Please, just give me the FACTS @anotherhumaninthisworld - Tumblr Blog

Some primary sources

I plan to add more whenever I find more.

#frev resources #frev #french revolution #maximilen robespierre #augustin robespierre #robespierre #george couthon #couthon #camille desmoulins #desmoulins #joseph fouché #fouché #charlotte robespierre #elisabeth lebas #elisabeth duplay #billaud-varennes #jerome Pétion #jacques-pierre brissot #saint-just

anotherhumaninthisworld

Revolutionaries’ activities on the day of the Champ-de-Mars massacre

Pauline Léon took part in the demonstration. On her way home from there, she used her fists to defend a friend against the family of a national guard. This is the first conserved trace of any militant activities from her side. (Pauline Léon, une républicaine révolutionnaire (2006) by Claude Guillon).

Manon Roland wrote in her memoirs that she on the day in question had been at the jacobins ”where I had witnessed the agitations caused by the sad events on Champ-de-Mars.” Manon remembers walking home eleven o’clock in the evening and bumping into François and Louise Robert. Louise (who it might be worth mentioning would have been seven months pregnant at this point) explains that ”my husband was writing the petition on the altar of the homeland, I was at his side. We escaped the slaughter without daring to retire neither to our house nor that of one of friends.” She therefore asks if they can take shelter at Manon’s place. Manon happily agrees, and brings them over to hôtel Britannique, rue Guénégaud. The next morning, the Roberts start talking through the window with an acquaintance by the name of Vachard, whom they invite up. Vachard speaks loudly about yesterday’s events, boasting about having run his sabre through a National Guardsman. Manon finds this conduct to be careless, and asks the Roberts to tell their friend to leave, which they do. The Roberts themselves leave around noon.

#Champ de mars anniversary!

Danton using crude language compilation

Fifteen days ago, a delegation of Jacobins went, at one o'clock in the morning, to express to the counter-revolutionary general their desire to see him abandon the Club of 1789 and return to the Jacobin Club, from which he had cowardly deserted. “No, gentlemen,” replied the soothsayer Mottié, “I am committed to the Club of '89, and I will remain faithful to it.” “Why then have you given your allegiance to both sides and thus betrayed your honor?” Danton told him. “Come now, General, you wish to be a great man; so be it, but for that you need character. Stop whoring yourself out.” l’Ami du Peuple, number 298 (December 2 1790)

Grandpré, who, by his position, is bound to render an account to the Minister of the Interior of the state of the prisons, had found their sad inhabitants in the greatest terror on the morning of September 2 [1792]. […] This estimable citizen, back at the Hôtel de Ville, awaits the ministers at the end of the council: Danton appears first; he approaches him, talks to him about what he has seen, recounts the steps, the requisitions made to the armed force by the Minister of the Interior, the lack of regard that seems to be there, the alarms of the prisoners and the care that he, as minister of justice, has to take for them. Danton, bothered by the unfortunate description, exclaims with his bellowing voice and a gesture appropriate to the expression: I don’t give a fuck about the prisoners or what happens to them! — and he goes away with temperament. It was in the second antechamber, in the presence of twenty people, who all shuddered to hear such a harsh Minister of Justice. Appel à l’impartiale postérité (1795) by Manon Roland (written somewhere between her arrest in June and execution in November 1793)

Tuesday 22 — […] I went to Robert’s house. Danton came there. His jokes are as boorish as he is. Despite this, he is a good devil. Lucile Desmoulins’ diary, January 22 1793

When I showed to Danton the system of calumny of Roland and of the Brissotins, promoted in all the public writings, Danton answered me: “What do I care! Public opinion is a whore, posterity is a folly!” The word virtue made Danton laugh; he didn’t have a more solid virtue, he said amusingly, than the one which he did every night with his wife. How could a man, to whom every idea of morality was foreign, be the defender of liberty? Robespierre’s notes against the dantonists, written somewhere in March 1794 and published in 1841

…Vadier happened to pass near him. Danton, deeply stirred by the man’s presence — and gripping David’s arm tightly while fixing a blazing stare upon him — said in a tone made terrible by rage: “That man passing by says of me: ‘And that fat stuffed turbot, we’ll gut him too!’ Tell that scoundrel” — and at this point his voice sounded like a roll of thunder — “that the day I have cause to fear for my life, I shall become more cruel than a cannibal; I shall eat his brain and shit in his skull.” Notes et souvenirs de Courtois de l’Aube, député à la Convention nationale, cited in La Révolution française: revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (1887) page 813. Anecdote portrayed as taking place a few days before Danton’s arrest on March 30 1794.

One day I told Danton: ”Your carelessness surprises me, I understand nothing of your apathy. Don’t you see Robespierre is conspiring to lose you? Won’t you do anything to prevent it?” ”If I thought that he has so much as thought about it,” [Danton replied], ”I would eat his entrails!” Five or six days later, this man so terrible allowed himself to be arrested like a child and slaughtered like a lamb. Mémoires sur la Convention et le Directoire (1827) by Antoine-Clair Thibaudeau, page 60.

Danton in the chamber of the accused: Me a conspirator? I fuck my wife everyday. My name is attached to all revolutionary institutions, the revolutionary army, revolutionary committee, Committee of Public Safety, Revolutionary Tribunal. Notes de Topino-Lebrun, juré au Tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris sur le procès de Danton et sur Fouquier-Tinville, written during Danton’s trial in 1794 and published for the first time 1875.

Danton, placed in a cell next to Westermann, didn’t stop talking, less to be heard by Westermann than to be heard by us. This terrible Danton truly was evaded by Robespierre. He was a little ashamed over this, looking through the bars he said many things that he might not have meant; all his phrases were intertwined with oaths and foul expressions. Here are some I retained: […] ”The stupid fuckers, they will scream Vive la République in seeing me pass by.” Mémoires d’un détenu, pour servir à l’histoire de la tyrannie de Robespierre by H.J Riouffe (1795) page 86-88

#georges danton #frev #frev compilation #robespierre #manon Roland #lucile desmoulins #no one can hold a candle to Hébert on this subject tho…

liberty-epistolary-fraternity

Letter from Paris to unknown recipient

15 July 1789 (sent out the 14th)

Early on the morning of the 14th, the Bourgeois troops—better armed and better organised than the previous day, numbering some 30 to 40 thousand—were reinforced by 500 to 600 French Guards, who came to join a similar number we already had; roughly the same number of Dragoons and Swiss soldiers swelled their ranks. We dared to advance, without cannons, towards the Invalides, whose garrison opened fire. They were soon forced to open the gates to us: the Governor was the first to hoist our cockade, and all the gates were opened to us. We found very little gunpowder, but at least 30 to 40 thousand muskets, pistols, sabres, and so on, along with 8 or 10 large cannons, not counting the smaller ones. The camp at the Champ de Mars did not put up a fight. We hauled the artillery into the city, and all those accustomed to pushing and shoving violently were given weapons; for the crush caused some to be trampled to death. No sooner had the bourgeois troops swelled in number thanks to the new armaments than they sought to attack the Bastille.

