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anotherhumaninthisworld · 3 months ago

Note

Me again. Your (amazing) post on Camille and Robespierre got me thinking about the ins and outs of the Vieux Cordelier story. There are so many interesting details there , and moments where it could almost have gone a different way. I wondered what your assessment is of Camille’s mindset over this period? Obviously he must have been aware that he was taking a massive risk, but what was the ratio of kamikaze to (possibly deluded) belief he could actually change Robespierre’s mind and thus policy?

If the latter, I feel like that in itself is evidence that they were quite personally close, given “clemency” obviously not the way Robespierre was naturally leaning politically ?

Secondly, to what extent would you say Camille was attempting to back down in numbers 6 and 7, and could it have saved him if he had been willing to so that more fully, or was it just too late at that point?

Finally, somewhat separately, what do we actually know about Danton’s role in the indulgents campaign , and to what extent was Camille his “mouthpiece” ? It often gets phrased that way , but Danton actually comes across as marginal to the stand-off in the textual evidence from Vieux Cordelier itself and the debates in the jacobins around this time. Camille certainly seems to be the main one on the front line. What evidence do we have that Danton wanted him to go through with the riskier numbers of Vieux Cordelier?

Sorry, three to four very wordy questions there…and I’m aware you can’t answer them without a *lot* of guesswork . The whole tale is so fascinating.

In a letter to his father dated August 1 1793 (the last one conserved written by him as a free man) Camille expresses regret over a revolution that has not turned out the way he wanted it, as well as a wish to spend more time with his family:

Where is the asylum, the underground where I could hide from all eyes with my wife, my child and my books? I cannot help but constantly think about the fact that these men who are killed by the thousands have children, also have their fathers who accuse us of their grief, which it would have been so easy to spare them of. At least I have no reason to reproach myself for any of these wars which I have always opposed, nor for this multitude of evils, the fruit of ignorance and blind ambition sitting together at the helm. Farewell. I embrace you. Take care of your health, so that I can hold you against my chest if I am to survive this revolution; although there are times when I am tempted to cry out like Lord Falkland, and go and get myself killed in the Vendée or at the borders to free myself from the spectacle of so many evils and a revolution that to me does not seem to have brought common sense into the council of those who govern the republic and in which I see little else than ambition in place of ambition and greed in place of greed. It is true that freedom of the press is a great remedy whose benefit we owe to the revolution, and there is this advantage in the new regime over knaves, that we can have hanged, and over the ignorant and the intriguers, who we can deliver to ridicule. The state of things, such as it is, is incomparably better than four years ago, because there is hope of improving it, a hope which does not exist under the despotism of which the slaves are condemned like spem bon habent, but it is to the prize of so much bloodshed, that I feel such a sacrifice from the nation’s men should offer it a bigger happiness.

On December 14 1793, he also admitted that, on October 30, the day the Girondins were condemned to death, he had exclaimed: ”they die as republicans, but federalist republicans.” Camille’s accusers the same day did on the other hand declare that the correct quote had been ”they die as republicans, as Brutus,” and in his Les mysterès de la mère de Dieu dévoilès, released a few months after Camille’s death, Joachim Vilate described an even more dramatic reaction from his part:

This led to the account that I gave them of the particularities of the judgment of this case. I observed that I was sitting, with Camille Desmoulins, on the bench placed in front of the jury table. When these returned from deliberation, Camille comes forward to speak to Antonelle, who was one of the last to return. Surprised by the change in his face, he said to him, quite loudly: ”ah my god, I pity you, these are very terrible functions.” Then, hearing the juror's declaration, he suddenly threw himself into my arms, agitated, tormenting himself: ”ah my god, my god, it's me who kills them: my Brissot dévoilé [sic], ah my god, it’s that which kills them.” As the accused returned to hear their judgment, eyes turned towards them. The deepest silence reigned throughout the room, the public prosecutor announced the death penalty, the unfortunate Camille, defeated, losing the use of his senses, let out these words: ”I'm leaving, I'm leaving, I want to leave.” He couldn't exit. […] The late hour of the night, the torches were lit, the judges and the public were tired from a long session, it was midnight, everything gave this scene a dark, imposing and terrible character, nature was suffering in all its ailments. Camille Desmoulins felt worse.

In his 2018 biography, Hervé Leuwers also underlines how Camille throughout the fall of 1793 started to absence himself from both the Convention and the Jacobins, and when in rare instances did take to the floor it was with moderation in mind — on October 16 he and Philippeaux demanded some adjustment to a decree ordering the arrest of all foreigners belonging to countries currently at war with France at the Convention, and on November 26 he warned the Jacobins that "when a man is proscribed by public opinion, he is halfway to the guillotine." (Leuwers does however note a similar absence during the spring of the same year, AKA, the same period Camille was working on the fatal l’Histoire des Brissotins, so this is perhaps a weaker point). All these pieces could hint at the idea Camille’s mindset at the time was that of a a man who had grown disillusioned with the revolution and was willing to try to moderate it (and perhaps atone for some of the bloodshed he had himself contributed to causing?)

The first number of Le Vieux Cordelier was released on December 5, just two days after a jacobin session where Danton had opposed the idea of sending a group with a guillotine to Seine-Inférieure in order to deal with rebels fleeing the Vendée — ”The Constitution must be asleep, while the people are busy striking their enemies and terrifying them with their revolutionary operations: this is my thought, which will undoubtedly not be slandered; but I ask that we distrust those who want to take the people beyond the limits of the revolution, and who propose ultra-revolutionary measures.” Coupé d’Oise protests against this, arguing that the club must not listen to ”proposals tending to diminish the vigor of the revolutionary movement.” As a consequence, Danton defends his patriotism and asks that a commission be set up to look over his conduct, after which Robespierre stands up as well to take his defence — ”In political matters, I observed him: a difference of opinion between him and me made me observe him carefully, sometimes with anger; and, if he was not always of my opinion, would I conclude that he betrayed his homeland? No, I have seen him always serve it with zeal. Danton wants us to judge him. He's right, let me be judged too. Let them come forward, these men who are more patriotic than us! I bet they are noble, privileged people!”, ending by asking that everyone says what he sincerely thinks about Danton. Aside from Merlin de Thionville, who hails Danton as the saviour of the republic, no one says anything, and Momoro therefore concludes this means no one has anything to accuse Danton of. The discussion therefore ends with the latter embracing the president of the club amidst loud applause. Camille references the session in the number, describing it as the event that caused him to return to the journalistic pen:

Victory is with us because, amid the ruins of so many colossal civic reputations, Robespierre’s in unassailed; because he lent a hand to his competitor in patriotism, our perpetual President of the “Old Cordeliers,” our Horatius Cocles, who alone held the bridge against Lafayette and his four thousand Parisians besieging Marat, who now seemed overwhelmed by the foreign party. Already having gained stronger ground during the illness and absence of Danton, this party, domineering insolent in society, in the midst of the most sensitive places, the most compelling justification, in the tribunes, jeering, and in the middle of the meeting, shaking its head and smiling with pity, as in the speech of a man condemned by every vote. We have won, however, because after the crushing speeches of Robespierre, in which it seems that talent grows in pace with the dangers of the Republic, and the profound impression he has left in souls, it was impossible to venture to raise a voice against Danton without giving, so to speak, a public quittance of guineas of Pitt. […] I learned some things yesterday. I saw how many enemies we have. Their multitude tears me from the Hotel des Invalides and returns me to combat. I must write. I have to leave behind the slow pen of the history of the Revolution I was tracing by the fire side in order to again take up the rapid and breathless pen of the journalist and follow, at full gallop, the revolutionary torrent. A consulting deputy who no one has consulted since June 3, I leave my office and armchair, where I had all the time in the world to follow in detail our enemies’ new system, an overview of which Robespierre laid out to you and which his occupations at the Committee of Public Safety have prevented him, like me, from seizing in its entirety. I feel again what I said a year ago, how wrong I was to put aside the journalistic pen and grant intrigue the time to adulterate the opinions of the departments and corrupt that immense sea by means of a mass of journals, like many rivers that ceaselessly bringing poisoned water. We no longer have any journals that tell the truth, or at least the whole truth. I return to the arena with all of my well-known honesty and courage.

To say something about Camille’s mindset based off of this first number, it can in other words be concluded that he by this point is on the side of both Danton and Robespierre, wanting to aid them in a fight against ”a foreign party,” that he doesn’t specify much about, but that, through the jacobin session that he claims inspired him so much, can be deciphed as ”ultra-revolutionaries.” Camille also, like in the letter to his father four months earlier, takes a stand in favor of freedom of the press — ”Let no one tell me that we are in a revolution and that the freedom of the press must be suspended during a revolution.”

In the second number of Vieux Cordelier, released five days later on December 10, Camille praises three speeches Robespierre has held in the meantime. Two of them were smaller interventions on December 5 and December 6 that were both about, and in favour of, liberty of cults. The third speech was the ”Response of the National Convention to the manifesto of the united kings against the republic,” read, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, by Robespierre on December 5 as well. In it, he defended the French people, accused of ”rebellion, immorality and irreligion” by said united kings. Robespierre argued that it was in fact they themselves that were guilty of these vices and insisted on the French people’s wish for freedom of religion:

Your masters tell you that the French nation has proscribed all religions, that it has substituted the worship of a few men for that of the Divinity; they paint us in your eyes as an idolatrous or foolish people. They are lying: the French people and their representatives respect the freedom of all religions, and do not proscribe any of them.

Camille joins Robespierre’s side, openly taking a stand against those pushing for extreme dechristianization:

Finally, Robespierre, in his first speech which the Convention has decreed to dispatch to all of Europe, has lifted the veil. It suited his courage and his popularity to adroitly slip in, as he did, the great and salutary statement that Pitt had changed his batteries; that he undertook to do by exaggeration what he could not do by moderation, and that there are men, patriotically counter-revolutionary, who worked to form, like Roland, public spirit and push public opinion in the opposition direction - but to a different extreme, equally fatal to liberty. Since then, in two speeches no less eloquent to the Jacobins, he has expressed himself with still greater vehemence against the intruders who, through perfidious and exclusive praises, flattered themselves by detaching him from all of his old comrades-in-arms and the sacred battalion of the Cordeliers, with whom he had so often defeated the royal army. To the shame of priests, he defended the God that they abandoned so cowardly. By rendering justice to those who, like the priest Meslier, renounced their profession because of philosophy, he put in their place those hypocrites of religion, who, having become priests for the sake of rich meals, were not ashamed to publish their own ignominy, in accusing themselves of having for a long time been vile charlatans, and coming to tell us at the bar: ”Citizens, I lied for sixty years for the sake of my stomach.”

He nevertheless also underlines that he is against this not because he himself is religious, but because he sees it as a counterproductive method for fighting superstition:

Certainly I am not a sanctimonious hypocrite or a champion of priests. […] I have always thought that at least the clergy should be cut off from the body politic; but for that it was enough to abandon Catholicism to its decrepitude and to let it end with its beautiful death, which was soon approaching. It was enough to let reason and ridicule act on the understanding of peoples and, with Montaigne, to look at churches as houses of fools which had been allowed to subsist until reason had made enough progress, lest the madmen become angry.

For the first time ever the journal also denounces someone by name, in this instance Jean-Baptiste ”Anacharsis” Cloots and Pierre-Gaspard ”Anaxagoras” Chaumette, attacked for their push for dechristianization:

Anacharsis and Anaxagoras believe they are pushing the wheel of reason when in fact it is that of counter-revolution; and soon, instead of letting papism in France die of old age and starvation, ready to breathe its last breath without giving our enemies any advantage, since the treasure of the sacristies could not escape Cambon by persecution and intolerance against those who wish to liturgy and be liturgied, I urge to you to send a force of constitutional recruits to Lescure and Roche-Jacquelin.

This is also the number of Vieux Cordelier we know with almost certainty Robespierre had gotten to proofread before it got sent to the printer. On December 12, Robespierre also continued the attack Camille had started two days earlier as he got Cloots expelled from the Jacobins when the latter passed through its scrutiny test — ”Cloots, you spend your life with our enemies, with the agents and spies of foreign powers; like them, you are a traitor who must be watched.” When, two days later, the turn had come to Camille to go through the very same examination, Robespierre also helped him pass it and encouraged him to keep writing his journal — ”[Camille’s] energetic and easy pen can still serve [the revolution] usefully, but, more circumspect in the choice of his friends, he must break all pacts with impiety, that is to say, with the aristocracy; under these conditions, I request the admission of Camille Desmoulins.” With all this added together, I would say number 2 of the Vieux Cordelier is the biggest example of ”journalism on the terms of the governance” there is throughout Camille’s entire career.

