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you should make a dubious charlotte moments compilation at this point

That’s a great idea!

My sister does not have a single drop of blood that resembles ours. I have seen and learned so much about her that I regard her as our greatest enemy. She abuses our spotless reputation to lay down the law on us and threatens to take a scandalous step in order to compromise us. We must take a decisive stand against her. We must make her leave for Arras, and thus take her away from us, a woman who causes our common despair. She would like to give us the reputation of bad brothers, her calumnies spread against us aim at this goal. I would like you to see the citoyenne La Saudraie, she would give you certain information on all the masks that it is interesting to know in these circumstances. A certain Saint-Félix seems to be from the clique. Undated letter from Augustin to Maximilien Robespierre, usually traced to spring 1794

La Flote has charged me with submitting you the papers here enclosed. I don’t know if you know who he is, but one has told me a lot of good things about him, he has come to see my brother, and he is strongly bound to Jauley, Genoan patriot who has translated the proclamation from the representatives who are in Nice. I especially know a virtuous patriot who is also from this friend group. You would do me the pleasure of giving me the proclamation that you have given to M. La Jourdeai. Undated letter from Charlotte to an unknown person, cited in Collection d'autographes, de dessins et de portraits de personnages célèbres, français et étrangers, du XVIe au XIXe siècle, formée par Alexandre Bixio. See also this letter from a certain ”Bruslé, employed by citizen Richard” to Charlotte on April 25 1794.

What Waleff undoubtedly accuses Charlotte and Madame Béguin of to the Revolutionary Committee of the Contract Social [on July 31 1794] is having been friends of the extremist Jacobins of Liège (they cannot be called Hébertists given their hatred of Hébert) and to have released Nihon, who we know had been arrested at the same time as his enemy Fyon in Frimaire Year II, which seemed surprising. The interest of piece III is to teach us that Madame Béguin intimately knew the Nihon-Nahon-Briart group in whose service and confidence she was, that indeed Nihon had been arrested at the same time as Fyon, but released almost immediately on the orders of the Jacobins (Madame Béguin denies having had anything to do with this release, but declares that she was content to announce it to Nihon, to whom she brought food in prison). As for Charlotte, she claims to have known nothing, but nevertheless cites Mermet (or Mermey) certainly from Liège, according to the context, whom she often saw, not only at Madame Béguin’s house, but at her own. Charlotte Robespierre et ses amis (1961) by Gabriel Pioro, and Pierre Labracherie, in Annales Historiques de La Révolution Française 33, no. 166. Unfortunately, the interrogation where Charlotte says this has not been published. It was at Madame Béguin’s house Charlotte was arrested on July 31 1794.

Fouché had shown the most ardent patriotism, the most sacred devotion since the beginning of the revolution. My brother, who believed him sincere, had accorded him his friendship and his esteem; he spoke to me of him as a proven democrat, and introduced him to me in praising him and asking me to give him my esteem. Fouché, after having been introduced to me by my brother, came to see me assiduously, and had those regards and attentions that one has for a person in whom one is particularly interested. Fouché was not handsome, but he had a charming wit and was extremely amiable. He spoke to me of marriage, and I admit that I felt no repugnance for that bond, and that I was well enough disposed to accord my hand to he whom my brother had introduced to me as a pure democrat and his friend. […] Despicable words have been spoken about me on the subject of that man, some have dared to say that I was his mistress before and after 9 Thermidor; this is an abominable calumny! Never did Fouché cease to have the greatest respect for me; and if in his discourse he had included any words tending to make me neglect my duty, I would have left him that very instant. Besides, Fouché had only sought my hand because my eldest brother occupied premier place on the political stage. Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1834) page 122-123. Charlotte places the courtship in the midst of the revolution, which can hardly be true given the fact Fouché was already married by then. With that in mind, you have to wonder from where those mistress claims (did they actually exist) really stemmed…

…A lady, who had had relations with Mme. Couthon, proposed to introduce me to her, and advised me, if we succeeded in approaching the husband, to plead the cause of my unfortunate compatriots. She succeeded in overcoming my repugnance, and soon in even making me regard the signal favour of being admitted to the presence of this influential member of the Committee of Public Safety as a Heaven-sent blessing. We arrived... Couthon […] wore a white dressing-gown, and on his arm was a young rabbit which he was feeding with clover. His son, an angelically beautiful boy of three or four, alternately stroked his father's hand and the pretty white animal. These innocent sourroundings and Couthon's great affability charmed me. ”In what way can I be of service to you, Monsieur?” he asked. ”A gentleman who is recommended to me by Madame is entitled to my warmest regard.” So I related the misadventure which had befallen my poor judges, and asked what advice I could give them. […] [Later], [p]ersuaded that Couthon was sincere I said to him: ”Monsieur Couthon, you who are all-powerful on the Committee of Public Safety, are you aware that the Revolutionary Tribunal daily condemns unfortunate men who are accused of the same crime as these magistrates? This very day, Monsieur Couthon, sixty-three prisoners are to be executed under this pretext.” This reflection produced an indescribable effect on Couthon: his face became distorted and assumed a tiger-like expression… He made a movement. The rabbit was overturned and the child, weeping, rushed into his mother's arms... Couthon had seized the bell-rope, but the person who had introduced me threw herself upon him and held him in his armchair. ”Escape!” she exclaimed, with an emotion which chilled me with fright. Then, lowering her voice: ”Go and wait for me in the orangery!” I descended with lightning-like rapidity, and reached the end of the Terrasse des Feuillants at the top of my speed. As soon as I saw my guardian angel approaching in the distance, I rushed towards her and asked for an explanation of what had just happened. ”The wretched man,” she replied, ”merely wanted to discover your inmost thoughts. Your cutting reproach was like a dagger-thrust in his heart. I, like yourself, thought that he was sincere! Couthon, like all the members of the Committee of Public Safety, has five or six guardsmen stationed at his house, and he was about to summon them when I held him in his chair. You would have been placed this very day in the fatal tumbril with the sixty-three victims of whom you spoke! Fortunately, I have succeeded in making him ashamed of the crime which he was about to commit against one whom I had introduced to him in confidence. I attentively followed everything you said. He is ignorant of the fact that you do not live in Paris… Return home quickly, but, for fear you are recognised, do not travel by the ordinary route. And, finally, profit by this lesson.” I set off there and then without seeing anybody in Paris. The judges remained immured until the death of this man Couthon, of whom I cannot think without shuddering. Anecdote written by Maurice Gaillard, published in Romances of the French Revolution (1909) by G. Lenotre, volume 1, page 171-173. On the original document is written: ”This memorandum was written by the person who presented himself at Couthon's house, and has been handed to the Duc d'Otrante (Fouché), at his request.” The ”lady” here was revealed to be Charlotte when the story was retold in Gaillard’s memoirs La Révolution, la Terreur, le Directoire 1791-1799: d’après les mémoires de Gaillard (1908) page 263-272, where it was further revealed that Gaillard had enjoyed telling this anecdote to other of his friends as well.

