Revolutionaries that encountered each other before the revolution compilation
Comment if there was anything that surprised you! 🙃🫢
Sources:
For the college relationships between Robespierre, Desmoulins, Suleau and Fréron, see this post.
For Robespierre welcoming Louise de Kéralio to the Academy of Arras, see Un inédit de Robespierre: Sa réponse au discours de réception de Mademoiselle de Kéralio 18 avril 1787 (1974) by Léon Berthe.
For the relationship between Robespierre and Carnot pre-revolution, see this post.
For the relationship between Robespierre and Fouché pre-revolution, see this post.
For the relationship between Robespierre and Guffroy pre-revolution, see Censure républicaine, ou, Lettre d’A-B-J Guffroy, répresentant du peuple (1794), page 66: ”Robespierre the elder must remember my firmness when, both working as judges in the episcopal hall of Arras, we condemned an assassin to death. He must remember, it seems to me, our philosophical and philanthropic debates, and even that it cost him much more than me to resolve to sign the sentence.”
For Fréron’s father Élie Fréron praising one of Collot d’Herbois’ plays, see this post.
For the relationship between Desmoulins and Charles Lambrechts, see a letter to the former from the latter dated September 12 1781, cited in Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un rêve de république (2018) page 28-29: ”[Your successes make me encourage you] to make the final efforts to overcome the small natural defect of which you complain, and which must embarrass you much more in France than it would embarrass you in this country, where people hardly plead verbally, and where in all genres people look much more at the substance than at the form; I urge you, however, not to be discouraged on this side and I dare to predict that with constancy you will overcome all obstacles; you will imitate Demosthenes in this.”
For the relationship between Desmoulins and Lucile Duplessis’ mother, see this post.
For Lucile Desmoulins and Sylvain Maréchal’s relationship, see Lucile’s diary from 1788.
For Hérault de Séchelles and Michel Lepeletier being childhood friends, see the Convention session of December 29 1793 (Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, number 100, page 404), during which Hérault is recorded to have said: ”I who, in the world, have never had more than one close friend since the age of six. Here he is! Michel Lepeletier, oh you from whom I have never parted, you whose virtue was my model, you who like me was the target of parliamentary hatred, happy martyr!”
For Billaud-Varennes serving as Danton’s secretary in 1787, see Billaud-Varenne, membre du Comité de salut public: mémoires inédits et correspondance (1893) page 21. See also Notes de Topino-Lebrun, juré au Tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris sur le procès de Danton et sur Fouquier-Tinville (1875) page 19, according to which Danton during his trial would have stated: ”Billaud-Varennes doesn’t forgive me for having been my secretary.”
For Brissot and Pétion being childhood friends, see Discours de Jérôme Pétion sur l’accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre (1792) page 16: ”I’ve known [Brissot] since his childhood. I’ve seen him in these moments where the soul completely shows itself.”
For Barbaroux taking an optics course under Marat, see Mémoires inédits de Charles Barbaroux, député a la Convention nationale (1822), page 57.
For Brissot and Marat’s relationship pre-revolution, see Mémoires de Brissot, volume 1, page 346-361, as well as a letter from Brissot to Marat dated June 6 1782 and a letter from Marat to Brissot dated 1783.
For Brissot’s relationship with the Rolands pre-revolution, see a letter from Brissot to M. Roland dated June 24 1787, and an undated one from Brissot to Mme Roland, as well as Mémoires de Madame Roland, volume 2, page 358.
For the relationship between Brissot, Clavière and Mirabeau, see Mémoires de Brissot, volume 2, page 23-24 and 28-33, as well as a letters from Mirabeau to Brissot dated 11 August 1783 and 15 July 1786and a letter from Brissot to Mirabeau dated July 1786.
For the relationship between Brissot and Lafayette, see a letter from Lafayette to Washington in favor of Brissot dated May 25 1788, and number 659 (May 29 1791) of Brissot’s journal Le Patriote Français: ”I saw Lafayette before the revolution.”
For the relationship between Madame de Genlis and Brissot, see Mémoires inédites de Madame la comptesse de Genlis, volume 4, page 106-110, as well as this letter dated June 1783 from Félicité Brissot to Félicité Genlis.
For Condorcet objecting to Brissot’s imprisonment in the Bastille in 1784, see Mémoires de Brissot, volume 1, page 348: ”I owed my freedom also to the warmth of a few precious friends who offered to vouch for me at the price of their own liberty; I also owed it to the almost universal outcry from men of letters, even those I scarcely knew at the time, who, convinced of the austerity of my principles and morals, denounced as slander the composition of the pamphlets attributed to me and loudly demanded the end of my captivity. Thus, not only did the friends I mentioned in these memoirs give me proof of their devotion, but I also received marks of interest from a host of other people who were then almost strangers to me, such as Condorcet, with whom I have since had so many honorable relations.”
For Brissot and Gabriel Vaugeois being college comrades, see Mémoires de Brissot, volume 1, page 34: ”I have yet not spoken of Vaugeois, he was one of my college comrades, who had de la solidité dans l’esprit and love for the sciences.”
For the relationship between Prieur de la Côte d’Or and Guyton-Morveau, see Prieur de la Côte d’Or(1946) by Georges Bouchard, page 54, 62.
For Laclos critizicing Carnot’s work Éloge à Vauban, see Lettre à MM. de l'Académie françoise, sur l'éloge de M. le maréchal de Vauban, proposé pour sujet du prix d'éloquence de l'année 1787
Teenage Lucile Desmoulins being #relatable compilation
Source: Lucile’s diary from 1788 and 1789
1788
Friday 27 — I want to finish my story, I cannot finish it! I pick up the pen, I want to write, but nothing comes…
Monday 30 — […] I had fun breaking dead wood, then I found a snail. I examined it a little, I broke its shell, but having fallen onto my stomach it made me cry out loud, because this ugly beast was crawling on my stomach!