I thought the undertaking was impossible, especially with mere muskets and bladed weapons. The attack took place nonetheless, but it petered out. The Governor used cannons firing cannonballs and grapeshot; as many as 200 of our men may have been killed. Efforts were made to set fire to the gates; but it was all to no avail: these methods were abandoned, and we went to fetch the heaviest cannons, which we trained towards the side opposite the gate, and used them to good effect. The defenders inside then turned their attention to the breach, and the Governor, M. de Launay, resorted to a ruse; he lowered the flag just as the man defending it was seen to fall dead; he then had the drawbridge lowered, and our citizen troops, believing the fortress was theirs, entered triumphantly; but as soon as there were about two hundred of them inside, he ordered his Invalides to lay down their arms, and urged the Bourgeois to do the same. Immediately the drawbridge was raised, and fire was opened on our troops. The cannon then fired, making a good breach, and our Bourgeois, along with a few Gardes-Françaises, charged in furiously; a valiant Garde-Française seized Monsieur de Launay, who immediately drew his Cross of Saint Louis to give it to him; but the Garde-Française refused it, saying: ‘I do not want it; it is that of a traitor’; —they grappled fiercely, and we could not resist the urge to punish him as he deserved: he was stabbed in the face with a bayonet; and then everyone, vying with one another, roughed him up, and he was taken to the Greve, where he was killed; the same was done to the Deputy Governor, the Keeper of the Gunpowder, and the Jailer; and the Invalids, who had opened fire on our troops, were also taken to La Greve, where four were hanged; little gunpowder was found, but some ammunition, and artillery—some pieces of which were hauled into the town.

We searched inside the prisons, where we found few unfortunate souls, who had been set free; but above all, a fine old gentleman, a handsome man, at least five feet eight inches tall, who claimed to have been detained for thirty years; he must be some 65 to 70 years old. He is the Count d’Estrade, sentenced by the despotic authorities to life imprisonment on a charge of high treason brought by scheming women; he was led, supported by others, through the whole of Paris: it was a most bizarre sight, and one well worth pondering, to see, in the Palais-Royal, this good old man being paraded amidst his liberators on one side; and, on the other, at the tips of long pikes, the heads of the Governor, Deputy Governor and Jailer, who had tyrannised this unfortunate old man for thirty years. For the heads of these three men had been cut off and thus displayed for all the city—indeed, one might say the whole nation—to see, such was the crowd gathered at that moment. The alarm was raised by the new reinforcements sent to the Bastille; the militia left there to guard it were, for the most part, betrayed, and the attackers resumed firing on the militia. We rushed there and took ten men away, who were hanged on the spot at La Greve by M. de Flesselles, Provost of the Merchants, who, until that moment, having shown sufficient reserve and cunning in his conduct to give the impression that he was a true patriot, aroused suspicion of collusion with Versailles when he received a courier from the Queen at around five o’clock in the afternoon; this opened people’s eyes to his true nature. It was then observed that, from early that morning, on the pretext of supplying weapons only to well-known individuals, he had disarmed a considerable number of people; that, when people had come to ask him for gunpowder for the attack on the Bastille, he had skilfully evaded the request and had not provided any; added to this was the rumour being spread that a letter from M. de Broglio had advised him to be patient, assuring him that within two hours he would receive reinforcements from Versailles. All this having aroused public anger against him, he was arrested and executed, whilst still wearing his magistrate’s robes, on the Place de Grève, by a volley of pistol shots; thus, this man, who an hour earlier had been, as it were, a minister and all-powerful in Paris, and who enjoyed great influence at Court, was treated, the very next moment, like a beggar, and died on the Place de Grève the death of a traitor. What an example for the Bréteuils, Foulons, Videau de Latours, the Lambesqs, the Condés, the Contis, the Polignacs and so many others who will certainly not be spared if the Nation triumphs! Such is the general cry.

Throughout all this, the People keep a watchful eye on things and endeavour to purge their ranks; for they show no more leniency towards wrongdoers of any other kind than they do towards traitors. All thieves are hanged or imprisoned; at least a hundred have been arrested or hanged over the past two days: there is no justice so rigorous; the streets are safer than at any other time; nowhere does a man on horseback, a porter’s bag or a carriage pass without being stopped, searched and taken to the Town Hall, even the postal couriers; the night before last, a cab filled with cartridges was found. Yesterday, two eight-horse carriages belonging to the Prince of Condé were seized, containing money and silverware, which were impounded at the Town Hall along with the horses, and countless other items; however, towards nightfall, a few detachments of our troops went to the Champ de Mars to link up with the Royalist troops, and brought back a further fifty dragoons, well mounted, who surrendered to us; immediately afterwards, one hundred and fifty soldiers arrived, both Swiss and French; we hope that the whole camp will gradually surrender; the only thing to fear is that there may be traitors amongst them. Even the Hussars, who had previously shown themselves in an unfavourable light, are now siding with us; we hope the same of all the French troops, and we have already received word that they are inclined to do so; provided the provinces support us, we shall prevail over this infernal cabal.

We have learnt nothing of much interest this morning, 15 July. Last night, the alarm bells rang out all over Tours, but this was merely to keep people on tenterhooks and prolong the sense of alarm. Last night at midnight, a danger was reported in Montmartre; but 3,000 men were dispatched there with cannons, as well as some 1,200 men to the Place de Louis XV, carrying ammunition. An hour or two later, two couriers were lost, but none of this amounts to anything.

I forgot to tell you that Versailles found itself starving and without flour; yesterday two carts, bearing the King’s livery, arrived to request flour from the market hall. Monsieur Leleu, who is in charge of the city’s supplies, acted as a true patriot and sent the drivers away, writing as follows: ‘I am expressly charged with supplying the good City of Paris, which is in the gravest danger of running out; I cannot, even for His Majesty’s sake, fail in my duties or betray them, as I owe my allegiance to the Fatherland before I can consider myself a subject of the King.’ We allowed the carriages and horses to leave; fortunately, everything that leaves Gonesse reaches us, including even the grain carriages that have come to us from Caen; but the number of mouths to feed is increasing by the minute, because people are constantly arriving here, and neither horses nor men are allowed to leave, except on foot or in stagecoaches; not even the Court’s own carriages are permitted to leave. Yesterday I saw a young, strapping man stopped whilst in a cabriolet; he managed to slip out of the crowd without being noticed, and abandoned his luggage; he was searched, and a good rifle with cartridges was found, which was seized; the horse was also seized; and, having hitched the cabriolet behind another carriage which was also being taken away, they drove it into town; it is said that even the post coaches are being stopped.

By the will of the people.

#awesome!

