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The French Revolution makes no sense without an understanding of the role played by emotions: the euphoria of success, the fury against those judged responsible for the suffering, the pride in triumph and, above all, the fear of violence, plots, treason, and death. For William Reddy, however, sentimentality was the key emotion, and Maximilien Robespierre personified the excesses of its expression. The “terror” was “an emotional battlefield”. The argument of this article on the other hand is that to understand Robespierre’s emotional history, it is necessary to adopt a holistic approach that integrates the expression of his emotions in all their complexity with the specific circumstances of his existence and the exigencies of the revolutionary crisis.