nesiacha

[nesiacha]

Sorry for the fans of the Carême series, but personally, I hope there won’t be a second season. Honestly, the profanation and anachronisms in the criminal procedure code are just too much for me—not to mention the other historical inaccuracies and clichés. On top of that, these historical errors are going to affect general knowledge. I already have a few colleagues asking me whether Fouché, Talleyrand, Carême, Joséphine, or Germaine de Staël really behaved that way in real life (some are even taking at face value what show Joséphine says about the French Revolution in 1793–1794), and one of them is convinced it’s all true.

It’s going to end up like those hardcore fans of Reign or The Spanish Princess who believe everything is historically accurate while these are the worst series in historical terms. But hey, to each their own. So I respect the people who want the season 2.

[nesiacha]

Against André Dumont: Denunciations and Polemics

Here is a Persée article on André Dumont, covering both before and after Thermidor. During the Thermidorian period, he was politically aligned with Fréron. The article is written by Robert Legrand.

This is only a translation, and while I disagree with certain points and am disappointed that his responsibility for the White Terror isn’t clearly addressed (nor the demonization of figures like Lebon and other revolutionaries), it remains an excellent article.

Warning: there are accusations that Dumont was a pervert and harassed women according to some testimonies, so sensitive souls should refrain.

The article write by Robert Legrand translated in english:

It is known that André Dumont, born in Oisemont (Somme) in 1764, was elected deputy to the Convention in September 1792. He was a convinced Montagnard and Robespierrist. He demonstrated great activity from the moment of his arrival at the Assembly: on September 26, substitute on the War Committee; in October, Commissioner to the Archives; the following year, on the Committee of Legislation, then a member of the Committee of Relief. In March and May, he was employed in various functions and finally, on June 16, a member of the Committee of General Security, then of the Committee of Correspondence. But at the end of July 1793, he was sent on a mission to the department of the Somme, a mission later extended to the department of the Oise. Upon his arrival in the Somme, he was confronted with a riot in Amiens where, along with Chabot, he was mistreated. Through the lively controversies of which he was the subject and which we will present, we will be able to judge his activity during his mission, until his recall to the Convention, after ten months. He then resumed his seat and once again became a member of the Committee of General Security, then from the 1st to the 15th of Thermidor, secretary of the Convention. With Robespierre brought down, he proved to be as fervent a supporter of the Thermidorian Reaction as he had been a "pronounced" Montagnard. But, as we shall see later, his constant obsession was a hatred of priests. As he had since 1792, he showed himself, throughout his mission and even after, to be anti-clerical and atheist.

Dumont's Entourage

Among those whom Barbier-Jenty called "Dumont's henchmen," we find military men and civilians. The military. During multiple visits to the departments of the Somme and the Oise, Dumont was seen strutting about in full dress surrounded by brilliant officers with whom he was closely associated. Among them, one could recognize Gondrand, brigade leader of the 20th dragoons, a fanatical anti-clerical: he had the churches of Huppy, Sénarpont, Aumale, and many others devastated. He had his troops mercilessly slash the sacred objects, crosses, and tabernacles. One day, he brought horses into the church of Vron and had them eat the consecrated hosts, mixed with oats in the troughs. Adjutant-General Taillefer, also a close friend of Dumont, was equally anti-clerical. He once entered the church of Heilly on horseback and broke the statues with his saber; he was an "advanced" Jacobin. The same was true for Courtin, leader of a cavalry brigade. Like the officers above, Adjutant-General Landrieux escorted Dumont in his cavalcades through the towns and villages he visited. Among the civilians, who obeyed Dumont's every command and proved to be pure sans-culottes, we note: Devaux, his cousin from Oisemont; Picot, who became Commissioner of the Post Office in Abbeville, then Commissioner of Provisions; Jacques Petit, from Vron, in charge of the dirty work and house searches with Loisel. Let us add Duval, who became, by favor, "public prosecutor" to the Departmental Council. Dumont could count on their devotion. The same is true for Cattaert, president of the Departmental Council, and a few others. Several of them came to a bad end: Gondrand was dismissed by Augereau; Taillefer, like Landrieux, would serve time in prison. Picot and Petit would themselves be sentenced to hard labor in chains.

The Denunciations against the Conventionnels

In Year II, then in Year III, various Committees, such as those of Public Safety and General Security, received letters of denunciation against members of the assembly. Faced with the abundance of these accusations, during the session of 13 Messidor an III (July 1, 1795), the Convention decided: "within 24 hours, the Committee of Legislation will make a report on all the deputies against whom there are complaints and denunciations. The Committee may hear the accused members, the report will be presented within a decade." The following 6 Thermidor (July 24), the deputies discussed the judgment of citizens arrested for revolutionary acts; the question was how to judge them. "A member thinks that before purging society, the Convention must be purged." There was talk of a commission of twelve members to study this question. On 17 Thermidor, a deputy from the Somme, Delecloy, announced that "several deputies accused of embezzlement have proven, with receipts, their probity and the falsehood of their denouncers. He adds that the work of the Committee (of Legislation) is progressing and that it will make a report as soon as it is ready." Two days later, on the 19th, Henri Larivière returned to this subject. After a lively discussion, the deputies refused to establish a new tribunal to judge the former Robespierrists, and "men of blood of all kinds" (terrorists and royalists). But on the 21st, another report on the denunciations made against the representatives of the people. (...). The Committee of Legislation confined itself to making known the denunciations; it believed it should dismiss all those that did not contain any serious fact, those that the facts proved to be slanderous (...). The Convention wants to punish crime alone, and not error"(1).

In fact, in the following days, a dozen deputies were accused and judged by the assembly, among others Laignelot, Lequinio, Laplanche, Cavaignac, and especially Fouché (he was decreed for accusation on the 21st). Some would clear their names, others would be arrested on the spot. The Committee of Legislation had already received, during the previous years, a certain number of letters of denunciation or accusation against the deputies. It would receive even more after the vote on the law of Messidor an III, and would make well-organized records of them. For the department of the Somme, the archives of this Committee preserve the denunciations against three deputies: André Dumont, Delecroy, and Saladin. We will not speak here of the denunciations against the latter two. Saladin was accused by the authorities of the Jura and that is not our subject. We will content ourselves with the denunciations against Dumont, which come from three citizens: Pochel, a farmer; Loisel; and Thuillier, a gendarmerie officer, then a farmer.

The accusation of the latter being the longest of all and the most precise, we will quote long passages from it.

Citizen Pochel accuses Dumont

This citizen, a farmer in La Hotoie, near Amiens, writes to the Citizen Representatives on 4 Thermidor an III (July 22, 1795):

"Liberty, Union, Equality, Citizen Representatives, Must I remind you that it was on 13 Messidor that the Convention decreed that before ratifying the Constitutional Act, its Committee of Legislation would, within the decade, make a general and complete report on the conduct of the deputies who were on mission? Must I tell you that the deadline prescribed to you expired 8 days ago? Must I observe this to the Convention, which would perhaps listen to me no more than you will? Or must I explain myself through the newspapers? This last course seems to me the surest! And I shall not delay in taking it. The Nation must be put in a position to appreciate the justice and impartiality of its representatives. The Convention wants those who will discuss the Constitutional Act to be commendable for their purity and integrity. In that case, there will be very few of your colleagues who have been on mission who will participate in the formation of this Constitution. It will surely not be Dumont, whose expulsion from the bosom of the National Convention is impatiently awaited; he is accused of the following facts, which are proven:

of having in his youth swindled his fellow students.

of having also swindled Brasseur, a prosecutor in Amiens, for whom he was a clerk, and who threw him out of his house.

of having stolen the silver buckles of a wigmaker's boy, at the home of one Guiot, where he lived in Amiens.

of having tried to incite his commune of Oisemont to rebel against the law, which obtained an arrest warrant against him; to evade it, he was a wanderer for 7 or 8 months.

of having attempted a fraudulent bankruptcy that his creditors prevented him from consummating.

of having sought to stir up his canton against the former administrators of this department, by attacking their decrees.

finally, of having committed, since he has been a representative, some of the horrors and infamies of which the Carriers, the Collots, the Lebons are accused, and of the obscenities of which Dartigoyte is accused (2). And this Monsieur Dumont is a legislator like any other! So there are still scoundrels among you, citizens! When will you finish purging yourselves? If this monster continues to take part in your deliberations, I warn you that people will spit on your Constitution; ask the deputies of the department of the Somme what Dumont is, they can give you a good account of him. Health and Fraternity. Pochel"

Citizen Loisel denounces Dumont

Loisel was a notable, procurator of the commune of Rue. He would become a notary like his father. During the Terror, he was an assistant to Petit, who was appointed commissioner of the Committee of General Security. Loisel and Petit sought out suspects, deserters, and conducted house searches. They were part of Dumont's "henchmen." However, after having been his friend, Loisel, in May 1794, addressed several letters to the Committee of General Security, denouncing Dumont, whose wife had allegedly moved everything that was in the apartment he occupied at the department's headquarters. He also accused an individual who had hidden a refractory priest in Amiens. "Loisel gathers information every day which he will communicate, if necessary...". But Dumont did not let it stand; he replied that Loisel had abandoned his post for a time at the municipality and that the move was an insignificant detail. In the end, Loisel confessed that he had been poorly informed by the agent Baroilhet and by his wife... and proclaimed that there was no one more republican than he... The incident was closed, and, in a new turnaround, Loisel and Dumont became friends again but, on the other hand, abandoned citizen Petit, accused of theft and extortion during his house searches, to the justice system: he was sentenced to twenty years in irons (4).

Thuillier denounces Dumont

Citizen Thuillier commanded the second gendarmerie company of the department of the Somme in 1793. In July 1792, he had been elected a member of the Departmental Council, but resigned on August 19 following. He recounts how Dumont dismissed him and had him imprisoned. He sent several acerbic letters to the Committee, for example, about the visit of Dumont and Chabot to Amiens at the end of July 1793, he criticized their lamentable attitude during the riots. In December 1793, he protested about the Noyon gate affair: on November 29, Dumont, on his way to Péronne, was leaving Amiens by the Noyon gate, with his usual entourage; according to the order, the sentry was not to let anyone pass without checking their passports; Dumont wanted to force his way through and shouted that he was the representative! The sentry, who did not know him, tried to stop him and was then struck by Dumont. The officer on duty, alerted, was also molested. Dumont, after a lively discussion, left furious and took his revenge: he had the officer and most of the guards imprisoned; they remained there for 6 months! We will speak again later of this painful affair. On 16 Messidor an III (July 4, 1795), Thuillier denounced Dumont to the Committee of Legislation for having placed Devaux, "ill-reputed and bankrupt," in the district tribunal of Amiens. Now, after these various missives, he addressed a very long letter of denunciations to the same Committee, reiterating the grievances already stated against the proconsul. In this letter, there is mention of Saladin. The latter, a lawyer in Amiens, had been elected deputy to the Convention. First a Montagnard, he became, after May 31, an enemy of the Jacobins, then a "reactionary."

This is the most precise denunciation in the entire file. It is dated 17 Prairial an III (June 5, 1795):

"To the representatives of the people composing the Committee of Legislation. Citizen representatives, Since justice is finally, in fact, the order of the day and since the Convention renders it indiscriminately to all citizens who have been victims of the tyranny of those of its members who, abusing the unlimited powers they had received from it, have only served their passions, by engaging in arbitrary acts and personal vengeance, I too have individual complaints to bring against citizen Dumont. I will get straight to the point."

Thuillier then explains that he was a gendarmerie officer at the time Dumont came on a mission to the Somme.

"The latter saw the Captain of the 1st gendarmerie company to whom he spoke of me with a bitterness that already announced prejudice, or rather, animosity, and questioned him on my conduct (...). Dumont tried several times to portray me as an enemy of the Revolution."

No member of the Popular Society of Amiens believed these slanderous accusations, and yet Dumont had Thuillier incarcerated on 30 Frimaire an II (December 20, 1793) until the following 13 Thermidor. He was released as a farmer in Poix.

"Dumont had dismissed me, as well as several of my comrades, without stated reason, but only to give our positions to his creatures (...). He had given mine to one Homassel, a relative of his, one of those turbulent spirits, those impetuous and fiery men, those ill-organized minds, in short, such as we have seen so many since the Revolution."

This Homassel seized Thuillier's weapons and books, which he demanded back as soon as he was released. Homassel refused to return them and informed Dumont. The latter, "charmed no doubt to make me feel the full weight of his vindictive power," requested an order from the Committee of General Security, which led to a new incarceration for Thuillier, who only regained his freedom when Dumont left that Committee. And Thuillier proclaimed:

"my actions have always been pure and my life without reproach, I have the sentiment of my conscience for me and I can state that in all the communes where I have resided, with the exception of three or four scoundrels, obscure villains (...), I have had the general esteem of my fellow citizens (...). I did not trouble anyone for religious opinions, I did not even denounce those who went to mass, a capital crime... in Dumont's eyes. Nor did I burn incense to the idols of the day, I was not a partisan of the Héberts and the Robespierres, nor of the vile agents they had sent to the departments to impose the Terror there."

Thuillier adds that he had been locked up because he was the brother-in-law of Saladin, "of whom Dumont was the sworn enemy" (...)

He dismissed the lieutenant of Abbeville, by a most deceitful decree, to replace him with a mere brigadier named Dubois, whose wife is related to Dumont's family. He also dismissed the captain of the first company of this department, to give the position to one of his friends (...). This is how André Dumont distributed Justice. I will say nothing of the capacity nor the talents nor the morality of these non-commissioned officers whom he chose to place at the head of the gendarmerie."

