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bonbonanza · 6 months
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the thermidorians demand the arrest of robespierre (1794)
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Frev friendships — Fouché and the Robespierre siblings
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A circumstance relating to one of the most important crises of my life must here be mentioned. By a singular chance, I had been acquainted with Maximilian Robespierre, at the time I was professor of philosophy in the town of Arras, and had even lent him money, to enable him to take up his abode in Paris, when he was appointed deputy to the National Assembly.  Memoirs of Fouché (1825), volume 1, page 12. Fouché first arrived in Arras in 1788.
Robespierre didn’t like science, but he thought it useful for his vanity to research Fouché and to annoy him several hours per day in his office in order to acquire the reputation of scholar. Often, in order to appear intelligent, he interrupted his physics demonstrations to reproach him for being a materialist. Note written by Barère, probably shortly after thermidor. Cited in Fouché: les silences de la pieuvre (2014) by Emmanuel de Waresquiel.
Fouché’s first need […] was to tell me his entire life story, a recital that I find in my notes written down that very day as it seemed interesting for me to keep: […] I (Fouché) had known [Robespierre] since our youth, we had belonged to the same academy. I then had occasions to prove to him his inadequacy, a relative insufficiency because he was judged poorly. He had some talent, a strong, persevering will; simplicity, no greed; but he was all puffed up with a pride that I had humiliated. De 1800 à 1812. Un aide de camp de Napoléon. Mémoires du général compte de Ségar (1894), page 438. According to Robespierre (2014) by Hervé Leuwers, it would not appear Fouché joined the arrageois literary society Rosati of which Robespierre was a member, a claim which is nevertheless often invoked.
Fouché had shown the most ardent patriotism, the most sacred devotion since the beginning of the revolution. My brother, who believed him sincere, had accorded him his friendship and his esteem; he spoke to me of him as a proven democrat, and introduced him to me in praising him and asking me to give him my esteem. Fouché, after having been introduced to me by my brother, came to see me assiduously, and had those regards and attentions that one has for a person in whom one is particularly interested. Fouché was not handsome, but he had a charming wit and was extremely amiable. He spoke to me of marriage, and I admit that I felt no repugnance for that bond, and that I was well enough disposed to accord my hand to he whom my brother had introduced to me as a pure democrat and his friend. I did not know that Fouché was only a hypocrite, a swindler, a man without convictions, without morals, and capable of doing anything to satisfy his frenzied ambition. He knew so well how to disguise his vile sentiments and his malicious passions in my eyes as in my brother’s eyes, that I was his dupe as well as Maximilien. I responded to his proposition that I wanted to think about it and consult my brother, and I asked him the time to resolve myself. I spoke of it, effectively, to Robespierre, who showed no opposition to my union with Fouché.  Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1834) page 122-123. Charlotte places the courtship in the midst of the revolution, which can hardly be accurate given the fact Fouché was already married by then, but it does sound likely for it to have happened somewhere between 1788 and 1790, when both of them were unmarried and lived in Arras.
When [Robespierre and I] again met at the Convention, we, at first, saw each other frequently; but the difference of our opinions, and perhaps, the still greater dissimilarity of our dispositions, soon caused a separation. One day, at the conclusion of a dinner given at my house, Robespierre began to declaim with much violence against the Girondins, particularly abusing Vergniaud, who was present. I was much attached to Vergniaud, who was a great orator, and a man of unaffected manners. I went round to him, and advancing towards Robespierre, said to him, "Such violence may assuredly enlist the passions on your side, but will never obtain for you esteem and confidence." Robespierre, offended, left the room; and it will shortly be seen how far this malignant man carried his animosity against me. Memoirs of Fouché (1825), volume 1, page 12
Lamartine, in the first edition of his Girondins, wrote the following: ”A very small number of friends of Robespierre and Duplay were one after another taken into this intimity: sometimes the Lameths; Le Bas, Saint-Just, always; Panis, Sergent, Coffinhal, Fouché, who liked Robespierre’s sister and who Robespierre didn’t like, Taschereau, Legendre, Le Boucher, Merlin de Thionville, Couthon, Pétion, Camille Desmoulins, Buonarotti, roman patriot… […]” On the placard corrected by the widow and son of Philippe Le Bas, these words are replaced by the following ones: ”The Lamenths and Pétion in the early days, quite rarely Legendre, Merlin de Thionville and Fouché, who liked Robespierre’s sister and who Robespierre didn’t like, often Taschereau, Desmoulins and Teault, always Lebas, Saint-Just, David, Couthon and Buonarotti.” Le conventionnel Le Bas: d’après des documents inédits et les mémoires de sa veuve (1901) page 83-84. This could be read as Élisabeth Le Bas confirming, or at least not denying, that there existed links between Charlotte and Fouché.
…The representatives of the people in Commune-Affranchie, using the powers entrusted to them for the surrounding departments, have already purged several administrations in the department of Allier. So consult with your colleagues by going to Commune-Affranchie. The instructions that Fouché has acquired relative to the department of Allier, where he resided for a long time, will be all the more useful to you since, animated by the same principles, the same effects must result from your common energy. Letter from the CPS to Petitjean, written by Robespierre, January 8 1794
The Committee of Public Safety decides 1, that citizen Reverchon immediately travels to Ville-Affranchie to organise revolutionary government and that he, together with Méaulle, takes all the measures that the interests of the republic need. 2, that the representative Fouché immediately travels to Paris to give to the Committee of Public Safety the neccesary clarifications about the affairs in Ville-Affranchie 3, that all procedurs against the popular society in Ville-Affranchie, and especially against the patriots that were subjected to persecution under the reign of Précy and the federalistes, are suspended. The representative Reverchon and his colleges will severely persecute the enemies of the Republic, protect the true friends of the Republic, help the patriots in need and assure the triumph of liberty through a constant and inflexible energy. Committee of Public Safety decree recalling Fouché from Lyon, written by Robespierre (and signed by him, Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, C-A Prieur, Carnot and Barère) on March 27 1794
The Committee of Public Safety, alarmed by the fate of patriots in Commune-Affranchie, considering that the oppression of a single one of them would be a triumph for the enemies of the Revolution and a mortal blow to freedom, orders that all proceedings against the Popular Society of Commune-Affranchie, and particularly against the patriots who were persecuted under the reign of the federalists and Precy, will be suspended: it further orders that the representative of people Fouché immediately travels to Paris to give to the Committee of Public Safety the neccesary clarifications about the affairs in Ville-Affranchie. Committee of Public Safety decree recalling Fouché from Lyon, written by Robespierre (and signed by him, Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, C-A Prieur, Carnot, Barère, Saint-Just and Couthon) on March 27 1794 (don’t know why there exists two seperate decrees)
I have since learned that the step I took opposite Robespierre - viz, of calling upon him - was attempted about the same time, and with as little success, by Tallien and Fouché, each of them on his own part. I have learned that their eloquence likewise struck against a determined deaf-mute, and that to all their gentle, forcible, friendly, respectful, and feeling words Robespierre vouchsafed no other answer than an obstinate silence, an expressionless physiognomy, and neither word nor sign. There is in a like silence, on the part of a man wielding the scep tre of death, something more fearful to the imagination than uttered threats.  Memoirs of Barras, member of the Directorate (1895) page 206