In number 3, released December 18, Camille begins by bringing the reader back to the Roman Empire, in particular, the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero, a time during which, according to the historian Tacitus, there existed ”a law which specified crimes of the state and lèse-majesté and imposed upon them capital punishment. […] As soon as remarks became crimes of the State, it was only a small step to transform into crimes simple glances, sadness, compassion, sighs, even silence.” Camille then goes on to describe how, under this law, people could be rendered ”suspect” for just about anything — from being rich to being poor, from being melancoly to being happy, from being introverted to being extroverted, from being a poet to being a military man, from holding a high post to resigning from said post. Even positive attributes, such as being virtuous, incorruptible or an ally of Augustus could result in being rendered guilty of ”counter-revolution,” resulting in a visit from the doctor who then got ”to choose, within twenty-four hours, the sort of death they liked best.”

But, and this is something both contemporaries and modern historians often have missed, Camille then makes sure to underline this lengthty description of a tyrannical reign is not at all meant as an allusion to France’s current state — ”let no one say, for instance, that in this third number and in my translation of Tacitus malignity will find similarities between those deplorable times and our own. I know this well, and it is to put an end to these rapprochements, it is so that liberty does not resemble despotism, that I have armed myself with my pen” — but to France under the ancien régime: ”Do not let the royalists tell me that this description tells us nothing, and that the reign of Louis XVI did not resemble that of the Caesars.” As examples, he cites the massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, the Nancy affair, the war in the Vendée, the ”horrors” committed in France by the English and Austrian armies. In this ”fight to the death between the Republic and the monarchy” Camille defends the revolutionary government and its institutions, objecting against British prime minister William Pitt who ”has made every effort to give our liberty the attitude of tyranny and thus turn against us the reason and humanity of the eighteenth century.” The revolutionary tribunal, he argues, has not sentenced any innocent people to death:

Despite so many guineas, can one cite to me, asked Danton, a single man, strongly pronounced in the Revolution and in favor of the Republic, who has been condemned to death by the revolutionary tribunal? The revolutionary tribunal, of Paris at least, when it saw false witnesses slipping into its bosom and putting the innocent in danger hastened to subject them to the penalty of retribution. It is true that it has condemned persons for words and writings. But, to begin with, can one regard as mere words the cry of Vive le Roi, that provocative cry of sedition that even the ancient law of the Roman republic that I have quoted would have punished with death? Second, it is in the melee of a revolution that the tribunal has to judge political crimes; and even those who believe that it is not exempt from errors owe it this justice, that in matters of writing it is more attached to the intention than to the corpus delicti; and when it was not convinced that the intention was counter-revolutionary, it has never failed to set free not only one who had spoken words or published writings, but even one who had emigrated.

The Committee of Public Safety in its turn excused for its more drastic measures, such as the suspension of the Constitution, on the grounds that the times demand it:

The Committee of Public Safety believed that to establish the Republic it needed for a time the jurisprudence of despots. It thought, with Machiavelli, that in cases of political conscience the greater good erased the lesser evil; it therefore veiled liberty’s statue for some time. But will this transparent veil of gauze be confused with the thick vellum of the Cloots, the Coupes, the Montauts, that funerary pall under which it is impossible recognize the principles in their casket? Will we confuse the Constitution, daughter of the Montagne, with the superfluities of Pitt; the errors of patriotism with the crimes of the foreign party; the public prosecutor's indictments on certificates of citizenship, on the closing of churches, and the definition of “suspect persons,” with the protective decrees of the Convention, which have maintained freedom of worship and principles?

Before putting forward that the biggest threat of them all is ”what Marat would have called the conspiracy of dopes: I speak of those men who, with the best intentions in the world, are strangers to all political ideas, and, if I may express myself thus, are scoundrels of stupidity and pride, and, because they belong to such and such a committee or they occupy this or that eminent place, hardly suffer that one speaks to them,” Camille also argued that, in the state of things, both moderation and exaggeration had to be avoided, but, if forced to choose, the latter would be the better alternative:

Those who judge the founders of the Republic so harshly do not put themselves in their place. See between what precipices we walk. On one side is the exaggeration of the moustaches, which does not care if, through its ultra-revolutionary measures, we should become the horror and the laughingstock of Europe; on the other side is moderation in mourning, which, seeing the old Cordeliers rowing towards common sense and trying to avoid the current of exaggeration, yesterday with an army of women laid siege to the Committee of General Security, and, taking me by the collar as I happened upon them by chance, claimed that, during the day, the Convention would open all the prisons, letting us loose under our feet – along with a certain number, it is true, of good citizens – a multitude of counter-revolutionaries, enraged by their detention. […] In this dual between liberty and servitude, and in the cruel alternative of a defeat a thousand times bloodier than our victory, “exaggerating the Revolution had less peril and greater value than falling short,” as Danton said, and the most critical necessity has been that the Republic secure victory on the battlefield.

Camille also once again makes a case for unlimited liberty of the press:

I hope the freedom of the press will be reborn in entirety. The best minds of the Convention were strangely deceived on the pretended danger of such freedom. It is intended that terror be the order of the day, that is to say the terror of bad citizens: so there we apply the freedom of the press, as it is the terror of scoundrels and counter-revolutionaries. […] I will die of the opinion that, to make France republican, happy, and flourishing, a little ink and a single guillotine would have sufficed. […] As long as unlimited freedom of the press has existed, it has been easy for us to foresee everything, to prevent everything. Freedom, truth, common sense have defeated slavery, stupidity, and lies, wherever they have found them.

As for people brought up by Camille in the number, Philippeaux is praised for his most recent publication Philippeaux, représentant du peuple, au Comité de salut public, released two weeks earlier, in which he critiques the war in the Vendée, claiming all the good generals have been dismissed while the ”traitor” Beysser, the ”imbecile” Rossignol and ”intriguer,” ”thief” and ”liar” Ronsin are encouraged and showered with honors. Unlike Desmoulins, Philippeaux also critiqued the revolutionary government, even reproaching CPS member Barère for having countermanded his request to put together a commission to investigate the situation a few weeks earlier. This pamphlet, Camille writes, is a ”truly salvatory writing” filled with ”dreadful truths,” even if one also can reproach the author ”for having misunderstood the great services of the Committee of Public Safety.” Minister of war George Bouchotte and Secretary General of the war ministry François-Nicolas Vincent are on the other hand denounced, Vincent getting called ”the Pitt of George Bouchotte,” and Camille writes that men like them should ”hasten to correct their conduct, [those] who, on reading these vivid depictions of tyranny, find in them some unfortunate resemblance to themselves.” Early in the number he also mentions Hébert, but not in the negative terms one might expect. Camille instead writes ”This, that the reign of Astraea may return, is why I take up my pen again; I wish to help Le Père Duchesne enlighten my fellow citizens and spread the seeds of public happiness.”

So taken that Camille is being sincere here, his mindset is still that of someone willing to support and defend the Committee of Public Safety, albeit while very moderately warning of people who wish to go even further.

Following the publication of number 3, Camille did however end up under open attack, the first time on December 21, when the printer Léopold Nicolas told the jacobins that ”I accuse him of having made a libel with criminal and counter-revolutionary intentions. I appeal to those who have read it. Camille Desmoulins has for a long time been on the verge of the guillotine.” Nicolas then also denounced Desmoulins for having come to the Surveillance committee of Paris where he worked to demand the release of one Vaillant, held suspect for his ties to aristocrats and hiding counterrevolutionaries, going so far as to threatening with denouncing the committee to the Committee of General Security if Vaillant was not set free. On these grounds, Nicolas asked that Camille be expelled from the club. Later the same session Hébert too took to the floor and denounced both Camille, his few months old Lettre de Camille Desmoulins, député de Paris à la Convention, au général Dillon en prison aux Madelonettes as well as number 3 of the Vieux Cordelier:

Ever since [Desmoulins] married a rich woman, he only lives with arisocrats, of which he is often the protector. He has written in favor of Dillon, whom he compared to Turenne, and he did not hold it against him that the Convention entrust him with command of all the armies of the Republic. Camille Desmoulins has picked up his pen again, and in a journal he occupies himself with ridiculing the patriots. In his third number, he has the infamy to say that Georges Bouchotte is governed by Pitt-Vincent: Bouchotte, who has never breathed except for the happiness of his fellow citizens, Bouchotte, to whom we cannot reproach for the slightest fault, Bouchotte, to whom we owe the appointment of the sans-culottes generals who will finally deliver us from the rebels of Vendée, seeing himself compared to an imbecile, to King George!

Hébert also denounced Philippeaux for his pamphlet and Fabre d’Églantine for being ”the kingpin of all these complots” (it was Fabre who on December 17 had obtained the arrest of the Vincent Camille denounced in number 2, along with Maillard and Ronsin, two other ”hébertist”) asking that the three plus Bourdon d’Oise be expelled from the club. The club ended up declaring that they be invited to explain themselves for the next session.

The second attack took place on December 23 and was launched by the recently returned from Lyon Collot d’Herbois, who seems to have read Camille’s allusion to the terror under the Roman emperors as a critique of the Committee of Public Safety: ”What! people attack the Committee of Public Safety with libels! It is accused of having shed the blood of patriots! It gets blamed for the death of fifty thousand men! And you believe that the authors of these writings did them in good faith? Do you believe that men who translate ancient historians for you, who go back five hundred years to give you a picture of the times in which you live, are patriotic? No, the man who is forced to go back so far will never be at the level of the Revolution.” Right after him, an unknown citizen declared that ”the system of moderation one wants to establish will lead to disastrous results,” and regretted the fact Camille — ”this man who dated to say that he had felt pity over the fate of the girondins” — had passed the jacobins’ scrutiny test a week earlier. He ended by proposing ”that we demand the judgment of any man who is moved by the fate of the conspirators.”

Camille had no time to respond to these three attacks before number 4 of the Vieux Cordelier was released on December 24. He starts by regretting the fact that ”some people have disapproved of my third number, where, they allege, I have been pleased to make comparisons which tend to throw the Republic and patriots into disfavour; they should, however, say the excesses of the Revolution and the patriots of industry,” as well as the idea that ”the present state is not that of liberty; but that of patience, you will be free later.” Camille disagrees with this, arguing that liberty isn’t something that needs to mature, but something concreate that you either have or do not have. He then rather quickly puts forth this radical proposal:

Open the prisons of those two hundred thousand citizens whom you call “suspects,” for in the Declaration of Rights there was no prison for suspected persons, but only for felons. Suspicion has no prison, it has the public prosecutor; there are no suspected persons but those who are accused of crime by the law. Do not believe that this measure would be fatal to the Republic; it would be the most revolutionary step you have ever taken. […] I am of a very different opinion from those who claim that it is necessary to leave terror as the order of the day. I am confident, on the contrary, that liberty will be assured and Europe conquered as soon as you have a Committee of Clemency. This committee will complete the Revolution, for clemency is itself a revolutionary measure, the most effective of all when it is wisely dealt out. Let imbeciles and rascals call me moderate, if they want to. I am certainly not ashamed to be no more of an enragé than M. Brutus; yet this is what Brutus wrote: You would do better, my dear Cicero, to put more effort into cutting short the civil wars than in losing your temper and pursuing your personal resentments against the vanquished. […] the establishment of a Committee of Clemency seems to me a grand idea and worthy of the French people, erasing from its memory many faults, since it has erased the very time they were committed and created a new era from which it alone dates its birth and memories. At this expression of a Committee of Clemency, what patriot does not feel his heart moved? For patriotism consists in the plentitude of every virtue, and therefore cannot exist where there is neither humanity nor philanthropy but a soul parched and dried by selfishness.

While Desmoulins is quick to point out that he is by no means asking for a general amnesty — ”To the back of the line with the motion of amnesty! A blind and general indulgence would be counter-revolutionary, or at least it would present the greatest danger and be obviously impolitic” — it can nevertheless be asked how he could suddenly produce such a drastic call for clemency in a journal that up until this point has been quite meek when it comes to questioning the current state of things. To understand this, it is important to note an event that took place four days before the number was released. On December 20, Robespierre had laid out the idea of so called ”committees of justice” to the Convention, after a group of women had arrived there to beg for clemency for their imprisoned relatives. While it should be noted that he did this with much less enthusiasm compared to Camille, making sure to state that the majority of prisoners were indeed locked up for a reason and throwing suspicion on the forceful attitude of the women, underlining that ”virtuous and republican wives […] address themselves in particular and with modesty to those who are responsible for the interests of the homeland,” the decree he then went on to propose sounds a bit too coherent to just have been pulled out of thin air due to the pressure:

The National Convention decrees, 1. that the Committees of Public Safety and General Security will appoint commissioners to seek means of releasing patriots who could have been incarcerated; 2. the commissioners will bring, in the exercise of their functions, the necessary severity so as not to hinder the energy of the revolutionary measures ordered by the salvation of the homeland; 3. the names of these commissioners will remain unknown to the public to avoid the dangers of solicitations; 4. they will not be able to release anyone on their own authority: they will only propose the results of their research to the two Committees, which will decide definitively on the release of people who appear to them to have been unjustly arrested...

