I know that Robespierre was an unapologetic advocate of revolutionary terror. The impression I got is he acknowledged it as a messy process but one he believed was fundamentally just -- that peoples' justice isn't handed down by courts and administrators.
But I also read that by the late days of the Reign of Terror, he had largely withdrawn from administration in the Committee for Public Safety, and that after his execution, much of the committee overplayed Robespierre's role as a chief ideologist into that of a single totalitarian dictator, to deflect responsibility on to the dead man.
How much of this is supported by fact? Also, what's a good radically-aligned history of the Revolution? It's very easy to find English people tut-tutting about the whole thing, but David Andress's "The Terror" is the only account I've seen that tries to approach the Revolution from another perspective.
It is still debated and will most likely always remain this way but it is very likely that Robespierre has been used as a scapegoat by his dear "colleagues" of the Comité de Salut Public and Comité de Sûreté Générale. Several elements tend to prove that Robespierre actually tried to stop the extreme violence and mass executions and that his colleagues got rid of him by denouncing as the tyrant who had taken over the committees by force and forced them to enact barbaric laws allowing the terror.
Albert Mathiez gives us an account of a meeting between Robespierre and Fouché by Charlotte De Robespierre in his book Etudes sur Robespierre (my own translation, original in French obviously), the scene takes place after the ridiculously barbaric repression of the Lyon uprising in 1793 by Joseph Fouché : "[Robespierre] held him [Fouché] accountable for the blood he spilled and reproached him his conduct with in such an energic way as to make Fouché pallid and shaking. He stammered some excuses and attributed the measures taken to the gravity of the circumstances. Robespierre retorted that nothing could justify the cruelty he made himself guilty of, and that even though it was true that Lyon was rebelling against the Convention National, it was certainly no reason to open fire en masse on unarmed opponents."
While this is true that Charlotte was the sister of Robespierre, Napoleon Bonaparte himself mentions how Robespierre has been screwed badly by his mates from the committee. The General Gourgaud, the aide of Bonaparte remembers him saying (again my own translation) : "Robespierre has been deposed because he wanted to become a moderator and put an end to the Revolutionary movement. Cambacérès told me that the day before his death he gave a wonderful speech that has never been published. Billaud and other pro-terror politicians, smelling that he was getting weak and that he would make their heads roll, made an alliance against him and excited the good people so they toppled the "tyrant", but in reality all they wanted was his seat so they could unleash even more terror."
Another witness, Las Cases, tells that Napoleon thought Robespierre to be "The real scapegoat of the Revolution that got struck down as soon as he tried to put an end to it. They [Billaud and the other "pro-terror"] blamed Robespierre for everything but he kept responding that he was not responsible of the last executions, that he had stopped going to the Committe for weeks. I have seen long letters from Robespierre to his brother, denouncing the commissars of the convention who corrupted the Revolution by their tyranny and brutality etc...".
Asked by the Emperor on the subject, Cambacérès answered that the trial of Robespierre "had been judged without pleading" and added that Robespierre only wanted to stop the rebellious factions and then bring back order and moderation. (From Las Cases' own memories of Napoleon's time in exile)
Pïerre Serna greatly sums up the matter in La République des girouettes 1789-1815... et au delà : une anomalie politique, la France de l'extrême centre (my own translation again) : By describing the Terror as the dictature of one and only person, the people from the Convention hoped to prove to the opinion "their non responsability, maybe their innocence, maybe even their status of unwilling victims and therefore legitimate and present as logical their change of allegiance."
Basically the guy participated in the start of what would become the Terror by participating in the elaboration of the Loi de Prairial reinforcing the Revolutionary courts and only allowing them to choose between acquittal or death. But it is pretty obvious that he imagined it to only be very temporary measures for a special time (France was in great danger and surrounded by enemies both from the inside and the outside) and he quickly asked for more moderation when he saw that the thing was getting out of hands. Ironically, that's him trying to stop the slaughter that caused him to be executed.