Three unpublished speeches by Momoro (Ventôse year II)
I found all of these speeches thanks to the work of the historian Albert Mathiez. The annotations are also his. Here is the link: “Trois discours inédits de Momoro (Ventôse an II)” on JSTOR here Trois discours inédits de Momoro (Ventôse an II) sur JSTOR .
These are Momoro’s last speeches before his arrest and later his execution.
Here is the first speech:
“It seems that today one blushes to possess good faith, and that people have taken it upon themselves to make perfidy triumph. Is cowardice to be the order of the day?
As is moderantism? We no longer recognize one another; we approach each other only with distrust. The purest principles, the most laudable intentions are criminalized. A swarm of other malefactors skillfully poisons everything, and under the mask of hypocrisy they want to pass for virtuous. The germ of moderantism is on the verge of a terrifying development; if one does not hasten to stop it, soon everything will be swallowed up in the abyss of despair. But no—the republicans have courage; they will display it to uphold the rights of man and to put to death any individual who threatens the sovereignty of the people (Declaration of Rights, art. 27).
Journalists in the pay of the moderantists, of those who still carry in their hearts the mourning of royalty, took advantage of their impunity to slander with audacity the Society of the Cordeliers (1). With this counter-revolutionary measure, they wanted to mislead public opinion in order to save criminals whose punishment has long been vainly demanded (2). They wanted the crimes of these scoundrels to fall back upon the most ardent defenders of the rights of citizens. It was quite natural for these rogues to attribute to their accusers the misdeeds they themselves committed against the sovereignty of the people (3).
It also fits well into their infamous plans to assassinate the friends of Marat so as to escape the avenging sword of the law; but the people will never be deceived, and the rogues who seek to mislead them will always learn to know its justice.
In vain would they seek to surround the ardent republicans with terror; these have devoted themselves, and nothing will prevent them from speaking the truths they guarantee with their very heads. Will they be more exposed than they were at the Champ de Mars? (4)
Terror must be the order of the day against scoundrels: such is the wish of the revolutionary government. Such is the aim of the Committee of Public Safety, which we have constantly defended against the slanderous atrocities of the Philipotins. Such is the aim of the Mountain, which we shall likewise defend with the Sans-Culottes. The Mountain is the gathering of republican virtues. Only those who possess them may sit there, according to the will of the people. Those who lack them cannot defend with dignity the cause of liberty, which rests upon all the virtues. This is the mortal combat of virtue against crime. Make virtue triumph, and the people will soon enjoy the happiness that liberty promises them. We form no other wish. The Revolution is not made for individuals in particular, but for the mass of the people".
(1) These “paid journalists” are Camille Desmoulins, who had attacked the Hébertists with exceptional violence in Le Vieux Cordelier, and Guffroy, who joined in through Rougyff.
(2) Amar, in fact, allowed his report on the Chabot affair to drag on beyond permissible limits. He did not even interrogate the administrators of the East India Company, and the Hébertists could plausibly wonder whether he was not an accomplice of the rogues.
(3) Fabre d’Églantine had had Ronsin, Vincent, and Manuel arrested, who were released on 14 Pluviôse.
(4) Allusion to the massacre of republicans at the Altar of the Fatherland on 14 July 1791. Momoro had been imprisoned after the massacre. See my book on the Club of the Cordeliers.
Second speech by Momoro:
The context is that Momoro delivered this second speech when he was president of the Cordeliers Club, in response to the delegation of Jacobins led by Collot d’Herbois.
Club of the Cordeliers
Session of 17 Ventôse, Year II of the French Republic
RESPONSE OF MOMORO,
President of the Society,
to the Delegation of the Society of the Jacobins
"Citizens, brothers and friends, deputies of the Society of the Jacobins,
The enemies of liberty, those mutes who have borrowed the mask of patriotism in order to oppress patriots and destroy the salutary effects of the Revolution, have shamelessly deceived the Committee of Public Safety. The Jacobin Society as well has been misled, and the Cordeliers are glad to see their brothers and friends among them, to give them a new proof of their inviolable attachment to the immortal Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The veil that the Society instantly cast over this picture during the most critical moments of oppression—when these rights were being violated with too much audacity across the entire Republic—this veil it is now going to tear away. If this measure, at first judged necessary, has been unable to lend itself to the seditious designs of the aristocracy, with which the Cordeliers can have nothing in common, the Society will show you even more clearly, by its devoted love of liberty, that it also declares it will uphold those precious rights by every means and with all the energy it displayed in the great events of the Revolution.
