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How about millions of Jacobins calling for the death of Girondin sympathizers. How about 25 and already a deputy of the National Convention. How about talented. How about virtuous and idealistic. I lost my first love and never felt that warmth ever again. My fellow colleges Maximilien Robespierre and Georges Couthon just attempted suicide 13 hours ago.
My Favorite Passages from Saint-Just's Letters to Beuvin (Spring 1791)
The letters to Beuvin were written in the spring of 1791, shortly before the publication of Saint-Just's first political essay, Esprit de la Révolution et de la Constitution de France. Published in June, the essay was intended to bolster his candidacy for the Legislative Assembly elections that summer - an ambitious run he attempted despite still being a legal minor.
While his age ultimately prevented him from being seated, the work earned him significant notoriety. In his memoirs, Barère notes the essay's success, and historian Antoine Boulant affirms in his biography of Saint-Just that the publication was instrumental in helping the young revolutionary make a name for himself.
For over a century, the two letters published by Charles Vellay in 1910 represented the extent of our knowledge regarding this correspondence. This changed in 2024, when Mathias Boussemart, a PhD candidate in the history of law, "discovered" three "new" letters. These were found within a collection of papers belonging to the Conventionnel Louis François Portiez de l'Oise (1765–1810).
Originally stored in the Bibliothèque de l'Assemblée nationale in 1832, the documents were transferred to the Archives nationales de France in 1920. However, because an inventory of these specific papers had never been conducted, they remained hidden in plain sight for over a hundred years. It is a powerful reminder of what historical treasures may still be "sleeping" within the Archives!
I am currently working (I have been for some time actually) on a complete translation of these letters. It is a meticulous process, as I am striving to remain as faithful as possible to the original 18th century nuance while ensuring the text remains accessible to modern readers. Until the full set is ready, I have selected a few extracts that I find particularly illuminating. They offer a unique window into Saint-Just's mindset during the years immediately preceding the National Convention.
[Ch. Vellay Transcriptions]
First letter:
"It is unfortunate, and I have told myself this many times over the past two years, that I am as much a slave to my adolescence as I truly am. You are not the first to make me bitterly regret possessing nothing; it would have been pleasant to find at home, as it is in my own feelings, what you ask of me, though I am fortunate if I have found it elsewhere. If I were the master, I would ask for nothing better than to help you in a powerful way in a career that requires wealth. But do you know my age? I am 23 years, 5 months, and a few days old."
"Il est malheureux, et je me le suis dit plusieurs fois depuis ces deux années, que je sois aussi esclave que je le suis de mon adolescence. Vous n'êtes point le premier qui me faites regretter amèrement de ne posséder rien, il m'aurait été agréable de trouver chez moi comme il l'est dans mes sentimens ce que vous me demandiés (*), heureux toutesfois si je l'ai trouvé ailleurs. Si j'étais le maître, je ne demanderais pas mieux que de vous aider d'une manière puissante dans une carrière où il faut de la fortune. Mais savés-vous (*) mon âge? J'ai 23 ans, 5 mois et quelques jours."
Second letter:
"Tell me what you think. I have the desire to start a journal until I turn 25, because I'm only 23, what am I supposed to do? I'm bored and this constant work in solitude is an obsession. Besides, I wish I were in Paris to frequent the libraries, which I can no longer do without."
"Dites-moi ce que vous en pensés (*). J'ai envie d'entreprendre un journal jusqu'à ce que mes 25 ans me viennent, car je n'en ai que 23, que faire? Je m'ennuie et ce travail continuel dans la solitude m'obsède. D'ailleurs je voudrais être à Paris pour fréquenter les bibliothèques dont je ne puis plus me passer."
(*) This would not have been considered "bad spelling" at the time. His use of this form is entirely consistent and reflects a common orthographic variant in use before French spelling was standardized. It wasn't until the 1835 reform of the Académie Française that French spelling was fully modernized into the forms we use today - for instance, replacing the "-ois" endings with "-ais", such as changing françois to français.
[M. Boussemart Transcriptions]
Third letter:
"You might send copies of my book to Laon, to Waroquier's in Soissons, to St. Quentin, and to Devin's in Noyon. I am known in all those parts; it is my département."
I forgot Château-Thierry.
"Vous pourriez faire passer des exemplaires de mon livre à Laon, à Soisson chez Waroquier, à St Quentin, à Noyon chez Devin. Je suis connu dans tous ces pays-là, c'est mon département.
J'oubliai Château-Thierry."
Fourth letter:
Dated 10 or 11 March 1791.
"You quite rightly anticipated that I would be awaiting your response with the utmost impatience. In truth, I feared that you had sent me packing. I take a sincere interest in your affliction; however, it does not befit a man of wit to succumb to it."
"Vous prévoyiez bien justement que je devais attendre votre réponse avec la dernière impatience. J'ai en vérité cru que vous m'aviez envoyé promener. Je prends part avec un véritable intérêt à votre mal, mais il n'appartient point à un homme d'esprit d'y succomber."
"The title of the work does not please me; it strikes me as a bit inflated. Substitute it with this one: Public Law of the French and Revolution in France."
"Le titre de l'ouvrage ne me plait pas, il me parait un peu enflé. Substituez-y celui-ci : Droit public des Français et révolution en France."
"I am a man truly vexed at being unable to do as I please to fulfill your wishes, but no one possesses more goodwill nor more impotence than I do at this moment. How much bitterness my legal minority brings me - not to mention the bitterness of being unfit for any employment, and of being in this world as if I had no motherland at all."
"Je suis un homme bien fâché de ne pouvoir faire à mon gré ce que vous souhaitez mais personne n'a plus que moi de bonne volonté et d'impuissance pour le moment. Combien ma minorité me coûte d'amertume, sans compter celle d’être inhabile à tout emploi et d'être au monde comme si je n'avais point de patrie."
Fifth letter:
"I would, however, prefer the title Public Law or the Spirit of the Revolution of France, and here is why: as I have often strayed from my subject, I have seemed more to expand upon the principles of the public law of this France than I have appeared merely to lay them down. The first title was sufficient, in truth, according to the first draft; it has become insignificant following everything I have sent you since."
"J'aimerais mieux pourtant le titre Droit public ou esprit de la révolution de France, voici pourquoi : comme souvent je suis sorti de mon sujet, j'ai plus semblé étendre les principes du droit public de cette France que je n'ai paru les poser seulement. Le premier titre suffisait à la vérité selon la première rédaction ; il est insignifiant depuis tout ce que je vous ai fait passer."
What These Letters Can Teach Us About Saint-Just
These rare glimpses into Saint-Just's interiority stand in stark contrast to the rigid, official correspondence that dominates his surviving record. Here, we find the portrait of an anxious young man at a threshold, transitioning from years of local activism in Blérancourt toward the national stage. We witness a profound, human vulnerability: his loneliness, his desperation for the intellectual life of Paris, and his plans for a journal as a remedy to this isolation. We even witness his fear that his editor might have abandoned him.