Sunday 5 — […] After dinner, I went upstairs to read a few passages from Grandisson, but I had to go back down to go for a walk with everyone, which annoyed me quite a bit, because I would have liked to read forever.
Monday 6 — I didn’t go out all morning, I did nothing but read.
Monday 21 — […] Maman made me tremble last night: she came to fetch the inkwell, I was in bed, she opened my drawer to take a pen, I was afraid she would take my diary…
Thursday 24 — […] I love only one person on earth, her alone! Yes, Maman alone makes all my happiness, everything else is indifferent to me. She’s the only friend I want to have.
Saturday 26 — […] I spent the morning, as well as the Friday afternoon, without being able to do anything, starting everything and finishing nothing.
Monday 28 — […] I went and threw myself on a haystack, I stayed there a long time. I found a few hours of happiness there. […] This lack of spirit does not leave me. I dare not talk about it because I cannot explain what I feel, not understanding it. They would laugh at me.
1789 (undated entries)
How upset I am! Everything I see only serves to despair me! Scourge of the earth, you whom heaven made to punish us… How tired I am of living, and I fear to die… Alas, why am I?… What am I useful for on earth? If I didn’t exist… I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. My mind is absent, I go to bed without thinking about where I am… What am I? Very little…
[…] What, men… Oh, what a lot to say! Be quiet, Lucile, let the men do what they want, close your eyes to their actions, you have nothing to do with them…
Cruel moments, which have lasted too long!… The dreadful memory still comes to torment me… Ah, all my life I will remember it! Oh, what temerity! O you, happy inhabitants of these sweet lands, you guided by simple nature, how I envy your fate! Why was I not born among you? I have rage in my heart… Flow my tears, flow, relieve my pain or rather consume me! Perish my memory! May I be reduced to ashes, and may the winds scatter it throughout the earth!
Could you do a collection of Camille’s bitchiest moments?
The thought of their (the Estates General’s) mission filled me with respect, and I was surprised to feel for our priest a sense of reverence from which I was so far removed in Laon. I blamed both you and your illness very much. Why did you show so little haste to receive so great an honor? This was the first of my sorrows.
Desmoulins in a letter to his father, May 5 1789
The King and the National Assembly live here now, and I want to reside in Paris too. I am abandoning my ungrateful and unfair region. I want to profit from this moment of fame to acquire furnishings, to register in a district; could you be so cruel as to refuse me a bed, or a pair of curtains? Am I without assets, without family? Is it true that I have neither father nor mother? But, you say, to obtain these furnishings will take thirty or forty louis. I reply to you: it is necessary to live; it is necessary to pay the debts you have forced me to take on over the last six years; because I have been without the bare essentials for the last six years. Tell the truth, have you ever bought me any furnishings? Have you ever put me in the position of not having to pay out the exorbitant rents for furnished accommodation? Your miserable policy of sending me two louis here, two louis there has never allowed me to acquire furnishings or a place of my own. And when I think that my chances depend on my residence; with a residence I could be president, district commander, a representative in the Paris commune; instead of which I am no more than an admired writer: living proof that with talent, virtue, character, a love of hard work and having given great services, one can still come to nothing. What an amazing thing! Here are ten years in which I have complained in this way and it is easier for me to create a revolution, and overturn all France than to obtain from my father, once and for all the fifty odd louis that will enable me to set up my own establishment. What a man you are! With all your intellect and all your virtues you have never known how to understand me. You have continually slandered me; you have always called me extravagant, a wastrel, I was nothing more than that. All my life I only yearned for a home, an establishment and after I left the paternal home in Guise you never wanted me to have any lodging in Paris except an inn, and here I am, thirty years old. You are always telling me that I have other brothers! Yes, but here is the difference; nature has given me wings and my brothers do not feel the chains of poverty which tether me to earth in the same way as I do. […] Help me out in these circumstances, if you can’t buy me a bed here, send me one. Can you refuse me a bed? I have told you that I don’t want to hear any talk of Guise. Your lack of recognition in the region, and mine even more so has detached me from it. So do something for me, your eldest son.
Desmoulins in a letter to his father, October 8 1789
The Lameths also wanted to attract Camille-Desmoulins. This young partisan of liberty, and one of the first Cordeliers, had also received advances from Lafayette, who often invited him to dinner, and who gave him his plaster bust as a present. But one morning the bust was thrown through one of the windows; we knew the cause.
Histoire générale et impartiale des erreurs, des fautes et des crimes commis pendant la révolution française (1797) by Louis-Marie Prudhomme, volume 3, page 322-323.
