#couthon

"I declare that, when it would be Buzot who wants to be king, I'd blow his brains out."

Buzot has just been making the same astoundingly hypocritical argument as Brissot that I've mentioned before: that executing Louis will cause war with Europe. (Ok, I technically don't know what Buzot was doing during the war debates, but it's still a stupid argument because it's WAY too late for that.)

Buzot's position is also particularly enraging because just the previous month he was proposing that all supporters of royalty should be sentenced to death. So I guess the regular person who supports the king should be condemned, but the king himself — who very much supported his own return to power & whom Buzot had literally already voted guilty for conspiring against the nation — should be spared.

Archives Parlementaires, Volume 57, p. 441

Saint-Pierre-et-Couthon

And uncoloured version

Your entire development, accomplishments, fuckups, thoughts, lies, insults, burps, words, tears are contained in this timespan. Even if I lived 10x the years I would never do so much.

*ok technically I guess it's gone up minutely since I last paid attention to the (long pre-covid) decade+ downward trajectory, but whatever, you know what I mean.

**ok technically Couthon didn't make it to 39, but he was on his way

My brain: I wonder if they'd like spicy food. I don't associate spicy with French food but here I am with fucking Aldi's dijon mustard cleaning out my damn sinuses like I picked it up in the pharmacy, and isn't dijon French? What is the spiciness that makes it dijon? Did they like mustard? Does that mean they liked spicy food in general? Or would it be like Americans eating szechuan peppercorns for the first time & thinking they've been poisoned? I feel like Max wouldn't have had szechuan peppercorns before and would definitely think he'd been poisoned, and Saint-Just probably knows this & thus hastens to hide the mapo tofu when Max comes home early from a day with Couthon, while Couthon is like "Hey! My friend!" *sniff*sniff* "You got Chinese!" And SJ is like *sigh* yes... OK but let me explain....

There are some people who at first glance appear to stand just on the side of the legends; who tend to slip between the pages of fiction and merge into the background of movie scenes; whose names are forever preceded by an "and".

Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Couthon.

There are glimpses - of friendship; of kindness, so rare in times of war; of clemency...

"The reader <...> may have heard that the crippled Couthon was one of the most bloodthirsty of the Twelve. But the fact is that during his mission not one person was executed by revolutionary justice in Puy-de-Dôme. Couthon possessed the power of life and death. Puy-de-Dôme seethed with disaffection. Yet the terrible power remained unused. Where the conscription in May had led to half a dozen executions, in September Couthon carried the Levy in Mass with none."

(Twelve Who Ruled, R.R. Palmer)

...of leaving the command rather than razing a city; of indefatigable conviction and determination and an iron will that is inferred more than demonstrated; of familiar affection and dry humor. Of a final choice, to be condemned rather than stand on the sidelines and watch the republic be lost.

There are some people who, through fate or accident, are only casually mentioned in legends - but without them, the legends would fail.