23 âą she/her âą Swedish âą apolitical Interests go to the years 1793â1794 during the French Revolution. Mostly Robespierre and Desmoulins. Trying to back the majority of my posts with a (preferably primary) source.
Tuesday 22 â [âŠ] I went to Robertâs house. Danton came there. His jokes are as boorish as he is. Despite this, he is a good devil.
Lucile Desmoulinsâ 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: âWhat do I care! Public opinion is a whore, posterity is a folly!â The word virtue made Danton laugh; he didnât 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? Â
Robespierreâs notes against the dantonists, written somewhere in March 1794 and published in 1841
Early on the morning of the 14th, the Bourgeois troopsâbetter armed and better organised than the previous day, numbering some 30 to 40 thousandâwere 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: âI do not want it; it is that of a traitorâ; âthey 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 artilleryâsome pieces of which were hauled into the town.
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 Kingâs livery, arrived to request flour from the market hall. Monsieur Leleu, who is in charge of the cityâs supplies, acted as a true patriot and sent the drivers away, writing as follows: âI am expressly charged with supplying the good City of Paris, which is in the gravest danger of running out; I cannot, even for His Majestyâs 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.â 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 Courtâs 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.
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.
Williamâs 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.
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.
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.
Buonarroti, who was close to the sisters, wrote this in 1830:
I seem to gather that the widowâs 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:
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 Ălisabeth? 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 [Robespierreâs] 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.
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'AbrantĂšs, 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.
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? â
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.
âWhen 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.
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 Robespierreâs doctor Joseph Souberbielle, cited in Recollections of a Parisian (docteur PoumiĂšs de La Siboutie) under six sovereigns, two revolutions, and a republic (1789-1863) (1911) page 26.
Brissot, from his childhood, showed a passion for study;Â 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.
âŠwhich 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. [âŠ] 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. [âŠ] I will only cite one trait to give an idea of ââmy 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.
When Brissot, and a few patriots of the Legislative Assembly of the same ilk, in concert with Narbonne, with Lafayette's consent, and through the mediation of several women, such as the Baroness de Staël, the Marquise de Condorcet, etc, had arranged everything, and the terms of the agreement were finalized, Brissot came to you and said: "Who shall we appoint as ministers? Roland, Claviere. They're good! Do you want them? Good Lord! Yes... Roland, Claviere... Oh! But do you know how wonderful it would be if we appointed them?" And you believed that the ministry was your creation.
Youâre right, I see Brissot, however rarely, but you donât know him, and I know him since his childhood. I have seen him in those moments when the whole soul shows itself; where one abandons oneself without reservation to friendship, to trust: I know his disinterestedness; I know these principles, I assure you that they are pure; those who make him a party leader do not have the slightest idea of ââhis character; he has lights and knowledge; but he has neither the reserve, nor the dissimulation, nor these catchy forms, nor this spirit of consistency which constitutes a party leader, and what will surprise you is that, far from leading others, he is very easy to abuse.
Brissot, from his childhood, showed a passion for study;Â 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.
âŠwhich 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. [âŠ] 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. [âŠ] I will only cite one trait to give an idea of ââmy 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.
When Brissot, and a few patriots of the Legislative Assembly of the same ilk, in concert with Narbonne, with Lafayette's consent, and through the mediation of several women, such as the Baroness de Staël, the Marquise de Condorcet, etc, had arranged everything, and the terms of the agreement were finalized, Brissot came to you and said: "Who shall we appoint as ministers? Roland, Claviere. They're good! Do you want them? Good Lord! Yes... Roland, Claviere... Oh! But do you know how wonderful it would be if we appointed them?" And you believed that the ministry was your creation.
Youâre right, I see Brissot, however rarely, but you donât know him, and I know him since his childhood. I have seen him in those moments when the whole soul shows itself; where one abandons oneself without reservation to friendship, to trust: I know his disinterestedness; I know these principles, I assure you that they are pure; those who make him a party leader do not have the slightest idea of ââhis character; he has lights and knowledge; but he has neither the reserve, nor the dissimulation, nor these catchy forms, nor this spirit of consistency which constitutes a party leader, and what will surprise you is that, far from leading others, he is very easy to abuse.
Often, while we with haste ate a piece of dry bread at the Committee table, BarĂšre, with some good joke, brought a smile back to our lips, Carnot, with the wonderful tranquility of his soul, and Collot dâHerbois, with his vigorous speeches, sustained our courage.
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:
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)
Robespierre, who sought to fulfill almost all of Caligulaâs 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)
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 â 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.
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 â and I say this not out of vanity but out of simple political realism â 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.
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 lâUnion, published 1858, 65 years after the fact, and apparently built on material collected by one of Louis XVIâs former bodyguards. The article doesnât 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 mistressâ prison, got struck by bayonets by the gendarmes, and disappeared around a year after Marie-Antoinetteâs death. How exactly the author of the story got this information is left unknown.