It is now, O Lucile, that I truly find myself to be pitied. Up until now I had blamed fortune, and it could come, I had blamed your parents and they could, when they saw me have a status and a reputation, stop distancing me from you. But now that I am allowed to see you, the hope of being happy has vanished forever. I see too clearly, O Lucile, that your heart cannot approach mine. Your face, as if of its own accord, continually turns away from me. In vain my pain, a constancy of 7 years and my tears are before your eyes. I am not lovable enough, I do not want so many charms and qualities. The sadness that I feel near you at not being able to please, combined with my usual melancholy, makes my company tiring for you. All the conversations I hear seem so cold, so indifferent to me that I cannot take any part in them. In spite of the boredom of my company, touched perhaps by my tender attachment, you make an effort on yourself, and instead of retiring to your books, and to this work that you love so much, you prolong for me the pleasure of enjoying your sight, I thank you for that, beautiful Lucile, I thank you for this kindness. But this pleasure of seeing you is cruelly poisoned by this thought that I will never succeed in pleasing you. I see too well that my presence is for you, oh beautiful Lucile, neither that of a lover, nor that of a husband, nor even that of a friend. No matter how much I question your heart with my gaze, it does not respond. Your eyes never turn towards your unfortunate lover. After 7 years of such tender love, I find the opportunity to present my hand to you for a moment, and you have the harshness to refuse me, to tell me that I will never obtain this hand so ardently desired. Rather than offering me a seat in your carriage, today you would rather have seen me die of fatigue following you. It’s done, I no longer hope to find the way to your heart, no, this charming Lucile will never love me, she will never be my Lucile. How little do they know you, those who congratulate you and who envy you. O unfortunate Desmoulins. If you had placed your happiness in riches, in dignities, in glory and you had been unable to achieve it, only you and your madness would have to be blamed for your ills. But to have placed it in the possession of Lucile's heart, when her mother responded to me from this heart 5 years ago, when she had emboldened me to ask her daughter in marriage, when her father had approved of me, when he had deceived me so cruelly about his daughter's emerging inclination, when they closed my heart to all affection, to all other happiness, after 7 years of constancy, to see that one displeases, that one shall never obtain this promised happiness, this happiness placed in nature. This is what tears me apart, but I would rather be unhappy alone than try to get you through importunity, extract half-consent and make you unhappy with me. I want to get used to the thought that she will never be mine, that she will never put her hand in mine, that I will not rest on Lucile's breast, that I will not press her against my heart. Retire into solitude, O unhappy Camille, go and cry for the rest of your life, forget if possible about her singing, and her loud piano, and her graces, and her wit and her beauty, and her walks and her window, and her writings, and so many qualities of which you were no less sure for having only guessed at them.
Camille in an undated letter to Lucile from 1790, cited on page 55-56 of Journal 1788-1793: Lucile Desmoulins ; texte établi et présenté par Philippe Lejeune (1995)
I wasted my time preaching the republic. The republic and democracy are now down, and it is unfortunate for an author to shout in the desert and to write pages as worthless, as little listened to, as the motions of J. F. Maury. Since I despair of overcoming insurmountable currents, tied for six months to the bench of rowers, perhaps I would do well to regain the shore, and throw away a useless oar. I should leave Garnery, continue writing Révolutions de France et de Brabant at a discount, without attempting with my librarian, the unequal struggle of Tournon with Prudhomme. But I hear Robespierre call my discouragement corruption, and exclaim that I am sold like the others to the King's wife and to the ministerial party. I must undeceive my dear Robespierre, I must give new proofs of my incorruptibility every week, show that I am as proud a republican as he is, and that when the number of patriots, which is diminishing prodigiously every day, would be reduced to one or two citizens, it is I who would like to remain the last of the Jacobins. […] How is it that I was accused of being a sold-out journalist, and that I saw Robespierre and L... among my slanderers, when it is so difficult to find proofs of corruption against me? Robespierre et L ... […] So I could not have my neck wrapped in a handkerchief and complain of esquinancia without being reproached for argyrancia as well. Ungrateful Robespierre!
Desmoulins in number 27 (May 31 1790) of Révolutions de France et de Brabant
M. Malouet: …Is Camille-Desmoulins innovative? He will justify himself. Is he guilty? I will be the accuser of him and of all those who take up his defense. Let him justify himself, if he dares. (A voice rises from the stands: Yes, I dare. A part of the surprised assembly rises; the rumor spreads in the assembly that it is M. Camille Desmoulins who has spoken; the president gives the order to arrest the individual who uttered these words.)
N…: I ask that we deliberate beforehand on this arrest.
M. Robespierre: I believe that the provisional order given by the President was indispensable; but must you confuse imprudence and inconsideration with crime? He heard himself accused of a crime against the Nation, it is difficult for a sensitive man to remain silent. It cannot be supposed that he intended to disrespect the Legislative Body. Humanity agrees with justice, pleads in its favour. I ask for his release, and that we move on to the agenda.
[The president annonces that M. Camille Desmoulins has escaped and can’t be arrested. The Assembly pass onto the order of the day.]
Session of the National Assembly, August 2 1790
Not that I idolize J.J. as I did in the past, since I saw in his Confessions that he had become an aristocrat in his old age. How far he was from looking at an Alexander with the pride of this Cynic, to whom he is compared, and how painfully I saw that he united the opposite faults of Diogenes and Arisippus! It is a pleasant thing to hear the author of the Social Contract protest in his Confessions about the simplicity of the commerce of such great lords (M. and Madame de Luxembourg) he cries with joy, he wants to kiss the feet of this good marshal, because he wanted to accompany one of his friends, an office clerk, for a walk. Is there anything smaller, more ridiculous? I received, he says elsewhere, the greatest honor that a man can receive, the visit of the Prince de Conti, (an honor that Rousseau shared with all the girls of the Palais-Royal.) At this point I tossed away the book out of spite, and I admit, that I had to reread the speech on equality of conditions, and Julie's novel, in order to not hate the philosopher of Geneva, like Durosoy and Mallet du Pan; for the same principles, in the mouth of such a great man, are more condemnable and worthy of aversion than in the mouths of our two gazetteers, whom God created poor in spirit, and predestined as such to the kingdom of heaven.
Desmoulins in number 55 (December 1790) of Révolutions de France et de Brabant
You are right to take the step of seniority over me, and disdainfully call me ”young man,” since it is 24 years since Voltaire made fun of you.
Desmoulins responding to Marat in number 76 (May 9 1791) of Révolutions de France et de Brabant
Robespierre the younger was called the great howler, the national bellower. Desmoulins said: Ducos' least gesture is an epigram, and the very sound of young Robespierre's voice is foolish. Desmoulins said of the opinions put forward by Robespierre the younger in the rostrum that they always came from the throat, never from the head.
Note written by Edme-Bonaventure Courtois, cited in Camille Desmoulins and his wife; passages from the history of the Dantonists founded upon new and hitherto unpublished documents(1878) by Jules Claretie, p. 458.