In these letters, the man of "twenty-three years and five months" literally counts the days to his majority. He is powerless and terrified that the first serious political work into which he poured his soul might be suppressed or discarded. It is perhaps one the most fragile moments we have of him - there is no arrogance or aggression, merely a young thinker facing the existential dread of being silenced before he has even begun.
A Few More Notes:
1. We see him being knowledgeable about his region when he notes to Beuvin the places (Laon, Soissons, St-Quentin, Noyon and Château-Thierry) his book should be sold at: "I am known in all those parts; it is my département." Indeed, Bernard Vinot mentions the relevance of these places in his biography:
[This passage comes right after the one I already shared here.]
THE BAPTISM OF THE ROSTRUM AT CHAUNY
The fate of this address was barely known before Saint-Just won a new triumph. From May 17 to 20, he participated in the assembly of electors called to choose the capital of the Aisne department. The meeting took place in the Saint-Martin church of Chauny, on neutral ground. A sharp rivalry pitted Soissons, the former administrative capital (chef-lieu de généralité), against the city of Laon, which benefited from its central position. In an attempt to thwart Laon, Soissons had obtained the annexation of the Château-Thierry region to the new department, stretching it significantly toward the south. However, as the northern districts were the most populated, it was predictable that the electors would choose Laon.
As the spokesperson for the canton of Blérancourt, Saint-Just feared not facing the assembly, but rather being unable to speak at all. He was not yet twenty-three years old, and twenty-five was the requirement for participating in political life. Granted, the entry control was not extremely rigorous, and he could allow some uncertainty to linger: born in Decize, he hoped it would be impossible to verify his records. But he had everything to fear from his adversaries. Thus, he had to resort to the help of "burly" companions to get rid of Gellé, who had denounced him ("he was thrown out by the shoulders," he would later confide to Desmoulins), in order to enter. Mandated to support Soissons, he strove above all to make himself known and appreciated by an audience composed, in his own words, of "men of every stripe and caliber." These were men he could not afford to alienate, for two obstacles stood in the path of his candidacy: age and the cens (since the end of 1789, to be eligible for the Assembly, one had to pay a "silver mark" in taxes, or 50 francs). Fulfilling neither of these conditions, it was in Saint-Just's best interest to charm his high-ranking listeners, which he did with the skill of a seasoned politician.
He apologized for his youth and gave thanks for the indulgence shown to him and for the lesson in democracy he was being offered. He expressed regret at having to take a side: "My conscience belongs to one, and my heart to both." Then, without passion, he laid out arguments that had been virulently rehashed for two days and invited the assembly to repudiate all local chauvinism by thinking of the unfortunate people who lacked bread.
The assembly ended in confusion, as most of the partisans of Soissons had left the premises before the vote that consecrated the triumph of Laon. Saint-Just was hardly affected by it. He confessed to Desmoulins: "It seems to me that it is only a point of honor between the two cities, and points of honor are very little thing in almost every regard." By the evening of May 20, Soissons had suffered a blow that weighed heavily on its future... But the detachment Saint-Just had displayed was interpreted as a sign of poise and mastery that placed him above partisan passions. He was congratulated from all sides: "I left loaded with compliments like the donkey with relics." He could tell Camille of his confidence in being elected "at the next legislature."
Before leaving the Saint-Martin church, he had the text of his speech inserted into the minutes. He had signed it Florelle de Saint-Just. This fanciful and unusual first name, used on this single occasion, was the first in a long series of false declarations meant to maintain doubt regarding his status as an elector: if the authorities, intrigued by Gellé's denunciation, had the idea of investigating the orator's age, it would be quite difficult to find a Saint-Just named "Florelle" in any parish register.
A week later, the electors of the Chauny district met to appoint their administrators. The choice of Saint-Just as the assembly's secretary bears witness to his adoption into the circle of notables: he had accomplished the most difficult part.
2. It's interesting to read his motivations (it sounds a bit too pompous, it doesn't accurately reflect the final text) and insistence on changing the title of his essay, as his choice clearly didn't prevail. The fact he focuses on "Droit public" gives a stronger basis to Quennedey's hypothesis that the true title of the manuscript known as "De la Nature" should be known as "Du Droit social".
3. Like Boussemart notes, he didn't check the date when writing the third letter, writing only "10 ou 11 mars 1791": "the young revolutionary didn't have the possibility or didn't have an interest in checking the date".
3. He reveals he feels unfit for any job which raises some questions about his work as a clerk in Soissons, like Quennedey observes:
"One cannot help but be surprised by Saint-Just’s admission, in one of his letters, that he was 'unfit for any position'. This statement casts doubt on whether his work as a clerk to a prosecutor in Soissons from 1787 to 1789 went smoothly."
(On ne manquera pas non plus de s’étonner de l’aveu que fait Saint-Just, dans l’une de ses lettres, « d’être inhabile à tout emploi ». Cette déclaration fait douter que le travail qu’il aurait effectué à Soissons en 1787-1789 comme clerc de procureur se soit bien passé.)
One could argue this admission also suggests a man whose intellectual ambitions had already made the clerk's desk feel like a cage. The bitterness and frustration he evokes weren't just about age; they were about a spirit that refused to be small and contained.
Conclusion
The discovery of these new letters after two centuries is a testament to the fact that the history of the Revolution is never truly "closed". There are still voices waiting to be heard in the uncatalogued boxes of our archives. For Saint-Just, these fragments restore a sense of intimacy that official records cannot provide. They remind us that behind every political decree was a human heart, often heavy with the bitterness of being misunderstood and the desperate hope of being seen.
Ultimately, these letters do more than just fill a biographical gap; they humanize a man who is too often flattened into a cold symbol. In the silence between his lines to Beuvin, we find the real Saint-Just: a young man of immense ambition struggling against the limitations of his age, his finances, and his isolation. Before he walked to a rostrum in Paris that would seal his image as the "Archangel of the Terror", he was this anxious, brilliant and deeply vulnerable soul, counting the days until he could finally begin to live.
Several months ago a few of us were discussing the new English Marat biography, so I wanted to share Clifford Conner's recent review of it that got published in Jacobin. Conner is the historian who wrote what I consider (still) to be the best anglophone biographies on Marat some years ago that cover both his politics and his time as a scientist and doctor before the revolution without the typical Cold War Era drivel that gets iterated throughout much of Baker's recent contribution.
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There are two things forever associated with Maximilien Robespierre. No, not the guillotine and the 'Reign of Terror' (get the hell out of here if those were your first thoughts).
Can someone please tell me where the information that Maximilien loved oranges comes from? Like, seriously, I have no idea and tumblr is full of it. Thanks!
The marvellous @bunniesandbeheadings answered an ask about this - in brief, our source is Fréron and there's reason to be suspicious of such a hostile source, though Charlotte Robespierre does say Maximilien liked fruit. I will link Bunnies' answer here, with thanks!
I asked about tarts earlier, but now - why do I keep seeing stuff about Robespierre and oranges?