Camille mentions this proposal in number 4, arguing that it’s possible to go further: ”Already you (Robespierre) have closely approached this idea, in the measure you caused to be decreed yesterday in the meeting of the week of 30 Frimaire. It is true that it was rather a Committee of Justice which was proposed. But why should clemency be a crime in the Republic?” That Camille had been influenced by Robespierre’s justice committee also goes along well with what he had to say about the committees of clemency during his trial:

The president: And these committees of clemency that you asked for, what was your motive for showing that much humanity? Desmoulins: I did nothing more than what the warmest patriots had already showed me the example of. I asked for three windows for the incarcerated patriots, and others before me had asked for six. In regards to Dillon, of whom I am accused of having been the defender, I answer that I asked for nothing other than to judge him promptly. I said: judge him; if he is guilty, then punish him; but if he is innocent, hasten to restore his rights as a citizen.

With the committees of justice in mind, I don’t think you can use Camille appealing to Robespierre in particular when talking about a clemency committee as evidence of their strong bond. That said, the fact alone that Camille openly implored Robespierre in person when laying out his proposal I think still proves a certain closeness between the two, considering these words would not have come off as particularly genuine had the two only been superficial acquaintances:

O! my dear Robespierre! It is to you I address these words, for I have seen the moment when Pitt had only you to conquer, where without you the ship Argo would have perished, the Republic would have entered into chaos, and the society of Jacobins and the Mountain would have become a tower of Babel. O my old college comrade! You whose eloquent words posterity will reread! Remember the lessons of history and philosophy: that love is stronger, more enduring than fear; that admiration and religion were born of generosity; that acts of clemency are the ladder of myth, as was said by Tertullian, by which members of the Committee of Public Safety are raised to the skies, and that men never climb thither on stairs of blood.

Like number 3, number 4 earned Camille open attacks from other prominent revolutionaries on two seperate occasions. The first took place on December 26, two days after the release. Barère then denounced Desmoulins (without mentioning him by name) when he, in a report held in the name of the CPS, warned of ”periodical writers who […] revive the counter-revolutionaries, and warm the ashes of the aristocracy.” Like Collot earlier, Barère had him too read the part about tyrannical reigns under Roman emperors in number 3 as a critique of the revolutionary government, underlining that it is actually correct to label both priest, noble, banker, stranger etc, etc as ”suspect.” Barère did however wish to absolve Desmoulins somewhat, adding that he was doing what he was doing ”unknowingly and perhaps unintentionally.” Later in the same report Barère also followed up Robespierre’s proposal of a committee of justice with suggesting even bigger measures, both Robespierre and Billaud-Varennes objected to it, and proposed they stick to the original proposal. Then on December 31, right after an anonymous jacobin had demanded ”journalist Camille Desmoulins” be struck from the jacobins’ list of members, Hébert cried out that ”all the things that can be used against Brissot aren’t even close to what you can reproach Camille for” and repeated his wish that ”Bourdon de l’Oise, Fabre d’Eglantine and Camille Desmoulins must be chased out from this society.” Hébert also attacked Desmoulins for his call for clemency in number 328 of his journal Père Dushesne, accusing him of being in the pay of Pitt.

Number 5 of the Vieux Cordelier, the longest of them all, released on January 5 1794 and entitled Camille Desmoulins’ great speech in defense to the Jacobins, Desmoulins spent almost only on responding to the different attacks made against him over the past two weeks. He begins by once again underlining that ”the ship of the republic drifts between two reefs, moderation and extremism,”and reminding the reader of what he wrote in number 3 — ”I have said, with Danton, that to exaggerate the revolution had fewer dangers and was better than to fall short; on the course set by the ship of state it was more often necessary to come close to the rocks of extremism than the sandbank of moderation.” However, with the recent attacks from, as he calls them, ”ungrateful sons,” for the first time, Camille openly states he wants to fight extremism:

But see how Père Duchesne and nearly all the patriot sentinels stand on the deck with their telescope only concerned with crying: Watch out! You are touching moderation! It has been necessary for me, old Cordelier and senior Jacobin, to take charge of the difficult duty which none of the younger people wanted, fearing loss of popularity, that of crying: Beware! You are going to touch extremism! And there is the duty which my colleagues in Convention gave me, that of sacrificing my own popularity to save the ship in which my cargo was no stronger than theirs.

Desmoulins first takes on Nicolas, defending his defence of his cousin Vaillant who, he claims, was denounced only for having giving dinner to a citizen and letting him pass the night at his house. He points out that Andre Dumont, the man who granted the requests that Vaillant be set free ”is not yet suspected of moderatism.” […] ”If I come close to the guillotine for having requested my relative’s freedom for such a minor peccadillo, what will you do to Andre Dumont, who granted the request? Is it fitting that a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal should be so lightly sent to the guillotine?” He also accuses Nicolas of in the recent month having obtained more than 150 000 francs by the revolutionary tribunal for his printing, ”while I, whom he accuses have not increased my savings by a denier,” as well as of having become corrupted by ”having the power of life and death in his own hands” after having been elected juror on the Revolutionary Tribunal.

Turning to Collot d’Herbois, Camille brings up the fact he has already turned out to be in the wrong in several instances before, and that he could prove him so once more — ”if I wanted to retaliate against Collot I would only have to let my pen fly, armed with facts more powerful than his denunciation.” He does however choose to ”bury my resentment of Collot’s attack,” confining himself to warning his ”colleague” to not be misled by the flatteries of Hébert (who in Père Duchesne had been very positive towards Collot and his activities in Lyon). Camille cites ”the interests of the homeland” as the official reason for why he’s going easy on Collot, reminding the reader of the things he has done for the revolution, but it might be suspected the risk of outright attacking a member of the Committee of Public Safety it too has played a considerable role here…

Camille goes harder on Barère, accusing him of having ”darkened my ideas,” by telling the Convention that he doesn’t recognize that there exists suspect people. ”If Barère had quoted me, if at least he had said that I shared his opinion, even the most suspicious republicans would have seen that I too wanted houses of suspicion, and that I only differed in opinion on the reporting of suspects.” He also reminds Barère of some things he himself can be reproached for:

Had it been an old Cordelier like myself, a straight-lined patriot, Billaud-Varennes for example, who had punished me so harshly, I would have said: It is the blow of the fiery Saint Paul to the good Saint Peter who had sinned! But you, my dear Barère! You, happy guardian of Paméla! You, the presidents of the Feuillants! You who proposed the committee of 12, you who, on June 2, put into deliberation in the Committee of Public Safety whether Danton should be arrested! you, of whom I could point out many other faults, […] it’s you who accuses me of moderation!

He nevertheless writes that he is ready to forget this as well — ”I also do you justice, Barère; I love your talent, your services, and I also proclaim your patriotism” — and claims the recent controversies with the two CPS members is simply ”a domestic quarrel with my friends the patriots Collot and Barère.”

The biggest amount of time is spent dealing with Hébert, and here there are on the other hand no kind words spared, instead Camille warns him that he’s going to ”unmask you like I unmasked Brissot.” He reproaches Hébert both for speaking ill of Barras, Fréron and La Poype, all currently on mission in Toulon, praising the by now imprisoned general Carteaux, as well as for the coarse language used by him in Père Duchesne, and accuses him of writing for the aristocrats and persecuring Marat in 1790 and 1791, of having been fired from his job at the theater for theft, and even of having opposed the Insurrection of August 10. He turns Hébert’s claim that he would be in Pitt’s pay back against him, no, it is Hébert himself who ”has been made Brissot’s successor by the agents of Pitt.” He is also ”a scoundrel degrading the French people and the Convention,” and a ”politician without opinions and the most foolish of the patriots if he is not the most cunning of the aristocrats.” To return Hébert’s charge about keeping company with aristocrats, Camille writes that ”the cockroach’s” own social circle includes one femme Rochechouart, ”an agent of the émigrés,” as well as the Dutch banker Kocke — ”an intimate of Dumouriez.” To return his charge about having married a rich woman, Camille writes he only obtained 4000 livres de rentes from her (which btw is a massive understatement), and ends the number by opposing this with an extract from the National Treasury detailing the sums received by Hébert since the summer — 135 000 livres on June 2, 10 000 livres in August and 60 000 livres in October.

Camille also firmly defends himself against those doubting his patriotism and even calling him a conspirator — ”It is true citizens; for five years I have conspired to make republican France happy and flourishing.” He reminds the reader of the fact he wrote verses ridiculing the monarchy already before the revolution. After giving a detailed description of his Great Table Standing Moment of July 12 1789, Camille writes he defies anyone to find a single phrase in the writings he has since produced ”where I depart from republican principles, or deviate from a single line of The Declaration of Rights.” He furthermore adds that no one will be able to ”cite a single conspirator whose mask I did not rip away well before he fell. I have always been six or even eighteen months ahead of public opinion,” something which becomes even more impressive given the fact most of these men had been his personal friends. He ends by imploring the reader ”to recognise your old friends and ask your new ones who accuse me if they find a single one amongst them who could merit such a right to your confidence.”

Camille also once again both defends and takes cover behind Robespierre by tying the two together as much as possible. He underlines that the dangers of touching extremism ”have already been recognized by Robespierre and even Billaud-Varennes.” When defending his works over the past five years he writes that he has never stopped conspiring against the tyrants ”with Danton and Robespierre.” He points out that, if it is a crime to have defended Dillon like he has, ”there is no reason why Robespierre is not a criminal too, for having defended Camille Desmoulins who defended Dillon.” When responding to Nicolas, Desmoulins underlines that the latter is still a good patriot, given his status as friend, companion and bodyguard of Robespierre. But he also asks why then Nicolas has chosen to listen more to ”what is said [about me] in certain bureaus” rather than the defence given of him on December 14 by Robespierre, ”who has followed me almost since childhood. […] Tell me of anyone who could make a better recommendation?”

The very same day the number was released, Collot d’Herbois went to the Jacobins to speak about the recent writings of Philippeaux and Desmoulins. Similar to the way Camille wrote about Collot in the most recent number, Collot regrets the Vieux Cordelier, saying it has ”lent weapons to the aristocrats,” but seperates the author from his works, reminding the Jacobins of all his past great services to the revolution. He opposes Hébert’s recent demands of expelling Desmoulins from the Jacobins, contenting himself with asking that the numbers be censored, and even appears to give in to his appeals for a committee to look over the suspects — ”I wrap up by demanding that Philippeaux be expelled from the Jacobins, the numbers of Camille Desmoulins censored, and that the Committee of General Security report as quickly as possible on incarcerated patriots.” When the president reads aloud a letter from Desmoulins announcing the release of number 5 of the Vieux Cordelier, Collot quickly responds that he’s not there to talk about it. A bit later into the session, Hébert does however disagree, exclaiming: ”I have been accused, in a libel that was released today, of being a daring brigand, a despoiler of the public fortune.” Camille responds that he has in his hand the extracts from the National Treasury published at the the end of the number, proving this charge true. But just as Hébert is about to counterattack, Augustin Robespierre interrupts, regretting the quarrels infecting the club that were not there when he left on a mission five months earlier, asking that Hébert respond to Camille in his journal instead of here. His brother does however disagree, declaring that Camille interrupted the session as much as Hébert ”claiming to have proof, when maybe that’s not the case.” He then invites the club to ”leave the intrigues and focus only on the interests of the homeland.”

At the next session, held January 7, Camille invited those that held anything against him to search in the numbers of his journal the answers to all their denounciations. When an unspecified person asked that he explain himself regarding the praise he had given Philippeaux in number 3, Camille responded that he had been mistaken and no longer believed what the latter — ”the most insolent of liars” — had written in the pamphlet. Immediately after this, Robespierre attacks Desmoulins, calling his writings ”the pain of patriots and the joy of aristocrats.” Robespierre mainly reproaches Camille for his number 3, asking, like Collot and Barère before him, if its ”translation of Tacitus isn’t in fact piquant satyrs of the present government and of the Convention,” and mocking the praise given to Philippeaux in it — ”What is the charm that excited him about this man? What is this blind confidence which may have induced Desmoulins to make a pernicious alliance of his newspaper with the libels of Philippeaux against the revolutionary government and against the patriots?” He also breifly condemns number 5 for the ”indecent diatribes lavished on several members of the Convention,” before, again like Barère and Collot, seperating author from work and asking that the numbers of the Vieux Cordelier ”just” be burned in the middle of the room. When Desmoulins refuses this ultimatum, Robespierre asks that the numbers be answered instead, and the club reads aloud number 4 and schedules for number 3 and 5 the next session, where Camille will also justify himself. But he is not confirmed to have shown up at the club for the occasion, or ever again at all following this moment.