After Legendre, the member of the Convention who has the highest opinion of himself is Saint-Just. One can see by his gait and bearing that he looks upon his own head as the corner-stone of the Revolution, for he carries it upon his shoulders with as much respect and as if it was the Sacred Host. But what makes his vanity killing is, that some years ago he published an epic poem in twenty-four cantos entitled Argant [sic]. Rivarol and Champcenetz, from whose microscope, used in the interests of the Almanach des grands hommes, not a single verse, not a single hemistich in France has ever escaped, have in vain gone searching for this; they who have hunted up even the least little scrap of literature have not seen Saint-Just’s epic poem in twenty-four cantos. After such a misadventure, how can he show himself?
Lettre de Camille Desmoulins, député de Paris à la Convention, August général Dillon en prison aux Madelonettes (1793) page 52.
Robespierre: Camille's writings are to be condemned, no doubt; but nevertheless it is necessary to distinguish the person from his works. I consent freedom to treat Desmoulins like a spoiled child who had happy dispositions, and who has been led astray by bad company. His head sometimes wanders, but his talents are precious. […] I end by asking that his numbers be treated like the aristocrats who buy them, with the contempt that profanity deserves. I propose to the Society to burn them in the middle of the room (There is applause several times; Robespierre's speech was interrupted by applause and bursts of laughter).
Desmoulins: That's very well said, Robespierre, but I'll answer you like Rousseau: "To burn is not to answer."
Robespierre: How dare you still want to justify works that delight the aristocracy? Learn, Camille, that if you were not Camille, one could not have so much indulgence for you.
Robespierre and Desmoulins at the Jacobins January 7 1794
The accused are asked their names, surnames, they answer as follows: […] 4. Benoît Camille Desmoulins, 33 [sic] years old, the age of Jesus, critical for patriots.
Desmoulins at the first day of his trial
There is another measure to be taken. There exists in Paris a class of individuals who, despite the weakness of their sex, do a lot of harm to the Republic. They corrupt your young men; and instead of making them vigorous and worthy of the ancient Spartans, they only make them into Sibarites incapable of serving liberty: I am talking about these immodest women who make a shameful trafficking of their charms. It is a plague on society, and any good government should banish it from its midst. I ask that the Committee of Public Safety examine whether it would not be useful to stifle this germ of counter-revolution, by deporting these women of bad habits beyond the seas (applauds).
Jean-Bon-Saint-André at the Convention, September 5 1793
In effect, how should one esteem a woman (Madame Ricord) who knows so little of the rules of propriety and her duties as a wife to commit the gravest offenses against them? How should I have loved a person who continually compromised my younger brother with her advances, to which he believed it essential to his honor and duty not to respond?
Charlotte Robespierre’s memoirs (1834)
[Albertine Marat] mentioned Charlotte Corday to me in passing, describing her as an adventuress and a woman of ill repute.
Oeuvres d'Alphonse Esquiros, député des Bouches-du-Rhône, Histoire des Montagnards (1875), page 5. Section titled ”my witnesses.”
[The Enragés] reduced to silence the estimable citoyennes whom the love of the public good had led there, they entrusted the scepter to the hands of some female Demosthenes, inspired by these English and Austrian sylphs. Their primary occupation is to cry out for famine, to push the people into despair, to denounce the imperturbable friends of liberty. They are the ones who came in the wake of Jacques Roux and Leclerc, to insult the Mountain and the Jacobins, to insult and threaten the representatives of the people. They are responsible for teaching the universe that modesty is a prejudice, that the distinction between the talents and occupations of the two sexes is nothing other than an invention of the aristocracy; that men must abandon the tribune and the seats of the senate to women; and all men's clubs must appear before the tribunal of revolutionary presidents. Porcia was only an imbecile, with her virtue revered in Rome; she should have played the role of Cato. Cornelia only played a vulgar role, instructing her sons, still children, to defend the rights of the people; Cornelia should have mounted the rostrum for harangues: instead of offering their jewels to the homeland; they will not cry out when they learn of their glorious death: I had given birth to him to serve the homeland; this merit is too vulgar; they are sterile like vice; but on the other hand, they will declaim against the founders of the republic, and slander the representatives of the people. Such is the sublime instrument that the agents of the enemies of the homeland keep in reserve to incite trouble if necessary, at the first moment of embarrassment or disaster with which the republic would be threatened.
Rapport écrit de la main de Robespierre, sur la faction de l’étranger, cited in Pièces trouvées dans les papiers de Robespierre et complices (24 September 1794).
M. Le Bas continued to come assiduously to my parents’ home. One evening, he seemed sad to me, he who, until then, had always showed himself to be so cheerful and so happy with me. He was worried and a bit cold. I wanted to know the cause of this change and asked him whether he was still ill; he replied that he was not but that something he had learned recently had much afflicted him; he hesitated to confide it to me; however I insisted and I then learned from him that a man of his acquaintance had abused me to him, and had strongly discouraged him from marrying me, seeking to make him believe that I had had lovers and that one of them ought to marry me. […] He saw my distress and finally named Guffroy [as the calumniator]; he was a printer and bookseller.
Memoirs of Élisabeth Lebas. In Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices… (1795) page 116, Guffroy admitted that he had attempted to stop the marriage between Lebas and Élisabeth, writing: ”This young man (Lebas) for whom I had held esteem, and whom I had sometimes kept company during an illness, stopped seeing me when I saw him assiduously frequenting Hébert and David; and when I told him the truth about Duplay's daughter whom he married despite the truthful stories I told him.”
Philippe had, it seems, learned from a certain source many things on the conduct of this young person (Guffroy’s daughter), and even knew that she was pregnant, having had a liaison with her father’s master printer. He replied therefore bad-temperedly: “Guffroy, you wish me too well; I thank you for the ill you have told me of Mlle Duplay, but I want to be the father only of children of my own making.” Guffroy, furious at this refusal, would later put all his effort into troubling our happiness, but he did not succeed. The pregnancy of his daughter was only too certain, for she had her lying-in four months after my marriage.
