Morgaine Le Jean

According to some sources, the ”he carries his head like the Sacret Host” comment was a reply to something Saint-Just had himself said about Desmoulins. Marcellin Matton published in 1834 an anecdote (which it is presumed he obtained from Desmoulins’ mother- or sister-in-law) in which Guillaume Brune has tea with the Desmoulins couple at the time of the numbers of the Vieux Cordelier being released. The following conversation would then have played out:

”…You [Brune said] are also read by Barère who recognizes himself; by Saint-Just, who promised to make you carry your head like Saint Denis.” ”That’s true,” [Desmoulins] replied, ”I remember it: it was a very bad joke, and my answer was much better. Have you seen my letter to Dillon? In the approach and posture of Saint-Just, we see that he regards his head as the cornerstone of the republic, and that he carries it on his shoulders with respect like a holy sacrament. Was I wrong, and do you think that for such a good joke he would want to kill me? I only ask him for one favor, and that is to wait until he has given a valid response.”

In 1851, the historian Nicolas Villiaume similarly claimed to have had the same story told to him multiple times by Desmoulins’ mother-in-law. Interestingly though, the ”I will make him carry his head like Saint Denis” comment already appeared in works dated 1816 and 1825 (in both cases without any source cited). There, it is instead portrayed as a response to Desmoulins having written ”Saint-Just carries his head like the Sacred Host” and not as the cause of it. In light of this, I think the idea of Saint-Just having actually said it is something that must be taken with a big grain of salt.

The things more reliable sources can tell us about Saint-Just’s attitude towards Desmoulins at the time are less overwhelming. He was away from Paris during much of the period where Desmoulins released and got in trouble for the Vieux Cordelier (from October 17 to December 4, December 10 to December 30, and finally January 22 to February 13), and when he was there during said period, I cannot find him recorded to have spoken about Desmoulins or his journal a single time. Saint-Just also went unmentioned in all of the six numbers of the Vieux Cordelier that were released during the time they were both alive.

When the Committee of Public Safety decided to strike down Desmoulins and the other ”dantonists,” it was however Saint-Just who, like in the previous case with the hébertists, got tasked with writing a report against them. Here he obtained the help of Robespierre, who prepared around 65 notes for him to use as material against them. In said notes, Robespierre presented Desmoulins as less guilty than Danton and Fabre, having instead been more of their minion, a version of the story Saint-Just then stuck to when finishing his Rapport sur la conjuration ourdie pour obtenir un changement de dynastie; et contre Fabre d’Églantine, Danton, Philippeaux, Lacroix et Camille Desmoulins:

Bad citizen (speaking of Danton), you have conspired, you said, two days ago, bad things about Desmoulins, an instrument that you have lost, and you attributed to him shameful vices. […] For six months, a plan of palpitation and anxiety has been hatched within the government. Every day we were sent a report on Paris; we were flexibly insinuated, sometimes imprudent advice, sometimes misplaced fears; the tables were calculated on the feelings that it was important to arouse in us, so that the government would move in the direction that suited criminal plots; Danton was praised there, Hébert and Camille Desmoulins were accredited, and all their projects were assumed to be sanctioned by public opinion, to discourage us. […] What shall I say of those who claimed to be exclusively the old Cordeliers? They were precisely Danton, Fabre, Camille Desmoulins, and the ministry, author of the reports on Paris, where Danton, Fabre, Camille and Philippeanx are praised, where everything is directed in their direction and in the direction of Hébert. Danton had directed the last writings of Desmoulins and Philippeaux. […] Camille Desmoulins, who was initially duped and ended up being an accomplice, was, like Philippeaux, an instrument of Fabre and Danton. It was said, as proof of Fabre's good nature, that when he was at Desmoulins' house at the time when he read to someone a writing in which he requested a committee of clemency for the aristocracy and called the Convention the court of Tiberius, Fabre started to cry. The crocodile cries too. As Camille Desmoulins lacked character, his pride was used. As a rhetorician, he attacked the revolutionary government in all its forms; he spoke brazenly in favor of the enemies of the Revolution, proposed a committee of clemency for them; showed himself to be very inclement towards the popular party; attacked, like Hébert and Vincent, the representatives of the people in the armies; like Hébert, Vincent and Buzot, he himself treated them as proconsuls. He had been the defender of the infamous Dillon, with the same audacity that Dillon himself showed, when at Maubeuge he ordered his army to march on Paris, and take an oath of loyalty to the king. He fought the law against the English; he received thanks in England, in the newspapers of that time. Have you noticed that all those who were praised in England have betrayed their fatherland here?