The short number 6 of the Vieux Cordelier is not released until three weeks later, January 30. Desmoulins opens with the following citation: ”Camille-Desmoulins has indulged in a riot of wit with the aristocrats, but he is still a good republican, and it is impossible for him to be anything else” words he describes as an ”attestation of Collot d'Herbois and Robespierre, session of the Jacobins.” A clear indication Camille is trying to get on the Committee of Public Safety’s good side again, or at least remind its members of what they’ve thought about him in the very recent past. Camille then declares that he now wants to publish his ”political profession of faith,” in order to once and for all shut the mouths of all his caluminators. He reminds the reader that he’s always the same patriot and that the Vieux Cordelier breaths the same ideas as all his previous works:

We see that what one today calls moderantism in my journal, is my old system of utopia. We see that all my fault is to have remained at my death of July 12, 1789, and not to have grown an inch any more than Adam; all my fault is in having preserved the old errors of La France Libre, of La Lanterne, of Révolutions de France et de Brabant, of La Tribune des Patriotes, and of not being able to renounce the charms of my Republic of Cocagne.

Throughout the number he quotes passages from his earlier works, starting with a citation found in his La France Libre, released in July 1789 — “popular government and democracy is the only constitution that suits France and all those who are not unworthy of the name of man.” Four and a half years later, Camille writes, he still believes the same thing to be the case. He adds that he thinks two people can be divided in regards to which measures are the best for saving the republic, like Brutus and Cicero, or more recently like him and Marat. But while safeguarding this right to opinion, he appears to take a step back from his fervent defence of liberty of the press that, as can be seen, has been a theme of his convictions since the August letter to his father:

I believe that a representative is no more infallible than inviolable. Even if the salvation of the people should, in a moment of revolution, restrict freedom of the press to citizens, I believe that we can never take away from a deputy the right to express his opinion; I believe he must be allowed to be wrong; that it is in consideration of its errors that the French people have such a large number of representatives, so that those of some can be corrected by others.

Immediately after this, Desmoulins also takes a step back in regards to the committee of clemency asked for in number 4. He insists that it was actually a committee of justice he meant, and that the notes and the opening parenthesis included in the number make that clear. He reveals that he’s been reprimanded for the idea by Fréron, who in a recent letter from Toulon had told Lucile to ”tell [Camille] to keep his imagination in check a little with respect to a committee of clemency. It would be a triumph for the counter-revolutionaries.” Camille responds to Fréron in the journal, underlining that he’s not talking about Toulon, where clemency is clearly ”out of season,” when asking for such a committee, but that it’s Paris that could use ”the bridle of the Vieux Cordelier.” To give an example of what he means, he mentions the recent arrest of his father-in-law, held suspect for a few discarded objects imprinted with fleur-de-lis found in his house. This, says Camille, is quite ironic considering his father-in-law is ”the most ultra sixty-year-old I have yet seen,” ”the Père Duchesne of the house,” who would always go on about how only conspirators and aristocrats were arrested and the guillotine too idle.

Camille fully refutes those who think the content of number 3 and 4 is due to the ”influence” of someone else, in particular Fabre and Philippeaux. People who say that, writes Camille, ”do not know the untamed independence of my pen, which only belongs to the republic, and perhaps a little to my imagination and its deviations, if you like, but not to the ascendancy and influence of anyone.” But early in the number he also appears to show his disapproval of the fact Fabre since a month back has been imprisoned, remarking that ”the immortal author of Philinth” has been accused of counterfeiting and that ”today 24 nivôse, […] Fabre d'Églantine, the inventor of the new calendar, has just been sent to Luxembourg, before having seen the fourth month of his republican year.”

Desmoulins quite quickly wraps up, saying that ”I am obliged to postpone the rest of my political credo until another day,” as he wishes for his future numbers to be shorter in order to lower the prize of the journal. The fact that the long number 5 cost as much as twenty sous is what caused no sans-culotte to read it, which in it’s turn caused Hébert to reign supreme. He does however also leave a PS note, where he corrects some errors Hébert wrote about him in Père Dushesne in the wake of the last number of the Vieux Cordelier, before declaring that he’s happy Robespierre’s call on January 8 to focus on the crimes of the English government instead of the two journalists appears to have put an end to their struggles.

Why is there such a big gap between numbers 5 and 6 and why is the latter suddenly much meeker? The simple answer is course that we will never know for sure, Camille’s lack of personal correspondence during this period certainly not helping. The only thing I know of hinting at a motivation is the letter Lucile wrote to Robespierre after her husband’s arrest, where she claims that ”this hand which has pressed yours has left the pen before its time, once it could no longer hold it to trace your praise.” Lucile’s words should of course be taken with a grain of salt given that her goal with the letter is to save Camille’s life, but the idea that he got sick of the Vieux Cordelier once he realized Robespierre no longer had his back is still one I don’t think should be completely tossed aside. After all, checking his track record, whose errands did he most often run? His first journal Révolutions de France et de Brabant (1789-1791) hailed Robespierre as its number 1 champion, even more than for example Pétion and Buzot whose fame and influence at the time were pretty equal to his. When all of Paris gets caught in a war frenzie in December 1791 and forward, it is Desmoulins who sticks by Robespierre’s side in his fight against it and the soon to be ”girondins,” attacking Brissot in Jean Pierre Brissot démasqué (February 1792) and then starting a whole journal, La Tribune des Patriotes (April 1792) to act as a defence of him (”Fréron and I will not abandon you in the breach, in the midst of a cloud of enemies.”) When he the next year delivers the final blow to the ”faction” with l’Histoire des Brissotins, it is Robespierre who gets to proofread it, and finally, when we get to the Vieux Cordelier a few months later, it is again Robespierre (and not Danton) whose involvement we have the best evidence of. Suffice to say, Robespierre’s opinion obviously matterad a lot to Camille, and so for him to lose enthusiasm after Robespierre openly humiliates his journal (that he had originally supported) doesn’t sound like that impossible of an explanatory model. Not only that, but Robespierre’s support also served as a protection from critique, a support that was obviously quite important did you wish to keep your reputation and even head. Like you say, Camille must have known he was taking a risk by expressing himself the way he did. Now that his ideas are not getting through and he’s losing the support so vital for his safety, he might have fallen back on the fact that he had a young family to take care of and decided to back down a bit for that reason.

Uncertainty also seems to have reigned over the seventh and final number of the Vieux Cordelier, the one that Camille would never see the release of. According to Hervé Leuwers’ biography (and I’m going off completely on what he writes for this number so that we can finally get this thing over with), three drafts exists of this number. The first one is a severe critique of the revolutionary government that Camille nevertheless persists in claiming he still accepts. He is indignant over the conditions of the detained suspects, denounces the impolitic “annihilation” of Lyon, considers the closure of “bawdy houses at the same time as those of religion” as an entourage to the counter-revolution, expresses worry over the broad powers of the Committee of Public Safety and criticizes Barère and Collot d’Herbois. This draft does however gets scrapped for a second one (Leuwers speculates this might be due to Robespierre on February 5 1794 providing a logic and a moral framework for the revolutionary government in his famous ”On Political Morality” speech, and Desmoulins not wanting to rock the boat) which takes the form of a dialogue between an ”old cordelier” and ”Camille Desmoulins,” officially two different persons, but in practise both alter-egos of the author. This time the journalist launches an offensive against the Committee of General Security and its politics, openly attacking several of its members — Vadier, Voulland, Amar, David and Lavicomterie, and even reproaching Robespierre for having forgotten his anti-warmongering from three years earlier.

The third draft of the journal, the one Camille in the end wanted printed, no longer contains any of these reproaches towards the government committees, but still takes the form of a conversation between ”the old cordelier” and Camille Desmoulins.” The ”old cordelier” is loyal to principles and advocates for unlimited freedom of the press, proclaiming it’s stupid to think it dangerous, and that before shooting the ”rascals” they must be denounced. He openly asks ”Camille Desmoulins” if he would dare to use freedom of the press to it’s full extent: ”Would you dare to ridicule the political blunders of this or that member of the Public Safety Committee? […] Would you dare today to address a particular deputy of the Minister of War, the great character Vincent, for example, as courageously as you did, four years ago, Necker and Bailly, Mirabeau, the Lameths and Lafayette?” He also expresses despair over the current state of affairs: ”I no longer see in the republic anything but the flat calm of despotism, and the smooth surface of the stagnant waters of a marsh; I see only an equality of fear […]Where is liberty? frankness? audacity?” The ”old cordelier” even aims a rebuke against Barère and Saint-Just for reports held December 26 and February 26 respectively: ”Saint-Just and Barère put you in their reports from the committee of public safety, because you put them in your journal.”

”Camille Desmoulins” is however more cautious than the ”old cordelier.” He doesn’t want to renounce his faith in freedom of expression either: ”republics have as their basis and foundation the freedom of the press, not this other basis that Montesquieu gave them” (virtue, so here Desmoulins appears to be distancing himself from Robespierre who claimed that it is indeed virtue that is ”the fundamental principle of popular or democratic government” in the speech on February 5). But then he also adds that freedom the press is subordinate to the “salvation of the people” and that the revolutionary government should also have the right to restrict property and freedom of movement. ”Camille Desmoulins” nevertheless continues advocating for indulgence, but this time without debating suspects. Towards the end, he also rekindles his attack on the ultra-revolutionaries: ”would you like this goddess thirsty for blood whose high priest Hébert, Momoro and their like, dare to demand that the Temple be built like that of Mexico, on the bones of three million citizens, and tell incessantly to the Jacobins, to the Commune , to the Cordeliers what the Spanish priests said to Montézume [sic]: The Gods are athirst.”

So going off this final number, I’d say Camille’s mindset was that of someone deeply unsatisfied with the politics of the day. He is however aware that fully voicing this dissatisfaction would be dangerous and/or counter-productive, which is why he scraps the first number entirely, and edits out the attacks on Robespierre and the CGS in the second draft (so in sum, I would say he was indeed attempting to back down a bit in number 6 and 7). Camille also comes off as conflicted about what to believe anymore, the collusion between his ideals and the lived reality evidently very strong.

I don’t know if Desmoulins would have been able to save himself had he chosen to put his guns down even more in the two final numbers. After all, at the time of Camille’s arrest, it’s been more than two months since number six — the meekest one of them all — has been released, so I don’t think the authorities saw him as a threat for what he was visibly doing in the moment as much as for what he had done/said in the past. I think a safer bet would be that Camille might have been able to save himself had he said he regretted his actions and accepted getting his numbers destroyed when denounced at the jacobins by Robespierre on January 7, because then he would still have had this crucial protection left.

As for the question of Danton and his role in the ”indulgent campaign,” like I wrote in this post, the idea that he was some kind of mastermind pulling the threads behind the scenes (like he’s portrayed in for example La Terreur et la Vertu) appears to be entirely based on the testimonies of contemporaries. There’s Robespierre claiming in his notes against the dantonists (March 1794) that Danton had been the ”president” of the Vieux Cordelier, whose prints he had corrected, and also that he had had ”influence” over the writings of Philippeaux. There’s Danton’s friend Garat writing in 1795 that Danton, while recovering from illness in Arcis-sur-Aube, came up with a ”conspiracy” with the goal ”to restore for the benefit of all the reign of justice and of the laws, and to extend clemency to his enemies,” that all his friends became part of upon his return to Paris. There’s Camille’s friend Louis Marie Prudhomme claiming in 1797 that ”Danton, Lacroix, Camille-Desmoulins, Fabre-d'Églantine, put themselves at the head of a secret party against the emerging authority of the Committee which was their work” at that Camille for this purpose had been charged with a ”moral attack” to ensure the triumph of the ”system of clemency.” There’s Courtois who in his old age wrote that Danton softened the Vieux Cordelier’s ”acrimony” in many places, and finally, there’s Jules Claretie who in Camille Desmoulins And His Wife: Passages From The History Of The Dantonists (1876) claimed to have heard an anecdote about Danton telling Camille to write and ask for clemency already in the summer of 1793. But again, determining the veracity in any of these statements is harder than it seems, especially as it’s impossible to say if these testimonies were independent from one another or not. Furthermore, there’s also other testimonies that go against those above. The deputy Levasseur de la Sarthe did for example claim in his memoirs that ”Fabre d’Églantine was at the head of this [indulgent] faction” and had managed to drag Desmoulins and Philippeaux along, but that ”Danton, loyal to the oath that he would not associate himself with any faction, did for a long time remain outside of cette new and imprudent outcry: later forced to speak out, he allied himself with the faction against the committee,” while Hébert, when attacking Desmoulins, Philippeaux, Bourdon de l’Oise and Fabre at the jacobins on December 21 1793, at the same time praised Danton — ”there are two men who have all my estime and all my confidence: Danton and Robespierre.”