Memoirs of Élisabeth Lebas
Shall we speak here of a society of fallen women, picked up from the dregs of Paris, whose audacity is matched only by their shamelessness, female monsters possessing all the cruelty of weakness and all the vices of their sex? The mere sight of them inspires horror. These women played a major role in the 1793 revolution. An old Parisian hussy commands them, and their daggers belong to whoever knows best how to wield them. It seems that Lacombe, their leader, has seized considerable power; and in the debates brewing between Robespierre and his allies, and Danton and his, this shameless woman might well tip the scales in favor of the party she chooses to support. To what excess of infamy have the French people been led! It could be that, in the end, upon closer examination, the French armies fought, the Assembly of the nation was dishonored, the public fortune was destroyed, and the entire Republic was stained with French blood, only through the intrigues of the most hideous hussies of Paris.
Memoirs of Buzot, cited in Mémoires inédits de Pétion et mémoires de Buzot & de Barbaroux (1866), page 72.
The femme or fille Lacombe is finally in prison, and unable to do harm. This counter-revolutionary Bacchante now drinks only water; we know that she loved wine very much, that she loved food and men no less, as evidenced by the close fraternity that reigned between her, Jacques Roux, Leclerc, and company, etc.
Feuille du Salut Public, 24 September 1793.
This is the truth of what happened between Mr. Chabot and me, he said he had witnesses, I must name them. Upon entering his house, I first saw the vile companion of his disordered life.
Rapport fait par la citoyenne Lacombe à la société des Républicaines Révolutionnaires (fall 1793). The ”vile companion” Lacombe talks about here is probably Chabot’s 16 year old Austrian wife Léopoldine.
That despotism, fanaticism, pride, avarice lavishing gold and promises, arm the hands of a multitude of men without confession, without family, without homeland, this we have often had examples of since the [beginning of] the revolution. But that a weak and timid sex, stripping away at the same time the two feelings which are most essential to its being: fear and pity, arms its feeble hands against its fellow citizens, its friends, its brothers, its defenders; that one see women assembled in a public square, calling men to fight, provoking some, inciting others, ordering murder and setting an example! [---] Once again, it is the corruption of morals which today produces the anti-civility of women, formerly noble. Well! how could they not fear to cross, at one point, the limits of their sex, they who have stripped all sense of modesty? How would they blush to add hypocrisy to so many even more shameful vices? Chaste women are timid, lost women are bold, daring, cruel.
Adresse aux femmes de Monteauban par Mme Robert, ci-devant Melle de Kéralio (1790)
I have observed very well that these Societies [of Revolutionary Republican Women] are not composed of mothers, daughters, sisters looking after their young brothers or sisters, but of a kind of adventurers, knights-errant, emancipated girls, female grenadiers.
Fabre d’Eglantine at the Convention, October 29 1793.
[Robespierre] told me that he was as timid as a child and always trembled when he approached the rostrum.
Souvenirs sur Mirabeau (1832) by Etienne Dumont, page 251.
I was struck by the terror with which [Robespierre] seemed to be overcome on the day of the king's flight to Varennes; I found him in the afternoon at Pétion’s; where he said with concern that the royal family would not have taken this course without having a coalition in Paris which would order the Saint-Barthélemy of the patriots, and that he expected to be dead within twenty-four hours. Pétion and Brissot said, on the contrary, that the flight of the king was his loss, and that it was necessary to take advantage of it; that the dispositions of the people were excellent; that it would be better enlightened on the perfidy of the court by this approach than it would have been by the wisest of writings; that it was obvious to everyone, by this fact alone, that the king did not want the constitution he had sworn to; that it was time to ensure a more homogeneous one, and that it was necessary to prepare minds for the Republic. Robespierre, sneering as usual and biting his nails, asked what a Republic was!
Mémoires de Madame Roland, volume 1, page 364-365.
On the day of the Champ de Mars Massacre, [Robespierre] came to the session of the Jacobins. There, the friends of liberty were assembled in very small number. The courtyard was soon filled with gunners and chasseurs des barrières, blind instruments of the furies of Lafayette and of his partisans. Robespierre trembled with fear when crossing this courtyard in order to make his way after the session, and, hearing these soldiers vomiting imprecations and threats against the Jacobins, he was obliged, in order to support himself, to take the hand of Lecointre de Versailles, in the uniform of a commander of the National Guard of Versailles, and of La Poype, who has since become divisional general, then member of the society. He did not dare to go to sleep in the rue Saintonge in the Marais, where he stayed at the house of Humbert. He asked Lecointe if he knew, in the vicinity of the Tuileries, some patriot who could give him an asylum for the night. Lecointe suggested the house of Duplay to him, and led him there. From this day on, he did not leave it anymore.
Fréron’s notes on Robespierre, 1794-1795
I saw for a moment when [the jacobin club] was composed of only three members of the National Assembly and twenty to thirty other citizens. Terror had dispersed the rest; it had dispersed several of the men who now play the leading roles there. Of the three members of the Assembly, one was little known. Robespierre, whose reputation was rooted in patriotism, nevertheless did not enjoy the kind of esteem that wisdom and moderation in the conduct of public affairs confer. I saw Robespierre trembling, Robespierre wanting to flee, Robespierre not daring to show himself before the Assembly... Ask him if I trembled.
Discours de Jérôme Petion sur l'accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre (November 1792), on Robespierre following the founding of the Feuillant club in July 1791.