According to an anecdote published in the pamphlet À Maximilien Robespierre aux enfers (1795), released a few months after thermidor by Taschereau de Fargues and Paul-Auguste-Jacques, Saint-Just and Robespierre had wanted to denounce Desmoulins and the other dantonists before arresting them, but been downvoted by their colleagues:

Why should I not say that [the dantonist purge] was a meditated assassination, prepared for a long time, when two days after this session where the crime was taking place, the representative Vadier told me that Saint-Just, through his stubbornness, had almost caused the downfall of the members of the two committees, because he had wanted that the accused to be present when he read the report at the National Convention; and such was his obstinacy that, seeing our formal opposition, he threw his hat into the fire in rage, and left us there. Robespierre was also of this opinion; he believed that by having these deputies arrested beforehand, this approach would sooner or later be reprehensible; but, as fear was an irresistible argument with him, I used this weapon to fight him: You can take the chance of being guillotined, if that is what you want; For my part, I want to avoid this danger by having them arrested immediately, because we must not have any illusions about the course we must take; everything is reduced to these bits: If we do not have them guillotined, we will be that ourselves. 

Regardless of whether this be true or not, on March 30, Saint-Just was one of eighteen men to sign the by Amar drafted arrest warrant for Danton, Delacroix, Philippeaux and Desmoulins, who were all arrested in the night. The next day at the Convention, Robespierre shut down Legendre when he suggested the accused be allowed to come and defend themselves before the Convention, after which Saint-Just entered the hall, mounted the rostrum and read out the act of accusation the two of them had worked out.

Receiving a copy of Saint-Just’s report in his cell at the Luxembourg prison, Desmoulins got around to preparing a defence. In it, he claimed the author of the report had personal reasons for wanting him dead. He also referred to him as ”Monsieur le Chevalier de Saint-Just,” a nicknamed previously used by the girondin Salle:

If I had gotten the chance to print in turn, if one hadn’t put me in isolation, if one had lifted the seals and if I had the paper neccesary to establish my defense, if one gave me only two days to make a number seven, imagine how I would confront M. the chevalier Saint-Just! Imagiene how I would convince him of the most atrocious slander ! But Saint-Just writes leisurely in his bath, in his bathtub, he plots my murder during fifteen days, while I have no place to put my writing desk and only a few hours to defend my life. What is this if not the the duel of the Emperor Commodus, who, armed with an excellent blade, forced his enemy to fight with a simple foil garnished with cork? […] I arrive at the part of the report which concerns me. In living memory, there is no example of such atrocious slander as this piece. And yet there is not a single person in the Convention that doesn’t know that Monsieur the former chevalier Saint-Just holds for me an implacable hatred for a slight joke that I allowed myself five months ago in one of my numbers. Bourdaloue said: Molière puts me in his comedy, I will put him in my sermon. I put Saint-Just in a giggly number, and he puts me in a guillotine report where there isn’t a single true word in my regard. When Saint-Just accuses me of being an accomplice of Orléans and Dumouriez, he shows well that he is a patriot of yesterday. Who denounced Dumouriez first of all, and before Marat and more vigorously than anyone else? Certainly one cannot deny that it was me? My Tribune des Patriotes exists, let Saint-Just read the portrait I there painted of Dumouriez six months before his treason in Belgium, he will see that I have never since added anything to this portrait. And Orléans who he makes me the accomplice of, who doesn’t know that I was the first to denounce him? That the only writings on this faction that the Jacobins have printed and distributed were written by me? Does Saint-Just no longer remember my Histoire des Brissotins? […] There are witnesses to the fact that the great republican Saint-Just, at the beginning of the Convention, said: Oh! They want a republic, she shall cost them dearly! There are witnesses to the fact the ambitious Saint-Just said: I know where I go. 