I’ve found two seperate anecdotes painting Danton as someone who, similar to Vilate’s claim about Desmoulins, was deeply moved by the fate of the girondins. The first one comes from Memoirs of the revolution; or, an apology for my conduct, in the public employments which I have held (1795) by Dominique-Joseph Garat:

I could not convince myself that among all those who, since May 31, had retained great popularity, there was not one who did not still retain a little humanity, and I went to Danton. He was ill, it only took me two minutes to see that his illness was above all a deep pain and a great dismay at everything that was coming. ”I won't be able to save them (the girondins)”, were the first words out of his mouth, and, as he uttered them, all the strength of this man, who has been compared to an athlete, was defeated, big tears strolled down his face, whose shapes could have been used to represent that of Tartarus. […] When the fate reserved for the twenty-two [girondins] seemed inevitable, Danton already heard, so to speak, his death sentence in theirs. All the strength of this triumphant athlete of democracy succumbed under the feeling of the crimes of democracy and its disorders. He could only talk about the countryside, he was suffocating, he needed to escape from men in order to be able to breathe.

The other one comes from a memoir that Danton’s sons wrote over their father in 1846. They claimed to have obtained the anecdote from the son of the M. Doulet mentioned in it:

Danton was in Arcis in the month of November 1793. One day, when he was walking in his garden with M. Doulet, a third person came towards them, walking with great steps and holding a paper in his hand (it was a journal). As soon as he could make himself heard he cried out: ”Good news! Good news!” and approached them. ”What news?” said Danton. ”Here, read! The girondins have been condemned and executed,” responded the person that had just arrived. ”And you call this good news, you wretch?” cried Danton in his turn, Danton whose eyes immediately got filled with tears. ”The death of the girondins good news? Wretch!” ”Without a doubt,” responded his interlocuteur, ”weren’t they factious? ”Factious,” said Danton. Aren’t we factious? We all deserve death just as much as the girondins, we will all suffer, one after the other, the same fate as them.”

This could invite to the idea that Danton, like Camille, was horrified by the fact revolutionary justice had gone as far as it had (or at least that he got alarmed once he realized said justice could also reach politicians like himself) and wanted to put an end to it. But also like with Camille, this idea cracks a little once you start looking over the things he’s actually fully confirmed to have said himself following his return to Paris in November 1793 and his death five months later. This can be observed in Discours de Danton (1910) by André Fribourg. Below can be seen all recorded interventions made by Danton during this period, as well as which ones had anything to do with the ”indulgent campaign.”

On November 22, the first day of his public apperances since his return from Arcis-sur-Aube, Danton speaks about a decree granting help to priests who have abdicated, that the committee of legislation and finances has been charged with preparing. Danton supports the decree, pointing at ”the consequences the rejection of [it] would have” — if a priest cannot support himself, he will turn against them, travel to the Vendée and declare himself their enemy. He therefore suggests that it be kept track over which priests have obtained the relief, and that as soon as it is demonstrated to a commune that one has acquired the means to subsist, it will be authorized to remove all priest salary from him. And he ends with these words:

I ask that the blood of men be spared; I ask that you do not lose the means of going home to your enemies, and conciliating them. Be fair to all who are not your enemies; you owe them enough to live on until they can afford it. You can give it to them with economy: here there is no expense. Those who calculate know that a large number will hasten to search, and will find ways to cost the Nation nothing. But show yourselves just, show yourselves great like the people you represent; it wants justice, it wants it to be imperturbable; proclaim it in its name, you will receive its applause and blessings.

Danton’s intervention was met by applause, and the discussion ends with the committee’s decree about help to the priests getting sent to the printer.

Four days later, November 26, Danton spoke in similar terms, regretting the numerous deputations and former priests coming to the Convention that day to show off remains of their churches and renounce their estate respectively. Danton proposes that ”we should no longer admit these anti-religious masquerades,” pointing out that ”there exists a law that charges a committee to receive the renunciations of priests. I demand the execution of it.” After asking for there to quickly be made a report on the ”foreign plot” recently revealed to the authorities by Fabre d’Églantine, Danton once again makes a case for not multiplying the guilty:

The perpetrators and accomplices must be carefully sought after, even within the Assembly. We must pursue traitors everywhere in whatever forms they disguise themselves. But let us be careful to distinguish what is due to error from what is due to crime. The people want terror to be the order of the day; but it wants it to be carried out against the real enemies of the Republic, and against them alone; I read that the people do not want the individual who was not born with revolutionary vigor to be, for that reason alone, treated as a culprit; if they do not deviate from their duties, the people want to encourage even the weak, when they have no idea of crime.

This earned him a reprimand from Fayau, who said that Danton had just ”let escape, without a doubt unintentionally, expressions that do not please me, he has not misunderstood this great truth that the people are sovereign, but while they need to be terrible he invites them to clemency.” Danton responded that he hadn’t even pronounced the word ”clemency,” doesn’t want any indulgence for the guilty, and asks for ”an energetic and revolutionary government.” Fayau retorted, saying that the way Danton just expressed himself of the current government made it seem like he thinks it could easily be substituted for another. But Danton shut him down with the words ”The Republican Constitution is decreed, and I am an imperishable Republican.” Once again he carried the day, the Convention decreeing his propositions amid applause.

On December 1 Danton warned that ”any man who makes himself ultra-revolutionary will render results as dangerous as determined counter-revolution,” and urged the Convention to declare that ”no one has the right to arbitrarily lay down the law on a citizen.” He calls for centralisation and tighter control of representatives on mission:

Let us recall those of our commissioners who, no doubt with good intentions, have taken measures that have been reported to us, and that no representative of the people henceforth issues decrees except in accordance with our revolutionary decrees, with the principles of freedom, and according to the instructions which will be transmitted to him by the Committee of Public Safety. Let us remember that, if it is with the pike that we overthrow, it is with the compass of reason and genius that we can raise and consolidate the edifice of society.

Two days after that, December 3, the jacobin session reported about at the beginning of this post, the one where Danton once again speaks against what he calls ”ultra-revolutionary measures,” is critiqued by Coupé d’Oise but saved by Robespierre. After this however, Danton’s frequent warnings about ultra-revolution come to a sudden stop, and he instead occupies himself with speaking on other subjects. Did he at this point feel that he could leave over the task to Desmoulins and Robespierre?

On the Convention session December 22, upon the news that a wine merchant suspected of hoarding has been convicted but his innocence has been recognized, Danton cried out for a reprieve, and the Convention repeated it after him. Danton then supported a proposal made by Collot d’Herbois to first make a report regarding the case and send it to the Convention.

The day after that, December 23, Danton called for calm in the Jacobins’ tumultuous discussion about Philippeaux. He does however not defend the accused or his works, underlining instead that ”I don’t have any opinion on Philippeaux or others; I’ve told him myself: ”you must either prove your accusation, or get sent to the scaffold,” but asking that everyone that wishes to speak be heard: ”There is only one misfortune to fear, and that is that our enemies will take advantage of our discussions. Let them profit as little as neccesary, and all keep our heads that are neccesary to us.” Right after Danton, Robespierre makes a similar intervention, underlining that he himself hasn’t read Philippeaux’ pamphlet but hopes he had good intentions with it, before asking for everyone to be heard and the session to be kept ”calm and quiet,” warning of ”the foreign powers [that] surround you here.” When a while later, their advice still hasn’t borne any fruit, Danton irritatingly intervenes again: ”the enemy is at our gates, and we are tearing each other apart! Do all our altercations kill a Prussian?” (vivid applause). Danton ends by asking for ”a commission composed of five members, that will hear the accused and the accusers.” With the support of Couthon, this proposal is decreed and met with applause.

The next time Philippeaux is discussed by the jacobins, on January 5, Danton again observes that the discussion revolves around facts denied on one side and affirmed on the other. In order to find out what of Philippeaux’s writings actually correspond with reality, he asks that the correspondence from Vendée be analyzed and that the representatives and soldiers interrogated on what they have seen, so that then the Convention and the CPS can clarify the substance of the question. ”Before having reached the goal, let us not prejudge any individual; let's leave it a misunderstood predipitation. We will soon know what to think of Philippeaux when the facts are clearly known.” Danton also expresses doubt over the arrested Ronsin’s presumed guilt — ”I have a hard time believing Ronsin has changed in the way of thinking, he in whom I have always following the trail of liberty, he who during my ministery was pointed out to me as an ardent back up of republican government, and whom I chose, to the great satisfaction of patriots, to after the great insurrection of August 1 go and share the love of the republic in the departments” — something which makes it hard to believe he would have been the one who, through Fabre, masterminded said arrest. It may also be added that Desmoulins was also denounced during the session of both December 23 and January 5, without Danton speaking up for him.

On January 7, after Desmoulins has been attacked by Robespierre, Danton again steps in not to defend the journalist and his numbers, but rather to bring both friends back to order and call for quiet — ”Camille mustn’t be frightened by the rather severe lessons Robespierre’s friendship has just given him. Citizens, let justice and cold-headedness always preside over our decisions. In judging Camille, be careful to not strike a deadly blow against liberty of the press.”

The same day at the Convention, Bourdon d’Oise attacks two men Desmoulins has previously taken on in the Vieux Cordelier, Hébert and Bouchotte, the former of which has attacked ”the most pure patriots” in his journal while being in the pay of the latter, who, as Minister of War, ”draws immense sums from the public fund.” This money, Bourdon claims, is better used paying off the nation’s debt to the families of volunteers. Danton, while declaring that ”I think like the pre-opinionists that the organization of the Ministry of War is bad,” also makes sure to state that ”we must ensure that our decrees do not harm the action of the operations of this same ministry,” before again asking that everything be looked over by the CPS and the Committee of Finances instead, ”so that they present to us a method such that our enemies know that we will never slow down the efforts that public safety and the unshakeable establishment of freedom require of us.” He never mentions any names. If Danton is the leader of the ”indulgents,” he does in other words not do much to continue an offensive launched against the ”rival faction” by one of his presumed ”allies.”

The next intervention takes place on January 13, when Danton spoke about the recent arrest of Fabre d’Églantine, agreeing with Charlier who asked for an act of accusation against him and the three other deputies entangled in the East India Company Scandal, and proclaiming that the Committee of General Security has done a good job by putting a ”man presumed guilty” under the hand of the law, but that it at the same time wouldn’t hurt to let the accused come and explain themselves before the Convention — ”I ask that the Convention confirm the arrest of Fabre d'Églantine, that the Committee of General Security take all necessary measures, and that the defendants then be brought to the bar so that they can be judged before all the people so that it recignizes those who still deserve its esteem.” — underlining that his proposal isn’t contrary to that of the committee. His proposal did however receive a frosty response from both Vadier and Billaud-Varennes, the latter exclaiming: ”Woe to whoever sat next to Fabre d'Églantine, and who is still his dupe.” Right after him, Amar insinuated Danton was accusing the committee of negligence, to which he immediately responded that he wasn’t, ”I do justice to it.”

On January 16, Bourdon de l’Oise asks for the arrest and transfer before the are Revolutionary Tribunal of the deputy Dentzel, who, during a mission in the Bas-Rhin department ”focused on persecuting patriots and incarcerating them,” even having the colonel of the Corrèze battalion, a ”frank republican and known as such,” put in an iron cage. Here Danton wholeheartedly agrees, calling the charges against Dentzel ”grave” and calling for the CPS and CGS to take care of the accusation while nevertheless again repeating that ”we must follow a wise path that puts us aside from errors.”

On January 24 Camille protested against the recent arrest of his father-in-law at the Jacobins, again gaining the support of Bourdon d’Oise who asked that the Committee of General Security make a report about the case in three days. Danton did however object to this, stating that he didn’t want a certain prisoner to be given privilieges just because of his relations. He also underlined that ”no one wants the continuation of revolutionary action more than me,” and that ”it is impossible for revolutionary means not to be momentarily fatal to good citizens” before nevertheless reminding the deputies of Robespierre’s committee of justice (which ended up never happening in practice) and suggesting that ”the Convention consider ways to do justice to all the victims of arbitrary measures and arrests, without harming the action of the revolutionary government”:

I oppose the kind of distinction of privilege which would seem to be granted to Desmoulins' father-in-law. I want the Convention to deal only with general affairs. If we want a report for this citizen, we also need one for all the others. […] My colleague's complaint is fair in itself, but it would give rise to a decree unworthy of us. If we were to give priority, it would belong to citizens who do not find in their fortune and in their acquaintance with members of the Convention hopes and resources in the midst of their misfortune: it must be to the unfortunate, to the needy, that you should first hold out your hands. I ask that the Convention consider ways to do justice to all the victims of arbitrary measures and arrests, without harming the action of the revolutionary government. I would be careful not to prescribe the means here. I request the referral of this question to the consideration of the Committee of General Safety, which will consult with the Committee of Public Safety; that a report be made to the Convention, and that it be followed by a broad and in-depth discussion; because all the discussions of the Convention have resulted in the triumph of reason and liberty.