Eh! What can one imagine that is too cruel from a scoundrel who caused his benefactors, M. and Mme. Roland, to perish on the scaffold, they who saved him after the event on the Champs-de-Mars, who risked everything to save his execrable life, who induced me, whose disinterestedness and, dare I say, virtuous character they knew, to sacrifice my reputation to the point of throwing myself into the Feuillans, to protect Robespierre from the blind anger of the enemies of the Republic: blind, I said; for the vile scoundrel was innocent of the generous movement that had arisen against Louis XVI. He trembled like a leaf shaken by the winds, and his little soul was as incapable of braving an obvious danger as of conceiving a project useful to the liberty of his country. What Madame and Monsieur Rolland wanted from me, I could have done for Pétion, but never for Robespierre, whom I despised with all my might.
Mémoires sur la Révolution française, par Buzot, député à la Convention nationale (1828), page 163-164.
[Claire Lacombe] would have said one day, speaking with Lemoce about the members of the Committee of General Security: ”these blancs-becs must be made to tremble.” Another time, following a visit to the Committee of Public Safety, she would have told her that the representatives on mission in the departments had been enriching themselves there. After Lamoce observed the fact Robespierre had never gone on mission she responded: ”He is too cowardly and too afraid for his life. Did you notice how pale he was when I spoke to him? Fear was written all over his face."
Denounciation against Claire Lacombe dated May 28 1794, cited in Trois femmes de la Révolution: Olympe de Gouges, Théroigne de Méricourt, Rose Lacombe (1900) by Léopold Lacour, page 412.
Often Carnot had threatened [Robespierre] point-blank, putting his fist under his nose; one evening Robespierre, a little too sharply attacked by Carnot, felt ill or pretended to feel ill.
Dictionnaire néologique des hommes et des choses, ou Notice alphabétique des personnes des deux sexes, des événemens... (1799) by Beffroy de Reigny, volume 3, p. 11.
Collot d’Herbois still remained his hold on Robespierre’s coat-collar. As I had at that very moment left the Convention on my way to the committee, I became a chance spectator of this fearful scene, whose violence was still not the greatest crime in my eyes. Behind it stood revealed the plot of premeditated vengeance, far worse than a mere outburst of anger. I was among those who compelled Collot d’Herbois to release his hold on Robespierre, who thereupon declared that he could no longer sit with his enemies, styling them a party of septemvirs, whom he would unmask and fight in the body of the Convention. He then took his departure, in spite of the entreaties of the entreaties of the committee, which, having been unable to conquer, sought to retain him in its midst. ”Let him go his way,” I said to those surrounding him. All my interest in him lay in the fact that I did not wish to see him strangled on the spot by a stronger man, and one perhaps as wicked as himself. I followed him for a short distance in order to see him safely home; he was trembling as he walked alone.
Memoirs of Barras, Member of the Directorate (1895), volume 1, page 196-198.
Robespierre became more somber; his sullen expression repelled everyone, he spoke only of assassination, again assassination, always assassination. He was frightened his own shadow would assassinate him. One month before his overthrow I had only set foot in his house and was given worried and threatening looks.
Causes secrètes de la révolution du 9 au 10 thermidor (1794) by Joachim Vilate, page 38.
Frev people predicting the future (or just being dead wrong about it) compilation
shoutout to @cheeri1yfrancis for coming up with this idea!
May the capital, when it finds out (about the dismissal of Necker), not see any dangerous commotion arising in its bosom! May evil citizens not take advantage of it to cause disorder and spread rumors that might ignite rebellion!
Letter from Antoine-Joseph Gorsas, seven o’clock in the morning on July 12 1789
This will be an interesting day.
Lafayette in a letter written six o’clock in the morning on July 14 1789
O woman, cruel woman, woman unworthy of the sun that shines on you, what, shall celestial vengeance not burst entirely on your head, shall you triumph? Go, the day may not be far off when all the evils you cause will fall on you! You will groan then, but it will be too late! We won’t complain! Fear the example of queens who, like you, have done evil! See: some perished in misery, others were sent to the scaffold. This may be the fate that awaits you…
Lucile Duplessis in her diary, summer 1789
Despite the audacity of my enemies, they will not succeed: the Frenchman is incapable of regicide.
Louis XVI to the count of Estaing, October 5 1789
I love you nonetheless, because you are faithful to principles, even if you are not so faithful to friendship.
Desmoulins in a letter to Robespierre, published in number 29 (June 14 1790) of Révolutions de France et de Brabant
I did not hear this speech [by Robespierre] with as much composure as I report at this moment, where the arrest of the former King has changed the face of affairs. I was moved to tears in more than one place, and when this excellent citizen, in the middle of his speech, spoke of the certainty of paying with his head for the truths he had just pronounced, I cried out: we will all die before you!
Desmoulins in number 82 (June 27 1791) of Révolutions de France et de Brabant
Amidst the diversity of opinions and parties that divide the French, amidst the ignorance of the true principles of government, foreign to the meditations of most men, is it impossible that a triumphant general, in the name of the law, should arm his deluded soldiers against the best citizens, designating them as a particular and enemy faction, and marking them with the insignificant name of factious, which court policy has hitherto given to the defenders of the nation's rights?
Robespierre in a speech held January 25 1792
We have arrived at the outcome of the constitutional drama. The Revolution will take a faster course, if it does not sink into military and dictatorial despotism. In the situation we are in, it is impossible for the friends of liberty to foresee and direct events. The destiny of France seems to leave it to intrigue and chance.
Robespierre in a letter to Couthon, August 9 1792 (incorrectly dated July 20 1792 in his correspondence)
No… You and I are never going to take opposite sides, we are always going to have the same political faith.
Pétion in a letter to Robespierre, August 20 1792
Despite so many guineas, can one cite to me, asked Danton, a single man, strongly pronounced in the Revolution and in favor of the Republic, who has been condemned to death by the revolutionary tribunal?
Desmoulins in number 3 (18 December 1793) of le Vieux Cordelier
I have always been six or even eighteen months ahead of public opinion. I still am six months in advance, and I postpone your change of opinion about me to a less distant time.
