Who was the leader of the Committee of Public Safety executed on July 28, 1794?

The leader of the Committee of Public Safety executed on July 28, 1794, was Maximilien Robespierre. A prominent Jacobin politician, Robespierre became the most influential voice in France’s revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror.

The Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 to defend the French Republic against foreign invasion and internal rebellion. Although it was a collective body rather than a one-person dictatorship, Robespierre’s influence over revolutionary policy, political virtue, and the use of emergency justice made him its best-known leader.

Robespierre lost support after the Law of 22 Prairial expanded the Revolutionary Tribunal and after his controversial Festival of the Supreme Being. On 9 Thermidor Year II, corresponding to July 27, 1794, the National Convention ordered his arrest. He was guillotined in Paris the following day, along with several allies.

A common mix-up is confusing Robespierre with Georges Danton, another major revolutionary figure whom Robespierre helped bring to trial and execution months earlier. Jean-Paul Marat was assassinated in 1793, while Camille Desmoulins was executed alongside Danton.