It is known well enough in what way [Collot and Fouché] conducted themselves [in Lyon]; it is known that they made blood flow in torrents, and plunged the second city of the republic into fright and consternation. Robespierre was outraged by it. […] I was present for the interview that Fouché had with Robespierre upon his return. My brother asked him to account for the bloodshed he had caused, and reproached him for his conduct with such energy of expression that Fouché was pale and trembling. He mumbled a few excuses and blamed the cruel measures he had taken on the gravity of the circumstances. Robespierre replied that nothing could justify the cruelties of which he had been guilty; that Lyon, it was true, had been in insurrection against the National Convention, but that that was no reason to have unarmed enemies gunned down en masse. From that day forth, Fouché was the most irreconcilable enemy of my brother, and joined the faction conspiring his death. I would only learn this later. Fouché never again set foot in my apartment, but I met him from time to time on the Champs-Elysées, where walked almost every day. He addressed me as if nothing had happened between him and my brother. When I learned that he was Maximilien’s declared enemy, I no longer wanted to talk to him. Despicable words have been spoken about me on the subject of that man, some have dared to say that I was his mistress before and after 9 Thermidor; this is an abominable calumny! Never did Fouché cease to have the greatest respect for me; and if in his discourse he had included any words tending to make me neglect my duty, I would have left him that very instant. Besides, Fouché had only sought my hand because my eldest brother occupied premier place on the political stage. That honorific of Robespierre’s brother-in-law flattered his pride and his ambition; to judge by that man’s conduct since, everything was a calculation with him, and, if he pretended to love me, that’s because he saw it was in his interest. What would have become of me if I had married such a being? Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1834)
Robespierre murmured a lot about the forms that we had established in Lyon for the execution of decrees: he constantly repeated that there was no reason to judge the guilty when they are outlawed. He exclaimed that we had let the families of the condemned go free; and when the commission sent the Convention and the committee the list of its judgments, he was not in control of his anger as he cast his eyes on the column where the names of the citizens who had been acquitted were written. Unable to change anything in the forms of judgment, regulated according to the decrees and approved by the committee, he imagined another system; he questioned whether the patriots of Commune-Affranchie were not vexed and under oppression. They were, he said, because the property of the condemned being specially intended, by article IV of the decree of July 12, to become their patrimony, we had greatly reduced their claims, not only by not judging only a quarter of the number of conspirators identified by Dubois-Crancé on 23 Vendémiare, or designated by previous decrees, but also by establishing a commission which appeared willing to acquit two thirds, as it happened. Through these declamations Robespierre wanted to entertain the patriots of whom he spoke, with the most violent ideas, to throw into their minds a framework of extraordinary measures, and to put them in opposition with the representatives of the people and their closest cooperators: he made them understand that they could count on him, he emboldened them to form all kinds of obstacles, to only follow his indications which he presented as being the intentions of the Committee of Public Safety.   Collot d’Herbois’ explanation of Robespierre’s dislike for his and Fouché’s Lyon activities in Défense de J-M. Collot, répresentant du peuple. Éclaircissemens nécessaires sur ce qui s’est passé à Lyon (alors Commune-Affranchie), l’année dernière; pour faire suite aux rapports des Répresentants du peuple, envoyés vers cette commune, avant, pendant et après le siège (1794), somewhat the polar opposite of Charlotte’s version.
Robespierre accused Fouché of having dishonored the Revolution by exaggerating all measures and erecting atheism as a doctrine. ”No, Fouché," he said to him in the hall of the Jacobins, ”death is not an eternal sleep." Besides, to use his own expression, he believed he "held him in his power in the matter of honesty,” as Fouché had been charged with not having been any too strictly faithful on the occasion of his mission to Lyons, where, outstripping his epoch in those early days, he was believed to have enjoyed a foretaste of that corrupt century. Reports, possibly mendacious, had reached Robespierre, according to which Fouché is said to have, in the midst of the demolition of the dwellings in the town doomed to endure his cruelty, behaved somewhat like the incendiaries who carry on their business by the light of the flames. It is that which caused Robespierre to assume so lofty a manner against Fouché, because Fouché was supposed to have begun "to make money" at a time when no one in the Republic had so far dreamed of doing such a thing, either because of the Terror, which was not disposed to indulgence towards thieves, or because of a sentiment of genuine honesty which dominated men whose sole thought was the defence of the Republic.  Memoirs of Barras, member of the Directorate (1895) page 208-209
Fouché reads a report regarding Commune-Affranchie, where he was sent. After having brought up the slander repeated against the representatives sent to this commune, he proves by several observations the need of the measures that they took and the punishments that they handed out. He proves that the blood of crime fertilizes the soil of liberty and consolidates its power on unshakeable foundations. He also develops through much reflection the measures he was obliged to take in the last moments.
A citizen demands the floor in order to speak against Fouché.
Robespierre, after having declared that Fouché’s report is incomplete, pays homage to the patriotism of this representative and to the citizen who presented himself to speak against him. He presents some observations on what has gone down in Commune-Affranchie, and announces that the patriots, the friends of Chalier, and the companions of his suffering have been too modest against the schemers who put themselves in their place, and who introduced themselves among the patriots sent from Paris. He protests that without the schemers, the true patriots already would have plunged the whole conspiracy into nothingness. He recognizes that they have legitimate complaints to make, but he assures that the Committee of Public Safety, which is aware of them, has taken all the necessary measures to establish liberty in these unfortunate countries. Consequently, he invites the patriot who wants to speak, to put aside any kind of bitterness, to develop the facts and to give the knowledge that he considers useful. 
I recognize, says this citizen, the validity of the principles of Robespierre, you will subsequently know all the facts. The truth will pierce through all the clouds; I’m backing down. (applauds) Robespierre and Fouché at the Jacobins, April 8 1794
Sure of having sown the seed, I had the courage to defy [Robespierre], on the 20th Prairial (June 8 1794), a day on which, actuated with the ridiculous idea of solemnly acknowledging the existence of the Supreme Being, he dared to proclaim himself both his will and agent, in presence of all the people assembled at the Tuileries. As he was ascending the steps of his lofty tribune, whence he was to proclaim his manifesto in favour of God, I predicted to him aloud (twenty of my colleagues heard it) that his fall was near.  Memoirs of Fouché (1825) page 20
A deputation from the Society of Nevers presents itself at the tribune in order to repel charges directed against it. After having summarized the things done for the public sake by the Society which has sent him, the orator announces that the patriots have their souls broken and compromised in Nevers, because of atrocious persecutions of which they are every day the unfortunate victims.