On January 29, Danton opposed an immediate act of accusation being issued against Dalbarade, minister of navy, accused of rebellion against the Convention — ”I know that we above all must guard ourselves from our passions. If it is vigour that founds republics, I know that wisdom and concilation are what give them a unalterable solidity; and I foresee that if we exaggerate each other we would end up forming parties, and there can only be one, that of reason” — asking (again) that the CPS make a report on the matter first.

Three days later, February 2, Danton applauded the proposal put forward by the CGS:s Voulland to release the imprisoned Vincent and Ronsin, as no charge against them has appeared. He claims to have been sceptical about the decision to arrest them since day one — ”I said to Fabre himself, when he wrested from the Convention the decree of arrest against Vincent and Ronsin: You act like the Convention was great when it went through with this decree, as for me, I maintain that it had only a good intention, and it needed to be clarified.” — and calls it ”an incontestable principle” to not treat as suspects ”revolutionary veterans who, by public admission, have rendered constant services to liberty.” But he also claims to have been motivated by the same principles when asking that Fabre be allowed to come and defend himself before the Convention a month earlier — ”I defend Ronsin and Vincent against prejudice, just as I will defend Fabre and my other colleagues, as long as no one has carried into my soul a conviction contrary to the opinion I have of them.” He also repeats that he believes the intentions of Philippeaux (whose pamphlet is course what landed Ronsin and Vincent in prison to really begin with) were good (even while again underlining he doesn’t agree with his opinions) and that he will surely not object to setting the two free. And he ends by once again calling for unity: ”stop this germ of division that our enemies, undoubtedly, seek to cast among us.”

On February 22, Danton asked for the postponement of a decree put forward by Élie Lacoste, in the name of the CGS, putting under arrest the judges and public pursecotor of the military tribunal of the first district of the Ardennes department. Danton proclaims that ”it is time for the Convention to return to its rightful place, and to pronounce only with full knowledge of the facts,” and that this is ”only the preface to my political opinion; I will say it in time.” He’s proposal was again adopted.

Finally, on March 19, Danton celebrated the arrest of the hébertists, exclaiming that ”the people and the National Convention want the authors of this conspiracy to be punished with death” and that ”never has national representation appeared as great to me as it does today.” He praises the revolutionary government and its two committees. Nowhere, however, does the leader of the ”indulgents” take advantage of the elimination of the so called ”extremists” to ask for more moderation/clemency.

During the trial of the indulgents, I can’t find Danton’s activities and interventions over the past five months get discussed even once, focus lies instead on his revolutionary career prior to that point, with the intention of proving he’s been a closet royalist and an accomplice of both Dumouriez, the duke of Orléans, Mirabeau and the girondins. At one point, Danton does however proclaim that he still believes Fabre to be a good citizen…

So I would conclude by saying Danton’s part in the ”indulgent campaign” consists of him first warning about the dangers of ultra-revolution, and then asking that revolutionary justice be slowed down a bit in three seperate cases, calling for unity within the jacobin club and Convention, and at one point asking that measures be taken to help those under arbitrary arrest. In these two last points, he’s actually quite similar to Robespierre during this same period… Danton never shows himself hostile towards any of the ”ultras” until they have been put on trial, even expressing doubt over the first arrest of Ronsin and Vincent and joy over their release. This while simultaneously not showing the strongest ties to his fellow ”indulgents” — he claims that Philippeaux had good intentions but nevertheless underlines that he doesn’t share his opinions/hasn’t made up his mind on him, he proposes that the imprisoned Fabre be allowed to come and explain himself before the Convention but also applauds his arrest, he goes against Bourdon de l’Oise on both January 7 and 24, and he steps in to act as mediator when Desmoulins gets denounced by Robespierre, but does nothing to really defend him and his actions neither then nor when he’s openly attacked on December 23 and January 5. Danton, like Desmoulins, also never openly questions the authority of the government committees, appearing instead to hugely respect them and finding them important for the salvation of France, given how often he asks that matters be handed over to them.

As for what evidence we have regarding Danton’s view on the later numbers of the Vieux Cordelier, I would say there’s none, in both directions.

#camille desmoulins #desmoulins #georges danton #at least it didn’t take a whole year to get this posted…#just almost #hopefully not too late #but thank you for this ask anyway!#truly gave me a chance to truly deepdive into DnD’s role in the ”indulgent campaign”#after this i definitely get the newer interpretation #that camille really wasn’t some PG revolutionary who boldly demanded clemency and violently attacked the CPS #but rather a fierce revolutionary who very moderately critiqued the government towards the very end #though that of course makes the fact he got freaking executed for his writings even more f:ed up #robespierre calling danton a bad friend for badmouthing camille after originally supporting the vieux cordelier #when he had done the exact same thing sure is a bit…. unhinged

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anotherhumaninthisworld · 5 months ago

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How close Desmoulins and Fréron were? And what did they think of each other? I'm asking because I discovered they managed a journal together, La Tribune des Patriotes.

The seventeen year old Fréron was enrolled as a paying boarder at the college of Louis-le-Grand on September 30 1771, and just a day later, the eleven year old Camille was as well. I have however not been able to discover any evidence indicating the two were friends back then, or even an instance of one referring to the other as ”college comrade,” something which Camille otherwise is proven to have done with a whole lot of other fellow students. Perhaps this should be read as a sign the two did not know each other back then, six years after all being a rather big age difference for kids. They also don’t exactly appear to have been the same type of student, Desmoulins winning a total of four prizes during his time at the college and Fréron zero, and their teacher abbé Proyart admitting (despite his massive hostility) that student Camille had ”some success,” while Fréron ”showed few talents” and ”was cited as a rare example when speaking of laziness and indolence.” (for more info on the school days of them and other Louis-le-Grand students, see this post).

Fréron graduated from the college in 1779, Camille five years later. I have not been able to find anything suggesting they had anything to do with each other in the 1780s either. But on 23 June 1790, one year into the revolution, we find the following letter from Fréron to Camille, showing that the two by this point have forged a friendship. Judging by the content of the letter, said friendship was probably much grounded in their joint status as freshly baked patriotic journalists (Desmoulins had founded his Révolutions de France et de Brabant in November 1789, Fréron his l’Orateur du Peuple in May 1790):

I beg you (tu), my dear Camille, to insert in your first number the enclosed letter, which has so far only appeared in the journal of M. Gorsas; its publicity is all the more interesting to me as I have just, I am assured, been denounced to the commune as one of the authors of l’Ami du Roi. It is a horror that I must push back with all the energy I can. If you cannot insert it in full, in petit-romain, at the end of your first number, at least make it known by extract; you would be doing me a real service. It’s been a thousand years since I last saw you; I have had a raging fever for more than a fortnight which has prevented me from returning to Rue Saint-André; but I will go there next Saturday. Ch. de La Poype came to your house with a letter from M. Brissot de Warville, but he was unable to enter. It was to talk to you about a matter that you no doubt know about. If patriotic journalists don't line up, then goodbye freedom of the press. A thousand bonjours, my dear Camille I am very democratically your friend, Stanislas Fréron.

l’Orateur du Peuple has unfortunately not gotten digitalized yet, so we can’t check if Fréron wrote anything about Desmoulins there that could tell us more about their relationship. But in Révolutions de France et de Brabant we find Camille listing Fréron among ”journalists who are friends of truth” (number 37, August 9 1790), calling him a patriot (number 33, July 12 1790), protesting when national guards were sent to seize the journals of Fréron and Tournon (number 63, February 7 1791) and when the numbers of Fréron and Marat got plundered (number 83, July 4 1791), as well as republishing parts of the journal he finds inspiring (number 83, number 85 (July 18 1791). In both number 1 (November 28 1789) and number 65 (February 21 1791) Camille republished a poem he had written in 1783 that mocked Fréron’s father, the famous philosopher Élie Fréron, as well as his maternal uncle Thomas-Marie Royou, him too a member of the counter-enlightenment (and who, as a sidenote, had also been one of their teachers at Louis-le-Grand). Given Fréron’s open hostility towards both his father and uncle, it does however seem unlikely for this to have had any negative effect on their relationship.

Just a few days after the letter from Fréron to Desmoulins had been penned down, we find the two about to enter into partnership. On July 4 1790 the following contract was signed between Camille, Fréron and the printer Laffrey (cited in Camille Desmoulins and his wife: passages from the history of the dantonists (1874) by Jules Claretie), establishing that from number 33 of Révolutions de France et de Brabant and onwards, Fréron will be in charge of half the pages of the journal, while he from number 39 and forward will be in charge of an additional sheet particulary devoted to news:

We, the undersigned, Camille Desmoulins and Stanislas Fréron, the former living on Rue du Théâtre Français, the latter on Rue de la Lune, Porte St. Denys, of the one part; and Jean-Jacques Laffrey, living on Rue du Théâtre Français, of the other part, have agreed to the following: . 1. I, Camille Desmoulins, engage to delegate to Stanislas Fréron the sum of three thousand livres, out of the sum of ten thousand livres, which Jean-Jacques Laffrey has bound himself, by a bond between us, to pay me annually as the price of the editing of my journal, entitled Révolutions de France et de Brabant, of three printed sheets, under the express condition that said Stanislas Fréron shall furnish one sheet and a half to each number, and that during the whole term of my agreement with said Laffrey. 2. I, Stanislas Fréron, engage to furnish for each number of said journal of Révolutions de France et de Brabant, composed of three sheets, one sheet and a half, under the direction of the said Camille Desmoulins, with the understanding that this sheet and a half shall form one half of the three sheets of which each number is composed. I engage to deliver a portion of the copy of this said sheet and a half on the Wednesday of each week , and the rest during the day on Thursday, and this counting inclusively from the thirty-third number until the close of the agreement between Camille Desmoulins and Jean-Lacques Laffrey. 3. I, Jean-Jacques Laffrey, accept the delegation made by Camille Desmoulins of the sum of three thousand livres, payable, in equal payments, at the issue of each number, to Stanislas Fréron, to the clauses and conditions hereinunder; and I engage, besides, to pay to said Stanislas Fréron the sum of one thousand livres, also payable in equal payments, on the publication of each number, which thousand livres shall be over and above the said salary of three thousand livres on condition that the said Stanislas Fréron shall furnish to the journal an additional sheet per week which shall be devoted to news to begin from the thirty-ninth number, which commences the approaching quarter. And I, Stanislas Fréron, engage to furnish , at the stipulated periods the said sheet over and above, in consideration of the sum of one thousand livres, in addition to the three thousand livres delegated by Camille Desmoulins. Done, in triplicate, between us, in Paris, July 4, 1790. Stanislas Fréron, Laffrey, C. Desmoulins.

According to Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un rêve de république (2018) by Hervé Leuwers, nothing did however come about from this contract, Révolutions de France et de Brabant continuing to rest under the authority of Camille only, while Fréron instead kept going with his l’Orateur du Peuple. Why this project never saw the light of day one can only speculate in…

When Camille and Lucile got married in December 1790, Fréron neither signed the wedding contract on the 27th, nor attended the wedding ceremony on the 29th. Following the marriage they did however become neighbors, the couple moving to Rue du Théâtre 1 (today Rue de l’Odeon 28), and into the very same building where Fréron had gone to live a few months earlier.

In number 82 (June 27 1791) of Révolutions de France et de Brabant, Camille writes that he a week earlier, the same night the royal family fled Paris, he left the Jacobins at eleven o’clock in the evening together with ”Danton and other patriots.” The Paris night comes off as so calm Camille can’t stop himself from commenting on it, whereupon ”one of us, who had in his pocket a letter of which I will speak, that warned that the king would take flight this night, wanted to go observe the castle; he saw M. Lafayette enter at eleven o’clock.” According to Hervé Leuwers’ biography, this person was Fréron, though I don’t understand exactly how he can see this…

A little less than a month later, July 17 1791, Fréron and Camille find themselves at Danton’s house together with several other people discussing the lynching of two men at the Champ-de-Mars the same morning. At nine o’clock, Legendre arrives and tells the group that two men had come home to him and said: We are charged with warning you to get out of Paris, bring Danton, Camille and Fréron, let them not be seen in the city all day, it is Alexandre Lameth who engages this. Camille, Danton and Fréron follow this advice and leave, and were therefore most likely absent from the demonstration and shootings on the Champ-de-Mars the very same day (this information was given more than forty years after the fact by Sergent-Marceau, one of the people present, in volume 5 of the journal Revue rétrospective, ou Bibliothèque historique : contenant des mémoires et documens authentiques, inédits et originaux, pour servir à l'histoire proprement dite, à la biographie, à l'histoire de la littérature et des arts (1834)).