In an unfinished and unsent letter written to Robespierre around the same time, Lucile Desmoulins too held Saint-Just as the main culprit behind her husband’s fate, arguing that he had misled their friend:

…As far from the insensibility of your Saint-Just as from his base jealousies, [Camille] recoiled in front if the idea of accusing a college comrade, a companion in arms. […] Robespierre, can you really complete the fatal projects which the vile souls that surround you no doubt have inspired you to? […] Had I been Saint-Just’s wife I would tell him this: the sake of Camille is yours, it’s the sake of all the friends of Robespierre!  

A rumor claiming that Lucile had been sent money from the imprisoned Arthur Dillon conveniently arrived around the same time the trial against the indulgents started getting off the rails. In the afternoon of April 4, after the proceedings had been closed for the day, Saint-Just again mounted the rostrum at the Convention and revealed the discovery of this new conspiracy:

The public prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal reported that the revolt of the guilty had caused the court proceedings to be suspended until the Convention had taken measures. You have escaped the greatest danger that ever threatened freedom: now all the accomplices are discovered, and the revolt of the criminals at the foot of justice itself. Intimidated by the law, the secret of their conscience; their despair, their fury, everything announces that the good nature they presented was the most hypocritical trap that had been set for the revolution. What innocent person has ever rebelled before the law? There is no need for any other proof of their attacks than their audacity. What! those whom we accused of having been the accomplices of Dumouriez and Orléans, those who only made a revolution in favor of a new dynasty, those who conspired for the misfortune and slavery of the people are at the height of their infamy! If there are men here who are truly friends of liberty, if the energy that suits those who have undertaken to liberate their country is in their hearts, you will see that there are no longer any conspirators on the front line, who, counting on the aristocracy with whom they have marched for several years, call upon the people the vengeance of the crime. No, liberty shall not recoil in front of her enemies; their coalition has been revealed. Dillon, who ordered his army to march upon Paris, has declared that the wife of Desmoulins had received money in order to promote a movement to assassinate the patriots and the Revolutionary Tribunal. We thank you for placing us in the position of honor; like you, we will cover the fatherland with our bodies. Dying is nothing, provided that the revolution triumphs; here is the day of glory; this is the day when the Roman senate fought against Catiline; This is the day to consolidate public liberty forever. Your committees respond to you with heroic surveillance. Who can refuse you his veneration in this terrible moment when you fight for the last time against the faction which was lenient towards your enemies, and which today finds fury to fight liberty?

After having heard Saint-Just’s report, the Convention used this new discovery to order ”that the Revolutionary Tribunal shall proceed with the instruction relating to the conspiracy of Lacroix, Danton, Chabot and others. The President shall make use of every means which the law permits to cause his authority and that of the Revolutionary Tribunal to be respected, and to repress every attempt on the part of the accused to trouble public tranquillity and to hinder the course of justice. It is decreed that all persons accused of conspiracy who shall resist or insult the national justice shall be outlawed and receive judgment on the spot.” This order became essential for getting the dantonists condemned to death the following day.

Saint-Just had however nothing to do with the actual arrest warrant for Lucile, signed the same day by Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, C-A Prieur, Carnot, Couthon, Barère, Du Barran and Voulland, which would lead to her ending up on the scaffold as well nine days later.