Do you know if this guy just hates Camille or is any of this is true? Like he was "so little respected" and "never entrusted with duties of any consequence"?
I'm reading "The Twelve Who Ruled" by R.R. Palmer because it got recommended a lot on reddit, but this guy seems kind of mean. He refers to Camille's writings as "childish pretentions to learning" & even goes out of his way to say how he didn't die "with fortitude" like everyone else.
His Wikipedia article says he was begging for his wife's life, which paints a totally different picture. But I'm having trouble getting access to a lot of the books that I see referenced, and I don't know if that's a romanticized version or if Palmer's is slanted.
Camille's last letter got its hooks into my brain and I can't stop chasing down his story! People are complicated & I love that he might've been an awkward little weirdo, but also I don't know that the sources I have available are particularly unbiased.
Camille Desmoulins: A kind of child in politics?
First of all, I have to say I adore this question. Genuinely. Thank you, @secondjulia, for sending it in.
Why do I love it? Because it lets me say the obvious thing that somehow still needs saying: Camille Desmoulins, like everyone else in the 18th century, was a person. Not a metaphor. Â Not a cardboard cut-out. Not a tragic hero cooked up by a novelist. An actual human being. Loved by some, ignored by many, hated by others.
Iâve said this before, but it bears repeating: historical figures were people. They sulked, lied, procrastinated, wept, and occasionally changed their minds.
And so, as with Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Just and the rest, our understanding of Camille depends far more on whoâs writing than on Camille himself. The sources, primary or not, often reveal more about their authors than their subjects.
So what about Palmer? I like Twelve Who Ruled. Itâs a sharp piece of scholarship. Palmer had a clear aim: to explain the Committee of Public Safety. And thatâs what he did. The book is about them, told from their vantage point.
Palmer reconstructed Year II from the Committeeâs outgoing paperwork and their own letters. In other words, he built his narrative from the records of the people who had Desmoulins arrested. Naturally, their prejudices bled through. When Saint-Just called him a Dantonâs vain syncopath (1), Palmer more or less nods along and copies it out.
So, was Camille really a political child whose death meant nothing? As always with history, it depends who you ask.
A Short (and simplified) overview on Historiography of Camille Desmoulins
Nineteenth-century French historians such as Michelet, Lamartine, Thiers and Claretie, cast Desmoulins as a central (if impetuous) voice of 1789: the spark that roused Paris, an eloquent pamphleteer elected to the Convention, and a tragic victim of the Revolutionâs tendency to eat its own children.
Twentieth-century assessments split. The Marxist-Jacobin line, via Mathiez and Lefebvre, paints Camille as vain, erratic and unserious. In this respect, Palmer follows this view, Â no surprise, since he admired Lefebvre and borrowed from his intellectual conclusions. And Palmer, after all, wasnât writing a book on Desmoulins.
Revisionist historians , from J. M. Thompson to François Furet,  pushed back, reframing Camille as a voice of early dissent, warning of the Republicâs descent into purges and paranoia.
Since the 1980s, press historians have looked more closely at his journalism. RĂ©volutions de France et de Brabant, Le Vieux Cordelier. They have found serious contributions to republican thought and critiques of the Terror.
Today, writers like Hervé Leuwers depict him as a thoughtful Enlightenment man of letters, a proto-republican, and a principled journalist whose private letters radiate clarity, courage and, and, above all, love for his family.
Palmerâs charges against Camille
So, given that the historiography is anything but settled, letâs examine what Palmer actually accuses him of:
Political immaturity and irrelevance. Desmoulins was "a kind of child in politics". So unimportant that he was never given any serious responsibility.
Mock-intellectualism and distortion. He had âchildish pretensions to learningâ and twisted facts for the Indulgentsâ cause.
Cowardice at death. He alone struggled at the scaffold.
Cruel hypocrisy. He was cruel and mocked others for dying badly but couldnât manage composure himself.
Undue familiarity. People called him âCamilleâ, and that, somehow, is evidence of his unseriousness.
So, with all the charges laid out, letâs get into it
1. Political immaturity and irrelevance.
Desmoulins wasnât just writing pamphlets in cafĂ©s, the 18th-century equivalent of a keyboard warrior. He was elected Deputy for Paris from 1792 to 1794. Convention transcripts show him speaking at the kingâs trial and submitting official opinions on the veto, the royal succession, and the state of army morale.
He sat briefly on the Commission of Public Safety (March 1793) (2) Â and then on the Committee of War, submitting papers on military supply and recruitment. In February 1793, he alone was tasked with inspecting Didotâs paper mill (3), which was vital to revolutionary printing.
