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[anotherhumaninthisworld]

It's Friday: time to confess your sins to father Joseph.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

I'm sick of internet negativity, so let's combat it: reblog this and saying something nice/pay a compliment to the prev in the tags.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

I found the Charlotte Robespierre-pins-down-Couthon-in-an-armchair-and-calls-him-a-hypocrite anecdote in its full glory within La Révolution, la Terreur, le Directoire 1791-1799: d’après les mémoires de Gaillard (1908) page 263-272. The table of contents claim this event happened in May 1794.

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Gaillard therefore presents himself at Mlle Robespierre's house, she welcomes him in a friendly manner, she does not seek to know the political opinions of her visitor; both talk for a long time about her family and their old acquaintances, she names for Gaillard, with great bitterness, the prodigious number of very honest people dragged to the scaffold by Joseph Lebon; she makes him tell her how he was able to save himself at least from prison and tells him how much pleasure she and her older brother felt in receiving news of him from their younger brother; then Gaillard explains to her the embarrassment he finds himself in and asks her to help him with her advice to save the magistrates of Melun and the signatories of the address to Louis XVI.

”When my younger brother passed through Melun,” said Mlle Robespierre, ”all three of us were living together; I still hoped to be able to bring back the older, to snatch him from the wretches who obsess over him and lead him to the scaffold. They felt that my brother would eventually escape them if I regained his confidence, they destroyed me entirely in his mind; today he hates the sister who served as his mother… For several months he has been living alone, and although lodged in the same house, I no longer have the power to approach him… I loved him tenderly, I still do… His excesses are the consequence of the domination under which he groans, I am sure of it, but knowing no way to break the yoke he has allowed himself to be placed under, and no longer able to bear the pain and the shame of to see my brother devote his name to general execration, I ardently desire his death as well as mine. Judge of my unhappiness!… But let’s return to what interests you. The addresses to the king on the events of 1792 are already far from us; it seems to me that the signatures of these addresses are persecuted less than those who protested against the day of May 31. Try to see Maximilien, you will be content; he was very glad that our younger brother saw you at Melun. On this occasion he spoke with interest of the exercises of your pupils and of the attention you had in entrusting him with presiding over them. I won’t introduce you to him, I would not succeed; I even advise you not to speak to him about me. You will be told he is out, don't believe it, insist on your visit.”

The Robespierre family was housed on rue Saint-Honoré, near the Assomption chapel, the sister and younger brother at the front, the older brother at the back of the courtyard. Gaillard went to Maximilien’s apartment; a young man, looking at him with the most insolent air, said to him, barely having opened the door: “The representative isn’t home…”

“He may not be there for those who come to talk to him about business, but that is not my doing; I will talk to him about his family that I know a lot, you have seen me come out of his sister's apartment who is involved in state affairs no more than I am... Bring my name to the representative, he will receive me, I’m sure of it.”

The fellow did not dare refuse to carry a paper on which Gaillard had taken care to indicate himself in such a way as to be recognized, he immediately came back and gave the visitor his paper saying: “The representative does not know you,” and the door was violently slammed shut!…

The insolence of this brazen man whom Gaillard knew to be the secretary of Robespierre, son of Duplay, to whom the sister attributed the excesses of his brother, the sorrow he felt at losing the hope of saving the judges of Melun and to ensure his personal rest, all these thoughts made him very angry; he calls the young man a liar, insolent, he accuses him of deceiving Robespierre and of increasing the number of his enemies every day, all this in the loudest voice with the intention of being heard by Maximilien and lure him to one of the windows where, surely, he would have recognized him. New disappointment, no one appears and Gaillard goes back to tell Mlle Robespierre about his misadventure.

“I prepared you for it, she told him. ”No one can approach my brother unless he is a friend of those Duplays, with whom we are lodging; these wretches have neither intelligence nor education, explain to me their ascendancy over Maximilien. However, I do not despair of breaking the spell that holds him under their yoke; for that I am awaiting the return of my other brother, who has the right to see Maximilien. If the discovery I just made doesn't rid us of this race of vipers forever, my family is forever lost. You know what a miserable state we found ourselves in, reduced to alms, my brothers and I, if the sister of our father hadn’t taken us in. It’s strange that you didn’t often notice how much her husband’s brusqueness and formality made us pay dearly for the bread he gave us; but you must also have noticed that if indigence saddened us, it never degraded us and you always judged us incapable of containing money through a dubious action. Maximilien, who makes me so unhappy, has never given a hold, as you know, in terms of delicacy. Imagiene his fury when he learns that these miserable Duplays are using his name and his credit to get themselves the rarest goods at a low price from the merchants. So while all of Paris is forced to line up at the baker's shop every morning to get a few ounces of black, disgusting bread, the Duplays eat very good bread because the Incorruptible sits at their table: the same pretext provides them with sugar, oil, soap of the best quality, which the inhabitant of Paris would seek in vain in the best shops... How my brother's pride would be humiliated if he knew the abuse that these wretches make of his name! What would become of his popularity, even among his most ardent supporters? Certainly my brother is very proud, it is in him a capital fault; you must remember, you and I have often lamented the ridicule he made for himself by his vanity, the great number of enemies he made for himself by his disdainful and contemptuous tone, but he is not bloodthirsty. Certainly he believes he can overthrow his adversaries and his enemies by the superiority of his talent.”

The tenderness of this unfortunate girl for her brother was therefore very keen and very blind, she forgot that, a few moments before, she had told Gaillard, with the accent of despair and with eyes filled with tears, that death would seem preferable to the pain of seeing Maximilien dedicate his name to public execration, and yet her brother for his part had devoted mortal hatred to her since the trip she had made to Arras to collect evidence of the massacres carried out by Joseph Lebon.

“In the absence of my brother,” said Mlle Robespierre to Gaillard, would you like to try to see Couthon? He prides himself on being good for me, I will ask him to receive you, he will not refuse me, I will precede you by a quarter of an hour, he will give the order to let you in and we will exit together.”

Gaillard gratefully accepts, takes the address of Couthon who lived at n. 97 of the Cour du Manège, today rue de Rivoli, near rue du 29 Juilliet, and the next morning arrives at the indicated time.

Couthon, whose face was truly angelic, wore a white dressing gown. A child of five or six years old, beautiful as Love, was between his father's legs; he had a young white rabbit in his arms which he was feeding alfalfa. Mme Couthon and Mlle Robespierre stood in the embrasure of a window overlooking the Tuileries.

“You (vous) are,” said Couthon to Gaillard, a friend of Mlle Robespierre, you therefore have every kind of right to my interest, tell me, citizen, how can I be of use to you?”

The fine face, the entourage of innocence, the tone, the manners of good company, this care not to use tutoient when everyone else did so, convinced Gaillard that the slander had attached itself in particular to the person of this worthy M. Couthon, he promises to undeceive all those with whom the deputy had relations.

“Citizen representative, one of your colleagues, Maure, deputy for Yonne, had recalled the former judges, all very honest people, to the courts of Melun, and everyone applauded this act of justice. The popular society was offended by this, it threatened Maure that it was going to denounce him to the Convention as a supporter of Louis XVI and his family, given that these judges had adhered to the address by which the directorate of the department complained of the outrages committed against the king on the day of June 20 1792. The next day your colleague issued a decree dismissing these judges who were not yet installed, and ordered the revolutionary committee to incarcerate them. Can you please tell me by which means these unfortunate judges can escape this act of severity?”

“Admit, citizen,” answered Couthon, “that the Convention is indeed to be pitied for being forced to send as commissioners to the departments a crowd of imbeciles who make it hated and who compromise liberty... Maure doesn’t have the strength to understand that true patriots were saddened and rightly outraged by this fatal day of June 20. The aristocrats, as one said then, were delighted by it, the crimes of the people seemed to them a means of forever losing liberty and reestablishing despotism... It was a duty to rise up against the violation of the home of the first official of the the State and the bloody outrages to which it was subjected that day. I signed an address in which our indignation was expressed in the most energetic terms and I am far from repenting of it. Have the judges you are talking to me about been arrested?”

“No, citizen.”

”That’s what I suspected, they will have been warned; in fact, one is not going to prison automatically, one will have their homes sealed and perhaps not be very eager to arrest them?… Can you assure me, citizen, that these judges are honest men?”

”The most honest people in the country!”

”Well, on reflection, I was going to give you bad advice... based on the distance from Melun to Paris, this is where they will come to hide, one will find them, there is no safety in the prisons of Paris. They'd better go home, they shall be given a guard, they won't even be incarcerated... but once again, how can it be made a crime to have signed these addresses?”

“Citizen,” continues Gaillard, with great emotion, you are convinced that the signatures of these addresses have not committed a crime, you are all-powerful in the Committee of Public Safety where your opinion always prevails. Today, seventy unfortunate people are being led to the scaffold, their condemnation based on nothing other than the signing of these addresses…”

Couthon's face changed, he suddenly takes on the tiger's mask, makes a movement to grab the bell pull... Mlle Robespierre rushes at him to stop him (he was paralyzed from the legs down), turns towards Gaillard and says to him: “Save yourself!” In the confusion into which all this throws him, Gaillard takes Couthon's hat, she notices it, warns him, he runs across the apartment and reaches the stairs. He had barely gone down eight or ten steps when he heard Mlle Robespierre shouting to him: “Go and wait for me at the Orangerie.” (The courtyard of the Orangerie was located at the end of the Terrace des Feuillants where Rue de Rivoli now meets Place de la Concorde).

When Gaillard was able to think, he wondered why the various sentries posted along the Feuillants terrace had not stopped him. A glance in a mirror while picking up his hat in Couthon's salon had told him how altered his face was. Even after leaving the deputy, he did not think he was safe, he did not take four strides without wondering if he was being pursued. He has barely gone down into the courtyard of the Orangery when he goes back up onto the terrace, looking anxiously to see if his good angel was arriving. As soon as he sees her, he runs towards her, loudly asking her five or six questions at the same time without paying attention to the crowd around them. Mlle Robespierre, calmer, tells him in a low voice that she will answer him when they have reached the Place de la Révolution.

“Explain to me, please,” said Gaillard to Mlle Robespierre as soon as they were offshore, ”your haste to tell me to take flight flee and why you held back Couthon in his chair?”

“You were fooled, my dear monsieur, by the profound hypocrisy of Couthon, I was completely fooled myself; I believed your judges saved and you forever at peace like all the signatories of these addresses to Louis XVI... Couthon only showed himself to be so good-natured in order to get to know the depths of your thoughts, you fell into his trap, I could not have avoided it more than you. Your bloody and so justly deserved reproach regarding the 63 victims of today struck in the hearth, my presence, even my confidence could not have stopped his vengeance. The members of the Committee of Public Safety each have five or six men at home who are resolute at their command, because they are constantly trembling. Had he reached the bell pull, this very afternoon you would have been placed in the tumbril alongside the 63 unfortunate people you wanted to save... Fortunately, I succeeded in making him ashamed of the crime he was going to commit by immolating a friend that I had brought to his house... Will he keep his word to me? I followed your conversation very attentively, you did not say a word from which Couthon could conclude that you do not live in Paris... Return home quickly, do not follow the ordinary route out of fear that, remembering the name of the city where your judges were to sit, he sends for men to follow you on the road to Melun.” (1)

Mlle Robespierre barely gives her protégé time to thank her and does not want him to accompany her back to her house. Gaillard leaves immediately without seeing his sister or the two dismissed judges, who have taken refuge in Paris.

(1) The story of Gaillard's visit to Couthon is reproduced almost word for word by M. Lenôtre, in his Paris révolutionnaire, vielles maisons, vieux papiers, 1900, La Brouette de Couthon, p. 279.* Mr. Lenôtre draws his story from the collection of Victorien Sardou's autographs. The note appearing among these authographs which speaks of Couthon comes from Fouché's papers: it is in fact Gaillard who, at the request of his friend Fouché, recorded in writing for him the narration of his interview with Couthon. Gaillard took pleasure in often recounting to the people with whom he was in contact this scene of which he had always retained such a terrifying impression of; this is the reason why it appears today in his memoirs.

*Worth noting is that Charlotte’s identitity is kept a secret in this account, she’s simply described as ”a lady.” This account also includes the detail of Couthon’s son starting to cry and the bunny he was holding getting pushed to the floor once his father gets mad.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

How many political parties were there during the revolution?

Because duo to the popularity (I mean by popularity "the most influential" like "Jacobin" and "Girondins" etc. ) I start to forgot that was there more political parties so could you tell us about them and their most notable achievements ?

It is hard to really talk about political parties when it comes to the French Revolution, at least not in the way in which we today think of the term, with worked out ideologies and party programs for each and everyone. Furthermore, some of these ”parties” are not like the others. Jacobin, Cordelier and Feuillant all refer to people belonging to a certain political club, paying money for their membership, whereas girondins, montagnards, thermidorians, enragés, hébertists (and robespirreists that are not mentioned in the chart) all are loose compounds of people that pushed for (or were at least said to push for) the same political changes, and often were personal friends as well. The vagueness of all of this has lead to debates not only regarding what each group really stood for, but even who really belonged to them. My understanding of these groups is honestly not much deeper than what can be read on wikipedia (each group already has its own page) but to shortly summarize:

Jacobins — members of the Jacobin Club (Society of the Friends of the Constitution) which was founded in 1789 and shut down in November of 1794. It’s main quarter was on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, but unlike the Cordeliers and Feuillants, it also set up sister clubs out in the provinces. This makes the Jacobins the biggest political group throughout the revolution in terms of official members. When it comes to ideology, the club’s first set of official reglutions, passed on February 8 1790, stated that ”the object of the Society of Friends of the Constitution is: 1, to discuss in advance the questions which must be decided in the National Assembly; 2, to work towards the re-establishment and strengthening of the constitution according to the spirit of the preamble above; 3, to correspond with other Societies of the same type which may be formed in the kingdom” as well as that ”loyalty to the constitution, dedication to defending it, respect and submission to the powers it has established, will be the first laws imposed on those who wish to be admitted to these Societies.” However, as the revolution radicalized, so did the Jacobin club.

Cordeliers — members of the Cordelier Club (also known as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) which existed from 1790 to 1795. Its head quarter was in the Cordeliers Convent (hence the name) in Paris, located on 15 rue de l'École de Médecine. The Cordeliers had lower fees in comparison to the Jacobins, and as a result, counted more working class men and women among its members. Its leaders were however still middle class. The Cordeliers are traditionally described as more radical than the Jacobins.

Feuillant — member of the Feuillants Club (Society of the Friends of the Constitution), founded on July 16 1791. The group held meetings in a former monastery of the Feuillant monks on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, hence the name. The club was for upholding the Constitution of 1791, which designated France as a constitutional monarchy.

Girondins (also sometimes known as Brissotins or Rolandins) — political group which existed within the Legislative Assembly and then National Convention, in particular the 29 deputies ordered arrested by said Convention on June 2 1793. Of these, 20 would be guillotined in Paris on October 31 the same year, while many others fled to be executed or commit suicide in order to prevent it across the following months. The name ”girondin” stem from the fact many of the groups alleged members originated from the department of Gironde. In the article The "Girondins" Were Girondins, after All (1988) Frederick A. de Luna concludes that the earliest labeling of girondins as girondins stem from April 1792, after which they grew to be frequently used by their enemies. The girondins themselves did however never use the name, and in the pamphlet J. P. Brissot, député à la Convention nationale, à tous les républicains de France ; sur la société des Jacobins de Paris (October 1792) Brissot even exclaimed ”Will the slanderers now remain silent? Will they stop pretending to believe and wanting to make believe in a faction of Gironde or of Brissot?” The girondins have traditionally been associated with 1, waging a pro-war campaign within the Legislative Assembly and the Jacobin club from December 1791 to April 1792 (as can be seen above, the first recorded labeling of girondins as girondins is from the same month said war was declared), pushing for a more liberal economy as well as seeking more ”moderate/less violent” solutions compared to the Mountain during the time of the Convention. However, there’s no actual safe connections between these goals and all the men tradionally described as girondins for as far as I’m aware. To give the word to Terror: the French Revolution and its Demons (2022) by Michel Biard and Marisa Linton:

Montagnards — member of the Mountain, a group within the Legislative Assembly and then especially the National Convention, so dubbed because its members occupied the highest benches of the hall of the assembly. I honestly don’t really know what defines this ”party” more than being opponents of the girondins. So while the latter are associated with being pro-war, for a more liberal economy and reluctant to ”violent/exceptional measures”, the Montagnards are instead described as anti-war, for a more planned economy and welcoming of more ”violent/exceptional measures.” However, like in the case with the girondins, were we to line up every person tradionally described as a montagnard and check up his stance on each of these three topics, I’m unsure if we would actually get a very unified result. 

Unlike in the case of the girondins, indulgents and exagères, we have proof of the montagnards describing themselves as just that. Here is Robespierre, who might as well be called the leader/heart of the ”party,” defining what a montagnard is on June 12 1794. More than anything, it may however rather illustrate how this wasn’t a properly defined group either, as I’m sure the members of every other ”party” discussed here would be willing to describe themselves in the exact same way:

Yes, Montagnards, you will always be the boulevard of public liberty; but you have nothing in common with intriguers and perverts, whoever they may be. If they try to deceive you, if they claim to identify with you, they are no less foreign to your principles. The Mountain is nothing other than the heights of patriotism; a Montagnard is nothing other than a pure, reasonable and sublime patriot.

The fall of Robespierre marks the beginning of the end for the Mountain, many of who’s members would be expulsed, executed and exiled during the thermidorian convention.

Thermidorians — the name has its origin in the journée of 9 thermidor (July 27 1794), the day Robespierre and his allies fell from power, but it is not fully clear if it is active participation in/support of said journée, or holding power during the period that followed it, which is distinguished by its step back, for better or worse, from the more ”revolutionary measures” taken during 1793-1794 that makes someone a thermidorian. In the article ”Robbers, Muddlers, Bastards, and Bankrupts?” A Collective Look at the Thermidorians (2019) Mette Harder writes that this too is a very poorly defined group — ”Beyond their individual names, there is, however, no clear sense of who the Thermidorians were collectively, how cohesive a group they became, and what exactly they hoped to achieve while in power. Their name itself adds to this uncertainty, as it is used interchangeably to describe a specific group of reactionaries and the entire Convention post-thermidor.”

Indulgents (also sometimes known as dantonists) — group associated around Convention deputy Georges-Jacques Danton, and in particular those executed alongside him on April 5 1794. Traditionally described as driving a campaign that was about softening ”the terror” as well as pushing back from dechristianization from late 1793 up until their execution. This idea is however something that has been heavily contested in more recent years, some historians concluding the Indulgents never were a coherent group with a common goal to begin with but that this was rather something contructed by their enemies in time for their trial (see for example chapter 8 — Le chef d’un groupe indulgent ? — of Danton: le mythe et l’histoire (2016) or Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un rêve de république (2018).

Hébertists (also known as exagères) — group associated around the journalist Jacques René Hébert, and in particular those that were executed alongside him on March 24 1794. Drove a campaign for a hardening of ”the terror” and dechristianization from late 1793 up until the execution. Like with the indulgents, it’s however hard for me to say if the members themselves identified themselves as a group or if this is a post-construction.

Enragés — just read this. I honestly had trouble finding much more.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Non-existing wikipedia page generates the sentence ”This is the name of a school during 1763 in France executed homosexuals with the help of Maximilien’s invention the guillotine”

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

How many political parties were there during the revolution?

Because duo to the popularity (I mean by popularity "the most influential" like "Jacobin" and "Girondins" etc. ) I start to forgot that was there more political parties so could you tell us about them and their most notable achievements ?

It is hard to really talk about political parties when it comes to the French Revolution, at least not in the way in which we today think of the term, with worked out ideologies and party programs for each and everyone. Furthermore, some of these ”parties” are not like the others. Jacobin, Cordelier and Feuillant all refer to people belonging to a certain political club, paying money for their membership, whereas girondins, montagnards, thermidorians, enragés, hébertists (and robespirreists that are not mentioned in the chart) all are loose compounds of people that pushed for (or were at least said to push for) the same political changes, and often were personal friends as well. The vagueness of all of this has lead to debates not only regarding what each group really stood for, but even who really belonged to them. My understanding of these groups is honestly not much deeper than what can be read on wikipedia (each group already has its own page) but to shortly summarize:

Jacobins — members of the Jacobin Club (Society of the Friends of the Constitution) which was founded in 1789 and shut down in November of 1794. It’s main quarter was on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, but unlike the Cordeliers and Feuillants, it also set up sister clubs out in the provinces. This makes the Jacobins the biggest political group throughout the revolution in terms of official members. When it comes to ideology, the club’s first set of official reglutions, passed on February 8 1790, stated that ”the object of the Society of Friends of the Constitution is: 1, to discuss in advance the questions which must be decided in the National Assembly; 2, to work towards the re-establishment and strengthening of the constitution according to the spirit of the preamble above; 3, to correspond with other Societies of the same type which may be formed in the kingdom” as well as that ”loyalty to the constitution, dedication to defending it, respect and submission to the powers it has established, will be the first laws imposed on those who wish to be admitted to these Societies.” However, as the revolution radicalized, so did the Jacobin club.

Cordeliers — members of the Cordelier Club (also known as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) which existed from 1790 to 1795. Its head quarter was in the Cordeliers Convent (hence the name) in Paris, located on 15 rue de l'École de Médecine. The Cordeliers had lower fees in comparison to the Jacobins, and as a result, counted more working class men and women among its members. Its leaders were however still middle class. The Cordeliers are traditionally described as more radical than the Jacobins.

Feuillant — member of the Feuillants Club (Society of the Friends of the Constitution), founded on July 16 1791. The group held meetings in a former monastery of the Feuillant monks on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, hence the name. The club was for upholding the Constitution of 1791, which designated France as a constitutional monarchy.

Girondins (also sometimes known as Brissotins or Rolandins) — political group which existed within the Legislative Assembly and then National Convention, in particular the 29 deputies ordered arrested by said Convention on June 2 1793. Of these, 20 would be guillotined in Paris on October 31 the same year, while many others fled to be executed or commit suicide in order to prevent it across the following months. The name ”girondin” stem from the fact many of the groups alleged members originated from the department of Gironde. In the article The "Girondins" Were Girondins, after All (1988) Frederick A. de Luna concludes that the earliest labeling of girondins as girondins stem from April 1792, after which they grew to be frequently used by their enemies. The girondins themselves did however never use the name, and in the pamphlet J. P. Brissot, député à la Convention nationale, à tous les républicains de France ; sur la société des Jacobins de Paris (October 1792) Brissot even exclaimed ”Will the slanderers now remain silent? Will they stop pretending to believe and wanting to make believe in a faction of Gironde or of Brissot?” The girondins have traditionally been associated with 1, waging a pro-war campaign within the Legislative Assembly and the Jacobin club from December 1791 to April 1792 (as can be seen above, the first recorded labeling of girondins as girondins is from the same month said war was declared), pushing for a more liberal economy as well as seeking more ”moderate/less violent” solutions compared to the Mountain during the time of the Convention. However, there’s no actual safe connections between these goals and all the men tradionally described as girondins for as far as I’m aware. To give the word to Terror: the French Revolution and its Demons (2022) by Michel Biard and Marisa Linton:

Montagnards — member of the Mountain, a group within the Legislative Assembly and then especially the National Convention, so dubbed because its members occupied the highest benches of the hall of the assembly. I honestly don’t really know what defines this ”party” more than being opponents of the girondins. So while the latter are associated with being pro-war, for a more liberal economy and reluctant to ”violent/exceptional measures”, the Montagnards are instead described as anti-war, for a more planned economy and welcoming of more ”violent/exceptional measures.” However, like in the case with the girondins, were we to line up every person tradionally described as a montagnard and check up his stance on each of these three topics, I’m unsure if we would actually get a very unified result. 