Fouché (currently serving as president of the Jacobins): Your society deserves severe reproaches. If it is true to say that the impure breath of Chaumette could not exert its disastrous influence there during his stay in Nevers, it seems at least certain that the shadow of this conspirator hovers there today. Imprisoned suspects were released, and your Society made no complaint. Ardent and pure patriots, true sans-culottes, were slandered by federalist lawyers, and your Society remained silent. Finally, its correspondence is insignificant, it is null. As the Jacobins do not know how to disguise any truth, I make it my duty, on their behalf, to point out some false and very weak ideas that you have just expressed. The patriots, you say, have their souls compromised at this moment in Nevers. Citizens, strong hearts can never be compromised; Republicans know how to die for the truth as well as for liberty, and the perfidious person who tells you that he is not free to express his thoughts is a coward; the crime is in his heart, he complains of not being able to produce it. You hand us, as proof of your opposition to the maxims of the conspirators, the celebration that you are preparing for the Supreme Being; but in this you are only obeying the impulse given to nature. Add to this natural impulse the strength and courage to dedicate yourself to the defense of patriots and the annihilation of their oppressors; the exercise of democratic virtues. Brutus paid homage worthy of the Supreme Being by bringing the blade into the heart of the one who conspired against the liberty of his homeland.
I don't know, says Robespierre immediately, if the Society understood the motive and the object of the approach of the members of the Society of Nevers; I ask if the president's response can shed some light on this point. For my part, I assure you that I don't understand anything about it. If the president knows everything that concerns morals, it is his duty to explain. Everyone knows that Nevers was one of the main centers of the conspiracies hatched by Chaumette, in concert with the supporters of the foreign faction. We must remember that he abandoned his post as national agent, near the Paris Commune where he appeared to play a major role, to go, under a frivolous pretext, to plot in the commune of Nevers: it is important that we learn from what we were able to discover on such a journey. I ask that the president explain his response to us, and tell us frankly what he thinks.
Fouché takes the floor to give clarifications. He announces that, having served as representative of the people in the department of Nièvre at the time when the scoundrel Chaumette arrived in Nevers under the pretext of enjoying the native air, he didn’t hear from his mouth any counterrevolutionary expression; that he only saw him while in public, that, the popular society believing this Chaumette to be a zealous defender of liberty, it took him in without difficulty and without defiance. Fouché thinks that this immoral man hid away, because he saw the constitutional authorities strongly attached to good principles, and that he conspired in secret, and then returned to Paris to there continue his execrable profession of assassin of all public and private morality. As for the deputation that has just been heard, Fouché declares that, as the Society of Nevers has been indirectly attacked, it will send a deputation of its members to respond to the imputations that have been made against it, that there was a time when suspicious people, arrested, then released, and finally imprisoned again, managed to obtain an arrest order against the patriots. “This,” he says, “is all I know; I reproached the deputation on the weakness of the letters written by the Society of Nevers, and on the insignificance of its correspondence. The deputation presented its address to me when it entered, and it is on that I’m basing my answer.
Robespierre is surprised that the president and the delegation only say insignificant things that cannot enlighten the Society. He declares that Chaumette having hatched his plots in Nevers, it is impossible that neither the representative nor the Société populaire had knowledge of some of the maneuvers he employed. He recalls that at the moment when the Convention took a vigorous decision against the infernal plot of Chaumette, the Society of Nevers sent the Convention an address in which the decree was faulted.
Fouché observes that this adress wasn’t from the Society of Nevers, but from that of Moulins.
Robespierre replies that the latter is right next to to the other, that both corresponded to each other and that the information must have been the same; he continues by maintaining that the Society is isn’t instructed by the details that have just been given to it, and one has not sufficiently characterized the men who are called patriots, and those who are declared triumphant aristocrats. He is surprised to hear congratulations on the decree issued yesterday, mixed with observations presented by the Society of Nevers, as if this society could be aware of this decree. It is not by sentences, as he observes, but by conduct and facts that one must judge men: instead of stopping at the language of the deputation, one must ask the Society of Nevers if it fought Chaumette and foiled his horrible schemes? Very often the greatest enemies of the people use republican expressions, to better deceive unsuspecting citizens. It is not a question, he says, of throwing mud on the grave of Chaumette, when this monster has already perished on the scaffold. For a long time people have done evil while speaking the language of republicans. Today someone is spewing imprecations against Danton, who until recently was his accomplice. There are others who appear all fired up to defend the Committee of Public Safety, and who then sharpen daggers against it. The enemies of liberty have retained the same audacity, they have not changed their system; they do not want to appear to separate themselves from the patriots; they praise and flatter them; they even make vague imprecations against tyrants, and at the same time they conspire for their cause! It is to their friends the conspirators that they give the name of patriots; and it is the latter that they designate by the name of aristocrats: they surround the Committee of Public Safety and the representatives of the people only to intrigue, to lead them astray and thus destroy the Revolution. There are still two parties within the Republic: on the one hand patriotism and probity; on the other, the counter-revolutionary spirit, the crookedness and the improbity which are bent on the ruin of empires and the virtue of humankind. Patriots, you who in the career of the Revolution have only sought the public good, you who did nor go into it to serve a criminal faction, be more than ever on your guard; evil men use all imaginable artifices to destroy the Convention and slaughter the defenders of the homeland. Do not fall asleep in a false security, do not abandon the Convention and the government of which it is the center: let courageous voices be raised to make the truth known, stifle the clamors of the intriguers who surround us daily, who change patriotism into aristocracy, and reciprocally aristocracy into patriotism. Do not tire of instructing us, rest assured that the wish to sacrifice ourselves for all patriots is always deeply engraved in our hearts, that we are resolved to defend persecuted virtue with all our power, and to fight with strength and constancy the enemies of liberty and patriotism. This is the wish that I address, on behalf of the representatives, to the oppressed patriots; it is not natural that we remain indifferent on their account: the first of the republican virtues is to watch over innocence. Pure patriots, one is waging a war to the death against you, save yourselves, save with you all the friends of liberty. 
Robespierre’s speech is followed by the liveliest applause.
Fouché observes that he hasn’t wanted to reproach the Society of Nevers for not having denounced Chaumette. This society didn’t know him as a conspirator, it wouldn’t have been late to accuse him warmly, had it suspected him of this. Robespierre and Fouché at the Jacobins, June 11 1794
Five days after (June 12) in full committee, [Robespierre] demanded my head and that of eight of my friends, reserving to himself the destruction of twenty more at a later period. How great was his astonishment, and what was his rage, upon finding amongst the members of the committee an invincible opposition to his sanguinary designs against the national representation! It has already been too much mutilated, said they to him, and it is high time to put a stop to a deliberate and progressive cutting-down, which at last will include ourselves. Finding himself in a minority, he withdrew, choked with rage and disappointment, swearing never to set foot again in the committee, so long as his will should be opposed. He immediately sent for St. Just, who was with the army, rallied Couthon under his sanguinary banner, and by his influence over the revolutionary tribunal, still made the Convention, and all those who were operated on by fear, to tremble.  Memoirs of Fouché (1825), volume 1, page 20
Robespierre: The example of Commune-Affranchie can explain a theory that I have already noted. The patriots defend the patriots with all their means; they give no rest to the intriguers and traitors, they constantly badger and fight them; aristocrats do precisely the opposite. I knew Chalier at a time when the patriotic representatives of the people were themselves persecuted. It was he who first discovered Roland's perfidy, and denounced him to me for keeping an immense store of libels at his home, directed against the Mountain and against me. Chalier had no sooner known this conspiring minister than he abandoned him and renounced the justice he had come to demand from him, not wanting to owe anything to a traitor who sought to ignite civil war in France. 