He actually wanted to be Prince of Orange b
It is possible Robespierre was encouraged to eat fruit by his doctor, Souberbielle. We know that Robespierre's health wasn't good, he himself testified to that ('my health and my strength are not enough'), and Souberbielle tells us for example that he had a chronic leg ulcer - this could have indicated a vitamin deficiency such as scurvy, for which fresh produce in general had been known as an effective preventative and cure on and off throughout history, and citrus fruit in particular in Europe since the 1740s. Might Souberbielle have advised Robespierre to consume citrus fruits, when they were available to him? Maybe. But as @bunniesandbeheadings says above, the image of Robespierre sitting down to a pile of oranges, a luxury food, during periods when basic foodstuffs were in short supply is a powerfully negative one, and possibly just a touch of malice from Fréron.
There is one more thing I'd like to add. In the 1790s, we're still in an era when certain essential physical qualities are associated with masculinity and femininity (yes, the old humoural idea that men are properly predisposed to being hot and dry and women properly predisposed to being cold and moist), and as such, that certain foodstuffs were more aligned with and beneficial to the essential temperaments of men or women. Women were more encouraged to eat 'cooling' foods like fruit than men (red meat, red wine, 'heating' foods were generally considered more appropriate for men). I've speculated before on here as to whether the association of Robespierre with habitually eating fruit like oranges might have been another way to 'feminise' him, and that this is why it has persisted in FRev histories and media, especially in contrast to either a hyper-masculine image of Danton or to a dominating image of Saint-Just (hostile and knowingly or not homophobic 'readings' of the Saint-Just/Robespierre relationship tend to emphasise the domination of one over the other). It's just a little theory of mine, but it would fit in with the curious emphasis so many historians, novelists and directors have put on Robespierre as a dandy in his manner of dress and styling (when he was in fact by no means unusual - even portraits of the hyper-masculine Danton show him with powdered wig/hair).
List of Saint-Just’s personal possessions part III: Clothing
Since Saint-Just personal effects were confiscated and documented, we have a rather unique and precious insight into what the man was wearing and in what state the items were.
Saint-Just was considered by his contemporaries to be a very fashionable young man, something which was used by his detractors as well - they mocked his elegant style of dress and snidely called him Chevalier Saint-Just, linking his manners and appearance to that of an aristocrat. Although he was by nature clean and liked to dress carefully, there is no doubt that Saint-Just understood early on in his life the powerful effect clothing could have. As the youngest member of the National Assembly and a social and political nobody, he probably wanted to stand out among his older, louder, more seasoned peers, and saw his clothes as a way to distinguish himself.
Can you please give an explainer on the friendship between Robespierre and Desmoulins and what their dynamic together was like? I know they were at school together as kids but were they really as close as movies usually portray them as? Was Robespierre better friends with Saint-Just?
Bonus: What's the story behind Desmoulins using Roussaeau against Robespierre?
Merci!
That’s an interesting question considering how often their relationship, as you say, has gotten dramatized.
The good days of the relationship
Both Robespierre and Desmoulins started attending the boarding school of Louis-le-Grand at the age of eleven, the former in 1769, the latter in 1771. We don’t know when exactly they first ran into and/or got to know each other, nor exactly just how close or not they actually grew to be while at college. To me, the following two statements do however suggest that their relationship back then was at least better than ”mere acquaintances”:
Oh, my dear Robespierre! It is not long since we were sighing together over our country’s servitude, since, drawing from the same sources the sacred love of liberty and equality, amid so many professors whose lessons only taught us to detest our land, we were complaining there was no professor of cabals who would teach us to free it, when we were regretting the tribune of Rome and Athens, how far was I from thinking that the day of a constitution a thousand times more beautiful was so close to shining on us, and that you, in the tribune of the French people, would be one of the firmest ramparts of the nascent freedom!
Desmoulins in number 15 of Révolutions de France et de Brabant (March 8 1790)
I knew Camille in college, he was my study companion, he was then a talented young man without mature judgement. Since then Camille has developed the most ardent love of the Republic;... one must not look only at one point in his moral life, one must take the whole of it; one must examine him as a whole.
Robespierre defends Camille at the Jacobins December 14 1793 (only time he ever admitted to a college friendship with anyone at all)
Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart, who worked at the college up until 1778, would give the following description of the relationship Desmoulins and Robespierre had back then in his La vie et les crimes de Robespierre: surnommé le Tyran… (1795):
In his lower classes, and however young he had been, [Robespierre] was very rarely seen sharing the amusements and games which most please childhood. His cold and misanthropic heart never knew those outpourings of lively and frank joy, natural signs of candor and ingenuity. Of all the noisy and endlessly varied amusements which make the public recreation of a college such an animated scene, none pleased him, and he preferred dark reveries and solitary walks. If someone, at these moments, approached him, he received him with a cold gravity; and answered him at first only in monofyllables. If he took it upon himself to praise his style and his scholastic productions, Robespierre did him the favor of striking up a conversation with him. But, however little one ventured to thwart him, one instantly became the object of some harsh and virulent trait. Camille Desmoulins, who lived at the same college, and whose impetuous and untidy character did not adapt well to the philosophical arrogance of Robespierre, had from time to time grapples with him, but from then on as since, the champions did not fight on equal terms. Always more reflective than the opponent who provoked him, and more master of his moves, Robespierre, watching the moment, pounced on him with all the advantage that cold prudence has over temerity.
Fellow students Beffroy de Reigny and Stanislas Fréron would in the latter half of the 1790’s similarly make the contradiction of stating both that the young Robespierre didn’t have any friends at school and that he and Desmoulins had been college comrades (Beffroy writing that Robespierre was ”his (Desmoulins’) comrade and mine” and Fréron that Desmoulins was Robespierre’s ”childhood comrade”). Though given the time these texts were written, I think this might should be read more as these Robespierre-dislikers wanting to have the cake and eat it too (ergo they both want Robespierre to have killed his childhood friend and to have been so repulsive he had no friends at all) than as full blown evidence Camille was Robespierre’s ”only friend” at school as the latter puts it in La Terreur et la Vertu.
Finally, Marcellin Matton, when writing a short biography over Camille in 1834, stated the following regarding his college days:
It was [at Louis-le Grand] that Camille got to know Maximilien Robespierre. They differed in character, but both had this passion which always distinguishes men of genius — love for liberty and for independence. The fully republican education one gave to young people born to live under a monarchy contributed a lot to their character. Without stop and in all forms, one presented them with history of Gracchus, Brutus, Cato. Camille was always together with Robespierre and their conversation most often revolved around the constitution of the Roman Republic.
While this certainly sounds like it could just be romantizing, we do know Matton was friends with Camille’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and it it’s therefore possible it’s them (who in their turn would have gotten it from Camille) who have given him this account of a close college relationship.