"I will now have to speak to you of Dumont's morality, and although one cannot say that he committed all the infamies of which Dartigoete is accused, he came so close that I confess it would take a different brush than mine to paint his portrait (...). Having met in Montreuil-sur-Mer during his mission with Lebon, his worthy colleague, they went together to the Popular Society where Lebon was the first to take the tribune, to recommend respect for individuals and property. Dumont, on the contrary, succeeding him, turned his colleague's morality to ridicule and preached a completely opposite doctrine, which was attested to me by a dozen citizens of that commune, recognized as honest people. What a difference, however, between these two men, one is in irons and the other is still free."

"Dumont says he did not spill the blood of the innocent, but did he not have it spilled? Was it not he who had the old Maréchale de Biron, aged 79, brought before Robespierre's tribunal? A stranger to all sentiment of justice and humanity, if he was not as cruel as the Carriers and the Lebons, if he seems to have had a horror of blood, it was cowardice on his part and not philanthropy (sic). The harsh and inhuman treatments he inflicted on detainees by cruelly separating husband from wife, brother from sister, father from daughter, attest only too well that his closed heart was inaccessible to pity. He was, towards women, coarse, brutal, and lewd. When a person of the opposite sex presented herself at his home, he looked her up and down and said disdainfully: you could have been better dressed, or you are too elegant, your face displeases me, get out, you bitch, I'll put my foot up your ass... Such remarks would have been better placed in the mouth of a docker than in that of a representative, but the honorable member was then playing the part. He had adopted the customs and even the expressions of the sans-culotterie; when the petitioner was to his taste, he would embrace her (...). It is said that more than one woman, and even young ladies, paid with a criminal compliance for the freedom of their husband, their father, their brother, for the sultan of the department of Somme granted protection only at this price. Seeing young people next to their mothers when he visited the detention houses, he would say to them: Well! When are you sleeping with me?"

"Dumont preaches the same religion as Père Duchesne, we saw him publicly preach atheism at the Popular Society of Amiens, swearing and blaspheming: I have already told you, he cried one day, and I repeat it for the third time: there is no God, or if there is one, let him punish me this instant! One must well believe that a man who denied the existence of a Supreme Being must, all the more, proscribe the worship that a credulous populace rendered to it and profane the Temple where it went to implore its goodness and its help. This is what Dumont did by dancing in the former cathedral of this city with shameless women and with all that was most vile and crapulous in Amiens. When Dumont hears the name of the Eternal pronounced, he flies into a rage, as animals afflicted with rabies shudder with horror at the sight of water.

Dumont never surrounded himself with anything but immoral beings, whose lives were but a chain of baseness and crime. It was with this kind of people that he must have, in part, populated the administrations and Committees during his proconsulship. He had placed at the head of the Surveillance Committee of Péronne a Dubois who was later sentenced to four years in irons for extortion. He had also put in the administration of the department of the Somme, the triple scoundrel Petit who has just been sentenced to twenty years in irons for domiciliary thefts. The famous Cattaert, president of this department, whom the gendarmerie has just brought to Paris, had also been placed there by Dumont. Finally, if I had to name all the scoundrels he placed in positions, I would be obliged to name almost all the members of the constituted bodies (…) He got the mansion of the former Marquis du Plouy, an émigré in Abbeville, for twenty thousand francs. This mansion was built seven or eight years ago and cost at least 80,000 livres in cash. I will be told that no one else bid. I well believe it: prison was there for anyone who would have dared to bid a hundred francs more. I finish, Citizen representatives, I cannot say everything, but I believe I have said enough to make you know that the Convention must cast Dumont from its bosom, if it wants to purify itself entirely, and thereby merit the esteem of Nations and the respect of the French. Long live Justice, Long live the courage to render it!" (5).

Multiple Controversies

After 9 Thermidor, Dumont attacked his colleagues with vehemence. As early as the 10th, he accused Robespierre the Younger of theft and speculation in the Army of Italy. He denounced and then had Hermann and Lahne, commissioners of civil administrations, arrested; he denounced David, a deputy from Paris, "that tyrant of the arts, as cowardly as he is villainous." He also denounced Joseph Lebon, and on 7 Fructidor, supported a denunciation against Desmagnet and Darthé; he spoke out against Duhem. On 13 Frimaire, he attacked the Jacobins of Paris, and, the next day, proposed the indictment of Lebon and Fouquier-Tinville. He also accused Maignet, and opposed Choudieu. In short, his violent speeches in the assembly did not cease. Thus, after Thermidor, having become one of the leaders of the reaction, Dumont showed himself to be as violent as during the time of the Terror, but in the opposite direction. This is why this turnaround earned him ardent controversies. For to renounce oneself to such a degree and so quickly was a difficult exercise. We will only mention here, first of all, his discussions with the deputy Choudieu, and outside the assembly, with Louchet and three deputies from the Somme, Gérard-Scellier, Saladin, and Devérité6. We will then present the vengeful writings of the Chénier brothers, Barbier-Jenty, Blanchard-Changy, and others less significant. These various attacks would be launched after Dumont, having become, in Year V, a member of the Council of Five Hundred (until 1 Prairial - March 20, 1797), had left this assembly.

Choudieu

During the session of 29 Pluviôse an III (February 17, 1795), a discussion arose about printing all the papers found at Robespierre's home.

"André Dumont opposes it and says that they want to assassinate a crowd of misguided patriots, who wrote to this tyrant, in the time of his popularity." The discussion is lively, several voices reproach him for his letters to Robespierre. Choudieu opposes Dumont; after debate, the latter has it decreed "that the printing of these papers will be limited to letters addressed to Robespierre by the deputies"(7). Choudieu and Dumont would oppose each other again in the following months. Choudieu wrote in his Memoirs: "Tallien, Fréron, Fouché of Nantes, André Dumont, Bourdon de l'Oise, (who) never had more than a mediocre influence in the Mountain, and (who) only obtained the sad celebrity of crime"(8). Choudieu had published a placard titled: To the Sovereign People, Choudieu, one of its representatives. Dumont replied to him in a speech delivered at the Convention on 28 Ventôse an III.

Gérard-Scellier

A merchant in Amiens, a member of the General Council of that commune. In this capacity, in 1793, he had to face the difficulties of provisions and hunger riots. A substitute deputy to the Convention, he was called to sit on December 12, 1793, replacing Sillery, who had been guillotined. Upon his departure for Paris, the Council of the commune of Amiens, "considering the good services that Gérard-Scellier has rendered to the commune, (...) where he has always shown the most sustained activity, the soundest ideas, of liberty and the Republic (...) gives Gérard-Scellier a testimony of its feelings of attachment..."(9). He was therefore esteemed in Amiens. Until the end of 1793, he appears to be on good terms with Dumont. But, subsequently, the latter accused his colleague of having denounced him to Robespierre. And the dark story of the Noyon Gate, which we mentioned above, would make them enemies. Dumont's brutal gesture, which injured a guard and an officer, caused a great stir in Amiens and the Popular Society, alerted, took up the cause of the injured. This was the beginning of serious dissensions between the Proconsul and this Popular Society. Gérard-Scellier also took a clear stand against Dumont, hence a violent controversy between the two deputies. In his report, Dumont attacked Gérard-Scellier and the latter replied to him with energy in a libel "To André Dumont," calling him an "assassin and a vile slanderer," even threatening to drag him before the courts (10). Gérard-Scellier was a moderate Jacobin: in a correspondence exchanged with the Minister of Justice in Brumaire IV, he expressed concern about the reactionary spirit of the people of Amiens and the rise of royalism (11).

Saladin

Saladin was, at the beginning of the Revolution, a lawyer and procurator of the commune of Amiens; he already showed himself to be an ardent, even exalted revolutionary. Elected deputy to the Convention, Dumont wrote that among his colleagues from the Somme, he only knew Saladin. They were on good terms then, but after the coup of May 31, Saladin became a moderate; having protested against these serious events and the affront to the national representation, he found himself "decreed," along with nine other deputies from the Somme, a total of 73 conventionnels. Dumont, furious at this stance, attacked Saladin, his colleagues, and the members of the Departmental Council, in a word all those who had taken a stand against the Mountain. But he did not demand their arrest; they were only suspended, and regained their place in the assembly the following year; Dumont then welcomed them without discussion (12).

Devérité

Louis-Alexandre Devérité was born in Abbeville in 1743. Initially a printer, he was elected municipal councilor of the city in 1790, then to the Convention in 1792. In June 1793, he also protested against May 31. He was dismissed like the others, and had to hide for eighteen months. Devérité had already had a run-in with Dumont, concerning letters opened by the commissioner of mail Picot (an affiliate of Dumont). Devérité resumed his post at the Convention after Thermidor, with the other protesting deputies. Like Dumont's other enemies, he attacked him in Year IV, as the press had become free again. Devérité then published two violent and rather witty pamphlets, in response to Dumont's report: Dialogue between two electors of the department of the Somme on the report (...), (printed, 22 pages, n.d.), Second dialogue between Alceste and Philinte on André Dumont, (printed, 24 pages, n.d.).

A cultivated man, Devérité imagines in these texts the conversation and discussions between Alceste, that is, the author, and Philinte (Dumont) who tries to defend himself. Thus, one can read: Alceste: "I esteem and love only men whose march in the Revolution has been strong and uniform, without boasting as without weakness. If there is anyone of this kind in the deputation of the Somme, it is not Dumont." Philinte replies: "But what did you want him to do under the reign of brigands, of men of blood? He had to howl with the wolves." Alceste: "I would have wanted him not to espouse the party of these wolves and not to defend them from his arrival at the Convention, that he not take the names of 'the sans-culotte Dumont,' of 'the Maratist Dumont...'."

Devérité recalls that Dumont "was part of the Jacobins, that mother society of anarchy, sitting in Paris, which so exalted Dumont, one of its most cherished children...". He takes pleasure in quoting the vulgar expressions of his enemy, who wanted, for example, to "cast his wide net over a quarry for the guillotine, or purge with his great emetic." Alceste denounces "this lewd proconsul, this little ape of Tiberius." - "A revolutionary charlatan, a vile slanderer." - Devérité cites the sharp attacks of Barbier-Jenty and those of Blanchard-Changy. In the "Second Dialogue" is reproduced a list of 59 innocents of both sexes "arrested and slaughtered on the scaffold or dead in their prison, by the act of the ogre Dumont." This list is close to the one published by Louis-Sauveur Chénier, but, like it, is open to discussion.

Louchet

Louis Louchet was born in Longpré-les-Corps-Saints (Somme). He was elected deputy of Aveyron to the Convention. Remaining faithful to his Picardy, he was at first on good terms with Dumont, and even wrote to him in 1793 to denounce the priests of his native commune. Appointed in December 1794 receiver-general of the department of the Somme, it was in this capacity that he had disagreements with Dumont. The Minister of Police Merlin de Douai had asked Louchet for information on certain officials. Dumont managed to intercept the letter and violently accused Louchet of being a denouncer and a vile agent of the Directory. He easily cleared himself.

Barbier-Jenty

This pure Jacobin was president of the Popular Society of Amiens, therefore an influential man. He delivered an important speech at the Festival of the Supreme Being in that city. He would later write: "Scarcely was Dumont a member of the Committee (of General Security) than he remembered that his self-esteem and his passions had to occupy themselves with his personal vengeance, rather than with the exclusive interests of the fatherland. Dumont entered the Committee on 16 Thermidor (an II). On the 18th, my arrest was pronounced. If he could have had the entire Popular Society (of Amiens, R.L.) arrested, with the exception of a dozen citizens, his creatures, spies, reporters, or sycophants, he would have done so without a doubt" (13).

Barbier-Jenty remained in prison despite the protests of this Popular Society, the communal authorities, and the National Guard. Sautereau, the new representative on mission, a moderate, would have him released after several months of detention.

It was again the Noyon Gate affair that had cut the bridges between Dumont and Barbier-Jenty. And the latter was attacked, like others, in Dumont's Report to his constituents, dated 18 Pluviôse an V (February 6, 1797). Barbier-Jenty replied to him in the same tone, acerbic and vengeful, in a 123-page brochure (14), a large part of which is devoted to this incident. This citizen was then commissioner of the Executive Directory near the administration of the canton of Amiens. In Brumaire an IV, he had shown his hostility towards the Amiens administration in which, he said, the reaction dominated under a republican mask. Like Gérard-Scellier and like the Popular Society, he had taken the side of the guard and the officer assaulted at the Noyon Gate, against an aggressive, vain representative, who believed himself above the law and simple humanity. In his libel, Barbier-Jenty shows the weakness of Dumont's arguments and his signal bad faith.

Blanchard-Changy

This citizen of Beauvais was imprisoned, with his wife, for five months on Dumont's orders, who later accused him of terrorism...! But the accused defended himself in a printed letter (of 21 Brumaire an V) then in two violent and precise libels. He then draws a severe picture of the representative's immorality, his cruelty, and his misdeeds in Beauvais and the Oise. Dumont's report is dated 18 Pluviôse an V; Blanchard-Changy responds to him with hauteur in his second libel15 and puts the proconsul on trial. He accuses him, for example, of having been in contact with Mazuel, the one who had spread terror in Beauvais with the Parisian Revolutionary Army. Dumont accuses Blanchard-Changy of terrorism; this is his usual method, and the latter retorts: "You decry today those whom in 1793 you called your brave sans-culottes" - "Say that you were at least as afraid of the tyrants as those you tyrannized to please them...".