[Robespierre] adds that since this moment he has only known Chalier through the acts of heroism and virtue which immortalized his name. The enemies of the people were only able to establish their triumph through the assassination of this man, as patriotic as he was intrepid. He recalls the courage of this republican at the time of his torture, prolonged by the villainy of the aristocrats of Lyon who brought the ax down on his head four times, which he raised each time, crying out in a dying voice: Long live the Republic, attach the cockade to me.
After this touching story, Robespierre goes into detail about the services rendered by Chalier's friends; he knows them all, he also knows their persecutors. The fate of the former was to be oppressed by all the factions that succeeded one another. They opposed these tyrannical and unprecedented vexations with a calm and patience of which it is impossible to find an example in the history of any people.
When the overly prolonged siege of Lyon was over, and this commune had been returned to the power of the Republic, the friends of Chalier were not restored to the goodness that they had so well deserved by their constant virtue. One took care to make sure Précy and all the other conspirators escaped, although one went so far as to making the trick of the Committee the supposed remains of this monster. The gate of Lyon was opened to them at the very moment when the Republican army entered, and they left through the gate where the army corps commanded by Dubois-Crancé was, which remained motionless.
Another cause of the impunity of the conspirators is that national justice has not been exercised with the degree of force and action that the interests of a great people require and command. The temporary commission initially displayed energy, but soon it gave way to human weakness which too soon tires of serving the homeland, and it lost with all its courage, its devotion and its purity. After having given in to the insinuations of the perverse aristocrats, the persecution was established against the patriots themselves: the cause of this criminal change can be found in the seduction of certain women, and it is to these terrible maneuvers that we can attribute the despair that led Gaillard to kill himself.
Reduced to escape, the patriots come to submit their complaints to the Committee of Public Safety, which rescues them from persecution, and suppresses their odious persecutors with fear. Thus, virtue will be eternally exposed to the traits of two factions which, opposed in apperance, always rally to sacrifice the patriots. Here [Robespierre] swears to avenge Chalier, Gaillard and all the victims of the infamous aristocracy.
The speaker's principles are to stop the shedding of human blood caused by crime: the authors of the plots denounced, on the contrary, only aspire to immolate all patriots and especially the National Convention, since the Committee indicated the vices from which it must purge itself. Who are those who have constantly distinguished error from crime, and who have defended lost patriots? Isn’t it the members of the Committee? Those who demand justice can only be formidable to the leaders of the factions, and those who want to destroy the members of the Committee in public opinion can have no other intention than to serve the projects of the tyrants interested in the fall of a Committee which disconcerts them and will soon destroy them.
Robespierre ends by denouncing the author of all these maneuvers who is the same one who persecuted the patriots at Commune-Affranchie, with a cunning, a perfidy as cowardly as it is cruel: the Committee of Public Safety was not his dupe. He asks, finally, that justice and virtue triumph, that innocence be peaceful and the people victorious over all their enemies, and that the Convention puts all petty intrigues under its feet.
Couthon, who had interrupted Robespierre in order to cite charges against Dubois-Crancé regarding the siege of Commune-Affranchie, proposes that he be struck from the club’s list of members (adopted).
At the suggestion of Robespierre, Fouché is invited to come and exonerate himself of the reproaches which have been addressed to him before the Society. Robespierre at the Jacobins, July 11 1794
One reads a letter from Fouché, in which he asks the Society to suspend their judgement up until the Committees of Public Safety and General Security have made their report on his private and public conduct.
Robespierre: I begin by making the declaration that I am not interested in the individual Fouché at all. I could be connected to him because I thought him a patriot. When I denounced him here, it was less because of his past crimes than because he hid away in order to commit others, and because I regarded him as the leader of the conspiracy which we have to thwart.
I examine the letter which was just read out, and I see that it is written by a man who, being accused for crimes, refuses to justify himself before his fellow citizens. This is the beginning of a system of tyranny. He who refuses to answer to a Popular Society whose member he is, is a man who attacks the institution of Popular Societies. This contempt for the Society of the Jacobins is all the more inexcusable as Fouché himself has not refused his suffrage when he was denounced by the patriots from Nevers, and as he even took refuge on the [president’s] seat of the Jacobins. He was placed there because he had agents in this Society, who had been at Commune-Affranchie. He delivers a great speech to you on his conduct in the mission with which he had been charged. I will not seek to analyse this speech. The Society has judged that Fouché does not want to say anything, as his reflections are insignificant.
It is surprising that the one who, at the time of which I speak, craved the approval of the Society, neglects it when he is denounced, and that he seems to implore, so to speak, the aid of the Convention against the Jacobins. Does he fear the eyes and ears of the people? Does he fear that his sad face visibly presents crime, that six thousand looks fixed on him discover his entire soul in his eyes, and that, in spite of nature which has hidden them, one reads his thoughts there? Does he fear that his speech reveals the embarrassment and the contradictions of a culprit? A reasonable man has to judge that fear is the only motive of Fouché’s conduct ; well, the man who fears the looks of his fellow citizens is a culprit. He uses [the fact] as a pretext that his denunciation is sent to the Committee of Public Safety ; but is he forgetting that the tribunal of the public conscience is the most infallible? Why does he refuse to present himself here?
The obligation to give an account of his mission to the Committees of Public Safety and of General Security, which are the government, and to the Convention, which is its source or, rather, which is the government by definition, this obligation, I say, does not destroy the one of appearing respectable in the eyes of a Society, and does not excuse appearing to put it in contradiction with the Convention. A representative is responsible for his actions to the Convention; but a good citizen does not discard appearing before his fellow citizens. If the system of Fouché could dominate, it would follow that those who have denounced schemes outside of the Convention have committed a crime. This was the conduct of all conspirators, who, from the moment onwards when one has wanted to judge them, shunned this Society and denounced it to the different National Assemblies as a gathering of factious [persons].
I here call Fouché into judgement. He shall respond and he shall say who, among him and us, has borne the rights of the representatives of the people with more dignity, and struck down all factions with more courage? Was it him who unveiled the Héberts and the Chaumettes, when they hatched assassination plots and wanted to debase the Convention? No! It was us who, on this tribune, when the Hébertists claimed to be more patriotic than us, unmasked them openly. It was us who silenced the false denunciations.
They shall say if they would have been listened to here, these men who had only served the Revolution in order to dishonour it and to make it turn to the benefit of the foreign [powers] and of the aristocracy! All the vile agents who have conspired did not see their likes unveiled and punished sooner than they seemed to abandon their cause ; and, because we had dismissed the perfidiously spread calumnies against the Convention, they extended this principle onto themselves in such a way as to render it tyrannical. The slightest words against this kind of men have been regarded as crimes by them; terror was the means which they used in order to force the patriots into silence. They threw those into prison who had the courage to break it; and this is the crime for which I reproach Fouché!
He will not say that it were the principles of the Convention that he has professed ; the intention of the Convention is not to throw terror into the soul of the patriots, nor to carry out the dissolution of the Popular Societies. Which means would thus remain to us, if, while plotters conspire and prepare daggers in order to assassinate us, we could not speak in the presence of the Friends of Liberty?