Unlike in the case of the girondins, indulgents and exagères, we have proof of the montagnards describing themselves as just that. Here is Robespierre, who might as well be called the leader/heart of the ”party,” defining what a montagnard is on June 12 1794. More than anything, it may however rather illustrate how this wasn’t a properly defined group either, as I’m sure the members of every other ”party” discussed here would be willing to describe themselves in the exact same way:

Yes, Montagnards, you will always be the boulevard of public liberty; but you have nothing in common with intriguers and perverts, whoever they may be. If they try to deceive you, if they claim to identify with you, they are no less foreign to your principles. The Mountain is nothing other than the heights of patriotism; a Montagnard is nothing other than a pure, reasonable and sublime patriot.

The fall of Robespierre marks the beginning of the end for the Mountain, many of who’s members would be expulsed, executed and exiled during the thermidorian convention.

Thermidorians — the name has its origin in the journée of 9 thermidor (July 27 1794), the day Robespierre and his allies fell from power, but it is not fully clear if it is active participation in/support of said journée, or holding power during the period that followed it, which is distinguished by its step back, for better or worse, from the more ”revolutionary measures” taken during 1793-1794 that makes someone a thermidorian. In the article ”Robbers, Muddlers, Bastards, and Bankrupts?” A Collective Look at the Thermidorians (2019) Mette Harder writes that this too is a very poorly defined group — ”Beyond their individual names, there is, however, no clear sense of who the Thermidorians were collectively, how cohesive a group they became, and what exactly they hoped to achieve while in power. Their name itself adds to this uncertainty, as it is used interchangeably to describe a specific group of reactionaries and the entire Convention post-thermidor.”

Indulgents (also sometimes known as dantonists) — group associated around Convention deputy Georges-Jacques Danton, and in particular those executed alongside him on April 5 1794. Traditionally described as driving a campaign that was about softening ”the terror” as well as pushing back from dechristianization from late 1793 up until their execution. This idea is however something that has been heavily contested in more recent years, some historians concluding the Indulgents never were a coherent group with a common goal to begin with but that this was rather something contructed by their enemies in time for their trial (see for example chapter 8 — Le chef d’un groupe indulgent ? — of Danton: le mythe et l’histoire (2016) or Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un rêve de république (2018).

Hébertists (also known as exagères) — group associated around the journalist Jacques René Hébert, and in particular those that were executed alongside him on March 24 1794. Drove a campaign for a hardening of ”the terror” and dechristianization from late 1793 up until the execution. Like with the indulgents, it’s however hard for me to say if the members themselves identified themselves as a group or if this is a post-construction.

Enragés — just read this. I honestly had trouble finding much more.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

On the 13th of April 1794, exactly 230 years ago, Lucile Desmoulins and Francoise Hebert met their tragic end, following their husbands to the guillotine after enduring a brief, sham trial that wrongfully convicted them of conspiracy. Though widowed by leaders of ideologically opposed factions (Hebert was an extremist, while Desmoulins was a so-called indulgent), the two women forged a strong bond in prison. Their final moments were marked by a brief embrace before they faced their execution with dignity.

The execution of Lucile Desmoulins:

FRANCE.

From Paris, the 26th of Germinal.

The conspirators condemned by the revolutionary tribunal were executed yesterday at a quarter to seven. Chaumette, next to Gobel, responded to the accusations of atheism made against him with a rageful smile; Gobel was morose, silent, dejected; Dillon, cheerful, was beside Simon; the Count of Grammont next to his son; the widow Hébert and that of Camille Desmoulins, dressed elegantly and maintaining their composure, were talking together. Gobel & Chaumette were the last to endure the punishment. Chaumette's head was carried to the people amidst applause and cries of "Long live the republic." The wife of Hébert and the wife of Camille Desmoulins were the first to go up to the scaffold; they embraced before dying.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

What happened exactly to Lucile Desmoulins? I never quite understood why she got arrested... Did members of both the CSP and CSG really plotted against her? Was there a need to do it? Was Robespierre responsible for it?

On April 4 1794 the trial of the ”indulgents” had been dragging on for three stormy days, during which Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor, and Hermann, the president of the tribunal, had had a hard time containing the accused. After the proceedings had been closed for the day, the two put their signatures on a letter written by the former which they then proceeded to send off to the Committee of Public Safety. In the letter they exposed their worries, particulary the one about the accused demanding their right to call witnesses, and ended by asking the committee ”to definitively outline our rules of conduct if this complaint is made, the current legal order providing us with no means of justifying this refusal.”

At three o’clock the same day, Saint-Just mounted the rostrum at the Convention and revealed the discovery of a new conspiracy:

…No, liberty shall not recoil in front of her enemies; their (the indulgents’) coalition has been revealed. Dillon, who ordered his army to march upon Paris, has declared that the wife of Desmoulins had received money in order to promote a movement to assassinate the patriots and the Revolutionary Tribunal.

After having heard Saint-Just’s report, the Convention used this new discovery to order ”that the Revolutionary Tribunal shall proceed with the instruction relating to the conspiracy of Lacroix, Danton, Chabot and others. The President shall make use of every means which the law permits to cause his authority and that of the Revolutionary Tribunal to be respected, and to repress every attempt on the part of the accused to trouble public tranquillity and to hinder the course of justice. It is decreed that all persons accused of conspiracy who shall resist or insult the national justice shall be outlawed and receive judgment on the spot.” This order became essential for getting the dantonists condemned to death the following day.

Right after the order had been passed, Billaud-Varennes proposed the reading of the report that had led the authorities onto this new conspiracy, announced by the prison informant Alexandre Laflotte:

We, administrators of the police department, seeing a letter written to us by the janitor of the Luxembourg prison, immediately went to said prison, and called before us the citizen Laflotte, former minister of the Republic of Florence, detained in this prison since around six days back, who told us that yesterday, around six to seven o’clock in the evening, being in the room of Arthur Dillon, who he declared to not have known before his incarceration, said Dillon, after having pulled him to the side, asked him if he knew of what had happened that day at the Revolutionary Tribunal; that after Laflotte had answered ”no”, Dillon had told him that the accused Danton, Lacroix, Hérault had declared that they would only speak in the presence of members of the Convention, Robespierre, Barère, Saint-Just and others; that the people had applauded, that the embarrassed jury had written a letter to the Convention, that was passed, that at the reading of said letter the people had given strong marks of disapproval, that were heard right up to the bridge (a rumour that Dillon had taken care to spread in the prison); that his fear was that the Committees of Public Safety and General Security were going to cut the throats of the prisoners detained at the Conciergerie, and that the same fate was reserved for those detained in the other prisons; that one must resist oppression; that the men with mind and heart were going to meet; that Dillon said that they wanted a republic, but a free republic. Dillon added that he was working on a projet together with Simon, deputy of the Convention that was detained in the same prison, a man with a cool head and big heart; that he wanted to communicate it to him. Laflotte, feeling that it for the public cause could be important to discover this project, made up his mind to dissemble and enter into Dillon’s views; Dillon told him that he would come to him; that he would bring Simon, and would also make sure to bring Thouret, him too detained. He then gave a letter to a guard, who’s name he thought was Lambert. On Lambert’s suggestion, Dillon cut out his signature; he said that this letter was for the wife of Desmoulins; that she had at her disposal one thousand écus in order to be able to send people around the revolutionary tribunal; after that he left the room. […]

At six o’clock in the evening, two hours after the closing of the session, the police commissioner Jacques-Philibert Guellard went to the Desmoulins apartment to arrest Lucile. According to the police report written by him, she handed herself over willingly, saying she was ready to obey the law. After a search warrant she was sent to the Sainte-Pélagie prison, and, five days later, from there to the Conciergerie. Once arrived there, she underwent a quick interrogation, being asked her name, age, profession, recidence, if she had ever conspired against the republic and if she had a counsel (she answered ”no” on the last two questions). When asked to sign the minute, Lucile wrote Femme Camille Desmoulins, showing that she had not abandoned her since four days back executed husband. Whether or not this refusal of rejection contributed to her death I will leave unsaid.

Lucile’s trial began the following day, April 10. She was tried alongside 25 other people from different political backgrounds, but who all had been indicted ”of having, in complicity with the infamous Hébert, Clootz, alias Anacharsis, Ronsin, Vincent, Mazuel, Momoro, Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Lacroix and others, already struck by the sword of the law, conspired against the liberty and security of the French people, by wanting to trouble the state through civil war, by arming the citizens against one another, and against the exercise of legitimate authority, as a result of which, during last ventôse and current germinal, conspirators were to dissolve the national representation, assassinate its members and the patriots, destroy the republican government, seize the sovereignty of the people, and give a tyrant to the state.”

One of the accused was of course Arthur Dillon, the man Laflotte had pointed out as having gotten Lucile involved in this conspiracy. Dillon and Lucile were the very first the president turned to, and, after Laflotte had once again witnessed against the two, the protocol reports the following interchange:

The president to Dillon: Did you write a letter and read it to two citizens? Did you present it to Lambert, who refused to deliver it, and did you, on the observations of Lambert, take care to cut out your signature? And to whom did you address this letter?

Dillon: I adressed this letter to Camille’s wife, to whom I owed a great deal for some services received from her; I wrote to her: “Virtuous woman, do not lose courage; your affair and mine is in good progress, and soon the guilty will be punished, and the innocent will triumph.”

The president: Lambert, was this letter presented to you, and did you take care of it?

Lambert: Dillon asked me to deliver it, and to cut out the signature.

The president: Why did you take care of it, and why didn't you tell the janitor? Your aim was no doubt to provide this prisoner with communications to the outside, which is prohibited by law.

Lambert: I did all in my power to refuse the letter; but Dillon stealthily slipped it into my pocket. As soon as I perceived it, I handed it back to him; he wanted to force me to carry out this commission; I persisted in my refusals, and it would not have been possible for me to give this letter to anyone, because Dillon, doubtless, disconcerted by my refusals, conceived fears and tore the letter to pieces.

The public prosecutor to Lambert: But your duty, when this letter was presented to you for the first time, was to hasten to communicate it to the guards of the prison; and in the absence of this communication, you should at least denounce all the criminal attempts of Dillon to corrupt you.

The president to Camille’s widow: Did you receive Dillon’s letter?

Lucile: I didn’t receive anything.

[…]

The president: Did you (Dillon) send 3000 livres to Desmoulins’ wife?

Dillon: All these facts are imagined at Laflotte’s pleasure; the day that I spoke to him, he was a little drunk and yet he had brought some lemons to prepare some punch. It would not be surprising if his head, which was a little exalted that day, would not allow his memory today to render the facts as they happened.

The president: Femme Desmoulins, were you sent 3000 livres?

Lucile: I didn’t receive anything.

The president: Do you know Dillon? Have you had any relation with him? Did he ever come to your house?

Lucile: I’ve seen Dillon sometimes, he required me in different meetings; but he rarely came to my house.

[…]

The president: Dillon, did communicate your counterrevolutionary plans to Thuriot, and especially your secret relations with Camille’s widow, and all the steps she was charged with taking to assist you in your projects, and all the money you had given her to scatter to the public, to increase the number of your partisans?

Dillon: I haven’t talked to Thouret about any kind of conspiracy, and, when I had the good fortune to oblige Camille’s widow, I demanded nothing from her that was contrary to the public good.

This was the only time the three day long trial concerned Lucile, and also the only times she spoke during it. It was however all it took, on April 13, she and 18 of the other accused were found guilty and sentenced to death within 24 hours, as well as to having their belongings confiscated by the state.

So to say members of the CPS and CGS plotted against Lucile would be incorrect. They did seize on a rumor implicating her in order to easier condemn the indulgents, but it was not they themselves who had come up with it and they did for practical rather than personal reasons.

As for what Robespierre’s role in Lucile’s demise was, he had been one of eight people to sign her arrest warrant on April 4 (the others were Billaud-Varennes, C-A Prieur, Carnot, Couthon and Barère from the CPS and Du Barran and Voulland from the CGS. It was Du Barran who had been author behind the decree). After Saint-Just’s report and the Laflotte letter had been read at the Convention the same day, Robespierre also spoke up to propose the two be sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal for them to be read at the hearing, a proposition that was adapted. Finally, we also know of two letters (one of which has had its authenticity questioned) Lucile’s mother sent Robespierre on April 13, begging him to intervene in the trial and save her daughter’s life. It is however unknown if he ever received them or not (given that we have the letters today I would lean more towards the latter theory…)

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

hebert had a wife and daughter?

Indeed he had!

Hébert’s wife’s name was Marie Marguerite Françoise Goupil. I haven’t found better information regarding her birth more than that it happened in Paris in ”the first days of 1756” (she was in other words one year older than her future husband). I also haven’t found out which of her three names was her first name, though all texts I’ve checked settle on Françoise, so I’m also going to call her that.

Françoise, according to Paris révolutionnaire: vieilles maisons, Vieux papiers (1903) was the only child of Jacques Goupil and his second wife Marie-Louise Morel. The former had been the owner of a not very successful lingerie business which his wife then took over after his death. When Marie-Louise died as well, on July 16 1781, she had for a while lived with and worked as a nurse for the abbot Vaudair, who it is possible her daughter then turned to when she a while later started working for religion. Françoise became a nun of the Couvent des Filles de la Conception on rue Saint-Honoré, the same convent where Élisabeth Duplay claimed she and her three sisters took their first communion.

In June 1790, municipal commissioners presented themselves at the convent to hear its inhabitants’ declaration on whether they would stay there or leave. Out of the 24 nuns, only Françoise responded that ”she could not make up her mind at the moment,” the other 23 declaring that ”faithful to their wishes, they wanted to live and die in their state as nuns.” A year later, July 1 1791, Françoise’s name no longer featured among the convent’s inhabitants, meaning she had left it, be that out of free will or her sisters kicking her out for what she had said the previous year.

Hébert’s fellow journalist Louis Marie Prudhomme claimed in his l’Histoire générale et impartiale des erreurs, des fautes et des crimes commis pendant la Révolution (1797) that it was while at La Société Fraternelle des Patriotes de l'un et l'autre sexe Françoise for the first time met her future husband. Their wedding was held in the parish of Saint-Gervais on February 7 1792 (see the image below). After the marriage, the couple settled on Rue Saint-Antoine.

According to the same Prudhomme, Hébert was however not heads over heels in love with his wife:

[Hébert] married more to appear to have carried out an act of good citizenship than out of esteem and love for his wife. Nevertheless, they got along quite well, although she was ugly. It was a large spider that came out of the convent of the Assumption or the Annunciation. […] A wonderful revolutionary frenzy took hold of the couple, and they were faced with the people, who shouted bravo!

Hébert’s own letters would however appear to contradict this:

My situation, although difficult given the immensity of occupations with which I am responsible, becomes happier every day. I must inform you, my good friends, of the alliance that I am contracting with a very amiable young lady of excellent character. It would be enough of these advantages and were she devoid of all resources, the one I love would not be any less dear to me; but to fill my happiness I find enough fortune with my wife to be reassured about her fate if death separates us. I therefore ask you, my dear sister, to give me your approval and to ask the same from Boissierre. […] I am very assured that you will sympathize with my lovable pretender. She is very spiritual. Speaking in the old style I would say that she is comme il faut, but as I have been assured that you are as patriotic as me I only use constitutional expressions. This demoiselle is called Goupil: she has spent her entire life in the convent up until now. By her personal qualities and by the advantages she enjoys she could claim to someone much richer than me; but my good fortune gave me preference over several competitors. You see, my good friend, that not everything in life is bad and that fate has finally tired of persecuting me and through consistency I have been able to create a pleasant and lucrative position for myself. Hébert in an undated letter to his sister, written somewhere in 1791

I am healthy and very happy. United with a woman who combines all the good qualities with the charms of the mind, whose education is completed, whose character is perfect, I lead the sweetest and most peaceful life. Hébert in an undated letter to his sister, written somewhere in 1792

Réné Desgenettes, who in his memoirs claimed to have met Hébert in late 1791 (though it was most likely early 1792) also hints at a loving relationship:

After my return to Paris, by the end of 1791, I had met at la Grave, or rather under the Saint-Jean arch, my fellow patriot and almost fellow student Hébert, who showed me with satisfaction his feelings over seeing me again, how much he had often regretted that I had been absent from the capital during the first days of the revolution. ”You would have surely played an important role,” he told me, ”but now that you’re here everything is almost over. I live pretty close to this place, rue Saint-Antoine, opposite the passage of this name, which leads to rue du Roi des Deux-Siciles. My little apartment is on the third floor at the front. I have not at all forgotten your constant kindness or what I owe you. I want to speak of money so generously lent, because I would not dare to recall and could not count how much you often gave me at the traitors of the rue de la Parcheminerie, de Mâcon and de la Grille du Carrousel. Without you and the honest patriots from rue des Noyers, I would have starved to death… I can’t say, monsieur, which hours I will be at home, where I still dine everyday, and where I would consider myself both happy and honored to find you. But you will be sure to always find my wife there, because I’m married. Madame Hébert is a former nun from Conception-Saint-Honoré, young and very spiritual. Despite her burning patriotism, she has kept a lot of piety, and considering I love her so much, I never contradict her on this point, contenting myself with a few jokes.” I never answered to this invitation, nor did I find the occasion to see Hébert again after the end of 1791.

From the summer of 1792, we have two letters Françoise wrote to her husband’s sister, which they too seem to indicate a happy marriage:

To mademoiselle Hébert the older in Alençon Paris, 24 July 92 We were firmly convinced, my husband and I, that you received the newspaper as well as Mr. Desnos. M. Hébert had taken all the necessary means for this; but we had the misfortune of associating ourselves with the biggest rascal in Paris, who deceives us in every way. It is therefore not surprising that you were deprived of the papers he was responsible for sending you. We are ready to leave him and you will receive what you want without fail, I hope. We would already be on top of our affairs without this man, hardly worthy of a partner as upright as my husband, who has been fooled ever since he started working; but whose well-known probity and frankness made an infinitely honest young man desire his association. So we will work through new charges and I hope that this time we will not be unsuccessful. If M. Hébert is good enough to make his happiness consist in having me, it is indeed me, mademoiselle, who without grace can certify that I am perfectly happy with he who never ceases to everyday give me new proofs of his tenderness. I have carried a precious token of him in my belly for three months now, he wants the child to look like me, and I want it to look like its father, this, mademoiselle, is the continual subject of our differences. We agree more willingly on the desire to have you as a witness of our love, it will not be up to us unless it happens soon. You are very worried about the dangers of the fatherland. They are imminent, we cannot hide them: we are betrayed by the court, by the leaders of the armies, by a large part of the members of the assembly; many people despair; but I am far from doing so, the people are the only ones who made the revolution. It alone will support her because it alone is worthy of it. There are still incorruptible members in the assembly, who will not fear to tell it that its salvation is in their hands, then the people, so great, will still be so in their just revenge, the longer they delay in striking the more it learns to know its enemies and their number, the more, according to me, its blows will only strike with certainty and  only fall on the guilty, do not be worried about the fate of my worthy husband. He and I would be sorry if the people were enslaved to survive the liberty of their fatherland, I would be inconsolable if the child I am carrying only saw the light of day with the eyes of a slave, then I would prefer to see it perish with me. I gave Mde Pelletier the papers for you that I haven't through up much since M. Desnos left. I have the most ardent desire to see you. Mademoiselle and dear sister Your very humble servant Goupil… Hébert My husband tenderly embraces you as well as your sister, whom I beg you to accept the assurance of my very sincere feelings.

To Mademoiselle Hébert the older.  Rue de la Mairie, Alençon, département de l'Orne.  Mademoiselle and dear sister-in-law, I don't know what to attribute your long silence since last time I had the pleasure of writing to you; but it surprises and distresses me, I would have already complained if my since five months back very bad health would have left me that possibility. My husband, who was chosen by his section to serve as city commissioner on the night between August 9 and 10, has run the greatest of risks. He had the pleasure of rendering services to his fatherland, and always with that noble disinterestedness that you know from him. He has done and still does good without respite, he has seen and still sees intrigue rise up, and modestly remains Père Duchesne, a poor newspaper seller. He stood for election and was undoubtedly well worthy of becoming a member of the Convention; but he believed he had to hide nothing of the truth, more than once he made the intriguer who enjoyed a great reputation turn pale, he seemed too pure and too formidable to those who had influence in the nominations, and to the great astonishment of the brave sans-culottes, he himself is still a brave sans-culotte, which is enough for my happiness. Satisfied to know my husband was worthy and capable of doing anything to be satisfied, his hands remained pure like his soul and were not soaked in the blood that flowed in the prisons. For my part, I suffered from such a great horror that I almost lost my life; I believe that the law alone can strike down the guilty, and until then I will cover them with my body. All that can console me in this tragic event is that the names of those who are its authors are already in execration and that history by transmitting them to posterity will justify the people of Paris who has lost nothing (it must be said) of its urbanity. You would oblige me infinitely if you could tell me if the former Viscount the huntsman Lord of Carrouge has emigrated. I suspect that he has and if I was certain of it I would put an opposition against his property as he owes le 600 livres. My husband, who loves you very tenderly, says a thousand tender things to you and to your sister, and I ask you to believe me, both of you, with a very sincere attachment. Mademoiselle and dear sister-in-law . Your very humble, . Servant G... HÉBERT. My address from now on will be: Cour des Miracles rue de Bourbon Ville Neuve.

A few months later, Réné Desgenettes claimed to have run into Hébert and been invited to dinner yet again, and this time he did follow through with it, resulting in this very long anecdote:

On February 24 1793, I spotted him, on rue Saint-Honoré, part of the procession bringing the remains of Pelletier de St-Fargeau to the Panthéon. […] Hébert, who had noticed me as well, dispatched himself from the group, approached me, shook my hand roughly and said: ”Where in the devil’s name do you live?”

”Rue du Paradis au Marais, n. 3.”

”I have important things to tell you and still live on rue St-Antoine.”

I still refrained from visiting Hébert. However, after a very few days, I learned that a gentleman of fairly good appearance, well dressed and calling himself substitute deputy of the Commune, had come to ask for me, and that he seemed upset for not having met me. Thinking there was no way to back down, the next day, around five o’clock, I went home to Hébert, where I found his wife, the former sister Goupille [sic], who, while waiting for her husband, occupied herself with preparing a rather delicate dinner, because the orator loved good food. Madame Hébert received me very well and told me her husband so many times had spoken of me with affection, that we were two old acquaintances. I approached to contemplate an engraving based on the beautiful painting by Titian or Paul Veronese, showing Jesus Christ with two of his disciples at Emmaüs’, when I noticed that Hébert below it had written: the sans-culotte Jesus dining with two of his disciples in the castle of a ci-devant…

”Here you see,” Madame Hébert told me, ”one of these bad jokes my husband often allows himself to make against religion, as a result of a detestable habit I have no hopes of curling him from... I am, monsieur, very much attached to Christianity… It’s our religion at its most beautiful, because I don’t subscribe to everything… I preach to the Jacobins, in the society of our sisters, the same doctrine that abbot Fauchet preach to our brothers at their reunions. He is a great and true apostle who inspired me with a perception of the enthusiasm which animates him, and I have reason to believe that he is also not dissatisfied with the zeal with which I seek to imitate him. I know all the advantages that the Bishop of Calvados has for me; he owes them to nature and to his superior talents, because he is a very handsome man, and everyone agrees that he is also very eloquent.”