The Chénier family

It is known that the great poet André Chénier perished on the scaffold on 7 Thermidor an II. His brother, Marie-Joseph Chénier, a Montagnard conventionnel, wrongly accused Dumont of his elder brother's death. Another brother, Louis-Sauveur Chénier, a cavalry lieutenant-colonel in disgrace at Breteuil, had denounced suspect individuals close to Dumont. The latter had him immediately incarcerated, as well as Marie-Joseph, his brother. 9 Thermidor saved their heads. As freedom of the press allowed it, a lively controversy arose between Dumont and the family, which formed a bloc. The mother, indeed, was not to be outdone; she wrote in Frimaire an V: "I have just read with indignation in a newspaper, the atrocious slanders vomited against my youngest son, Marie-Joseph Chénier, by the infamous Dumont, impure remnant of those brigands who, under the reign of Terror, covered France with tears and blood...". And Louis-Sauveur, in Ventôse of the same year, published several vengeful libels. At the end of one of them, he gives a list of 58 victims of Dumont: innocents of both sexes, arrested by order of the ogre Dumont, delivered by him to the revolutionary tribunals of Paris, Arras and others, and died on the scaffold (16). These condemnations took place between Frimaire and Thermidor; they are mainly citizens of the Oise and fifteen from the Somme. But some were wrongly attributed to Dumont and there are others from the Somme whom Chénier does not know (17). The exact list is not possible to establish and one would have to add those who died in prison before execution.

Caron-Berquier and others

An influential citizen of Amiens, the printer Caron-Berquier, was connected with Dumont. It was he who printed most of the libels and pamphlets at the time. But the time of dissensions and discord came, and in Year IV, Caron-Berquier also took the side of Gérard-Scellier against the vain proconsul. Dumont also had discussions with his former henchman Jacques Petit, from Vron, with Merlin-Hibon, from Boulogne-sur-Mer, with Evrard, from Hesdin, and we will mention for the record, the serious dissensions in 1814 with M. de la Tour du Pin, prefect of the Somme.

Opinions of his adversaries

Partial, no doubt, the acerbic declarations of Dumont's enemies (direct witnesses) are too consistent not to be cited. On his vulgarity and sensuality, Devérité, like Louis-Sauveur Chénier and Thuillier, are categorical. And Blanchard-Changy shows him to be a "braggart, proud," he sees in him "fear and cowardice," "pretense and deceit." Marie-Joseph Chénier writes on his side: "Dumont has lied impudently," he speaks of this "perfidious" man, of his "cowardly lies." His mother, the widow Chénier, calls him "infamous." And Louis-Sauveur Chénier speaks bluntly of the "ogre Dumont," "this scoundrel kneaded from blood and mud... an impostor and a hypocrite." The same, writes again: "the execrable Dumont, an assembly of foolishness and blackness, of turpitude, baseness and infamy" - "a cowardly hypocrite," he evokes "his perfidious conduct,... his base cruelty." Barbier-Jenty calls him "as deceitful as he is contemptible" - "a political chameleon, a hypocritical slanderer"(18). An Englishwoman who, like Barbier-Jenty, had suffered imprisonment, judges him: "a poltroon who is afraid of his own temerity and dreads its punishment." - "Dumont, although transformed into a tyrant by circumstances, is not bloodthirsty; he is, by nature and by education, passionate and coarse, and in other times, he would perhaps have been only a good-natured rascal." This Englishwoman recounts in detail the customs of the prisons: "Dumont, who is married and resembles a white negro, never visits us without causing a general commotion among the women, particularly those who are young and pretty. As soon as it is known that he is expected, all toilets are in activity, the rouge is renewed, the curls are adjusted, one adorns oneself with more haste (...) than for a first introduction to Court. When the great man arrives, he finds the entrance court filled with beautiful captives, and each one, a petition in hand, tries to attract his attention, or to merit his favor by the wiles of the most skillful coquetry, by a plaintive smile or judicious tears...". And this Englishwoman, a fine observer, notes further: "However (Dumont) unites in his person all the attributes of despotism, and lives in a more luxurious and expensive manner than most of the ci-devant nobles"(19).

And Thuillier, whom Dumont had put in prison, writes: "Dumont, who never had a pronounced character, has always followed the dominant party; this man preaches great principles today, but he is far from having always recognized them." - "If he seems to have had a horror of blood, it was cowardice on his part, and not philanthropy (sic). His ferocious heart was inaccessible to pity, he was, towards women, coarse, brutal, and lewd."

What historians have thought of Dumont's palinodies

After this display of lies, of painful controversies, after so many hateful words exchanged between Dumont and his enemies, can we attempt to take stock? For this, we will note what his contemporaries thought, and compare it with the judgments of authors and historians of the 19th century, and those of our own time.

After Thermidor, as we have seen, Dumont ardently followed the movement of reaction, he even became one of its most engaged and vindictive members. From an avowed Robespierrist, he became the one who had his former comrades in struggle imprisoned. He was, from then on, attacked by some, the former Jacobins, as a turncoat who burned what he had adored. And the others, the moderates, and those close to the victims, reminded him of his past violence. He remained, in the end, faithful to himself, always as anti-clerical (but that was his master idea) as he was boastful and coarse. Kuscinski is not tender: "In these three missions (...) Dumont acted as a true energumen" - "Having left the Council on 1 Prairial an V (May 20, 1797), Dumont was so discredited and despised that the Directory left him aside"(20). - "A true fraud" one reads again in this Dictionary, regarding the letter from Robespierre, of which Dumont published only the laudatory part, but was careful not to reproduce the severe reprimand; the story is known and Aulard commented on it severely thus: "Dumont shouted more than he struck, and he boasted of having been as clement as he was injurious. But the style of his letters, his ridiculous jokes against priests, whom he treated as animals, his tone of a furious swashbuckler, which is an exception in the correspondence of the representatives as a whole, his attitude of a madman, discredited the Revolution in France and abroad. The deception that we have pointed out, shows that this very ill-mannered man was not loyalty itself"(21). The Dictionary of Robert and Cougny notes that Dumont may have played a double game, but recalls that he voted for the death of the King, even specifying his vote a second time... One of his contemporaries, Tissot, writes that at the tribune, Dumont resembled "a hyena in a fury"(22). Mathiez calls him a "political chameleon." As can be seen, these opinions concur with those of all who had reason to take revenge on him. The same arguments and the same epithets are used.

More nuanced judgments

And yet! Favorable opinions of Dumont are numerous today. Authors seem to give much less importance than his contemporaries to the man himself. On the other hand, more interest is attached to the fact that the Proconsul had few victims. Certainly, the Somme saw less blood shed than the Pas-de-Calais, for example. Albéric de Calonne does not attack him too much, but shows a mediocre character: "the Maratist speaks like an ogre, gets angry, fulminates (...) but ultimately shows himself more clement than most of the conventionnels invested with an authority similar to his"(23).

De Pongerville, in 1837, is very favorable in the Biographie des hommes célèbres, des artistes, des savants... Prarond does not attack him clearly in his notes on the Rues d'Abbeville.

Closer to us, Abbé Peltier writes: "He received orders from the Popular Society, master of the situation. Despite his excesses of language, he refused certain condemnations, and had no one from Amiens perish during his mission. He strove to preserve Amiens from the proscriptions of Lebon who was raging in Arras, and from the atrocities of Robespierre; he later had it attested that he had not participated in any way in the execution of Fr. Firmin Vigneron" (24). The same, writes further: "André Dumont had a horror of blood and cruelties: he created a diversion by the violence of his messages and the intemperance of his speeches."

G. Braillon, generally severe, writes: "André Dumont, in Picardy, made more noise than harm"(25). A manuscript, preserved in Amiens, of a rather counter-revolutionary tendency, nevertheless recognizes that in mid-October 1793, Dumont showed indulgence towards the detainees (26). And Canon Le Sueur, although often hostile to the Revolution, writes: in December 1793, "Dumont obliges the Augustinian nuns of Amiens to take an oath, under threat. Taillefer was part of the ceremony. The nuns retracted a few days later. The Benedictine nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu took the oath, then were arrested, Dumont had them released" (27).

For his part, Boucher de Crévecœur notes: "While his sinister colleague Joseph Lebon decimated the Pas-de-Calais with his arbitrary executions, André Dumont, despite the violence of his speeches, was content to imprison persons suspected by the Republic and thus managed to save a great number of his fellow citizens. Therefore, considering the troubled times in which he lived, we should be grateful for his moderation"(28).

The assessment

Can we, at the end of this study, draw some general ideas?

It is certain that the department of the Somme was moderate, more Girondin than Montagnard. Dumont, sent on a mission with full powers, galvanized the members of the Popular Societies, the municipalities, the members of the Districts and the Surveillance Committees, for the fight against hoarders, deserters, the ci-devant nobles, and especially against the priests, whom he detested. He deployed all his energy against the latter, during the ten months of his mission. Skillful, devoted, he made himself loved, adulated by the Jacobins and the Picard sans-culottes. His Report, which he published after being attacked by some, provoked acerbic responses, for example from those he had imprisoned: Thuillier, Barbier-Jenty, Blanchard-Changy, and the Chéniers. As some of them indicate, fear was the general law during those years. After Thermidor, those who had feared him, like those who had known prison, wanted to take revenge. Certainly, Dumont is not the only Montagnard who became a Thermidorian, but he too wanted to take revenge on his enemies. Hence these controversies: it was a power struggle, and the regime was not conducive to compromises, in religious struggles as in civil conflicts.

Today, we remember the man: mediocre, a liar, vindictive, a pleasure-seeker and coarse, deceitful and violent. But as we have said, the historians and writers of our century present him with less severity than those who knew him, because, it seems, it is considered above all that he caused less bloodshed than others, alas, well known. We began this study with three official, signed denunciations, addressed, as the law permitted, to the Committee of Legislation. Loisel's letter can be dismissed: Dumont contradicted it, and replied sharply to its author.

The other two denunciations are motivated, detailed, and their themes correspond on many points. Pochel's speaks mainly of Dumont's youth. The longest and most important is that of Thuillier, which we have, for this reason, reproduced almost in its entirety. As for the controversies, we can set aside those with Caron-Berquier, Louchet and Saladin; these are personal discussions. To be clear, we must therefore summarize and classify the themes of the two denunciations: Pochel and Thuillier, and of the seven controversies: three conventionnels: Devérité, Gérard-Scellier and Choudieu, a Jacobin from Amiens: Barbier-Jenty, and also Blanchard-Changy, the Chéniers and the Englishwoman.

The different attacks against the "proconsul" can be classified as follows:

his violent and impulsive character is attested by Thuillier, Gérard-Scellier, Barbier-Jenty, and moreover, by the municipality and the Popular Society of Amiens.

Slanderer, deceitful, vengeful, thus he is seen by Thuillier, Gérard-Scellier, Barbier-Jenty, Blanchard-Changy, Devérité and the Chéniers.

He is attacked as a renegade by Devérité, Barbier-Jenty, Choudieu, and by other deputies: Ruamps, Duhem among others; also by Babeuf.

His arbitrary acts to favor his faithful agents: Thuillier, Barbier-Jenty.

Coarse, a pleasure-seeker, obscene, cynical, as seen by Pochel, Thuillier, Blanchard-Changy, Louis-Sauveur Chénier, and the Englishwoman.

His anti-clericalism affects only Thuillier.

Bloodthirsty. This is the accusation of Thuillier, Devérité, Louis-Sauveur Chénier. This question is not clear; Devérité and Chénier exaggerate the number of his victims: there were certainly some, but far fewer; Dumont defended himself with the famous words: "They asked me for blood, I sent them ink!"

Man of money. Thuillier affirms it, but here again, Dumont defended himself, and Thuillier's accusation is difficult to verify.

Dumont's Report responds to general attacks, most often by publishing letters of congratulation or encouragement that the Popular Societies, municipalities, and Surveillance Committees had sent him. The book is a plea, a long chapter of which is devoted to the Noyon Gate affair. Now, it was after the publication of this volume that Gérard-Scellier, Devérité, Barbier-Jenty and Blanchard-Changy published their responses.

We consider, to conclude, Dumont as an impulsive man, often coarse, violent, vain, but very skillful. He had, however, the merit of being a Representative on Mission, faithful to the orders received, and of having spared this department of the Somme from serious incidents, and, ultimately, civil war.

(1)Le Moniteur an IX, 1801, p. 761, n° 325, séance du 21 thermidor an III.

(2) Dartigoyte, a deputy to the Convention (from the Landes), had spread terror during his mission in the Southwest. He was placed under formal accusation in Prairial, Year III.

(3)Arch. Nat. D. Ill, 357.

(4)Arch. Nat. D. Ill, 346.

(5)Arch. Nat. D. Ill, 346.

(6) For more details on Devérité and the other deputies from the Somme, see my book.

: La Révolution dans la Somme, Conventionnels, etc., Abbeville, 1988.

(7) Le Moniteur, nos 152 et 153 des 2 et 3 ventôse, p. 626 et 627. (8) Memoirs and notes of Choudieu, published byV. Barrucand (1 vol. Paris 1897).

(9)Documents pour servir à l'histoire de la Révolution française dans la ville d'Amiens, Registres aux délib. de l'administration municipale, 7 vol. Paris 1895-1905, tome VI, p. 709 (22 frimaire).

(10) Letters reproduced by De Rouge : Le conventionnel André Dumont, (I vol. Paris 1911), p. 386.

(11) Letters reproduced in the Révolution dans la Somme, p. 143.

(12) For more details on this incident, see the same work, p. 158.

(13)Barbier-Jenty’s response to André Dumont’s report, (10 ventôse an V, 1 brochure imprimée, 123 p.)

(14) The first libel: 12 printed pages, 30 Pluviôse year V, was reproduced in part by De Rouge, work cited, p. 356.

(15) The second libel: Blanchard Changy's response to André Dumont's report (15 Ventôse, Year V, 1 printed brochure, 8 pages), reproduced by De Rouge, op. cit., p. 363. Report by André Dumont, deputy for the Somme department to the National Convention and member of the Council of Five Hundred, to his constituents, Paris-Amiens, 1797, 1 vol. in-8°, 439 p.