Robespierre then declares that Fouché is a vile and despicable impostor ; that his move is the confession of his crimes and that the action which he takes is similar to the one of the Brissots and of the other crooks who slander the Society as soon as they are chased from it. He assures that virtue will never sacrificed to baseness, nor [will] liberty [be sacrificed] to men whose hands are full of rapines and crimes. I do not want to add anything, he says while closing; Fouché himself has characterised himself enough. I have made all these observations, so that the conspirators know once and for all that they must never hope to escape the surveillance of the people. 
A citizen from Commune-Affranchie reports some serious facts against Fouché. The Society sends them to the Committee of Public Safety and, upon the motion of a member, Fouché is excluded from the Society.
The citizens Tolède and Dessyrier, who found themselves at Commune-Affranchie in the days of Fouché, and who claim to be accused, mount the tribune. 
Robespierre observes that these two citizens divert, without wanting it, the attention away from Fouché, and that his cause must not be common with theirs. He recalls that the conspirators have always sought to save themselves by placing themselves beside pure patriots ; he hence invites Tolède and Dessyrier not to interrupt a discussion wherein they are not involved. – After members did justice to the patriotism of these citizens, they descend from the tribune. Robespierre at the Jacobins, July 14 1794
They are strange accomplices of Robespierre, those who, against his will, made a political report on the religious troubles, sheltered from all research in this matter the representatives of the people sent on mission in the departments, defended Tallien, Dubois-Crance, Fouché, Bourdon de l'Oise, and other representatives whom he relentlessly pursued. Réponse des membres des deux anciens Comités de Salut Public et de sûreté générale aux imputations renouvelées contre eux par Laurent Lecointre, de Versailles, et déclarées calomnieuses par décret du 13 fructidor dernier, à la Convention Nationale (1795) by Barère, Collot d’Herbois, Vadier and Billaud-Varennes
One man alone in the Convention appeared to enjoy an inexpugnable popularity: this was Robespierre, a man full of pride and cunning; an envious and vindictive being, who was never satiated with the blood of his colleagues; and who, by his capacity, steadiness, the clearness of his head, and the obstinacy of his character, surmounted circumstances the most appalling. Availing himself of his preponderance in the Committee of Public Safety, he openly aspired, not only to the tyranny of the decemviri, but to the despotism of the dictatorship of Marius and Sylla. One step more would have given him the masterdom of the revolution, which it was his audacious ambition to govern at his will; but thirty victims more were to be sacrificed, and he had marked them out in the convention. 
He well knew that I understood him; and I, therefore, was honoured by being inscribed upon his tablets at the head of those doomed to destruction. I was still on a mission, when he accused me of oppressing the patriots and tampering with the aristocracy. Being recalled to Paris, I dared to call upon him from the tribune, to make good his accusation. He caused me to be expelled from the Jacobins, of whom he was the high-priest; this was for me equivalent to a decree of proscription. I did not trifle in contending for my head, nor in long and secret deliberations with such of my colleagues as were threatened with my own fate. I merely said to them, among others to Legendre, Tallien, Dubois de Crancé, Daunou and Chénier: “You are on the list, you are on the list as well as myself, I am certain of it!” Tallien, Barras, Bourdon de l'Oise and Dubois de Crancé evinced some energy. Tallien contended for two lives, of which one was then dearer to him than his own: he therefore resolved upon assassinating the future dictator, even in the Convention itself. But what a hazardous chance was this! Robespierre’s popularity would have survived him, and we should have been immolated to his manes. I therefore dissuaded Tallien from an isolated enterprise, which would have destroyed the man, but preserved his system. 
Convinced that other means must be resorted to, I went straight to those who shared with Robespierre the government of terror, and whom I knew to be envious or fearful of his immense popularity. I revealed to Collot d'Herbois, to Carnot, to Billaud-Varennes, the designs of the modern Appius; and I presented to each of them separately, so lively and so true a picture of the danger of their situation, I urged them with so much address and good fortune, that I insinuated into their breasts more than mistrust, but the courage of henceforth opposing the Tyrant in any further decimating of the Convention.  "Count the votes,” said I to them, “in your committee, and you will see, that when you are determined, he will be reduced to the powerless minority of a Couthon and a Saint-Just. Refuse him your votes, and compel him to stand alone by your vis inertiæ.” But what contrivances, what expedients were necessary to avoid exasperating the Jacobin club, the Seides, and the partisans of Robespierre. 
My eye was on him; and seeing him reduced to a single faction, I secretly urged such of his enemies who still clung to the committee, at least to remove the artillery from Paris, who were all devoted to Robespierre and the Commune, and to deprive Henriot of his command  or at least to suspend him. The first measure I obtained, thanks to the firmness of Carnot, who alleged the necessity of sending reinforcements of artillery to the army. As to depriving Henriot of his command, that appeared too hazardous; Henriot remained, and was near losing all, or rather, to speak the truth, it was he, who on the 9th Thermidor (the 27th July) ruined the cause of Robespierre, the triumph of which was for a short time in his power. But what could be expected from a drunken and stupid ci-devant footman. 
What follows is too well known for me to dwell upon it. It is notorious how Maximilian the First perished; a man whom certain authors have compared to the Gracchi, to whom he bore not the slightest resemblance, either in eloquence or elevation of mind. I confess that in the delirium of victory, I said to those who thought that his views tended to the dictatorship: "You do him too much honour; he had neither plan, nor design: far from disposing of futurity, he was drawn along, and did but obey an impulse he could neither oppose nor govern." But at that time I was too near a spectator of events justly to appreciate their history. The sudden overthrow of the dreadful system which suspended the nation between life and death, was doubtless a grand epoch of liberty; but, in this world, good is ever mixed with evil. What took place after Robespierre's fall? that which we have seen to have been the case after a fall still more memorable. Those who had crouched most abjectly before the decemvir, could, after his death, find no expression strong enough to express their detestation of him.  Memoirs of Fouché (1825), volume 1, page 18-22
…The fact is that, sent [to Lyon], after the sack of this city, I (Fouché) returned in revolt, with a report against Robespierre, and that, from this moment up until Thermidor, I was his declared rival! Robespierre had established himself at the Jacobins, and I in the Committees, from where I expelled him; you'll see! I was a Jacobin myself, but there were two kinds. As for us, we were not popular; we talked about equality, but deep down we were aristocrats! Yes, more aristocratic than anyone perhaps! The Jacobins of the opposite party, such as Hullin, paved the way; they would shout in the crowd on the floor; we only saw them in the stands. It was Robespierre’s henchmen who flattered this populace; Robespierre was its leader, its soul, attempting to reign through them and crush the Convention! But we were his antagonists there, me at the head! He feared me. […] [The fact that I had humiliated his pride] was enough to be certain that he would be my mortal enemy, his hateful and envious character would never forgive me for it, no more than Lacuée who, if it wasn’t for Carnot, he would have had guillotined! […] I understood that you couldn’t go and fight such a man in his club; that I there would be dominated, crushed, and that to resist it, it was necessary to choose another terrain, that is to say the Convention itself and its Committees. It was therefore there that, on my return from Lyon, I began with a report on what needed to be done to stop the complete disorganization of this province, of which I accused Robespierre. People were surprised and terrified by my audacity, Carnot among others, who in his emotion embraced me, praising my courage, but warning me that it would cost me my head! This did not stop me, I persisted; and, addressing all the enemies of the Dictator, either separately or in meetings that I convened as head of public education, I reassured them, encouraged them, and got the Committee to call Robespierre before it to defend itself. It was putting him in a false position, he did not accept it; he refused to present himself and confined himself to the Jacobins, where I proposed to have him attacked, seized as a rebel and thrown into the river! We were preparing the means when the 9th of Thermidor arrived, the day when Tallien, single-handedly, unexpectedly, without having warned us, without knowing our project, warning us, denounced Robespierre as the tyrant of his colleagues! He cited me in support of this questioning, to which Robespierre replied that this was a duel between him and me! You know the rest. But what we don't know is that, under the Directory, it was again me who destroyed the tail of this party, after having thus fought its head! De 1800 à 1812. Un aide de camp de Napoléon. Mémoires du général compte de Ségar (1894), page 437-438
The primary object of [Robespierre’s] ambition seemed to be to strike, in the first place, what remained or what might spring up again of those he looked upon as his personal enemies, of whom in his hatred he never lost sight. At the head of those he had marked for death stood Fouché, and as, in view of the point his personal quarrel with Robespierre had reached, he could not but succumb within a very short time, it had been concluded therefrom that he was to be one of those who would deal the first blows at Robespierre. 