In the aftermath of the massacre on Champ de Mars, arrest warrants were issued against those deemed guilty for them. On July 22, the Moniteur reports that the journalists Suleau and Verrières have been arrested, and that the authorities have also fruitlessly gone looking for Fréron, Legendre, Desmoulins and Danton, the latter three having already left Paris. Both Fréron and Camille hid out at Lucile’s parents’ country house in Bourg-la-Reine, as revealed by Camille in number 6 (January 30 1794) of the Vieux Cordelier. The two could resurface in Paris again by September.

On April 20 1792, the same day France declared war on Austria, Camille and Fréron again put their hopes to the idea of a partnership from two years earlier. That day, the two, along with booksellers Patris and Momoro, signed a contract for a new journal, La Tribune des Patriotes, whose first number appeared on May 7 (they had tried to get Marat to join in on the project as well, but he had said no). In the contract, Fréron undertook to each week bring 2/3 of the sheets, Camille the rest. According to Leuwers, Camille did nevertheless end up writing most of it anyway. The journal did however fail to catch an audience and ran for only four numbers.

On June 23 1792 Lucile starts keeping a diary. It doesn’t take more than a day before the first mention of Fréron, in the diary most often known as just ”F,” appears — ”June 24 - F(réron) is scary. Poor simpleton, you have so little to think about. I’m going to write to Maman.” One month and one day later Camille tells Lucile, who is currently resting up at Bourg-la-Reine after giving birth, that ”I was brought to Chaville this morning by Panis, together with Danton, Fréron, Brune, at Santerre’s” (letter cited in Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un rêve de république). Lucile returned to Paris on August 8. In a diary entry written by her four months later it is revealed that both Fréron and the couple were at Danton’s house on the eve of the insurrection of August 10 — ”F(réron) looked like he was determined to perish. "I'm weary of life," he said, "I just want to die." Every patriot that came I thought I was seeing for the last time.” She doesn’t however, and can in the same entry instead report the following regarding the period that immediately followed the successful insurrection:

After eight days (August 20) D(anton) went to stay at the Chabcellerie, madame R(obert) and I went there in our turn. I really liked it there, but only one thing bothered me, it was Fréron. Every day I saw new progress and didn't know what to do about it. I consulted Maman, she approved of my plan to banter and joke about it, and that was the wisest course. Because what else to do? Forbid him to come? He and C(amille) dealt with each other everyday, we would meet. To tell him to be more circumspect was to confess that I knew everything and that I did not disapprove of him; an explanation would have been needed. I therefore thought myself very prudent to receive him with friendship and reserve as usual, and I see now that I have done well. Soon he left to go on a mission. (to Metz, he was given this mission on August 29 1792) I was very happy with it, I thought it would change him. […] F(réron) returned, he seems to be still the same but I don't care! Let him go crazy if he wants!…My poor C(amille), go, don’t be afraid…

Following Fréron’s return from his mission, he hung out with the couple quite frequently. On January 7 1793 we find the following letter from him to Lucile:

I beg Madame Desmoulins to be pleased to accept the homage of my respect. I have the honour to inform her that my destination is changed, that I shall not go to the National Assembly because I am setting out for the countryside with MM Danton and Saturne (Duplain). Will she have the goodness to present herself at the assembly, before ten o’clock, in the hall of deputations; she is to send for M. La Source, the secretary, who will come to her, and she will find a place for her by means of the commissary of the tribunes. I renew the assurence of my respectful devotion to Madame Desmoulins. Stanislas Fréron. Kindest regards to Camille.

Two weeks later, January 20, Lucile writes ”F(réron), La P(oype) came in the evening.” The day after that Fréron writes her the following note: ”I beg the chaste Diana to accept the homage of a quarter of a deer killed in her domains. Adieu. Stanislas Lapin.” This is the first known apperance of Fréron’s nickname within the inner circle — Lapin (Bunny). In Correspondance inédite de Camille Desmoulins(1834), Marcellin Matton, friend of Lucile’s mother and sister, writes that it was Lucile who had come up with this nickname, and that it stemmed from the fact Fréron often visited the country house of Lucile’s parents at Bourg-la-Reine and played with the bunnies they had there each time. In her diary entry from the same day, Lucile has written: ”F(réron) sent us venison.” The very next day she writes the following, showing that Fréron, as she already put it in December, ”appears to still be the same”:

Ricord came to see me. He is always the same, very brusque and coarse, truly mad, giddy, insane. I went to Robert’s. Danton came there. His jokes are as boorish as he is. Despite this, he is a good devil. Madame Ro(bert) seemed jealous of how he teased me… F(réron) came. That one always seems to sigh, but his manners are bearish! Poor devil, what hope do you hold? Extinguish a senseless r [sic] in your heart! What can I do for you? I feel sorry for you... No, no, my friend, my dear C(amille), this friendship, this love so pure, will never exist for anyone other than you! And those I see will only be dear to me through the friendship they have for you.

One day later, January 23, Lucile writes: ”F(réron), La P(oype), Po, R(obert) and others came to dinner. The dinner was quite happy and cheerful. Afterwards they went to the Jacobins, Maman and I stayed by the fire.” The day after that she has written the following, and while it’s far from confirmed Fréron is the one she’s alluding to here, it would fit rather well with the previous entries:

What does this statement mean? Why do I need to be praised so much? What do I care if I please? Do you think I’ll be proud of a few attractions? No, no, I know how to appreciate myself, and will never be dazed by praise. To you, you’re crazy, and I’ll make you feel like you need to be smarter.

Lucile’s diary entries abruptly end on February 13 1793, and a month later, March 9, Fréron was tasked with going on yet another mission by the Committee of Public Safety. This time, it would be a whole year before he was back in Paris again. It is probably during this period the following two undated letters from Fréron’s little sister Jeanne-Thérèse, wife of the military leader Jean François La Poype, were penned down and sent off to Lucile (both cited within Camille Desmoulins and his wife… (1874) by Jules Claretie. I also found a mention of a third, unpublished letter with the same sender and receiver):

Coubertin, this Monday morning. How good you are, my dear Lucile, to take such pains to answer so punctually, and to relieve my anxiety! I rely upon your kindness to let me know any good news when you know it yourself. Neither my husband nor my brother has written to me; but, according to what you tell me, M. De la Poype will be with you immediately. Scold him well, I beg, my dear Lucile, and beat him even, if you think it necessary; I give him over to you. Goodbye, dear aunt; I embrace you with all my heart. Do tell me about your pretty boy; is he well? We shall, I hope, see him at some time together. Be the first to tell me of my husband's arrival ; it will be so sweet to owe my happiness to you! Fanny is perfectly well. I received most tenderly the kiss she gave me from you. My compliments to your husband. Fréron de la Poype.

Here I come again, beautiful and kind Lucile, to plague you with my complaints, and the frightful uneasiness by which I am tormented. The letter your husband had the kindness to write to me does not allay my grief; he tells me that my brother has given him news of my husband, but he had not heard from him before his departure. He has not been absent long enough to have had time to give us news of himself since he set out. I do not hide from you, dear Lucile, state; for pity's sake, try to restore composure to my heart; let me owe tranquillity to you. They say the enemy is within forty leagues of Paris; if this is so, the country will not be safe. Will you promise to warn me of danger, and to receive me into your house? I count upon the friendship you have always been willing to show me, and I shall throw myself into your arms with the greatest confidence. I beg you to give my compliments to your dear husband. Fréron de La Poype. Coubertin, near Chevreuse. The 5th. Madame Desmoulins.

On October 18 1793, Fréron too picks up his pen again and writes the following two letters, one to Camille and one to Lucile. He is at the time in Marseille preparing for the siege of Toulon, a subject which he spends the majority of the ink on discussing, but also blends this with nostalgic remarks. Fréron addresses Camille with tutoiement, but Lucile with vouvoiement. The parts in italics got censored when the letters for the first time got published in Correspondance de Camille Desmoulins(1834):

Marseille, October 18 1793, year 2 of the republic one and indivisible Bonjour, Camille, Ricord will tell you about a lot of things. Our business in front of Toulon is going badly. We have lost precious time and if Carteaux had left La Poype to his own devices, the latter would have been master of the place more than fifteen days ago, but instead, we have to hold a regular siege and our enemies grow stronger every day by the way of the sea. It is time for the Committee of Public Safety to know the truth. I am going to write to Robespierre to inform him about everything. You may not know everything that has happened to me; I have upheld my reputation as an old Cordelier, for I am like you from the first batch; and although very lazy by nature (I say my fault), I found in the great crises a greater activity than I would have believed. But it was a question of saving the south and the army of Italy; because I am not talking about my skin; for a long time [unreadable word for me] have been an object of [unreadable word] for the counter-revolutionaries without [unreadable word]. I will prevent Toulon from forming its sections and consequently from opening its port to the English and from dragging us, at the onset of winter, into the lengths of a murderous siege. La Poype commands a division of the army in front of Toulon; you have no idea how Carteaux makes him swallow snakes: he had seized the heights of Faron, a mountain which dominates a very important fort from which one can strike down and reduce Toulon. Well! Carteaux left him at this post without reinforcement, and he was obliged to evacuate it. Carteaux would rather have the capture of Toulon delayed and missed twenty times than allow another to have the glory. Speak, thunder, burst. La Poype did not contradict himself for a single moment; you know him, he has not changed. I am perhaps a little suspicious: that is why I abstain from writing on his account; but ask all those who come from here and they will tell you what the patriots think. Did you learn from Father Huguenin that I had printed in Monaco six thousand copies of your Histoire des Brissotins which I distributed profusely in Nice and in the department of Var? You did not think you would receive the honors of printing in Italy. You see it's good to have friends everywhere. I have been very worried about Danton. The papers announced that he was ill. Let me know if he’s recovered. Tell him and give him a thousand regards from me. I look forward to seeing you again, but this after the capture of Toulon; I dream only of Toulon; it’s my nec plus ultra. I will either perish or see its ruins. Is Patagon (Brune) in Paris? Remind me of him. Farewell, my dear Camille, tell me the story of Duplain Lunettes. Is it true that he is in prison? Attacking Chaplain! ah! he is such a good man! Tell me the reasons for his detention. Has he really changed? This is inconceivable. We are doing a lot of work here; we are impatiently awaiting the troops which were in front of Lyon and the siege artillery which we lack; without that the only thing we would make in Toulon would be clear water. Answer me in grace; Ricord will give you my address. I embrace you. Fréron. PS. You have known for a long time that I love your wife madly; I write to her about it, it is indeed the least consolation that can be obtained for an unhappy bunny, absent since eight months. As there is a fairly detailed article on La Poype, I invite you to read it. Adieu, both of you, think sometimes of the best of your friends; answer me as well as Rouleau (Lucile).

Marseille, October 18 1793, year 2 of the republic one and indivisible How lucky Ricord is! So he is going to see you again, Lucile, and I, for a century, have been in exile. Communications between the southern departments with Paris have been closed for more than three months. Ever since they’ve been restored, I have wanted to write to you. A hundred times I have picked up the pen, and a hundred times it has fallen from my hand. He is leaving, this fortunate mortal, and I finally venture to give him this letter for you, the content of which he is unaware about. May it convince you, Lucile, that you have always been in my thoughts! Let Camille murmur about it, let him say all he wants about it, in that he will only act like all proprietor; but certainly he cannot do you the insult of thinking that he is the only one in the world who finds you lovable and has the right to tell you so. He knows it, that wretch of Bouli-Boula, because said in your presence: "I love Bunny because he loves Rouleau."