(16) These various libels were reproduced by de Rouge, op. cit., p. 389

(17)H. Tausin, Les Picards guillotinés à Paris pendant la Révolution, ( booklet, Saint-Quentin, 1904). Marie-Joseph Chénier, a prolific author, had composed in 1794, an Ode to Slander in response to the queue of Robespierre (in 8° - 8 p.). He had composed the words of the Chant du départ, a tragedy Caius Gracchus, epistles to Voltaire, etc.

Louis-Sauveur Chénier has published, among other things: «Pièces justificatives publiées dans le Compte-rendu d'André Dumont», dedicated to the electoral body of France, Paris, n.d. in 8°, 24 p. and two studies on the organization of the army, one of which, in 1790, is 19-75 pages).

(18) Response from Barbier-Jenty, op. cit., 10 Ventôse year V.

(19)Un séjour en France, lettres d'une Anglaise témoin de la Révolution française, et emprisonnée à Amiens, Published by J.R. Green, translated by H. Taine; Paris 1872 and reprints.

(20)A. Kuscinski, Dictionnaire des conventionnels, I vol. Paris, 1917.

(21)A. Aulard, «Une supercherie d'André Dumont», La Révolution française, 1894, p. 241.

(22) Tissot. Souvenirs manuscrits inédits, conservés à la Bibliothèque centrale de Lausanne.

(23)A. de Calonne, Histoire de la ville d'Amiens t. Il, Amiens - Paris, p. 517.

(24)H. Peltier, Histoire religieuse de la Picardie, Abbeville, 1966, p. 162, 169, 175.

25)G. Braillon, Le clergé du Noyonnais pendant la Révolution, (1789-1801), I, Noyon 1987.

(26)Bibl. Amiens, Ms 1722, Notes sur la Révolution, copie de Prarond.

(27) Chanoine Le Sueur, Le clergé picard et la Révolution, t. I, Amiens, 1904, p. 399, 407.

(28)Notice sur les membres de la Société d'émulation, Abbeville, 1892, p. 419

Source:

[nesiacha]

Hello, I'm back! Sorry, I've been dealing with some serious problems that have worsened, both financially and personally. Things are still tough and will probably continue for a while, but I’ll try to be a bit more present on social media. (And if not, I promise I’ll do my best to let you know in advance.)

[nesiacha]

Disgusted by what's happening between Iran and Israel. And to think that, according to BFM TV and RMC TV, Netanyahu apparently claimed that unlike Iran, he doesn't target hospitals (at least that's what I briefly heard on the news—so maybe he didn’t actually say it, but that was the message conveyed). Has he forgotten what he did in Palestine?

It’s time to point out—even though I absolutely despise the religious oppression in Iran (I've always loathed and rejected the idea of imposing religious laws on others; it's one of the clearest red flags—politics and religion should never be mixed)—that Iran is not the worst country when it comes to religious oppression or Islamism.

Saudi Arabia (where it took ages for women to even gain the right to drive) and Qatar are far worse in that respect. And despite so-called “reforms” lately, both countries have contributed to destabilizing several nations—some of which are still dealing with the consequences, like Libya, thanks in part to Qatar. But since they’re strong allies, people don’t talk much about it (especially Saudi Arabia, which has been allied with the United States for a very long time).

And please, spare me the term “preventive war.” It’s a legally shaky concept used to justify illegal wars. As for trying to slow down Iran’s nuclear program—Israel isn’t exactly in a position to lecture anyone. (Let’s not forget the case of Mordechai Vanunu, defended among others by lawyer Nicole Dreyfus.)

[nesiacha]

There's nothing worse in history than Zweig. Secher: Hold my beer.

[nesiacha]

Warning mention of torture:

It's so inconsistent. Cadoudal is being tortured, which is already illegal. So why even bother with the rule about not influencing a suspect just to get a name? Yes, I know there were some cases of torture at the time—whether against certain republicans like Ceracchi or royalists—but the way it’s written here is just sloppy.

And oh my god (from an atheist, no less)! The Code of Criminal Procedure didn’t even exist back then—it was only established in 1958. Its 'ancestor', the Code d’instruction criminelle, dates back to 1808 (though it had been in the works for years before).

Even I, one of the worst law students out there, know that. So how come they( the screenwriters ) , with all the resources they had, didn’t? XD

Fouché showing how well he knows the penal code

... And how good he is in respecting it évidemment! (from Carême ep.6)

[nesiacha]

Yes thank you! I didn't find these and it will be helpful ( now we know the true reason on why Barras broke up with Josephine then Theresia XD)

Was Paul Barras attracted to men ?

Warning not a very serious post

Some time ago, I heard Françoise Kermina suggest the hypothesis that Paul Barras might have been attracted to men. She based this on Talleyrand’s memoirs (which are not the most reliable, and whose nature I don’t fully know). Apparently, one day, Talleyrand was surprised to see Barras in tears. A young man named Raymond had disappeared into the Seine and drowned. Since becoming a Director, Barras had "promoted" him politically, reportedly made him his aide-de-camp, and was said to be very fond of him. Françoise Kermina was surprised because it was not Barras' style to cry openly in front of his political colleagues since he was a tough, authoritative man.

Still, I think this is a rather thin basis for such a claim. Not to mention the general rule that even the least admirable figures of the French Revolution had people they genuinely cared for – and vice versa. (Perhaps with the exception of Turreau.) So it’s entirely possible that Barras simply felt sincere friendship, however surprising that may seem. Assuming, of course, that the anecdote is even true.

[nesiacha]

Was Paul Barras attracted to men ?

Warning not a very serious post

Some time ago, I heard Françoise Kermina suggest the hypothesis that Paul Barras might have been attracted to men. She based this on Talleyrand’s memoirs (which are not the most reliable, and whose nature I don’t fully know). Apparently, one day, Talleyrand was surprised to see Barras in tears. A young man named Raymond had disappeared into the Seine and drowned. Since becoming a Director, Barras had "promoted" him politically, reportedly made him his aide-de-camp, and was said to be very fond of him. Françoise Kermina was surprised because it was not Barras' style to cry openly in front of his political colleagues since he was a tough, authoritative man.

Still, I think this is a rather thin basis for such a claim. Not to mention the general rule that even the least admirable figures of the French Revolution had people they genuinely cared for – and vice versa. (Perhaps with the exception of Turreau.) So it’s entirely possible that Barras simply felt sincere friendship, however surprising that may seem. Assuming, of course, that the anecdote is even true.

[nesiacha]

The "Famous" Sophies of the 18th Century

Sophie of France, daughter of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska

Sophie, daughter of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI

Sophie of Artois, daughter of the future Charles X and Marie Thérèse of Savoy

Sophie Volland

Sophie Germain

Sophie de Grouchy, wife of Nicolas de Condorcet

Sophie Momoro, wife of Antoine François Momoro

Sophie Carnot, wife of Lazare Carnot

Sophie Lapierre

The two Sophie Babeuf, daughters of Gracchus and Marie-Anne Babeuf

Sophie Arnould

Sophie Hugo mother of Victor Hugo

Sophie Fayd'herbe de Maudave morgautic wife of Rear-Admiral Charles René Magon de Médine thanks to @tetreaultology-and-tabarnak to find her

Feel free to add more Sophie living in 18th Century

[nesiacha]

Before the Rasputin and Russian imperial family affair, I believe that, in some ways—though it's admittedly anachronistic—there were some similar situations in history in my eyes :

Cinci Hoca and Sultan Ibrahim I

Catherine of Aragon during the period when she was the widow of Arthur and not yet married to Henry VIII. During this time of uncertainty, she likely felt vulnerable—especially as her father, Ferdinand II, failed to provide adequate support and that her stepfather didn't help her a lot. She found an ally in a confessor Fray Diego Fernández who, unfortunately, harmed her reputation by giving her poor advice (among others). Fortunately, after the reign of Henry VII, this confessor was dismissed. Here is a link to more information about the scandal: https://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/catherine-of-aragon-involved-in-scandal

Feel free to share more examples

[nesiacha]

Hello! Do you know if there are any good biographies/sources/ or general information beside Wikipedia about Bengal-born french revolutionary Zamor? He seems very cool and it is a shame he is not more talked about, thank you!

Madame de Barry herself writes about Zamor on page 11-14 in volume 2 of her memoirs.

In volume 2 of Histoire du tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris: avec le journal de ses actes (1880) by Henri Wallon, page 224 and 231, we can read about Zamor during Madame de Barry’s trial in December 1793, as well as what it was he had to say during it.

I have however been unable to find any written material conserved from Zamor himself, when checking both Internet Archive and Gallica.

I was unfortunately also unable to discover any biography over Zamor. I did however find three fictional works where he serves as main character — rêve de Zamor: roman (2003) by Eve Ruggieri (can be read for free on Internet Archive), Zamor: Le nègre républicain (2016) by Ludovic Miserole and The Greatest Thing (2023) by Patti Flinn. But if there’s any factual value in these I of course don’t know… :(

[nesiacha]

Félix Le Peletier and Thérésia Tallien, then the wife of the Marquis de Fontenay, had an affair in 1789.

Several sources, including historian Laurence Constance Vaet, confirm that Le Peletier was romantically involved with Thérésia. At the time, she was trapped in an arranged marriage to the Marquis de Fontenay, which had been imposed on her at the age of 15 and which she reportedly did not enjoy. In 1789, Félix Le Peletier was 23 years old, and Thérésia was just 16. He was a frequent guest at her political salons.

Some sources—though I still need to verify their reliability—suggest that Le Peletier was, for a time, her favored lover before being replaced by Alexandre de Lameth. There are also claims that he proposed marriage to her and formally approached her parents, who rejected his proposal in favor of the Marquis de Fontenay. I remain unsure how credible these reports are.

There is also speculation that Le Peletier might have been the biological father of Thérésia’s first child, Théodore. Personally, I doubt this. If Le Peletier had truly been the father, I believe he would have—if not acknowledged the child openly—at least ensured that his son lacked nothing. Yet, when Thérésia was arrested during the Revolution, he made no effort to help her, at least as far as I can tell. Nor is there any indication that she tried to intervene for him during the Babeuf Conspiracy, when he was threatened with deportation, or later during the White Terror, when he was at risk of being killed . This suggests that their political paths had diverged and that they had effectively severed ties.

If Théodore had indeed been his son, Le Peletier could have discreetly checked on the child’s well-being. But there’s no sign of such concern. In contrast, he took responsibility for his daughter Félicité (whose mother was Marie-Adélaïde Guénon). I believe he would have done the same if Théodore had been his own.

It’s understandable that Thérésia and Félix were drawn to one another, even if they both had multiple lovers. Although in 1789 neither had yet developed the strong political identities they would become known for, both seemed unafraid of risk and danger. Historian Françoise Kermina noted that Thérésia had a taste for danger and courage: she used her position in Bordeaux to pursue her own political goals and notably refused to testify against Jean-Lambert Tallien, even though doing so might have secured her release.

Le Peletier, for his part, was a committed Babouvist during a highly dangerous time. Years later he openly defied the Consulate alongside his friend Antonelle, to the point of being pursued by Bonaparte’s police even before the Rue Saint-Nicaise assassination attempt (which, although perpetrated by the royalists, was the pretext for Bonaparte to get rid of the Jacobins). He taunted the Minister of Justice by sending a letter announcing his own escape, and despite having powerful friends to protect him, he continued provoking the authorities. He was eventually banned from Paris, feigned illness to pretend he had left politics, all while staying in contact with key figures in the radical Société des Philadelphes, likely preparing to strike at the right moment. As mayor under Louis XVIII, he used his office to disrupt the regime while delivering subtle yet sharp anti-monarchist speeches. He endured four years in exile, and upon his return, immediately resumed his opposition to the monarchy.

Both showed remarkable resilience. Thérésia survived prison, rose to fame under the Directory, and even after falling from grace under Bonaparte, achieved her goal of rejoining the nobility by marrying the Prince of Caraman-Chimay. She adapted to aristocratic life with ease. Le Peletier escaped persecution after the Babouvist trials, avoided deportation during the Consulate, and again survived during the White Terror. His survival was due in large part to his connections—first with Carnot during the Babeuf affair, later with his childhood friend Saint-Jean d’Angély (a State Councillor under Bonaparte), and through his uncle, who was a friend of Count Beugnot, Prefect of the Seine-Inférieure.

Thérésia and Félix were both prominent political actors during this era. Interestingly, both associated with opponents of Bonaparte, though from very different ideological camps—Thérésia leaned royalist and conservative like madame de Stael (an orientation she adopted partly due to her disgrace under Bonaparte), while Le Peletier was aligned with Jacobins.

In some respects, they resembled each other. Yet I wonder whether, by the end, they viewed one another as enemies. Thérésia, despite her chameleon-like adaptability, remained fundamentally royalist and conservative. Le Peletier, in contrast, was a deeply committed republican, far to the left—precisely the kind of revolutionary Thérésia despised. It's unlikely he ever forgot that royalists had murdered his brother. He was profoundly close to the Babeuf family—he even accepted Babeuf’s dying request to care for his family— and remained tightly linked with the Montagnards, who were fierce opponents of Thérésia. After all the Gracchus Babeuf ( and so Marie-Anne Babeuf) despise the couple Tallien as you can see there https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/784328603622047744/babeuf-article-against-tallien-couple-and-freron?source=share.

Had the Babouvist Conspiracy—of which Le Peletier was a central figure—succeeded, it would have marked the end of Thérésia’s political career, as well as that of Barras and many others. Ironically, I don’t believe Carnot would have been a "target", as many Babouvists, including Babeuf, Buonarroti had nothing against whim while Le Peletier, appeared to hold him in some regard and had no real quarrel with him as you can see there https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/770487228804759553/f%C3%A9lix-lepeletier-de-saint-fargeau-un-personnage?source=share ( it's talk about the relationship between Carnot and Le Peletier) .