Hébert arrived at six o’clock. Before sitting down at the table, where we then stayed for three hours, he took from a secretary a certain number of gold francs, which he handed over to me like an old debt with a thousand thanks. […] 

Let us [said Hébert] speak a bit about Alençon and the first time of our youth. Madame Hébert will see that I have hidden nothing from her about the time of my life when it has been claimed that I was a scoundrel. You surely remember, monsieur, that upon leaving college, where I quite simply had the well-deserved reputation of being lazy and mischievous, I had the misfortune, or perhaps the good fortune, to fall out with la justice? 

R.D.G: I remember it well. 

Madame Hébert: But that is always very grave. 

Hébert: This was also very grave, because the bailiwick of Alençon condemned me to banishment; but I appealed to the parliament of Rouen, which did not confirm the sentence of the first judges.

Madame Hébert: I’ve only ever known of this in a rough and very imperfect way.

Hébert: Well, you will know, my good friend, that in the town where monsieur and I were born, women have always had a great reputation for gallantry. Now the widow of an apothecary, who had been accused of bigamy, had in turn many lovers. In the front line there was a doctor who was very handsome, and after him, living under the same roof as the lady, was her premier garçon, as they expressed it then, and then finally the man who managed the very busy pharmacy. A rivalry which existed secretly between the doctor and the pharmasist broke out one day with so much fury that the doctor murdered his rival...

Madame Hébert: The horror! How did he kill him? 

Hébert: The doctor took an iron or copper pestle, and delivered several strong blows to the head and across the face of my poor friend L..., who was on the point of being trepanned. However, even before public rumor got around, the king's prosecutor was seized as suspect in this criminal matter, it was dormant or rather stifled by a transaction which was attributed throughout the city to the conciliatory spirit of M. Desgenettes, your respectable father. Doctor Cl.... however, had aggravated his crime, because he was closely pursued, it is true, sword in hand, by the brother of L..., employed on the farms, he had tried twice to kill him. Outraged with rage upon learning that just revenge was going to elude the L... brothers and their friends, I drew up a note which was posted at the doors of the main church, the commissary, the courts and other places.

Madame Hébert: What did it say on the note? 

Hébert: It said: ”Sentence rendered to the Supreme Court of Honor which condemns Doctor Cl... to the pillory of infamy, for compensation, etc. Then I drew two bloody knives in a saltire, with this motto: Olim veneno, nunc cultro.”

Madame Hébert: Which means? 

Hébert: Formerly with the poison, now with the knife.

Madame Hébert: Is that right, M. Desgenettes?

R.D.G: Yes, madame, and if you want a different version: ”He has replaced the knife with the poison.” Nevertheless I must have the honor of observing to you, as your husbands already knows, that the doctor did not use the knife.

Hébert: The knife made Cl... more odious, and that's what I intended. The assassination is therefore tolerated by a court which had just hanged two unfortunate people, for having burglarily stolen forty sous from a church trunk, which I would happily call provocative, since it jutted out onto a main road. The veil of oblivion is extended over a crime that was to be punished by the torture of the wheel, and here I am, for a placard which repaired the wrongs of justice, extraordinarily prosecuted, and decreed for personal adjournment . This is not yet enough, and both God and the devil are invoked against me.

Madame Hébert: You are aware, my friend, that all justice emanates from God; but the possible intervention of the devil in a judgment rendered by men is a superstition that I reject, although you have sometimes regarded me as superstitious. Monsieur, she said, addressing the author of these Memoirs, I am not superstitious, but no one is more penetrated than me by the power of God and the ineffable benefits of the religion of Jesus Christ... Is it not the Savior who said to men: You are the children of the free woman? I have never blushed over my [connection to] the first estate, and admit it in front of everyone. I still keep, and you have it before your eyes, the bed that I had at the Assomption; when it becomes that of a mother, it will change in neither shape nor color... My principles are still the same as those of Sister Goupile [sic]. But, tell me, Hébert, please, how was Satan brought into your business?

Hébert: Because it was brought before the official of Seez, and the general vicar and canon of the cathedral, who presides over this ecclesiastical tribunal, launched a monitory against me. This act fulminated in the sermon in the parish church of Notre-Dame d'Alençon, with an apparatus and ceremonies borrowed from the inquisition, which filled the common people with terror, and part of the population barricaded themselves in their homes, at the the onset of night, while the proud men of the city, and especially the armed butchers, searched everywhere for the werewolf. You know, monsieur, that they are a brutal and even ferocious type of man. The fanaticism of butchers has long been maintained in our city, by making them appear with their cleavers and their dogs in the procession of the little Corpus Christi, in memory of the assistance they had given, in 1500, to the Catholics against the Calvinists, then very numerous and very powerful in our country. Do you remember, monsieur, seeing this ceremony?

R.D.G: Yes, monsieur, and to have seen at the head of the butchers, with his sword raised and his arm bare, a Malêfre. This gentleman who, I believe, lived in Seez and had a stronghold at the gates of Alençon, was descended from the one who first commanded the butchers in this ceremony. The dogs had been removed, because they bit those of the assistants who stepped on their feet, and because they howled in a terrible manner when the culverines of the castle came to shoot to salute the Blessed Sacrament.

Hébert: If the butchers, who were pleased by my known cheerfulness, had suspected me of being the author of the placard, I would have been very uncomfortable, and if they had been convinced of it, I would perhaps have been treated like the werewolf that they wanted to skin like a calf... Barricaded at the house of my poor mother, who borrowed books for me from all directions, I acquired this profound knowledge of history that deigned to grant me. My misfortunes in Alençon, repaired a little in Rouen, led me to Paris, and you know, very roughly, what the rest of my life was like.

Madame Hébert: It was during your debut in Paris, my dear friend, that you were the most silent…

Hébert: However, I had no reason to keep silent about the fact that for a long time I had struggled with the devil by the tail, even up to the time when I obtained a small job as a tobacconist at the Théâtre des Variétés. Yes, I suffered from hunger, thirst and cold for a long time. You are not unaware of the services rendered to me by Monsieur; I also had many obligations to the Parisot hairdresser on rue des Noyers, as well as to his wife. This graceful couple reminded us of the wigmaker, the Love of the Lutrin, and his wigmaker... We still had charming neighbors, the two daughters of the butcher across the street from Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais... Then, close to that of the English, this woman who loved you so much...

Madame Hébert: Is it so, monsieur, that you also have a good friend (girlfriend) in the quarter? 

R.D.G: No, madame, but I often chat with a rather laughable old woman, who ran a tobacco shop and housed two or three students. The house, which was no more than fifteen feet wide, as deep, and yet five stories high, had belonged to the father of J.-B. Rousseau, who was born there on April 6, 1671.  The good woman in question, who daily and naively repeated that she had once been young and had always haunted minds, had written on her door: This is where Rousseau was born.

Arriving quickly at the first days of the revolution, Hébert began to talk about how he had determined to write in a genre which was neither in his taste nor in his habits, but which he considered as having a powerful effect on the popular masses. Everyone believed that Père Duchesne was an essentially crude man; one will believe that by reading his papers, and one will be wrong, because he was, on the contrary, very polite. The conversation, which changed subject at every moment, because Hébert had little consistency in ideas, focused on Louis XVI and his family, whom the substitute of the commune had seen very often since August 10 at the Temple. At first he spoke of the dethroned monarch as a vanquished man who did not inspire him with any kind of interest. However, the day when Garat the younger, as minister of justice, and Grouvelle, as secretary general of the executive council, notified and read the final judgment to Louis XVI, he shared the emotion that this great misfortune caused them... He attended the execution, and recounted the circumstances with marked infidelity... After believing for a moment, he said, that he was going to persuade the people, Capet showed the greatest cowardice and began screaming like a calf... He had to be dragged to be placed under the blade…

R.D.G: What you say, monsieur, is in complete opposition to what thousands of men have seen and heard... The resignation of Louis XVI is a historical fact which cannot be altered, and we will not forget this resignation more than the sublime words of Father Edgeworth, which must have inspired him. 

Madame Hébert: This is true, and if Louis Capet, like we believe, was a tyrant, we must today, and after his death, consider him as a martyr to his position, and I too would perhaps invoke him.

Hébert: My good friend, what extravagances... Women almost never listen to anything other than imagination and rarely to reason. Anyway, he said (and he pulled a bloody handkerchief out from his pocket), look at his blood… I gathered it while it was flowing from the scaffold… I won’t believe, monsieur, in the success of the revolution, until I’ve seen that the Swiss have been disarmed and had their throats cut, that the statue of Henri IV has been toppled and the head of Louis XVI off. […] In desiring, monsieur, to have the honor of speaking to you, I was moved by a motive more important than the subjects of which we have spoken so far. My gratitude to you makes it my duty to warn you of what is happening regarding Mr. de V..., your uncle, and his friends. You are perhaps aware that they have declared themselves enemies of the municipality of Paris, which has little fear of them and accepts combat, even to the death.

R.D.G: Monsieur, I am not in my uncle's political confidence... He has the rigidity of a Cato, and I cannot tell him anything.

Hébert: The statesmen, sir, have spoken of our heads... The municipality will ask for theirs, if necessary, and the people will grant them.

R.D.G: I thank you, monsieur, for your communications, but I cannot use them and consider them useless.

When we seperated, it was more than nine o’clock, and I never saw Hébert or his wife again.

In his testament, François Chabot, who was among the ”indulgents” executed on April 5 1794, claimed that Françoise was ”very close with [Joseph] Delaunai's [sic] mistress for more than two years as far as I’m aware, and my brave colleague Forestier saw them together occupy themselves with my trial at the time when the faction doubted my will to serve it…” How much truth there is to this is probably impossible to know.

On March 14 1794, four a’clock in the morning, Jacques-René was arrested and taken to the Conciergerie prison. Françoise stayed behind at their apartment, watched over by a guard as seals were placed on her husband’s papers. However, at six o’clock the same evening, she too was arrested and brought to the women section of the same prison as her husband. Before leaving, she handed over her watch and a pair of earrings to her ”woman of trust” Marie Gentille.

I’ve not been able to track down the arrest warrant for Françoise, but I suppose it was issued by the Committee of General Security, as I couldn’t find anything in Recueil des actes du Comité de Salut Public. The act of accusation proclaimed her suspected of being ”conspirator with her husband, immediate agent of the system of corruption imagined by the horde of foreign bankers against a few unworthy representatives of the people, accomplice of Kock, du Frey, Despagnac.” The draft of the public prosecutor's indictment did in its turn state that ”The widow Hébert has, I do not say perverted her husband, whose immorality has been demonstrated to you, but supported with all her means the liberticidal projects of this monster.”

Ten days after the two had been arrested, March 24 1794, Jacques-René was executed alongside 17 other ”hébertists.” In Paris révolutionnaire: Vieilles maisons… there is to read (though without any source cited) that with her husband dead, Françoise asked to go back to their child, but that this request was ignored. Two weeks later, April 9, Françoise was joined at the Conciergerie by the fourteen years younger Lucile Desmoulins, who had been arrested on the fourth and widowed just a day later. The two women supported each other and became friends despite the antagonism their husbands had held for one another while they were alive:

A few days later we saw her arrive, [Desmoulins’] widow so lovely and so gentle, she was still inside the vertigo and pain, she walked and watched like Nina. Oh what bizarre a game revolutions are! The widow Hébert and the widow Camille Desmoulins, who’s husbands had just been sent to the scaffold, often sat together on the same stone in the heart of the Conciergerie and cried together. Mémoires sur les prisons (1823) by Honoré Jean Riouffe, page 66.

I saw at the registry of the Conciergerie, the day after their appearance at the hearing, and the very day of their trial, the wives of Hébert and Camille together. Hébert’s wife said to Camille’s wife: ”You are real lucky, you, there was not a single statement against you yesterday; no shadow of suspicion cast upon your conduct; you are no doubt going to go out by the main staircase, while I will be sent to the scaffold.” The wife of Camille, no doubt imbued with the atrocity of her judges, did not raise her eyes, showed neither fear nor hope, but modestly awaited her judgment. She went up a few minutes later; the debates had been closed the day before; the hearing was held only for the pronunciation of the judgment; she was condemned like the others and executed. I recall this conversation as precious, because in coming from the mouth of the wife of Hébert, in the presence of several people, it has a character of truth which gives an idea of ​​the innocence of the wife of Camille, and of the barbarism of the court.  A witness during the trial of Fouquier-Tinville 1795. Cited in Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française… volume 34, page 427

Françoise and Lucile were both part of a group made up of 26 people, all accused ”of having, in complicity with the infamous Hébert, Clootz, alias Anacharsis, Ronsin, Vincent, Mazuel, Momoro, Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Lacroix and others, already struck by the sword of the law, conspired against the liberty and security of the French people, by wanting to trouble the state through civil war, by arming the citizens against one another, and against the exercise of legitimate authority, as a result of which, during last ventôse and current germinal, conspirators were to dissolve the national representation, assassinate its members and the patriots, destroy the republican government, seize the sovereignty of the people, and give a tyrant to the state.” Their trial began on April 10, and continued for three days. Looking over the protocol, these are the only times I’ve found where the proceeding concerned Françoise:

Louis-Claude Adnet, cavalry captain, testifies that, during Momoro's arrest, the latter told him that Barras was a good citizen; that Hébert’s wife was asking for news the day before it; that it is absolutely true that this Barras should have been made lieutenant-colonel of the gendarmerie, as a price for his crimes, and that he bragged about it to several people.

These facts are denied by Barras and Hébert’s wife, who are convinced by other statements to the same effect.

[…]

Finally, from the last depositions in this affair, it appears that about two months ago Chabot said: You are complaining about the scarcity of provisions, about their lack of arrival. If you sincerely want to put an end to all these evils, to bring back abundance, arrest the leaders of the conspiracy, who are Hébert, his wife, and Baron de Batz. The same witnesses declared having found themselves at dinner with Hébert and his wife, and having heard them utter the most atrocious insults against Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety; that Hébert’s wife in particular indulged in the most indecent rants against the Committee of General Security and all kinds of authority; that in a session at the Cordeliers, where the question was raised as to whether the Rights of Man would be unveiled; on the petition of Collot-d'Herbois, representative of the people, sent commissioner on this subject, she said to the people placed near Hébert, on the questioning made to her relating to said Collot-d'Herbois and his patriotism: This Collot is nothing but an intriguer, an actor who comes to try his talent for theatrical stunts; he is paid by the Jacobins to demand the uncovering of Rights of Man; but we who are not millionaires do not pay; finally the same witnesses said that the wife of Hébert daily preached the sation and subversion of the most sacred principles, and spoke about the revolution as being the first of its declared enemy. 

Hébert’s wife was content with denying all these facts; she claimed to have never known her husband to be a conspirator, if he was he would have died by her hand; and the witnesses for their part persisted in their statements against Hébert’s wife.

Immediately after this last deposition, the debates were closed and sentences handed out. The tribunal found Françoise and 18 of the other accused guilty of being part of a conspiracy attempting to ”trouble the state through a civil war, by arming the citizens against each other and against the existence of legitimate authority, as a result of this, as a result of which, in the course of the last ventôse, conspirators were to dissolve the national representation, assassinate its members and the patriots, destroy the republican government, seize the sovereignty of the people, reestablish the monarchy and give a tyrant to the state.” They were sentenced to death and to have their belongings confiscated by the state. 

Shortly after the sentences had been passed, Françoise did however declare herself to be around three months pregnant:

Second year of the French Republic  24 Germinal, half past four in the afternoon. On the notice given to the public prosecutor that the widow Hébert, who has just been condemned to death by today’s judgment, had a pregnancy declaration to make, we, François Joseph Denizot, judge at the revolutionary tribunal, assisted by Robert Wolff, clerk commissioner, in the presence of Citizen Nautin, one of the public prosecutor’s substitutes, are transported to one of the rooms of court house of the Conciergerie where said widow Hébert had been brought. She declared that her name was Marie-Marguerite-Françoise Goupil, widow Hébert, and that she is approximately three months pregnant. She signed with me, the aforementioned Clerk and the other aforesaid. / Widow Hébert

This claim was however quickly dismissed and/or disproven, and Françoise got driven to the scaffold the very same day, dying at the age of 38. The execution got described the following way in number 146 of the journal Nouvelles politiques et étrangères (April 15 1794):

The conspirators condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal were executed yesterday [sic] at a quarter to seven [in the evening]. Chaumette, sitting next to Gobel, replied with a smile of rage to the reproaches of atheism that were made against him; Gobel was gloomy, silent, downcast; pale Dillon sat beside Simon; the actor Grammont next to his son; the widow of Hébert and that of Camille Desmoulins, elegantly dressed and maintaining composure, were chatting together. Gobel and Chaumette were the last to suffer their ordeal. Chaumette's head was shown to the people, to the sound of applause and cries of "Vive la République.” The wife of Hébert and the wife of Camille Desmoulins were the first to climb the scaffold, they embraced each other before dying. 

The Héberts only child, Scipion-Virginie, was born in February 1793. Her birth record (cited within Mémoires de la Société historique, littéraire et scientifique du Cher) goes as follows:

February 8, 1793, birth of an unbaptized female child who one wishes to call Scripion-Virginie, born on the day and time of yesterday, at 11 a.m, in Paris, Cour des Miracles, daughter of Jacques-René Hébert, man of letters and substitute for the Commune prosecutor, and Marie-Marguerite-Françoise Goupil, his wife. First witness: Anaxagore Chaumette, man of letters and prosecutor of the Commune, living in Paris, rue du Paon n 3. Second witness: Scipion Duroure, man of letters and municipal officer, living in Paris, rue de Buffaut, faubourg Montmartre, n° 506, designated godfather. Third witness: Marie-Jeanne Doity, widow of Paul-François Maillard, living at Grande-Rue, faubourg Saint-Martin, n° 37, designated godmother. Signed, M.-J. Doisy, Scipion Duroure, — Hébert, — Bourner, — p. g. Anaxagore Chaumette. 

According to the article La Fille d’Hébert (1947), Scipion’s godfather (who, as it can be seen, was also the one she was named after) was imprisoned just four days after her parents (he would however escape the guillotine and be set free on September 27 1794). After the death of her mother and father, Scipion-Virginie was therefore taken in, not by him, nor  by her godmother, but instead Françoise’s older half brother J-J Goupil. On March 12 1795 we do however find a decree handing tutorship over to ”Jacques-Christophe Marquet, printer, Rue de Vaugirard,” and it was under the eyes of him and his wife Anne (married August 29 1794) that Scipion-Virginie grew up. On October 7 1808, at age 15, she got baptised in a religious baptism as seen by the following decree:

On December 9 1809, at the age of 16 years and ten months, Scipion married the nine years older priest’s son Léon-Frédéric Née from Bohain. She was by then working as ”institutrice” at the home of a priest by the name Masson. Scipion and Léon-Frédéric moved to Marsauceux, where the latter exercised the functions of ”minister of Saint Evangile” and where they had six children, half of which died while in infancy. Of the surviving children, Paul-Emile-Frédéric died in Paris in 1829, aged 17, Timothée died in Marsauceux in 1843, aged 19 and Frédéric-Auguste died in 1877, aged 63. The latter was the only one to marry and have a child, a son born in October 1841 that lived for less than a year. As a result, no decendant of the Hébert lineage exists today. Scipion-Virginie herself died on July 11 1830, aged 37, one year younger than her mother. Her husband remarried six years later, but did not have any more children. He died himself in 1856.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

I’m doing fine my dear maman. Send me a pocket handkerchief.

I embrace you my dear maman. I’m doing pretty well.

Good evening dear maman. A tear falls from my eyes. It is for you. I’m going to fall asleep in the tranquility of innocence.

Three notes written by Lucile Desmoulins to her mother between her arrest on April 4 1794 and execution nine days later. The last one is generally seen as a final farewell, penned down right after the death sentence had been pronounced on April 13.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Frev friendships — the Robespierres and the Duplays

(Shout-out to @sieclesetcieux whose thesis on Élisabeth Duplay Lebas is the origin of the majority of the primary sources gathered here.)

People will be curious to know how my brother Maximilien met the Duplay family. The day when the red flag was deployed and martial law proclaimed on the Champ-de-Mars by Lafayette and Bailly, my brother, who had seen the fusillades ordered by the hero of two worlds, and who returned, heartbroken with all these scenes of horror, following the rue Saint-Honoré. A considerable crowd pressed about him; he had been recognized, and the people cried vive Robespierre! M. Duplay, cabinet-maker, left his house, came before my brother, and engaged him to come into his house to rest. Maximilien accepted his invitation. After an hour or two he wanted to return home, but he was kept for dinner, and not even that evening did they want to let him leave; he slept in M. Duplay’s house, and remained there for several days. Madame Duplay and her daughters showed him the liveliest interest, surrounded him with a thousand delicate cares. He was extremely sensitive to all those sorts of things. My aunts and I had spoiled him by a crowd of those little attentions of which women alone are capable. All at once transported from the bosom of his family, where he was the object of the sweetest solicitudes, into his household on the rue Saintonge, where he was alone, let the change he had had to submit to be judged! The Duplay family’s provenances in his regard recalled to him those that we had had for him, and made him feel still more vividly the emptiness and solitude of the apartment he occupied in the Marais. M. Duplay proposed to him that he should come live with him, and be his host’s lodger. Maximilien, to whom this proposition was quite agreeable, and who anyway had never known how to refuse in fear of disobliging, accepted and came to live among the Duplay family. Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835) page 84-85

On the day of the massacre on the Champ-de-Mars, [Robespierre] came to the session at the Jacobins. The friends of liberty gathered there in very small numbers. The courtyard was soon filled with gunners and hunters from the barriers, blind instruments of the furies of Lafayette and his supporters. Robespierre was trembling with fear as he crossed this courtyard to return home after the session, and hearing these soldiers vomit imprecations and threats against the Jacobins, he was obliged, in order to support himself, to take the arm of Lecoitre [sic] of Versailles, in uniform of commander of the national guard of Versailles, and of Lapoype, since division general, then member of the club. He did not dare go to sleep on rue Saintonge au Marais, where he lived with Humbert. He asked Lecointe [sic] if he did not know any patriot in the vicinity of the Tuileries who could give him shelter for the night. Lecointe [sic] suggested Duplay’s house to him, and took him there. From that day on, he never exited. It is perhaps to this change of domicile that we must attribute the development of his ambition. As long as he remained with Humbert, he was accessible to his friends and patriots. Once at Duplay, he gradually became invisible. They sequestered him from society, they adored him, they entranced him, they destroyed him by exalting his pride. It should be noted that from his arrival in Paris until the time of Champ-de-Mars, he had been housed, fed, maintained, heated, served at Humbert's house. He never spoke to the latter about compensating him; he thought he was too honored to have had such a great man as himself as a companion. He never did him the slightest service, and during the last six months of her life, he had his door barred from him: the presence of a benefactor bothered him. Stanislas Fréron’s ”Notes on Robespierre,” published for the first time within volume 1 of Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, Saint-Just, Payan, etc., supprimés ou omis par Courtois; précédés du rapport de ce député à la Convention nationale (1828) but most likely dating back to right after thermidor.

My grandfather (Maurice Duplay) was not Robespierre’s compatriot; he was from Forez. It was not in Artois, where he never set foot, that he met Maximilien. Their reports had an equally honorable origin for both: they date from the day when martial law was proclaimed on the Champ-de-Mars. That day, the rumor having spread that the most influential members of the democratic party, and in particular Robespierre, were going to be arrested, my grandfather offered the latter, whose character and talent he admired, asylum at his home. His proposal was accepted, and, from then until his last moment, Maximilien did not cease to be the companion of my family. Undated letter from Philippe Lebas Jr. to Alphonse Lamartine. On August 9 1791, around three weeks after the massacre on Champ-de-Mars, Robespierre still gave his adress as ”n. 8 rue de Saintonge” when appearing as witness before the court of the 6th arrondissement. A month later, September 14 1791, the journalist François Suleau, who had gotten arrested shortly after the massacre, was asked who he wanted to represent him in court and answered ”M. Robespierre, residing on rue Saintonge,” whereupon he got the answer that Robespierre no longer lived there. Formally, Robespierre must therefore have moved to rue Saint-Honoré 398 somewhere between these two dates.