In fact, [Lebon] returned to Paris for two 24-hour long periods. He spoke to the committee, to Lebas, to Saint-Just and to Robespierre. He was very diligent with the latter. His sister, worthy of the esteem of all good citizens, reproached him for his cruelty; he denied it, and under the pretext of making her an eyewitness, he brought Robespierre’s sister with him. The brothers wanted to get rid of her: their correspondence proves it. Lebon had her denounced to the popular society of Arras, by his cutthroats, as an aristocrat. Her apparent crime, and at least the pretext for her arrest must have been, having been at the house of Payen de Neuville la Liberté (where Lebon had been priest), an estimable farmer whom Lebon had guillotined, and brother of another Payen, member of the constituent assembly who had served as father and friend to Robespierre and who Lebon had similarly guillotined, for not having been at his constitutional mass. Fortunately for Robespierre's sister, she did not stay in Arras; she had the opportunity to go to Lille to see Florent Guyot who brought her back directly to Paris; because otherwise it would have been done with this estimable girl, who sold her portion of patrimony to support her brothers. Sorrows born very prior to their punishment damaged her health, to the point of making her incapable of long work. Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices (1794) by Armand Joseph Guffroy, page 180-181. Similar claims are made in an undated letter Guffroy wrote to the Committee of General Security to help Charlotte out: ”They (the brothers) drove her out of their house because she did not think like they did, because she came to see my wife and because she saw citizens who were sincere friends of justice and truth. She even exposed herself to prosecution when Lebon took her to Arras, and without Florent Guyot, who brought her back to Paris, she would have been imprisoned there, because Lebon’s accomplices had denounced her in their infernal club which they called popular society.”

#charlotte robespierre #to read #ressources #frev

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SALUT ET FRATERNITÉ, CITOYENS

ON THIS SATURDAY, 14 THERMIDOR, YEAR 234 OF THE FRENCH FIRST REPUBLIC (August 1 for non-revolutionaries who shall be guillotined shortly), I SHALL BE PRESENTING MY THESIS ON HOW ROBESPIERRE FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION WOULD HAVE BEEN A TUMBLR SEXYMAN IF TUMBLR HAD EXISTED IN THE 1790S, MEANING HE HAD A BAFFLINGLY LARGE FANBASE AMONG A PARTICULAR TYPE OF GIRLIES DESPITE HIS UTTER LACK OF CONVENTIONAL SEX APPEAL

IT SHALL TAKE PLACE FROM 5:30PM TO 6:30PM EST AT DASHCON 2: VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION @dashcon-two. IF YOU CANNOT ATTEND IN PERSON IN TORONTO, YOU CAN ATTEND THE PANEL ONLINE VIA VIRTUAL DASHCON 2 (which will take place on Discord because of course it will). TICKETS HERE.

LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ, OU LA MORT

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anotherhumaninthisworld

On March 9 1794, a provincial Revolutionary Tribunal was established in Arras, to run under the authority of representative on mission Joseph Lebon, a former priest of the town who in 1792 had taken off the cassock to instead turn fully to politics. This tribunal was the only one exempted when the Convention a month later, 16 April 1794, passed the decree of 27 Germinal, which otherwise ruled that all future counter-revolutionary suspects were to be sent to and tried in Paris. Instead, the Committee of Public Safety gave Lebon permission to keep the tribunal running and even ordered him to set up a second one in Cambrai. Together, the two tribunals came to judge almost 700 people from the entire department of Pas-de-Calais, and about 70% were sentenced to death (see this and this post for a detailed summary of all the sentences).

Lebon’s activities were however not without opponents. In the forefront stood Armand Joseph Guffroy, him too a Convention deputy from Arras, who later detailed his efforts in the pamphlet Les Secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices, released a few months after thermidor. Guffroy, who just earlier that year had embraced the most extreme revolutionary violence in his journal Roygyff (examples can be seen here), does not seem to have been mainly affected by the massive bloodletting in itself as much as by the fact Lebon on April 19 1794 had ordered the arrest of three prominent members of the Arras Revolutionary Tribunal — the public prosecutor Henri Joseph Démuliez, the president of the tribunal Norbert Beugniet, and the jury member Gabriel Leblond. In the following days, the three were joined by Leblond’s brother Joseph Leblond, as well as by another jury member named Danten. Nevertheless, Guffroy was able to find supporters both in Augustin and Charlotte Robespierre, Antoine and Charlotte Buissart and relatives of the five arrested public officials.

But Lebon was not without allies either, among them Arras’ new public prosecutor Augustin Darthé, Cambrai’s Revolutionary tribunal president Stanislas Daillet and representatives on mission Philippe Lebas and Ernest Duquesnoy. Between April and July these two groups fought over the fate of the five arrested public officials, trying to gain the trust of the CPS, and, in particular, Robespierre. If we look at the conflict from his POV which is clearly the most important part of this situation in particular, it’s easy to imagine it provided him with some worry, since it would appear he had personal connections to people on both sides of it: Daillet and Darthé both show up on a list of ”patriots with more or less talent” he had written in private (and the former, if Guffroy is to be believed, was also such a close personal friend he was the only one Robespierre trusted to properly tie his cravat), while the Buissart couple seemed to have functioned a bit like substitute parents for him and his siblings. Philippe Lebas was a trusted ally and friend who on 9 Thermidor would ask to share his fate, the arrested Gabriel Leblond had in 1791 named his newborn son after him, and on November 9 1793 Robespierre had openly defended Duquesnoy before the entire Convention. As for the two main opponents Guffroy and Lebon, Robespierre had known them both since several years back. He had corresponded with Lebon since at least 1791 (letters dated 3 June 1791, 15 August 1792 and 28 August 28 1792) and Lebon had also helped Augustin Robespierre get elected to the Convention. The relationship with Guffroy ran even further back, to when the two had worked as lawyers before the revolution, and Guffroy had too under the early years of the revolution kept Robespierre updated on the political development his hometown. Their relationship had however started to sour already around a year before the start of this episode, when Guffroy had tried to stop the marriage between Philippe Lebas and Élisabeth Duplay (as revealed both by Guffroy himself and Élisabeth in her memoirs). Élisabeth writes he did so by falsely telling Philippe she had had lovers so that he would marry Guffroy’s own (already pregnant) daughter instead, and that both of the Robespierre brothers held him in ”great contempt.” Furthermore, on March 3 1794 Guffroy had gotten expelled from the jacobins after his journal was denounced as counter-revolutionary, and, most serious of all, halfway through June 1794 it would appear like he secretly joined a group of fellow Convention deputies that behind the scene was plotting to Julius Caesar Robespierre…

So hey, if anyone wants an original idea for an angst fic, here you go!

—

16 April — the Convention passes the decree of 27 Germinal, which among other things proclaims that from now on, all people suspected of conspiracy shall be tried in Paris. (decree cited in Gazette Nationale ou le Moniteur universel, number 198 (April 17 1794), page 845)

18 April — Stanislas Daillet writes a letter to Robespierre in which he calls the decree of 27 Germinal ”very wise,” but asks that the Arras tribunal be exempted from it. The reason for this, he argues, is that they have local knowledge of all the ”aristocrats” in the city, knowledge that would escape a parisian jury. Daillet assures Robespierre that ”we show no mercy to anyone; we strike with certainty, because we know the morality of each individual.”

19 April — the Committee of Public Safety authors the following decree, declaring that the city of Arras shall be excluded from the decree of 27 germinal:

The Committee of Public Safety, instructed by the representative Lebon of the circumstances that makes a tribunal in Arras necessary to repress conspiracy, decides that said tribunal will continue to exercise its functions. Billaud-Varennes, C-A Prieur, Robespierre.

19 April — in Arras, Lebon issues a decree ordering the arrest of Beugniet, president of the city’s revolutionary tribunal, Gabriel Leblond, jury member, Démuliez, public prosecutor, as well as Démuliez’s substitute Peltier, all ”suspected of plotting to wrest the aristocrats from the sword of the law.” The decree also orders for the city’s surveillance committee (which Leblond was the leader of) to be suspended from its functions and for its members to be examined. The same day, one of said members writes a letter to Guffroy stating: ”My friend, quick, save my country and yours, have me sent to Paris: I’m maybe going to die. They are arresting the patriots… the entire Committee is suspended...” Soon thereafter, he flees from Arras to Paris.