Marat defends Danton for talking without taking his hat off

The agitators, paid to raise a clamor against the patriots of the Cordeliers Club, were merely waiting for a pretext. Danton — the vigorous Danton — gave them one during the first intermission by keeping his hat on. Since no law forbade the wearing of hats, and no decree had enshrined the servile custom of remaining bareheaded when actors were not on stage, Danton saw no reason to obey the imperious commands of those automatons who sought to perpetuate this servile habit — a relic of the Ancien Régime. For a few days, I saw a multitude of deluded citizens siding against Danton; they loudly criticized him for wishing to exercise the rights of a free man, arguing that one must respect custom and avoid setting an example of insubordination. Good heavens! Had such a disastrous maxim always been followed, what people would ever have broken their chains, and how could we ourselves have cast off the yoke? Given the fatal inclination toward servitude found in almost all men, what would become of nations were there not, in their midst, a few bold spirits — men intrepid enough to trample upon the orders of despots, raise the standard of insurrection, assault the ramparts of tyranny, and be the first to storm the breach?

Marat in number 504 of l’Ami du Peuple (June 28 1791)

AKA the difference between Marat and Robespierre in a nutshell:

At the Convention, [Léonard Bourdon] was one of the first who introduced the custom to debase it by indecent forms, like speaking there with the hat on the head and sitting there with a ridiculous outfit. Robespierre in a private note on Léonard Bourdon, written June/July 1794

#marat #georges danton #robespierre #maximilien robespierre #frev #french revolution #jean paul marat #i mean they probably got into a heated discussion regarding this at least at SOME point

anotherhumaninthisworld

I have heard several persons mention a young man, of a little insignificant figure, who, the day before the Bastille was taken, got up on a chair in the Palace Royal, and harangued the multitude, conjuring them to make a struggle for their liberty, and asserting, that now the moment had arrived. They listened to his eloquence with the most eager attention; and, when he had instructed as many as could hear him at one time, he requested them to depart, and repeated his harangue to a new set of auditors.

William’s letters: letters written in France in the summer 1790 to a friend in England, containing various anecdotes relative to the French Revolution by Helen Maria Williams, page 31.

#NO leaf day anniversary!🍃❌#the leaf thing is a myth in case you didn’t know #camille desmoulins #desmoulins #12 july

saintjustitude

On Robespierre and Saint-Just's Relationships with Women

For some reason @sincerelyjennie I cannot reply to your post which I had saved in my drafts. It took me a few days to get it done because there was a lot of material to go over, and also because there was a second mini-heatwave.

Anyway, here's my response.

Most of these stories are unconfirmed rumors, gossip and hearsay.

The story that Robespierre might have married Éléonore and that Saint-Just was a witness came from Simon-Edme Monnel:

It has been rumored that this daughter [Éléonore] had been Robespierre’s mistress. I think I can affirm she was his wife; according to the testimony of one of my colleagues, Saint-Just had been informed of this secret marriage, which he had attended.

- Mémoires d’un prêtre regicide (1829) by Simon-Edme Monnel, page 337-338

He is the only one who claims this. He doesn't tell us who the colleague is. There is no way to verify this. It should be treated with the same sort of validity as any rumor. You want to believe it? You can. But that's all it is: a belief based on one testimony of some guy who might be writing a sweet story.

The only person who could have confirmed this is Éléonore Duplay herself, but she never wrote anything. Third parties have said she called herself Robespierre's widow - but that information doesn't come from her sister, the only one who actually left writings behind. Élisabeth only wrote: "My older sister had been promised to Robespierre." That's it. Nothing more.

Buonarroti, who was close to the sisters, wrote this in 1830:

I seem to gather that the widow’s sister has personal reasons for refusing to discuss the great man with whom she was once friends; based on some information I received a long time ago regarding her brother, I would not be surprised if he were the cause of her behavior.

- Armando Saitta, Filippo Buonarroti, contributi alla storia della sua vita e del suo pensiero, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1950-1951, vol. 2, p. 53.

He says she was his friend, which is a very ambiguous and large term, and that she refuses to talk about him. He suspects her brother is to blame.

On the other hand, Charlotte Robespierre refuted it:

There are in regard to Éléonore Duplay two opinions: one, that that she was the mistress of Robespierre the elder; the other that she was his fiancée. I believe that these opinions are equally false; but what is certain is that Madame Duplay would have strongly desired to have my brother Maximilien for a son-in-law, and that she forget neither caresses nor seductions to make him marry her daughter. Éléonore too was very ambitious to call herself the Citizeness Robespierre, and she put into effect all that could touch Maximilien’s heart. But, overwhelmed with work and affairs as he was, entirely absorbed by his functions as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, could my older brother occupy himself with love and marriage? Was there a place in his heart for such futilities, when his heart was entirely filled with love for the patrie, when all his sentiments, all his thoughts were concentrated in a sole sentiment, in a sole thought, the happiness of the people; when, without cease fighting against the revolution’s enemies, without cease assailed by his personal enemies, his life was a perpetual combat? No, my older brother should not have, could not have amused himself to be a Celadon with Éléonore Duplay, and, I should add, such a role would not enter into his character. Besides, I can attest it, he told me twenty times that he felt nothing for Éléonore; her family’s obsessions, their importunities were more suited to make feel disgust for her than to make him love her. The Duplays could say what they wanted, but there is the exact truth. One can judge if he was disposed to unite himself to Madame Duplay’s eldest daughter by something I heard him say to Augustin:

“You should marry Éléonore.”

“My faith, no,” replied my younger brother.

- Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1834) page 90-91

So we have a standstill on the sources: his sister says no, her sister says yes. These are the only two sources I would trust to speak on this topic, and they disagree. Therefore the answer is: we will never truly know. Do you believe Charlotte or Élisabeth? Again, it's a matter of choice.

As for other women, there were rumors. But that's all there is. I never read the story about a woman with a tobacco shop but this is where you heard the story about a woman he paid and threw out of his apartment:

As for [Robespierre’s] continence, I only knew of a woman of about twenty-six years, whom he treated rather badly, and who idolized him. Very often he refused her at his door; he gave her a quarter of his fees.

- Souvernirs d’un déporté (1802) by Paul Villiers, who claimed to have served as Robespierre’s secretary for a few months in 1790.

Even if this man claimed he was his secretary, we have no way to know if this story is true. It could be. It could also not be.

You're probably asking yourself: well, why are these people telling these stories then? It's the simplest explanation: to make themselves interesting. Revealing some great secret about "The Tyrant Robespierre" was a currency. It's the late 18th-early 19th century equivalent of giving an "exclusive" interview to a tabloid. Some of them, like Georges Duval and Laure d'Abrantès, turned their own memories into novelizations which arguably became best-sellers. There was a whole market for this.