One evening, the carpenter brought back a stranger from the Jacobin club, whom he led by the hand into his apartment. It was a person of about thirty years old, dressed, according to the fashion of the time, in a waistcoat with a large lapel, a brown coat and silk breeches. “You are at home here,” he said to him as he entered: ”you shall be my son, and I shall be your father.” Then, showing him a group of young girls who were discreetly standing aside in a corner of the living room, he added: “My friend, here are your sisters.” He called his children with a gesture of authority: “Come here, Éléonore, Sophie, Victoire, Élisabeth; come, my children, come my daughters. I have brought you a brave citizen whom the counter-revolutionaries want to have arrested. This house will serve as his asylum. You already know him by name: it’s Maximilien [Robespierre].” The young girls, who had read that name in the public papers and who had heard it often pronounced by their father with enthusiasm, surrounded the stranger. From that day on, the house had one more child. The carpenter, his wife, his daughters, everyone hurried to show a smiling face to him. He was asked to choose his own room: he designated one at the end of the courtyard under the roof, a simple and modest room which was lined, according to his tastes, with a hanging of blue damask with white flowers on it. [Maximilien's] habits were soon known; although not sumptuous in his attire, he was very clean: he liked white linen and put elegance into his clothes. Every morning, a hairdresser ran the detangler through her long, powdered hair. Having finished washing, he gathered with the carpenter's family for the morning meal. Maximilien had a sobriety worthy of the golden age: his breakfast consisted of bread and dairy products. Une Maison de la Rue Saint-Honoré by Alphonse Ésquiros, published in Revue de Paris, number 9 (May 1 1844). At the end of this article, Esquiros claimed to have obtained the information contained in it from Élisabeth Duplay Lebas herself. Shortly thereafter, said Élisabeth did however write a letter to the paper in order to ”protest loudly against the use that, without consulting me, you have made of my name, and to declare that this article, on many points in contradiction with my recollections, also contains a large number of inaccuracies.” She does unfortunately not indicate exactly which parts of the article are inaccurate and which ones are not, and certain details contained in it match up too well with what Élisabeth writes in her memoirs for me not to believe Esquiros hadn’t actually interviewed her prior to writing the article. In spite of her complaint, all the information in article was republished, almost entirely word for word, in volume 2 of Ésquiros’ Histoire des Montagnards (1847).

My dear friend, I arrived safely in Bapaume this Friday. The national guards of Paris, earlier camped out at Verberies, those of the department of Oise who had just arrived in the city the same day, joined by the patriots of Bapaume, presented me with a civic crown together with the testimonies of the most fraternal affection. The district and municipal directories, although aristocrats, did not disdain to come and visit my body. I was delighted by the patriotism of the National Guards, who seemed very well composed. Those of Paris found no preparation to receive them in Bapaume; those of Oise were forced to leave without weapons, and still do not have any.  From Bapaume, several officers of the two corps, joined by a part of the national guard of Arras, who had come to meet me, took me back to Arras, where the people received me with demonstrations of an attachment that I cannot express, and which I cannot think of without emotion; a multitude of citizens came out of the city to meet me; to the civic crown that they offered me they added one for Petion; in their acclamations they often mingled with my name that of my comrade in arms and friend. I was surprised to see the houses of my enemies and of the aristocrats (who only appear here in ministerial or feuillantine form; the others have emigrated), illuminated as I passed, which I attributed only to their respect for the wish of the people. Eight days earlier one had made the same preparations because I was expected at that time.  On both occasions, the municipality, which is of the order of the Feuillants, had spared nothing to oppose these steps taken by the people and the patriots: “If it were the king, it said ingeniously, we would not do the same; when we were installed, were we given honors?  So no sooner had I entered my house when it sent out the alguazils of the police with the order to put out the lanterns, which was not always punctually carried out. The next day, another disorder broke out in the city: the national guards of Oise arrived in Arras through which they had to pass in order to get to their destination. They danced in the public square singing patriotic tunes and came to my house resounding with cheers that were extremely unpleasant for the ear of a feuillant. No other misfortune happened.  The national guards stationed in this country are viewed very negatively by the ministerial aristocracy, which is very numerous; they spread to the surrounding villages to protect the inhabitants of the countryside against the dangerous insinuations of refractory priests who do incalculable harm; they revive languishing patriotism everywhere. I have no doubt that we will continue to do everything we can to disgust them and get rid of them.  On our way we found inns full of emigrants. The innkeepers told us that they were astonished at the multitude of those they had been lodging for some time.

A miracle has just taken place here, which is not surprising, since it is due to the Gallvaire of Arras, who, as we know, has already done so many others: an unsworn priest said mass in the chapolle which contains the precious monument; truly devout people understood this. In the middle of the mass a man throws away two crutches that he had brought, stretches his legs, walks; shows the scar that remains on his leg, displays papers which prove that he had a serious injury; right after the miracle this man's wife arrives; she asks for her husband; is told that he walks without crutches; falls unconscious; regains her senses to thank heaven and cry out for a miracle.  However, it was resolved, in the devout sauhedrin, that it would not be in the city that much noise would be made about this adventure, but that it would instead be spread throughout the countryside: since this moment several peasants have, in fact, come to burn small candles in the Calvary chapel. I still intend to not stay long in this holy land; I am not worthy of it. I shall however not leave it without regrets; because my fellow citizens have so far only given me the sweetest of pleasures: I will console myself by embracing you (vous). Please present the testimonies of my tender friendship to Madame Duplay, to your young ladies, and to my little friend. Also, please do not forget to remind me of La Coste and Couthon. Robespierre to Maurice Duplay, October 16 1791

Brother and friend,  I received with gratitude the new mark of interest and friendship that you (vous) gave me in your last letter. I am seriously proposing, this time, to return to Paris in a few days. The pleasure of seeing you again will not be the least advantage I shall find there. I think with sweet satisfaction about the fact that my dear Pétion may have been appointed mayor of Paris as I write. I will feel more keenly than anyone the joy that this triumph of patriotism and frank probity over intrigue and tyranny must give to every citizen. Present the testimonies of my tender and unalterable attachment to your ladies, whom I very much desire to embrace, as well as our little patriot. Robespierre to Maurice Duplay, November 17 1791

My mother saw our attachment to Robespierre and his family with pleasure. For us, we loved him like a good brother! He was so good! He was our defender when my mother scolded us. That happened to me sometimes: I was quite young, a bit scatterbrained; he gave me such good advice that, as young as I was, I listened to it with pleasure. When I felt some unhappiness, I told him everything. He was not a severe judge: he was a friend, a good brother indeed; he was so virtuous! He venerated my father and mother. We all loved him tenderly. […] At that time (summer 1793) we often went walking as a family in the Champs-Élysées; ordinarily we chose the most retired paths. Robespierre often accompanied us in these walks. We passed happy moments together thus. We were always surrounded by poor little Savoyards, whose dancing it pleased Robespierre to watch; he gave them money: he was so good! For him it was a joy to do good: he was never happier than in those moments. He had a dog, named Brount, that he loved a lot; the poor animal was very attached to him. In the evening, after returning from the walk, Robespierre read us the works of Corneille, Voltaire, Rousseau; we listened to him as a family with great pleasure; he knew so well how to make what he was reading felt! After an hour or two of reading, he retired to his room, saying good evening to all. He had a profound respect for my father and mother; they too regarded him as a son, and we as a brother. Memoirs of Élisabeth Lebas Duplay, cited in Le conventionnel Le Bas: d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) by Stéfane-Pol, page 104 and 107-108

The days, the months, the years followed one another. Maximilien had become so well acquainted with this family that it had, in a way, become his own. He had another in Artois to whom he sent part of his salary as deputy, but he was nonetheless the adopted son of his hosts. The carpenter's four daughters loved him like a brother; they confided to him their sorrows, their feelings, their reveries. When one of those light clouds, which pass over the most united families, obscured the pure forehead of one of his young sisters, he gently drew her onto his knees and asked her in a low voice the secret of her sadness. If it was the trace of a discord or of some small domestic debates, he acted as conciliator between the offended parties. It was especially through him that Sophie, Élisabeth and Victoire had recourse after a falling out with their mother, to spare themselves the trouble of asking for pardon from their mother. Une Maison de la Rue Saint-Honoré by Alphonse Ésquiros, published in Revue de Paris, number 9 (May 1 1844).

[Maximilien] constantly went out in the middle of the day: where did he go? One didn't know. The carpenter told his daughters that Maximilien was going working for the public good; they had no idea in what way. […] Maximilien returned at six o'clock for supper. After leaving the table, he followed the carpenter and his daughters into the salon; these were charming family gatherings, full of grace and severity: the young girls, grouped in a circle around their mother, were working, with downcast eyes, on various needleworks. They separated at nine o'clock and said goodnight. On Thursdays only, these evenings took on a ceremonial character, a few guests, all friends of the house, gathered that day: it was David, the painter; Buonarotti, descendant of Michelangelo; Lebas, deputy; the brother of Maximilien, and some other close friends. Large mahogany armchairs covered in cherry velvet formed as they approached, a narrow but pleasant circle. They sometimes talked about literature: Maximilien read his favorite author, the tender Racine; as he said the verses well, he was asked to recite a few tirades from Bérénice or Audromanque; he carried it out with so much soul that he brought tears to all eyes. The carpenter's daughters, seated around their mother, listened to the reading while working; with modestly bowed eyelashes and feet on their stool, they contained their emotion within themselves. Then Buonarotti, who was a great musician, sat down at the piano: he was a dreamy and ardent soul, he played pathetic airs whose effect was inevitable: it seemed as if life was escaping beneath his fingers touching the quivering keys of the the instrument; they approached the windows to look at the sky, as this music lifted their hearts. However, the sky was full of stars, and hearts were full of love. One believed in family, in humanity, in the future. Seeing this interior so serious and so united, this sweet religion of the home, this cult of bare gray hair among old men and of modesty among young girls, one understood that the ancients had raised altars to the lare gods. These meetings did not last very far into the night: Maximilien retired at eleven o'clock to his room in order to work; often, until the whiteness of the morning, a little light could be seen shining in his window. Une Maison de la Rue Saint-Honoré by Alphonse Ésquiros, published in Revue de Paris, number 9 (May 1 1844).

Maximilien had brought back from a trip to Artois a large dog named Brount, whom he loved. This dog brought joy to the carpenter's daughters. He was another ally in the house. The animal, serious and thoughtful with its master, was playful with Victoire or Éléonore. Une Maison de la Rue Saint-Honoré by Alphonse Ésquiros, published in Revue de Paris, number 9 (May 1 1844). 

Patriot Dupleix [sic], I learned indirectly that my brother is indisposed; I am worried; let me know about his situation as soon as possible. Send me also the cartridge that I asked my brother's friend to look for in his papers. Tell my brother that my sister is convalescing, and that I will send back Mme Witty's book in a few days. Don't waste a moment, send answers right away. My worry is at its peak. If neccesary I’ll come to Paris. Also send me some copies of the speech on the war that your friend gave and the observations of Pethion [sic] and Robespierre. I embrace you and your family. Augustin to Maurice Duplay, March 19 1792

In my second excursion to Paris, I experienced a surprise, which gave me anxiety for the future, and here you see the occasion. A rich carpenter by the name of Duplay, his wife, his three or four daughters and his son, a boy of fifteen or sixteen years old, all good people at heart, but very passionate and very narrow-minded, had become passionate about the Revolution. Towards the end of the Constituent Assembly, Duplay came in the name of patriotism to invite me to dinner and to spend the day in a house of his, on the Champ-Élysées, with my wife and children. I accepted, so as not to let them believe that I disdained their thoughtfulness, and also because our departure being very imminent, this connection could not last long. Among the guests were Pétion, Robespierre and Giraud de Pouzol, deputy of Puy-de-Dôme, a good and honest man, and a man of merit. The Duplay family was, moreover, all kinds of accommodating to our children. In this last trip of which I speak, I thought it necessary, therefore, to go and see them. I went there one morning. I was received very warmly, and ushered into the salon, to which was adjoined a small cabinet whose door remained open. What do I see when I enter? Robespierre, who had impatronized himself in the house, where he received homage such as those paid to a divinity. The small cabinet was particularly dedicated to him. His bust was enshrined there with various ornaments, verses, mottos, etc. The living room itself was furnished with small busts in red and gray terracotta, and lined with portraits of the great man, in pencil, blur, bistre, and watercolor. He himself, well combed and powdered, dressed in the cleanest dressing gown, was spread out in a large armchair, before a table laden with the finest fruits, fresh butter, pure milk and aromatic coffee. The whole family, father, mother and children, tried to guess in his eyes all his desires, in order to instantly please them. Mémoires de La Révellière-Lépeaux (1895), volume 1, page 114-115. The second meeting described took place somewhere in the summer of 1792, before the Insurrection of August 10.

The next day I (Barbaroux) was invited to another conference at Robespierre’s house. I was struck by the ornaments at his cabinet: it was a pretty boudoir where his image was repeated in all forms and by all the arts. His painted portrait was on the wall on the right, his engraved one on the left, his bust was at the back and his bas-relief opposite; there were also half a dozen small engravings of Robespierre on the tables.  Mémoires inédits de Pétion, et Mémoires de Buzot et de Barbaroux (1866) page 358-359. This meeting took place shortly after the Insurrection of August 10 1792. Given the fact Barbaroux was executed in 1794 and his memoirs published 1866, 42 years after Révellière-Lépeaux’ death (his memoirs were in their turn published 1895) their claims that the Duplays had several busts and portraits of Robespierre were most likely independent from one another.

I should tell the whole truth. I have nothing but praise for the demoiselles Duplay; but I would not say the same for their mother, who did me much wrong; she looked constantly to put me in bad standing with my older brother and to monopolize him. Maximilien’s character took very will to Madame Duplay’s views; he let himself be led as she wished, and this man so energetic at the head of the government had no other will in his interior than that which was suggested to him, as it were. When I arrived from Arras, in 1792, I came to live with the Duplay family, and I saw at once the ascendancy they exercised on him; an ascendancy which was founded neither on wit, since Maximilien certainly had more of it than Madame Duplay, nor on great services rendered, since the family among whom my brother lived had not for some time been in a position to render them. But, I repeat, this ascendancy took its source, on one side, from my brother’s debonair attitude, if I may express it thus, and on the other from Madame Duplay’s incessant and often importune caresses. I resolved to take my brother out of her hands, and, to succeed at this, I looked to make him understand that, in his position, and occupying such a high rank in politics, he should have a home of his own. Maximilien recognized the fairness of my reasons, but long fought my proposition that he should separate from the Duplay family, fearing to distress them. In the end, I succeeded, not without effort, to make him take an apartment in the rue Saint-Florentin. Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre… (1835) page 85-87

Robespierre only moved away from my father’s house a single time, in order to go live with his sister, whose imperious character rendered him really unhappy… Note written by Élisabeth Lebas, cited in Histoire de Robespierre (1867) by Ernest Hamel, volume 3, page 286.

Madame Duplay was very angry with me [for making Maximilien move away]; I believe she remained bitter towards me her entire life. We had lived thus alone for some time, my brother and I, when Maximilien fell ill. His indisposition was in no way dangerous. He needed much mare, and certainly, I did not let him lack for it; I did not quit him for an instant, I watched over him constantly. When he was better, Madame Duplay came to see him; she had not been informed of his indisposition, and made a great fuss because she had not been warned of it. She said some very disobliging things to me; she told me that my brother had not had all necessary care, that he would have been better cared for with her family, that he would lack for nothing; and that is what pressed Maximilien to return to her house; my brother at first refused weakly; she redoubled her insistences, I should say, her obsessions. Robespierre, despite my protests, decided finally to follow her. “They love me so,” he said to me, “they have such regard, such goodwill toward me, that it would be ingratitude on my part to repulse them.” This fact alone gives an idea of my brother Maximilien. He cedes to Madame Duplay, he resolves himself to leave his home, to become again a lodger in a foreign house, whale he has his house, his household, because he does not want to pain a person for whom he has friendship. I do not want to recriminate against him; far from me the thought of addressing reproaches to his memory; but in the end should he not have considered that his preference for Madame Duplay distressed me as much at least as his refusal could have afflicted this lady? Between Madame Duplay and me should he have hesitated? Should he have sacrificed me to her? After the disobliging words she had said, after having reproached me for having let my brother lack care, he who knew so well the contrary, should he not have reflected that leaving me to deliver himself to Madame Duplay’s care was to corroborate what she had said? And yet my brother loved me tenderly; his friendship for me was a thousand times stronger than that which he could have felt for a stranger; how then to explain the contradiction? Here it is: Maximilien was all devotion, he did not belong to himself, his life was a continual sacrifice, with great heart he hurt himself to please others; he did not hesitate thus, he who regarded me as a part of himself, to sacrifice me, as he sacrificed himself, so as not to affect a family who, by their caresses and kindnesses without number, had taken from him all methods of resistance. Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre… (1835) page 87-89. We have no date for when Maximilien moved out, and then back in, with the Duplays. Hamel places it in September of 1793, when he claims Robespierre was ”slightly indisposed.” Mary Young, biographer of Augustin, places it in early 1793, in time for Rosalie Jullien to report about a dinner with the three siblings where Charlotte would have told her their domestic morals consisted of ”simplicity and candor.” In his memoirs (seen below), Maurice Gaillard claims Charlotte in May 1794 told him that ”when my younger brother passed through Melun (that is to say, December 1793) the three of us were living together.” Élisabeth’s memoirs imply Charlotte still lived with the family in April 1793.

I said before that I had much to complain about regarding Madame Duplay, and certainly, if I were to report everything she did to me I would fill a fat volume. When my brother, in fear of disobliging her, once again became once a lodger in her house, I went to see him quite assiduously. One cannot have any idea of the disgraceful manner in which she received me. I would have pardoned her dishonesties, her impertinences; but I what I will never pardon her is a word, a dreadful word, that she pronounced on my account. I often sent my brother jams or fruit comfits, which he liked a lot, or other sweets; Madame Duplay always let her bad humor show every time she saw my domestic arrive. One day when I had charged her with bringing a few jars of jam to my brother, Madame Duplay said angrily to her: “Bring that back, I don’t want her to poison Robespierre.” My domestic returned in tears to tell me of Madame Duplay’s dreadful blasphemy. I remained stupefied and could not speak. How to believe it? In place of going to ask an explanation, in place of going to complain to my brother of the horrible words she had said, the fear of causing him pain, and of provoking a scene which could only be very disagreeable restrained me, and I swallowed in sadness my grief and indignation. Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre (1835) page 89-90

Robespierre the younger [was] nicknamed Bonbon, a repetition of his firstname Bon. Note written by the elderly Élisabeth Duplay Lebas, cited in Le conventionnel Le Bas : d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901). An indicator Augustin was called by his nickname within the Duplay family.

[Robespierre’s] host's daughter passed for his wife and exercised a sort of empire over him.  Causes secrètes de la révolution du 9 au 10 thermidor (1794) by Joachim Vilate, page 16

It has been rumored that this daughter [Éléonore] had been Robespierre's mistress. I think I can affirm she was his wife; according to the testimony of one of my colleagues, Saint-Just had been informed of this secret marriage, which he had attended. Mémoires d’un prêtre regicide (1829) by Simon-Edme Monnel, page 337-338

Madame Lebreton, a sweet and sensitive young woman, said, blushing: “Everyone assures that Eugénie [sic] Duplay was Robespierre’s mistress.” “Ah! My God! Is it possible that that good and generous creature should have so degraded herself?” I was aghast. “Listen,” cried Henriette, “don’t judge on appearances. The unhappy Eugénie was not the mistress, but the wife of the monster, whom her pure soul decorated with every virtue; they were united by a secret marriage of which Saint-Just was the witness.”  Souvernirs de 1793 et 1794 par madame Clément, Née Hémery (1832) by Albertine Clément-Hémery

The eldest of the Duplay daughters, who Robespierre wanted to marry, was called Éléonore. Robespierre allowed himself to be cared for, but he was not in love. […] The Duplay family formed a kind of cult around Robespierre. It was claimed that this new Jupiter did not need to take the metamorphoses of the god of Olympus to become human with the eldest daughter of his host, called Éléonore. This is completely false. Like her entire family, this young girl was a fanatic of the god Robespierre, she was even more exalted because of her age. But Robespierre did not like women, he was absorbed in his political enlightenment; his abstract dreams, his metaphysical discourses, his guards, his personal security, all things incompatible with love, gave him no hold on this passion. He loved neither women nor money and cared no more about his private interests than if all the merchants had been free, obligatory suppliers to him, and the inn houses paid in advance for his use. And that’s what he acted like this with his hosts. Notes historiques sur la Convention nationale, le Directoire, l’Empire et l’exil des votants (1895) by Marc Antoine Baudot, page 41 and 242.

All the historians assert that [Robespierre] carried out an intrigue with the daughter of Duplay, but as the family physician and constant guest of that house I am in a position to deny this on oath. They were devoted to each other, and their marriage was arranged; but nothing of the kind alleged ever sullied their love.   Testimony from Robespierre’s doctor Joseph Souberbielle, cited in Recollections of a Parisian (docteur Poumiès de La Siboutie) under six sovereigns, two revolutions, and a republic (1789-1863) (1911) page 26.

Madame Duplay had three [sic] daughters: one married the conventionnel Le Bas; another married, I believe, an ex-constituent; the third, Éléonore, who preferred to be called Cornélie, and who was the eldest, was, according to what people pleased themselves to say, on the point of marrying my brother Maximilien when 9 Thermidor came. There are in regard to Éléonore Duplay two opinions: one, that that she was the mistress of Robespierre the elder; the other that she was his fiancée. I believe that these opinions are equally false; but what is certain is that Madame Duplay would have strongly desired to have my brother Maximilien for a son-in-law, and that she forget neither caresses nor seductions to make him marry her daughter. Éléonore too was very ambitious to call herself the Citoyenne Robespierre, and she put into effect all that could touch Maximilien’s heart. But, overwhelmed with work and affairs as he was, entirely absorbed by his functions as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, could my older brother occupy himself with love and marriage? Was there a place in his heart for such futilities, when his heart was entirely filled with love for the patrie, when all his sentiments, all his thoughts were concentrated in a sole sentiment, in a sole thought, the happiness of the people; when, without cease fighting against the revolution’s enemies, without cease assailed by his personal enemies, his life was a perpetual combat? No, my older brother should not have, could not have amused himself to be a Celadon with Éléonore Duplay, and, I should add, such a role would not enter into his character. Besides, I can attest it, he told me twenty times that he felt nothing for Éléonore; her family’s obsessions, their importunities were more suited to make feel disgust for her than to make him love her. The Duplays could say what they wanted, but there is the exact truth. One can judge if he was disposed to unite himself to Madame Duplay’s eldest daughter by something I heard him say to Augustin:  “You should marry Éléonore.”  “My faith, no,” replied my younger brother.   Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1834) page 90-91.

We were five children: four daughters, Éléonore, Sophie, Victoire, Élisabeth; one brother named Maurice: he was the youngest of the family. My eldest sister was promised to Robespierre; my sister Sophie married M. Auzat, lawyer in Issoire, in Auvergne, under the Constituent; my sister Victoire never married. I married Philippe Le Bas. Note written by Élisabeth Duplay, cited on page 150 of Le conventionnel Le Bas : d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) by Stéfane-Pol.