When Lebon the following year sets out to explain his conduct during ”the terror,” he claims that Démuliez and Leblond ”had for over a year been accused of succumbing to corruption and malfeasance in office,” but that what determined him to finally act against them and Béugniet was the fact that they on April 14 had acquitted an accused that Lebon thought deserved death, and then on April 18 and 19 ”together with various members of the Committee of Surveillance and several other individuals, sought to incite a reaction by in coffeehouses and public squares criticizing and railing against the severity of revolutionary measures.” (Deuxième interrogatoire du représentant Joseph Lebon (1795), page 3, Joseph Lebon à la Convention nationale: lettres justificatives n. 4 (1795) page 9)

7 May — Guffroy writes a letter to Robespierre, after having been unable to meet him both at the Committee of Public Safety and at his house. The letter is filled with grave accusations against Lebon, Guffroy writing only an ”extravagant despot” or ”vapid tyrant” can act the way he currently does in Arras, a city that at the moment is ”filled with mourning” and where no one dares to speak or write freely. Lebon is preaching both atheism and the absolute sharing of property, to the extent that one hears citizens openly state: ”We can do whatever we want, there is no God.” His attachment to the Oratory has led to him giving six or seven Oratorians important posts, even having made a former Capuchin friar public prosecutor. Lebon also threatens and dismisses jury members that don’t vote for the punishment ”that he himself has decided upon” and then he has ”the ferocity” to watch the executions from the theater balcony and have Ça ira played while people are getting guillotined. Guffroy concludes that Lebon is either ”atrociously cruel and punishable, or horribly insane.” He hopes for the latter alternative, underlining that Lebon was considered ”insane” and ”mad with fanaticism” back when he was an Oratorian, and that both of his parents are insane as well, the mother even being locked up as such at the moment. Guffroy also takes up the cudgets for the four ”patriots” — ”If, as I believe, justice is the order of the day in your heart, you won’t do anything today before having secured the oppressed patriotism of Démuliez, Beugnet and the two Leblonds, that Lebon persecute with a guilty achernement for having displayed a just opinion contrary to his own.” Guffroy claims that if they hadn’t been in Paris they would have already been guillotined at this point. He demands Robespierre receive Démuliez for him to explain himself, as he had apparently already promised him, and that the Committee of Public Safety must immediately also charge the Committee of General Security with temporarily setting all four patriots free so that they can hand over a declaration they’ve written. Finally, Guffroy begs Robespierre to ”in the name of the homeland” recall Lebon and replace him with someone else. Had Augustin Robespierre not been away with the army he would have been the best alternative, but for the moment he instead suggests sending ”Florent Guyot with Bollet” to check up all the information contained both in this letter and in notes he has previously given Collot d’Herbois. He also suggests sending Delbrel, Élie Lacoste and Peyssart to Arras with the four patriots’ declaration, and if said declaration, ”AS I’M SURE, is exact” Lebon can be recalled. After having recalled Lebon he also proposes sending Buissard, Delleville, Milhaud, Danten, Lefebvre Roche and Durut in his place.

16 May — Lebon is back in Paris. We have different accounts over his short stay there. Lebon, when defending himself a year later, claimed the committee called him back to ask him to establish two new revolutionary tribunals, one in Saint-Quentin, the other in Guise. To that, he did however reply that he ”[didn’t] know enough honest and dedicated men for these delicate and rigorous duties.” (statement cited in La terreur dans le Pas-de-Calais et dans le Nord (1864), volume 2, page 161). In a letter written May 19, Darthé reports that ”the Committee of Public Safety gave [Lebon] all the justice he deserved, and his slanderers were covered with the contempt and opprobrium that their infamous conduct has long brought upon them,” that the committee told him that ”it hoped we would get better and better every day,” while Robespierre personally stated he ”would like each of us to be able to form a tribunal on our own and each seize a border town.” Guffroy for his part writes Lebon stayed in Paris for only 24 hours, and that he spoke to both the Committee of Public Safety as a whole, Saint-Just and Lebas (this can hardly be true given the fact they were with the Army of the North at the time) and Robespierre personally, whom he treated ”very diligently.” Guffroy also claims Charlotte Robespierre confronted Lebon during this visit and ”reproached him for his cruelty.” Lebon did however deny it and under pretext of proving it he brought Charlotte with him when he shortly thereafter set out for Cambrai again. (Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices, page 180). To this last allegation can be added an undated letter from Augustin to Maximilien Robespierre, telling him they need to send Charlotte to Arras since she is caluminating the two, and the memoirs of Maurice Gaillard which they too record Charlotte to in May 1794 have ”named [for Gaillard] with great bitterness the prodigious number of very honest people dragged to the scaffold by Joseph Lebon.” Gaillard claims Charlotte willingly travelled to Arras in order to ”collect evidence of the massacres,” but that Maximilien ”devoted mortal hatred” to her because of it.

18 June — Guffroy and the newly released Danten run into Collot d’Herbois in the Tuilerie garden. Guffroy complains to Collot about Lebon’s conduct and the fact he has gotten Gabriel Leblond arrested again and is trying to go after Démuliez and the other Leblond as well (he claims he was left unaware of the committee’s order six days earlier revoking the decree setting the ”patriots” free). Collot listens half-heartedly before responding: ”We need memorandums.” Guffroy briskly responds: ”I know very well the way affairs are treated, but for fuck’s sake, I’ve already given memorandums to you, to Robespierre, to Couthon, to the Committee…” Collot walks away as Guffroy rants on. (Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices, page 125) Ten o’clock in the evening the same day, Guffroy writes to Collot and Robespierre, having been directed to those two whenever he tried to speak with someone else. In the letter to Collot, he suggests that Lebon putting Gabriel Leblond under arrest once again should be enough to result in him getting recalled immediately and send a commission in his place ”as I have already proposed to you [and] Couthon, in my notes and verbally.” In the letter to Robespierre, Guffroy explains that he went over to the Committee of Public Safety the day before but couldn’t find him, which is why he’ll try to write to him instead. He then once again repeats that ”Lebon's conduct in Arras and elsewhere continues to weigh on the patriots,” lamenting the fact that he at this point has written to Robespierre about the issue four or five times without getting a response. He reminds Robespierre that, in spite of the Committee of Public Safety having set the patriots free, Lebon continues to ”vex” them, and that he’s succeeded in rearresting Gabriel Leblond ”whose child you are godfather to” (this information would appear to be incorrect, Leblond had on the other hand named the child after Robespierre). Guffroy ends by declaring it the duty of both him and Robespierre to ”put an end to this oppressive conduct,” that he’s going to tell the Convention everything and that ”the truth and public happiness” obliges Robespierre to support him. Finally, he lets him know he’s talked to Couthon about the issue this very morning and is going to write to him.

