Billaud-Varenne systematized the Terror because he believed it necessary for the safety of the country; Robespierre intensified it in order to carry out his own ideas and theories. Robespierre's private life was always respectable: he was always emphatically a gentleman and man of culture, and even a little bit of a dandy, scrupulously honest, truthful and charitable. In his habits and manner of life he was simple and laborious; he was not a man gifted with flashes of genius, but one who had to think much before he could come to a decision, and he worked hard all his life.
On the family of Robespierre see A. J. Paris in the Mémoires (2nd series, vol. iii.) of the Academy of Arras; the Œuvres de Maximilien Robespierre (3 vols., 1840), published by Laponneraye with preface by Armand Carrel, contain some of his speeches and the memoirs of Charlotte Robespierre on her brothers. The standard work on Robespierre's career is Ernest Hamel, Histoire de Robespierre d'apres des papiers de famille, les sources originales et des documents entièrement inédits (3 vols., 1865-67). After the appearance of the first volume, the publisher refused to proceed for fear of prosecution until compelled to do so by the author. Another edition with a different title appeared in 1878. See also Ch. d'Hericault, La Révolution de Thermidor (and ed., 1878); Karl Brunnemann, Maximilian Robespierre (Leipzig, 1880); F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de l'Assemblée Constituante (1882); M. de Lescure, “Le Roman de Robespierre,” in La Société française pendant la Terreur (1882); E. Hamel, La Maison de Robespierre (1895); Hilaire Belloc, Robespierre (1901); and C. F. Warwick, Robespierre and the French Revolution (1909). Many of the books which have been written about Robespierre are most untrustworthy, and the picture of him given by Thomas Carlyle in his French Revolution is unjust.
ROBILANT, CARLO FELICE NICOLIS, Conte di (1826-1888),
Italian statesman and diplomat, was a native of Turin.
He entered the army, and lost his left hand at Novara, where
he was aide-de-camp to Charles Albert, king of Piedmont. He
fought in 1859, and reached the grade of general in the Austrian
campaign of 1866, after which he served on the delimitation
commission. He was chief of the Military Academy, and in
1867 was made prefect of Ravenna to suppress political
disorder. He was defeated at Turin in the elections for the
Chamber in 1870, and was sent in 1871 as minister plenipotentiary
to Vienna, where he subsequently became ambassador.
He was connected with the Prussian nobility by his mother,
and he married an Austrian, a daughter of Prince Edmund
Clary-Aldringen. In spite of the active share he had taken
in driving Austria from Italy, he was a persona grata at Vienna,
and his policy was steadily directed to an alliance between the
two powers. This was accomplished by the secret terms of
the Triple Alliance in 1882. He was recalled to Rome in 1885
to become minister for foreign affairs in the Depretis cabinet.
Robilant's independent attitude as foreign minister secured
greater consideration for Italy from her allies, but he did not
adapt himself to the exigencies of domestic politics, and his
excessive unpopularity contributed to the downfall of the
ministry on the 7th of February 1887, consequent on an adverse
vote on the Massawa question. Before leaving office, he
completed the negotiations for the renewal of the Triple Alliance,
and for its extension to cover Anglo-Italian co-operation in
the Mediterranean. In the new Depretis-Crispi administration
Robilant was not included. He was sent to London as ambassador
in the next year, but died two months after his arrival,
on the 17th of October 1888.
ROBIN HOOD, English legendary hero. The oldest mention
of Robin Hood at present known occurs in the second edition —
what is called the B text — of Piers the Plowman, the date of
which is about 1377. In passus v. of that poem the figure of
Sloth is represented as saying —
| “ | I can nou[?]te perfidy my pater-noster, as the prest it syngeth: But I can rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf Erie of Chestre.” |
He is next mentioned by Andrew of Wyntoun in his Original
Chronicle of Scotland, written about 1420 —
| “ | Lytel Jhon and Robyne Hude Waythmen ware commendyd gude; In Yngilwode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this time [c. 1283] thare trawale”; |
next by Walter Bower in his additions of Fordun's Scotichronicon about 1450 —
“Hoc in tempore [1266] de exheredatis et bannitis surrexit et caput erexit ille famosissimus sicarius Robertus Hode et Littill Johanne cum eorum complicibus, de quibus stolidum vulgus hianter in comoediis et tragoediis prurienter restum faciunt et super ceteras romancias, mimos, er bardanos cantitare delectantur.”