Duplay's eldest daughter, Éléonore, shared her father's patriotic sentiments. She was one of those serious and just minds, one of those firm and upright characters, one of those generous and devoted hearts, the model of which must be sought in the good times of the ancient republics. Maximilien could not fail to pay homage to such virtues; a mutual esteem brought their two hearts together; they loved each other without ever having said so to each other, there is no doubt that if he had succeeded in bringing order and calm to the State, and if his existence had ceased to be so agitated, he would have become his friend's son-in-law. The slander, which spared none of those loved by the victim of the Thermidorians, did not fail to attack the woman he wanted to make his wife, and we were not afraid to write that a guilty bond united them. We, who knew Éléonore Duplay for nearly fifty years, we who know to what extent she carried the feeling of duty, to what extent she rose above the weaknesses and fragility of her sex, we strongly protest against such an odious imputation. Our testimony deserves all confidence. France: Dictionnaire Encyclopédique (1840-1845) by Philippe Lebas jr, volume 6, page 821.

A virile soul, said Robespierre of his friend [Éléonore], she would know how to die as she knows how to love... The destitution of her fortune and the uncertainty of the next day prevented him from uniting with her before the destiny of France was clarified; but he only aspired, he said, to the moment when, the Revolution finished and strengthened, he could withdraw from the fray, marry the one he loved and go live in Artois, on one of the farms that he kept from his family's property, to there confuse his obscure well-being in common happiness. (Extract from a part of l’Histoire des Girondins looked over by Philippe Le Bas). Le conventionnel Le Bas: d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) by Stéfane-Pol, page 78.

[Robespierre’s] relationship with Éléonore, the carpenter's eldest daughter, had a less protective and more tender character than with her other sisters. One day, Maximilien, in the presence of his hosts, took Éléonore's hand in his: it was, in accordance with the customs of his province, a sign of engagement. From that moment on he was seen more than ever as a member of the family. Une Maison de la Rue Saint-Honoré by Alphonse Ésquiros, published in Revue de Paris, number 9 (May 1 1844).

I have nothing but praise for Madame Duplay’s second [youngest] daughter, the one who married Lebas; she was not, like her mother and older sister, stirred up against me; many times she came to wipe away my tears, when Madame Duplay’s indignities made me cry. Her younger [sic, she means elder] sister was good like her. Both of them would have made me forget their mother and Éléonore’s lack of courtesy, if it had not been that these things once engraved in such an indelible manner in one’s heart, are not thereafter effaced. Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre (1835), page 91-92

[Charlotte] occupied an apartment in the front, in my father’s house on the Rue Saint-Honoré. I was also good friends with her, and it was a pleasure to go see her often; sometimes I even pleased myself to help her with her hair and her toilette. She too seemed to have much affection for me.  Memoirs of Élisabeth Duplay Lebas, cited in Le conventionnel Le Bas: d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) page 104. The friendship between Élisabeth and Charlotte is confirmed here.

Robespierre rarely dined outside of his house — six times at most during his stay on rue Saint-Honoré, said Buonarotti. Le conventionnel Le Bas: d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) by Stéfane-Pol, page 98. I was unable to discover the place where Buonarotti says this.

[Robespierre] rarely went out in the evening. Two or three times a year he took Madame Duplay and her daughters to the theater. It was always to the Théâtre-Français and to classical performances. He only liked tragic declamations which reminded him of the tribune, of tyranny, of the people, of great crimes, of great virtues; theatrical even in his dreams and in his relaxations. Histoire des Girondins (1847) by Alphonse de Lamartine, volume 4, page 132. Lamartine claimed to have interviewed Élisabeth Lebas Duplay (see below) and it therefore seems likely for this detail to come from her.

One day Camille familiarly enters the Duplay house; Robespierre was absent. He starts a conversation with the youngest of the carpenter's daughters; as he retires, Camille hands her a book he had under his arm. ”Elizabeth,” he said to her, ”do me the service of holding onto this work; I will come back for it.” No sooner had Desmoulins left than the young girl curiously half-opened the book entrusted to her custody: what was her confusion, seeing paintings of revolting obscenity pass under her fingers. She blushes: the book falls. All the rest of the day Elizabeth was silent and troubled; Maximilian noticed it; drawing her aside. "What's the matter with you," he asked her, "you look so worried to me?" The young girl lowered her head, and as an answer went to fetch the book with the odious engravings which had offended her sight. Maximilien opened the volume and turned pale. "Who gave you this?" he asked in a voice shaking with anger. The girl frankly told him what had happened. "It’s fine," Robespierre went on, "don't talk about what you've just told me to anyone: I'll make it my business. Don't be sad anymore. I'll let Camille know. It is not what enters involuntarily through the eyes that defiles chastity: it is the evil thoughts that one has in the heart.” He admonished his friend severely, and from that day on, visits from Camille Desmoulins became very rare.  Histoire des Montagnards (1847) by Alphonse Esquiros, volume 2, page 417-418. In his Histoire de la Révolution Française (1858) volume 10, page 345, Louis Blanc, who claimed to have had the story told to him by Esquiros, who in his turn had obtained it from Élisabeth, writes that the book Élisabeth was given was l’Arétin. Given the fact that Élisabeth in a list written in her old days still places Desmoulins among the revolutionaries who frequented the Duplay house ”often,” I imagiene this incident happened in 1793.

It was the day when Marat was borne in triumph to the Assembly (April 24 1793) that I saw my beloved Philippe Le Bas for the first time. I found myself, that day, at the National Convention with Charlotte Robespierre. Le Bas came to greet her; he stayed with us for a long time and asked who I was. Charlotte told him that I was one of her elder brother’s host’s daughters. He asked her a few questions about my family; he asked Charlotte if we came to the Assembly often, and said that on a particular day there would be a rather interesting session. He urged her to come to it. Charlotte asked my good mother for permission to take me there with her. At that time, my mother liked her a lot; she still had nothing to complain of. My mother was so good that she never refused her anything that could please her. She allowed me to accompany her many times. Therefore, I was with her at the Convention.  Memoirs of ��lisabeth Duplay Lebas, cited in Le conventionnel Le Bas : d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) page 102-104.

At last, Charlotte came to get me to be present at a [Convention] session which was to be quite noisy. Le Bas came up to me; for the first time, he addressed me to tell me quite good things. He told Charlotte that there would be a night session, that it should be quite interesting, that she should ask permission for me to come with her. Charlotte had no difficulty obtaining it. She was Robespierre’s sister, and my mother regarded her as her daughter. Poor mother! She believed Charlotte as pure and sincere as her brothers. Great God! This was not so!  We went therefore to that session. We had brought oranges and some sweets. Charlotte offered some to Le Bas and to her younger brother. These messieurs, after having stayed with us for some time, left us to go vote. I asked Charlotte if I could offer Le Bas an orange; she said yes. I was happy to be able to show him some attention. He accepted with pleasure. How good and respectful he seemed to me! As I said already, Mademoiselle Robespierre seemed pleased with me.  At another session of the Assembly, where we once again found ourselves together, she took a ring from me that I had on my finger. Le Bas saw and asked her to let him see it, which she did. He looked at the figure that was engraved on it, and he was obliged, at that moment, to go away to give his vote, without having the time to return the ring, which caused me great torment; for he could not return it to me, and I no longer had it on my finger. Our good mother was dear to all of us and we trembled to cause her pain. At that same session, Le Bas had lent us, Charlotte and I, a lorgnette. He returned, for a moment, to speak to Mlle Robespierre of what had just happened in the session; I wanted to return his lorgnette to him; he did not want to take it back and said that we were going to have need of it again. He begged me keep it. He went away again, and, at that moment I pleaded with Charlotte to ask him for my ring back; she promised me to do so, but we didn’t see Le Bas again. He had charged Robespierre the Younger with making his excuses and telling us that he had found himself indisposed and had been obliged to leave, quite to his regret. And myself too, I regretted no longer having my ring and not being able to return his lorgnette to him. I feared to displease my mother and be scolded; this was a great torment to me. My mother was good, but very severe. Charlotte said, to console me: “If your mother asks you for your ring, I will tell her how it happened.” All this made me quite unhappy: it was the first time such a thing had happened to me. From that time, we did not have occasion to return to the Convention again. Charlotte told me to be calm about what tormented me so. She also told me that M. Le Bas was quite sick and could no longer return to the Assembly. I admit that this news made a great impression on me. I could not take account of it: I, so young and so gay, I became sad and pensive; everyone observed my sadness, even Robespierre, who asked me if I had some sorrow; I assured him that nothing was wrong, that my mother had not scolded me, that I could not take account of what I was feeling. He said kindly: “Little Élisabeth, think of me as your best friend, as a good brother; I’ll give you all the advice one needs at your age.” Later, he saw how much confidence I had in him. Memoirs of Élisabeth Lebas Duplay, cited in Le conventionnel Le Bas : d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) page 102-207

For some time, my health had been less good; my parents observed this and resolved to send me to stay a month in the country, with Mme Panis (in Chaville). She had all a mother’s cares for me; she took me walking in very beautiful gardens. One day, among others, she took me to Sèvres, to a country house inhabited by Danton. I had never seen him; but great God! How ugly he was! We found him with a lot of people, walking in a very beautiful garden. He came to us and asked Mme Panis who I was; she replied that I was one of Robespierre’s host’s daughters. He told her I appeared to be suffering, that I needed a good [boy]friend, that this would return me to health. He had the sort of repulsive features that frighten one. He came up to me, wanted to take my waist and kiss me. I repulsed him forcefully, though I was still quite weak. I was very young; but his face scared me so much that I pleaded insistently with Mme Panis not to bring me back to that house; I told her that this man had said horrible things to me, such as I had never heard. He had no respect for women, and still less for young people. […] I did not even want to stay in the country anymore; but my brother came to see me, and we passed a few more days there; and we departed once more for Paris. God! How happy I was to see my parents again! I had such a need to recount everything to my mother! The horrid mien of that man followed me everywhere. My mother did not find my health much better; she asked me several questions, asked what I had done in Chaville and if I had had fun there, if I had gone on many walks and where we had been. Poor mother! I could hide nothing from her; she seemed very perturbed by what I told her and asked me if I would like to return to Sèvres again; but I said no with such emphasis that she no longer spoke to me on the subject. I was still quite sad; our good friend Robespierre tried every means of finding out what was wrong with me, told me that this sadness was not natural at my age, and so much the more since I had always been cheerful until then. What could I say to him? I could not resolve myself to explain the reasons for my sadness to him! Upon my return I went to see Charlotte; I feared to speak to her about Le Bas; I was afraid she would think it was only about the ring. She seemed happy to see me and also found me changed. I asked her then if it had been a long time since she had gone to the Convention; she said yes and I could learn no more from her. Memoirs of Élisabeth Lebas, cited in Ibid, page 108-110

It was after these two months of absence that I saw my beloved again (that would be July-August 1793). My mother, having gone one day to dine in the countryside with Robespierre, had left us, my sister Victoire and I, at the house, recommending that we should go reserve seats at the Jacobins for the evening session, at which it was thought that Robespierre would speak (the days when he was to be heard there was always so large a crowd that one was forced to reserve seats in advance). I went alone and arrived early so as not to miss out. What was my surprise and joy when I saw my beloved! […] ”Robespierre [said Lebas] came one day; he was the only man from whom I could have gotten news of you; but how unhappy I was! I did not know I how to ask him. Finally, it occurred to me to speak to him of his hosts; he praised the entire family most highly, spoke to me of the happiness he felt to be among people so pure, so devoted to liberty. I already knew this from several of my friends; but, my Élisabeth, he did not speak to me of you. My God! How I suffered for many days. This time was so long… Robespierre the younger came at last to see me. What joy for me! I was more familiar with him: we were of the same age. We spoke of his brother. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself; I spoke to him of your family, of your sisters; I spoke to him of you, my Élisabeth. He praised you, told me that he had the friendship of a brother for you, that you were cheerful and good and that it was you who he loved the most, that your good mother was excellent, that she had raised you well, as housewives, that your household was perfect and recalled the golden age, that everything there breathed virtue and a pure patriotism, that your good father was the most worthy and generous of men, that his whole life had passed in goodness. He told me that his brother was very happy to be among you, that you were a family to him, that he loved you like sisters and regarded your father and mother as his own parents. If you could have known, my Elisabeth, how happy I was to hear him speak thus of a family I already honored, and whose conduct toward Robespierre, toward the friend of liberty, had made me recognize and esteem! I wished for the return of my health in order to be able to meet you like in the past with Charlotte…” Memoirs of Élisabeth Duplay Lebas, cited in Ibid (1901) page 110, 114-115.

[After Lebas had asked my mother for my hand] I passed a very agitated night; my mother, returning to the house, had spoken to my father of the conversation she had just had with M. Le Bas; I admit to my shame that, from a room next to theirs, I heard their conversation. My father seemed happy; but my mother still wanted to marry off my sisters before me. Finally, I heard my father call our good friend: he was so good that we loved him better than a brother. My father informed him of the subject of the conversation and told him: “My friend, it’s our Élisabeth, our scatterbrain, that M. Le Bas is asking us in marriage.”  “I congratulate you on it,” he replied, “so much the better. Élisabeth will be happy; my dear friend, don’t hesitate for a moment: Le Bas is the worthiest of men by all accounts; he is a good son, a good friend, a good citizen, a man of talent; he’s a distinguished lawyer.” That good Maximilien seemed happy to see me asked in marriage by his compatriot and pleaded in our favor with my parents; he added: “This union will, I believe, make for Élisabeth’s happiness; they are in love; they will be happy together.” He praised me and my good friend; my mother made a few more objections on my distractedness; but our friend assured her that I would be a good wife and a good housekeeper. It was almost one in the morning when he retired to his room, wishing my father and mother a good night. I then heard my father say: “There is no reason to hesitate after the way Robespierre has just praised his friend.” […] [The following day] the good Robespierre came to share our happiness [of Françoise and Maurice giving Lebas Élisabeth’s hand]; that good friend said to me: “Be happy, Babet, you deserve it; you are made for each other.” Then my father, Robespierre, Le Bas and my mother took chocolate together while I returned to my work; the conversation lasted until after eleven o’clock. I was still in the dining room when Le Bas crossed it to go out; he took my hand and said: “Goodbye, my beloved, I’m dining with you, your worthy family, and our friend Robespierre.” Memoirs of Élisabeth Duplay Lebas, cited in Ibid (1901) page 117-118, 120.

M. Le Bas continued to come assiduously to my parents’ home. One evening, he appeared sad to me, he who, until then, had always showed himself to be so cheerful and so happy with me. He was worried and a bit cold. I wanted to know the cause of this change and asked him whether he was still ill; he replied that he was not but that something he had learned recently had much afflicted him; he hesitated to confide it to me; however I insisted and I then learned from him that a man of his acquaintance had abused me to him, and had strongly discouraged him from marrying me, seeking to make him believe that I had had lovers and that one of them ought to marry me, adding that my father had no fortune, that moreover I was uneducated, that finally, as a compatriot, he owed him the whole truth, and that, in his interest, he strongly advised him not to make a fool of himself by marrying me, and that if would be easy for him to do better than me, insisting that I had had affairs, and telling him that he would do well not to rely on me. I could see that these calumnies had made an impression on my friend’s thoughts. I was profoundly afflicted my this, and I told him: “As far as education goes, if mine has not been very broad, nature has gifted me with a pure heart, and good and tender parents, who have raised us wisely and given us an education capable of making us virtuous women.” As to the infamies that had been produced to him on my account, I told him that I was quite pained to see that my Philippe could have believed them, and I cried much in speaking to him. He then sought every means to console me, told me that he did not believe those calumnies, but that, despite himself, he had felt great sorrow in thinking that she whom he had chosen for a wife could be suspected of being capable of deceiving him. “You do me much wrong,” I told him; “I will tell everything to our good friend Robespierre. He will be very cross to learn that you could have believed the ill that had been said of me. He knows how good and yet how strict our parents are, and how they raised us.” He saw my distress and finally named Guffroy [as the calumniator]; he was a printer and bookseller. He left me that evening in assuring me that he wanted to believe only me, and promised me that he would come the next morning early, in order to pray my parents to marry as early as possible. […] My good mother, who was working with my sisters in a room next to the little chamber in which we had been talking, had heard a few words of our long conversation and seen that I had been crying. She had great confidence in Philippe after what Robespierre had said of him, and we were engaged. That good mother told me to go speak to her in her room before going to bed. I went therefore to find her and recounted everything Philippe had told me to her. She proposed that I should speak to our friend about it and told me: “You must hid nothing from him; he knows Philippe, and he will tell us if he knows the villain who spoke so odiously; we must get to the bottom of this; it is a question of your honor.” I could see that this afflicted my mother greatly and I feared too to cause Robespierre pain. Memoirs of Élisabeth Duplay Lebas, cited in Ibid (1901) page 121-123, 120. In his Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices… (1795) page 116, Guffroy admitted that he had attempted to stop the marriage between Lebas and Élisabeth, writing: ”This young man (Lebas) for whom I had held esteem, and whom I had sometimes kept company during an illness, stopped seeing me when I saw him assiduously frequenting Hébert and David; and when I told him the truth about Duplay's daughter whom he married despite the truthful stories I told him.”

[The day after he had told me about the Guffroy incident], during dinner, Philippe spoke to Robespierre of everything that had happened. Our good brother scolded Philippe and told him that he was very wrong of him not to have spoken to him about it first, because it would have spared much chagrin to both us. “Poor little one,” he said to me, “be cheerful again, this is nothing. Philippe does indeed love you; he is happy to have his Élisabeth.” He took our hands and pressed them together; he seemed to give us his blessing. Poor friend! You had for our parents the tenderness of a good son and for us the tender friendship of a good brother; which we returned, for we loved you sincerely! After dinner, I heard my Philippe ask my parents to fix the date of our wedding, saying that he would be happiest with the earliest possible date. Robespierre supported his request and said: “He’s right; we must get this marriage over with.” My parents asked that it take place in two décades, in order to have time to prepare my trousseau and our lodging. My father, the owner at that time of several houses, had a vacant one at that moment in the Rue de l’Arcade; he gave us lodging there and everything was promptly settled for the agreed-upon date. But, great God! What chagrin came to strike us again! At the moment of being united, we were separated. My friend was obliged to go promptly to the army. The Committee of Public Safety had just named him [representative on mission] and enjoined him to depart the same day; he barely had time to pack his trunk and have something to eat; he came in haste to bid us adieu; the post-chaise was at our door. He departed with his cousin Duquesnoy, a pure man of integrity, a devoted patriot. Judge of the sorrow of my beloved and of mine! To see ourselves separated on the eve of being united! I could not prevent myself from saying to Robespierre that he was doing us much ill.  “My good Élisabeth,” he replied, “the homeland above all else when it is in danger; this departure is indispensable, my friend; you must have courage; he will return soon; his presence his necessary where he is being sent. You will be much happier, as patriotic as you are, to see him return after having rendered a great service to his country.” I was so distressed that I did not want to be a patriot any longer. I reproached him for having made my Philippe leave; he replied that having to fulfill such a mission spoke very highly of him, especially in a moment such as the one where we then found ourselves; that men like him were necessary in a moment like this. He sought, as well as my good parents, to console me, but it was useless; I was inconsolable. My health suffered greatly for it; this alarmed my family and our friend, who indeed promised me to seize upon a favorable moment to have him return. It would still be quite a long time, but we had to wait: I had confidence in our friend; I knew that he would do all in his power to have Le Bas return to Paris and have him replaced by one of his colleagues. Philippe wrote to me often and charged me to tell Robespierre that if he did not find a means of having him return, he would see himself as forced to absent himself for a few days to come to Paris, get married, and bring me back with him, for it was impossible for him to bear our separation any longer; that he could not live as he was and would fall ill. I insisted so energetically to Robespierre, I obsessed over it so often, that that good friend found a way to have my Philippe return; [this last] wrote me to pray our parents to have everything ready for the moment of his return. He arrived, and everything being ready, we were married at the [Hôtel de] Ville, by Lebert; it was 10 Fructidor (26 August 1793). What joy for us, and how happy I was! I believed that I would never again be separated from my husband; but alas! It had to be otherwise. Memoirs of Élisabeth Duplay Lebas, cited in Ibid (1901) page 126-128. 

The (Lebas) marriage certificate states that it was celebrated at the Commune on August 26 1793, in the presence of Jacques-Louis David, 43, deputy, residing at the Louvre; Jacques-René Hébert, Deputy Public Prosecutor of the Commune, rue Neuve de l'Égalité. Witnesses of the spouses: Maximilien Robespierre, deputy rue Saint-Honoré, section des Piques; J.-Pierre Vaugeois, 61 years old, carpenter, uncle of the wife. The document is signed: Le Bas, Élisabeth Duplay, Hébert, David, Vaugeois. Ibid (1901) page 164.

Duplay has rented to Robespierre the older and the younger for the term and from the first of October 1793, old style, the small apartment at the back where we are, fully furnished, as well as an unfurnished apartment in the main building on the Rüe, all for the sum of one thousand pounds per year and without a lease, all for the sum of thousand pounds per year and this without a lease. The lease decided between Augustin, Maximilien and Maurice, cited in Notes et Glanes (1908).

Robespierre was choked with bile. His yellow eyes and complexion announced it. So Duplay was careful to serve him for dessert (in all seasons of the year) a pyramid of oranges, which Robespierre ate with avidity. He was insatiable; no one dared touch this sacred fruit. No doubt its acidity divided Robespierre's bilious humor and facilitated circulation. It was easy to distinguish the place that Robespierre had occupied at the table, by the mounds of orange peels which covered his plate. One noticed that he became more relaxed as he ate it. Stanislas Fréron’s ”Notes on Robespierre,” published in Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, Saint-Just, Payan, etc., supprimés ou omis par Courtois; précédés du rapport de ce député à la Convention nationale (1828) volume 1, page 157. 

At that time, Daillet had acquired the trust of Robespierre the older, so much so that he was the only one who had the talent to tie his cravat the way he wished: because he was so difficult, that he had it untied and tied several times. In the absence of Daillet, the Duplay girls rendered him this service. It is a rather singular thing that Robespierre the elder was able to make people believe in his sobriety; he was not greedy, it is true, when it came to common dishes, such as boiled meat, of which he hardly ate: but he needed some refinement and delicacies. At Pétion’s house, the only time Robespierre took me there; I saw the latter eating a pot of fine jams, which were very expensive at the time. The Duplays went leagues away to get him the dishes he wanted; they stuffed him with fine oranges, and when he had to speak to the Jacobins, father Duplay knew to give him a few shots of old wine. So he hardly liked to dine in town, because he knew how people dined there. Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices… (1795) by Armand-Joseph Guffroy, page 417. The claim in particular that the Duplays fed Robespierre oranges reappears here. It can be noted that Élisabeth too mentions she and Charlotte brought oranges to the Convention in her memoirs.

