daydreaming

I have to say this is the first time I've ever done an edit, so I hope it's okay—my perfectionist's ass was suffering, editing is MUCH MORE harder than I thought... But I'm lowkey proud with the result and I hope yall like it!

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Philippe Le Bas 🐴

🩵 Patience: The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.

‌He was known for his calm and prudent character; Élisabeth herself (his wife) said that because of his character he was paired with Saint-Just to go to Alsace, so they could balance each other.

‌In Alsace he spent months trying to implement the revolutionary laws in a region with linguistic, military and religious tensions.

‌He used to work in the background, accepting administrative and organizational tasks without seeking the limelight.

‌He calmly accepted the danger and his tragic final fate, remaining serene and loyal to his friends, without giving in to panic.

Georges Danton 🗣️

🧡 Bravery: The quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty.

‌He was one of the main leaders on the day of August 10, 1792.

‌When Paris was threatened by foreign armies, he uttered the famous "Audacity, and more audacity, and always audacity!"

‌He was never a prudent politician: he said what he thought even if it made him enemies.

‌He publicly defended his friend Fabre d'Églantine when it was already very unpopular (and dangerous) to do so.

‌He refused to flee France knowing and being warned that he would be arrested.

‌During the trial, he continually defied the Revolutionary Tribunal, so much so that they had to silence him.

‌He climbed the scaffold without losing his composure and even joked with the executioner: "Don't forget to show my head to the people; it's well worth it."

Camille Desmoulins ☘️

💙 Integrity: The quality of being honest and firmly adhering to strong moral, ethical, or professional principles.

‌From a very young age he denounced the abuses of absolutism and defended civil liberties.

‌On July 12, 1789, he was one of the first to publicly call for popular mobilization after Necker's dismissal.

‌For years he wrote newspapers defending what he believed, even when he changed his mind (which he did a lot).

‌He was never a particularly rich man, nor did he use the Revolution to enrich himself.

‌In Le Vieux Cordelier he criticized measures that he himself had previously supported because he believed that the Revolution was losing its principles.

‌He continued publishing even though he knew he was angering many people, so much so that he was almost expelled from the Jacobin club if it weren't for Robespierre's intervention.

Jean-Paul Marat 📰

💜 Perseverance: Continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.

‌He published in his newspapers without rest. Sometimes he disappeared for months and other times he published daily.

‌Even with the police trying to capture him, Marat continued writing in his newspaper, remaining underground and constantly changing hiding places for almost 3 years, until August 1792.

‌Bailly and Lafayette organized a massive military mobilization to finally arrest Marat, but the people blocked the operation, allowing Marat to escape again.

‌To awaken the revolutionary spirit of the people, Marat decided that he would be more violent, even knowing that he would win in the judgment of his fellow revolutionaries.

‌He suffered from a very painful skin disease that barely allowed him to rest.

‌It took him a while to be elected deputy to the National Convention because of his violent reputation, but with Robespierre's backing he succeeded.

‌Since many Montagnards were away on missions, the Girondins took advantage of the situation to arrest Marat, and he went to trial. Marat won the trial.

‌He never stopped denouncing the enemies of the Revolution, even a moment before his death.

Georges Couthon 🐇

💚 Kindness: The quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.

‌Committee members with whom he did not get along described him as polite, affable, and easy to deal with.

‌As Representative on Mission in Lyon, he tried to reduce punishments to a minimum and reintegrate Lyon into the nation. Very differently from his successors, Collot and Fouché, who carried out mass repressions and executions in the same city.

In Lyon he tried to stop the local Jacobins, he did not imprison anyone without prior examination and the vast majority of insurgents were labeled as "Deviant" and were released after recanting.

‌Four days after being reproached and receiving new orders, Couthon asked to be removed from his mission in Lyon. The request was not made to the committee, but to Saint-Just, where he also said: "Tell me that you still exist, that you are well, that you haven't forgotten me, and I shall be content..."