Le Peletier used his honestly acquired inheritance to support the underprivileged, unlike Thérésia, whose wealth was reportedly obtained through corrupt means—a criticism made even by Françoise Kermina. He used his resources to assist surviving Babouvists and their families, many of whom had been ruined after the trials, and possibly even helped care for Charles Germain’s three-year-old son, left behind due to his father’s deportation. It’s difficult to believe he would have respected Thérésia’s lifestyle.

It would be fascinating to discover more about the time when Thérésia and Félix were a couple. Some have speculated about what might have happened had they married. I doubt it would have lasted—despite Le Peletier’s remarkable ability to survive politically and reinvent himself in nearly every situation, unlike Jean-Lambert Tallien from which he never recovered from his political fall. But then again, Le Peletier was a different kind of man entirely, incomparable to Tallien.

P.S. According to Laurence Constant in the Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, there was a rumor that Félix Le Peletier once had an affair with Joséphine de Beauharnais. While Le Peletier did have multiple lovers, even Constant notes that this is unconfirmed.

One last note: I felt quite uncomfortable with the age at which Thérésia began her affair with Le Peletier. She was only 16, and he was 23. I understand that such age gaps were more socially acceptable at the time—and it's certainly less extreme than, say, Fréron, who had a 13-year-old mistress—but I still find it unsettling, especially given how young Thérésia was.

Source:

[nesiacha]

Carnot reaction against Tallien and Barras

Carnot, on the day he learned that he would have to work with Tallien, and later with Barras:

He must have missed the good old days of the Committee of the Year II even with the big political differences.

[nesiacha]

Babeuf article against Tallien couple and Freron

Here is an article by Babeuf against the couple Tallien (and also Fréron). While he may have had valid personal and political reasons to oppose Madame Tallien, he nonetheless used deeply sexist and unacceptable language toward her. In this, he resembles Condorcet—true revolutionary feminists in many ways, yet who used offensive and degrading language against women from opposing political factions.

I also get the impression that Babeuf might have held racist prejudices (even though the term did not exist at the time). He refers to people as “Arabs” when describing Parisian shopkeepers, merchants, and street vendors, clearly relying on orientalist stereotypes—even if he did not directly insult the Arab world itself.

I wonder whether Babeuf harbored strong biases against the peoples of the Orient and North Africa. This would be in contrast to a politically complex and pro-slavery figure like Anacharsis Cloots, who nevertheless presented himself at the Convention on June 10, 1790, accompanied by a group of foreigners, including Arabs—as you can see here: https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/763168272650846208/anacharsis-cloots-a-noble-internationalist?source=share

Immediate Demands and Prostitution

Anyone with eyes who takes the trouble to open them cannot help but find it extraordinary that, at the same time when protective decrees issued by the exclusively ruling faction have caused a massive increase in the prices of all goods and merchandise, other acts of authority have come to diminish and nearly eliminate the resources of the working class. A decree from the Committee of Public Safety, dated 16 Frimaire, stipulated that, starting from the first of Pluviôse, arms manufacturing would no longer be paid by the day but by contract; that contractors would retain only the number of workers they deemed appropriate, and that those not retained would be required to rejoin their battalions. As a result of this measure, a large number of workers—fathers of families who supported them with their daily wages—will, by leaving for the armies, abandon a multitude of women and children to the utmost misery, amidst a populace of Arabs, shopkeepers, and vendors of all kinds, who seem inflated to strangle and starve the true people.

Let us compare this sudden stagnation in workshops with the one occurring at the same time for all the sans-culotte women working at home on military uniforms. It was a noble institution that, by providing honest resources to an entire gender previously too often forced to seek dishonorable ones, made them love the homeland by employing them in its service, constantly reminding them of its defenders, and allowing them to find their subsistence in the price of labor, which was further compensated by the satisfaction of helping to clothe their friends, brothers, husbands, or sons.

It is quite peculiar that, while Dubois-Crancé, in the session of 25 Frimaire, acknowledged the necessity of continuing the campaign during the winter, there is no longer a need to produce uniforms or weapons for our troops? What presumptions can be drawn about the hidden motives behind these measures! On one hand, your regulations allow the former nobles to proliferate in Paris; on the other, they aim to expel a large portion of the sans-culottes, reducing their wives and children to the most horrible distress. What is the purpose of all this? Is it to remove from the trousered people the concerns that the sans-culotte men might cause them and to force women to prostitute themselves to survive, for that handful of dandies who already clutter all the streets, squares, and promenades with their display? Why wouldn't that be the case? Is there anything that should be spared for such a precious portion of beings? Should they lack anything? "Fools exist here below for their petty pleasures." It is thus perfectly coincidental to see the high protection granted to prostitution in Paris. Moreover, when corruption is at court, it is consistent to have the city follow its example...

Frenchmen! You have returned under the reign of harlots: the Pompadours, the Dubarrys, the Antoinettes live again, and it is they who govern you; to them, you owe, in large part, all the calamities that besiege you and the deplorable regression that is killing your revolution. It was a glorious day for virtue and patriotism when crowned debauchery atoned on the scaffold, in the person of Venus Dubarry, for the crime of having long siphoned, under the protective shadow of a debauched majesty, the sweat and blood of the French people. Such an example should have imposed upon prostitutes of all categories, who might have aspired to direct the conduct of the state as the price of their vile shamelessness. Should we have expected to see several courtesans reappear on the throne at once, instead of just one? Yes, on the throne. Republican ones have been elevated, awaiting the establishment of royal ones: our leading senators, those who now direct opinion, events, and legislative decisions, each have a court, and it is fallen women who have established them.

Why remain silent any longer that Tallien, Fréron, and Bentabole decide the fate of humanity, lying softly on eiderdown and roses, beside princesses? Isn't it good for all the people to know that the legitimate wife of the Friend of the Citizens is the daughter of the Spanish Necker, the millionaire Cabarus, director of the famous Bank of St. Charles? Is it still necessary for anyone to ignore that the patriot Bentabole is likewise united in perfect marriage with two or three hundred thousand livres of income and the Countess of Choiseul-Gouffier, whose château in Heilly, district of Amiens, is a little Chantilly? It is also necessary to inform those who haven't heard how the bonds that so well match these legislators were formed. Those who have become their halves were under arrest around the 9th of Thermidor; they were told: Do you want to avoid the guillotine? Accept the offer of my hand. The high and mighty ladies replied: It is better to marry than to be beheaded, and thus they became legislators.

Soon, the tender husbands are eager to abandon the cause of those vile sans-culottes, and means are complacently taken for that. Treacherous journals are opened; popularity is used to better deceive; they begin by aligning with the people's sentiments, by speaking their language; and they stifle it by pretending to serve it. The people are duped for some time by this stratagem; but finally, they discover the trap. They are indignant at the sight of these murderous sheets, manufactured in the boudoirs of the Lays; they reject these pestilent notes that smell of musk from a league away.

Cowardly plebeians, what have you done? Do you not see that these discredited patricians, these noble-born adventuresses, who today do you the honor of prostituting themselves in your plebeian arms, will suffocate you as soon as, with you, they have succeeded in restoring things to their former state? If you had any sense of virtue and love for the homeland left, you would abandon the delights of Capua and Sybaris, rid yourselves of the cushions in which you are buried, and repel far from you these Sirens who have already caused so much harm to your country.

You were once republicans, and today you are not ashamed to appear as Sardanapaluses at the spectacles, to lead Semiramis there, and to have her receive the shameful homage of a crowd of slaves. Do you believe you will never have to account to the people? What will you do about the decree that obliges every official to account for the fortune acquired during the revolution? But you will not go that far. No: once Samsons, you have entrusted Delilahs with the secret of your strength; you have let your hair be cut; the Philistines will bring you down. To what blindness do pleasures lead! Into what madness have the treacherous nymphs, who pretend to cherish you, not dragged you? At their voice, you have dug your own grave.

Le Tribun du Peuple, No. 29 (1st–19th Nivôse, Year III / December 1794–January 1795)

[nesiacha]

Pache defense for the Babouvists

Context: this concerns the arrests of the Babouvists and after the repression of Grenelle.

Very few people, at that time (although later public opinion would, in some ways, begin to shift in their favor due to several of their actions and strategies), wanted to defend them, and they became the target of a press onslaught. Interestingly, Babeuf had served under Pache when the latter was mayor of Paris (Babeuf told his wife that he considered him a friend even if in reality it's more complicated than that , and it was one of the rare times when the Babeuf family was free from financial hardship), and he defended him in 1794.

This defense was edited by the Jacobin colleague of his son-in-law Xavier Audouin, the famous editor René Vatar (whose defense of Babeuf was one of reasons that earned him deportation to Guyana during the era of Bonaparte where he died there). I was able to find this defense document on Gallica in Pierquin's book.

This pamphlet is very virulent against Carnot as one would expect given the relationship between the two as I have already explained. So, although Pache has, in my opinion, many reasons to be angry with Carnot(both for political and personal reasons) , one should not take at face value the part where he talks about Carnot.

About warning in issue X Pache speaks at one point of the tortures of the Ancien Régime under Louis XV so sensitive souls should abstain

J.-N. Pache on Factions and Parties, Conspiracies and Plots, and on Those Currently on the Agenda.

I

There has been a harmful confusion in the use of the words faction, party, conspiracy, and plot; it is useful—especially at a time when these terms are used so frequently—to restrict each of them to a specific and proper meaning, in order to achieve mutual understanding. If language does not ensure this advantage, it ceases to be that fortunate discovery which most powerfully contributes to raising man above the brute and to heralding the long-term improvement of the species. Instead, it becomes a futile invention or a dangerous artifice. Men live in association, either in the form of a primary or secondary democracy with a government that maintains liberty and equality, or else in a collective under aristocratic or monarchical rule, which holds them in slavery. In both conditions, one must consider principles and persons. The word faction seems more suited to express a relation to principles; it carries more consistency and has been more frequently used in this sense. The word party has more often been used, in contemporary writings, to express a relation to persons. It would suffice simply to stick to these meanings. In this text, the word faction will constantly and exclusively express a relation to the principles of government; the word party will likewise constantly and exclusively refer to persons. A man is a factionist as soon as he is in opposition to the principles of the government. But for a faction to exist, several men must be animated by this spirit; a single man does not constitute a faction. It is the same for parties; a single man does not form a party. II

In a state of society, citizens can be divided into two classes: 1)Patriots who are devoted to the Government; and 2) Factionists who seek to overthrow it in order to establish a form of domination. There are two kinds of faction: aristocratic and monarchical, and there can be no others. Each of these kinds is subdivided into several varieties. Patriots often divide into two parties: one supports the individuals in power, while the other rejects them. Each of these parties is also subdivided into various types. In a state of collective existence under domination, the enslaved are likewise divided into two classes: 1)Patriots who, despite their chains, strive to overthrow aristocratic or monarchical domination in order to establish a Government on its ruins; 2) Factionists who work to maintain the existing domination, or to replace it with another—namely, under monarchical domination, to substitute aristocratic rule, and under aristocratic domination, to substitute monarchical rule. These individuals are factionists not because of their efforts to overthrow the existing domination, but because of their efforts to establish another form of domination that is equally opposed to the principles of Government. Factionists who aim to preserve the existing domination often divide into parties: some remain loyal to the current rulers, while others seek to overthrow them in order to replace them within the same system of domination.

III

There may be anarchists in a society or in a collective; there may exist certain individuals whom a flaw of temperament or upbringing renders equally incapable of enduring either the salutary restraint of Government or the oppressive yoke of domination. But there can be no anarchist faction; there cannot be a group of individuals who conceive of and desire a permanent gathering of persons without any relations between the members of that gathering. As soon as there is a gathering, it becomes a moral necessity that the relationships among its members be defined in one of two forms: Government or domination. There is—and can only be—a moment of anarchy during the transition from domination to Government, or vice versa; anarchy, properly speaking, cannot endure. A gathering without relations among its members is a moral impossibility; it is an absurdity that, not entering the mind, cannot possibly enter the will of anyone. The phrase anarchist faction is a contradiction in terms.

It has been used and repeated—like so many other expressions—without any value or meaning, by the parrots of both factions, just as they repeat trinity in their catechism or liberty under a constitution that establishes monarchy or aristocracy—at best a futile use of language, if not a pernicious artifice.

IV

In society or in a collective, the most numerous class is always the patriotic one. It can only wish, in the first case, to maintain—and in the second, to establish—a Government that upholds liberty and equality. For this class, a Government is everything. It is the source of all improvements in its intellectual, moral, political, and physical condition—through education, the development of sentiment, the absence of oppression, and the increase of absolute individual well-being, resulting from enhanced intelligence and a better distribution of labor, regardless of differences in relative comfort. A system of domination, on the other hand, weighs upon it with every form of physical, political, moral, and intellectual suffering: by darkening the understanding, repressing sentiment, degrading it to the state of purely passive beings, and ultimately imposing excessive labor—unpaid or poorly paid—as a direct consequence. That is all it has to fear. The traveler sees these truths at a glance; the historian finds them in every memoir; reflection reveals them to philosophers; and every honest soul ardently desires their sincere application to the nation—even if it requires the sacrifice of personal advantages rooted in prejudice. But an even stronger instinct makes each individual within the great mass feel them. Hence come—and will always come—insurrections at more or less frequent intervals, until, through a possible perfection of the human species and society, Governments are firmly established and beyond reach of subversion. In societies, there are rarely factious among the governed; but the Governors often are. They tend to exploit the advantages of their position to alter the Government—an unfortunate consequence of that human weakness which leads men, when not sufficiently enlightened, to desire the growth or preservation of power. In collectives under domination, the rulers are essentially factious. They maintain their rule as long as possible by rejecting, obscuring, and slandering even the idea of a true Government.