As for Saint-Just? He had one girlfriend. Perhaps. There is no love letter, no poem dedicated to her, no correspondence between them. There's a letter from his childhood friend Thuillier saying there's a rumor that Saint-Just kidnapped her, and Saint-Just tells him to shut that down. Everything else is conjecture.

There's Marc-Antoine Baudot who tells us a wild story that Saint-Just had a lover who saw that Baudot was on Saint-Just's "list of animosities" and she went to tell Baudot... must I really explain why this is nonsense? Now I don't know if they mean there was an actual paper list or it's just a figure of speech... but it's still absurd. As Baudot says, he already knew Saint-Just disliked him. Moreover, Saint-Just was extremely private and we already struggle to know anything about him. He was excessively conscious about his private reputation - if he could have wiped Organt from existence, he probably would have done it. So you tell me the one time he had a lover who blabbed, it was just to warn Baudot about something he already knew? Nothing else? Now why would Baudot invent this? I honestly have no idea. Maybe there was a young woman who told him this extraordinary tale and he believed her. Maybe she sought Baudot's favors or protection, and this was the story she chose to tell, and he chose to believe her. That's the best guess I have, because that makes more sense to me than the story itself. You have to consider that, much like today, sometimes people believe what they want to hear, will decide it's the "truth, and write it down for posterity.

Saint-Just was also very briefly engaged to Henriette Le Bas, but broke it off on what sounded like a pretext (she used tobacco - the story came from Élisabeth who told Hamel). Élisabeth Duplay-Le Bas believed they might have gotten back together, yet when Alphonse de Lamartine started spinning tales of their grand romance writing about "his stormy and passionate feelings for Le Bas' sister" (le sentiment orageux et passionné de Saint-Just pour la sœur de Le Bas), she immediately corrected him with "say [instead]: very calm feelings" (dites : sentiment très calme.)

Anything else about Saint-Just being with other women is fanfiction, usually royalist propaganda trying to paint him (and every other revolutionary) as sexually depraved. It's the myth of the Brutish Commoner Revolutionary forcing himself on the Innocent Noble Maiden - it's a dark fantasy rooted in classist and ideological anxieties.

It's not easy to evaluate these testimonies. You need to study the core principles of source criticism and historiography. The principles noted here when discussing a secondary source also apply to primary sources.

First you must evaluate the type of document: are they memoirs or archival records?

Memoirs written decades later are not objective diaries; they are highly curated, polished, edited, subjective narratives shaped by faulty memory, personal grudges, hindsight and sometimes other testimonies. They are at the crossroads between literature and history. On the other hand, contemporary evidence (letters written during the period, police reports, official registries) doesn't have the benefit of hindsight or the need to cater to a 19th-century reading public. But we have a notorious problem when it comes to Robespierre and Saint-Just: a lot of their personal letters, Saint-Just's especially, were destroyed both by the Thermidorians and reportedly by Jacques-Maurice Duplay, most likely in 1814-1815. However, because the Thermidorians got to them first, we can guess one certain thing: if there had been anything scandalous, they would have used it. And the fact is: there isn't.

Then, you need to evaluate the proximity of the witness (did they see it themselves or is it hearsay?) and their motive. Writing salacious stories about Robespierre and Saint-Just wasn't just a hobby; like I said, it could be a survival strategy or a lucrative business.

You also need corroboration. In history, a single source making a wild claim is usually a red flag, especially if it sounds fantastic or out of character. Robespierre marrying Éléonore secretly? Great romance novel. But you must ask yourself: why would he do that? There's no reason for a secret wedding; he already lives in her house. If anything, it would have been much more respectable for this marriage to be public record.

If a claim is true, it usually leaves a paper trail or is mentioned by multiple independent parties who had no reason to coordinate their stories. This is why there's some reasonable belief that there perhaps was something between Saint-Just and Thérèse Gellé, though most of it relies on the small talk of a small village, which is inherently not the most reliable type of testimony. (Small villages like to make stuff up, or to take a possibility for a fact.)

When a story exists only in one person's memoirs and is contradicted or ignored by everyone else who, say, lived in that house, the burden of proof isn't met. It remains a rumor, not a fact. Villiers' story about Robespierre having a lover once could be true, but we cannot know.

It might take years of study, reading and reading these sources again, in order to evaluate them. It's not a perfect method. I don't claim to know the truth. But this is what I have after 20 years on the topic.

anotherhumaninthisworld

If I may, I know of two other contemporaries with allegations regarding the relationship between Éléonore and Robespierre — Albertine Clément Hémery who claims the whole ”secretly married with Saint-Just as the witness” like Monnel, and Joseph Souberbielle who goes with the ”arranged to soon be married” route like Élisabeth:

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

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

#i wonder how easy/hard it was for these people to get hold of each other’s works and copy claims #i sometimes accidentally inflict my own resource amount upon them and think ”well she could have googled found monnel’s account #and decided to say the very same thing to make herself sound more reliable”

anotherhumaninthisworld

Frev friendships — Pétion and Brissot

Brissot and Pétion were both born in Chartres, Brissot on January 15 1754, Pétion almost exactly two years later, January 3 1756. We unfortunately know very little about their relationship back then, this extract from Pétion’s Discours de Jérôme Pétion sur l’accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre (1792) being the strongest indicator of it:

…I’ve known [Brissot] since his childhood. I’ve seen him in these moments where the soul completely shows itself.

I so far haven’t found any hard evidence Pétion attended the college of Chartres, where Brissot studied between age eight to sixteen, even if that certainly sounds plausible. In his Notice sur Brissot (1794) Pétion also shares the following details regarding Brissot’s studies…

Brissot, from his childhood, showed a passion for study; he spent the nights reading, and serious works occupied him at this age when most men dream only of dissipations and pleasures. He was always at the head of his fellow students in classes, and numerous prizes were awarded to his early work.

…which match up rather well with what Brissot, unbeknownst to his friend, had written about the same subject in his memoirs:

At eight years old, I entered college; At nine, I was in fifth grade and people were already talking about my successes. I owed them to a prodigious love of work which devoured me, and this love came from the encouragement and help given to me by a professor who had taken a liking to me. […] Abbot Comusle had a fairly well-stocked library, he left it to me. It was with some pride that at that age I immersed myself in reading instead of sharing the games of my college comrades. […] I will only cite one trait to give an idea of my tireless zeal. The day was not enough for my ardor, I devoted part of the nights to it. My elder sister, who, out of devotion, went to the cathedral at four o'clock in the morning, gave me light, and I enclosed it in a dark lantern, so that it would not be seen by my father, whose room was next door to mine. It was in this concentrated light that I studied my Latin authors.

In the same memoirs, Brissot also mentions that both he and his ”fellow patriot and unfortunate friend” Pétion got their second lastnames de Warville and de Villeneuve from the name of the towns they had been wetnursed in, ”following the custom of Beauce.”