‌While waiting for the Committee to replace him, Couthon set up the new revolutionary tribunals, but so slowly that there were almost no executions.

‌In response to reports of the Carrier's drownings, Couthon raised his voice in favor of pardoning the ordinary people of Vendéans who had been "deceived".

‌The committee twice tried to remove Couthon by sending him on a mission to isolate Robespierre. Couthon refused.

Louis Antoine Saint-Just ⚖️

💛 Justice: The concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, and fairness.

‌He believed that the laws should be applied equally to everyone, without privileges.

‌He wrote the Laws of Ventôse, which sought to redistribute property confiscated from enemies of the Republic to citizens in need. Despite Saint-Just's insistence, the law was not applied.

‌As a representative on mission, he effectively organized the Rhine army without resorting to mass killings as other representatives did.

‌He punished both aristocratic and revolutionary officers when they failed to fulfill their duty or there was military corruption.

‌Although he and Robespierre were growing somewhat distant, on 9 Thermidor Saint-Just remained with Robespierre instead of trying to save himself.

‌Saint-Just knew that the Commune had enough military power to wipe out the Convention troops and thus save himself. But he did not give the order because he did not believe the insurrection had legitimacy.

‌He preferred to die rather than live under tyranny or compromise, because, for him, corruption destroys human dignity.

Maximilien Robespierre 📝

❤️ Determination: The mental strength and firmness of purpose to continue trying to achieve a goal, even when faced with significant difficulties.

‌For years he championed very unpopular causes: universal suffrage; rights for Jews, Protestants and actors; abolition of slavery and opposition to the death penalty before the Revolution.

‌Just when he was looking for a retirement from his political life in Paris, he was chosen as a public prosecutor without his knowledge. Robespierre, though tired, accepted it as a painful sacrifice: "I am called to a turbulent destiny."

‌He strongly opposed France entering the war in 1792, even if his position was initially unpopular and he was also harshly attacked by Brissot and the Girondins.

‌His health deteriorated greatly between 1793 and 1794 and there were several attempts on his life, yet he continued to work.

‌Although he left the Committee for 40 days 1794, he continued to participate in the Jacobin Club and eventually returned to the Committee.

‌On 9 Thermidor, he initially accepted arrest because he wanted to respect the Convention's accusation; only later did he agree to leave his cell when his supporters insisted.

‌Until the very end, he tried to convince the sections to support him, instead of trying to seize power by military force.

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And that's it! There are some I don't know much about, so I couldn't include as much information as with the others. Also, If I've put any incorrect information in any of these facts or you'd like to add something, please feel free to do so 😊

Sources used:

- Twelve Who Ruled from R.R Palmer

- Jean-Paul Marat Tribune of the French Revolution from Clifford D. Conner

Is it possible that the larger population just doesn't understand how Plutarch and his tales of absolute heroic stoicism molded Saint-Just's mind and why he embraces death? That if faced with the horror of surviving in a diminished degraded corrupt state, he will always choose to let himself die? Liberty or death. His entire philosophy is basically a continuation of La Boétie and the inspiration for the future "better to die on your feet than live on your knees".

"Ô Dieu ! faut-il que Brutus languisse oublié loin de Rome ! Mon parti est pris cependant : si Brutus ne tue point les autres, il se tuera lui-même." - letter to Daubigny, 1791

If he cannot act, if he cannot deliver Rome from tyranny, he will choose total self-annihilation over compromise or obscurity.

This is how you can summarize his philosophy:

"As long as liberty triumphs, what does it matter if my name is tarnished or if I perish?"

He knows true heroes perish and are slandered, so he expects it (that's in the introduction to the Institutions républicaines), but all that matters to him is that he offered his life as a monument to the truth and that his name and example will live on as a myth regardless. That he's transcending humanity into becoming a myth:

"I despise the dust of which I am composed and that speaks to you; one may persecute it and make this dust die! But I defy anyone to rip from me this independent life I have given myself in the centuries and in the skies."