23 June — Joseph Leblond goes to the Convention and asks that his brother be released, affirming that a ”hébertist system” is in control of the Commune of Arras and ”the warmest patriots” have been imprisoned there. He explains how he and ”several other patriots from 1789” were transported to Paris and ”treated with an unprecedented inhumanity on the part of the men surrounding your colleague (Lebon)” before being set free by the Committee of Public Safety, but that Lebon despite this had his brother rearrested ”without there being any new charges against him,” and that he too would meet the same fate if he tried to return to Arras. ”So I throw myself into the arms of the Convention, with this surrender of a truly republican soul, and ask only for the full and complete execution of the decree issued by the Committee of Public Safety on 18 Prairial (the decree setting Leblond and the others free, though it was actually written on 17 Prairial), and the right to have my weapons, my accounting papers, my equipment and my horses returned to me.” Guffroy supports Leblond’s speech before denouncing Lebon in his turn, calling him ”the terror of the patriots of Arras” where ”patriotism is oppressed and in mourning, popular society scattered, shops closed, citizens trembling and fleeing their homes, the local farmer discouraged, the officials chosen by the people replaced by monks, priests and lackeys, blood shed, the prisons overflowing, and the action of the revolutionary government thwarted.” The Convention proposes that the decree from 17 prairial be faithfully executed, that the citizens of Arras and those with knowledge about the political situation in the city within three days write what they know to the two government committes to serve as an examination of Lebon’s conduct, and for the committees to make a report on whether it would be useful to send a commission made up of three people to Arras to examine things. These three proposals are then sent to the Committee of Public Safety to be looked over. (Moniteur universel, number 277 (25 June 1794), page 1130, Journal de la Montagne, number 58, page 474)

28 June — Antoine Buissart writes a letter to Robespierre, beginning by reproaching him for his silence: ”it’s been a month since I last wrote to you, and it seems to me, Maximilien, like you sleep and let the patriots be slaughtered.” He writes that Guffroy’s recent ”alarm” has put the schemers, made up entirely of ”priests and servants” into action, and throws shade on a petition that has just been signed in Arras to asservate Lebon and is to be presented to the Convention, writing that while ”all good citizens” were encouraged to publically sign it, ”cunning and treachery” were employed, and that those who didn’t sign got told that they would pay for it dearly later. Commissioners also made sure to write down all signatories on a seperate list, making it easy to see who had ”the courage not to sign.” Buissart reveals that he belongs to this group ”because I have made it my duty never to sign anything against the truth and the salvation of the public good, whatever terror a guillotine at the disposal of priests might inspire.” He points out that the commune of Arras houses 20 000 inhabitants, while the petition has been signed by only 3000 people, of which he insists one must subtract those who have been sold off for three months (which he judges to be around half of them), as well as those of women and those of boys aged 12-15. Buissart therefore urges Robespierre not to trust the petition, adding that one of the two commissioners who have been sent to deliver it to the Convention is an administrator by the name of Carlier, who since a month back has ”much injured” both him, his wife and Charlotte Robespierre: ”you must know that since then, I am a conspirator in the eyes of this famous Carlier, and my wife and your sister are two schemers. Should such infamies ever be uttered publicly if the people hadn't been corrupted beforehand?” Buissart then once again asks Robespierre to help them out: ”grant nothing to friendship, but everything to justice! Do not see me, see only the public good, and perhaps yourself, since you defend it so well.” He announces that this letter will be handed to Robespierre by his wife (who at that point is in Paris or just about to go there), ”because I don’t have the greatest confidence in your secretary, and the same goes for many other people that surround you.” Finally, he ends by asking when Augustin Robespierre is coming to Arras: ”when will Bonbon come, so desired, him alone can calm the evils that sadden our homeland.”

1 July — Guffroy sends Barère his Censuré républicaine ou Lettre aux Français habitants d’Arras et des communes environnantes, à la Convention nationale et à l’opinion publique, an 80 pages long pamphlet which begins with the revelations that ”my fellow citizens of Arras and its surroundings are oppressed, I will name the subordinate despots who silenced them, who imprisoned them, I don’t fear the despicable threats from their persecutors.” Before doing that, Guffroy does however spend 30 pages with citing long passages from reports made by Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes and Saint-Just over the past year to show that the CPS most definitely must have his back regarding this matter (for example, he underlines the following part from Robespierre’s Rapport sur les principes de la morale politique (February 1794): ”perish the scroundrel who dares to abuse the sacred law of liberty to carry death and sorrow into the heart of patriots!” (page 30). After that, he finally gets around to naming his enemy — ”It is with the unyielding rod of austere virtue that I forge the political dagger with which I’m going to strike you, Joseph Lebon.” He accuses Lebon of having made people tremble to just pass through Arras, of using child soldiers as young as nine without the government’s knowledge, of also leading children into denouncing their parents and going through all letters in the commune before they get sent off, of having arrested farmers only for not having attended constitutional mass, of preaching atheism, of watching executions while playing Ça ira, of having discredited national estates and the property of emigrants, of threatening people with the sabre he’s always carrying and saying he’ll cut their stomachs open, of having allowed people to threaten Buissart with an arrest warrant for corresponding with Carnot, Robespierre and Guffroy himself in order to ”save our commune from the oppression you subject it to,” and of letting his surveillance committee to strip women naked when searching them. As for Démeuliez, Beugniet, the Leblond brothers and Danten, whom he claims all of Arras recognizes as patriots, he writes the reason Lebon had the first four arrested, imprisoned and sent to Paris was ”to punish them for having the courage to oppose his turbulent orders with the very decrees he was violating,” (42) while the émigré Saint-Rémy that Danten was accused of having ties to actually isn’t an émigré at all. (50-51) He also underlines the fact Lebon also had their wives arrested, one of whom, he claims, had just given birth and had a child that was ill. Towards the end of the pamphlet, Guffroy inserts a footnote in which he reminds Robespierre of how the two used to work as lawyers together before the revolution and how the latter then had much bigger qualms about signing a death warrant than he had. Guffroy writes that he in spite of this has ”more than him the soul exercised in sensitivity, in the love of humanity” than Robespierre, since ”I am a husband and father, he is not.” (page 66) This is the only place in the entire pamphlet he writes something that could resemble criticism of the CPS or its members, otherwise he simply accuses Lebon of having misled them. In Les secrets de Joseph Lebon… (page 150) released the following year, Guffroy recalls that Charlotte Buissart nevertheless would have adviced against including the passage and suggested printing a letter praising Robespierre instead. To that he would have replied ”that Robespierre was deceiving her, toying with her, deceiving the patriots of Arras, deceiving everyone, and I predicted his imminent fate.”

8 July — Guffroy writes a letter to Augustin Robespierre, who has recently returned to Paris after an eight months long mission. Guffroy begins by admitting the letter is long, but that Augustin should read all of it. He suggests they should avoid meeting with each other, ”lest anyone accuse us of plotting against one of our colleagues,” and then says he’s going to give him an account over all the steps he’s taken with the two government committees in this affair, ”so that they do not interfere with those you must take, and which you have undoubtedly already taken, to bring the scoundrels and schemers of Arras to justice.” He brings up his new pamphlet, assuring Augustin that ”I wouldn’t have spoken like that about that madman if the patriots hadn’t been oppressed,” and defends the little jab he took at Maximilien in it: ”You know me, had I wanted to attack your brother in a note, like it is insinuated I did, then I'm loyal enough to do it out loud.” Guffroy then tells Augustin to tell his brother to look over the four or five letters he’s sent to him about the subject and get him to ”renounce the prejudices that ill-intentioned people have given him against me,” as well as to speak to the Committee of General Security members Élie Lacoste, Vadier and Rühl who ”must fear that I am acting with passion, yet they all know my love for the truth.” He complains about having been expelled from the jacobins three months earlier, dismisses the petition from Arras read at the Convention on June 29 as ”a work of violence and cunning,” and accuses Lebon of having gotten elected to the Convention ”only on the basis of negative evidence of his civic-mindedness.” He ends with some encouraging words: ”Courage, brave comrade, put an end to the suffering of the true and sincere friends of liberty in Arras,” and, like Buissart, expresses his surprise over the fact Augustin has not gotten sent to Arras: ”Why don't they put you in charge of restoring order? Only you or I can do it: local knowledge is absolutely necessary.”