The scoundrels who would dare to slander a Society that has at all times been so feared by aristocrats would indeed be cowards! Any faction that declares itself against the defenders of the rights of man will have only ephemeral success; it will pass like the others, and Liberty alone will remain.
We know only Principles. Men are nothing in our eyes when personal considerations endanger those principles; yet we also defend the rights of man in the persons of oppressed patriots. It is well known that the Cordeliers—the true Cordeliers—have never served any faction, that they have foiled them all, and that they will foil them still. Why, then, should one speak to us of Men, we who know only Principles? Justice must be done to the defenders of the rights of man!
Brothers and friends, men are judged by their actions. The Cordeliers have proved themselves—together with the good Jacobins, for Jacobin and Cordelier must be one, since they fight for the maintenance of the same principles. Woe to him who has sowed, and three times woe to him who would dare to sow, division among us who have served the fatherland so well! We must say it, and the annals of the two societies offer the most evident proof of it.
Brothers and friends, convey to the Society of the Jacobins the expression of our sentiments, the manifestation of our principles. Tell them that our institution is the Declaration of Rights, that we will defend it like Marat—whose heart was among us, and whose principles are engraved in flaming characters upon our souls. Tell the Society that together we shall overthrow the oppressors of patriotism; that the energy of their character will assert itself in all perilous circumstances; and that, despite the slanderers, the royalists, the moderates, or the false patriots, we will remain clinging fast to the edifice of the Republic. It shall not be overthrown.
Come often, brothers and friends, among us. Let us enlighten one another on the dangers of the Fatherland and on our duties; you will always find us ready to defend the Republic.
Long live the true Montagnards, long live the French Republic, one and indivisible!"
Here is Momoro’s final speech, delivered on 22 Ventôse. It is likely that he never had the chance to have it printed, as he was arrested shortly afterward.
"A Well-Defined Conspiracy
Against the people and against the most zealous, the most steadfast defenders of their sacred rights, of Liberty, of Equality.
The Awful System of Moderation
Those who fear the scaffolds wish to destroy them. We will not remain silent; we will proclaim the terrible truths that they so fear, and the enlightened people, aware of the secret and perfidious schemes of their most dangerous enemies, will know how to do justice to their true friends.
Marat, invoked now because he can no longer be feared, is insulted every day by these moderates, by these infamous royalists, who have the audacity to openly proclaim themselves his friends. Marat dragged the moderates through the mud, and they remain there in the public eye for eternity, relying on their audacity as scoundrels assured of impunity.
It is in vain that one tries to deceive public opinion; it is in vain that monsters who dare to attack the sovereignty of the people by violating all the rights of nature and citizens attempt it. We repeat it, we say it loudly, and with the deep confidence we have in the virtues of the people: they will not succeed in turning against the true friends of the people an indignation reserved only for the villains.
The people have always loved Marat, admiring the courage he displayed in proclaiming harsh truths amidst the daggers of assassins who had placed a bounty on his head.
Know the people better, monsters, who seek to agitate them and to turn against themselves weapons that liberty has placed in their hands solely to secure their happiness, by crushing all the rogues, hypocrites, and ambitious…
The people have never served the passions of individuals; to think otherwise would be an insult. The people have only ever served their own cause; it is that cause they will defend with all the energy given to them by their love of liberty and hatred of tyranny.
With these great principles established, these eternal truths well recognized, we shall now expose the perfidious system of those cowardly men who, because they lack energy, criminalize those who have it; because they are weak, wish to criminalize those with greater courage, and seek to destroy a revolution founded on all virtues. Those who, having filled their coffers through embezzlement, want to silence those who denounce them; who, for their own interests, seek to propagate in public offices the inseparable vices of prosperity to ensure the happiness of their fellow citizens, refuse to be reminded of the principles of liberty and equality they openly violate; who, because reasoning puts them out of line, resist being brought back; who, because their intellect surpasses that of the good-faith sans-culottes, wish that people do not distrust their often perfidious and dangerous eloquence; who, because they are friends of the patriots, true friends of liberty, acting from their heart without consulting them, want to criminalize even the purest, most laudable virtues, thereby misleading public opinion.
Today they renew the measures of 1789, proposed by the infamous court of the tyrant and executed by the no less infamous Châtelet.
The trial of the patriots of the Champ-de-Mars, who escaped the assassin’s blade of the royalists, is still recent. The murky proceedings related to the events of June 20 have not yet been erased from the pages of history.
Finally, at every remarkable epoch of our revolution, we know that those who initiated these moments, after the first moments of terror that struck the villains, were persecuted and mercilessly thrown into dungeons.