But the arguments brought into play to convince Fouché of his danger were not sufficient to inspire him with courage. He had certainly been at all times an ultra-Revolutionist, and had shown what he was made of in his support of the system of terror; but he had not exactly hit the idea of Robespierre, or rather he had become his rival, and had given him offence by going even further than he did. Fouché's position was therefore not one to afford him opposite his enemy a frank and clearly defined character enabling him to attack him openly. Robespierre had told Fouché that his face was the expression of crime. Fouché, far from replying, took it as a matter of course; expelled from the Jacobins, he had not been able to return to the fold; he no longer dared show himself even in the Convention, but busied himself actively and with a will with intrigues and machinations of the lowest kind. I sent him hither and thither to inform our friends of what we knew of the intentions of Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Couthon. His personal dread of the triumvirs served but to increase in his eyes the idea of their hostile plans. Everything that he already dreaded most sincerely was artfully exaggerated by him when seeking to stimulate those whom he sought to induce to make up their minds to action. Rising at early morning, he would run round till night calling on deputies of all shades of opinion, saying to each and everyone, "You perish tomorrow if he does not.” To those who mourned Danton, and who were threatened with the resentment of his executioners, Fouché said: ”We may, if we see fit, be avenged tomorrow, and tomorrow only will we be safe.”
 In order to instil fresh courage into minds so stricken with fright more than one speech was required to place the question before each and every one in such a way that he should see his own interests in it. Hence it cannot be denied that Fouché, gathering together by his clever intriguing all sentiments against Robespierre, was a genuine resource in the midst of the elements extant ready to make a decisive move against the oppressors of the Convention. […] Matters were growing worse apace; no longer was there any possibility of a reconciliation, even under the mask of mutual deceit. Not only had hostilities been declared, but a war to the knife proclaimed. In spite of all Fouché's prudence, a letter written in his own hand had been intercepted, containing particularly the following line addressed to a colleague in the Convention: ”Ere a fortnight has rolled over us either Maximilien or we shall have ceased to exist." Hence the quarrel could end only by the destruction of one side or the other; nothing was left but to conquer or die. 
Even at a time when he was brought face to face with the necessity of defending himself, it was not in Fouché to do so aboveboard. Indirect means, those of ceaseless and underground intrigue, in which he had served his apprenticeship at the Oratory, he was familiar with; and just as everything comes handy in a household, so in a conspiracy, which is itself but an intrigue more serious than others, skill and manoeuvring constitute the necessary elements; and it will be seen that Fouché was to be, if not by his courage, at least by his doings, a useful cooperator in what was about to take place. He has, in later days, boasted that he dealt mortal blows to Robespierre; the fact is that in order to flee from his wrath and, if he could have done so; from his relentless memory, Fouché no longer appeared at the National Convention nor slept at home; it was at night alone that, under various disguises, he would go the rounds of such of his colleagues as were busily engaged in preparing means of defence against Robespierre, and bring and carry from one to the other every particular as to what was taking place, and go on the errands it was requisite should be dextrously done in order to cement the alliances we were forming pending the moment, impossible to positively determine, when the decisive blow was to be struck.  Memoirs of Barras, member of the Directorate (1895) page 207-214
Legendre: […] I did not see Fouché during his missions, but I saw him at the Jacobins; he surrounded himself with all the men who, before the 9th of Thermidor, were preparing for this great day. There he openly attacked Robespierre who, wanting to manage him or give himself the means to destroy him, had him named president of the Jacobins. Fouché seized this post to attack Robespierre more openly, and in his responses he designated this tyrant whom it was necessary to strike. I declare that I see Fouché as one of the elements of the day of 9 Thermidor. Tallien: On Germinal 12, at the time when I believed I saw in Fouché a man linked to the conspirators, I had the courage to denounce him. Since that time, I have had no relationship with him, but it is my duty to defend him by attesting to the facts that are within my knowledge. Fouché was proscribed by Robespierre, because he had opposed the measures taken by Collot in Lyon. Fouché courageously unmasked Robespierre, and declared that, even if his head fell, he would make this dictator known to the people. Every day Fouché came to report to us what was happening at the Committee of Public Safety, and the day before the 9th of Thermidor he told us: “The division is complete, tomorrow we must strike.” The next day, the tyrant was no more. Fouché, at the same time, wrote to his sister: “In a short time the tyrant shall be punished. Robespierre only have a few days left to reign.” This letter was intercepted by Bô, who sent it to Robespierre. These are the facts I had to make known. Legendre and Tallien at the Convention, August 9 1794
Madame Collot (d’Herbois)   Mademoiselle Robespierre   (their titles are common as well as their distress) Per month: 200 pounds Per year: 2400 pounds for special help. Collective decree granting Charlotte a pension from Minister of Police Fouché dated February 8 1805, cited in Charlotte Robespierre et ses amis (1961) by Gabriel Pioro and Pierre Labracherie.
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braucherei · 4 months
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Just finished seeing Napoleon (2023) for the first time! I liked it more than I thought I would. The comedy bits were funny and the core relationship of Napoleon and Josephine was engaging even if all the other characters were pretty flat.
I don’t know much about Napoleon post-emperor but the history at least before that was unsurprisingly pretty all over the place.