2 August — Lebon climbs the tribune of the Convention, but before he’s able to say anything Bourdon d’Oise shouts: ”look at this executioner who served Robespierre!” André Dumont joins in and declares that ”justice has for long been outraged in the Pas-de-Calais and North departments,” and that the ”monster” Lebon has made blood flow, and he ends by asking for his arrest and a report against him. The deputy Clauzel asserts he too thinks Lebon to be a scoundrel, but asks that he be given the floor nevertheless. Lebon then asserts that he, contrary to having served Robespierre, was actually close to becoming his victim — ”this scoundrel sought to bring about my death three décadés ago,” — that he for the past nine months has loyally served his fellow citizens and that the Arras tribunal ran on the CPS’s orders. Poultier objects to this last statement and claims Lebon tore up an order from the CPS. Lebon responds that this is false, that Dumont is speaking against him right now only because the two had some disagreements while on mission together, and that Guffroy has only attacked him to save himself. Lebon puts forward that one year earlier, the same men Guffroy are defending today were denounced in his journal Rougiff because ”these men had discovered, in a clerk's office, a forgery committed by Guffroy, who hastened to Arras to hush up the affair.” Charles Lacroix says Lebon should respond if it is true that ”he committed the monstrous act of keeping a man under the blade of the guillotine for the entire time required to read the news.” Lebon doesn’t deny the charge as a whole, but explains that the condemned hadn’t yet arrived to the scaffold when he started reading. He then declares he wants to be interrogated on all the things the others have to ask him of, and that a commission be set up to deal with his affair. Legendre asks for Lebon’s provisional arrest, a report be made on him and he be given all means to answer it, and the Convention goes through with it. A bit later in the session, Guffroy declares that he will not respond to Lebon’s accusation, ”it is below me,” and also that he ”shall no longer trouble the Convention with this affair.” (Moniteur, number 316 (August 3 1794), page 1294-1295)

#frev #history #charlotte robespierre #ressources #to read

birdytaste

That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is,  So beautiful before, now comic and ugly!  One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe;  Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew!

The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky  Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman;  When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers,  His giant wings prevent him from walking.

— Charles Baudelaire, The Albatross

#parallels between rob and baudelaire's albatross #............. op your mind!!!!!!!!#frev #art #fanart

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bonebeautyart

ok so this is a weird question but in fragments of republican institutions, saint just talks about ‘laws’ ‘institutions’ and ‘mores’ being 3 separate things (at least in the translation i’ve read- i can link it if you like) but when i google the definitions they’re all pretty much the same. could you explain to me the difference?? tysm!!

Oh, okay, this might be a bit long... but I think I can do it. Although I am just seeing the possibility of getting the interpretive work that Anne Quennedy did on Republican Institutions, I have tried to base myself on more recent updates of his work, an available edition that is not of such poor quality is the one by Alienard.

Something that Quennedy mentioned at the time was the mixing of some diverse manuscripts with the theory of Republican Institutions. This can complicate the interpretation work. But I'll do my best to explain myself.

A brief context on the theoretical trends of the 17th and 18th centuries. During these two centuries (which spanned the Enlightenment), it became fashionable to seek the meaning of human nature and the origin of things. Many prestigious theorists (including Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke) had concluded that everything stems from a pact between humans, called the social contract. This social pact between humans was what explained the experience of living in society and the existence of the state, in a very brief summary. While Hobbes argues that for the state to maintain itself, there must be a dominance of subjects among subjects, that all people who belong to a social contract give up some of their freedom to the state, and the state provides them with protection among them. Hobbes assumes that there must be a dominant class (obviously the nobility), because they would be the most "fit" for governance, while the rest of the individuals would be considered too far removed from political matters to be able to exercise another form of organization. Practically, he believed in a strong state that could control everyone, considering that we are inherently evil, violent, and corrupt. Locke, although I'm still getting started on my study, I know a bit about his theories: He defended the existence of a state based on a social contract, where it is assured that, in the natural state of man, one is free and equal, but a common authority must exist. This authority should be a contract of mutual consent, which would guarantee freedom and private property. Additionally, he defended that there are natural rights, the legislation of this contract, should be the law, this should be maintained through the legislative bodies that were born from the contract, such as the powers. (In fact, it was Locke who proposed the division of powers before Montesquieu).

Rousseau is not so far from these conjectures (Locke had a significant influence on Rousseau) The main difference with Rousseau (the reason why vitalists canceled him out in later centuries) was his definitions of nature and general will. The general will is the ability of the people to make decisions based solely on the pursuit of the common good. For Rousseau, this would be the quality of a social contract, where no one would dominate others and everything would be agreed upon for the common good. Additionally, Rousseau defends the idea that humans are good by nature and that they should return to that nature. The biggest problem with this is that Rousseau does not see the human capacity to commit the worst atrocities against itself, and he also ignores that, in reality, a general will is complicated due to the existence of classes, distinctions of privileges, and differences of ideas, which vary from context to context. Additionally, the idea of "common will" is dangerous when the people cannot discern between needs and feelings. Although there are many more theorists who propose other types of structures and convergences: Edmund Burke and Sieyès himself advocate for the creation of new societies by gradually mixing the old system with improvements, but maintaining the same status quo of things (the privileged class).

They all seek through the same concept (very European, by the way) to return to or present a supposed nature of things. As we can already notice, each philosopher has a very different interpretation of what nature means, which, furthermore, is based on Socrates and Plato, who are the ones who determine values such as Ethics, Morality, reason, virtue, vices, arts, etc. These concepts were written as truths. The biggest problem with this is the human aspiration for an ideal; these standards become a point to which we all must and can aspire. Return to the wretch a martyr to aspire to (this is seen in the concept that Plato presents in the dialogue Gorgias, when he argues with the sophists, in which, Socrates as the protagonist, discusses how the one who commits an injustice is the most unfortunate or the least virtuous, and the one who suffers it) These ideas were harshly criticized by Nietzsche, who believed that in the real nature, the most adapted survive, and that it was more desirable to overcome being the Socratic martyr who feels pleasure in suffering (Nietzsche saw it as weakness), and to experience true happiness (more as a creation of a sense, a capacity for human transcendence through the true virtue, which would be strength and not subordination). Nietzsche criticizes the entire philosophical offspring of this idea of nature, and obviously the Enlightenment thinkers were not spared.

Once the philosophical concepts surrounding the subject had been explored a bit, Saint Just becomes much easier to explore from a Nietzschean perspective. This is to understand some ideas that both Saint Just and Nietzsche arrive at, although from different philosophical fields.

Let's start by defining that Saint Just does not accept the conventional idea of nature (as imposed in his time), as human was defined as a wild being, that the only way they can stay in order is through a social contract, from which all the laws of a nation emanate. The governing bodies of the nation are the state.