It’s sometimes argued that Robespierre and Desmoulins can’t have been friends while at school since they were never in the same grade, and it therefore would have been really hard for them to socialize. And indeed, when looking over the school regulations that were in motion during their time there, that does indeed come off as quite a hard thing to do — students were to stick to their ”quarter” both in dormitories, during classes, study hall, on Sunday outings, and at table (at first I thought maybe these ”quarters” weren’t neccessarily made up of students who all came from the same grade, but this other piece seems to rule out that possibility). This leaves the thirty-minute recesses as the only places where students from different quarters would have gotten a chance to interact with one another (bc they all seemed to have recess at the same time according to the schedule…). I do however think Robespierre and Desmoulins’ own testimonies weigh heavier than this. Desmoulins would also go on to admit college friendships with other students we know for a fact can never have been in the same grade as him.
In 1774 and 1775, both Robespierre and Desmoulins’ names featured on the list of students that had been awarded annual prizes for their hard labors, which means that they, according to the regulations, got presented before the bureau of administration by the principal ”to there receive praise and rewards due to their work and the success of their studies” together.
After graduating (Robespierre in 1781, Desmoulins in 1785) the two seemingly lost sight of one another, at least we don’t have any evidence they corresponded or in other ways kept up contact. Two pieces do however show us they did not forget about each other entirely. The first is a letter dated spring 1786 Camille adressed to the aforementioned Beffroy de Reigny, who in January the same year had openly thanked his ”former study comrade Robespiere [sic]” for sending him two of his works as a gift.
It was noticed lately, as a misfortune attached to the house where we were brought up together, that none of those who had distinguished themselves there fulfilled in the world the hopes that he had first given, that you alone seem happier right now, and we rejoice in your many subscribers. Although the subscribers are your dear and beloved cousins, we can clearly see that you have not forgotten the rest of the family, nor lost sight of the mountain where we were the first to applaud you. The advantageous manner in which you have spoken of M. Robespiere [sic] has charmed us all; up to now, M. Jéhanne has missed only one opportunity to provide you with the occasion of doing him justice as well. The joy with which you gave well deserved praise to a comrade reproached me for my conduct towards you, and obliges me to retract.
In 1793, Robespierre did in his turn admit to before the revolution have read a poem (that according to Camille had been written in 1787), and felt proud once he realized who the author was:
Remember that at a time when the monarchy was best established on its foundations, Camille, a simple individual, without support, without advocate or patron, a lawyer without a cause on the fourth floor, dared to put into verse the proudest principles of the most determined Republican. Then, in the depths of my province, I learned with secret pleasure that the author was one of my college comrades.
Interestingly, Robespierre’s younger brother Augustin started studying law at Louis-le-Grand in 1784, one year before Camille graduated from said program, although neither would claim to have known the other while at college.
On May 8 1789, Desmoulins authored a letter to his father, telling him about the opening of the Estates General at Versailles three days earlier. Lamenting the fact he himself didn’t get elected for it, he writes: ”one of my comrades has been more fortunate than I, it’s de Robespierre, deputy from Arras. He has been wise enough to plead in his own province.” The fact Camille was able to recognize Robespierre eight years after their separation (and care about it enough to write it down), could be read as yet another sign their college relationship had at least mattered somewhat, especially since this letter is from before Robespierre had made any kind of name for himself politically. How exactly Camille found out Robespierre had been elected (did he recognize his face in a crowd, accidentally run into him or just see it written down somewhere?) is however unknown.
After the ceremony, Camille did however head back to Paris, while Robespierre would remain at Versailles up until October 1789. On July 23 1789, the latter writes to his friend Antoine Buissart that he has been shown the stormed Bastille after the king and the National Assembly’s brief visit to Paris following July 14, but there’s no evidence he saw Desmoulins during it, or even that he knew he had been the one inciting the storming at this point.
In the beginning of September, Camille released Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens, the first of his works which he mentioned Robespierre in:
I would at least congratulate M. de Robespierre for opposing with all his strength the release of the Duke of Vauguyon. M. Glaizen opposed it in an even more eloquent manner. Member of the criminal committee, he resigned immediately. This speaks of conviction. Honor to MM. Glaizen and Robespierre!
Later the same month, Camille went back to Versaille after having been invited by Mirabeau, and the day after his arrival (September 20 1789) he could write to tell his father: ”If you hear bad things said about me, console yourself with the memory of the testimony that MM. de Mirabeau, Target, M. de Robespierre, Gleizal and more than two hundred deputies gave me.” Camille stayed with Mirabeau for two weeks before returning to Paris, but there’s no proof he saw Robespierre any more times during his stay.
When Robespierre too went to Paris soon thereafter, he settled in an apartment on Rue de Saintonge, today a 45 minute walk away from Camille’s erstwhile home on Rue de Tournon 19. Despite finally living in the same city again, it’s not until March 6 1790 I’ve discovered something more concreate tying the two together. It’s a note from Desmoulins to Robespierre, found listed in Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, agriculture, commerce, belles-lettres et arts du département de la Somme (1907) as one of many Desmoulins related text published in Journal de Vervins during the summer of 1884. Unfortunately, I can’t find this journal online anywhere, so I don’t know what the note was about.
In November 1789, Camille founded his very first journal — Révolutions de France et de Brabant — that would run until the fall of 1791. Searching for the term ”Robespierre” in the seven digitalized volumes of the journal, I find Camille talking about him around 85 times. The first time is in number 4 (released December 19 1789), where he makes sure to underline the fact that he and Robespierre had been ”college comrades”:
…If my dear college comrade, Robespierre, had said the same thing to the viscount, he wouldn’t have been able to respond like Saint Peter.
This was the first in a long series of homages Desmoulins’ journal would pay Robespierre. Throughout the years, he called him among other things ”The last of Romans and my hero” (number 41, September 6 1790), ”So pure, so inflexible, the peak of patriotism” (number 46, October 11 1790), ”the living commentary on the Declaration of Rights” (number 65, February 21 1791) and ”immutable” (number 76, May 9 1791). Desmoulins was also second in giving Robespierre the famous nickname ”the Incorruptible.” Not even Robespierre’s erstwhile boyfriend brother in arms Pétion, where Camille still admitted it was impossible to speak of one without thinking about the other (number 55, December 13 1790) got the same almost saintlike treatment. While Robespierre got praised by several journals positive to the revolution, I don’t think it would be that unfair to say Desmoulins was his cheerleader number one during at least its first few years. Several times, Robespierre also sent Camille speeches and letters of his which the latter willfully inserted into his journal (1, 2, 3).