Desmoulins in number 5 of the Vieux Cordelier
[Robespierre the younger] complains that the lowest flatteries are used to create division between patriots: they went so far as to tell him that he was better than his brother: “But in vain,” he cries, ”would anyone want to separate me from him: as long as he is the proclaimer of morality and the terror of scoundrels, I aspire to no other glory than to share the same tomb as him!”
Augustin Robespierre at the jacobins on July 11 1794, recorded in number 32 (July 18) of Mercure français.
If we succeed, the conspirators say, it is necessary to contrast by an extreme indulgence with the present state of things.
Robespierre in his final 8 thermidor speech
Comment who had the most creepy/impressive comment!
Revolutionaries making last recommendations for their children compilation
I see, my dear Félicité, that my last hour has arrived. It is today, if I’m not mistaken, that we are going to be judged. Perhaps I will suffer the misfortune of not getting to see you, nevertheless I’m doing all I can for it. If this goodness is refused to me, handle this blow with courage. You owe our children that. Live for them, keep some of my letters, so that you can show them to them one day. Then they shall say: See here the handwriting of a father who loved us, and who loved the public sake even more, because he sacrificed himself and was sacrificed for it.
Brissot to his wife, October 30 1793. Their children Félix, Sylvain and Anacharsis were 9, 7 and 2 years old by the time of their father’s execution on October 31 1793.
Courage makes it easy to bear the ills that are our own, but a mother's heart is hard to calm over the fate of a child from whom she feels herself torn. If misfortune imprints a sacred character, let it preserve my dear Eudora, I will not speak of pains similar to those I experience, but of dangers infinitely more formidable in my eyes! May she preserve her innocence, and may she succeed one day in fulfilling, in peace and obscurity, the touching duty of wife and mother. She needs to prepare for it by leading an active and orderly life, and to add to her taste for the duties of her sex some talents whose exercise she may find necessary. I know that she has the means for this with you. You have a son, and I dare not tell you that this idea has troubled me; but you also have a daughter, and then I felt reassured. That’s enough said to a sensitive soul, to a mother, and to a person such as I suppose you to be. My condition produces strong affections; it does not allow for long expressions. Please accept my best wishes and my gratitude.
Manon Roland in a letter to ”the person in charge of my daughter” (later identified as one Madame Godefroid) on November 7 1793. Eudora Roland was 11,5 years old at the time of her mother’s execution and father’s suicide in November 1793. A month earlier, October 8 1793, Manon had also written a letter adressed to Eudora herself, where she tells her to remember and be worthy of her parents.
Republican woman, preserve your character, your courage. You know the purity of my patriotism. I shall preserve the same character until death. Raise my son in Republican principles. You cannot manage the printing press alone, so dismiss the workers. Hail to the Marat citizenesses! Hail to the Republicans! I leave you my memory and my virtues. Marat has taught me to suffer.
Momoro’s last letter to his wife, cited in Antoine Francois Momoro: "First Printer of National Liberty", 1756-1794 (2015) by Grace Phelan. Credit to @nesiacha for discovering it!
My Lucile! My good Loulou! My hen from Cachant, I beg you, do not stay on the branch, do not call me by your cries, they would tear me from the depth of my grave. Go and care for your little one, live for my Horace, speak of me with him. Tell him what he will not be able to understand, that I would have loved him much!
Desmoulins in his last letter to his wife, April 1 1794. Their son Horace was 1,5 years old at the time of his parents’ executions in April 1794.
Porcia and Cornélie must be your models, as I have always invoked the soul of Brutus and that of Cato. I leave with you a precious stem, worthy of the Republic; you owe yourself entirely to the education of this interesting being. Communicate to him your soul and mine; the examples of his father will lead him to virtue. When he is old enough to be able to rise to sublime ideas, fill him with the feeling of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. This consoling dogma is the only refuge of withered and oppressed freedom. I hope that the Republic will then be well established; for I believe it to be imperishable, despite all the horrors with which it is defiled. Let him content himself with saying: My father contributed with all his being to cement the happiness of his fellow men. But no resentment or revenge against my oppressors; will they not be punished enough by their remorse?
Philippeaux in his last letter to his wife, April 4 1794. Their son Auguste was 6,5 years old at the time of his father’s execution on April 5 1794.
i find myself in the most cruel situation imaginable. I throw myself into the arms of Providence, I don’t have hope that it will save me. I embrace you a thousand times my dearest wife; I embrace my son; my last wishes are for you; that he remembers his father.
Pétion in his last letter to his wife (letter undated). Their son Louis Étienne Jérôme was 10,5 years old at the time of his father’s suicide in late June 1794. Pétion also wrote an entire epistle dedicated to his son, where he gives him some fatherly advice and tells him to avenge him.
When you receive this letter, my good friend, I will live only in the memory of those who love me. What a burden I leave you, three children, and nothing to help raise them! However, it is one of my consolations to think that you will want to live well because of your innocent family. My friend, I know your sensitivity, I like to believe that you will give bitter tears to the memory of a man who wanted to make you happy, who made his main pleasure the education of his two sons and his beloved daughter; but, could you neglect to think that your second thought belongs to them? They can at least, by their innocent caresses, take the place of those that I can no longer give you. […] My friend, contain your sorrows, and inspire in my children only modest virtues; it is so difficult to do good for one's country! […] Kiss my children, love them, raise them; console yourself, console my mother, my family. Farewell! Farewell forever.
Salle in his last letter to his wife, June 18 1794. I have been unable to discover how old his three children were at the time of his execution on June 19.