V

In both society and collective gatherings, there are almost always parties among the factionists and among the patriots. The latter, though in agreement on principles, often disagree regarding the individuals in power. Some have perceived certain circumstances that others are unaware of. Thus, differing considered opinions emerge about the same individuals, apart from the diversity of personal feeling that arises from sympathy or antipathy, from similarities or contrasts in characterand demeanor, and also apart from differences stemming from other social relationships. Patriots, factionists, and partisans all conspire or plot.

VI

To conspire is to aspire together toward the same goal: our wishes conspire toward your return, everything conspires to my happiness. Applied to politics, conspiracy is, in itself, morally neutral; it is the aim of the conspiracy that determines its nature. One may conspire for or against principles—the former type of conspiracy is as virtuous as the latter is vicious. It would be useful to have distinct words to express conspiracies related to principles and those related to individuals, and likewise to distinguish between virtuous and vicious conspiracies within each category. But in its current state, language does not offer sufficient resources for this distinction. People may conspire without knowing one another, without any communication, without ever having had any prior relationship. Conspiracy may occur from one end of a state to the other, or from one end of the globe to the other. Conspiracy is simply a disposition of the soul.

VII

To conspire is to make a mutual promise, a reciprocal oath to help one another achieve, through a public and external act, a common political goal. The promise or mutual commitment may be verbal or written, conditional or absolute, provoked or spontaneous, bought or disinterested. Conspiracy is, in itself, as neutral as plot; it is the object of the conspiracy that gives it its moral character. A conspiracy can be either for or against the principles of government: the first kind is as virtuous as the second is criminal. A conspiracy can be for or against governing or ruling individuals: the moral quality of those individuals determines that of the conspiracy. It is false to claim that the success or failure of a conspiracy unfairly distributes admiration or scorn over the memory of the conspirators through the ages. That is a prejudice propagated or maintained by aristocratic or monarchical rulers to restrain noble spirits—souls more devoted to their reputation than to their lives.

Respect surrounds the Sixteen—conspirators who, according to a royalist historian, were as feared by the leaders of the League, the Lorrainer and the Spaniard, as they were by the heir to the crown —because they aimed at a democratic government. Respect surrounds them even though a new coalition of parliamentarians, Sorbonne scholars, and high bourgeois—who secretly still favored inequality—suddenly formed among them, split off, and then established tactics and intrigues designed to weaken them, at which they were more skilled. In the end, these men handed themselves over to Mayenne to betray the democrats, causing the generous enterprise to fail.

Contempt surrounds the Count of Brissac and his staff—conspirators who, upon seeing the growing strength of public spirit after the fall of the Sixteen and the people’s subsequent indifference to a Revolution benefiting only a handful of aristocrats, secretly negotiated with the King of Navarre. They sold him Paris for a Marshal’s baton and pensions, delivered him its gates, and thus this flat, aristocratic coalition of parliamentarians, Sorbonne scholars, and high bourgeois plunged once again into slavery—dragging the rest of France with them. Respect surrounds the people of La Rochelle and Guiton—conspirators for the establishment of a Republic whose system might have extended over all Gaul. For this sacred cause, they endured one of the longest and most brutal sieges. Guiton even offered his life and body to the most starving among them to prolong the fight in hope of external aid. Respect surrounds them despite their lack of success. Hatred and contempt cover the conspirators Louis XIII, Richelieu, and his horde—bathing in the blood of these unfortunate republicans, feasting on their provisions, and committing all sorts of cruelties to gain over their exhausted remains a rule that bored the first, who was so burdened by it that he debased himself before the second, who was willing to relieve him. Meanwhile, the second was in turn equally exhausted, his soul as cowardly as it was fierce, constantly prey to such fears that he dared not move from one room to another without guards.

Respect surrounded the conspirators who stormed the Bastille on July 14th, those who brought Louis XVI and the Constituent Assembly back to Paris on October 6th—even had they failed. Hatred and contempt cover the conspirators Louis XVI and Bouillé for the massacre at Nancy; and the conspirators Bailly, Lafayette, and the constitutional revisionists for the massacre at the Champde-Mars, despite their horrible success. Respect would surround the conspirators of August 10th, even had they been crushed by the Swiss Guards and the fine grenadiers; the conspirators of May 31st, even if the ascendancy of reason and the necessity of preserving the Republic had not brought them success. And contempt would cover the conspirators of Thermidor and of Vendémiaire, enemies of the Republic, even had they succeeded. The riches of eloquence, the charms of poetry—so often in the service of rulers—do not alter the sense of natural justice; nothing corrupts that precious instinct which commands us to respect the defender of liberty and stirs our hearts against those who, even successfully, betray the cause of nations, the cause of humanity. Our current language lacks precise and distinct terms exclusively devoted to describing these various kinds of conspiracies. One might use federation in a positive sense, league in a negative sense, when dealing with principles; union in a positive sense, cabal in a negative one, when dealing with people. One cannot conspire without knowing one another—or at least without corresponding, by voice or in writing, directly or indirectly. Sometimes the conspirators are in the same place; sometimes they are scattered from one end of the state to the other.

VIII

One can transform a conspiracy into a conjuration through several methods. Those who bring about the change, those through whose intervention the conspirators become the conspirators, are the heroes or the criminals, since without them, without their transformative actions, there would have been no conjuration, and the conspirators would have remained simple conspirators.

IX

The conjuration, once formed by this change, has different degrees of consistency at different times. There are the plans for actions, and there is their execution: there are preparatory acts, intermediate acts, and the final act.

Those who move the conjuration from one degree to another—from the plan of actions to their execution, or from the preparatory acts to the intermediate acts, or from the intermediate acts to the final act, or from certain plans to others, or from certain preparatory or intermediate acts to others— are still the heroes or the criminals, since, without them, the stationary conjuration would not have progressed in either plans or actions, whether preparatory, intermediate, or final.

X

The conjuration, at any time and at any degree, must be considered in terms of the means that make the final act possible, or that reduce it to a daydream, chatter, or scribbling. It is the possibility of the final act, through the means at the disposal of the conspirators, that makes the conjuration a serious matter and worthy of occupying a nation and posterity. It is not enough to dream of a revolution, to discuss it with three or four patriots while promising to help one another if circumstances allow for its possibility, in order to receive the honors due to the benefactors of humankind; one must either have executed it, or after taking preparatory actions and gathering solid means that make the success of the conjuration highly probable, one must at least have begun executing the intermediate acts. It is not enough to dream of a revolution, to discuss it with three or four accomplices while promising to help one another if circumstances allow for its possibility, in order to receive the punishments due to criminals of lese-humanity; one must have executed it, or after taking preparatory actions and gathering solid means that make the success of the conjuration highly probable, one must at least have begun executing the intermediate acts.

I have seen a royalist speaker say that in conspiracies, in the absence of deeds, the intention should be punished. This proposition is not that of a Barbarian. Barbarians do not possess the civility of civilized men, but they are not devoid of natural feelings, and they do not dilute them with vain subtleties. It is the proposition of one of those men whose moral organs are reversed, like the physical organs of those monstrous children who have their esophagus at their backside; it is the proposition of one of those men who, thus organized against nature, has lived in a state contrary to nature. Indeed, it is within dominations that this maxim was invented. Tyrants sought to impose fear through the threat of punishments, and what punishments! I will not go back to the bull of Phalaris, but we have all seen, under the reign of humanity, human parliamentarians order, at the request of the human Louis XV, that a man be clamped by his nipples and other sensitive parts of his body, that molten lead be poured onto his bleeding wounds, and that eight horses then rip apart all the nerves of his four limbs through quartering. His painful and agonizing screams still echo in our ears. This fear of punishments for the slightest offense was not enough for them; they devised ways to make people fear even their thoughts, to add to terror the guilt of conscience; they went so far as to make man responsible for his dreams, and they were aided by priests and judges degraded by slavery. But in a society, there can be no rewards or punishments distributed in such a manner. There must be 1) facts, and 2) intent. With intent but no facts, just as with facts but no intent, there are neither punishments nor rewards; both are graduated according to the facts.

XI

In every gathering, the essentially patriotic people are in permanent conspiracy for a Government against domination: from time to time, there are conspiracies. Their intervals are determined by the concurrence of several constants. The factious rulers are in permanent conspiracy and conjuration against the principles of the Government and against all means that would lead to its establishment. In every society, some factious individuals, among whom we can unfortunately almost always count rulers, are in permanent conspiracy against the principles of governments. There is very rarely conjuration on the part of the governed factious, but there is ordinarily permanent conjuration on the part of these factious rulers. In every gathering, the factious, party men, are in permanent conspiracy against the rulers, and from time to time, there are conspiracies on their part. In every society, the parties among the patriots conspire against the rulers, and sometimes this leads to conjuration.

XII

In any society where the rulers fulfill their duties, conspiracies and conjurations are not dangerous. If it is the governed who attack the principles of the Government, a vast majority defends them. If it is patriots, patriotic men, who mistakenly attack these good rulers, a vast majority defends them.

XIII

In any society where the rulers do not fulfill their duties, there are two cases. The conspirators and conspirators are either rulers or the governed. If it is the rulers who attack the principles of the Government, the conspiracy is dangerous; for although a vast majority supports these principles, the means of seduction and force employed by these factious rulers can temporarily harm the public good.

XIV

If it is the governed who are the conspirators and conspirators, or if they are factious individuals who want to overthrow the Government, they are not dangerous, as we have seen, because a vast majority supports it against their weak attacks. Or if it is patriots who, not as party men, but as patriots, attack the bad rulers who are enemies of the principles of the Government; in this case, the conjuration, far from being dangerous, is salutary, it is desirable; there are too few of this kind. It saves the public good.

XV

In these circumstances, the great art of factious rulers is to make people believe that the generous patriots are themselves factious, to make them so, if not in reality, at least in appearance. They would not dare to claim that conspiring against their persons is conspiring against the State. This maxim is reserved for dominations, where it is proven to the incredulous by tearing them apart, just as the non-existence of the antipodes was proven to other skeptics by burning them. One would laugh in the face of the sophists in their pay if they were to propose such a statement; even children today know that the rulers are not the Government, and therefore that conspiring against the rulers is not conspiring against the Government. In this predicament, they resort to all possible tricks to create some circumstances or inspire certain acts from which it can be inferred, as it suits their interests, that these generous patriots who attack their persons also want to attack the Government.

XVI

The number of conspiracies in any society is the measure of the qualities of the rulers. If this number is small, the rulers are tolerable. If it is large, the rulers are necessarily very bad.

What good and prudent rulers must do is reduce this number: 1º by enlightening the factious about the principles, in order to attach them to the Government; 2º by rectifying their own conduct, so as not to be justly disapproved and pursued by the patriots, who will always prevail in the long run because they have the right and reason on their side.

A Government is not instituted, nor are rulers maintained, to kill men abruptly; one institutes the former and maintains the latter to bring back lost citizens to the principles, or to restore embittered citizens to better feelings, by superiorly directed means, according to circumstances and minds, by gentle, humane, social, and skillful ways; it is not to crush factions, to crush parties against each other with colossal force, it is to alleviate them through the influence of reason, the attraction of methods, the charms of gentleness; it is not to make criminals of weak men in order to punish them according to severe laws, it is to strengthen them, to prevent them from falling into crime, and to avert the misfortune of having to inflict terrible punishments on them; it is not to inoculate the virus of crime into men whose temperaments are already too harsh, it is to keep away even the miasma of contagion from them; it is not to destroy, it is to preserve, and to preserve through the preventive method: if it deserves preference in physical medicine, it is a perfect and rigorous duty in political medicine.

XVII

Rulers who suppose conspiracies are therefore fools, who proclaim their own ineptitude or vices in front of their contemporaries and posterity, unless they are driven by some major personal interests, and the discovery of these personal interests usually transforms them from fools into factious individuals. If they use these supposed conspiracies as a means to shed innocent blood, they are criminals.

XVIII

Rulers who do not merely suppose, but actually create conspiracies, are either fools or factious individuals with an additional degree of malice. If they use the conspiracies they have created as a means to shed blood, they are criminals of a higher degree.

XIX

I know of a town where the bells had not been rung for a long time. The Christians, exercising their religion freely, had, as the democratic Jesus recommends, decided to comply with the civil law of the state. The news of the discovery of the great conspiracy of Floréal arrives there; the following Sunday, early in the morning, the bells ring out and there is a double peal. After the great mass, a young prosecutor, who has never read to the people the account of the victories of the Italian army, passionately declaims the story of the remarkable discovery that saves the Republic, and some old fanatics say to themselves: "It’s Drouet, it’s the one who arrested the king, he’s going to be guillotined, it’s God who punishes him." And fanaticism, with its acolytes, has not abated since. You can easily see that if their good God gets involved in punishing the one who arrested the king at Varennes, it is even more likely, in these minds, that He will punish those who condemned him to death and even those who allowed him to be executed, and that the anticipated punishment, perhaps requested at the morning and evening Angelus, will not give rise, when it comes, to any other feelings than those stirred by the idea of punishing Drouet. Of course, these nonsense will do nothing to the existence of the Republic, but that is the good political effect of this great coup d'état.