I’ve found only one time Révolutions de France et de Brabant had something negative to say about Robespierre, and it is in number 27, released on May 31 1790, and conviently enough, the next piece of information regarding Desmoulins and Robespierre’s relationship that I know of:
I wasted my time preaching the republic. The republic and democracy are now down, and it is unfortunate for an author to shout in the desert and to write pages as worthless, as little listened to, as the motions of J. F. Maury. Since I despair of overcoming insurmountable currents, tied for six months to the bench of rowers, perhaps I would do well to regain the shore, and throw away a useless oar. I should leave Garnery, continue writing Révolutions de France et de Brabant at a discount, without attempting with my librarian, the unequal struggle of Tournon with Prudhomme. But I hear Robespierre call my discouragement corruption, and exclaim that I am sold like the others to the King's wife and to the ministerial party. I must undeceive my dear Robespierre, I must give new proofs of my incorruptibility every week, show that I am as proud a republican as he is, and that when the number of patriots, which is diminishing prodigiously every day, would be reduced to one or two citizens, it is I who would like to remain the last of the Jacobins. […] How is it that I was accused of being a sold-out journalist, and that I saw Robespierre and L... among my slanderers, when it is so difficult to find proofs of corruption against me? […] So I could not have my neck wrapped in a handkerchief and complain of esquinancia without being reproached for argyrancia as well. Ungrateful Robespierre!
A week later, June 7 1790, Robespierre authors the following letter to Desmoulins, in response to something the latter has written about him in the number of his journal released right after the one quoted above:
Monsieur,
I read the following passage regarding the decree from May 22 on the right of war and peace in your (votre) latest number of Révolutions de France et de Brabant: On Saturday, May 22, the little dauphin applauded a decree Mirabeau had put forward with a good sense way beyond his young years. The people applauded too. It led back in triumph Barnave, Péthion [sic], Lameth, d'Aiguillon, Duport, and all the illustrious Jacobins; imagiening itself having just won a great victory, and these deputies had the weakness to maintain it in an error which they enjoyed. Robespierre was more frank, he said to the multitude which surrounded him and stunned them with his beating statement: ”Well! gentlemen, what are you congratulating yourself on? the decree is detestable, detestable to the last bit; let's let the brat clap his hands at his window, he knows better than us what he's doing.” I must, monsieur, point out the error in which you have been led on the fact which concerns me in this passage. I told the National Assembly my opinion on the principles and consequences of the decree which regulates the exercise of the right of peace and war; but there I stopped. I did not make the statement you cite in the Tuileries garden; I didn’t even speak to the crowd of citizens who gathered in my path as I crossed it. I believe I must disavow this fact: 1, because it is not true; 2, because, however disposed I am to always display in the National Assembly the character of frankness which should distinguish the representatives of the nation, I am not unaware that elsewhere there is a certain reserve which suits them. I hope, monsieur, that you will be good enough to make my statement public through your newspaper, especially since your magnanimous zeal for the cause of liberty will make it a law for you not to leave bad citizens the slightest of pretext to calumniate the energy of the defenders of the people.
De Robespierre.
There’s certainly not much in this letter implying Robespierre is friends with Desmoulins, or even knows him as anything more than a journalist… All readers’ letters published within Révolutions de France et de Brabant up to this point have however used vouvoiement and been about as formal, so it’s possible Robespierre (who, according to his conserved correspondence, doesn’t use a particulary warm tone with anyone around this period save his arragois friend Antoine Buissart) is trying to mimick them. It’s also not impossible his tone had something to do with what Desmoulins had written about him a week earlier. Desmoulins did however not let himself become influenced by it when publishing and responding to the letter in the the next number (June 14 1790) of his journal. He even chose to adress Robespierre in tutoiment, even though Robespierre addressed him with vouvoiement, and despite having adressed every other correspondent to the journal with vouvoiement up until this point.
If I insure this errata, my dear Robespierre, it is only to show your (ton) signature to my fellow journalists, and teach them not to cripple a name that patriotism has illustrated. There is in your letter a dignity, a seanatorial gravity which wounds college friendship. You’re rightly proud of the laticlave of deputy to the National Assembly. This noble pride pleases me, and what annoys me even more is that not everyone feels their dignity as you do? But you should at least greet a former comrade with a slight nod. I love you none the less, because you are faithful to principles, even if you are not so faithful to friendship. However, why demand this retraction from me? When I would have slightly altered the truth in the anecdote I told, since this fact is honorable for you, since I doubtless said what you thought, if not your expressed words, instead of disavowing the journalists so curtly, you had to content yourself with saying like the cousin, in the charming comedy of the supposed dead man:
”Ah! Monsieur, vous brodez!”
You are not one of those weak men of whom J.J Rousseau speaks, who do not want anyone to be able to repeat what they think, and who only speak the truth in their negligee or in their dressing gown, and not in the National Assembly or in the Tuileries.
According to Brissot, the incident did however end up making both college comrades rather piqued against one another. In his memoirs (1793), he wrote the following about it:
I reread this letter to Camille, which chance put before my eyes at this moment, and of which Robespierre himself had brought me a copy to print so that it would have more publicity. It is dated June 8 [sic] 1790 […] Doesn't everything in this letter, on which I can't help but dwell yet, bear the character of a vague uneasiness, of a singular timidity? I remember on this occasion Robespierre with his fears and his scruples which he could not dissimulate. Desmoulins' thoughtlessness alarmed him; he didn't know what to think of it. Was this young man paid to write such follies, and thus compromise the friends of reason and liberty? The deputy's response to the journalist was dignified, proud; it was indeed the style of a patriot. Royalism? what clumsiness! […] Before inserting this complaint in my diary, I warned Camille, whose susceptibility I knew. His answer was made, he left it to me; but I thought I was agreeable to him by publishing neither this answer nor the complaint of which it was the object. He seemed to me strongly piqued against Robespierre. Was it in this tone that a college friend had written to him? What had this rose-watered Brutus to blame, and what power was he so afraid of displeasing? However, Cassius did not want to anger Brutus. Desmoulins always sought to stick to celebrities, to Danton as to Mirabeau, to Linguet as to Robespierre; he would have sought out Marat, had that wolf been able to live with someone in society. Moreover, Robespierre's letter, like his signature, struck his mind, and his answer smelt a bit of taunting.
If the relationship got damaged, it was however not enough to stop Robespierre from saving Camille after an arrest warrant had been issued against him during the session of the National Assembly held on August 2 1790:
M. Malouet: …Is Camille Desmoulins innovative? He will justify himself. Is he guilty? I will be the accuser of him and of all those who take up his defense. Let him justify himself, if he dares. (A voice rises from the stands: ”Yes, I dare.” A part of the surprised assembly rises; the rumor spreads in the assembly that it is M. Camille Desmoulins who has spoken; the president gives the order to arrest the individual who uttered these words).
N…: I ask that we deliberate beforehand on this arrest.
M. Robespierre: I believe that the provisional order given by the President was indispensable; but must you confuse imprudence and inconsideration with crime? He heard himself accused of a crime against the Nation, it is difficult for a sensitive man to remain silent. It cannot be supposed that he intended to disrespect the Legislative Body. Humanity agrees with justice, pleads in its favour. I ask for his release, and that we move on to the agenda.
The president annonces that M. Camille Desmoulins has escaped and can’t be arrested. The Assembly pass onto the order of the day.