Using Retronews, Iâve not found any newspaper that even mention the word âchienâ in the month of October 1793. You might imagine they would had Marie-Antoinetteâs dog really been killed alongside her on 16 OctoberâŠ
Hello! I know you mainly work primary sources but Iâm wondering if you know any secondary sources that are profoundly Thermidorian when recollecting Robespierreâs control over the reign of terror? If no secondary source, Iâd be happy with a primary source. Thanks in advance if you do know any!!
(Itâs for my history IA, if youâre familiar with the IB)
Here are some primary sources released in the months/years following Robespierreâs death that all depict him in what we could call a âthermidorian wayâ:
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) Iâm afraid I for the moment canât really come up with any⊠Iâve mostly read modern biographies which of course make use of a more balanced way of looking at things, but I canât really come up with any (professional) author even before that argues âof course Robespierre was a dictator, just look at what Proyart wrote,â or even just âof course Robespierre was a dictator.â Other people on here are gonna have to fill in. đđ
When did Robespierre move out from the Duplaysâ 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 âsimplicity and candor.â With that said, what do the (surprisingly many!) primary sources actually tell us about this topic?
In a note published in Histoire de Robespierre (1867) by Ernest Hamel, Ălisabeth Duplay specifies that âRobespierre only moved away from my fatherâs house a single time, in order to go live with his sister, whose imperious character rendered him really unhappyâŠâ
Duplay had rented âto 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.âÂ
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.
On July 6 1794, Charlotte writes a letter to Augustin in which she refers to the place on Rue Saint-Florentin as âyour apartment,â and writes that he from the next day and forward can return there without having to see her, since sheâs 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 âthat 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.â (see this post)
In an undated memorandum presumably written in March 1795, Armand Joseph Guffroy writes that â[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.â (Cited in the article Charlotte Robespierre et Guffroy (1910) by Hector Fleischmann)
We donât 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 heâs âjustâ a (albait influencial) Convention deputy.
Then in December 1793, Augustin too comes back to Paris for a short leave. Here, we have conflicting reports. Either he moved in with his brother and sister on Rue Saint-Florentin, like Gaillard has Charlotte say in his memoirs, or he refused to put his foot in the same house as Charlotte and instead went to live with a colleague, as Charlotte puts it in her own memoirs. In January 1794 Augustin leaves for a new mission and wonât return until the summer.
Charlotte claims Maximilien moved back in with the Duplays after he fell ill and Mme Duplay convinced him he would be better cared for at their house. The only period of illness in Robespierreâs last year alive that Iâve been able to identify is in February-March 1794, when he was away from public life for as much as a month. So it seems likely for this incident to have happened here. This would also make Robespierreâs stay on rue Saint-Florentin short enough for Charlotteâs memoirs to be the only place where it is ever really brought up.
One explanation for Charlotte moving back in with the Duplays can be found in Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices (1795) by Convention deputy Armand Joseph Guffroy. Guffroy claims that in the spring of 1794, Charlotte, alongside several other women from Arras, made efforts to make Maximilien aware of the repression carried out in their hometown under representative on mission Joseph Lebon. âNevertheless I was not discouraged [after falling to gain an interview with Robespierre], Leblondâs sister, Demeulierâs daughter, Buissartâs wife, Robespierreâs sister, for whom he was also almost invisible, took all the means to reach him,â Guffroy writes (page 111).
On May 14, Maximilien, on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, wrote a letter to Joseph Lebon in Arras, telling him to come to Paris and then âreturn promptly to the post where you currently are.â According to Guffroy, Charlotte confronted Lebon during this brief visit and âreproached him for his cruelty. Lebon denied it, and under the pretext of making her an eyewitness, he brought Robespierreâs sister back with himâ (Les Secretes de Joseph Lebon (1795) page 180). Regardless of how much truth there is to that account, on May 19 1794 we find a letter confirming that Lebon two days earlier had returned to the north with Charlotte at his side.
This then, could possibly be the moving out from the Duplays Charlotte is referring to in her interrogation, as well as the one Guffroy is referring to in the 1795 memorandum. It could also be so that theyâre talking about something that happened after Charlotte came back to Paris once again in July 1794. It is possible she then tried to go live with the Duplays/get in contact with Maximilien once again, but was told to leave due to being seen as too âsuspect.â
To conclude, my timeline looks a little like this:
Fall 1793 â Charlotte and Maximilien move to rue Saint-Florentin.
December 1793 â Augustin returns to Paris and possibly settles on rue Saint-Florentin with his siblings.
January 1794 â Augustin leaves for another mission.
February - March 1794 â Maximilien moves back in with the Duplays
April - May 1794 â Charlotte moves back in with the Duplays
Middle of May 1794 â Charlotte moves out from the Duplays and goes/gets sent to Arras
June/July 1794 â Augustin returns to Paris and moves in on rue Saint-Florentin.