Saint Just is a pioneer in proposing that this conjecture of nature is false, as it assumes as true that man is savage by nature; however, he came to study various cultures (among which the Inca was the most surprising), where traditions and hierarchies function without these social contracts, the main driving force of their operation being mores. Therefore, the mores for Saint Just, is what they actually do to the people and a nation. Not as previously proposed, when it was supposed that this contract created the mores. These mores are at the same time virtues, not returning to the concept of Plato, but to that of Nietzsche: the overcoming of old values (God, is what Nietzsche describes as the old order of values, and our only task is to seek more human ones). For a mores to be virtuous, conditions must first exist in which it can germinate. Saint Just knows that a beggar or a hungry person can never aspire to virtue, because if there are no material conditions that allow for the only natural law, which is survival, then such concepts will not exist in the human mind.

For these customs to exist and not be corrupted over the years, there must be institutions capable of maintaining them.

This would be considered mutual guarantees (imagine it as a reciprocal system) where bureaucracy (a tiered system where the power to act depends on lawmakers) is replaced by a visible system (which in radical republicanism would be considered a fair system, since what corrupts systems is often the lack of visibility of facts, where only a few members of the government know about the most dense decisions of politics, this being one of the greatest challenges of democracy, since the more this darkness grows due to bureaucracy, the more control the people lose, which causes autocracy. You can find more details on these concepts in the works of Norberto Bobbio).

A visible system would be mutual governance, where the three executive powers regulate each other and there is visibility and accountability. These institutions are nourished by good customs (virtues), and the institutions (reciprocal system) guarantee the survival of these customs in the face of corruption (another concept that he also does not understand as much as individual malice or vice, but rather as an error of an entire collective for imagining the government as a static and non-rotating issue). This is the most original concept that does not fit into either the liberalists (like Locke or Rousseau) or the modern totalitarians (where it has been savagely encapsulated). A system that even I find hard to imagine working, even though it is quite logical and based on studies of various non-European cultures.

Now, what Saint Just understands by law is not very different from the contractualists, since law is what is born from a social contract. Saint Just conceives the social contract as a type of support for the separation of the human from their nature. The human was defined as "good", "bad", or "neutral" as various justifications for the social contract. But Saint Just does not define humans in any of these categories (because that would reduce them to partial qualities, rendering them powerless), but rather assumes that we are only social animals, and that's it. Which means that the biology of the next centuries will give even more weight to his thesis, since we are not independent beings that unite mystically through a contract, but rather, due to the needs of the species itself, we are defined as a collective more than an individual. Everything that the word "individual" can imply has a meaning in the collective. Nothing that happens to us is our fault individual, but rather due to a contextual error.

Saint Just, understanding it in this way, knows that we are all dependent on everything (one of the reasons he criticizes those who try to take credit for "who made the revolution," since everyone made it). So this nature of union was erased over time, where the repetition of vices (history) made it seem "natural". All laws arise from the belief that we are wild and not social. For Saint Just, laws become repressive and separate from the social nature of the individual. The more laws a state needs, the more it is removed from social nature, and therefore, the more corrupt it is.

The truth is that the concepts used by Saint Just in his theory are quite far from our conventional concepts, so it is important to make a glossary of words to avoid getting lost in his reading.

Thanks for asking and sorry for the long text, it's just that it's quite a lot, hahaha.

firtzaire

He studied Inca culture? How come? I have a very strong urge to know more about this 👀.

bonebeautyart

Hello! Well, in various passages of his texts (especially L'nature), he notes that no society is more civilized than another; all societies are barbaric because they exist in a state of war. The only distinction he draws concerns the use of barbarism. One could say this is a direct critique of European colonialism—and of colonialism itself—in which Europeans position themselves as a moral compass for other peoples. Regarding his perspective on the Inca Empire, this view stems primarily from the aforementioned points (and I recall he touched upon this in his writings) as well as the existence of a book about Peru in his library:

Letters of a Peruvian Woman is... a political novel. Lol. It centers on the life of a young woman in the Inca Empire during the Spanish conquest. While the story has a dimension that addresses coloniality, it is actually considered a pre-feminist work, as it essentially deals with the status of women in society.

Here is an interesting summary of the book.

It was certainly not an unknown work; in fact, it caused a sensation among contemporaries, as it offered a very direct critique of French society and the role of women.

“The work recounts the life of Zilia, a young Inca woman who is separated from her fiancé, Aza, after being abducted by Spanish conquistadors and forcibly taken to Europe. She is purchased by a French officer, Déterville, who takes her under his wing. Gradually, she learns to carve out a place for herself in French society, all the while offering a critique of it. The novel concludes in a manner that was surprising, to say the least, for the time, as Zilia rejects the traditional status of female submission to a man. She chooses, at that point, to free herself from any form of captivity.”

One could say that the actual influence this novel had was on his perspective regarding women—a perspective that, for the time, was quite liberal and critical of the female role. I would say it was less explicit than that of Condorcet, who took a public stance on women's suffrage.

I explain a bit more about his stance in this post.

Besides, I need to make some corrections to this post... maybe later.

Source of consult: La bibliothèque de Saint Just: catalogue et essai d’interprétation critique. Par Louise Ampilova-Tuil, Catherine Gosselin et Anne Quennedey (2015).

#frev #history #saint just #to read

montagnarde1793

“Ah ! pauvre peuple, adieu le siècle d’or, N’attends plus que peine et misère : Il est passé dès le dix thermidor, Jour qu’on immola Robespierre. Quand il vivait, il allégeait nos maux, Il avait toute notre estime : Les décemvirs, pour perdre ce héros, L’accusent de leur propre crime. Ah ! pauvre peuple, adieu le siècle d’or… Commune, aussi, tu fus de leur complot, Avec eux tu brisas le trône ; Pour t’en punir, tu meurs sur l’échafaud, Et c’est le Sénat qui l’ordonne. Il nous ravit cet heureux siècle d’or Et nous plonge dans la misère, En égorgeant, aux jours de thermidor, Nos magistrats et Robespierre. Républicains qui, dans ces jours d’horreur, Sûtes échapper au carnage, Rallions-nous et, d’une même ardeur, Jurons de venger tant d’outrages. Reconquérons notre heureux siècle d’or, Exécrons celui de misère ; Vengeons la France, et du dix thermidor, Et de la mort de Robespierre.”

— “Le dix thermidor ou la mort de Robespierre”, chanson des milieux babouvistes, vers l'an IV. (via montagnarde1793)

#frev #thermidor

7kqe3j9fzdwm-deactivated2025110

! this user loves illegal immigration, abortions, and sex change operations !

skogsdotter-draws

The scorching sun of Thermidor

#oughougohugo #frev

robespierres-secret-daughter

"I asked ChatGPT" well I asked Robespierre and he couldn't answer me because his jaw was shattered and he was bleeding out on the table

#frev

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theorahsart

Here's a comic breaking down some myths about Robespierre, The Terror, and *why* he died. This explanation is still pretty simplified, but I hope it can show why many of us talk about his downfall with such sadness. It can seem confusing if you've been taught a certain narrative.

In comparison to some of my other non fiction comics, this one is honestly a little more biased... but heck, it's Thermidor, and Robespierre's memory is indeed dear enough to me that I want to defend it.

#frev #yes yes yes

aramistinguette

Thermidor sketchbook

#on the floor motionless.#frev #fanart #friend's art

janellefeng

I took a little bit of creative liberty in terms of the order of events and Saint-Just's unpronounced last speech. Anyways, Thermidor is upon us again...

#crying screaming etc.#frev #saint just #robespierre #fanart

muzzlesbian

ublock origin is not enough i need advertisers to feel physical pain

ltwilliammowett

Work aloft - Reefing sails, by Charles Pears (1873-1958, English)

#naval art #age of sail #19th century #art #painting

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juliaanoia

Meet Mini-Nedward. Standing 1.5 apples tall, he's fully poseable and comes with his own emergency-lemon and a leather coat with patches of all his favourite bands.

