#le bas

[minvio]

Coming back to my dead Tumblr to post smth for Robespierre’s bday 🎉🧡

(I feel so bad for neglecting my historical stuff, but dw most of them are for my college works in the future. So sorry for not posting historical content for a while😢)

But anyways HAPPY BDAY BIG R

[cherryzlem]

Why are they standing like that...you're being arrested you idiots

[sieclesetcieux]

I think some people are confused about what a representative on mission was.

They were not military.

They were civilians with extreme oversight, supervision and direct control of the military.

It was the very deputies of the Convention, - the elected members of the Assembly - being sent to the front lines not to play soldier but to keep an eye on the officers for any Cesarist impulse or treasonous whim. They were all obsessed with the fear that someone would rise as a Caesar - and they were right to be. Both Robespierre and Saint-Just warned against celebrating military victories so it didn't inflate the ego of any general. The reason they debated battle plans with generals is because they wanted to keep a firm legislative control on military operations.

Remember what you might have heard about at one point in class, the three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial? The Convention had literally decapitated the executive (that was the king) and left that seat vacant, then drained the powers of the ministers, who they no longer trusted, and transfered them to the Committee of Public Safety. The CSP emanated from the legislative but acted like a de facto pro-tem (temporarily appointed) executive. (Important note: the CSP had power over everything but the police i.e. who was arrested and sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal - it was the Committee of General Security who was in charge of that, which was the source of tension with the CSP and led to a crisis in late Spring/early Summer 1794.)

(Nowadays, executive power is usually in the hands of either presidents or still of monarchs in parliamentary monarchies though it's mostly symbolic.)

According to Michel Biard, there were 426 representatives of mission (out of a total of 749 deputies in the Convention). (See here Annexe #1, p. 1.) Almost everyone on the CSP but Barère and Robespierre were sent on mission. Saint-Just had the same amount of power as his colleagues. I know that he and Le Bas were sent "extraordinarily" in Alsace but I would need to check what that actually meant legally for the other representatives operating there - as in, if it actually impacted their powers. However, I know it means Saint-Just and Le Bas had discretionary powers that superseded the local authorities in Alsace and the standard military hierarchy. The Committee of Public Safety, invested by the power of the Convention, made decrees that sent the representatives, usually in pairs, to every département or region currently ravaged either by the external war (the English, the Prussians, the Austrians, etc.) or the two types of internal war: 1) the Northwestern départements i.e. the Vendée and Bretagne regions and 2) the federalist insurrection caused by the Girondins ex: Lyon. They were given the power to take all measures to ensure the salvation of the Republic. It was essentially a state of emergency mandate. The Terror was one for Paris in practice and all of France in theory: since it was actually extremely hard to have centralized power in a time when communication circulated by the speed of a horse, the representatives on mission had the mandate of a micro-state of emergency on a given territory - and because the CSP didn't necessarily have the strictest of control, atrocities occurred.

Just in case this is too vague, I'm going to use a modern analogy:

Imagine if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) or any member of "The Squad" (if you're USAmerican) or Rima Hassan (I know she's a European deputy not a French one but try to follow my analogy here, I'm struggling to find radical leftist politicians who actually get an impact so insert here any radical-ish leftist elected member of a legislative house). Imagine one of those, and they were sent to Iran (or Iraq and Afghanistan in a very close past) (and yes the fact they're women of color and some of MENA origin is actually very relevant in terms of social power struggle for the analogy here), and they could directly decide on battle plans, they could demote or promote any member of the military, and they had the power of life and death on not just regular soldiers but the generals themselves.

That's how fascinating a representative of mission was.

I don't know for AOC but I know for sure that if Rima Hassan had the power equivalent to a representative on mission in 1793-1794, she would be leading a war against Israel in the name of Gaza. (Remember, the Montagnards/Jacobins were actually, sincerely, genuinely leading a war in the name of Universal Rights against the "Coalition of Kings and Tyrants". It wasn't a hollow, cynical slogan hiding a need for oil or, in their case, wheat - though this did become a matter of debate when the armies started being victorious.) That's how much power they had to change the course of history. And that's why they were "terrifying" to the establishment.

Much cooler than just another military dude IMO.

[helhauus]

oooh could you draw something with saint-just, philippe, and elisabeth?? sj’s friendship with them is so underrated

here’s the lovely little trio! elisabeth was a dear to draw <3

[neirien-of-ennorath]

Important silly image that's been living in my head rent free for ages:

Magical girl Saint Just and Le Bas defeating vampire Schneider

plz excuse me

[1794robespierre]

There is a cocarde tricolore on the grave.😭😭😭😭

[lemurious]

Only so many names can become titles of history books, earn chapters of their own, spur heated discussions; when hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands write the history of days and (if fortunate, only if fortunate) years, together, without a blueprint and with little hope for success - only sheer determination and conviction; to serve.

To follow, and what some might call a slight becomes a matter of pride; to serve the republic and those who have been building it, up until the moment when no alternative seems honorable - when no alternative seems possible; and somehow, it still feels like death should have only been an interlude, when there was so much more left to live.

What if is particularly poignant in this case; when should you decide to fight another day, another year; would your skills, your abilities, be used to serve, and not to waste what you have built? How many others have faced this choice, after this Revolution and others to follow?

We may not know the count, but that does not protect us from having to face the same choice; even now, even these days, some of us already have. The stakes may not be life and death, but the questions remain: what will you serve? what lines will you cross? what compromises will be made? and will they be worth it? May we have the integrity and the clarity to find our own answers.

Happy birthday, Philippe Le Bas.

[misscalming]

It’s my birthday so I sketched my favourite Scorpio :3