Desmoulins was grateful Robespierre had stepped in, and in number 38 (August 16 1790) of his journal, he described the incident in the following way:
My dear Robespierre did not abandon me at this moment. By condemning me at first he conciliated all minds, and then brought them back with great art by developing this motion: if it is someone other than M. Desmoulins who raised his voice, this breach of assembly wheat must be punished; if it is him; it is difficult for an accused who does not feel guilty not to accept the challenge of his accuser. I ask for his release. Robespierre was applauded.
When Fréron (who we know was on friendly terms with at least Camille) described the very same incident in his journal l’Orateur du Peuple, he did refer to Robespierre as ”[Camille’s] friend” so perhaps their relationship had indeed gotten better since Robespierre’s impersonal letter…
Three numbers later (September 6 1790) Desmoulins writes about having given Robespierre a book written by abbot Jean-Joseph Rive:
O most learned and most patriotic of abbots! I read your letters, in which you always start out angry with me, and in which you end up smothering me with patriotic semens, and I gave your dear Robespierre your 700 pages in-80. But when do expect us to find the time to read your little novel?
Pierre Villiers, who in his Souvenirs d’un déporté (1802) claimed to have served as Robespierre’s secretary April-November 1790, wrote that the latter during this period ”thought the highest (il a fait le plus grand cas) of Camille Desmoulins. He's going too fast, Robespierre said to me, he'll break his neck; Paris wasn't made in a day, it takes more than a day to undo.”
On December 11 1790, Camille was given permission to marry Lucile Duplessis. Two weeks later, December 27, Robespierre, alongside Pétion, Brissot, Mercier, Sillery, Danton, Duport du Tertre, Barnave, Viefville des Essarts, Charles Lameth, Alexandre Lameth, Mirabeau, Andrieu and Deviefville, signed the couple’s wedding contract (1, 2). Two days after that, the wedding ceremony was held in Église Saint-Sulpice. Writing to his father about it, Camille could report that the witnesses this time had been ”Péthion [sic] and Robespierre, the elite of the National Assembly, M. de Sillery, who wanted to be there, and my two collegues Brissot de Warville and Mercier, the elite among the journalists.” The priest presiding over the ceremony was Denis Bérardier, who from 1778 to 1787 had been Camille and Robespierre’s college principal, after which he had been elected to represent the clergy at the Estates general. In the previously cited letter to his father, Camille writes that Bérardier during the ceremony held a speech that moved both him, Lucile and all of the witnesses to tears. An anonymous anecdote from 1792 similarily claims Camille began to cry out of joy during the ceremony, only this time Robespierre, instead of crying along with him, responded: ”don’t cry, you hypocrite!” It was however dismissed as apocryphal by Desmoulins’ latest biographer. After the ceremony, Camille reports that groom, bride, the witnesses and Bérardier all went over to his place to have dinner together with Lucile’s parents and sister.
A little more than a month after the wedding, Robespierre, impatient to see a speech of his printed in Révolutions de France et de Brabant, sent the following letter to Camille. This is the first time in his conserved correspondence where he doesn’t use vouvoiement, and it won’t be until February 1793 that he does so again (though I don’t have any appreciation on whether adressing someone in third-person is less formal or not):
Paris, February 14 1791
I point out to Monsieur Camille Demoulins [sic] that neither the beautiful eyes nor the fine qualities of the charming Lucile are reasons for not announcing my work on the national guard which has been given to him and of which I send him a copy if necessary. At this moment there is no object more pressing or more important than the organization of the National Guards. At least that is what the citizens of Marseilles think, of whom I am here attaching a decree relating to my speech. I beg Camille not to mislead himself and to try to also send me back the letters from Avignon and the replies which I gave him.
Robespierre
Camille obliged, printing the speech a week later in number 65 (February 21 1791) of his journal. It happened to be Discours sur l’organisation des gardes nationales, in which Robespierre becomes the first person ever to use the three words ”liberté, égalité, fraternité” as a slogan. But it was Camille who in July 1790 had been the first to bring the three words together as a formula. Robespierre and Desmoulins can therefore be said to hold the shared responsibility for the invention of what today is France’s national motto.
Five days after Camille had published Robespierre’s speech, February 26, Madame Chalabre wrote to the latter that ”The patriot Camille, in his last speech, paints with a charming naturalness, a truly original precision, the character of your talents. One would think that the genius of the good and unfortunate Jean-Jacques inspired him; it is of such a delicate touch; he shed so many tears reading this passage! Good Camille, you deserve the happiness which I hope you will enjoy with your lovely companion.” A week later, March 3, Sillery writes to Camille that ”Madame de Sillery is coming to dine at my house with Pétion and Robespierre, I dare to ask your lovable and beautiful wife to too do me this honor. […] Come, my dear Camille, if you have ever found yourself in a pure and exact democracy, it will be eight o’clock on Sunday when I hope to embrace you.”
In number 79 (June 4 1791) of his journal, Camille praises the ”simplicity” of Robespierre ”going by foot from his home on rue Saintonge to the National Assembly and dining for 30 sols,” implying they are on good enough terms for him to know those details about him. A few weeks later, June 21, Paris woke up to the discovery that the royal family had disappeared from the capital during the night. In number 82 (June 27 1791) of his journal, Camille would describe in detail what he had been up to during this day:
I left [Lafayette] hoping that maybe the immense career that the King's flight had opened to his ambition had brought him back to the popular party, and arrived at the Jacobins, striving to believe in his demonstrations of friendship and patriotism, and to fill myself with this persuasion, which, despite my efforts, flowed from my mind through a thousand memories, as through a thousand outlets. The only man who has my full confidence, Robespierre, had the floor. See here a speech full of truths of which I haven’t lost a single one, and tremble: [he then transcribes a speech Robespierre holds on the flight of the royal family] How shall I express this abandon, this accent of patriotism and indignation with which he pronounced it! He was listened to with that religious attention from which we collect the last words of the dying. It was, in fact, like his testament that he came to deposit in the archives of the club. I did not hear this speech with as much composure as I report at this moment, where the arrest of the former King has changed the face of affairs. I was moved to tears in more than one place, and when this excellent citizen, in the middle of his speech, spoke of the certainty of paying with his head for the truths he had just pronounced, I cried out: we will all die before you!
Apparently no one ever taught Camille to be careful with what you wish for.
In the same number, Desmoulins also describes how, the next day, he and several others brought a woman who had information to give on the escape attempt to the Jacobin club, in the hopes that her testimony would get Robespierre to denounce Lafayette and Bailly. Once arrived, they talk to him and Buzot, who both quickly become convinced of the high credibility of the witness, but are taken aback by the measures proposed to be taken. ”We will be,” they said, ”pushed back from the tribune, referred to the research committee, and our accusation will be entered in this mortuary register of denunciations.” After a while Pétion shows up and definitely discourages Robespierre, who, according to Camille, ”at first was quite disposed to take away the reputation of Bailly and La Fayette via assault.”
