DiotimosReading Desk

Animals

Tiger rule

Tigrocratie

Tigrocratie names rule by tigers in the title of an allegorical print attacking Robespierre.

From the book

The Gods Are Athirst

Anatole France · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Meaning

Lemma.

Tigrocratie names rule by tigers in the title of an allegorical print attacking Robespierre. The shop’s new display gives his regime the shape of hydras, serpents and monsters. This is the rhetoric of saleable images after his fall, not a literal political institution. The English title “Robespierre’s Tiger Rule” makes the invented compound intelligible without adopting its accusation as an independent account of events.

Places to read

  1. Chapter XXIX, paragraph 1Frenchla Tigrocratie de Robespierre: Robespierre’s Tiger Rule. An advertised allegorical print joins the new anti-Robespierre merchandise.