…This carpenter, a member of the Society of Jacobins, had met Robespierre at its meetings; with the whole of his household he had become an enthusiastic worshipper at the shrine of the popular orator, and had obtained for himself the honor of securing him both as boarder and lodger. In his leisure moments Robespierre was wont to comment on Emile of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and explain it to the children of the carpenter, just as a good village parish priest expounds the Gospel to his flock. Touched and grateful for this evangelistic solicitude, the children and apprentices of the worthy artisan would not suffer his guest, the object of their hero-worship, to go into the street without escorting him to the door of the National Convention, for the purpose of watching over his precious life, which his innate cowardice and the flattery of his courtiers were beginning to make him believe threatened in every possible way by the aristocracy, who were seeking to destroy the incorruptible tribune of the people. It was necessary, in order to reach the eminent guest deigning to inhabit this humble little hole of a place, to pass through a long alley flanked with planks stacked there, the owner's stock-in-trade. This alley led to a little yard from seven to eight feet square, likewise full of planks. A little wooden staircase led to a room on the first floor. Prior to ascending it we perceived in the yard the daughter of the carpenter Duplay, the owner of the house. This girl allowed no one to take her place in ministering to Robespierre's needs. As women of this class in those days freely espoused the political ideas then prevalent, and as in her case they were of a most pronounced nature, Danton had surnamed Cornelie Copeau "the Cornelia who is not the mother of the Gracchi." Cornelie seemed to be finishing spreading linen to dry in the yard; in her hand were a pair of striped cotton stockings, in fashion at the time, and which were certainly similar to those we daily saw encasing the legs of Robespierre on his visits to the Convention. Opposite her sat Mother Duplay between a pail and a saladbasket, busily engaged in picking salad herbs. Two men in military garb, standing close to her in a respectful attitude, seemed to be taking part in the duties of the household, obligingly picking herbs, in order to be free to chat more unrestrainedly under the shelter of this familiar occupation. These two men, since famous in their respective positions, were, the one General Danican, who since then, on the 13th Vendemiaire, became impressed with the idea that he was a Royalist, and who perhaps still retains the belief because he is one of England's pensioners; the other was General, later on Marshal, Brune. Freron and I told Cornelie Copeau that we had called to see Robespierre. She began by informing us that he was not in the house, then asked whether he was expecting our visit. Freron, who was familiar with the premises, advanced towards the staircase, while Mother Duplay shook her head in a negative fashion at her daughter. Both generals, smilingly enjoying what was passing through the two women's minds, told us plainly by their looks that he was at home, and to the women that he was not. Cornelie Copeau, on seeing that Freron, persisting in his purpose, had his foot on the third step, placed herself in front of him, exclaiming: ”Well, then, I will apprise him of your presence," and, tripping upstairs, she again called out, "It’s Fréron and his friend, whose name I do not know." Fréron thereupon said, "It’s Barras and Freron," as if announcing himself, entering the while Robespierre's room, the door of which had been opened by Cornelie Copeau, we following her closely. Memoirs of Barras: member of the Directorate (1899) page 167-169, regarding a meeting he and Fréron tried to have with Robespierre following their return from Marseilles in March 1794.

Those whom fate did not lead to the Duplay family presume that it was enough to be introduced to them to see Robespierre: they are wrong; I appeal to the testimony of all his former friends; not one could reach him: the entrance to his residence, similar to Tartarus, was constantly guarded by Cerberians who overshadowed everything... You, whom terror has compressed for so long, have you understood it well? No: to feel its full weight, compelling circumstances would often have had to drag you into its temple, where the sinister look of a Chalabre was sometimes equivalent to a death sentence; where once suspected your loss was sworn, which you accelerated even by no longer going there. À Maximilien Robespierre aux Enfers (1794) by Paul-Auguste Taschereau-Fargues, page 11.

Duplay was a poor carpenter, who had little idea that he was destined to play a sort of role in the revolution, and that his name would become almost historic. When the constituent assembly was transferred to Paris after the October days, Robespierre came to stay in the house of Duplay, located on rue Saint-Honoré, opposite the convent of Assomption, and wasted no time in becoming a zealous devotee. The father, the mother, the sons, the daughters, the cousins, etc, swore only by Robespierre, who deigned to raise the eldest of the two [sic] daughters to the honors of his bed, without however marrying her other than with the left hand. At the time of the organization of the revolutionary tribunal, Robespierre had father Duplay appointed as juror; the two sons had a distinguished rank among Maximilien I’s bodyguards, whose leader was Brigadier General Boulanger. Mother Duplay became superior of the devotees of Robespierre; and her daughters, as well as her nieces and several of her neighbors, obtained high ranks in this respectable body. Souvenirs thermidoriens (1844) by Georges Duval, volume 1, page 247.

I must not, moreover, pass over in silence the picture that you (Lamartine) give us of the private space where Robespierre lived with admirable simplicity of morals. Never has your imagination shown itself more poetic or more creative than in this painting of an interior life where all the virtues of the golden age reigned. The chaste loves of Robespierre for the eldest daughter of this house, the patriarchal habits of this family, the innocent pleasure she took in hearing Maximilien read to her the verses of the tender Racine, inspire the sweetest interest. But monsieur, is this really how one is allowed to write history, and contemporary history? The excellent father of the family of whom you speak in such touching terms, this brave craftsman, who should have remained a carpenter, was nothing less than a member of this revolutionary tribunal whose servile barbarity you yourself have so eloquently condemned. His wife, fanaticized by Robespierre, appeared every day in the stands of the Convention or the Jacobins, which were certainly not a school of gentle philosophy. Finally, no one is unaware that this unfortunate woman hanged herself in the prison where the revolution of 9 Thermidor had brought her. Would she have met such a cruel end had she had the housekeeping virtues, the pure and modest qualities that your gallant imagination likes to attribute to her? You say, I do not know thanks to what information, that she was put to death by furious women; but you provide no proof to support this assertion, contrary to all the reports published in 1794. It is fair, moreover, to say that the young family of the carpenter was in good faith in their enthusiasm for Robespierre; and that once it had recovered from its illusions, it did not take long for it to be esteemed by good people through the gentleness of its morals and character. I like to recognize this truth! Le Robespierre de M. de Lamartine : lettre d’un septuagénaire à l’auteur de l’Histoire des Girondins, (1848) by Fabien Pillet, page 7-8.

A young and pretty person aged 17 to 18, accompanied by her aunt, arrives one morning, by carriage, at Robespierre's door, to ask for her father's liberation. These two women speak to Mother Duplay, who they ask if Robespierre is avaliable. “No,” this she-cat replies abruptly. This initial reception intimidated the young person so much that, without daring to open her mouth, she sadly returned to her carriage. As she was about to climb into it, she said to herself that the way in which she had been received was perhaps the result of a lack of formality towards this woman whom, due to her dirty and disgusting attire, she took for the servant of the house. She therefore returns, the 25 livres assignat in hand, to try to make the female dragon yield. Femme Duplay eagerly runs to meet her, and, grabbing her by the arm, says to her: “Now that you are alone, you can go up. Citizen Robespierre really likes young people your age.” This innocent girl got so disturbed that she immediately went back to her aunt, whom she told, completely frightened, about her adventure. I have from the mouths of irrefutable witnesses the following anecdote: One of the pleasures of this tyrant was to provoke with harsh words the sensitivity of young people who came to ask for some grace, and at the moment when they shed tears in abundance, he would take out his handkerchief and hasten, with a sort of interest, to wipe away the tears of his victims. Racine put this verse into Nero's mouth, about Junie: I loved even the tears which I made her flow. Notes et souvenirs de Courtois de l’Aube, député à la Convention nationale, cited in La Révolution française: revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (1887), volume 12, page 929-930.

Simon Duplay, nephew of Duplay the carpenter, with whom Robespierre lived, served as Robespierre's secretary. He had collected many facts about this famous character and he was the only one capable of giving true memoirs on Robespierre. He died two or three years ago without having published anything. Moreover, Simon Duplay could only have done it from memory, because all his papers were seized as well as those of his patron. He was thrown into prison with the entire Duplay family. It is remarkable in the imprisonment of this family that one of the young ladies Duplay (Sophie), married to a husband strongly opposed to the Revolution, was found after much research and imprisoned for having borne the name Duplay. Simon Duplay was an ardent young man, full of spirit, who had enlisted voluntarily at the start of the Revolution, and he had been wounded and amputated: at the time of 9 Thermidor he was using a wooden leg. He wrote under Robespierre's dictation, and if necessary served as his secretary. There is no need to say that he was poorly paid. In those days, zeal did everything. Notes historiques sur la Convention nationale, le Directoire, l’Empire et l’exil des votants, (1893) by Marc-Antoine Baudot, page 40. Note written 12 July 1829.

One evening, at table, Robespierre vaguely inquired about what [Maurice] had done at the revolutionary tribunal, where he had sat during the day: “Maximilien,” Duplay replied, “I never ask you (vous) what you do at the Committee of Public Safety.” Robespierre understood the discretion of his old friend, and, without saying a word, he shook his hand affectionately. Histoire de Robespierre (1867) by Ernest Hamel, volume 3, page 289. In a footnote, Hamel claims to have had this anecdote told to him by Philippe Lebas jr.

Did your uncle lodge the Robespierre brothers? Yes, but Robespierre the younger left it after his return from the army of Italy, to instead go and live on rue Florentin. Interrogation of Simon Duplay, held January 1 1795, cited in Les divisions dans les comités de gouvernement à la veille du 9 thermidor d’après quelques documents inédits (1915) by Albert Mathiez. It is unknown if Simon is referring to Augustin’s first return from the army of Italy (December 1793) or his second one (June 1794) here. In her memoirs, Charlotte writes Augustin went to live with a colleague by the name of Record during the first leave in Paris, while a letterfrom her to him dated July 6 1794 indicates he planned to settle in the apartment on Rue Saint-Florentin the three siblings briefly moved into after his second return.

”When my younger brother passed through Melun,” said Mlle Robespierre, ”all three of us were living together; I still hoped to be able to bring back the older, to snatch him from the wretches who obsess over him and lead him to the scaffold. They felt that my brother would eventually escape them if I regained his confidence, they destroyed me entirely in his mind; today he hates the sister who served as his mother… For several months he has been living alone, and although lodged in the same house, I no longer have the power to approach him… I loved him tenderly, I still do… His excesses are the consequence of the domination under which he groans, I am sure of it, but knowing no way to break the yoke he has allowed himself to be placed under, and no longer able to bear the pain and the shame of to see my brother devote his name to general execration, I ardently desire his death as well as mine. Judge of my unhappiness!… But let’s return to what interests you. The addresses to the king on the events of 1792 are already far from us; it seems to me that the signatures of these addresses are persecuted less than those who protested against the day of May 31. Try to see Maximilien, you will be content; he was very glad that our younger brother saw you at Melun. On this occasion he spoke with interest of the exercises of your pupils and of the attention you had in entrusting him with presiding over them. I won’t introduce you to him, I would not succeed; I even advise you not to speak to him about me. You will be told he is out, don't believe it, insist on your visit.”

The Robespierre family was housed on rue Saint-Honoré, near the Assomption chapel, the sister and younger brother at the front, the older brother at the back of the courtyard. Gaillard went to Maximilien’s apartment; a young man, looking at him with the most insolent air, said to him, barely having opened the door: “The representative isn’t home…”

“He may not be there for those who come to talk to him about business, but that is not my doing; I will talk to him about his family that I know a lot, you have seen me come out of his sister's apartment who is involved in state affairs no more than I am... Bring my name to the representative, he will receive me, I’m sure of it.”

The fellow did not dare refuse to carry a paper on which Gaillard had taken care to indicate himself in such a way as to be recognized, he immediately came back and gave the visitor his paper saying: “The representative does not know you,” and the door was violently slammed shut!…

The insolence of this brazen man whom Gaillard knew to be the secretary of Robespierre, son of Duplay, to whom the sister attributed the excesses of his brother, the sorrow he felt at losing the hope of saving the judges of Melun and to ensure his personal rest, all these thoughts made him very angry; he calls the young man a liar, insolent, he accuses him of deceiving Robespierre and of increasing the number of his enemies every day, all this in the loudest voice with the intention of being heard by Maximilien and lure him to one of the windows where, surely, he would have recognized him. New disappointment, no one appears and Gaillard goes back to tell Mlle Robespierre about his misadventure.

“I prepared you for it, she told him. ”No one can approach my brother unless he is a friend of those Duplays, with whom we are lodging; these wretches have neither intelligence nor education, explain to me their ascendancy over Maximilien. However, I do not despair of breaking the spell that holds him under their yoke; for that I am awaiting the return of my other brother, who has the right to see Maximilien. If the discovery I just made doesn't rid us of this race of vipers forever, my family is forever lost. You know what a miserable state we found ourselves in, reduced to alms, my brothers and I, if the sister of our father hadn’t taken us in. It’s strange that you didn’t often notice how much her husband’s brusqueness and formality made us pay dearly for the bread he gave us; but you must also have noticed that if indigence saddened us, it never degraded us and you always judged us incapable of containing money through a dubious action. Maximilien, who makes me so unhappy, has never given a hold, as you know, in terms of delicacy. Imagiene his fury when he learns that these miserable Duplays are using his name and his credit to get themselves the rarest goods at a low price from the merchants. So while all of Paris is forced to line up at the baker's shop every morning to get a few ounces of black, disgusting bread, the Duplays eat very good bread because the Incorruptible sits at their table: the same pretext provides them with sugar, oil, soap of the best quality, which the inhabitant of Paris would seek in vain in the best shops... How my brother's pride would be humiliated if he knew the abuse that these wretches make of his name! What would become of his popularity, even among his most ardent supporters? Certainly my brother is very proud, it is in him a capital fault; you must remember, you and I have often lamented the ridicule he made for himself by his vanity, the great number of enemies he made for himself by his disdainful and contemptuous tone, but he is not bloodthirsty. Certainly he believes he can overthrow his adversaries and his enemies by the superiority of his talent.” La Révolution, la Terreur, le Directoire 1791-1799: d’après les mémoires de Gaillard (1908) page 263-266. This anecdote implies Charlotte had moved back in with the Duplays somewhere before May 1794, when it is described as taking place.

On Floréal 18 (May 7 1794), I wrote to Robespierre, having been unable to meet him both at the Committee of Public Safety and at his house. This man, to whom many people ran, was never able to get hold of me, nor lure me into his home. The Duplays, his hosts, had extended invitations to me; but my wife told them: Robespierre is younger than my husband; let him come to us if he wants to see him. To be useful, at that time, I wanted to see him; but I could not obtain it. I only met him once, on my way from the Convention to the Committee of Public Safety: it was then that he told me that Sains-Just [sic] and Lebas were going to leave. Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices… (1795) by Armand-Joseph Guffroy, page 72-73. Does this imply the Duplays were willing to invite Guffroy to their place even after he had slandered Élisabeth?

Robespierre believed in the Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul. How many times he scolded me when I did not seem to believe with the same fervor as he! He said to me: “You are greatly mistaken! You will be unhappy not to believe; you are still quite young, Élisabeth! Consider that it is the only consolation on earth!” Note written by Élisabeth Duplay, cited on page 150 of Le conventionnel Le Bas : d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) by Stéfane-Pol.

In the morning, the daughters of the carpenter with whom Robespierre lived dressed in white and gathered flowers in their hands to attend the feast [of the Supreme Being]. Éléonore herself composed the bouquet for the president of the Convention. The sun had risen without a cloud, everything in nature was laughing, and the four young sisters were touched in advance by the solemn character of the ceremony which was being prepared: the spring of the year was getting married for them in the spring of the age and innocence. They had heard Maximilien speak more than once about the existence of God. He had read to them, in the winter evenings, beautiful pages from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his master, on the Author of nature and on the immortality of the soul. The time having come to go to the Tuileries garden, the head of the house, Duplay, delighted to see his daughters so pious and so charming, placed a kiss on the forehead of each of them to bring them good luck. They left with joy in their souls. The craftsman's family only returned to their father's house at nightfall. How the faces had changed! It was no longer this joy of the morning, this enthusiasm of young girls who, fresh and naive, advanced, like the virgins of Judea, to meet the Lord; Murmurs and sinister warnings had been heard in the crowd. A cloud was on all fronts. Robespierre seemed sad and resigned: “I know well,” he said, looking at his hosts, “the fate reserved for me; you won't see me for much longer; I will not have the consolation of witnessing the reign of my ideas; I leave you my memory to defend; the death that I will soon suffer is not an evil: death is the beginning of immortality.” He was silent. A gloomy presentiment froze hearts. They separated for the night. Histoire des Montagnards (1847) by Alphonse Esquiros, volume 2, page 447-449. In a footnote inserted on page 28 of Thermidor, d’après les sources originalets er les documents authentiques (1891), Ernest Hamel writes that Esquiros obtained this description from Élisabeth herself.

This letter will be delivered to you under the address of my wife, because I do not have the greatest confidence in your secretary and in many other people that surround you. It is still friendship that makes me speak like this. Letter from Antoine Buissart to Maximilien, June 28 1794. Could it be Charlotte, who reached Arras on May 17 and left it around the time this letter was written, who inspired this mistrust of the Duplays in Buissart?

…Éléonore, Victoire, Sophie, Élisabeth, raised in the peaceful interior of the home, in the oasis of the family, sincerely imagined that the same happiness extended to the whole city; they blessed in their hearts the God of the revolution who had given such rest to the French nation. Only one circumstance worried them, it was that for some time the porte-cochère of the house had been strictly closed night and day on orders from the carpenter. Éléonore timidly asked Maximilien the reason for it in front of her other sisters. He blushed “Your father is right,” he said; ”Everyday right now something passes along this street that you must not see.” In fact, around two o'clock in the afternoon, a tumbril was rolling heavily on the pavement of Rue Saint-Honoré; the sound of horses and the cries of people could be heard even in the courtyard. It was the thing that passed by. Une Maison de la Rue Saint-Honoré by Alphonse Ésquiros, published in Revue de Paris, number 9 (May 1 1844). The incident is portayed as happening during the time of the ”great terror” of June-July 1794. When republishing the anecdote in his Histoire des Montagnards (1847), Esquiros instead has Robespierre say this on January 21 1793, the day of the king’s execution.

The day before he had planned to deliver [the speech of 8 thermidor] before the National Convention, [Robespierre] went out with his secretary, Simon Duplay, the soldier from Valmy, the one they called Duplay with the wooden leg, and took him to the Chaillot promenade at the top of the Champ-Elysées. He appeared cheerful and playful, even going after the very abundant cockchafers this year. Nevertheless, at times, a cloud seemed to veil his countenance, and he felt himself gripped by some sort of wave. Thermidor: d'après les sources originales et les documents authentiques avec un portrait de Robespierre gravé sur acier (1897) by Ernest Hamel, page 241-242. In a footnote, Hamel claims this information was provided to him by ”Doctor Duplay, son of Duplay.”

It was the first days of Thermidor: Maximilien continued his evening walks at the Champ-Élysées with his adoptive family. The sun, at the end of the sky, buried its globe behind the clumps of trees, or swam softly here and there in a dark gold fluid. The sounds of the city died away in the agitated branches; everything was rest, silence and meditation: no more tribunes, no more people; nothing but the peaceful and solemn teaching of nature. Maximilien walked with the carpenter's eldest daughter at his arm: Brount followed them. What were they saying to each other? Only the breeze heard and forgot everything. Éléonore had a melancholy brow and downcast eyes: her hand carelessly stroked the head of Brount who seemed very proud of such beautiful caresses; Maximilien showed his fiancée how red the sunset was. Here ends the story of intimate life; here Mme L(ebas) movedly wiped her eyes. This walk was the last. The next day, Maximilien disappeared in a storm. Une Maison de la Rue Saint-Honoré by Alphonse Ésquiros, published in Revue de Paris, number 9 (May 1 1844). When republishing the anecdote in Histoire des Montagnards (1847), volume 2, page 460, Esquiros adds the following part right after reprinting the anecdote word by word: “It will be good weather tomorrow,” said [Éléonore]. Maximilien lowered his head as if struck by an image and a terrible presentiment.

Toulognon, volume 11. p. 502—, writes that Robespierre upon returning to the house where he lodged spoke quietly about the morning debates (8 Thermidor); and said: “I no longer expect anything from the Mountain; they want to get rid of me like a tyrant; but the mass of the assembly will hear me.”These expressions, which Toulongeon clearly indicates to have been repeated by some member of the Duplay family, are in conformity with what Robespierre declared on the morning of the 9th before going to the Convention. As Duplay spoke to him with great concern about the dangers that awaited him, as he insisted on the need to take precautions, Robespierre replied: “The mass of the Convention is pure; do not worry; I have nothing to fear.” We obtained details from Buonarotti, who collected them while in prison, from the mouth of Duplay. Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française: ou Journal des Assemblées Nationales…(1837) by Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez, Roux-Lavergne, volume 34, page 3-4.

Legendre: At the time of 9 Thermidor, I was secretary as well as Dumont: I said to him: “There’s going to be some noise. Do you see in this rostrum the whole Duplay family? Do you see Gerard? Do you see Dechamps?” At the same moment Saint-Just began his speech; Tallien interrupted him and tore the veil. Louis Legendre at the Convention March 26 1795

One of those who had witnessed the outcome of this catastrophe (the execution on 10 thermidor) told me that he recognized in the crowd Duplay's eldest daughter, who had wanted to see for one last time the man whom her whole family had looked upon as a god. Mémoires d’un prêtre regicide (1829) by Simon-Edme Monnel, page 337.

…A moment later the whole Duplay family was brought in[to prison]. One of the prisoners cried out: ”I announce to you the ganimede of Robespierre, and his prime minister.” It was then learned, from several questions asked to them, all the circumstances surrounding the fall of the tyrant. The next morning, as soon as the women saw these two individuals [Maurice and Jacques-Maurice] among the prisoners; they cried out: ”You are with your slaughtermen, you should knock these beggars out!” One contented oneself with molesting them a little, because one needed them to learn all the details of the insurrection. On 11 Thermidor, around nine o'clock, the rumor spread that femme Duplay had hanged herself in the night; a citizen announced this news by saying: ”Citizens, I announce to you that the dowager queen has just fared a somewhat unfortunate excess.” ”What? What happened? cried the two Duplays, who did not understand what it was he meant.  ”Citizens, he added, it is a great day of mourning for France; we no longer have a princess.” What amused us the most in all of this was that the same evening, Duplay’s son gave ten francs to a jailer to go and gather information about his mother’s situation, whom he believed to be free; and that the same man came to tell her that she enjoyed perfect health! He remained in this belief for a very long time; which earned the unscrupulous teller at least fifty ecus for supposed commissions. Almanach des prisons, ou Anecdotes sur le régime intérieur de la Conciergerie, du Luxembourg, ect., et sur différens prisonniers qui ont habité ces maisons, sous la tyrannie de Robespierre, avec les chansons, lettres et couplets qui y ont été faits (1794) by Philippe-Edme Coittant, page 165-167. Maurice, Françoise and Jacques-Maurice were all ordered arrested on 10 thermidor. Françoise death could be both a murder and a suicide, though the fact that the arrest orderstates all three were to be kept isolated, while the report made after her death underlines that there’s no sign of any fight, would point towards the latter.

13 thermidor, year two of the Republic, one and indivisible

There was brought before us citoyenne Carraut, found on rue du Four, section du Contrat Social n. 482, at the house of citoyenne Béguin.

She was asked her name, age and residence.

Marie-Marguerite-Charlotte Robespierre, 28 years old, living on her income, residing with citoyenne Laporte, rue de la Réunion n. 200, and this since about a month back.

She was invited to tell us why she didn’t live with the Duplays on rue Honoré where the conspirator Robespierre lived and what motivated her to leave this residence.

To which she answered that she used to live there, but that her brothers and femme Duplay had told her to leave her apartment, and that femme Duplay reproached her for seeing counter-revolutionaries, among which was Guffroy, representative of the people; that her older brother resented her because she had the courage of letting him know the danger he ran by being sourrunded so badly, and that the Duplays had taken up the case to lose him, and that this was what motivated her to go live with citoyenne Laporte.

[…]

She was invited to declare if she had been aware of the infamous conspiracy that her older brother had been hatching and if she knew which were the men who frequently visited him.