The escape attempt resulted in the demonstration and shootings on Champ de Mars on July 17 1791. On the evening of the same day as these events, we find Desmoulins and Robespierre at the Jacobin Club, both speaking of what had just happened. Shortly thereafter Camille went incognito for a while, hiding out at Lucile’s parents’ country house at Bourg-la-Reine until finally resurfacing in Paris again in early September. In the meantime, Robespierre had changed address and gone to live with the Duplay family on Rue Saint-Honoré 398, today a 35 minute walk from Rue du Théâtre 1 (today Rue de l’Odeon 28) where Camille and Lucile had moved shortly after their wedding. In her old days, Élisabeth Duplay authored a list over the people who most commonly would frequent her family’s house during the revolution.
The Lamenths and Pétion in the early days, quite rarely Legendre, Merlin de Thionville and Fouché, often Taschereau, Desmoulins and Teault, always Lebas, Saint-Just, David, Couthon and Buonarotti.
However, judging by an anecdote told by the same Élisabeth, Desmoulins’ visits went from being frequent to rare after a certain incident (that I would guess happened in 1793 considering Élisabeth still places his overall visits under the ”often” section):
One day Camille familiarly enters the Duplay house; Robespierre was absent. He starts a conversation with the youngest of the carpenter's daughters; as he retires, Camille hands her a book he had under his arm. ”Elizabeth,” he said to her, ”do me the service of holding onto this work; I will come back for it.” No sooner had Desmoulins left than the young girl curiously half-opened the book entrusted to her custody: what was her confusion, seeing paintings of revolting obscenity pass under her fingers. She blushes: the book falls. All the rest of the day Elizabeth was silent and troubled; Maximilian noticed it; drawing her aside. "What's the matter with you," he asked her, "you look so worried to me?" The young girl lowered her head, and as an answer went to fetch the book with the odious engravings which had offended her sight. Maximilien opened the volume and turned pale. "Who gave you this?" he asked in a voice shaking with anger. The girl frankly told him what had happened. "It’s fine," Robespierre went on, "don't talk about what you've just told me to anyone: I'll make it my business. Don't be sad anymore. I'll let Camille know. It is not what enters involuntarily through the eyes that defiles chastity: it is the evil thoughts that one has in the heart.” He admonished his friend severely, and from that day on, visits from Camille Desmoulins became very rare.
In a diary entry entry from June 1792, Lucile seemingly confirms the connection she and her husband had with Robespierre’s host family when she writes ”I went with C(amille) and little Duplay (most likely Élisabeth’s little brother Jacques-Maurice) to an old madwoman’s.”
On September 30 1791, the National Assembly was shut down and Robespierre left Paris for Arras, where he arrived on October 14. He was back in the capital again on November 28. A little more than two weeks later, December 16, Brissot, held his first speech in favor of going to war. As known, Robespierre opposed this, holding his first speech against the idea just two days later. Desmoulins quickly joined his side, holding a similar speech on December 25. When Robespierre held his third big speech on the subject, on January 11, Desmoulins, who listened to the reading, was enthusiastic and the next day he wrote the following letter to the ”patriots of Millau” (cited in Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un Rêve de République):
At the moment I am still enthusiastic. This speech will be reread in all sections, in all clubs and in all patriots' houses; everywhere one will admire and especially love the author, but what would have happened had you heard him speak yourself! Those who were his college comrades, and even those who last year were his colleagues in the National Assembly, have not recognized Robespierre for some time. From a man of spirit, he became eliquent, and now he is sublime at intervals. It seems that he grows by one foot every month, as it is true that the home of talent is the heart. When, two years ago, I presented him, in my journal, as a Cato, I was far from foreseeing that he would never rise to the height of the talent of Demosthenes.
A month later, Desmoulins also aimed a blow against Brissot with the release of the pampleth Jean Pierre Brissot démasqué. While said pampleth definitely outlined who Camille considered his enemies, it also made clear who were his champions, with Robespierre, who’s name got mentioned nine times throughout, taking up the forefront:
This true patriot (Rœderer) has not forgiven me, him and his cabal, for loving Robespierre, my college friend, venerable, great in my eyes, although it has been said that there was no great man for his valet-de-chambre, nor for his college friend and the witness of his youth.
In a letter written shortly thereafter to François Suleau, another one of their former college comrades, Desmoulins claimed that ”[Robespierre] sees me as invulnurable after the proof of incorruptibility that I produced in my latest writing to Brissot.” Apropos of Desmoulins still seeing Suleau, a firm royalist, he added: ”I cannot blame my friend Robespierre when he tells me that he would run away from my house on seeing a notable from Coblentz (Suleau) enter.”
War was nevertheless declared on April 20 1792. The very same day, Camille and Fréron, who had both had to quit their journals in the aftermath of the massacre on Champ de Mars, signed a contract for creating a new one — La Tribune des Patriotes. The first number was meant to be released on May 7, but the following day, their publisher Charles Frobert Patris told Camille he had refused to print it, on the charge of it being ”a libel.” Camille reported this to the Jacobin club the very same day, and the following session Patris came forward to explain himself. Things did however not go the way he’d planned, and in a pampleth released shortly afterwards, Patris wrote the following regarding the session:
How come you (Robespierre) tolerated that the vile informer (Camille), to whom I was answering, seeing the club cover with long applause the hard truths that I was beginning to tell him, left his place to go sit down behind you, pulled you by the tailcoat and spoke to you in a low voice and with an air of intelligence! Didn't you have to feel that such intimacy would favor him, and turn to my prejudice?
Soon thereafter, La Tribune des Patriotes could finally be released. This work too was in part meant to protect and advocate for Robespierre, starting already in the first number:
O my dear Robespierre, I gave you this name (the Incorruptible) three years ago! Let people re-read my writings: at the time of my highest admiration for the Mirabeaus, the Lafayettes, the Lameths, and so many others, I always set you apart, I always placed your probity, character and soul above all; and I have seen that the public, while learning from my writings, has hitherto confirmed my judgments, six months or a year after I had made them. Since degenerate friends of truth come to the aid of the impotence of our means to defray the cost of this journal, Fréron and I will not abandon you in the breach, in the midst of a cloud of enemies. The efforts of all these false patriots relentless today - against you alone, we will divide them, by drawing on us their hatred, and by fighting at your side, not for a man, not for you, but for the cause of the people, the equality of the constitution, which has been attacked in you.
Desmoulins and Fréron had originally planned to have the journal run for at least a year, however, it failed to catch an audience and was put down already after four numbers. Robespierre’s name did however still get mentioned a total of 40 times throughout the journal, always in a positive light.
On July 6 1792, Lucile gave birth to a son who received the name Horace. The idea that Robespierre was his godfather would appear to be nothing but a myth seeing as the baptism record doesn’t mention any godparents but only two witnesses — neither of which is Robespierre but instead Laurent Lecointre and Merlin de Thionville. After the good days of the relationship were over, both Lucile and her mother would however contemplate over Robespierre having held Horace in his arms on multiple occasions, the former writing: ”You (Robespierre) who have smiled at my son and whom his infantile hands have carassed so many times…” and the latter asking if he still remembered ”the caresses you lavished on little Horace, how you delighted to hold him upon your knee.”
