robespierre's arrest. Augustin Robespierre then asked to share his brother's fate, and the Convention also ordered the arrest of Saint-Just, Georges Couthon and Philippe-François-Joseph Le Bas.

The coalition was not a simple moderate rising against a lone dictator; it included former participants in the Terror who feared the unnamed accusations Robespierre had made in his speech the day before.

Three thousand men who never attacked

The Paris Commune declared an insurrection, summoned the city sections and helped the arrested deputies reach the Hôtel de Ville. Coffinhal assembled roughly 3,000 men and about 30 cannon at the Place de Grève.

The insurgents never ordered an attack on the Convention, and their force dispersed.

Once it learned the prisoners had escaped custody, the Convention declared Robespierre and the rebels outside the law — a change that allowed identification and execution without an ordinary trial.

The shattered jaw nobody can explain

Convention forces entered the Hôtel de Ville at about 2:30 a.m. on 28 July and took the Robespierrists. Maximilien Robespierre had a shattered jaw; whether he shot himself, was shot by a gendarme, or was wounded some other way remains disputed.

On the evening of 28 July, 22 Robespierrists were guillotined, among them both Robespierre brothers, Saint-Just, Couthon, Hanriot, Dumas and Fleuriot-Lescot. A further 71 were executed on 29 July.

Treating these two days as the precise end of the Reign of Terror is conventional periodization: executions and political violence continued, and Terror-era institutions were dismantled over time rather than overnight.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1794-07-27.

What the sources leave uncertain

9 Thermidor Year II is securely equivalent to 27 July 1794.
It remains uncertain whether Maximilien Robespierre shot himself, was shot by a gendarme, or was wounded in another way during the Hôtel de Ville’s capture.
Treating 9–10 Thermidor as the precise “end” of the Reign of Terror is conventional periodization. Executions and political violence continued, while institutions associated with the Terror were dismantled over time.