Throughout the first months of 1787 we find a series of letters (the first conserved ones that we have) from Pétion in Chartres to Brissot in Paris, regarding the establishment of a philanthropic institution in Chartres. Pétion addresses Brissot with tutoiement, suggesting the two are close:

I am undoubtedly very angry, my friend, not to have been able to confer with you on the veto question. I would doubtless have gained new insights from conversing with you. I have reflected as much as I could; I do not know if I am on the right path. So far I have not yet heard reasons given that have made me change my mind. I do not know if those who do not want any veto reflect well on our present position; our nation is very old, our monarchs are accustomed to great power, the people are still idolatrous of their kings; they would not see them stripped of all their prerogatives without murmuring; there are not twenty cahiers that recommend that deputies make the law in concert with the king: the king would retain a profound hatred of absolute spoliation; he would only seek means of revenge, and a great executive power has many opportunities to poorly execute what it has not consented to. The suspensive veto only leaves him with an appearance of power, which I find almost impossible for him to abuse with permanent assemblies. However, it is also possible that the Legislative Body does not always defend the rights of the people, and then the people are warned by a veto. The suspensive veto occurs in America itself, because the President of Congress may not sign, and the matter is subject to further examination. The duration of the veto and the manner in which it is lifted are important points to examine. I would like to speak with you for a moment about the appeal to the people; I cannot tell you how many means justify this appeal and how lightly one treats one of the most important matters, on which national liberty may depend for the future. Abbé Sieyès has advanced the most anti-political principles on the articles of representation and mandates. They tend toward nothing less than the constant stripping of constituent power, for, in his opinion, constituted powers can do anything, and the nation is free, as Rousseau said of the English nation, only when it holds its elections. I can tell you that I have delved into this matter somewhat, and perhaps I am no less prone to error. All to you. To Monsieur Brissot de Warville, Rue Grétry n. 1 Paris.

Pétion’s memoirs, which only concern themselves with telling us about his activities following the Insurrection of May 31, don’t mention Brissot in more places than those already covered. In the beginning of 1794, a few months after the execution of Brissot and twenty other girondins, Pétion did on the other hand dedicate a whole work to his friend’s memory, Notice sur Brissot (cited in J.-P. Brissot : Mémoires (1911), page 357-370). In it, Pétion doesn’t write anything about Brissot’s career after 1789, with the motivation that ”the things he’s done in the Legislative Assembly and the Convention are too well known to be talked about,” but does on the other hand provide a detailed and glorified portrait of his friend’s life prior to that. Already as a child he was studious and the best in his class. He always had a facility for learning and studied both science as well as several languages — English, Italien, Greek, Spanish and German. He also had an amazing memory and could cite his favorite authors almost by heart. Eventually the curiosity of his soul led him out of Chartres and into Paris, where he never let any of the big amusements the city had to offer distract him from his work, choosing instead to spend Sundays and holidays ”with Locke, Montaigne, and Montesquieu.” Pétion brings up and praises all of Brissot’s pre-revolutionary works. In regards to one of them, Bibliothèque criminelle du législateur et du philosophe (1782), a work on penal justice reform, he even writes that, had it been released by a more famous author, ”it would have been celebrated, widely disseminated, and regarded as a benefaction to humanity.” Pétion also underlines Brissot’s opposition towards ”the tyranny of academic bodies” and efforts for people of colour. He brings up the Society of the Friends of Black, and firmly rebukes those thinking it was a work of self profit rather than one of philantrophy — ”Not only did Brissot derive no profit from acting as the unofficial defender and champion of this class of unfortunate men, but he also devoted his time to the cause without pay and spent his own money on it.” After returning to France from America in 1788, Brissot started busying himself with ”ways to cultivate the first seeds of public spirit and prepare the French people for liberty,” telling his friends: "Let us write, let us write, there is not a moment to lose." Finally, Pétion also pays homage to the private person Brissot, writing that ”everyone who knew him was aware that he never indulged in luxuries nor led the life of a man with money to spare. It was impossible to be simpler in one’s dress, to have less ostentatious living quarters, to keep a more frugal table, or, in short, to spend less money.” He never sought glory, willingly shared knowledge and source material with his friends without asking for credit and his only real concern was simply to be useful. According to Pétion, Brissot’s biggest flaw, besides being utterly indifferent to his own interests, was simply that he was too trusting — ”no one was more prone to being deceived than Brissot; his trust was boundless, and he believed in the good faith of others with the simplicity of a child.” Pétion ended with the words: ”He was a good father, good husband, good citizen.”

revolutionarywig

Okay but I really wanted to add this one specific occasion where Brissot threw Petion under the bus (April 20 1793) LOL

Source: Brissot de Warville page 335, the original cited document is J.P. Brissot, député à la Convention, sur la dénonciation de Roberpierre [sic], et sur l'adresse prêtée aux 48 sections de Paris

anotherhumaninthisworld

Thank you for bringing that up! Tho reading that passage within its context I think it becomes less Brissot throwing Pétion under the bus and more Brissot saying ”Pétion was the one who did it, but I agree with him!”

Complicity with Miranda — I did not recommend Miranda to Dumouriez; it was Pétion; and had I recommended him, I would have fulfilled a sacred duty. Miranda, banished by the Spanish government for his principles of liberty, a banishment for which there is more than cowardice to reproach him; for his cause is honorable and sacred; Miranda, cherished and respected in the United States of America, where he was spoken of only with veneration; Miranda, who only had dealings with Pitt to restore South America to liberty, and who broke with that minister long ago, after having been deceived by him; Miranda, full of the wisdom he gleaned from his travels throughout Europe; Miranda, philosopher, politician, and military man, could only render great services to the revolution, and he did. A victim of a horrific plot, he is now persecuted. — I will say like Pétion: if he is guilty, punish him; if he is not, restore his honor and liberty; but do not slaughter him in advance with the knife of slander.

#which is a bit weird way to defend yourself brissot ngl but…

Frev friendships — Pétion and Brissot

…I’ve known [Brissot] since his childhood. I’ve seen him in these moments where the soul completely shows itself.

…which match up rather well with what Brissot, unbeknownst to his friend, had written about the same subject in his memoirs:

#brissot #pétion #frev #frev friendships #to think after YEARS of doing this i finally found a healthy relationship!#if by healthy we mean a relationship that doesn’t involve:#getting each other killed #falling out with each other #excessive one-sided stanning/glorification #hey very few frev relationships clear all three!#(basically none of robespierre’s relationships does😁)#French revolution

Often, while we with haste ate a piece of dry bread at the Committee table, Barère, with some good joke, brought a smile back to our lips, Carnot, with the wonderful tranquility of his soul, and Collot d’Herbois, with his vigorous speeches, sustained our courage.

Testimony of Prieur de la Côté d’Or, cited in Mémoires sur Carnot par son fils (1861), page 527-528.