SPOILERS (this is a bullet pointed list of moments mostly from the first quarter of the movie set during the French Revolution/Directoire) (EDIT: I just saw the movie for a second time so I added amendments/clarifications in red)
the movie opens with a text scroll summarizing in very vague terms what led to the French Revolution
The first real scene is Marie-Antoinette being guillotined while Ça ira is sung. Her execution is then immediately followed by Robespierre giving his “Terror and Virtue” speech very menacingly
Didn’t care for the guy casted as Robespierre didn’t really look like him and was too old. He just comes off as a generic “power hungry” politician in a powdered wig
When Napoleon first charges at the siege of Toulon a cannon hits his horse right in the chest and Barras has to awkwardly help Napoleon off the ground
The next day Napoleon is awarded for taking Toulon and for some reason the gored horse is still there. Napoleon reached his hand inside the horse and grabs the cannon ball
A scene or two after Toulon they show Thermidor where the whole convention turns on aspiring dictator Robespierre
Barras is in the balcony of the Convention and specifically yells that Robespierre wants to be “judge, jury and executioner”
This Robespierre runs away as a crowd of deputies chase him up the stairs. Someone in a chair that might have been an 18th century wheel chair falls over but the scene happens so fast I wasn’t sure
I believe it was just a regular chair tossed over during Thermidor but I’m still not entirely sure since there is some kind of either design or mechanism on the side of the chair
Robespierre pulls a gun on the mob of deputies chasing him but the gun jams so he pulls out a second gun and shoots himself
Barras says “you missed” and then fingers his jaw wound to I guess parallel Napoleon and the horse
A little later Napoleon is at the Victim’s ball and Josephine is seen there next to Barras.
Thérésa Cabarrus is also in the cast list but she is never named in the movie so I assume she will be in the Director’s cut
Josephine and a woman hug while leaving prison so that’s probably Cabarrus but her name is never said
There’s also a scene that starts with Barras and Napoleon goofing around together and throwing nuts at a wall which is sweet I guess
Weirdly Barras is the only male character Napoleon seems to be genuinely friendly with
I was wrong it was his brother Lucien not Barras that Napoleon was goofing around and throwing nuts with which makes more sense. I must have gotten their mullets confused
Napoleon returns from Egypt in this movie because he hears Josephine is cheating on him
the newspapers he gets from the English aren’t stories on how the Directoire is unpopular/corrupt but instead cartoons of him being cucked
(This is foreshadowing for the worst part of the movie)
The only real Fouché scene is when Napoleon is sitting with the Directors telling them how he’s going to coup them and it’s going around the table getting their reactions as Napoleon calls their names
Then Napoleon says Fouché and it cuts to a guy standing in the corner of the room
Talleyrand is a more important part of the movie and is given some of historical Fouché’s moments (I liked his actor a lot actually and he’s the best character besides the core two)
Barras also stops being a character after he agrees to resign as director but he continues to show up in the background throughout the movie
This is SPOILERS AGAIN for the end of the movie but I have to mention this because it was an insane decision
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While Napoleon is in Elba the Tsar of Russia rolls up to Josephine’s manor in a carriage and is “entertained” by her
Napoleon sees a cartoon of him being cucked again in the newspaper and that is why the Hundred Days happens
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aedesluminis · 5 months
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Interesting, very interesting...
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What exactly did you two do in Lyon? c:
Excerpt from Gershoy's "A Reluctant Terrorist", Collot and Fouché from "La Terreur et la Vertu: Robespierre".
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frevandrest · 3 months
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More Père Lachaise with @robespapier
Eleonore:
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Babet and Junior:
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Barras (look at the sad state of it):
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Tallien again:
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And last, but certainly not the least, Fouché's daughter in law (captured because of the last name alone tbh.)
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His son is also buried at Père Lachaise but we didn't have time to visit him. Apparently, he does NOT have "Fouché" on the tombstone! Just "F." and "d'Otrante". (Come on, be proud of the snake name!)
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tierseta · 2 months
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Fouché and lying
With Fouché, everything is a matter of appearance, but he’s too busy with the great game of politics to care about his dress. No one has ever pushed the art of subterfuge and artifice this far. By means of eager solicitude and honeyed assurances, like a cat working its charms, he always gets more than what you had intended to tell him.
He displays a masterful ability, or perhaps impudence, for lying. He lies ceaselessly and to everyone. “What good is lying for when you’re not fooling anyone?” he would later say to his friend Gaillard. “To lie without deceiving is the mistake of a fool.”
He knows what he’s talking about! “He lies twice or thrice a day,” asserts Bourienne, Bonaparte’s secretary, who has practiced him quite a lot. Yet the deception has no hold on him: “I am so convinced of that man’s lack of honesty, that every time I know for certain that he’s lying to me, I am desperate to believe he’s telling the truth.” “He had something of a charlatan,” also says Madame de Chastenay.
When he speaks, it’s only to scramble the tracks and it’s still an imposture. He’s chatty without restrain. He can talk endlessly when he’s in a good mood. To his young private secretary who dares to question him on the subject, he gives this reply as the concealed man he is: “Child, you know nothing; don’t you see you should keep your enemies on tenterhooks? As for these pleasantries, I prefer that my entourage repeats them as coming from me rather than anything serious one might want to learn from them.”
E. de Waresquiel, Fouché. Les silences de la pieuvre, 2014
translation and emphasis are mine
in response to this post about who among Barère, Charlotte Robespierre, or Fouché lies the most
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empirearchives · 6 months
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“Is the Minister mad? or is he joking?”
— Napoleon about Fouché (letter to Cambacérès, 13 July 1808)
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dovesandoranges · 5 months
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I started reading Fouché's memoirs earlier today and I'm still thinking about the opening paragraph
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Joseph.
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michel-feuilly · 1 year
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Okay Fouché
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I tried to draw without line.
My old computer is almost dead. And me too
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robespapier · 1 month
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For Fouché Friday, @tierseta, this exchange between Fouché and Robespierre in Gaston Crémieux' Thermidor
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Fouché, with grandiloquence Salut to the President of the Convention, To the regenerator of the motherland! Robespierre Enough with your grovelling and fawning! What do you want? Fouché Your bad mood excuses your oversight. I was hoping for a warmer welcome Once you've promised me your sister's hand in marriage. Robespierre I didn't know the darkness of your soul. Fouché I've loved her ardently for a long time. Robespierre It's in vain.
Then Fouché goes "She loves me. Can you really refuse me her hand?" and Robespierre replies "Charlotte loving Fouché! Me, uniting her to his kind!" and goes on a rant about Fouché's crimes in Lyon. In defense of Crémieux, he wrote this in 1871 (in jail, awaiting his execution as a leader of Marseille's Commune) and I guess his source for this was Charlotte's Mémoires?
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nesiacha · 11 days
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in your opinion, what was the most significant mistake the jacobins ever made? (i tend to like them much more than other factions in the frev, but i still want to know how Problematic my Faves were)
Good question. I'm not sure which period you want to talk about regarding the Jacobins, so let's discuss the one after the fall of Louis XVI's monarchy. I will mainly encompass the Mountain faction.
Regarding tactical errors, according to some historians, including Antoine Resche, a contemporary historian who has made excellent videos on the French Revolution under the name Histony, which can be found on the Veni Vidi Sensi website, leans towards the lack of left-wing unity as one of the errors. And honestly, he's not wrong. Some might think that the elimination of Danton and the Hébertists was a turning point. But it was salvageable (I've already discussed what I thought in one of my posts). Only the Jacobins made the grave mistake of eliminating Chaumette, among others, even though he had refused to participate in an attempt to overthrow the Convention, which showed he was the most reasonable. Keeping him as the prosecutor of the Commune would have appeased some of the sans-culottes. Instead, the Convention has him arrested and executed. I understand that at that time the Convention could not afford an overthrow and was afraid Chaumette might change his mind, but by doing so, they alienated a large part of the sans-culottes. The wave of executions like Gobel or Chaumette was one of the most disastrous moves.
