Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre was the younger brother of French Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre.
Background
He was born in Arras, the youngest of five children of the lawyer Maximilien-Barthelemy-François de Robespierre and Jacqueline-Marguerite Carraut, the daughter of a brewer. His mother died when he was one year old, and his grief-stricken father abandoned the family to go to Bavaria, where he died in 1777.
Career
He was brought up by an aunt and trained as a lawyer At the outset of the Revolution, he was prosecutor-syndic of Arras. In 1791, he was appointed Administrator of the département of Pas-de-Calais.
Becoming Député-en-Mission to the Army of Italy in 1794, he used his influence to advance Napoleon Bonaparte"s career, after reading Napoleon"s pro-Jacobin pamphlet titled Le souper de Beaucaire.
With the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in the coup d"état of 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794), those associated with him were subjected to a witch-hunt-like series of attacks from the Thermidorians. (Napoleon"s relationship with Augustin led to Napoleon"s imprisonment in Fort Carré on 6 August 1794 until he was cleared two weeks later)
Augustin was one of the five most famous victims of 9 Thermidor.
I ask also to be charged". After taking refuge in the Hôtel de Ville, he tried to escape capture by leaping out of a window.