feeling my oath

A strange thing has been said, that Robespierre and Danton a few hours before the arrest of the latter had spoken and embraced each other, even though Robespierre had already decided on his fate, and the latter the next day had planned to deliver a big motion against the former at the Convention. Götheborgs Allehanda, number 32 (April 23 1794), page 1.

Looking through his bars, he (Danton) said many things that he might not have meant. […] Here are some phrases I retained: […] ”What proves Robespierre is a Nero, is that he never spoke as kindly to Desmoulins as on the day before his arrest.”  Mémoires d’un detenu pour servir à l’histoire de la tyrannie de Robespierre (1794-1795) by Honoré Riouffe, page 88.

[Robespierre] had pressed the hand of Camille, his childhood friend, the same day he signed his arrest. Fréron’s notes on Robespierre, meant as material for Courtois to use in his Rapport fait au nom de la commission chargée de l'examen des papiers trouvés chez Robespierre et ses complices(presented to the Convention in July 1795). This particular claim was however never included there, and the notes themselves were seemingly not published until 1828, in Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, Saint-Just, Payan, etc, supprimés ou omis par Courtois, volume 1, page 158-159.

Comment if there was anything that surprised you! 🙃🫢

Sources:

For the college relationships between Robespierre, Desmoulins, Suleau and Fréron, see this post.

For Robespierre welcoming Louise de Kéralio to the Academy of Arras, see Un inédit de Robespierre: Sa réponse au discours de réception de Mademoiselle de Kéralio 18 avril 1787 (1974) by Léon Berthe.

For the relationship between Robespierre and Carnot pre-revolution, see this post.

For the relationship between Robespierre and Fouché pre-revolution, see this post.

For the relationship between Robespierre and Guffroy pre-revolution, see Censure républicaine, ou, Lettre d’A-B-J Guffroy, répresentant du peuple (1794), page 66: ”Robespierre the elder must remember my firmness when, both working as judges in the episcopal hall of Arras, we condemned an assassin to death. He must remember, it seems to me, our philosophical and philanthropic debates, and even that it cost him much more than me to resolve to sign the sentence.”

Since first time was such a hit, why not do it again?

Lettre de Robespierre à Danton (15 février 1790) / Letter from Robespierre to Danton (February 15, 1790)

Context:

While Georges Danton was on a mission in Belgium, his wife-Antoinette Gabrielle Danton-died on February 10, 1790, giving birth to their fourth son. Neither the mother nor the child survives. On February 15, Robespierre writes him a letter of concolarisation. (This is the only letter from Robespierre to Danton that we are aware of.)

Translation:

My dear Danton, if in the only misfortunes that can shake a soul such as yours, the certainty of having a tender and devoted friend can offer you some consolation, I present it to you. I love you more than ever and until death. In this moment I am yourself. Do not close your heart to the accents of friendship that feel all your pain. Let’s mourn together our friends, and soon make the effects of our deep pain felt by the tyrants who are the authors of our public misfortunes and our private misfortunes my friend. I would have addressed this language to you from my heart, in Belgium. I would have already gone to see you if I hadn’t respected the first moments of your just affliction. Embrace your friend. Robespierre.

Sources:

Dividers : @saradika-graphics

this year the Dantonists’ death anniversary falls on a Sunday (April 5th) so i’m thinking we could have a watch party of one of the many Danton-centric movies out there, namely the German 1931 Danton movie since it’s available on YouTube with English subtitles

like most ppl here i’m not a Danton fan but it’s always interesting to see movies about the frev, and we’ll have the chat option to talk about what we see on the screen

sometime TBD between 8am and 10am CEST (Paris time zone) might be a good starting time? hopefully this accomodates most people interested in participating, depending on people’s interest/availability i’ll see if we should find a better time slot

The owner of this particular plantation had it built by slaves for 3 years. Every brick was handmade. Over 120,000 bricks on 2,000+ acres of land (this place was huge.) The clay used for the bricks came from the Mississippi River. The majority of the slaves are buried under the Levees and water. Some are buried with their Masters. Not allowed to live with them but could be dead with them.

Before you enter the house, there’s a list of slaves who lived here including their age and how much they were purchased for. 124 total. Some slaves were worth as little as $25. As young as 5 years old.

On this particular plantation, the owner was big on punishment…he used noise making neck restraints. Imagine three 4lb balls around your neck with bells inside. Children were restrained by ankle locks that connected between their ankles.

This was a sugar cane plantation, one the worst practices to involve slaves because of its danger. A lot of slaves were decapitated, amputees and killed from the fields and machinery. A lot of kids lost their lives creating sugar. Speaking of children, a child stood in the living room and operated the fan with a string while guests ate dinner. As young as 3 years old.

