On January 29 1891 the censorship of Thermidor, a play by Victorien Sardou, which violently criticized Robespierre and the period of the Terror, caused a scandal in the French Assemblée Nationale. The ensuing “Thermidor affair” revealed the diverging attitudes among political groups within the Assemblée towards the French Revolution. It was on this occasion that Clemenceau made his famous speech in which he declared that the French Revolution should be seen in its entirety – “as a block”. The dispute was political but also historiographical, for it opposed Victorien Sardou to Ernest Hamel, the biographer of Robespierre.