Danton and Robespierre also used him strategically. They gave him documents and political cover to attack the HĂ©bertists in Le Vieux Cordelier (4). Even Palmer concedes that his Histoire des Brissotins (5) Â was so influential that entire pages were quoted in the Girondinsâ indictment.
So no, he wasnât kept out of power because no one respected him. The Committee turned on him when he demanded clemency, not because they thought he was harmless, but because they knew he wasnât. They understood perfectly well that his words could shift public mood, that he could cause real trouble. If he were just Dantonâs decorative shadow, thereâd have been no need to silence him. But they arrested him, too. That tells you exactly how seriously they took him.
2. Mock-intellectualism and distortion
Camilleâs notebooks are still in the BibliothĂšque Thiers. Marginalia in Cicero, Tacitus, Livy, Rousseau. Not bad for a political childâŠ
In La France libre he coined âlibertĂ©, Ă©galitĂ©, fraternitĂ©â. In RĂ©volutions de France et de Brabant, he cites Grotius and Vattel to sketch a law of nations. I donât know about you, but I wouldnât call that childish. When I was a child, I was reading Harry Potter, not Grotius.
Palmer accuses Le Vieux Cordelier of distortion. But what did Camille actually write? He warned of secret denunciations, lawless arrests, and the slow crawl toward dictatorship. Robespierre himself approved the first three issues until Camille turned the critique on the Committee itself and dared to demand clemency. That was the line. Truth was acceptable, so long as it didnât threaten the precarious stability of the revolutionary government.
And letâs be clear. Iâm not in the âRobespierre was a tyrantâ camp. He wasnât. Not even a little bit. But Year II was an unholy mess, and Camille was right to say so.
First of all, I donât know about you, but if I were about to have my head cut off for writing a few pamphlets, Iâd be a little miffed too. But letâs set that aside.
Did Camille lose his composure on the scaffold? Yes, he did. Eyewitnesses like Beffroy de Reigny (6) saw him in the tumbrel, shirt torn, laughing convulsively, looking unhinged. He did not cut the calm figure Danton did beside him.
But was he truly afraid of death itself? Perhaps. He had every reason to be. That would have been natural, even expected. Yet his final letters suggest something else. In one of them, he wrote: âMy head rests on the pillow of my writings... they all breathe philanthropy.â (7) He knew why he was being killed, and he accepted it.
So why the breakdown? In court, when Fouquier-Tinville (8) dragged Lucileâs name into it, Camille lost control. âThey want to murder my wife too!â (9) he shouted, and had to be forced down. Perhaps his despair was not for himself, but for her. For the child they had. For the family he knew he was leaving behind, and feared might follow him to the scaffold.
Palmer was writing in an era that still venerated stoicism as a masculine ideal. Men were expected to die well, quietly, without emotion. It is a ridiculous standard. Always has been. Men, 18th-century ones included, are allowed to be human. A thirty-four-year-old husband and father, facing a violent end and the likely execution of his wife, is allowed a moment of collapse.
Yes, Camille broke down physically. So did Fabre dâĂglantine (10) and Chabot (11), though Palmer leaves them out. But courage should be measured by your posture in the cart. It should be measured by whether you stood by your words. Camille did. He never disowned what he wrote. He died with it, and with all the fear that came with being someone who loved deeply.
Camille Desmoulins was a brilliant journalist. In my view, the best of the Revolution. His style was elegant, funny, and direct. He picked his topics shrewdly and knew exactly what would catch the publicâs attention. At times, he was cruel, but cruelty was the currency of the era. No one ever accused Marat or HĂ©bert of restraintâŠ
He was a masterful satirist. Early in the Revolution, he mocked the high and mighty with gusto. In RĂ©volutions de France et de Brabant, he took aim even at the executioner Sanson (12) and earned himself a libel suit. In Discours de la lanterne, he justified the lynching of aristocrats. The title alone was a nod to the violent street slogan âĂ la lanterneâ (13). He made his position very clear.
And he was hardly an outlier. Violent rhetoric was everywhere. It was the daily fare of the press, speeches, and yes, even the national motto. âLibertĂ©, Ă©galitĂ©, fraternitĂ© ou la mort.â (14) This was a very intense time.
That said, by the time Year II descended into madness, Camille had changed his tune.