I'm rubbish at sewing, so his clothes are a bit tattered. But I made him as a gift and his now owner is a master of wool and yarn, so perhaps he'll receive a tiny knitted vest or jumper in the future.

Happy @lieutenantfest everyone!

#incredible!!!!!#art #fanart #the terror

nesiacha

Lying as a Political Practice: The Cases of Charlotte Robespierre and Marie-Anne Babeuf

In her memoirs, Charlotte Robespierre presents herself primarily as someone uninterested in politics, incapable of lying, devoted to supporting her two brothers, and depicts her separation from them as apolitical in nature.

Marie-Anne Babeuf, for her part, advances mainly the argument that she was illiterate. She deliberately refrains from making arguments herself and allows herself to be portrayed as a simple housewife by her husband and his friends, including Félix Le Peletier, Thibaudeau, and others, who describe her either as a “virtuous woman” or as an innocent and persecuted mother.

Yet both women engaged in repeated falsehoods and were far more politically involved than they claimed.

Examples of Charlotte Robespierre’s Falsehoods

Charlotte Robespierre claims in her memoirs that Joseph Fouché proposed marriage to her during the French Revolution. However, Fouché was already married at the time, making this claim impossible.

Contrary to what she writes about the period before the Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre never resigned from his position as a judge after sentencing a man to death. He remained in office.

She also falsely asserts that she was present during a meeting between Pétion, Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre, even though she was not in Paris at that time.

Charlotte further claims that her brother Maximilien wished to visit Camille Desmoulins after learning of his arrest. In reality, Maximilien was among those who signed the order for Desmoulins’ arrest. This assertion in her memoirs is therefore once again implausible.

She recounts how she deliberately detained Couthon in order to allow Maurice Gaillard—a close associate of Fouché—to escape, then later manipulated Couthon to save herself, while privately denouncing him as a hypocrite to Gaillard once they were alone.

Her arrest and the manner in which she recounts it further demonstrate her capacity for deception, as shown in the excellent post by @anotherhumaninthisworld, available here: https://www.tumblr.com/anotherhumaninthisworld/730894961758846976/the-arrest-and-interrogation-of-charlotte?source=share

She also conceals in her memoirs that her separation from her brothers—especially Augustin—was not due to domestic reasons, but was in fact primarily political. This is again demonstrated by the meticulous research of @anotherhumaninthisworld.

Examples of Marie-Anne Babeuf’s Falsehoods

Marie-Anne Babeuf actively supported her husband Gracchus Babeuf’s financial subterfuge in 1789 by dictating—word for word, through her brother—a reply to Madame de Louvencourt. This letter presented an administrative and financial situation supposedly obliging Babeuf to travel and receive a substantial sum of money. The aim was to encourage the creditor or intermediary to advance funds, or at least to believe that payment had already been approved by a higher authority (according to Victor Advielle who find the letter).

According to Robert Barrie Rose , Robert Legrand and Jean Marc Schiappa in January 1795, when questioned by the police, Marie-Anne Babeuf declared that she had not seen her husband—who was under an arrest warrant—for three months. However, Carin, the printer of Le Tribun du peuple, stated that during this same period he had printed Babeuf’s pamphlet Système de dépopulation for the couple, and that both Gracchus and Marie-Anne visited him together. Moreover, documents discovered by historians show that Babeuf remained in contact with Marie-Anne and their son Émile (whom she referred to as “Robert,” his former name, during her interrogation).

While her husband was imprisoned again, this time in Arras, Babeuf wrote to a trusted acquaintance, Thibaudeau, explaining that he intended to feign corruption toward former allies who had become enemies in order to lower their guard and regain his freedom. He explicitly stated that this strategy came from his wife and that she had been sent to attempt to manipulate Guffroy —despite the fact that the Babeufs and Guffroy had parted on extremely bad terms, as documented here: https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/780339711912869888/the-collaboration-and-eventual-break-between?source=share

This attempt ultimately failed, as shown in Babeuf’s letter of 7 Fructidor Year III as you can see here Une lettre de Babeuf du 7 fructidor an III - Persée . Marie-Anne also wrote to her husband that Guffroy’s wife had received her poorly and advised him to write to Fréron and Tallien, whom she referred to as “honest men ” in order to secure his release. This phrasing was almost certainly deliberate, as she knew the correspondence would be intercepted and read (because of the prison system) , and there is no indication that she genuinely held such views of them (everything indicates the opposite, rather). She even offered to deliver the letter herself, once again in the spirit of manipulation.

During her arrest—discussed here: https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/771850387276873728/edit-here-is-an-excerpt-from-the-arrest-of?source=share

—authorities unsuccessfully attempted to force Marie-Anne Babeuf to reveal Gracchus’ whereabouts and the addresses where printing presses were hidden. This arrest caused a major outcry among prominent Jacobins such as Darthé, Félix Le Peletier, Lebois, Antonelle, and Buonarroti. Marie-Anne claimed she had been interrogated and imprisoned for 48 hours without food—a version repeated by Gracchus himself—although her interrogator, Lamaignière, stated that he had brought her some food. According to Charavay, who published Lamaignière’s report, she was in fact detained for only 24 hours before being transferred to prison.

Marie-Anne allowed her husband to present her publicly as illiterate, claiming she could neither read nor write when the French government targeted her. She continued to dictate her letters even later, including in 1801, when she was arrested by Napoleonic police and imprisoned at the Madelonnettes following the Jacobin repression after the attack on the rue Saint-Nicaise.

During the Malet conspiracy of 1808—when an arrest warrant was issued for Émile Babeuf and Marie-Anne’s home was searched and her papers seized—historian Jean Dautry cites a revealing passage:

“The poor woman receives her papers and those of her son, placed under seal. Unable to write the receipt, she merely signs it with a kind of rebus in which, with goodwill, one can discern the letters of her name.”

However, Robert Legrand has demonstrated that Marie-Anne Babeuf was perfectly capable of reading and writing. Numerous letters written in her own hand, dating up to around 1789 and even a few years later, have been found—primarily correspondence addressed to her husband. Coming from a very poor background, and like most women of her time lacking access to formal education, her spelling was limited and her handwriting large, but she was by no means illiterate. Gracchus himself sent her a letter enclosing his Cadastre perpétuel so that she could read it.

She therefore knowingly lied—at least on this point—to the Napoleonic police and even earlier to Revolutionary authorities in order to appear politically insignificant. This supposed illiteracy misled several scholars and historians for a long time.

Another striking point concerns historian Claude Mazauric, who states—based on police archives relating to the first Malet conspiracy—that historians of Babeuf and “Babouvism” have searched in vain for any political activity on Marie-Anne’s part, concluding that she maintained a prudent reserve in the “public sphere.”

Yet Émile Babeuf was actively sought by Napoleonic police and was in contact with staunch opponents of Bonaparte such as Antonelle according to Pierre Serna (see his biography here: https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/797365648777953280/the-beginning-of-the-revolutionary-period?source=share ). Had the conspiracy succeeded, Antonelle would have been appointed minister.

Marie-Anne Babeuf’s link to this network lies in her awareness of Émile’s movements. In a letter sent in 1807 by Émile to Pierre-Nicolas Hésine—an ally and friend to them who supported the Babouvists during the Vendôme trial—Émile states that his mother sends her greetings. Hésine himself showed no overt opposition to Bonaparte, but many of his associates did. For example, Pierre-François-Félix-Joseph Giraud was “employed in the offices of the Committee of General Safety, where he became friends with Scipion Duroure, Antonelle, and the most radical members of the Montagnard faction,” and later worked with Antonelle on the Journal des Hommes libres, becoming in 1799 one of the most active members of the Manège Society opposing the coup of 18 Brumaire (according to Bouis).