People might see a contradiction here: how can he live forever if he's dead? But to him it's totally logical. If he cannot live free, then he will not live at all, and death becomes his true form of existence. There is no contradiction to him because he separates existence into two distinct categories: the dust (the physical, biological body that can be chained, starved, or guillotined) and the independent life (the moral legacy, the virtue, the idea).

​For Saint-Just, the "dust" is merely a temporary vessel. If that vessel can no longer exist in absolute liberty, then keeping it alive through compromise or submission is the true death. To live on one's knees is to reduce oneself to nothing but dust. It's what he explains in the two paragraphs that precede the famous "centuries and skies" quote:

"Circumstances are only difficult for those who recoil before the tomb. I implore it, the tomb, as a blessing of Providence, so that I may no longer be a witness to the impunity of crimes plotted against my motherland and humanity.

Certainly, it is leaving very little behind to quit a miserable life, in which one is condemned to vegetate as either the accomplice or the impotent witness of crime…"

​Therefore, letting the dust die is not an act of destruction; it is an act of liberation. It is the moment the idea is permanently freed from the fragile, corruptible flesh. This is exactly what drives his final weeks. He realizes that a living man can be compromised, bribed, worn down, or defeated by politics. A living man has to deal with the messy, frustrating friction of human nature. To be truly Incorruptible is to die for the Ideal.

Because Saint-Just famously suppressed his emotions by hiding behind an uncompromising, inflexible mask of ice and marble, people assume he lacked human feeling. That he was some kind of "sociopath". In truth, it was a philosophical exercise, the highest form of performance where your life becomes a role of absolute sincerity. There is no cynicism here. Only pure belief.

Beneath the facade he is forcing onto himself, there was a deeply sensitive (in this sense), hyper-idealistic, and profoundly exhausted young man dealing with what we would now classify as massive psychological pressure, depression, and burnout. But his century elevated this state not as a dysfunction but as perfection. His stoicism wasn't a lack of emotion; it was an intense, violent containment of emotion. He used an overwhelming amount of passion to act that "cold". Most people don't see the volcano underneath the ice; they only see the frost. But people from his time saw it, hence Barère’s quote: "He has a mind of fire and a heart of ice."

However, contemporary society - the one that rose from Thermidorian cynicism and bourgeois liberalism - is profoundly uncomfortable with the concept of the absolute. It teaches the value of self-interest, compromise, moderation, and keeping our heads down (and on) to survive. On the other hand, Saint-Just represents the terrifying, intoxicating (and therefore sublime) concept of total commitment and devotion to an Ideal. And that Ideal is Liberty and Independence. In bourgeois liberalism, liberty is a legal fiction and theory; for someone like Saint-Just, it's a sacred, transcendental force.

​When he says:

"Those who make revolutions by halves do nothing but dig their own graves."

He is rejecting the very concept of middle ground not just in the realm of politics but in life itself. To the contemporary audience, that level of conviction is terrifying. It cannot be compromised with or tempted with wealth, glory or power. It is much safer and easier for a contemporary mind to label that "fanaticism" and "madness" or to believe he was bluffing than to sit with the uncomfortable truth that a human being was capable of loving an ideal - in this case liberty - so much that he viewed his own life, and the lives of others, as entirely secondary to it:

The day I become convinced that it is impossible to give the French people customs that are gentle, energetic, and sensitive, I shall stab myself.

Not only does he basically echo and complete one of his famous quotes:

"Un peuple n'a qu'un ennemi dangereux, c'est son gouvernement." (​"A people has only one dangerous enemy, and that is its government.")

"People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people."

But also:

He has shed his humanity to become a symbol and hides behind a porcelain mask.

He becomes a monster in the name of the highest ideal: liberty, integrity, and thus virtue in the 18th century sense (Evey's torture being liberation).

He has this same hard-to-categorize, contradictory pull between despotism and liberty, domination and emancipation, authoritarianism and anarchism described by Miguel Abensour.