Here’s what shook me even further: Before the Civil War, a lot of slave owners were going in debt and could not afford their properties and were not producing enough cotton and sugar to maintain their lifestyles. Slaves were used as HUMAN CREDIT CARDS. Slaves were a guaranteed line of credit. You could get HALF of your property’s value depending on how many healthy and able slaves you owned.

My people were human credit cards and lines of credit to BANKS. We were property. We were labeled as equipment and nothing more.

There is no such thing as a good slave owner. They owned my PEOPLE and used them as checks and balances. This cycle continues with prison and brutality. I do not want to hear shit about “Why can only Black people say this or that?” I don’t want to hear shit about “we’re all human.”

SOME of the enslaved names, ages, race and purchase price.

The living room.

Interior.

The dining room. That piece hanging above the table is ORIGINAL to the house. That’s the fan that a slave as young as 3 years old had to operate manually with a string.

The view from the balcony in the main hallway. This is how they looked over the slaves while they worked in the yard.

*sigh* Names of the enslaved that occupied the shacks. Children included. Their names are written inside one of the shacks. I’m not sure if there are other names inside other shacks because I could only handle 2. After I saw the punishment equipment, I left.

Slave Shacks. These are NOT the original shacks. These were built to imitate them.

Slaves for Sale Ads.

The landscape of Slavery throughout the United States in 1860. JUST 1860. Let that sink in.

Note: The last time the home was OWNED by a Louisiana citizen was 1972. This is her original bedroom, her lipstick is STILL on the dresser. This is why the house has been updated since slavery times because it was occupied up until 1972. Regardless, this used to be where house slaves slept.

One of my first contact with the French Revolution was watching the extremely biased, extremely Thermidorized movie La Révolution française: Les Années terribles. Saint-Just is depicted as a beautiful, deadly, brooding, attack dog. There's no nuance. There's nothing about his constitutional work - or Robespierre's. So when these idiot filmmakers left in Saint-Just's last known words - "at least we/I've done this" while looking at the Declaration of Rights of 1793 - it threw a huge brick at the facade they had constructed. It was a contradiction. And they had left the key to historical truth.

That contradiction became the foundation for all my work. It was the reason I became the historian who decided to study Robespierre's Black Legend, Élisabeth Duplay Le Bas' memoirs, the inner circle of the Robespierristes and, naturally, Saint-Just too.

In the Summer of 2006, I bought the Abensour-Kupiec edition of Saint-Just's works and started actually reading his texts. I read Organt and his other literary works. I read the speeches. I read the political theory. I read the few letters he's left. I read the decrees on mission. Then I checked out a few biographies at my university: Vinot's, Ladret's, and many others.

I realized absolutely no one had ever faithfully depicted him in any media. All they cared about was his aesthetic - a villainous one especially. Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution (2009) came out, and it was more of the same. That was when I wrote my first online essay defending his humanity, but also his existence as a political theorist.

I hoped that if I presented the man beneath the myth, the discourse would grow up. For a while, I think it did.

Two decades later, our community has considerably grown, and "fandomification" is in full effect. The French Revolution fandom was always fundamentally different from other history fandoms or any fandom that perceives itself as a "creative sandbox" where everything is allowed: because of our focus on the Montagnards/Jacobins, we hold a critical stance strongly anchored in the ideals of social justice they introduced and defended to their very last breath. It's not merely a hobby, but the awakening of a political consciousness. We like to have fun, but we also prioritize sources, accuracy and politics. The French Revolution is inherently political. Our fandom isn't merely driven by aesthetics and tropes. It's rooted in political reality and moral stakes. We view this history as an inheritance to defend and pass on.

Unlike 20 years ago, we live in a period with incredible access to primary sources on the French Revolution - they often just need to be translated. And while this is also happening, the growth of this community seems to call for a shift in the way we engage with our subject matter.

The desire to maintain a certain standard of political and historical rigor has sometimes been eclipsed by a desire for narrative convenience. We are seeing a move toward "fandomification", where the complexities of the French Revolution are erased to fit the tropes of fandom culture. It's a strange return to how simplified things used to be, when there's no reason for it. I shouldn't still be correcting the same reductionist clichés I thought we had finally buried. Or worse: new ones created from a poor understanding. It's a jarring, regressive loop, as if we were essentially back to where we started.

This critique isn't meant to gatekeep the newcomers. We do welcome new perspectives. But when we treat the French Revolution uniquely like a creative sandbox, we risk stripping it of the very political urgency that makes it relevant in the first place. And in the times we're currently facing? It's more important than ever.