People came to tell me about it; I said: it is impossible that Drouet is a royalist, that he is an aristocrat, that he wants to overthrow the republican government; he can only have had the idea of toppling rulers he believes to be bad and harmful to the Government. It is impossible that those I know on this list—Cordas, Fiquet, Crespin, Paris, Antonelle, Lepelletier, Parein, Amar, Menessier, Bodson, Lindet, Chrétien—have changed, that they are anti-republicans; it is also impossible that they would accept all the aberrations attributed to what is called the anarchist faction; aberrations that might amuse the imagination, even engage the heart, but which are always rejected by sound judgment: the equal division of land, the community of property, and all the other follies that have been spread about the democrats to ruin them, just as, in other times, other tyrants accused the Jews of stabbing hosts, drawing blood from them to quench their thirst; or the Templars of killing, then roasting their own children whom they devoured; false inventions of treacherous rulers to achieve criminal goals. I know each of these men too well to not believe in their integrity, patriotism, and sound views; time will clarify this.

When, shortly after, I learned of the Grenelle affair and that they were being shot in large numbers, I said to myself, with bitterness in my heart: another conspiracy! A movement of the conspirators! It is impossible that Huguet, Cailleux, Gagnant, Javogues, Cusset—whose names were presented to me—are anti-republicans. The rulers, as I see it, suppose conspiracies and plots against the state, when at most there are conspiracies and plots against their persons, which is not the same thing. By doing so, they first show that they are bad rulers; they let it be presumed that they may have ulterior motives. Then they somehow legitimize these conspiracies and plots, they elevate the conspirators to the Pantheon, but since it’s by making them pass through a murderous pit, they are criminals.

I then subscribed to a patriotic newspaper, in order to regain some understanding of the current affairs. I saw in debates that the rulers had not merely supposed, but actually made or favored the formation or progressive advancement of the Floréal conspiracy, probably the one at Grenelle, and perhaps that of Brottier; that with the money and resources of the Republic, they had managed with difficulty to turn simple conspirators against their persons into conspirators, or conspirators in projects into active conspirators, and then came to boast about this noble action in front of the deputies in the legislature, some of whom had been duped, and others pretended to be. But these rulers, soaked in the blood of Grenelle, against whose shedding the Court of Cassation now calls, are criminals of a higher degree.

XX

It is the duty of the rulers to monitor the conspirators against the Government; it is in their interest to monitor the conspirators against their own persons, even to introduce among both groups men who can report everything that happens, in order to prevent harm, to correct the opinions of some, and to correct themselves according to the disapproval of others. But it is a horror to provoke evil in these two classes of conspirators, whoever they may be, in order to have the right to punish them; to transform them, almost against their will, from conspirators into plotters, or from plotters into projects, into active conspirators, in order to have the legal right to kill them.

"It is difficult," you will say, "to draw the line and to limit oneself to observation without provoking in order to make them confess." – No, it is not difficult; and if you do not know how to do difficult things, go plant your cabbages; if, not knowing how to do what is difficult, you substitute it with an act of wickedness, your names will forever be held in horror.

Surveillance is indispensable in a city as large as Paris, with a population as numerous as Olympian, where both virtues and talents from both worlds converge for the games, and where all that is most subtly vicious gathers as well; but it is the surveillance of a father. He suspects that, despite his instructions and reproaches, his son has acquired the habit of going to gambling dens; he sends a trusted man to watch him. This man must advance into the familiarity of the lost young man, to be able to accompany him everywhere. But it is not by provoking him to gamble, it is not by inflaming him even more with that fatal passion. You would reply, "We need intelligent and honest agents to grasp and apply these nuances, but all we have are Malo, Grisel." Well, do not degrade them, you will have what you need. Be good and delicate yourselves, do not give infamous commissions, and then these can be carried out by men who are at once skilled and virtuous. This too is a service to the Republic. Moreover, good faith is there. It is fixed; no human force can move it, distance it, or bring it closer. Anything that exceeds it is a crime that puts the Republic in greater danger than remaining below it; for conspiracies of governed factious people are always less perilous than attacks by rulers, and it would rather be against the latter that the phrase Salus populi prima lex could apply, though this should be used sparingly: it cannot and should not be a maxim of everyday life.

As we have seen, it is a perfect and rigorous duty for you to work towards preventing harm. You can never provoke it in order to have the right to punish it. It would be in vain for you to say that you provoke a particular evil in order to prevent a general evil by punishing it. It is an execrable sophism, since by taking the opposite side and preventing the particular evil, you would also prevent the general evil, and thus you would have nothing to punish. Provoking the particular evil is therefore an unnecessary act for the public good, for the salvation of the state, for the salvation of the people. You can only be led to it by selfish and interested motives, or else you falsely wish to present yourselves as saviors of the homeland, which was not in danger, by simulating placing it in danger yourself to appear to bring it out. Or perhaps you have an even more culpable thought. In all things and despite all the claims of genius, there is no society, no government, without morality. It is necessary; it is sufficient. I soon realized, through an undeniable fact, that the rulers were employing means opposed to those allowed by morality in the precautions required by politics.

XXI

The Minister of Police, Cochon, stated in his report of [date] that he had been informed for a month that there was a royalist agent in Paris, that this agent was supposed to, etc., etc., that he was to incite a movement in the suburbs and among the citizens who, according to Capet and the royalists, the modern aristocrats also call anarchists, and that these suburbs and anarchists were also working toward the royalists' goals. It was wisely observed in the Council of Five Hundred that the documents and charges presented nothing of this last circumstance, which seemed to be the imagination of Minister Cochon or his informants. Let’s see what was happening a month before this report from Minister Cochon.

XXII

Announcing a tendency toward a movement in any newspaper is not always the same as provoking it; however, it is known that the most effective way to make it seem probable, to make it happen, to activate it, is to have an accredited newspaper spread the word that a person in whom the people have trusted is taking an active part in it, meaning that he considers the movement necessary and certain to succeed. A larger number of citizens will pay attention, engage with it, and discuss it; atthe slightest opportunity, the group grows; its aggregation attracts proportionally more curious onlookers, and a gathering, a movement, is created.

This is not an ordinary journalist, someone whose newspaper is known for publishing news that is sometimes true, sometimes false, due to his frequent inability to verify the facts. This is Mr. Delagarde, the Secretary-General of the Directory, and editor of the official newspaper of this power, reputed in these two capacities to be informed about what is happening, especially in matters as important as a subversive or conservative movement regarding the established regime. It is this privileged journalist who announces the tendency toward a movement, adding the detail that Pache is walking through the streets of Paris on this matter, thereby taking an active part. The rulers, under whose watch Mr. Delagarde writes his newspaper, could not have been unaware that I was as calm here as I had been in the Château de Ham when, during the Prairial movement, the Grand Master of the high Convention works, who was in service with all the factions that were successively dominant, devised the motion to have me judged by a military commission without being moved; I certainly never left Thim, just as I never left Ham; the rulers and Mr. Delagarde know this. The official editor, the mouthpiece of the rulers, thus knowingly and deliberately placed this false article in his newspaper, a month before the time of Minister Cochon’s report.

XXIII

What could his aim have been? After all, a man like Mr. Delagarde does not knowingly insert a false article into such a serious newspaper on such an important matter without having a purpose. He has so many other things to discuss for the satisfaction of his subscribers and non-subscribers; the work of the Directory provides him with so many instructive or interesting notes that he cannot afford to indulge in inventing or collecting trivialities, or to entertain the public with my supposed walks, as some journalists lacking such valuable material might do. Close to that enormous heap of well-nourished sheaves, he is spared from having to glean. So what was his purpose?

As far as I am concerned, it was to compromise me by placing my name in this movement. But as for the public good, the purpose is much more serious. I do not delude myself about my real influence; however, the long and atrocious persecutions of which I have also been the victim, under all the factions, prove that a great deal was presumed about my influence, whether personal or nominal. And in this assumption, my name being placed in this context must awaken the attention of many citizens, attract more participants to the movement, make it more likely, bring it to fruition, and activate it.

XXIV

The rulers therefore wanted a movement from the suburbs and from those they called anarchists, at that time, about a month before the report of Minister Cochon. They were composing it within themselves; they were gathering its elements; those who were missing, they made them intervene; unable to involve me personally, they used my name; they determined a movement at the cost of the truth, and through a deliberate lie.

XXV

However, the rulers, who were thus creating a movement, were surely not slow in taking precautions and preparing the means to suppress it; by giving orders to Mr. Delagarde, the inciter, they were surely preparing them for Mr. Malo, the suppressor. All of this is a perfidy, a Nero-like behavior, or rather a new aristocratic dogmatism to me.

XXVI

If this infamous expedition had not been thwarted by republican journalists, who mocked Mr. Delagarde, his hunting horns, his Pache, and who enlightened the people about the trap being set for them, it would have been possible for groups of discontented citizens— not with the government, but with the rulers— to form; that curious onlookers would have swollen their ranks, that Grisel, by carrying out insurrectionary acts commanded and paid for by the rulers, would have drawn in, by the powerful means of mechanical imitation— too little considered in the judgments of the Military Commissions— some few thoughtless citizens; that some would have been sabred by Mr. Malo, and others transformed into conspirators, sentenced to be shot by a new Military Commission of the Temple. Thus, in my name, by the actions of the rulers, a crowd of good citizens would have been dragged into this double slaughter! I shudder at the thought.

XXVII

To cover up all these horrors, a proclamation and a message would have been made, in which the nation and the legislature would have been informed that the suburbs and the anarchists had formed a great conspiracy that was putting the Republic in danger; that they were, at least at that time, collaborating with the royalists, with whom a conspiracy was being fabricated or spun on the other side, in order to discover it in time. The good modern aristocrats would have loudly demanded honorable mention for the zeal of these good rulers, who so skillfully uncovered the conspiracies they had created; who bravely sabred the gatherings they formed, and they would have supported, alongside the royalists, the military commission to have those who escaped the sabre shot. Poor people, poor legislators, guilty rulers! This personal event has completely opened my eyes to their conduct.

XXVIII

I had always assumed, based on my knowledge of Carnot, that he would lead the Directory into some of the measures I had seen him strongly support during the Septemvirate; cowards are cruel. I had always assumed that he would try to restore the regime through coups d'état, which he adapted to so well. But I had not thought that such monstrosities could now accumulate so easily, nor that he could find at hand police ministers, justice ministers, Malo, Grisel, Delagarde, etc.

XXIX

However, it now seems proven to me, by Grisel’s testimonies, that it was the rulers who made almost everything that exists of the conspiracy of the 20th of Floréal; who transformed the conspiracy against their persons into what one wants to call a conspiracy against the State, against the Republic, and who progressively advanced the conspiracy. It is the rulers who provided Grisel with the financial means and seduction tools that can turn men, who without them would remain mere malcontents, into conspirators; it is the rulers who encouraged, through the lure of rewards and military ranks, Grisel—less vicious than those who employed him—to carry out the provocative acts and progressively increase the consistency of the conspiracy. Whatever degree one supposes it to have, whatever importance one gives it, whatever guilt one attributes to it, this Grisel, by his actions, would be an actor in it, because he did not remain within the limits of his functions, within the bounds of observation, and this Grisel, they are the rulers. It seems to me that similar provocations occurred in the case of Grenelle and that of Brottier. But on the fourth fact that concerns me personally, the provocation by Mr. Delagarde for a movement, using my name falsely, is indisputable.

XXX

Apart from the crime of leading innocent people to their death, one must consider the objective, one must consider the major private interest that forces the rulers to endure the shame of declaring themselves inept or vicious through this multiplication of conspiracies and movements of conspirators, which they boast of discovering.

This is the main point of this writing. The rulers must monitor the governed conspirators to discover if any of them adopt a seditious spirit and bring them back. The governed must monitor the rulers to discover if any of them adopt a seditious spirit and contain them. Patriotic rulers must deliver the governed, seditious conspirators, to the courts; patriotic citizens must deliver the rulers, seditious conspirators, to national opinion. While a high jury is occupied with judging the accused governed, the nation must be concerned with judging the accusing rulers, and I bring them before its tribunal. One does not torment undeniably patriotic citizens, nor kill others through such infernally devised machinations, when one desires only the Republic, when one wants only to fulfill their duty through the faithful execution of the Constitution. It is remarkable that it is Carnot who holds the leading position; it is Carnot who confers with Malo, Grisel, who directs them, who pushes them, who fulfills, who oversteps the functions of the Minister of Police. This matter belongs more to Carnot than to the Directory. Thus, it is the revived system, but extended, but amplified, of the Septemvirate, of which he was a part, and a very essential part, for all that the Septemvirs did that was reprehensible.

XXXI

When, through the commendable work of the twelve members of the Committee of Public Safety, either within the Committee or outside it, affairs were brought to a point where there was no longer any doubt about the Republic's existence, and when people began to feel secure about its future, an almost imperceptible coalition gradually formed, through a tacit agreement, that was successively expanded to seven members. They ceased to argue, ceased to oppose one another, at least publicly, and appeared to pool their ambition and resources.

The royalist factions being dormant and silent, the Septemvirate enjoyed, for a time, the power with considerable satisfaction. One becomes accustomed to it easily. An unwise continuation of the same members within the Committee strengthened within them the fatal habit and gave rise to the vague and obscure desire to see their rule extended even further. This desire is such a natural consequence of the strongest inclination of a man in his thirties that it is not to be blamed, and one should have expected it. These vague desires were naturally followed by a distaste for any arrangement that would bring this power to an end, and a tendency towards any circumstance that would prolong it.

Soon came the schemes to dismiss some and provoke others, then the calculated plans, and eventually their execution.