How many arbitrary arrests of the most devoted patriots occurred during these different periods! It is enough to recall the massacres of La Chapelle, of the Champ-de-Mars, of Nancy, of Vincennes, where even young children were thrown into chains.
Well, citizens, the faction of the moderates today follows the same path. They are unmasked; they see themselves doomed; the people already know all the plots, revealed to them by Marat’s friends. Their only remaining means of saving themselves is to hasten the destruction of the ardent republicans who have unmasked them.
What has this faction, which conspires only in the shadows, done? They sought to gather all the scoundrels into their ranks, and there are many. It was easy for them to align them with their cause. They spoke to them of clemency: they hinted at hope, promised to overlook their crimes, lulled them with an ideal happiness, and, as the rogues feared the scaffold, they said: “Let us destroy the scaffold and you will all be saved.” But they were mistaken in their hopes.
The Committee of Public Safety saw this system of oppression and declared: “Let us ensure the inviolability of the properties of patriots, banish the enemies of the Revolution, and let their wealth serve public prosperity!” (1).
This salutary decree was enacted; henceforth, on one side, patriots redoubled their efforts to unmask the traitors, the moderates, the hypocrites; on the other, the faction revealed all the cunning and perfidy that could be used to tarnish the most ardent patriots in public opinion. They said: “In this way, we will turn the second provision of the decree against them.” But the trap was too crude to succeed.
However, through intrigue, they succeeded in sowing momentary doubt about the purity of the patriots’ intentions; they criminalized their energy, skillfully spreading the notion that this energy was merely a counter-revolutionary movement. To support such odious rumors, they sought to destroy in public opinion the formidable and feared Cordeliers society; they claimed it was divided from the Jacobins, and to make people believe this fictitious division existed, they alienated the two societies from fraternal explanations, when in fact no division ever existed on principles defended with energy.
These clarifications exposed the villains and unmasked new traitors. The moderates trembled at the energy of the Cordeliers, so fearful that they saw nothing around them but scaffolds. Yet again, they agitated to bring down those who led them there, who would lead them there, or who would perish themselves because they had more courage than the scoundrels.
Searches, investigations, subpoenas, declarations of anti-liberty plots—all was employed; all who wished to speak were heard; many lost their property, while others, judging only by passion, unknowingly served the faction’s designs. What will be the outcome? It is easy to guess. What was the outcome of the 1790 proceedings, the Champ-de-Mars trial? The people will triumph again, and liberty will be purified of the insects who dare cling to it to deform it.
Did this villainous faction believe they could approach a revolutionary tribunal composed of patriots as they approached the infamous Châtelet? The conduct of the tribunal must have proved to them that only villains end up on the scaffold. Were others sent? But the faction burns to make as many Chaliers as there are patriots pursuing it.
The tribunal itself will pursue it, as it pursues the enemies of the people’s happiness. All the crimes it committed, which it wishes to attribute to the patriots, will rebound on itself. Soon it will be recognized without doubt that it is this faction that guides the sacrilegious hand which drafted the royalist regrets, circulating them in public markets (2). Soon it will likely be recognized, and all evidence favors this view, that it is this faction that agitates the people by alarming them about their means of subsistence, etc.
Yet there is still a new plot to unmask. Investigations are ongoing against the Marat section, against its president, whom the cowards have not yet dared assassinate.
Because this section adopted a decree, which it presented at the following session, aiming to awaken the magistrates’ concern for the people’s subsistence, the president—who expressed no personal opinion but only put the unanimously requested decree to a vote—was reported against.
And this decree, citizens, could it cast suspicion on the intentions of a section known for its great energy, a section constantly slandered, accused as often as Marat himself, where his spirit resides entirely?
Marat section, is this the reward for all you have done to secure liberty? It is beautiful, it is glorious for you to be persecuted.
Your president, whom the faction seeks to destroy, was once summoned to the Convention’s podium for a vigorous decree adopted by you, and he was honored by the law (3) . You received all the honors of the Marat seat; he ascended it. His fearlessness was proclaimed. You chose the principles of your president.
To pursue a republican, the representative of a section that has done everything for liberty, is the height of madness, and the conspiracy is fully unmasked. Cowardly assassins, if you dare!"
(1)Reference to the decree of 8 Ventôse proposed by Saint-Just.
(2)Reference to the incendiary posters which Momoro disavowed.
(3)On October 6, 1792, the Marseille section decided under the presidency of Momoro to proceed with municipal elections by public ballot. Momoro was brought before the Convention for this on October 13. He explained that the section’s decree predated the Convention decree prohibiting public voting and was thus honored.