He accepts the inevitability of his death not as a tragedy but as the consecration of his principles: if a living man cannot impose the rule of liberty without the use of despotism and therefore becoming corrupt, because no one can reign/govern innocently, then the man must step aside and let the myth take over.

[...] The system is essentially incomplete because it does not deal with the real principle. In my opinion, the errors made in this regard stem from two main causes:

First. The authors of that theory treated the products most essential to life as ordinary commodities, drawing no distinction between the trade in wheat, for instance, and the trade in indigo; they discoursed on the grain trade without regard for the people's subsistence, and by failing to factor this into their calculations, they misapplied principles that were otherwise self-evident—it is this blend of truth and falsehood that has flawed their system and rendered it erroneous.

Second. They did even less to adapt it to the turbulent circumstances brought about by revolutions; their vague theory, however sound it might have been in ordinary times, offers no solution regarding the immediate measures that moments of crisis may demand of us. They paid too much attention to the profits of merchants or landowners and too little to the lives of ordinary people. And why? Because it was the great, the ministers, the wealthy, who did the writing and the governing. Had it been the people, that system would likely have undergone some modifications!

Excerpts from "On Subsistence". December 2, 1792

Even his critics find him interesting. But if you need an answer:

And:

He is a close friend of madmen, wretches, beasts, and poets.

I WAS WAITING TO BE ASKED THIS QUESTION!!!

I have a full list prepared, anon.

Ahem. *clears voice* Here we go.

🥰✨️Why We Love Saint-Just✨️🥰

👉 He defied established traditional authorities from older men trying to keep him down to the literal king (also his mom)

👉 He changed the course of the Revolution with his speech(es) about the king

👉 He was absolutely brilliant, his speeches and theoretical works are amazing? (Also Organt is great Idc what you say and not enough people know Arlequin-Diogène or La Raison à la morne.)

👉 His self-reflection in the fragments and all the philosophical/political stuff??

👉 His views on friendship and the community of affections completely shattering nationalist ties to soil and blood rhetoric

👉 He was fiercely devoted to an ideal to the point of incarnating the sublime

👉 His devotion to his friends, not just Robespierre but also Couthon and Le Bas and Thuillier and Gateau etc. and Élisabeth Duplay-Le Bas. Even Villain d'Aubigny who yet turned on him.

👉 He was so kind to Élisabeth and Henriette on mission and treated them like capable adults (which Philippe was less good at lol)

👉 His work on missions was incredible but also can we talk about the Ventôse Decrees? And the fact HE WROTE A CONSTITUTION BEFORE TURNING TWENTY-SIX????

👉 His self-myth and the struggle with his mask and how it's hiding a vulnerable sensitive young man is just w o w

👉 He lived in a small village and lacked a lot of resources from money to books and everyone who's been there can relate

👉 He's like the patron saint to impatient overachieving youth

👉 Transmascs and lesbians love him because he definitely speaks to their experience of being queer and struggling with objectification and infantilization

👉 He defiantly told his executioners he was a STUDENT before the Revolution without any career

👉 He tried so hard??? He's so #relatable???

👉 He terrified the establishment then and now

👉 He pisses off SO MANY PEOPLE like Furet and Gueniffey and Schama and Mantel 🫶😈🥳

👉 He could have easily embraced tyranny and taken action against the Convention but he chose not to and to die instead

👉 His rage gives a voice to the abused and the oppressed and the scorned in the centuries and in the skies

👉 Alexa, play his anthem Welcome to the Black Parade

👉 Oh yeah and HE LOOKED LIKE THIS

What follows is the translation of a recent interview to Luigi Mascilli-Migliorini, a reputed Italian historian, focused on the Napoleonic Era. I found it peculiar for an expert of that period to talk rather positively of Robespierre and be aware of the black legend that has affected him for over two centuries. I though you might be interested in reading it, so there it is:

Professor, why is all the responsibility for the Terror attributed to Robespierre? He was no dictator, but just a member - though with lots of influence - of a large Committee [established] for public safety.