Émile avoided arrest only because he was abroad, though he was later allowed to return to France under the condition that he reside in Lyon. One may legitimately wonder what Marie-Anne said during her interrogation to escape with only questioning—however grueling—given these facts, while even excellent historians such as Mazauric continue to claim she maintained a public political reserve.

In my view, there is a strong possibility that Émile and Marie-Anne Babeuf who shared exceptional skills in political clandestinity try to fight the regime of Bonaparte during this period—and that this was Marie-Anne Babeuf’s primary mode of political action.

Parallels and Divergences Between Charlotte Robespierre and Marie-Anne Babeuf

It is striking to observe how many similarities Charlotte Robespierre and Marie-Anne Babeuf share. Both were capable of lying to such an extent that they long shaped—and in some cases still shape—the perceptions of certain scholars and even historians who study them. As we have seen, both women were adept at deception and preserved documents relating to their executed male relatives—Maximilien Robespierre in the case of Charlotte Robespierre, and Gracchus Babeuf in the case of Marie-Anne Babeuf.

For a long time, Charlotte Robespierre’s political views were neglected, despite the fact that they diverged significantly from those of her two brothers and even contributed to their estrangement. Similarly, Marie-Anne Babeuf was long relegated to the role of a mere “courageous wife,” supposedly one of the few women whose political opinions Gracchus Babeuf did not take into account. In reality, she was one of his most valuable advisers—both politically and strategically—acting as a liaison agent and, in addition to managing subscriptions and the printing press, helping to gauge public opinion, although she operated primarily in clandestinity.

Their political activity is relatively easy to trace during the lifetimes of their male relatives, but far more difficult to identify after their deaths. Although indirect traces of political engagement do remain, they are much scarcer.

Both women benefited from powerful protection at times when their family names were deeply hated and they had lost their closest relatives. Charlotte Robespierre received protection from Guffroy and later from Fouché under the Napoleonic regime. Marie-Anne Babeuf, for her part, appears to have been protected by Félix Le Peletier and the neo-Jacobin Society under the Directory. There are also indications that, under Bonaparte, she may have benefited from the protection of Réal, Babeuf’s former defense lawyer—one of whose sons was a friend of Émile Babeuf. This could explain why she and her son faced only minor consequences during the first Malet conspiracy, whereas others received far harsher punishments.

Marie-Anne Babeuf maintained close ties with many Babouvists, while Charlotte Robespierre, years after the end of the Revolution, remained in contact with the Babouvist conspirator Laignelot.

Both women witnessed the destruction of their families: Charlotte lost both of her brothers on the same day, while Marie-Anne lost her husband and almost all of her children—possibly even outliving Émile, her last surviving son.

They also maintained significant political contacts. On Marie-Anne Babeuf’s side, these included the Gohier couple, Garin, Thibaudeau, and others; on Charlotte Robespierre’s side, figures such as the Guffroy couple, Buissard, and others appear prominently.

Moreover, Charlotte Robespierre transmitted documents to Laponneraye about her brothers. It is highly plausible that Marie-Anne Babeuf likewise provided documents to Buonarroti when he wrote his memoirs on the Babouvist conspiracy, since Gracchus Babeuf had entrusted her with his papers precisely so that she could help ensure the transmission of that history. Buonarroti’s memoirs remain relatively honest, though necessarily not objective and therefore insufficient as a sole source. Writing in 1830, he also minimized and protected the roles of individuals who were still alive, at a time when republicans—and especially Babouvists—were viewed extremely negatively.

Divergences

Despite these similarities, important differences must be emphasized.

Marie-Anne Babeuf appears, overall, to have enjoyed a relatively good reputation among her “revolutionary colleagues.” Her misfortunes were discussed sympathetically in the press favorable to the Babouvists ( or to the jacobins), and figures such as Thibaudeau, Pierre-Nicolas Hésine, Daube, and Le Peletier referred to her in favorable terms. She maintained close relationships with several women, including Agathe Hésine (wife of Pierre-Nicolas Hésine), Sophie Pottofeux (sister of one of the accused conspirators), and the widow of Chaumette. She also seems to have had a workable relationship with Laignelot’s wife. Didier’s wife was likely another important ally, as she clandestinely transmitted messages to the prisoners of Vendôme while they awaited trial following the Babouvist repression.

During the period when the conspiracy was being prepared in the faubourgs, Marie-Anne was assisted by other women in producing posters and gauging favorable public opinion. Women such as Clozelle, Maurade, Rouville, and Girard—subscribers to the newspaper—appear to have been satisfied with its content and willingly provided the corresponding funds.

If some figures, such as Buonarroti, say relatively little about Marie-Anne Babeuf in their writings, this may have been a deliberate attempt to protect her, given that she had already endured repeated police persecution under every regime she lived through.

Nevertheless, it is clear that she did not get along with everyone—most notably the Guffroy couple, the police officers she constantly had to evade as a liaison agent or confront during interrogations, those who hated the Babeuf name, and very likely Fouché, who should probably be counted among her enemies.

Charlotte Robespierre, by contrast, experienced tensions with several revolutionaries who held her in low esteem, including Albertine Marat. She did not get along well with Éléonore Duplay, and even Élisabeth Le Bas—despite having better relations with her—sometimes wrote remarks suggesting disapproval of certain aspects of Charlotte’s behavior. Nonetheless, Charlotte maintained good relations with the Guffroy couple, Laignelot, Maurice Gaillard, and others.

Marie-Anne Babeuf always signed her name Babeuf despite the persecutions, whereas Charlotte Robespierre temporarily abandoned her family name.

A fundamental difference lies in their political positioning. Marie-Anne Babeuf shared and actively supported the political ideas of her male relative—her husband Gracchus—whereas Charlotte Robespierre developed her own political views, which diverged from those of her two brothers.

Conclusion

In any case, both women were very far from being the simple housewives they—or their relatives—sought to portray them as.

Postscript. Regarding Marie-Anne Babeuf’s lies, it is important to understand their nature. The first, of a financial nature, must be contextualized: like many families in France, the couple Babeuf faced severe financial difficulties and had children to feed. As for her other falsehoods, she did what she believed was necessary. Her lies were not motivated by personal gain, but by the need to enable her husband to pursue his revolutionary mission and to protect their comrades. In clandestine politics, lying is a tool like any other. This does not mean, however, that her testimony can be taken at face value—especially now that we know more about her. This is particularly true when she was interrogated by the police or confronted by political enemies, many of whom were morally far more compromised than she and showed her and her allies no mercy.

It must also be emphasized that the incorruptibility of a revolutionary does not imply an inability to lie or to manipulate.

As for Charlotte Robespierre, the situation is somewhat different. At least in the case of her memoirs, her falsehoods seem primarily aimed at restoring both her brothers’ reputations—and her own. In my view, this attempt ultimately failed, as her narrative remains deeply inconsistent on many points.It would be interesting, however, to see if there were other women of the French Revolution who might have lied, like Charlotte Robespierre and Marie-Anne Babeuf. Furthermore, it would be interesting to know if Babeuf and Charlotte Robespierre might have met when Marie-Anne was working at the newspaper when Guffroy was the printer for Babeuf after Thermidor.

#frev #ressources #charlotte robespierre

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