To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty

–Maximillian Robespierre

One of the most iconic figures during the French Revolution of 1789 was Maximillian Robespierre who mostly responsible for the extremity that the Revolution had evolved to show in its later stages. He was part of the major revolutionary force by the name of the Jacobins and was later compared by historians as a dictator, establishing similarities with the late Adolf Hitler.

Robespierre, a journalist before becoming a politician, was considered a man with great morals and reason however, as his involvement with the revolution grew so did his extremist tendencies. The fact that after the execution of the oppressive king, Louis the XVI, he paraded his severed head as a symbol of justice, the end of suppression and the success of the aims of the Revolution to overthrow the monarchy go to show to great extents the mindset that he had evolved to where forgiveness, sympathy and pity were unbearable concepts of the past.