Of his popularity in the latter half of the 15th and in the 16th centuries there are many signs. Just one passage must be quoted as of special importance because closely followed by R. Grafton, J. Stow and W. Camden. It is from John Mair's Historia Majoris Britanniae tam Angliae quam Scotiae, which appeared in 1521 —
“Circa haec tempora [Ricardi Primi], ut auguror, Robertus Hudus Anglus et Parvus Joannes latrones famatissimi in nemoribus latuerunt, solum opulentorurn virorum bona deripientes. Nullum nisi eos invadentem vel resistentem pro suarum rerum tuitione occiderunt. Centum sagittarios ad pugnam aptissimos Robertus latrociniis aluit, quos 400 viri fortissimi invadere non audebant. Rebus hujus Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur. Faeminam nullam opprimi permisit nec pauperum bona surripuit, verum eos ex abbatum bonis sublatis opipare pavit. Viri rapinam improbo, sed latronum omnium humanissimus et princeps erat.”
In the Elizabethan era and afterwards mentions abound; see the works of Shakespeare, Sidney, Ben Jonson, Drayton, Warner, A. Munday, Camden, Stow, Braithwaite, Fuller, &c.
Of the ballads themselves, Robin Hood and the Monk is possibly
as old as the reign of Edward II. (see Thomas Wright's Essays
on England in the Middle Ages, ii. 174); Robin Hood and the
Potter and Robyn and Gandelyn are certainly not later than the
15th century. Most important of all is A Lytell Geste of Robyn
Hode, which was first printed about 1510 (see A. W. Pollard's
Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse, Westminster, 1903). This is
evidently founded on older ballads; we read in The Seconde
Fytte, 11. 176 and 177 —
| “ | He wente hym forthe full mery syngynge, As men have told in tale.” |
In fact, it does for the Robin Hood cycle what a few years before Sir Thomas Malory had done for the Arthurian romances — what in the 6th century B.C. Peisistratus is said to have done for the Homeric poems.
These are the facts about him and his balladry. Of conjectures there is no end. He has been represented as the last of the Saxons — as a Saxon holding out against the Norman conquerors so late as the end of the 12th century (see Augustin Thierry's Norman Conquest, and compare Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe). J. M. Gutch maintains that he was a follower of Simon de Montfort. The Rev. Joseph Hunter associated him with the rebel earl of Lancaster of Edward II.'s time. This scholar in a brochure published in 1852 produced evidence from the exchequer accounts and the court rolls of the manor of Wakefield showing that a “Robyn Hod” and a “Robertus Hood” were living in this reign. The series of coincidences to which he points is undoubtedly striking, but had failed to convince most critics. Professor F. J. Child dismisses his inferences as “ludicrous.”
For our part, we are not disinclined to believe that the Robin Hood story has some historical basis, however fanciful and romantic the superstructure. We parallel it with the Arthurian story, and hold that, just as there was probably a real Arthur, however different from the hero of the trouvères, so there was a real Hood, however now enlarged and disguised by the accretions of legend. That Charlemagne and Richard I. of England became the subjects of romances does not prevent our believing in their existence; nor need Hood's mythical life deprive him of his natural one. Sloth in Langland's poem couples him, as we have seen, with Randle, earl of Chester; and no one doubts this nobleman's existence because he had “rymes” made about him. We believe him to have been the third Randle (see Bishop Percy's Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall, i. 260). And possibly enough Hood was contemporary with that earl, who “flourished” in the reigns of Richard I., John and Henry III. Wyntoun and Mair, as we have seen, assign him to that period. It is impossible to believe with Hunter that he lived so late as Edward II.'s reign. This would leave no time for the growth