She responded that she loved her country so much that she had the courage to lament this diabolical conspiracy, that every time she had met him she had found the occasion to tell him that the men around him were trying to deceive him, that if she had suspected the infamous plot that was being hatched, she would have denounced it rather than seeing her country lost.

She read her interrogation and said it contained the truth and signed while observing that she sometimes saw at the Duplays a man named Didier, who for a period of time served as secretary to her older brother, that through that position, he had been appointed juror to the Revolutionary Tribunal. 

Robespierre.  Interrogation of Charlotte Robespierre, held on July 31 1794. Can Charlotte’s denounciation of the Duplays here have played a role in the decision to arrest Élisabeth, Simon (order given July 31) Victoire, Sophie (order given August 1) and Éléonore (order given August 4)? The Guffroy Charlotte namedrops is the same man who tried to stop the marriage between Élisabeth and Lebas. Charlotte’s connections to him are furthered comfirmed by the work Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices (1794) and an undated decree, both in Guffroy’s hand, as well as a letter to him from Antoine Buissart, dated May 7 1794. Charlotte’s claim here to have been forced to move out from the Duplay house line up rather well with Gaillard’s story, where’s she’s portrayed to have moved back in by May 1794.

The same 13 thermidor there then appeared before us citoyenne Béguin, wife of citizen Béguin, employed as secretary at the Commission of Representatives of the People at the Army of Italy, rue du Four-Honoré, n. 482.

[…]

She was asked if she had visited the infamous Robespierre the older, which were the people who frequented him and if she had known about his infamous conspiracy.

To which she answered that she had never visited Robespierre the older, that the infamous Duplays didn’t leave his side… Interrogation of citoyenne Béguin, at whose house Charlotte was arrested, held July 31 1794

Citizens, When giving orders for the arrest of the Duplays, where Robespierre was lodging, you forgot their nephew, the wooden leg, who, after their arrest, went to the Jacobins, where he denounced the commissioner of the Revolutionary Committee charged by your Committee to carry out said arrest. This individual took the liberty of saying that he should not recognize orders given against patriots so well known and worthy of Robespierre. Commissioner Labarre was consequently kept in custody in the hall of the Jacobins and a motion was made to send him to the Commune. His Jacobin card was taken away from him and he was searched, at the request of said nephew Duplay, to see if he was carrying orders to arrest the mentioned patriots. Not having seen nephew Duplay yesterday, and having heard that he was outlawed, I thought myself excused from making this denunciation, but I learned that he was seen this morning entering the house of Duplay. I think I have to denounce him. We can question Citizen Labarre about these facts. Letter from an anonymous police agent to the Committee of Public Safety, July 29 1794, cited in the article L'arrestation de Simon Duplay (1919) by Albert Mathiez.

Citizen representatives, I was arrested on 12 Thermidor by order of the Committee of General Security and the order read: Robespierre’s secretary. I don't know who could have given me a title that I never had, and you yourselves are aware, representative citizens, that Robespierre did not have a secretary, that he did not even give away his speeches to copy. I lost a thigh in the service of the homeland. The pain caused by this injury is too serious for me to remain in this state for a long time, and unfortunately at this moment, for lack of air, I am attacked by a very considerable fever, which, combined with my injury, puts me in a very sad state. If this reason can speed up the examination of my case, I ask you, representative citizens, to take it into consideration. I had the misfortune to be taken in, on my return from the army, by my uncle with whom Robespierre was staying. He deceived me like so many others, those are all my crimes. I beg you, representative citizens, to have regard for my unfortunate position, to give me the justice I deserve and the freedom for which I lost a limb.  Salut and fraternity, Simon Duplay, disabled soldier, detained at Magdelonnettes. Letter from Simon Duplay to the Committee of Public Safety, August 19 1794. Cited in Ibid.

To citizens representatives members of the Committee of General Security, We have been arrested for a year, because our father lodged Robespierre, we have not exercised any public function, no denunciation has been raised against us. Prevention alone was therefore able to prolong our detention. We hope that the solemn judgment which returned our father to society will have dissipated him, and we expect from the justice of the Committee the end of our misfortunes and our long detention. We observe that we cannot produce exculpatory documents, since no accusation weighs against us and we cannot destroy what does not exist. As for proof of good citizenship, one of us [Simon] gave unequivocal proof in the plains of Champagne. The pension certificate that the Republic granted him to compensate him for the loss of a leg is proof of this. The other two could only make wishes for public liberty, since one had barely reached his sixteenth year and the other is a woman. Salut et fraternité. Undated petition from the imprisoned Simon, Jacques Maurice and Éléonore Duplay. Cited in Ibid.

…I managed to get introduced to Madame Lebas, this naive and passionate witness of the intimate life of Robespierre, this living and ardent protest against the slander (because even the crime gets slandered) of the historians of the Revolution. I found in Madame Lebas a woman from the Bible after the dispersion of the tribes in Babylon, withdrawn from the commerce of the living in the upper floor of a modest apartment, conversing about her memories, surrounded by portraits of her family decimated on the 18th Fructidor [sic], of her sisters, of whom Robespierre had wanted to marry the most beautiful, of Robespierre himself in all these elegant costumes in which he took pride in presenting the contrast on his person with the vest, the red cap, the clogs, sordid signs, ignoble flatteries of the Jacobins to the equality and misery of the populace. Histoire de Robespierre : d’après des papiers de famille, les sources originales et des documents entièrement inédits, (1865) by Ernest Hamel, volume 1, page 365.

…It was through an academic that I was truly introduced to the republican world. M. Philippe Le Bas, my history teacher at the École Normale, welcomed me into his home, brought me into a few families who remained faithful to the memories of 1793. 

He was the son of the deputy Le Bas, friend and disciple of Robespierre. He was proud of his father's fame. It is even said that before becoming a member of the Institute, he presented himself in salons under this title: “M. Philippe Le Bas, son of the deputy”. I had wanted to see survivors of the Revolution up close: my success exceeded my expectations, since I immediately found myself in the world of Robespierre. I was like a young beginner who wanted to taste a generous wine, and who had been poured abundantly with alcohol. I had had enough firmness to more or less put up with the Girondins, but I was on the verge of losing my mind when I found myself among Robespierre's friends. 

The widow of the deputy Le Bas, who gave birth to the man who was to be my teacher, was one of the daughters of the carpenter Duplay. This Duplay family had become Robespierre’s family. He lived with them, and when he died, he was engaged to Mademoiselle Éléonore, the sister of Madame Le Bas. The fiancée mourned Robespierre up until her death. This whole family was closely united, and the memory of the deceased contributed not a little to this union. The Committee of Public Safety, universally condemned and cursed, still had a few friends in this corner of the world; and for these survivors, for these persisters, the Le Bas family was the object of particular respect.

Moreover, the carpenter Duplay had given his daughters an excellent education. This carpenter was a carpentry contractor; for some time he had served as judge at the Revolutionary Tribunal. His grandson, the one who was my teacher at l’École normale, was the gentlest and most benevolent man in the world. When he no longer had to explain himself about his father and his father's terrible friends, he spoke and acted like a cultured man, a friend of peace, and preoccupied, above all, with his scholarly research. He had been tutor to a prince. It is true that this prince was Prince Louis-Napoleon, the same one who, against all expectations, became Emperor of the French. The advent of his student to the supreme rank changed nothing either in the ideas, conduct, language or life of Philippe Le Bas. He remained until the end as I had known him in 1834, M. Philippe Le Bas, son of the deputy. 

It was known among those familiar with M. Le Bas that I knew no one in Paris; and that was a reason for them to invite me to dinner or super on Sunday. I was invited once with solemn and mysterious forms which gave me reason to think that I was going to attend some important event. I arrived at the appointed time. There were a few guests, all avowed republicans and editors of party newspapers. Nearly an hour passed; the person who had initiated the meeting was kept waiting. I think everyone except me was in on the secret; but I was too shy to ask a question. Finally a great movement occurred, the whole family went into the antechamber to make the reception more solemn, and we lined up around the door. 

There was no advertising in this modest house. I saw an elderly woman enter, walking with difficulty and giving her arm to the lady of the house. She had come alone. They saluted her very profoundly; she responded to this greeting like a queen who wants to be amiable to her subjects. She was a very thin woman, very upright in her small frame, dressed in the antique style with very puritanical cleanliness. She wore the costume of the Directory, but without lace or ornaments. I immediately had, as it were, an intuition that I was seeing Robespierre’s sister. She sat down at the table, where she naturally took the place of honor. I kept looking at her throughout the meal. She seemed serious, sad to me, without austerity however, a little haughty although polite, particularly kind to M. Le Bas, who showered her with consideration or, to put it better, with respect. When the conversation started revolving around general things, she took little part in it; but listened to everything with politeness and attention. If she happened to say a word, everyone would immediately shut up. I thought to myself that one couldn’t have treated a sovereign better. 

Robespierre's name was not even mentioned. Essentially, it was him that everyone thought of, and it was him that they talked about without naming him. That was the habit in these devoted families. I wasn’t planning on compromising myself by pronouncing this name which was revered there, and execrated everywhere else. It was not pronounced, because it was implied in every word spoken. 

There are two Robespierres: the fierce Robespierre and the reasoning and sentimental Robespierre. The cult of his fanatics was equally aimed at the dictator and the humanitarian orator. The ghosts with which I was seated did not belong to 1834. They were from, and wanted to be from, 1793. The great killings were for them only necessary acts of government. The Thermidorians had barely overthrown the Committee of Public Safety when they began copying it. On 18 Fructidor, La Réveillère-Lépeaux, the toughest of men, deported Directors, representatives and journalists to Sinnamari. For a quarter of a century, proscription was the custom. I believe that the killings of 1793 were excused by those around me, that perhaps they were even glorified. But one thought above all about the disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, of the speeches against the death penalty and on the Supreme Being, of the author of so many touching homilies on fraternity and virtue. I am sure that Charlotte saw him again in her dreams, preceding the Convention at the altar, on the day of the religious festival, in a light blue habit and white tie, carrying a wreath of flowers in his hand. 

Mlle Robespierre was seventy-four years old when I saw her. I knew that she had passionately loved her two brothers and that, when Maximilien had moved in with the Duplays, she had been irritated and jealous. She made a crime out of the friendship these new friends had for him. She went so far as to claim that Éléonore had used cunning to get herself married. She lived far from them after the catastrophe. The First Consul gave her a pension of 3,600 livres, which was later reduced by more than half, but which she received almost without interruption until her death. She lived on this meager resource in absolute isolation. She published Memoirs which focused on known events, and did not pique curiosity. I suppose she agreed to allow this publication in a moment of distress. No doubt, as death approached, she had wanted to forget her old grudge. She had remembered with tenderness a venerable woman who had almost been her brother's sister. She had wanted to get closer for a moment to this already famous man, whose father had been Maximilien's most faithful friend. She finally felt that those who had met in those dismal days should be reunited in memory as they had been in life.

I thought I was dreaming and that was in fact the case. The two women who were there, whatever their name, had lived in the intimacy of Robespierre, listened to his words as if they were those of a pontiff, admired his life like that of a hero and a sage. Questions crowded in the tumult in my mind, and I wondered with terror if I would dare to question my master or if I would allow myself to be oppressed once again by my accursed timidity. He led me to the door and said triumphantly, “What did you think of her?” I fled and as I ran through the streets of Paris I told myself that I was out of place in that world. Everything in this temple was respectable, except the God.  Premières années, (1901) by Jules Simon, p. 181-187.

Madame Lebas must have been pretty in her youth. She had dark eyes, distinguished manners and a very reliable memory. It is from her that two or three historians of the French Revolution learned interesting details about the Duplay family and the private life of Robespierre. Her memories hardly went beyond the circle of intimate relationships; but as from 93 the house of Duplay became the center towards which all political life around Robespierre converged, she had spent her youth at the very heart of the Revolution. She had loved her husband, as she herself said, with a patriotic love; but through a reserve and a delicacy of heart that women will understand, it was the one she talked about the least. From Saint-Just, from Couthon, from Robespierre the younger, she cited beautiful and good deeds that had touched her. Her great admiration was for Maximilien. The interior of the Duplay family was a Jean-Jacques Rousseau-style house, an ark of domestic virtues risked on a flood of blood. When she spoke of the 9th of Thermidor, her brow darkened, her eyes filled with tears. Unfortunately her son was present for all our conversations and watched closely, doubtless fearing indiscretions which could hurt his self-esteem as the son of a member of the Convention and as a member of the Institute. I will never forget the dismayed expression on his face one day when this respectable widow confided to me the state of distress and misery to which she had been reduced after the death of her husband. She became a laundress and went to wash on the boats of the Seine. This time it was too strong, and the academician turned pale. Telling such things is permitted, but to write them down (and he knew well that I would do so later), according to him, was to deviate from the classical dignity of history. Histoire des Montagnards (1875) by Alphonse Esquiros, page 2-3. Section titled ”my witnesses.”

…Naturally, Madame Le Bas talks to me about Thiers, the Revolution, Robespierre; and, as she sees me as a little lukewarm towards her hero, she does not miss this opportunity to say that he was “well slandered by his enemies!” I quote word for word…I still hear her: ”And I certainly would have loved him!… He was so good and affectionate towards young people!” Victorien Sardou recounts a meeting he had with the elderly Élisabeth Duplay Lebas, cited in the preface of Le conventionnel Le Bas: d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve(1901) by Stéfane-Pol.

[Edgar Degas] told me that, when he was a child, his mother one day took him to rue de Tournon to visit Madame Lebas, widow of the famous Convention deputy who, on 9 thermidor, killed himself with a pistol. When the visit was over, they withdrew with small steps, accompanied to the door by the old lady, when Madame Degas suddenly stopped, deeply overwhelmed. Letting go of her son's hand, she pointed at the portraits of Robespierre, of Couthon, of Saint-Just, that she had just noticed were hanging on the walls of the antechambre, and she couldn’t keep herself from crying out with horror: ”What! You still keep the faces of these monsters here!”  ”Be quiet, Célestine!” Madame Lebas cried out ardently, ”be quiet… They were saints!”  Discours de l’Histoire prononcé à la distribution solennelle des prix du Lycée Jeanson-de-Sailly held by Paul Valéry on July 13 1932, cited in Robespierre ou les contradictions du jacobinisme (1978) by Albert Soboul.

I was able to converse, between 1838 and 1839, with a famous parrot who had been the friend of Robespierre. He belonged to Mme the widow Lebas, the wife of the famous Convention deputy who chose to die with Robespierre, and the mother of M. Lebas, Hellenist scholar, who died a few years ago. Mme widow Lebas, a very respectable woman, whom I had the honour of seeing often in her little house in Fontenay-aux-Roses, where she would make the sign of the cross when she pronounced the name Robespierre, adding these words: Saint Maximilien. As for her parrot, when one said "Robespierre", it replied Hats off! Hats off! It sang the Marseillaise with perfect diction and Ça ira like a Jacobin. It was — and perhaps, thanks to its diet of grain, still is — a sans-culotte parrot, the like of which can no longer be found. Mme Lebas recounted with great emotion how she had managed to save this precious psittacus  after Thermidor.  It had been seriously compromised.  After the arrest of Robespierre and Lebas, in the course of a long domiciliary inspection,  every time the name of Robespierre was pronouned the parrot would repeat its refrain, Hats off! Hats off! The government agents had grown impatient and were about to wring its neck, when Mme Lebas, as quick as lightning,  grabbed the bird, opened the window and set it free. The poor parrot flew from window to window, until it found a charitable person to open up for it; a few days later Madame Lebas was able to regain possession of this last friend left to her by Robespierre, the only one perhaps, besides his elderly mistress, who has remained faithful to his memory.   L’Union médicale: journal des intérêts scientifiques et pratiques, moraux et professionnels du corps médical (1861) volume 12, page 258-259. A somewhat dubious anecdote given the fact Élisabeth hardly would have been able to go and fetch the parrot ”a few days” after the arrest of Robespierre, having already been arrested herself.

[My husband] knew how to die for the patrie; he could only have died with the martyrs of liberty! He left me a mother and a widow at twenty-one and a half years. I bless heaven for having taken him from me that day; he is the dearer to me for it. […] Yes, I preferred to go take in wash on a boat rather than ask assistance of our poor friends’ assassins. I feared neither death nor persecution. I was not the one who repudiated my name; it pains me to say it, but Mlle Robespierre was the one who took her mother’s name, Charlotte Carreau [sic]. If you had been informed of my residence, I would have been eager to tell you the truth. The good that you say of our martyrs is not too charged: they were the true friends of liberty; they lived only for the people, for their fatherland; but some monsters, in one day, destroyed everything; in one day they assassinated liberty. Yes, monsieur, a republican like you would have been happy to know those men, so virtuous on all accounts; they all died poor.  Note written by Élisabeth a few years before her death in 1859, regarding ”a work treating the revolution” (l’Histoire des Girondins?). Cited in Le conventionnel Le Bas : d'après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve, page 145-147.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Germinal

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Contemporary descriptions of the dantonist execution compilation

Their trial was over around one o’clock in the afternoon. Only Luiner was acquitted. But as he was detained as suspect for the sake of general security he was escorted to the Luxembourg. The fifteen others were sentenced to death, and driven to the scaffold around six o’clock. They were in three tumbrils: in the first was Danton, next to Delacroix; Fabre near the executioner; Hérault opposite Chabot. In the second, Phelippeaux [sic], Westermann, Camille Desmoulins, Basire and Launai d’Angers [sic]. In the last tumbril, one saw but l’Abbé d’Espagnac; his companions were almost all strangers and little known to the public. Almost all approached death with the same audacity that they had shown in court. Danton, who, like Hébert, was recognizable by his red collar, seemed to pay little attention to the crowd around him: he was chatting with Lacroix and Fabre. Hérault was the quietest. Chabot pointed to the sky, laughing. Desmoulins spoke almost continually to the people; the courage he affected seemed like a painful effort, he was an actor who was studying to play his last part well. Diederichsen, danish lawyer, was executed first, the heads of Lacroix and Danton were the last ones to fall. Only that of Danton was shown to the people, among prolonged cries of ”vive la république.”  Suite du Journal de Perlet, number 561 (April 6 1794). A shortened version of this description is given in number 104 of Journal général de la guerre (April 13 1794). According to Michel Biard’s La Liberté ou la mort: mourir en deputé 1792-1795 (2015), these were the only contemporary journals that mentioned any details regarding the execution.

Camille had made incredible efforts to tear herself away from these execrable gendarmes, who have been the lowest servants of despots; so that in going to the scaffold he was completely naked to the waist, because his shirt was in tatters. I saw him cross the space of the palace at the Place de Sang (that’s what I called Place de la Révolution) with a frightened air, talking to his neighbors with great agitation, and yet on his face was the convulsive laughter of a man who no longer has his head.  Dictionnaire neólogique des hommes et des choses, volume 2, page 480 (1799) by Louis Abel Beffroy de Reigny. In his Testament d’un électeur de Paris (1795) Beffroy adds that he couldn’t restrain his tears in watching Camille pass by.

I saw the tumbrils pass by to the place of execution, containing the men who, a few days before, had been seen as those who were to consolidate the revolution. Some maintained a firm and calm demeanor, others only showed on their faces that humiliating vexation felt by a scoundrel who finds himself caught in the trap set up by his enemy. This feeling was depicted with the most striking expression on the decomposed countenance of Danton. Camille Desmoulins seemed indignant at the deceit of Robespierre, who had never showed him more friendship than on the eve of his arrest. Bazire and Chabot tried to speak to the people by whom they were surrounded; though they spoke loudly, the noise which was made around them drowned out their voices. One only heard them say that, had not Marat been assassinated, he would have been accused of conspiracy like them, and that with them he would go to his execution. The multitude regarded as blasphemous an assertion of which the truth, a few days later, was disputed by no one. They were executed on 17 germinal.  Histoire Philosophique de la Révolution de France (1807) by Antoine Étienne Fantin-Desodoards, volume 5, page 371-372

Like Hugues Aubriot, who was imprisoned in the Bastille he had had built in order to trap others, when Danton had been condemned to death by the tribunal he had instituted, the crowd gathered in the square to feast their eyes on the horrible spectacle that the cries of the public promised them.  I was going to see Méhul, who was by then living on Rue de la Monnaie, when I came across the tumbril in Rue Honoré in which this revolutionary hero was for the last time presiding over his stricken party. He was calm, between Camille Desmoulins, whom he listened to, and Fabre d'Églantine, who did not listen to anyone. Camille spoke with great warmth, and struggled so much that his unfastened clothes left his collar and shoulders, which the blade was about to separate, bare. Never had life manifested itself in him by more activity. As for Fabre, immobile under the weight of his misfortune, overwhelmed by the feeling of the present and perhaps also by the memory of the past, he no longer existed. Camille who, by cooperating in the revolution, had thought he was cooperating in a good work, still enjoyed his illusion; he believed himself on the road to martyrdom. Alluding to his last writings, he shouted: “My crime is to have shed tears!” to the crowd. He was proud of his conviction. Fabre was on the other hand ashamed of his, he, who had been pushed into revolutionary excesses by less generous interests, was overwhelmed by the awareness of the truth. He saw only torture at the end of the little road that remained for him to travel.  Another physiognomy also attracted my attention in this cartload of reprobates, it was that of Hérault de Séchelles. The tranquility which reigned over the handsome face of this former advocate-general was of a different nature from the tranquility of Danton, whose face offered a caricature of that of Socrates. Hérault’s calm was that of indifference; Danton’s calm that of disdain. The pallor did not sit on the latter’s forehead; but that of the other was colored with such a fiery tint that it looked less like he was going to the scaffold than returning from a banquet. Hérault de Séchelles finally seemed detached from life, the preservation of which he had purchased by so much cowardice, by so many atrocities. The appearance of this selfish man astonished everyone: everyone asked his name with interest, and as soon as he was named he no longer interested anyone. […] I went up to Méhul’s, and, my imagination full of what I had just seen, I told him: “Tragedy well begun! I want to see the end of it, after having finished in three words the business which brought me. This Danton really plays his role well. We are all on the eve of the day that will end for him. I want to learn how to pass it well too.” “Useful study,” said Méhul, who saw things with the same eye as me, and who would have accompanied me if he hadn’t been in his dressing gown and slippers.  However, the fatal tumbril had not stopped moving; the execution was beginning when, after having crossed the Tuileries, I arrived at the gate which opens onto the Place Louis XV. From there I saw the condemned, not mounting together, but appearing one by one on the fatal scaffold, to die immediately by the effect of the movement which the board or the bed on which was about to begin for them the eternal rest. The rest of the operation was hidden from me by the operatives running it. The accelerated fall of the blade alone told me that it was was being carried out.  Danton appeared last on this scene, flooded with the blood of all his friends. Day was falling. At the foot of the horrible statue whose mass stood out in a colossal silhouette against the sky, I saw the rising, like a shadow of Dante, of this tribune who, half-lit by the dying sun, seemed as much to emerge from the tomb as ready to enter it. There is nothing as daring as the countenance of this athlete of the revolution; nothing as formidable as the attitude of this profile which defied the axe, like the expression of this head which, ready to fall, still seemed to dictate laws. Horrible pantomime! time cannot erase it from my memory. I found there all the expression of the sentiment which inspired Danton with his last words; terrible words which I could not hear, but which people repeated to each other, quivering with horror and admiration. ”Above all, don’t forget,” he said to the executioner with the accent of a Gracque, don’t forget to show my head to the people; it’s worth seeing.” At the foot of the scaffold he had said another word worthy of being recorded, because it characterizes both the circumstance which inspired it, and the man who uttered it. With his hands tied behind his back, Danton was waiting his turn at the foot of the stairs, when his friend Lacroix, whose turn had come, was brought there. As they rushed towards each other to give each other the farewell kiss, a policeman, envying them this painful consolation, threw himself between them and brutally separated them. “At least you won’t prevent our heads from kissing each other in the basket," Danton told him with a hideous smile. Danton, as I have said, perishes as a result of a security more justified by reason than by politics. Warned of Robespierre’s plans, Robespierre knows too well that he cannot send me to the scaffold without proving that he can be sent there himself.” Resting on this idea, he fell asleep in laziness and pleasures.  Souvernirs d’un sexagénaire (1833) by Antoine Vincent Arnault, volume 2 page 95-100. According to Biard in Danton: Le mythe et l’histoire (2016) this is the only semi-authentic source we have for Danton’s last words being ”show my head to the people, it’s worth seeing.” It’s still however somewhat dubious considering Arnault places Camille in the wrong tumbril.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

The unfortunate Camille, hearing the name of his wife being pronounced, cried out in pain and said: ”The scoundrels, not content with murdering me, they also want to murder my wife!”

