#BEST WISHES TO FABRE D'EGLANTINE

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Fabre's shoe intrigue

As we know well how messy the entire Dantonist case was, as we pity Camille and believe Hérault to be innocent, I would also like to reflect on Fabre, as I believe, there will be very little said about him today. 

Fabre d’Églantine was known for his financial affairs, falsifications, malversation, conformism and corruption. While I absolutely do not wish to justify his crimes, I would like to point out a few less-known facts about his life that may help us understand him better. 

Ever since Fabre abandoned his life as a young scholar accepted to Toulouse’s Doctrinaire congregation and pursued a career as a traveling actor in 1771 (which his father for obvious reasons disapproved) he has been struggling financially. Later in his life, during his time in Paris which obviously interests us most, his theater brought him little profit, and the plays he wrote were not selling well. By the time the Revolution started, as Edme Monne wrote:

His position (when he arrived in Paris) was far from brilliant; and even at the time when I knew him (in 1791 and 1792), although it had improved and could offer a rather advantageous perspective, it was still embarrassing. Constantly surrounded by a swarm of creditors, Fabre saw himself carried away by the need to answer them, to visit them, to bring them promises.

Which, along with his mischievous personality led to a situation well known as Fabre's shoes intrigue:

He was accused at the Convention of shameful speculation about a supply of shoes for the army, of which he was in charge while he was secretary of the Ministry of Justice. He had roughly proved that he had hoarded ten thousand pairs of shoes, that he had sold them to regiments at the rate of 8 pounds 10 cents, after having paid 4 pounds. ; and who, it was said, had not lasted more than twenty-four hours for our soldiers. But the continuation of this case was abandoned and did not follow.

Fabre’s shoe intrigue and managing Danton’s secret finances are clearly a shady case. The money Fabre earned as a secretary at Danton’s office was used to pay off some of the said debts, and his situation didn’t improve at all as he still needed some funds. As it is said in his biography:

 It was in this state of presumed poverty that he arrived at the Convention. Whatever good opinion one may have of Fabre d'Eglantine, the financial distress in which he found himself in 1792 suggests that when he submitted at this time the delivery of ten thousand shoes to the army of Dumouriez, he had to worry about his personal interest a little more than the general interest.

However, the case lacks clear evidence. It is also worth noticing that Fabre’s reputation wasn’t the best due to his 'life of a party' lifestyle, which most likely contributed to how the whole intrigue was seen. Allow me to add few quotes:

If Fabre d'Eglantine was an honest man, it doesn't appear very clearly. Who had been involved in so many intrigues and linked with such notorious gamblers, in an attitude of disinterested patriot would only be eager to provide excellent shoes to the soldiers of the Republic. On the other hand, this affair remains singularly enigmatic, and, in the absence of precise facts, the historian is reduced to suppositions.

 [...]

The misfortune of people who have, rightly or wrongly, a bad reputation, is that as soon as they are accused, everyone hastens to declare them guilty. And that is precisely what happened to poor Fabre d'Eglantine in this affair of the shoes. They judged him by his past, by his wandering life and the scandalous adventures of which he had been really too lavish. They didn't want to admit that he could be innocent, and I have great difficulty, I confess, so numerous are his accusers, in admitting it myself. To tell the truth, many things, in the absence of formal proofs which are almost always lacking in these sorts of stories, plead against his probity.

In short, in spite of the almost unanimous opinion of contemporaries on this matter of shoes, the doubt subsists because only affirmations, conjectures in one direction or the other, and no proof have been provided; but it is nonetheless true that when Fabre d'Eglantine made his entry into the Convention, he was already compromised or suspected.

However, Fabre managed to make enough money for people to accuse him of being rich and drowning in luxury, thus meaning he had bought, along with his mistress, an expensive house filled with various art pieces. The "palace", however, consisted of three rooms; the decorative elements Fabre claimed to have painted himself, and we have reasons to believe him as he was indeed a skilled painter as well as a poet and used to draw pastel portraits. Struggling with money his whole life, Fabre seeked a source of income, and being a conformist with loose morals he saw his chance in intrigues and corruption. It is said that in order to change his clothes, he had to sell the only tailcoat he possessed and buy a new one with the same money. I will not try to get into the East India Company case as it is way more complicated, but count this as my tribute to Fabre d’Eglantine.