The Rolands’ friend Maximilien Robespierre believed he was such a man. For a time he convinced others as well (Jacques-Louis David served as his de facto minister of propaganda). Robespierre’s goal was to banish tyranny and injustice not just from France, but from the planet. There was no room for compromise or second thoughts. In his grandiose vision, any resistance to the revolutionary regime sprang not from reasonable doubts about whether men could be made good by legislation alone, but from resistance to the idea of virtue itself.