Camille Desmoulins on the third day of his trial (April 4 1794) upon hearing that his wife had been accused of taking part in a new conspiracy, as reported by the witness Paris, registrar at the Revolutionary Trubunal, during the trial of public procecutor Fouquier-Tinville. Cited in Historie Parlamentaire de la Révolution Française ou Journal des Assemblées Nationales, depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1815 (1837) page 472.

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Pauline Léon timeline

A timeline over the 70 year old life of Pauline Leclerc née Léon, based primarily on the article Pauline Léon, une républicaine révolutionnaire (2006) by Claude Guillon.

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19 October 1767 — Mathurine Téholan and Pierre Paul Léon are married in the parish of Saint-Severin in Paris. Pierre Paul runs a small chocolate business on 356 rue de Grenelle. The couple settles on rue du Basq.

28 September 1768 — birth of Anne Pauline Léon, the couple’s first child. They later have four more children — Antoine Paul Louis (1772-1835), Marie Reine Antoinette, (1778), François Paul Mathurin (1779) as well as a child who’s sex and year of birth remains unknown. Pauline later describes her father as: ”a philosopher” and adds: ”If his lack of fortune did not allow him to give us a very brilliant education, at least he left us with no prejudices.”

1784 — death of Pierre Paul Léon. Pauline, aged sixteen, now starts helping her mother with keeping the chocolate business running in order to provide for the family.

14 July 1789 — Fall of the Bastille. Pauline claims to upon this event have felt ”the liveliest enthusiam, and although a woman I did not remain idle; I was seen from morning to evening animating the citizens against the artisans of tyranny, urging them to despise and brave aristocrats, barricading streets, and inciting the cowardly to leave their homes to come to the aid of the fatherland in danger.”

February 1791 — Pauline is introduced to several popular societies in Paris. She herself claims she would frequent the Cordelier Club up until 1794 (though there doesn’t seem to exist any trace of her in the debates held there), the Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes (where again, we have few documents that mention any direct activity from her part), as well as the section of Mucius Scaevola. The same month, Pauline defenestrates a bust of Lafayette “at Fréron’s”. It seems unlikey for this attack to have been aimed at the journalist Stanislas Fréron, who frequently denounced Lafayette in his l’Orateur du Peuple, but rather his mother Anne Françoise Fréron, who handled the publishing of the royalist paper L’Ami du Roi.

21 June 1791 — Pauline, her mother and their neighbor Constance Évrard are near the Palais Royal loudly protesting the king’s ”infamous treason” (his flight) when they, according to her, are ”almost assassinated by Lafayette’s mouchards” and are saved by other sans-culottes who manage to snatch them ”from the hands of these monsters” (National guardsmen)

17 July 1791 — Pauline takes part in the demonstration on the Champ-de-Mars. On the way home, she uses her fists to defend a friend against the family of a national guard. This last incident is witnessed by Constance Evrard, another sans-culotte woman and friend of Pauline, who reports it during an interrogation. This is the first conserved trace of any militant activities from Pauline.

Late February 1792 — l’Adresse individuelle à l’Assemblée nationale par des citoyennes de la capitale, a petition regarding women’s right to bear arms, is penned down. It was most likely written by Pauline herself, seeing as the first signature on the bottom of the handwritten version kept in the National Archives, as well as the only one appearing in the version printed by order of the Assembly, is “fille Léon.” After Pauline’s name about 310 more follow, including that of her mother and many other daughter-mother couples. The petition is first read out before the Society of Patriots of Both Sexes, which, under the presidency of Tallien, orders its printing and distribution.

March 9 1792 — the Patriotic Society of the Luxembourg section sends a delegation to the Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes to request affiliation. The latter club grants the request and appoints five auditors to attend the former’s next meeting, among which are three women: Pauline Léon, Constance Evrard and Marie-Charlotte Hardon. Pauline will actively participate in the recruitment of members for the Patriotic Society, personally presenting or supporting at least seven candidates between October 1792 and September 1793

June 1792 — Pauline, along with many other men and women, signs Pétition individuelle au corps législatif pour lui demander la punition de tous les conspirateurs that calls for ”a quick vengeance” against monarchist ministers.

10 August 1792 — Pauline takes part in the Insurrection of August 10. She describes her activities in the following way: "On August 10, 1792, after spending part of the night in the Fontaine-de-Grenelle section, I joined the next day, armed with a pike, the ranks of the citizens of this section to go and fight the tyrant and his satellites. It was only at the request of almost all the patriots that I consented to give up my weapon to a sans-culotte; I gave it to him, however, only on the condition that he would use it well.”

December 1792 — Pauline, together with 3 other women and 88 men, signs the Adresse au peuple par la Société patriotique de la section du Luxembourg which demands the death of the king and pronounces threats against eventual monarchist deputies.

2 February 1793 — During a session at the Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes, Pauline is welcomed as mandated by the Defenders of the Republic of the 84 departments. At the same session, Pauline’s future husband Théophile Leclerc (1771-1820) is charged with writing a petition against commodity money. This is the first known meeting between the two.

3 February 1793 — during the session at The Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes, ”Citoyenne Léon” takes the floor to continue a denounciation against Dumouriez that Hébert has just made. Le Créole patriote reports that ”she thinks, like him, that [Dumouriez] is nothing more than an intrigant; she accuses him of several things, notably the persecution he inflicted on two patriotic battalions unjustly accused by him.”

10 February 1793 — Le Créole patriote reports the following regarding the session at The Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes:

Citoyenne Léon informs of an important denunciation made to the Commune and to the society of defenders of the republic, one and indivisible of the 84 departments. This denunciation, signed, states that on the 6th of the month a dinner was held at the house of Garat, minister of justice, provisionally exercising the functions of minister of interior, where Brissot, Barbaroux, Louvet and other noirs, composing the great and famous right side of the National Convention; plus, Bournonville, new minister of war. She calls on the society to monitor the latter, and asks that two of its members be sent to that of the Jacobins to communicate to them this fact, to which the most serious attention must be paid. Boussard makes the motion that the president be instructed to write to Bournonville, so that he can give the company explanations on this subject. These three proposals are adopted.

At the Jacobin Club the same day, ”a citoyenne,” in the name of the Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes, makes the following intervention: ”Citizens, I denounce to you Garat, minister of justice, who last Wednesday had thirty people to dinner, among which were Brissot, Barbaroux, Louvet and Beurnonville. The patriots do not have entry to this minister, and Brissot comes and goes there all the time.” It is very likely this speaker was Pauline.

17 February 1793 — Le Créole patriote reports that, during the session at The Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes, ”citoyenne Léon reads a denunciation from Citizen Godchaux against General Félix Wemphen. Several members believe that this denunciation is well founded, and urge the society to tear off the mask from all the intriguers.”

10 May 1793 — Pauline is a co-founder of the Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women (Société des Républicaines révolutionnaires or Société des citoyennes républicaines révolutionnaires de Paris), a club which only admits women as members and holds its meetings at the libary of the Jacobins, rue Saint-Honoré. Claire Lacombe, who often gets mentioned as another co-founder, actually doesn’t have her first attested appearance as a member of the society until June 26.  Already on the May 12, the club presents itself at the Jacobins, proposing to arm patriotic women between ages 18 and 50 in order to organize them against the Vendée. A week later, May 19, a delegation made up of members from both the Cordeliers and Revolutionary and Republican Women present themselves before the Jacobins yet again, asking for the arrest of all suspect people, the establishment of both revolutionary tribunals in all departments and a revolutionary sans-culotte army in every town, an act of accusation against the girondins, the extermination of “the stockbrokers, the hoarders and the selfish merchants” who are responsible for a conspiracy attempting to starve the people, that the revolutionary army of Paris be increased to 40,000 men, that land be distributed to the soldiers, as well as the send forth of the petition to the Convention. Though Pauline’s presence can be supposed for both of these occasions, we don’t have any hard evidence for it.

2 June 1793 — Pauline leads a delegation from the Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women wishing to be admitted to the Convention, carrying a request in her own handwriting. They are however quickly forgotten in the tumult caused by the Insurrection of May 31, which this day ends with 22 girondins being put under house arrest. During this same insurrection, several Revolutionary and Republican Women are arrested, and Pauline, as president of the Society, signs a warrant by which they demand the liberation of one of them, detained for having threatened three men with a knife.

June 1793 — Pauline is the author of a denounciation against the grocer Le Doux, rue du Sépulcre, accused of “bad comments,” mainly consisting of complains about the looting. We don’t know if the denounciation had any consequences.

9 July 1793 — Le Réglement de la Société des citoyennes républicaines révolutionnaires de Paris is published. The document is signed by president Rousaud and four secretaires: Potheau, Monier, Dubreuil och Pauline Léon. 

July 10 1793 — Pauline goes to the Jacobin club, where she, ”in the name of the Revolutionary and Republican Women, presents a petition demanding the exclusion of nobles from all employments.”

July 20 1793 — A Délibération de la Société des Républicaines révolutionnaires, relative à l’érection d’un obélisque à la mémoire de Marat, sur la place du Carrousel, is signed by Pauline. The text is read at the Jacobins on July 26, by a deputation from the Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women.

July 31 1793 — Réglement de la Société des citoyennes républicaines révolutionnaires de Paris is published. The document is signed by the president, Rousaud, and four secretaries: Potheau, Monier, Dubreuil and Pauline Léon.

15 August 1793 — At the Jacobin club, ”citoyenne Léon, at the head of a deputation from the Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women, comes to request assimilation and correspondence for said Society. She also asks that the Jacobins contribute to the costs of the obelisk erected in Marat’s honor.”

30 October 1793 — Jean Pierre André Amar, member of the Committee of General Security, announces the dissolution of the Society of Revolutionary Women to the National Convention.

12 November 1793 — the marriage contract between Pauline Léon and Théophile Leclerc is signed. Through it, we see that the husband brings property valued at 300 livres, while the wife holds 1000 livres consisting of both money and effects. Pauline was in other words richer than Leclerc. She declares to after her marriage have returned to the chocolate making business and ”devoted myself entirely to the care of my household and given the example of conjugal love and the domestic virtues which are the basis of love of the homeland.”

March 17 1794 — Pauline joins Leclerc at La Fère (Aisne), where the latter is mobilizing.

April 3 1794 — the Leclerc couple are arrested on orders given by the Committee of General Security. They are taken to Paris and locked up in the Luxembourg prison three days later.

4 July 1794 — At the Luxembourg prison, Pauline either writes or dictates Précis de la conduite révolutionnaire de dame Pauline Léon, femme Leclerc, which is adressed to the Committee of General Security. It is from this document we learn almost all the details regarding her militant activities and private life. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to find it published in full.

5 August 1794 — Pauline writes to ”sensible Tallien” and pleads for the cause of ”800 imprisoned people.” One day later she adresses herself to to ”the representatives” and asks them to at least consider a prompt examination of their case. Pauline claims that Leclerc and Pierre-François Réal were imprisoned for having "collected evidence against the accomplices of the tyrant Robespierre who were to have their throats slit." The following day, the two men are brought before the Committee of General Security. Réal is immediately set free, Pauline and Théophile joins him on August 22.

22 July 1804 — Pauline writes the following letter (cited in full within the article Un sans-culotte parisien en l’an XII: François Léon, frère de Pauline Léon (1982) by Michael David Sibalis) to Réal, by now one of those in charge of the general police, asking for the liberation of her younger brother François Paul Mathurin, imprisoned since three and a half months back for having written and published leaflets critical of Napoleon. Through the letter, we learn about some things that have happened in her life during the ten years since the last trace of her:

4 Thermidor [year 12] Monsieur, A month ago I presented a petition to the Grand Judge; at the same time I had the honor of writing to you, to request the release of my brother, named François Léon, imprisoned in the Bicêtre for a bad verse; I would ask for your indulgence, today I appeal to your justice; four months of such harsh detention had to atone for his fault; moreover his friend guilty of the same extravagance, since of two verses, one wrote the first and the other the second, was released; my brother is not more guilty, perhaps he is less; his delicacy did not allow him to justify himself at the expense of his friend; which certainly does not deserve punishment. Based on this, Monsieur, I believe I have the right to ask for his release; and I have the firm confidence that you will grant it to us; if you could still deign to think of his mother, who is old and more punished than him. This poor woman is exhausted trying to help and console him. She who needs help for herself, I am not talking to you about the grief her family is experiencing at the loss of my time (which is precious since it must be used to feed my son and relieve my mother), having, Monsieur, the advantage of having known you, I think you will not disdain these considerations. Salut and respect, Femme Leclerc Teacher (Instritutrice) Rue Jean Robert No. 4

François will be set free and leave Paris, the police having labeled him as a ”pronounced anarchist, difficult to correct.” In his interrogation, held May 2 1804 (it too cited in full within Un sans-culotte parisien en l’an XII…) he reveals that he is a tailor living alone on rue du Vieux Colombier N. 744 and ”very republican.”François’ accomplice Jean Sorret did in his interrogation claim that his friend was ”a pronounced jacobin, as is the rest of his family.”

October 5 1838 — death of Pauline in Bourbon-Vendée, rue de Bordeaux, one week after her seventieth birthday. She had moved there to settle with her sister Marie Reine Antoinette and her family somewhere between 1812 and 1835. 

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Contemporary descriptions of the hébertist execution compilation

The joy of the people was universal at seeing the conspirators taken to the scaffold. There were the same demonstrations of joy everywhere; a sansculotte jumped up and said: “I would light up my windows this evening, if candles were not so rare.” In the evening, in all the groups and cafes, people talked about the death of these conspirators; the story of their last moments was the only subject of conversation. It was said in several places that Hébert had denounced around forty deputies. It was time, they added, that this conspiracy was discovered, because it was believed in several departments that Paris was under fire. […] According to the comments made on the Place de la Révolution, during the appearance of the conspirators on the scaffold, one noticed that there were people placed to sow trouble. One woman was beaten by another for having made some comment. While the 19 conspirators were being guillotined, the people remained silent; but when Hébert’s turn came, a swarm of hats appeared, and everyone shouted: “Long live the Republic! This is a great lesson for those who are consumed by ambition; the intriguers have done well; the committees of public safety and general security will manage to discover them, and ça ira!” Tableaux de la Révolution française publiés sur les papiers inédits (1869) by Adolphe Schmidt, volume 2, page 186. ”Situation in Paris 4 Germinal Year 2” (March 24 1794).

The events of yesterday, that is to say the judgment of the conspirators, their journey from the Palace to the Place de la Révolution and their execution, have entirely absorbed the attention and feelings of the people. Everyone wanted to at least see them pass so that they could judge the impression made on their wicked souls by the sight of an immense people, outraged by their crime, and the knowledge of the imminent death they were going to suffer. The crowd of curious people who were on their way or who witnessed their execution was innumerable. [...] Two opposing feelings, indignation against the guilty and joy at seeing the Republic saved by their death, animated all the spectators. One tried to read the faces of the condemned to enjoy, in a way, the internal pain from which they suffered: it was a kind of revenge that they took pleasure in obtaining. The sans-culottes were especially angry with Hébert and insulted him. “He’s damn angry,” said one, “we broke all his stoves (fourneaux).” “No,” said another, “he is very happy to see that the real aristocrats are going to fall under the guillotine.” Others carried stoves? (fourneaux) and pipes and raised them in the air so that they could strike Father Duchesne's eyes. Regardless, this wretch could not pay any attention to what was happening around him; the horror of his situation appalled him; he had reproached Custine for dying as a coward, and he showed no less pusillanimity than him. Momoro put up, as they say, a brave face against bad luck, he pretended to be confident, talked to his neighbors and laughed a wicked laugh. [...] Cloots appeared calm, Vincent lost, Ancart and Ronsin furious and Hébert overwhelmed. The latter was the star of the show, he appeared last [on the scaffold]. Report by the police spy Grisel, March 25 1794, cited in La Liberté ou la Mort: mourir en député (2015) by Michel Biard.

On D-Day, March 24, 1794, an “innumerable crowd” impatiently awaited the execution of Father Duchesne and his accomplices: “Advancing from the place of execution of Paris, one encountered waves of citizens on their way there; everything resounded with the cry of “Father Duchesne to the guillotine!” and in this respect the children acted as peddlers.” Another agent remarks that “in the streets, from the Palace to the Place de la Révolution, the crowds of people were so great that one could barely pass through.” The police estimate (already!) claimed that “perhaps four hundred thousand souls witnesses to this execution.” […] If the legend claiming that Hébert fainted in the tumbril seems false, all reports corroborate on the other hand the moral and physical collapse which this great sermonizer presented: […] “It was noticed that Ronsin seemed the least frightened by his execution, that Anacharsis Cloots had retained great composure, but that Hébert and the others bore on their faces the signs of the greatest consternation;” [Another report states that]: “Of the nineteen culprits dragged to execution, Hébert was the one who presented the saddest and most dismayed face.” Taken from the Palace to the Place de la Révolution amid cries of joy and insults (“Everywhere they passed one shouted “Long live the Republic!,” and threw hats in the air and everyone said some epithet to them, especially to Hébert.”), Father Duchesne was not yet at the end of his troubles. To make the feast complete, a cruel staging allowed him to meditate on his fate: “Upon his arrival on the Place de la Révolution, he and his accomplices were greeted by boos and murmurs of indignation. With each head that fell, the people took revenge again with the cry of “Long live the Republic!” while throwing their hats in the air. Hébert was saved for last, and the executioners, after putting his head through the fatal window, responded to the wish that the people had expressed to condemn this great conspirator to a punishment less gentle than the guillotine, by holding the suspended blade for several seconds on his criminal neck, and throwing, during this time, their victorious hats around him and attacking him with poignant cries of ”Long live this Republic that he had wanted to destroy.” As can be seem, one knew how to have fun in those days. However, as soon as the affair was completed, the agents noted contrasting reactions among the people: “In all public places, the aristocrats and the moderates rejoiced at this execution and affected a lot of patriotism. The patriots also rejoiced, but they observed one another.” [Another report states] “I visited different cabarets near the Gros Caillou, near the Military School. They talked only about Father Duchesne, about whom a thousand stories were made with the intention to bless the Committee of Public Safety for having discovered such a betrayal. I found the little people cheerful”; [Another report states]: “The walks are everywhere full of people and everywhere one stays and asks: “Did you go to see Hébert yesterday?” One answers “yes”. All the faces seem happy.” [Another report states]: “Since Hébert’s death, I have noticed that, in cafés, men who talked a lot no longer say anything.” This is because the execution of Hébert and his supporters, although it purged the Mountain of its extremists, nonetheless shook the people’s confidence in their leaders. Who would believe if even the most ardent patriots could suddenly become traitors? At least one thing is certain, that is that beyond the unconscious dismay which struck the people after the execution, the great cowardice which Father Duchesne demonstrated before the guillotine ended up destroying him in the eyes of everyone: “After the execution, everyone was talking about the conspirators. They said: “They died like suckers”; others said: “We would have thought that Hébert would have shown more courage, but he died as a good-for-nothing.” Series of police reports found in Paris pendant la Terreur (1962) by Pierre Caron, cited in this blog post.

The execution took place in the afternoon around 5 o'clock, at the Place de la Révolution. A prodigious crowd of citizens filled all the streets and squares through which they passed. Repeated cries of long live the Republic and applause were heard everywhere. These testimonies of the indignation of the People against men who had just so eminently compromised the salvation of the Fatherland, were proportionate to the extreme confidence they had in the art of surprising them; and the public satisfaction whose feeling was mixed with this deep indignation was a new proof of the love of the citizens for the Republic saved by the punishment of these great culprits. Thus perishes anyone who dares to attempt the re-establishment of tyranny! Gazette Nationale ou Moniteur Universel, number 185 (March 25 1794)

It was 18 of them who suffered the death penalty due to their crimes... It was Father Duchesne, this scoundrel, who was cursed by all the people. If he had been susceptible to remorse, he would have died of shame before his arrival, in front of Madame Guillotine... He was the last to be guillotined, each of the closest spectators continued to reproach him for his villainy... Letter written by the Convention deputy Ayral Bernard, March 26 1794

Hébert, Ronsin, Vincent, and the other conspiracy defendants whose names and qualities we reported in previous issues, were sentenced to death by the revolutionary tribunal. Only one was acquitted; Laboureau: he was immediately set free; the president of the tribunal embraced him and made him sit next to him: the room resounded with the liveliest applause. The other defendants said nothing when they were sentenced; the Prussian Cloots appealed to the human race, of which we know that he had made himself the speaker. Ronsin wanted to say a few words, he was removed alongside the others. Femme Quetineau declared herself pregnant. Taken back to the Conciergerie, the condemned asked for half a septier of wine and a soup. Around four in the afternoon, they left on three tumbril to go to the execution. Never had an execution attracted such a considerable crowd of spectators; everywhere they passed, one clapped hands, tossed hats in the air, and shouted vive la république ! They seemed quite insensitive to the indignation that was brewing against them: arrived at the foot of the scaffold, they all embraced each other. Hébert, known as Father Duchesne, was the last to be guillotined; his head was shown to the people, and this spectacle provoked clapping of hands and universal cries of vive la république ! Annales Patriotiques et Litteraires de la France, et Affaires Politiques de l’Europe, number 369 (March 26 1794)

The republic has once again been saved: 19 leaders of the conspiracy hatched for its ruin were sentenced to death today, 4 germinal, at half past twelve. The flattering sword of the law struck their guilty heads: these traitors marched towards the scaffold with all the audacity of crime; some laughed, others raised their shoulders: Father Duchène appeared to be neither in great joy nor in great anger; the people applauded and stood in crowds in the places through which the procession was to pass. A lot of cavalry and infantry preceded, accompanied and followed the tumbrils carrying the conspirators: but armed force became useless, because joy was universal. Le Courier Belgique, number 39 (March 31 1794)

Here is an anecdote which can serve to make better known the eighteen conspirators whom the sword of the law has struck down. On the day of their execution, several heads had already fallen when General Laumur's turn had come. Ronsin and Vincent looked at him at the scaffold and said to Hébert: ”without the clumsiness of this j... f... we would have succeeded.” They were alluding to the indiscretion of Laumur, who would tell anyone who would listen that the Convention had to be destroyed. Suite de Journal de Perlet, number 555 (March 31 1794)

My father told me that only once, during the Revolution, he found himself stuck in the crowd, without being able to move forward or backward, as the fatal tumbril passed. It was the one who carried the Hébertists. Cloots, placed at one end, said to the spectators: “My friends, please do not confuse me with these rascals.” Mémoires sur Carnot par son fils (1861) volume 1, page 366.

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Previous parts of this totally family friendly series:

Contemporary descriptions of the dantonist execution compilation

Contemporary descriptions of the robespierrist execution compilation