I immediately abandoned the coach to run to my husband; all three of us walked in the direction of the Hôtel de Ville. On the way he exhorted me to return home, made me a thousand recommendations on the subject of our son, prayed me not to make him hate his father’s assassins: “Nourish him with your milk,” he said; “inspire him with the love of his homeland; tell him that his father died for it; farewell, my Élisabeth, farewell!” Then I had to separate from him. His last words to me were: “Live for our dear son; inspire him with noble sentiments, you are worthy of them. Farewell, farewell!” And I never saw him again…
Memoirs of Élisabeth Le Bas (written in the 1840s). Their son Philippe was six weeks old at the time of his father’s suicide on July 28 1794.
You would surprise me greatly if misfortune had not yet enlarged your soul. What does the fate that awaits me matter, provided that I know how to honor it by my firmness? Any feeling other than love of the homeland must be banished from our hearts at this moment; how many things you will have to tell one day to Pauline and to the child you have just brought into the world! Redouble your efforts to preserve yourself for them, and to transmit to them the sacred fire of virtue with which we are inflamed.
Joseph Le Bon in a letter to his wife Élisabeth ”Mimie”, November 9 1794. Their children, Pauline and Émile, were 2 and 1 years old at the time of their father’s execution on October 10 1795.
If, contrary to what I foresee, you were to survive the terrible storm that right now rumbles in the republic and everything attached to it, if you can find yourself in a calm situation again, and find some friends to help you triumph over your bad fortune, then I recommend you to live truly united together, I recommend my wife to try to lead my children forward very gently, and I recommend my children to be deserving the goodness of their mother by respecting her and always being very obedient to her. It is suitable for the family of a martyr of liberty to give example of all virtues, in order to gain esteem and attachment from all good men. I desire that my wife does all that is possible to give her children an education, by engaging all her friends to aid her in everything that would also be possible for them for this goal. I invite Émile to lend himself to this wish of a father whom I believe to be well loved, and by whom he was so much loved: I invite him to lend himself to it without losing time and as soon as he can. My friends, I hope that you remember me, and that you talk about me often. i hope that you will believe that I have loved you a lot. I don’t know of any other way of rendering you happy except through the common good. I failed, I sacrificed myself, it it for you that I die. Speak a lot about me to Camille, tell him a thousand times that I carried him tenderly in my heart. Say the same thing to Caïus, when he will be capable of understanding it.
Gracchus Babeuf’s last letter to his wife and children. At the time of his execution on May 27 1797, his sons Robert ”Émile” was 11,5 years old, Camille 7 years old and Caïus four months old.
Can I ask for a compilation of Robespierre's pettiest moments
Yes you can! 😉
Your Majesty speaks with energy, but you might have difficulty making the public understand by what astonishing privilege I was able to captivate your eyes by behaving like a traitor and enemy of the nation. You claim that men of good faith asked you, "How is it possible that Robespierre has not been sold?" And you assure us that these men were not my enemies; you replied that they were not, but that I had a bad temper... Sire, I give thanks for Your Majesty's kindness. It still deigns to invite me to follow his example, saying: “I have made it a habit to listen calmly to both sides of the argument; and when I feel sufficiently informed, I make up my mind. Above all, I have guarded myself early on against a pitfall to which you do not pay enough attention: that of pride.” Sire, I promise Your Majesty to conform, as far as I am able, all my conduct to this august model; but I humbly beg you to consider some of the truths I have had the honor of sharing with you, and the advice I have taken the liberty of offering for the happiness of the people and the prosperity of your reign.
Robespierre in his Deuxieme Lettre to Pétion (November 1792)
I remember an anecdote to which I attached too little importance at that time: In the first months of the Revolution, finding myself at the dinner with Danton, Danton reproached me for spoiling the good cause, by digressing from the line where Barnave and the Lameths marched, who then began to deviate from the popular principles.
Robespierre’s notes against the dantonists, written somewhere in March 1794
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
This man (Bourdon de l’Oise) walked incessantly with the appearance of an assassin who contemplates a crime; he seems to be persecuted by the image of the scaffold and by the furies.
Robespierre in a note on Bourdon de l’Oise written somewhere after the passing of the law of 22 prairial. All men in these notes are designated as ”leaders of the coalition.”
At the Convention, he (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 note on Léonard Bourdon written at the same time as the one above
[Robespierre] once wanted to declare me a traitor and conspirator, because I had strongly supported the useful and wise proposal that Lindet made, to require horses and carriages in each section of Paris, in order to provide for the supplies of the armies.
Défense particulière de J-M. Collot, représentant du peuple (March 1 1795)
On 19 Prairial (June 7 1794), I was in the council chamber with Dumas and several jurors. I heard the president speak of a new law (the Law of 22 prairial) which was being prepared and which was to reduce the number of jurors to seven and nine per sitting. That evening I went to the Committee of Public Safety. There I found Robespierre, Billaud, Collot, Barère and Carnot. I told them that the Tribunal having hitherto enjoyed public confidence, this reduction, if it took place, would infallibly cause it to lose it. Robespierre, who was standing in front of the fireplace, answered me with sudden rage, and ended by saying that only aristocrats could talk like that. None of the other members present said a word. So I withdrew.
Réponse d'Antoine-Quentin Fouquier, ex-accusateur-public près le Tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris (1795) page 52-53.
When [Robespierre and I] again met at the Convention, we, at first, saw each other frequently; but the difference of our opinions, and perhaps, the still greater dissimilarity of our dispositions, soon caused a separation. One day, at the conclusion of a dinner given at my house, Robespierre began to declaim with much violence against the Girondins, particularly abusing Vergniaud, who was present. I was much attached to Vergniaud, who was a great orator, and a man of unaffected manners. I went round to him, and advancing towards Robespierre, said to him, "Such violence may assuredly enlist the passions on your side, but will never obtain for you esteem and confidence." Robespierre, offended, left the room; and it will shortly be seen how far this malignant man carried his animosity against me.
Memoirs of Fouché (1825), volume 1, page 12