Naw! ☺️

#CPS the 2% of the time they weren’t being toxic to each other 🤗#frev #robespierre #barère #billaud-varennes #collot d’herbois #prieur de la côté d’or #carnot #this is like when the jerk character in a sitcom gets 1 scene where he does something nice to keep the audience from just hating him #french revolution

Hi again! I'm that person that asked how many times Robespierre referred to himself in the third person. Now I'm back with another odd request. Was there any time of any sort where Robespierre was likened or compared to Julius Caesar or some other Ancient Roman in a negative way because my brain refuses to believe that he wasn't likened to Caesar unless it receives evidence and my Robespierre brainrot is at crippling levels.

There sure is, here are just some examples I found using Retronews:

Caligula-Robespierre has just proven to us that this ultimate degree of villainy could be offered... Le Courrier des départemens, number 30 (30 May 1793)

Representatives, writes the Popular Society of Vence, Capet and Robespierre, Tarquin and Caesar are equal in our eyes. Feuille de la République, number 428 (8 September 1794)

All those people will eventually return to the truth once it is demonstrated to them — once they are shown that simple repressive laws against the malicious and the rights of man can coexist, and that, with this harmony, one can dispense with the regimes of Sulla and Robespierre. Journal de la liberté de la presse, number 13 (22 September 1794)

Collot like Sulla, Carrier like Nero, Robespierre like Tiberius, Caligula etc, had displayed in their cruelties that abominable grandeur, that colossal atrocity, which, while commanding execration, at least precluded contempt. Journal des Patriotes de 89, number 2 (19 August 1795)

Surrounding himself at every step with historical examples, he runs through the long list of infamous proscriptions, from Sulla and Marius to Robespierre and Collot. Mercure français, number 69 (1 September 1795)

Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Octavian, Rienzi, Cromwell, and, finally, Robespierre, began their tyrannies with undertakings that were as contemptible as they were despised; and generations have groaned, are groaning, and will groan over the atrocities, excesses, and consequences of their contemporaries' heedlessness. Le Républicain français, number 1132 (13 January 1796)

Robespierre, who sought to fulfill almost all of Caligula’s wishes and was consistent in his atrocities, had at least sworn to wage a war to the death against all kings. La Quotidienne ou Feuille du jour, number 221 (3 December 1796)

…neither Tarquin nor Caesar, let us say: neither Capet nor Robespierre. Nouvelles politiques, nationales et étrangères, number 123 (January 22 1797)

Cromwell, Sulla, Marius, Caesar, Cincinnatus, Robespierre. Le Républicain français, number 1507 (3 February 1797)

#sometimes i imagine what it would have been like living in in revolutionary France without knowing any roman history #many newspapers must have been simply unreadable (looking at you desmoulins)#robespierre #maximilien robespierre #frev #ask

bonbonrobespierre

AITA for having my sister escorted out of Paris by the one person she hates most because she was becoming a political liability and also possibly consorting with known criminals?

throwaway because my brother is basically the most famous man in France and i cannot have this traced back to us

OK so. Background. I (31M) am a representative of the people currently on mission with the Army of Italy. My brother (36M, let's call him M) is... you probably know who he is. My sister (28F, let's call her C) has lived with us on and off for the past two years, and things have recently gotten complicated: And while I confess I do not have long, with there being an army to attend to and a Carnot to destroy and approximately seventeen other crises of varying urgency. This situation with my sister has begun to occupy my thoughts in a manner incompatible with the efficient prosecution of the Republic's business and I require an outside perspective.

Let me explain the situation plainly, as I believe in frankness above all things: C and I were very close. When M left for Paris in 1789 we were basically running the household together in Arras, scraping by, genuinely struggling; she was writing to M to send money, I was writing to M to send money, the whole shebang.. When we finally came to Paris in 1792 we moved in together, worked together, supported M together. I say this so that you understand: this is not a case of a brother who has never paid attention to his sister.

The trouble began, I suppose, in Nice. I had been sent on mission to the Army of Italy — an assignment I accepted with pride, knowing it would be difficult and knowing the road would be dangerous. C came with me for company. This was, I think, a reasonable thing. She is my sister. We had always been close. It seemed natural.

While we were in Nice, C and my colleague's wife (let's call her MR) took up the habit of riding horses through the countryside in a manner that attracted extremely unflattering press attention.. You understand the climate. We are trying to make the Mountain beloved, not feared. We cannot have people writing that the representatives of the people are sending their women out to ride like aristocrats while the soldiers go hungry (though, personally, I found rich pun intended given that MR is from Grasse and C is from Arras but ANYWAY). I asked them to stop. C agreed to stop. I trusted her word because she is my sister and her word had always been sufficient.

Then while I was away she went again with MR.

I will.. pass over the details of what followed, except to say that I believed what I was told by someone I had no reason to distrust, and that the rupture between C and myself has its roots here, and that by the time she returned alone to Paris the situation between us had become strained.

Now. Apparently this makes me the villain?? I would simply like to point out that:

C had agreed to stop

The press attention was genuinely damaging

I was managing an active military situation and could not be dealing with this

I believed the person I believed, I'm not a. mind reader.

C returned to Paris shortly after. Possibly because of an administrative letter, possibly of her own accord, the details are disputed and frankly above my current ability to reconstruct clearly.

Anyway. Things were a bit strained but we were all still living together when I came back through Paris in December. Fine. Normal family stuff.

THEN. I go on my second mission (Franche-Comté this time, for different reasons). While I'm gone I start receiving information — intelligence, if you will, though it pains me to use that word about my own sister — about the company she was keeping in my absence.

And this is the part where I think I might be justified but people keep telling me I'm not so I'm putting it to you.

C has been spending time with:

A fellow deputy (G) who M and I have held in serious contempt for years, This is not simply that I find him personally unpleasant, though I do, but he is someone who was expelled from the Jacobin Club for suspected counter-revolutionary connections, and who has documented links to shady financial dealings involving the British: I know this because I have eyes and I have read the reports.

A man currently under house arrest for circulating counterfeit currency (!!!) whose brother was guillotined the previous month for inciting civil unrest, and who is apparently now part of C's social "clique"

Various other people I cannot fully detail here because. of operational security concerns

She has also, apparently, been telling people that M and I are bad brothers, which I find particularly rich given that we are actively managing the defense of the Republic while she is having tea with people on house arrest.

Now I remind you AGAIN that I am on mission with the Army of Italy. My brother is effectively governing the Republic. Our name — and I say this not out of vanity but out of simple political realism — is at this moment one of the few things standing between this country and the chaos that would follow if the enemies of the people regained their footing. We cannot afford associations of this kind. We simply cannot. I do not say C has. bad intentions. I say she has conducted herself with a complete absence of judgment at precisely the moment when judgment was most required.

So I wrote to M and said that C has become our "greatest enemy," that she is abusing our "spotless reputation," and that she needs to be sent back to Arras immediately. Of course, because I had a VALID point, he listened to me and he arranged for this to happen.