It's true. There was no formal hierarchy structure with Robespierre at the top. Moreover, he was not alone. Nevertheless, during the Terror, one turned often to him and, in a way, he could determine the destiny of some characters. Even today, it's not that men of major formal relevance are those really in charge as far as political parties are concerned. He wasn't even that extraordinary of an orator, he was a bit boring, but he had a sort of electric ability to catch the mood of the masses and give it a political shape.

According to Albert Mathiez the Terror was necessary to save France, which was threatened by the armed European monarchies and by those who wanted to come to terms with the enemy. Do you share this view as well?

My view can't be distant from that of a great historian like Mathiez. Nevertheless, I would like to reverse the issue from him, who was also a "militant". In the spring of 1793, revolutionary France was very fragile: the war -- badly waged by the Girondins the year before -- made the revolutionary spirit precarious and the internal situation unstable. There was the actual risk that foreign troops would put Louis XVI back on the throne. Was the Terror absolutely necessary? It surely saved the Revolution. Could it have been implemented in a different way though?

So the counter-evidence is missing, isn't it?

We have proof of fragility. We don't have the counter-evidence that the Terror was necessary. We can't not say what Mathiez said, but he said that in an assertive way. Personally, I'm not very sure that Danton's death strengthened revolutionary France.

Did the Terror make more victims than other revolutionary periods?

No, it didn't. The White Terror, the showdown after Robespierre's fall, did way more victims, of that we are pretty sure.

Robespierre proposed a Declaration of the rights of the man and the citizen which called for equality in front of the law, protection for the poor, progressive taxation, education for everyone, limitation of private property in the name of common good. It's hard to reconcile all of this with the public image of a bloodthirsty madman.

He was by no means a bloodthirsty madman. His horizons included a republic that today we would define as emancipatory. It has nothing to do with socialism, even though for some in the 20th century, Robespierre became the hero, who had he been let free to do it, France would have accomplished socialism. He was a rousseauiste, not even among the most ardent ones, convinced that equality lay behind the matter of liberty and a retouch to private property was necessary. Without Stalinist emphasis or generalized expropriation, instead, with common sense, to redress terrible inequalities. He starts from liberty in order to get to equality, not vice versa. This makes him belong to political groups which are rather distant to accomplished socialism.

[This] makes him a contemporary of ours.

Indeed. If there's anything to be credited to him (beyond the either positive or negative consequences of the Terror) it’s that the Revolution couldn't fail. He was neither a rebel, nor a revolutionary by profession like Stalin, Lenin or Gramsci. He was not "unkempt" like Danton or Marat, he was a good-mannered, old-fashioned man. He was someone, who, finding himself caught in the midst of the Revolution from the start, couldn't stop or go back. All of this in the name of revolutionary values, chief among them liberty. There's a beautiful sentence: "the Revolution is illegal like liberty itself". One can't ask the Revolution the syntax of peaceful times.

-------

Confession:

Robespierre’s execution* Robespierre’s elimination = Thermidor or 9 Thermidor

the political movement that ensued = Thermidorian reaction

The term Thermidorian reaction refers to a period and political movement that started in reaction to Thermidor. It spans form Thermidor to the start of the Directoire in November 1795.

In the same period, Carrier was denounced by a campaign led by the Thermidorian press that called for his trial (and death). And so they did. The leading core of the Thermidorians who had committed numerous crimes during their missions (Tallien, Fouché, etc.) used him as a scapegoat to whitewash themselves. He was executed on 16 December 1794.

Then, Fouquier-Tinville and the members of the Tribunal were put on trial in Spring (some had been in jail since Thermidor); some were acquitted, like Maurice Duplay; others were executed like Joachim Vilate. Fouquier and those found guilty were executed on 7 May 1795.

Barère, Collot and Billaud soon lost power shortly after 10 Thermidor. A campain was also built against them, starting as early as August 28. Collot and Billaud were the most "far-left" members of the Committee of Public Safety, so it was urgent to get rid of them.