Another one is the non-application of the Ventôse laws, but it is true that some Montagnards blocked this, and the Marais was against these laws.
Also, being a fervent advocate of freedom of expression, there should never have been decrees holding journalists accountable. I don't particularly like Desmoulins, but executing him for his writings… Moreover, it will not prevent opinions from forming and solidifying.
Regarding moral errors: In addition to the travesties of justice I mentioned concerning the Hébertists and the Dantonists, there were other cases. When Girondin deputies were dismissed, most deputies did not want them dead, let alone imprisoned. They were only supposed to remain under house arrest. The problem is, many of them escaped and incited uprisings in the departments, which further exacerbated the already endangered Republic. Despite all I have to reproach them for, some Girondins were honorable people, notably Manon Roland and Vergniaud (even if Vergniaud had an ambiguous attitude, he still remained under house arrest) who stay in Paris. Yet they were judged, condemned to death, and executed along with other Girondins who incited or attempted uprisings and fled Paris. It wasn't even a tactical error; it was unfair.
Another very minor point concerns the Convention entirely, and this is my opinion. Why separate Marie Antoinette from her son? I understand there were royalists in Paris (the assassination of the remarkable Louis Michel Lepeletier by one of Louis XVI's former guards, among other events, will demonstrate this) who would do anything to get their hands on him as Louis XVII, which would have been dangerous. It would have been better to monitor the child's education closely given this context, but why not have strict supervision while leaving him in his mother's care, even though we know her opinions? I don't want to demonize Antoine Simon, executed in Thermidor; he wasn't a brute; he had compassion for the former queen and liked the child, but it's horrible. Being myself a proponent of reforms for jail to ensure the child remains very close to his parents, I protest against this. And the royalists seized upon it to portray an image of an inhumane Republic.
Women's rights were not respected, as I discussed in my post "Women's rights suppressed."
One of the most serious errors was the Prairial Law. When this bill presented by Couthon and later approved by the Committee of Public Safety and voted on by the Convention passed, many innocents suffered. Following the execution of the "Robespierrists," the Convention lied, saying it had not approved it, which was false.
Paradoxically, there was no internal elimination necessary at that time, notably the case of Carnot, who gave orders behind the backs of others to wage a war of conquest, which would have jeopardized the Battle of Fleurus if Saint-Just had not intervened with the order. I don't understand why he wasn't arrested; generals have been executed for less than that. This man doesn't deserve his title as the organizer of Victory, but having eliminated those who had really done the job like Saint-Just, among others, he could claim that title.
I realize I have done a critical job on the Montagnards even though I admire them, so a few lines to rehabilitate them. Most of them refused the irresponsible war of conquest advocated by the Girondins. Finally, fatigue was fatal to them. They put their best efforts into saving France, but most became ill (Couthon, Robespierre; I don't know if Billaud-Varenne was beginning to develop his dysentery or if his illness came after his deportation). Robespierre made a grave mistake by slamming the door on the Committee of Public Safety following a dispute among its members, then a few weeks later making a speech where he designated culprits without naming names (like Fouché, for example), so some wrongly believed they were the ones being designated when they weren't. Fouché and his gang played on this.
I want to say that Jean Clement Martin explained that if the Girondins are seen as victims, it's because they didn't have time to put the Montagnards on the guillotine. There were quite a few assassinations of Montagnard deputies (some think that Barbaroux manipulated Corday to kill Marat, Joseph Chalier was killed in atrocious conditions by the Girondins of Lyon, Isnard's speech). When the Jacobins acted, there was an internal civil war and an external war against the Revolution, plus a depreciated currency. And they saved it. For a while, they tried to accommodate (at least the majority of them) their adversaries. Then the gloves came off. But they remained in democracy, even in the worst moments. The Jacobins supported the abolition of slavery (not just them), and most of the major Jacobin figures fully supported the uprisings by slaves against the colonists.
Napoleon, although praised today for inheriting a better situation thanks to the efforts of his predecessors, through his dictatorial attitudes, betrayal of the Jacobins, and wars of conquest (all the wrong things), left France in a worse state with the return of the Bourbons. Revolutionaries like Marat predicted from the outset of the French Revolution that if the Girondins persisted in declaring war, even if France were victorious, there would be a military dictatorship and subsequently the return of the Bourbons.
All this leads me to think that it was the revolutionaries of the Mountain who were pragmatic and Napoleon the "idealist" in the wrong sense of the term, given his grandiosity and stupid belief (in my opinion) that he could impose hereditary dictatorship, exploit other countries without them retaliating (but that's another story).
Finally, the Jacobins in power were exhausted; they even lacked sleep hours due to their internal schedules. Before the Prairial Law was passed, there was an assassination attempt on Collot, so it was thought that the royalist danger was present. Plus, this law was disfigured by those who presented it; they thought they would only use it against people like Fouché, Carrier, Barras, Fréron, Tallien—des despicable men who dishonored France and the Revolution. It was they who later presented themselves as victims of the Jacobins when they were the worst during the Terror. Contrary to belief, heads rolled after the Terror; just look at the execution of Romme and the other Montagnards, the execution of Babeuf, the fact that anyone who demanded the constitution of 1793 could be punishable by death.
Finally, I want to say that despite my speeches, I don't believe in providential men; if France could have a sense of greatness during this period, it's thanks to the people. In Algeria, we have the slogan: "One hero only: the people."
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bonbonanza · 4 months
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demaskblue · 1 year
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shocking revelations
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magicmagic09 · 4 months
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I am wondering what if Robespierre haunted in Fouché's house. Fouché's little child always said that there was a green-eye man with bandage on his head, walking around their house. The green-eye man sometimes even played with her without saying anything. However, other adults could not see him.
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Fouché in his memoirs (1825):
Tallien contended for two lives, of which one was then dearer to him than his own: he therefore resolved upon assassinating the future dictator, even in the Convention itself. But what a hazardous chance was this! Robespierre’s popularity would have survived him, and we should have been immolated to his manes. I therefore dissuaded Tallien from an isolated enterprise, which would have destroyed the man, but preserved his system. 
Also Fouché, as reported in De 1800 à 1812. Un aide de champ de Napoléon. Mémoires du général compte de Ségar (1894):
…I persisted; and, addressing all the enemies of the Dictator, either separately or in meetings that I convened as head of public education, I reassured them, encouraged them, and got the Committee to call Robespierre before it to defend itself. It was putting him in a false position, he did not accept it; he refused to present himself and confined himself to the Jacobins, where I proposed to have him attacked, seized as a rebel and thrown into the river! We were preparing the means when the 9th of Thermidor arrived, the day when Tallien, single-handedly, unexpectedly, without having warned us, without knowing our project, warning us, denounced Robespierre as the tyrant of his colleagues!
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frevandrest · 6 months
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Charlotte is all "it's a horrible LIE that I was Fouché's mistress before and after Thermidor!!!" Gurl why would anyone associate you with him? Were you... seen meeting with him or something?
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