Three days after his birth, Horace was sent off to a wetnurse, while Lucile soon thereafter went to her parents’ country house to rest up. Camille remained in Paris working on a speech that he delivered on July 24. A few days before it he reported to Lucile that ”I dined at Robespierre’s today and talked ever so much about Rouleau (nickname for Lucile), Rouleau, my poor Rouleau.” Lucile returned from the countryside on August 8. Four days later, after the Insurrection of August 10, Camille was made secretary by the new Minister of Justice Danton. After a week, the three went to live at Hôtel de Bourvallais, just a six minute walking distance away from the Duplay house, and where, in Lucile’s own words, ”we spent three months quite cheerfully.”
The trial of the king started around the same time Camille and Lucile returned to their original apartment. Robespierre and Camille once again fought side by side for the same goals — this time for death and against an appeal to the people. In number 2 of his journal La Defenseur de la Constitution, Robespierre inserted a speech Camille had made on the latter of these two questions. In his memoirs, Théodore de Lameth claimed to during this period have gone home to Camille to try to get him to change his mind on the matter. Lucile would have however firmly shut him down — ”she told me eloquently all the extravagances that her age and the exaltation of her sex can produce, deifying Robespierre in the praise she gave him.”
On March 26 1793, Desmoulins and Robespierre were both elected for the so called Commission of Public Safety, alongside 23 others. The commission, consisting of both fervent montagnards and girondins, was however off to a rocky start, and already on April 6 it was put to death and replaced by the Committee of Public Safety, which neither Desmoulins nor Robespierre was on.
On May 17 1793, Desmoulins announced the release of his new pampleth l’Histoire des Brissotins to the Jacobins. We know that Robespierre had had a hand in the creation of this pampleth through a note inserted in Camille’s Lettre de Camille Desmoulins au général Dillon released a few months later:
The true origin of the rigor of the Committee towards you, would it be in a very long note, which was printed following l’Histoire des Brissotins, which Robespierre made me cut out?
The Jacobins published l’Histoire des Brissotins on May 19, and a week later, Robespierre, who for a long time had refused to do so, openly called for an insurrection against ”the corrupt deputies” of the National Convention at the Jacobins, a wish he then repeated three days later. Two days after that, the Insurrection of May 31 took place, and on June 2 the Convention voted for the arrest of 29 Girondins. I think it could be argued it was Desmoulins and Robespierre who together had delivered the principal deathblow to this ”faction.”
Nine days after the murder of Marat, July 22 1793, the Jacobin Club tasked Desmoulins, Robespierre, Lepeletier and Dufourny with writing an adress to the French people regarding it. Said adress was printed and read aloud at the club four days later, obviously deploring of the event and praising the murdered. Just one day after that, July 27, Robespierre was elected as member of the Committee of Public Safety. Camille on the other hand remained restless, and on November 1, he wrote to ”his old friend” to ask to be sent on a mission to Aisne.
I point out to our dear Robespierre that there is no impediment by law to me going to my department. Choudieu and Ricord, who are in theirs, Barras, and so many others, prove that the decree of which Billaud-Varennes spoke yesterday either does not exist or is not being executed. So I always recommend to him, as Lejeune's assistant, the historian Lucceius, reminding him of the custom of the senate of Rome, which never failed, when one of its members wanted to spend a week in Greece or Sicily, to see his father, to deliver to him, honoris curá, letters of credence, and the title of commissioner, or of legatus, which did not prevent him, on the way, from deserving well of the republic, and from gaining the vasarium.
His old friend,
Camille Desmoulins.
To citizen Robespierre, member of the Committee of Public Safety.
As can be seen, Desmoulins adresses Robespierre in third person here, just like Robespierre had done to him two years earlier. These letters are the only examples of these two using third person that I’m aware of, almost making you suspect it was a conscious choice they made of adressing the other like that. Desmoulins did however not obtain any mission, but remained in Paris, as did Robespierre.
On December 5 1793 was released the first number of Desmoulins’ new journal Le Vieux Cordelier. According to what he wrote in said number, it was after having heard Robespierre and Danton speak at the Jacobins on December 3 that he decided to pick up his pen again — ”I leave my office and my armchair, where I had all the leisure to follow, in detail, this new system of our enemies, of which Robespierre only presented the outline, his occupations at the Committee of Public Safety not allowing him to embrace it in its entirety like me.”
Like with l’Histoire des Brissotins, Camille had let Robespierre proofread and give his approval of the number before it got sent to the publisher. He did the same thing again for the second number, released on December 9, that concerned itself with the topic of dechristianization, denouncing Anacharsis Cloots and Anaxagoras Chaumette for their role in it. These thoughts were shared by Robespierre, who had spoken for liberty of cults on both November 21 and 28 and December 5 and December 6, and would go on to get Cloots expelled from the Jacobins when the latter passed through its scrutiny test on December 12. Two days later, the turn had come to Camille to go through the very same examination. He was at first questioned on his friendship with the general Arthur Dillon and for having stated that the Girondins ”died as republicans” the day they were condemned. After Desmoulins had justified himself, stating among other things that ”a well marked fatality willed that, among the sixty [sic] people who signed my wedding contract, I only have two friends left — Danton and Robespierre. All the others have emigrated or been guillotined,” Robespierre took to the floor and, after reproaching Camille for having been on friendly terms with Mirabeau, Dillon, Lamarlière and the Lameth brothers, made sure his friend passed the test. To ensure it, he first recited from heart a long poem Camille had written in 1787, the verses of which ”struck me so hard back then, that they have been ingraved in my memory,” and then said the following:
The manner in which Camille expressed himself at a time when some great patriots of today trembled, perhaps even cringed, before the tyrant; these are character traits that must be taken into account when judging a man. It is true that no one better than he justifies the proverb of the peoples living on the banks of the Guadalquivir and the Tagus: so and so was brave on such a day. Camille, stricken with thoughts of death, constantly sees the guillotine before his eyes; he imagines that because several of his friends have perished by the last torture, the same fate awaits him. Here is the character of Desmoulins: easy to let himself be warned, he quickly believes in the signs of patriotism that he perceives; but is he undeceived? His love for public affairs makes him tear the veil; he drags in the mud the cheats he had placed under the canopy; it is thus that he treated Mirabeau, the Lameths, and the Brissotins in recent times. The Girondin faction wanted to attract Camille to their party; Sillery was charged with this role. The famous Pamela appeared before Desmoulins, accompanied with an enchanting voice the sounds of a melodious lute; Camille, insensitive to the sting, faithful to his wife, faithful to republican principles, disdained the attractions of this new Circe, of this second Herodiade. Desmoulins, the first of all, mounted at the Palais Royal on the unsteady boards of a tottering table, preached patriotism, pistol in hand; he rendered great services to the Revolution. His energetic and easy pen can still serve it usefully, but it is necessary that, more circumspect in the choice of his friends, he must break any pact with impiety, that is to say, with the aristocracy; on these conditions, I request the admission of Camille Desmoulins.
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