July 1794 â Charlotte returns to Paris and moves in with a friend.
Whereâs that anecdote of Saint-Just getting into a fight with a random woman outside the Committee building (I think?)? I canât find it anywhere đđ
I have to admit that anecdote doesnât ring any kind of bell for me. Anyone else recognizes it? đ€ @saintjustitude ?
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!)
The Committee of Public Safety decrees that Wife Lambert, who is residing at the home of Citizen Lepault, a watchmaker, at 959 Rue Thomas-du-Louvre, shall be immediately arrested and taken to the Conciergerie. The individual living with her in Paris shall also be arrested [and] taken to the Conciergerie. Braut, in conjunction with the Surveillance Committee of the Tuileries section, is charged with enforcing this decree. (3)
(3) An attached note explains that this decree was issued at the request of Saint-Just, who claimed that this woman had come to his lodgings no doubt to assassinate him.
Bernard Vinot barely mentions it, merely saying that she came to insult Saint-Just:
(I'm not translating the whole page đ it's the second highlighted passage.)
Eugene N. Curtis has a bit more details, p. 277-278 of his biography Saint-Just, colleague of Robespierre:
Thuillier and Gateau were also chosen by Saint-Just, because of their perfect knowledge of the region and its inhabitants, to establish the revolutionary government in the department of Aisne. To achieve this, they had terrorized the region; thus they had a large number of the inhabitants of the department arrested and taken to Paris; the entire population was dismayed and filled with anxiety. A relative of Saint-Just, Citizeness Lambert, came to see him in Paris, at the Committee of Public Safety, on the 3rd of Thermidor, Year II, to bring the complaints of her compatriots and to demand the release of those who had been unjustly arrested and were awaiting trial in the prisons of Paris, the outcome of which seemed all too certain. She undoubtedly made her case to him a bit too forcefully and voiced her reproaches in a tone that displeased him.
It's an article of about 44 pages (p. 49-92) that's most useful for transcribing all the documents related to the 1786-1787 affair when Saint-Just was supposedly imprisoned by a lettre de cachet for - and that's important to mention - having "escaped from his mother's house, taking with him a considerable quantity of silverware, other personal effects, and loose change" (p. 79):
On this letter, Mr. de Crosne, Lieutenant General of Police, signed on March 30, 1787, the provisional order to release Saint-Just and to formalize this order, he wrote to Baron de Breteuil:
"Monsieur de Saint-Just was taken to the home of Madame Marie de Sainte-Colombe, pursuant to the King's order of September 30, 1786, because he had escaped from his mother's house, taking with him a considerable quantity of silverware, other personal effects, and loose change."
Note that the word stealing isn't used because it was not theft. (Read also: this and this.)
Saint-Just asked Citizen Collot d'Herbois to have the Lambert woman and the man living with her arrested, telling him that she had come to his house, no doubt to assassinate him.
Collot then asked Lejeune to write the arrest decree previously mentioned, which he signed.
A few months later, on 5 germinal year III, Collot was defending himself from accusations and brought up the anecdote with more details:
Later, in response to an accusation brought against him by Clauzel on 5 Germinal Year III, from the rostrum of the Convention and in connection with that order, Collot d'Herbois stated that Saint-Just might have lied to him; that he came to the Committee to tell him how people had come to his home to assassinate him; and that, after making a few remarks to him, he replied:
"If Paris had been arrested that morning, Lepelletier would not have been assassinated that day. Those words gave me pause to think, he said, and I ask my colleagues: if Saint-Just had been assassinated that day, would I not have borne the blame for that crime?"
Lambert was reportedly imprisoned for 5 months. She is the primary source telling us she was related to Saint-Just and giving us a bit more details on the altercation:
Citizens,
Citizeness Lambert, who was arrested on the 3rd of thermidor and taken to the maison du Plessis on the orders of Saint-Just, her cousin, for having had a quite lively quarrel (querelle) with him over the atrocities being committed at the time, demands her freedom. She notes that she lost two of her children during the attack on Dunkirk and that her submission to the decrees of the Republic gives her hope that she will receive prompt justice.
Wife LAMBERT.
Considering this was written in her plea to the Thermidorian Comittee of General Security in order to be released (she was on 14 nivĂŽse year III), it should be taken with a grain of salt. We'll never know what actually happened between them, and if Saint-Just had reason to feel threatened. Yes, paranoia was at its peak but there had also been assassination attempts.
Whereâs that anecdote of Saint-Just getting into a fight with a random woman outside the Committee building (I think?)? I canât find it anywhere đđ
I have to admit that anecdote doesnât ring any kind of bell for me. Anyone else recognizes it? đ€ @saintjustitude ?
