Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
Robespierre was "a provincial lawyer who rose to prominence during the early years of the French Revolution by adopting a fierce radical and democratic stance, denouncing those who backslid from the revolutionary principles of the Jacobin Club." [Furtado: 1001 Days] "If Robespierre won moderate support for eliminating corruption, which was after all in the interests of the war-effort, the further restrictions on freedom and money-making were more disconcerting to the businessman. Finally, no large body of opinion liked the somewhat fanciful ideological excursions of the period--the systematic dechristianization campaigns (due to Sansculotte zeal) and Robespierre's new civic religion of the Supreme Being, complete with ceremonies, which attempted to counteract the atheists and carry out the precepts of the divine Jean-Jacques. And the steady hiss of the guillotine reminded all politicians that no one was really safe." [Hobsbawm: Revolution, p. 71]