She was escorted back to Arras by our colleague who she had been complaining about. I will admit this was perhaps not the. gentlest possible solution. In my defense.. I was busy.

And he was heading there anyways BUT REGARDLESS

She then came back to Paris anyway in July, wrote me a very long letter accusing me of treating her like I hate her, and I did not respond.

I want to be clear about something. I love my sister. I have always loved my sister. I embraced M with tears in my eyes when I feared for his safety and I would do the same for her. This is not about not loving her. This is about the fact that we are in the middle of something enormous, something historic, something that will determine whether this Republic survives or collapses, and I cannot allow personal sentiment to compromise the work.

Here is my case for NTA:

The political associations were genuinely dangerous, not hypothetically dangerous

I'm not saying she had bad intentions, I'm saying she had catastrophically bad judgment at the worst possible time

I did not make up the threat, I had actual information from sources I trusted

The Republic literally cannot function if M and I are being dragged down by association with people under house arrest for fraud

Here is where I'm willing to concede I might be the asshole:

I did not tell her what she'd done wrong at any point. Ever. She wrote to me saying she didn't understand what had happened and I didn't answer.

I sent her to Arras with the one person she disliked most on what I will characterize as a managed escort rather than a gentle conversation

I possibly processed her as a threat rather than as my sister which in hindsight is. a bit much

I literally have not spoken to her since

Regarding that last point.. Yeah yeah, I didn't write to her to tell her what she had done or why I was concerned or what she might do differently. But for what it's worth, when I wrote to M instead, the matter was handled from there. I am aware this is not how one ideally manages a family difficulty. But. There is an army out here. And frankly when I try to imagine sitting down to write C a calm explanatory letter I find I cannot do it without it becoming a denunciation, and she deserves better than that, and so I said nothing.

For what it's worth, I have been extremely busy. For obvious reasons..

But I want to be clear: I have not been a bad brother. I have been a brother in impossible circumstances, trying to protect something larger than any of us, in the only way I knew how.

So. AITA? I leave it to you to decide. I have to go. Carnot is not going to destroy himself.

#YATA: let the girl hang out with whoever she wants dammit!#also conveniently left out how she possibly maybe perhaps almost got arrested in arras after you sent her there #i think she deserves some praise for even wanting to associate with you afterwards if there’s any truth to that!#also did both you and C have a thing for pretending she was six years younger than she actually was?#it drives me nuts how I’ve not been able to find the bad press about charlotte’s horseback rides she alludes to in her memoirs 😞#bc if it does not exist… what to make of the rest of her story? 🫢

I saw a post that said Marie Antoinette had her dog follow her during her execution and they killed it too.

Do you know the source of this story? Or is it just a myth of some kind?

Because I've never heard of this before.

I actually found an explanation for where that story might originate from on Reddit of all places. It is an article in the royalist newspaper l’Union, published 1858, 65 years after the fact, and apparently built on material collected by one of Louis XVI’s former bodyguards. The article doesn’t say the dog was killed, but that it was wounded with a spike by a revolutionary for howling at the execution and then eventually drowned itself in the Seine out of despair.

This story would however appear to be a variation of another one, released already in 1797. In this version, the dog kept watch outside his mistress’ prison, got struck by bayonets by the gendarmes, and disappeared around a year after Marie-Antoinette’s death. How exactly the author of the story got this information is left unknown.

Using Retronews, I’ve not found any newspaper that even mention the word ”chien” in the month of October 1793. You might imagine they would had Marie-Antoinette’s dog really been killed alongside her on 16 October…

#marie-antoinette #frev #ask #what is it with stories about horrible stuff being done to frev people’s pets after their execution?#like years back i had someone say they read the thermidorians drowned robespierre’s dog #without finding any such source of course

Hello! I know you mainly work primary sources but I’m wondering if you know any secondary sources that are profoundly Thermidorian when recollecting Robespierre’s control over the reign of terror? If no secondary source, I’d be happy with a primary source. Thanks in advance if you do know any!!

(It’s for my history IA, if you’re familiar with the IB)

Here are some primary sources released in the months/years following Robespierre’s death that all depict him in what we could call a ”thermidorian way”:

La vie et les crimes de Robespierre, surnommé le tyran, depuis sa naissance jusqu'à sa mort(1795) by Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart

Rapport fait au nom de la Commission chargée de l'examen des papiers trouvés chez Robespierre et ses complices (1795) by Edme-Bonaventure Courtois

À Maximilien Robespierre aux Enfers (1794) by Paul-Auguste Taschereau-Fargues

Historie de la conjuration de Maximilien Robespierre (1796) by Galart de Montjoie

Portrait de Robespierre (1794) by Merlin de Thionville

But when it comes to secondary sources that largely build on these accounts and/or adapt many of their points (Robespierre was a tyrant/monster/successor to Sulla or some other Roman villain/had full control over the terror) I’m afraid I for the moment can’t really come up with any… I’ve mostly read modern biographies which of course make use of a more balanced way of looking at things, but I can’t really come up with any (professional) author even before that argues ”of course Robespierre was a dictator, just look at what Proyart wrote,” or even just ”of course Robespierre was a dictator.” Other people on here are gonna have to fill in. 🙃😞

#interestingly i actually know more authors that depict robespierre in a hagiographic way (hamel mathiez)#than authors that go full on ”he was a bloodthirsty tyrant”#but maybe i’m blanking on something obvious…#robespierre #frev #ask

When did Robespierre move out from the Duplays’ house to live with Charlotte? And when did he move back in?

The question of when this move happened is not one authors can be said to agree upon. The historian Ernest Hamel does for example trace it to September 1793, and writes Robespierre then moved back in with the Duplay almost immediately (Histoire de Robespierre (1867), page 286). Mary Young, biographer of Augustin Robespierre, instead places it in early 1793, in time for Rosalie Jullien to on February 10 of that year report about a dinner with the three Robespierre siblings during which Charlotte would have said their domestic morals consisted of ”simplicity and candor.” With that said, what do the (surprisingly many!) primary sources actually tell us about this topic?

Charlotte gives no date for the move in her memoirs, confining herself to revealing 1, that the argument she used to persuade Maximilien to go along with it was that he ought to have a home of his own due to occupying such a high rank in politics, and 2, that he moved back in with the Duplays when Madame Duplay one day came to visit them and found that he had fallen ill, whereupon she convinced him he would be better cared for at her house. Charlotte on the other hand stayed behind on Rue Saint-Florentin. (Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835), page 86-89).

Again in her memoirs, Charlotte writes she joined Augustin when he went on a mission to the Army of Italy (he was given said mission by the CPS on July 19 1793), but that they had a fallout during it causing her to return to Paris prematurely. When Augustin too came back to the capital for a short leave, in December 1793, Charlotte claims he refused to see her and ”didn’t put his foot in the house,” instead choosing to lodge with his colleague Record. In a footnote inserted in relation to this episode, Charlotte’s editor and friend Laponneraye specifies that ”Charlotte Robespierre and her [younger] brother lived together prior to their fight” (Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835), page 125).