They're arrested in March and condemned to be deported to Guyana on April 1st 1795, aka 12 Germinal an III. This date might be familar: it's the day of the first of two big insurrections against the Thermidorian regime, the other being on 1er Prairial (May 20). It was the last popular insurrection for decades. The repression against the sans-culottes was unheard of; they took away their weapons, something they had had since the 14 July of '89. The remaining clubs were all closed. It was the end of the popular revolution. The Revolution died in between 10 Thermidor and 1st Prairial.

The last few deputies of the Montagne, among them Romme (who ironically had drafted the accusation against Carrier) were accused of being guilty by association with the insurrection, because they voted laws in favor of the insurgés as it had always happened since the start of the Revolution (August 10, May 31st), but now it failed. By then the Montagne had reduced so much they called them the Crête; and the Montagnards the Crêtois; it's a pun on the Mountain slimming to a ridge. There was barely any Montagnards left. 14 deputies were arrested after the violent repression of the insurrection. 11 were put on trial. 6 were found guilty: Goujon, Duroy, Romme, Soubrany, Duquesnoy and Bourbotte. When their execution was ordered, they all attempted suicide; only three succeeded. They became known as the Martyrs of Prairial.

So what happened that changed in between then and Fall when the Jacobins were shut down and Fouquier executed?

Winter.

The terrible Winter of Year III.

Oh you know Les Mis? When Jean Valjean breaks a window to feed his sister's kids? That's when it happens. And yes it's intentional on Victor Hugo's part.

Paris ran out of not just wheat, but coal and wood and basically everything. You can't cook bread without those. Numerous jobs can't be done - laundry for example, and the soap had run out as well. There was no job to get money to get the little left to eat, plus the winter was violently colder, amongst the worst, including that of '88 which contributed in starting the Revolution.

There's a magnificent series of books by Aulard: Paris during the Thermidorian Reaction and the Directoire (Paris pendant la Réaction thermidorienne et le Directoire). It's a collection of the newspapers and police reports published every single day, that give an impressive as-if-you-were-there feeling of everything that happens: the press becomes increasingly conservative and reactionary not just against the Jacobins but the people too. Democracy is under attack. The idea that only wealthy men deserve to vote and have power becomes popular again. Women are whipped out of the Convention's tribunes. They are banned from the Convention - which had never happened before, no matter how many times you'll hear the Montagnards were "misogynists". You also get reports on all the resources running out and the small riots that start and the anger that rises.

During this time, the Convention bent increasingly right-wing, and eventually voted the conservative and reactionary Constitution of Year III which inaugurated the Directoire. Among other things, it restored census suffrage which Robespierre had fought against since 1791.

Meanwhile in other places outside of Paris, specifically the South, there was also a "White" Terror where royalists publicly took over.

Long short story: during these 10 months, they destroyed 5 years of Revolution. They couldn't restore the status quo without entirely betraying the Revolution (the reason they were, uh, in charge now) so they made up a corrupt and reactionary system that ruled via coups d'État. When electoral results didn't please the Directeurs, and bent too much for the royalists or the neo-Jacobins, they ordered a purge of the newly elected, usually leading to deportations to Guyana

There was one on 18 fructidor an V (4 September 1797) where 3 of the 5 Directeurs led a coup with the army against a royalist majority. The 2 other Directeurs were destitited. People were deported to Guyana. The elections were canceled.

Then there was a law on 22 floréal Year VI (11 May 1798) with basically the same effect, but on the neo-Jacobins.

Then another coup again on 30 prairial Year VII (18 juin 1799).

Is it any wonder the Directoire ended as it did?

Art © me A few other flags are available below for free, non-commercial use. Apologies in advance if your flag isn't here, I tried to include most of them for people to enjoy and there were so many! Happy Pride month!

Something I keep coming back to is the gap between how Augustin treated women in the abstract and how he handled them in his actual personal life: Because those are two genuinely different things, and both are documented, and neither fully cancels out the other.