In Vieux Cordelier no. III, he called for clemency and due process, an unpopular stance in the Convention, though wildly popular in the streets. The issue sold out across Paris. Robespierre had to speak on his behalf at the Jacobins just to stop his peers from tearing him apart.
By the end of 1793, Camille had become a humanist. He had moved from vengeance to justice. He had seen what violence looked like when taken to its logical end. That was not hypocrisy. It was growth.
This one barely deserves a rebuttal. Yes, people called him âCamilleâ instead of âDesmoulinsâ. In the West, Â they also called La Rochejaquelein âMonsieur Henriâ, and still do. It did not make him any less of a general. It was not disrespect. It was affection. Perhaps even popularity. Was it a bit infantilising? Maybe. But that is hardly an indictment.
Every one of Palmerâs criticisms, whether it be childishness, flippancy, uselessness, shallow intellect, fear, hypocrisy, or lack of seriousness, collapses under scrutiny. Read the transcripts. Read the pamphlets, the letters, the modern biographies. You will not find a clown. You will find a sharp, impassioned writer. Not a child, but a man whose conscience could no longer stomach what the Revolution had become.
Palmer was writing during the Second World War. He valued discipline, executive clarity, and the capacity to act decisively. Desmoulins, a polemicist and tribune rather than a minister, naturally fell outside Palmerâs pantheon.
So, who was Camille?
He was a man. He had friends. He was loved.
That may not have counted for much in Palmerâs eyes, but it was precisely what made Camille so effective. He moved people. He mattered to them. He made them listen.
Robespierre put it best during one of the most memorable exchanges between them. Camille, instead of keeping quiet and letting Robespierre speak for him, insisted on defending his own writings. Robespierre, exasperated, said: "Learn, Camille, that if you were not Camille, we might not be so indulgent with you." (15)
That tells you everything you need to know.
(1) Saint-Just had a busy spring in 1794. As the Committee of Public Safetyâs mouthpiece, he was repeatedly sent to the Convention to justify the arrests of Danton, Desmoulins, and the rest of the Indulgents. On 31 March, he made it perfectly clear what he thought of Camille. In his view, Desmoulins was a vain little man, too foolish to think for himself and too dazzled by Danton to notice he was being used.
(2) Not to be confused with the more infamous Committee of Public Safety. Desmoulins briefly served on the Commission of Public Safety in March 1793. This commission was established to protect the young Republic from internal and external threats. It would eventually evolve into the Committee we now know.
(3) The Didot family were renowned French printers and typographers. Their paper mill was instrumental in producing the high-quality paper used for revolutionary materials, including assignats (paper money).
(4) Le Vieux Cordelier was the last journal founded by Desmoulins, launched in December 1793 to attack the radical HĂ©bertists. It ran for seven issues, the last of which appeared posthumously.
(5) In May 1793, Desmoulins published Histoire des Brissotins, a pamphlet attacking the Girondins, particularly Jacques Pierre Brissot. It portrayed them as enemies of the Revolution, helping to discredit them and strengthen the Montagnardsâ hold on power.
(6) Louis Abel Beffroy de Reigny, known by the pseudonym "Cousin Jacques", was a French dramatist and journalist. He is best remembered for his satirical commentary during the Revolution.
(7) Original French: "Je repose ma tĂȘte calmement sur l'oreiller de mes Ă©crits... tous respirent la philanthropie."
(8) Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville served as the public prosecutor in Paris during 1793â1794. He was responsible for leading many of the key trials of the Terror, including those of Desmoulins, Danton, and Robespierre.
(9) Original French: "Ils veulent encore assassiner ma femme !".
(10) Philippe-François-Nazaire Fabre, known as Fabre dâĂglantine, was a French actor, playwright, and politician. He helped create the Revolutionary calendar and was a close ally of Danton. Accused (rightly) of corruption, he was executed alongside Desmoulins in April 1794.
(11) François Chabot was a former Capuchin friar who became a radical Jacobin and Convention deputy. He was implicated in financial scandals and executed with Danton and Desmoulins in April 1794.
(12) Charles-Henri Sanson was the official executioner of Paris throughout the Revolution. Desmoulins satirised him, claiming he dined with aristocrats , a jab that earned him a libel suit.
(13) The phrase âĂ la lanterneâ was a revolutionary slogan calling for perceived enemies to be hanged from street lamps.
(14) The motto of the First Republic was "Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort"  or "Liberty, equality, fraternity or death."
(15) Original French:
"Apprends, Camille, que si tu n'Ă©tais pas Camille, on pourrait bien ne pas avoir autant dâindulgence pour toi."