In her memoirs, Élisabeth Duplay portrays Charlotte as still living with her family in the spring of 1793: ”She occupied an apartment in the front, in my father’s house on the Rue Saint-Honoré. I was also good friends with her, and it was a pleasure to go see her often.” She also writes that her mother during the same period ”still liked [Charlotte], she still had nothing to complain about.”

In a note published in Histoire de Robespierre (1867) by Ernest Hamel, Élisabeth Duplay specifies that ”Robespierre only moved away from my father’s house a single time, in order to go live with his sister, whose imperious character rendered him really unhappy…”

We have a conserved lease agreement between Duplay and the two Robespierre brothers from October 1 1793 that looks the following way (cited in Annales révolutionnaires, volume 1, number 2 (1908), page 345):

Duplay had rented “to Robespierre the Elder and the Younger, for the term and beginning on October 1, 1793, old style, the small apartment at the rear where we are, fully furnished, as well as an unfurnished apartment in the main building facing the street, all for the sum of one thousand livres per year and without a lease.”

This would imply Augustin and Charlotte are still living with the Duplays at this point (though the former and perhaps also the latter would have been away on their mission at the moment this lease agreement was written), seeing as two apartments are still being rented.

In an interrogation held 1 January 1795, Simon Duplay is asked whether his uncle lodged the two Robespierre brothers. He is then recorded to have responded: ”Yes, but Robespierre the younger left [us] after his return from the army of Italy, to instead go and live on Rue Florentin.” (cited in Les divisions dans les comités de gouvernement à la veille du 9 thermidor d’après quelques documents inédits (1915) by Albert Mathiez, page 84-87). It is unclear if Simon is referring to Augustin’s first return from the army of Italy (December 1793) or his second one (June 1794) here.

In his memoirs, Maurice Gaillard claims to have met Charlotte in May 1794. He records her to then have told him that ”when my younger brother passed through Melun [December 1793], all three of us [siblings] were living together,” but that since then, both she and Maximilien have moved back in with the Duplay family. (La Révolution, la Terreur, le Directoire 1791-1799: d’après les mémoires de Gaillard (1908) page 263)

In her memoirs, Charlotte writes that when Augustin came back to Paris after his second and final mission in June/July 1794, ”he didn’t go to live in the apartment we shared, he seemed to be fleeing my presence” (Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835), page 86-89).

On July 6 1794, Charlotte writes a letter to Augustin in which she refers to the place on Rue Saint-Florentin as ”your apartment,” and writes that he from the next day and forward can return there without having to see her, since she’s instead going to move in with her friend citoyenne Laporte. In the postscript, Charlotte reveals Augustin has been living on Rue Saint-Florentin long enough for a locksmith to have made a key for his secretary.

When interrogated on July 31 1794, Charlotte is asked why she is living with her friend citoyenne Laporte instead of with the Duplay family. She then responds ”that she used to live there, but that her brothers and femme Duplay had told her to leave her apartment, and that femme Duplay reproached her for seeing counter-revolutionaries, among which was Guffroy, representative of the people; that her older brother resented her because she had the courage of letting him know the danger he ran by being surrounded so badly, and that the Duplays had taken up the case to lose him, and that this was what motivated her to go live with citoyenne Laporte.” (see this post)

In an undated memorandum presumably written in March 1795, Armand Joseph Guffroy writes that ”[Maximilien and Augustin] drove [Charlotte] out of their house because she did not think like they did, because she came to see my wife and because she saw citizens who were sincere friends of justice and truth.” (Cited in the article Charlotte Robespierre et Guffroy (1910) by Hector Fleischmann)

So what to make of all this?

Charlotte’s memoirs would have us believe she and Augustin lived on Rue Florentin already prior to their departure for the army in July 1793. However, the fact that we have a lease agreement still renting two apartments at Rue Saint-Honoré from October 1793, would to me imply that none of the three siblings have actually moved away from there yet. The interrogation of Simon Duplay also implies Augustin didn’t move away from Rue Saint-Honoré until after his return from the army of Italy. This would also match up with Élisabeth’s claim that Charlotte still lived with her family in the spring of 1793.

We don’t have any exact date for when Charlotte came back to Paris after falling out with Augustin in Nice, but I think it is most likely shortly after her return she finds the house on Rue Saint-Florentin and gets her older brother to move in there with her. Assuming she is telling the truth in her memoirs in that the argument she used to persuade him was that someone occupying such a high rank in politics ought to have a home of his own, it would actually make more sense to use it in the fall of 1793, when Maximilien is a member of the Committee of Public Safety and more or less the figurehead of the revolution, than it would in the months prior when he’s ”just” a (albait influencial) Convention deputy.

#ok this was NOT meant to be this long #Maybe it wouldn’t have been had just *someone* been a tiny bit more truthful about her whereabouts in her memoirs…#robespierre #maximilien robespierre #charlotte robespierre #augustin robespierre #frev #élisabeth duplay #élisabeth lebas #french revolution

anotherhumaninthisworld

Where’s that anecdote of Saint-Just getting into a fight with a random woman outside the Committee building (I think?)? I can’t find it anywhere 😭😭

I have to admit that anecdote doesn’t ring any kind of bell for me. Anyone else recognizes it? 🤔 @saintjustitude ?

saintjustitude

(I wonder how you came across it, anon! I kept looking through the biographies I have to figure out who mentioned it and there's a very quick mention by Vinot, but it doesn't talk of a fight per se: he says the woman came to insult him which seems to be the predominant story. Honestly, the only way I remembered is that I had already isolated the original source for the anecdote in Bégis!)

The only anecdote I can think of that matches this description is the one with a woman named Lambert. (She's referred to as "femme Lambert" which would translate to Wife Lambert even though "femme" also means "woman" but if she was widowed they would call her veuve/Widow Lambert. However, in some cases, it might be better to translate it to "the Lambert woman". You'll see below.)

(This is long with many pictures and translations so the rest is under the cut!)

#awesome! thank you!#i guess the fact femme lambert actually dared to get into a heated argument (or whatever it was) with sj at this point in the revolution #would imply she already knew him at least somewhat?#going home to an unknown CPS member and yelling at them just does not seem like something you’d do unless you had an active deathwish?#ok there’s cécile Renault but i honestly have NO idea what that girl was even thinking…

Where’s that anecdote of Saint-Just getting into a fight with a random woman outside the Committee building (I think?)? I can’t find it anywhere 😭😭

I have to admit that anecdote doesn’t ring any kind of bell for me. Anyone else recognizes it? 🤔 @saintjustitude ?

#saint-just #ask #frev

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