However, the parties that, in ordinary circumstances, should not see this prolonged appropriation of power without some concern, began to feel anxious. It was believed, not without some foundation, that they might be jealous of the power. People feared it; they feared that these factions might seek to remove it, and feared losing it. This fear only attached itself more strongly to the power, like all other real and illusory possessions. The rulers then definitively sought ways to preserve it. One of the methods that presented itself to certain minds was to destroy the men of the opposing party. A pretext was needed. It was not possible to have known republicans perish without first giving an apparent reason to those Convention members they were seducing, who were forming into a Septemvirate faction, and then to the people. It was suggested and circulated among the first that the popular faction was not strong enough to completely dismantle the royalists, who were pretending to be dead; that to ensure the Republic and the Convention (the Septemvirate), it was necessary to rid themselves of the popular faction that displeased the middle class, which would rally behind them and be more capable, through its mass, of stabilizing affairs and the Convention (the Septemvirate). The extreme royalism in the proscription was understood to be in conjunction with the extreme patriotism because if only patriots had been sent away, the scheme and its purpose would have been too obvious. Those who had the greatest desire to destroy the patriots never ceased to complain, within the Committee, about the troubles they caused. They became accustomed to viewing them with suspicion, desiring their downfall, and planning to achieve it without remorse. Jealousy, envy, and all base passions completed the work. The final rallying cry was for "both extremes." As for the pretext for the people, they relied on their confidence, hoping to seduce them with trivial reconciliations.

It was then that the most trivial and false pretexts were sought to sacrifice any patriot who, either through party spirit or immutability, was suspected of not supporting the views of the Septemvirate, either now or in the future. They exhausted, irritated, embittered, divided, and assassinated them. I saw the play of personal hatreds; I saw Robespierre yield to Billaud, and Billaud yield to Robespierre, with alternating satisfaction visible in each of their expressions; but I saw a constant joy on Carnot's face for the destruction of all. It was then, finally, that in order to cover up the intrigues against the patriots in the eyes of the people, they increased the intrigues against the royalists

Despite my warnings when I saw the progress of the false and especially treacherous idea, I pointed out the horror; I observed that the popular faction was sufficient to contain or even overthrow the royalists; that the consequences being drawn from it were, moreover, immoral and politically unwise; that it would only serve to drive the enemy to despair on one side, while on the other, it would treacherously shoot our light troops; and that, with the forward positions destroyed, the main army would run a great risk of being surprised and overwhelmed. Passions had formed a callus around the hearts, blocking the brains. Patriots were killed. Carnot took pleasure in this.

XXXII

They were killed, and quite obviously because there was a desire to prolong the exercise of power, to establish a form that would secure its duration or make its return easier, rather than adhere to the order set forth by the suspended Constitution, as was originally presumed. They wanted something other than the democratic Constitution that had been solemnly accepted and proclaimed. I can still hear Carnot, sometime after the first three or four massacres of the Convention’s patriots and those outside of it, swaying by the fireside with a self-satisfied air, sneering as he said to me: ‘Well, Citizen Mayor, there will be changes to the Constitution after all.’ And changes were indeed made — they cost the blood of the best republicans. Were they worth the blood they cost?

The great majority of the Septemvirs were originally patriots, I am willing to admit that; but at that fatal time, they had become factious. They had drunk from the cup of power, and one of them — more enslaved by the love of privilege due to the early hopes of his first profession, and also more cunning than the others — took advantage of their intoxication. As factional rulers, they used the national force for their own gain; they sought to rid themselves of any obstacle or even any scrutiny. They destroyed the patriots under the pretense of crushing, with giant arms, the parties one against the other; in this terrible clash, skulls and bones were shattered, shreds of brains and marrow spurted out, and your faces are still stained with it: such were the fruits of these ambitious and spiteful schemes.

Carnot got away with it. He claimed, I was told, that he signed everything on trust, and he even abandoned those he had once openly supported when he thought a powerful faction would back them and share the spoils with him. But tell me, whom exactly was he trusting when he signed? Was it Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just? No. Was it Billaud and Collot? No; those men had always regarded him as a hypocritical royalist, a shamefaced Jacobin, and treated him with contempt and harshness that could never breed confidence. Was it Barère? I never saw between them the kind of intimate relations, the complete surrender of judgment, where one man’s opinion becomes the other’s without question or difficulty.

But did his so-called trust go so far as to prevent him from hearing the debates in the Committee before decisions were made and minutes were drawn up? Did it stop him from hearing what was said to him outside the Committee about the actions that resulted from the orders he signed? I saw him constantly at that Committee, seated at the round table, taking part in every deliberation, giving his opinion not only on military matters but on every other issue, domestic and foreign policy alike. No one was more assiduous than him in that Committee. Barère, Robespierre, Collot, Saint-Just, and the others sometimes arrived late because they went to the theater or to the Jacobins; Carnot, morning and evening, was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. There is no member whose signature appears more often on the minutes of orders than Carnot’s. It seems he also excused himself by claiming he had been afraid. That, I can believe — deeply afraid; I would gladly write him a certificate of fear should he ever need one. But that fear did not date from the time he wormed his way into the Septemvirate and outbid everyone else in the use of the most extreme words and measures. Indeed, he would have been afraid of his own shadow.

XXXIII

Why does Carnot, who had patriots killed at that time because he wanted changes to the Constitution of Year II, have patriots killed today? It is because he feels about the Constitution of Year III in much the same way he felt about the other one. He still destroys patriots because they stand in his way, and in order to make their destruction acceptable, as he did in the past, he sacrifices royalists. The patriots inconvenience him. Although they may not have any enthusiasm for the Constitution of Year III, at least they want its faithful observance; they want this Constitution not just in name, but in practice, since it still contains the two foundations of democracy: the inviolability of the Constitution accepted by the people and the freedom of elections; since it can be perfected by revision assemblies; and finally, since it is being put into execution.

XXXIV

This crime of killing patriots in order to have free rein was that of the Septemvirs, who had become factious in the final days of their session, and notably of Carnot. The same machinations, in the same positions, are part of the same projects; they are part of the same plans, especially when it is the same principal man directing them. This was Carnot's crime in the Septemvirate, and it is his crime in the Directory; it is that of his collaborators in the creation of conspiracies—Cochon, Malo, Grisel, and Delagarde—and of his collaborator in the semi-legal assassination of the supposed conspirators of Grenelle, Merlin de Douai. And it must be admitted that the situation is tightly tied. With a member of the Directory who has appropriated military details, a minister of general police, and a minister of justice, one can go very far in a short amount of time. The modern aristocracy, if they don't play along, and, as a result, or in the final analysis, the royalists owe them strong protection.

XXXV

But Carnot, he serves the Republic, he repaired what Aubry had done. He repaired only partially in all areas, and in a manner that suited his particular direction; the losses resulting from his direct orders are double those of Aubry, and the share he has in the benefits does not compensate. Take these two men; it does not take a very strong hand to balance the scale. You will find that, for the Republic, Carnot is no better than Aubry; in fact, he is more dangerous. A hidden enemy harms more than an open one; and considered by himself, Carnot was more seriously concerned with the destruction of the patriots than with that of the Austrians. I saw in him a more vivid enthusiasm, a stronger determination for the first than for the second; it was with the blood of the patriots that he was most animated, and where his speech or pen flowed most easily.

But the victories of the Italian army! - We have clearer ideas, compared to the past, about the share that belongs, in victories, to the troops, the general, and the cabinet. The share of the troops is always positive. The same is not true for the general and the cabinet; sometimes their share is zero; at times, it is even negative. Condé’s share at the Battle of Rocroi was zero; Dumouriez’s at Jemmapes was negative; Bonaparte’s in Italy is positive. The share of the cabinet in the victory of Denain was zero; in the conquest of the Netherlands by Louis XIV, it had been positive; in Turenne’s campaigns of 1674 and 1675, it was negative. I refrain from discussing the proportional relationship between the shares, whether all three are positive or not; I refrain from discussing the shares in defeats, since we are talking about victories here; I refrain from presenting the scale or the measurement of these shares in both victories and defeats, on land and at sea, and I leave the details of application to others.

But I am very certain that our army in Italy would have fought just as well, that Bonaparte would have behaved just as perfectly, even if, according to Carnot's plans, Drouet and Cordas had not been on trial for a year; even if Huguet and Cailleux had not been killed; and that these tyrannical actions could not have diminished in any way our losses on the other side of the Rhine and at Kingsal. I am very certain that our army in Italy would still cover itself with glory and that, in the future, we could avoid losses on the other side of the Rhine and at Kingsal, even if Messrs. Delagarde, Grisel, Malo, Merlin, Cochon, and Carnot were not governors or agents of governors, and I firmly believe that if they had stopped meddling in public affairs a year ago, the internal situation would not be in worse condition.

XXXVI

I do not know what position the legislature will take regarding them, but being personally convinced of their atrocious perfidy in what they call the movement of conspirators, and that they are factious rulers, dangerous conspirators against the Republic, I publicly devote them to the execration of the French people and of men from all countries and all opinions who have any sense of morality. I am authorized in this by my personal experience. There is no doubt that I did not leave. Thim; there is no doubt that Mr. Delagarde and these rulers were perfectly aware of my whereabouts; one cannot doubt that it was by a deliberate lie that they placed my name in the announcement of a movement; one cannot doubt that placing my name there was meant to contribute to realizing and activating it, and that thus these rulers themselves were composing the movement; one cannot doubt that they were simultaneously preparing the two terrible means of repression, the sabre and the military commission. Although thwarted by the patriotic journalists and by the good sense of the people, this plot still sheds light on other movements, other conspiracies, and on the unbearable aristocratic dogmatism that will dominate and be called the Republic, awaiting a royal scene, if these treacherous schemes are not revealed by all those for whom the personal circumstances make them sensitive, and if these factious rulers and their supporters are not covered with the shame and hatred they deserve.

PACHE

At Thim-le-Moustier, the 21st of Floréal, Year V of the French Republic.

Source:

Mémoire sur Pache by Pierquin: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9757051c/f3.item.r=pierquin%20Pache].

[nesiacha]

Executions of Cerrachi, Topino Lebrun, Demerville and Arena ( asks for informations and theories)

So far, apart from one historian — Jacques Bourdon — all the others I’ve come across who have studied this case, including Pierre Serna, Waresquiel, Bernard Gainot, and especially Claude Mazauric, clearly affirm Topino Lebrun’s innocence. His friend Ceracchi was forced to implicate him — under torture.

I think I understand why Topino Lebrun was targeted. Bonaparte had a strong dislike for Babeuf, Buonarroti, and most of their associates. And although Topino Lebrun was never involved in the Babouvist conspiracy, he had been a friend of Babeuf and a fellow revolutionary even if after Babeuf’s imprisonment in Arras, Topino seems to have disappeared for a time — likely due to the harsh political climate. He also paid subtle tribute to Babeuf in his painting The Death of Caius Gracchus. He was one of the better-known Neo-Jacobins, though not as prominent as his Babouvist friends, such as Antonelle (his former colleague on the Revolutionary Tribunal) and Félix Le Peletier.

I believe he was an important figure in the Jacobin opposition to Bonaparte — enough to be targeted, but not influential enough to be protected. Even Félix Le Peletier narrowly escaped death in deportation thanks to his childhood friend Saint-Jean d’Angély, who held a high position under Bonaparte. Being Babeuf’s friend certainly didn’t help Topino Lebrun’s case. I believe he was chosen, in part, to illustrate the "danger" of Babouvists and revolutionary radicals — particularly someone with a known reputation as a juror during the Revolution.

I also wonder how Jacques-Louis David reacted to his execution as Topino Lebrun was his student in art.

As for Demerville, it’s odd that the secretary — and, according to Waresquiel, the nephew — of Barère was also among those executed. Especially since Fouché had managed to protect Barère. Why not his nephew?

Some still question whether the so-called “Dagger Conspiracy” was even a real threat — or just a few violent words against Bonaparte, at worst. If that’s the case, Ceracchi, Arena, and Demerville may have been innocent too. Serna believes there was indeed a conspiracy. But Gainot, Waresquiel, and Mazauric disagree. Bourdon sides with Serna, and I believe Jean Tulard does too — though I’m not entirely sure about Tulard. It's worth noting that even among those who think there really was a plan to assassinate Bonaparte, many argue that either a provocateur incited it or that the police allowed the plot to unfold until they could catch the conspirators red-handed.

Now, here's something else I’ve been wondering: how exactly were they executed?

In a rather questionable France Inter program, it’s claimed — based on a testimony supposedly by the Duchess of Abrantès — that one of the four prisoners in the execution cart (she doesn't say which) was laughing with his neighbor. The four men supposedly greeted the crowd and were executed without a word.

In a journal excerpt I found online — and sadly lost — it was said that one of the executioners motioned to the two condemned men (Topino Lebrun and Ceracchi) to wait before stepping up to the scaffold so that sketches could be made of them. If true, was this a tasteless joke because the two were artists, or was there another reason?

I honestly hope the one who laugh was Ceracchi with Topino Lebrun— I want to believe he found some inner peace before his death after having "denounced" his friend Topino Lebrun under torture, for which he should not be blamed. (I've already discussed why I find the friendship between Ceracchi and Topino Lebrun to be one of the most tragic revolutionary friendships here: Tumblr link.)

I hope they both found some kind of peace within themselves. That said, as I mentioned, the France Inter program seemed highly questionable. I couldn’t find any trace of the supposed testimony by the Duchess of Abrantès of the execution of Topino Lebrun, Arena, Demerville and Ceracchi — and even if it does exist, we shouldn’t automatically take a single person’s word as fact.

@miffy-junot please since you know Junot well, perhaps you know his wife very well and the testimonies she left (on this period in particular on the dagger conspiracy)? And that all those who have answers (or theories) about this tragic episode do not hesitate to share them...

[nesiacha]

Is it just me, or does the Fouché in this series subtly come across like he’s craving a smoke — in the way he talks and even in his facial expressions?

I swear I'm not saying this to make fun of him or the actor... But it's similar to some people I knew when they were first trying to quit smoking.

Fouché being a killjoy

(from Carême ep. 3)

The blonde man dressed in blue who looks like a pirate is Talleyrand fyi