This poor bunny has had a great deal of adventures; he has traversed furious burrows and he has stored up ample stories for his old age. He has often missed the wild thyme which your pretty hands in small strokes enjoyed feeding him in your garden in Bourg de l’Egalité. Besides, he was not below his mission, exposing his life several times to save the republic. In seeking the glory of a good deed, do you know what sustained him, what he always had before his eyes? First, the homeland, then, you. He only wanted and he only wants to be worthy of the both of you. You will find this romantic bunny and he is not bad at it. He remembers your idylls, your willows, your shrines and your bursts of laughter. He sees you trotting around your room, running over the floor, sitting down for a minute at your piano, spending whole hours in your armchair, dreaming, letting your imagination travel; then he sees you making coffee at the roadside, scrambling like an elf and cussing like a cat, showing your teeth. He enters your bedroom; he stealthily casts a longing eye on a certain blue bed, he watches you, he listens to you, and he keeps quiet. Isn’t that you! Isn’t that me! When will these happy moments return? I don’t know, I am now pressing the execrable Toulon, I am determined to either perish on its ramparts or to scale them, flame in hand. Death will be sweet and glorious to me as long as you reserve a tear for me.

My heart is torn, my mind devoted to a thousand cares, My sister and my niece, little Fanny, are locked up in Toulon in the hospital like unfortunates; I can't give them any relief and they may lack everything. La Poype, who adores her, but still more his homeland, besieges and presses this infamous city; he cannons and bombards it without reserve, and, as the price of such admirable devotion, he is calumniated, he is hampered, his efforts are paralyzed, he is left devoid of arms, cartridges, and artillery; they water him with bitterness, they cast doubts on his civism; and while Carteaux, to whom Albitte has made a colossal reputation, but who is in a condition to take Toulon no more than I am the moon, seeks, through the lowest jealousy, to lose him in the mind of the soldier, sometimes by passing him off as a counter-revolutionary, sometimes by spreading the rumor that he has emigrated and fled to Toulon. He alone attempts daring blows, and having made himself master of a fort which dominates Toulon, he would have taken that town in a week, if Carteaux had sent him the reinforcements he in vain asked for. One thing that must not be forgotten is that in the army of Italy, the traitor Brunet, the federalist Brunet, made La Poype pass for a Maratist and an outraged montagnard. Why? Because the staff of which he was the chief, had been composed by him only of Marseillois from the 10th of August and of Cordeliers. This is the truth. Make it known to your husband. Prevent from being oppressed the most patriotic general officer perhaps of all the armies, who has never contradicted himself; who has sacrificed his wife and child to the homeland; who began by besieging the Bastille with Barras and me; who since has not varied; who has worked for a long time with l’Orateur du Peuple; who was decreed in the affair of the Champ-de-Mars, etc, etc. I leave it to your so persuasive mouth to assert these titles.

I embrace you, divine Rouleau, dearer than all the rouleaux of gold and crowns that could be offered to me. I embrace you in hope, and I will date my happiness only from the day when I shall see you again. Remind me of your dear maman and of citizen Duplessis. Will you answer me? "Oh! no, Stanislas!” Please answer me, if only because of La Poype. Show my letter to Camille, for I do not wish to make a mystery of anything.

Lucile wrote a response to Fréron that has since gone missing, but it was clearly satisfying for him judging by his next letter, dated December 11 (incorrectly September 11 in the published correspondance) 1793 and addressed to Lucile:

No, my answer will not be delayed by eight months as you put it; the day before yesterday I received, read, reread and devoured your letter; and the pen does not fall from my hands when it comes to acknowledge receipt. What pleasure it gave me !... Pleasure all the more vivid than I dared to hope! You think, then, of that poor bunny, who, exiled far from your heaths, your cabbage, your wild thyme and the paternal dwelling, is consumed with grief at seeing the most constant efforts for the glory and the strengthening of the republic lost... They denounce me, they calumniate me, when all of the South proclaims that without our measures, as active as they are wise and energetic, all this country would be lost and given over to Lyon, Bordeaux and the Vendée. I did not deign to answer Hébert (Fréron (and La Poype) had been denounced at the Jacobins on November 8 by Hébert, who said he ”was nothing more than an aristocrat, a muscadin”). I thank your wolf for having defended me, but he, in his turn, is denounced. They want to take us one after the other, saving Robespierre for last. I invite your wolf to see Raphaël Leroy, commissioner of war for the Army of Italy, who saw me in the most stormy circumstances and the most critical situation in which a representative of the people has ever been. He will say if I am a muscadin, a dictator and an aristocrat. This Leroy is one of the first Cordeliers. Camille knows him; no one is in a better position to make the truth about La Poype and me triumph.

I dare say that never has a republican behaved with more self-sacrifice than your bunny. The fact that La Poype is my brother-in-law was enough for me to make it a rule to keep him away from all command-in-chief, albeit his rank and his seniority, but even more his foolproof patriotism called him there. From then on I foresaw everything that malevolence would not fail to spread. I’d rather be unjust towards La Poype, and make obvious privileges, than I’d give arms to slander, and make people suspect even that the most vicious motives of ambition or of particular interest were involved in my conduct for some reason. When Brunet was dismissed, what better opportunity to advance La Poype? He came to command naturally and by rank. He was the oldest officer-general of the army of Italy. Well! I dismissed him and we named the oldest member of the same army, a man who had only been a general of division for a fortnight, and yet La Poype wanted to sacrifice his wife and his child, saving the national representation, with the certainty that both were going to be delivered to the Toulonnais, which did indeed happen. And these are the men that the most execrable system of defamation pursues! Vulgar souls, muddy souls, you have lent us your baseness; you could not believe, still less reach the height of our sentiments; but the truth will destroy your infernal machinations; we will do our duty through all obstacles and disgusts; we will continue to be useful to the republic, to devote ourselves to its salvation; we will sacrifice our wives and our sisters to it; we will make to our fellow citizens the faithful presentation of our actions, our labors and our most secret thoughts, and we will say to our denouncers: have you produced more titles than us to the public esteem?

Dear Lucile, tell your wolf a thousand things from me; make sure he puts forward these reasons based on notorious facts. Pay him my compliment on his proud reply to Barnave; it is worthy of Brutus, our eternal model; I am like you; a gloomy uneasiness agitates me; I see a vast conspiracy about to break out within the republic; I see discord shake its torches among the patriots; I see ambitious people who want to seize the government, and who, to achieve this, do everything in the world to blacken and dismiss the purest men, men of means and character. I am proof of that. Robespierre is my compass; I perceive, in all the speeches he holds at the Jacobins, the truth of what I am saying here. I don't know if Camille thinks like me; but it seems to me that one wants to push the popular societies beyond their goal, and make them carry out, without them suspecting it, counter-revolution, by ultra-revolutionary measures. What has just happened in Marseille is proof of this. The municipals who had dared to give the order to two battalions of sans-culottes whom we had required to march on Toulon, not to obey the representatives of the people, and who, for this audacious and criminal act, were dismissed by us, were embraced and applauded in the popular society of Marseilles, as the victims of patriotism. Fortunately we have stifled any counter-revolutionary movement; the largest and most imposing measures were taken on the spot. Many intriguers who only saw in the revolution a means of making a fortune, or of satisfying revenge or particular hatreds, dominated and led society astray, all the more easily because they are interesting in the eyes of the people through the persecutions of the sections and a few months in prison. Do you believe that there were secret committees where the motion was made to arrest the representatives of the people? Within twenty-four hours, we have mixed up all these plots: Marseille is saved. It must be observed that this new conspiracy broke out the very day when the English pushed three columns upon our army before Toulon, and seized the battery of the convention, from which they were repulsed with a terrible loss on their side.

It is not useless to notice again that the aristocrats, the emissaries of Pitt, the false patriots, the patriots of money who see their small hopes destroyed by these acts of vigor, repeat with affectation what has been said about me by Hébert at the rostrum of the Jacobins. But the vast majority of true republicans do me justice. This is the harm produced by vague denunciations, made by a patriot against patriots. I see it well; Pitt and the people of Toulon, who doubt our energy because they have tested it on more than one occasion, want, by all possible means, to keep us away from the siege of Toulon, because it is known that we are going to strike the great blows. Well! let us be reminded; we are ready. The national representation did not cross our heads like so many others. Don't come here, lovable and dear Lucile, it's a terrible country, whatever people say, a barbaric country, when you've lived in Paris. I have no caves (cavernes) to offer you, but many cypresses. They grow here naturally. Tell your glutton of a husband that the snipes and thrushes here are better than the inhabitants. If it weren't so far from here in Paris, I would send him some, but you will receive some olives and oil. Farewell, dear Lucile, I am leaving immediately for the army. The general attack is about to begin; it will have taken place when you receive this letter. We are counting on great successes and to force all the posts and redoubts of the enemy with the bayonets. My sister is still locked up in Toulon. This consideration will not stop us: if she perishes, we will give tears to her ashes; but we will have returned Toulon to the republic. I thank you for your charming memory; La Poype, whom I do not see, because he is in his division, will be very sensitive to it. Farewell once again, madwoman, a hundred times mad, darling rouleau, bouli-boula of my heart; this is a very long letter; but I gave myself up to the pleasure of chatting with you, and I took the night for it. Tell loup-loup to write to me; he's a sloth. With regard to your reply to this one, it will probably take a year to arrive. What does it matter to me! On the contrary. It's clear as day. I remember those unintelligible sentences; I remember that piano, those melodies, that melancholy tone, abruptly interrupted by great bursts of laughter. Indefinable being!... Farewell. I embrace the whole warren and you, Lucile, with tenderness and with all my soul. Stanislas.

PS - Don't forget me to the baby bunny (Horace) and his pretty grandmother Melpomène. I would also like to hear from Patagon (Brune), Saturn (Duplain) and Marius (Danton). The latter must have received a letter from me. I will write to him again. Make sure Camille communicates the parts of this letter regarding La Poype, and that his eloquent voice pleads the cause of a friend always worthy of him, always worthy of the Cordeliers. Remind us of his memory, for we love him and are attached to him for life. Consternation is in Toulon. We have killed the English, at the last incident, all their grenadiers. The Spaniards are assassinating them with their stilettos. They have already stabbed thirty of them. It’s now or never to attack. So I am leaving; the cannonade will begin as soon as we will have arrived. We are going to win laurels or willows. Prepare, Lucile, what it is you intend for me.

In the fifth number of the Vieux Cordelier, released January 5 1794, Camille did like Fréron had asked and defended both him and la Poype, clearly using Fréron’s letter as a source:

Note here that four weeks ago, Hebert presented to the Jacobins a soldier who came to heap pretentious praise on Carteaux and to discredit our two Cordeliers Fréron and La Poype who nevertheless had come close to taking Toulon in spite of envy and slander; because Hebert called Freron, just as he called me, a ci-devant patriot, a muscadin, a Sardanapalus, a viédasse. Take note citizens that Hebert has continued to insult Fréron and Barras for two months, to demand their recall to the Committee of Public Safety and to commend Carteaux, without whom General La Poype would perhaps have retaken Toulon six weeks ago, when he had already seized Fort Pharon. Take note that when Hébert saw that he could not influence Robespierre on the subject of Fréron because Robespierre knows the Old Cordeliers, because he knows Freron just as he knows me; note that it was then that this forged letter signed by Fréron and Barras arrived at the Committee for Public Safety, from where no one knows; this letter which so strongly resembled one which managed to arrive two days ago at the Quinze Vingts, which made out that d’Eglantine, Bourdon de l’Oise, Philippeaux and myself wanted to whip up the sections. Oh! My dear Fréron, it is by these crude artifices that the patriots of August 10 are undermining the pillars of the old district of the Cordeliers. You wrote ten days ago to my wife ”I only dream of Toulon, I will either perish there or return it to the republic, I’m leaving. The cannonade will begin as soon as I arrive; we are going to win a laurel or a willow: prepare one or the other for me.” Oh! My brave Fréron, we both wept with joy when we learned this morning of the victory of the republic, and that it was with laurels that we would go to meet you, and not with willows to meet your ash. It was in the assault with Salicetti and the worthy brother of Robespierre, that you responded to the calumnies of Hébert. Things are therefore the same both in Paris and Marseille! I will quote your words, because those of a conqueror will carry more weight than mine. You write to us in this same letter: I don't know if Camille thinks like me; but it seems to me that one wants to push the popular societies beyond their goal, and make them carry out, without them suspecting it, counter-revolution, by ultra-revolutionary measures. What has just happened in Marseille is proof of this. Oh well! My poor Martin (this could be a reference to the the drawing ”Martin Fréron mobbed by Voltaire” which depicts Fréron’s father Élie Fréron as a donkey called ”Martin F.”), were you therefore pursued by the Père Duchesnes of both Paris and Bouches-du-Rhône? And without knowing it, by that instinct which never misleads true republicans, two hundred leagues apart, I with my writing desk, you with your sonorous voice, we are waging war against the same enemies! But it is necessary to break with you this colloquium, and return to my justification.

The very same day, Fréron wrote a third letter to Lucile. Again, the parts in italics were censored when the letter was first published in 1836:

You did not answer me, dearest Lucile, and my punctuality has so dumbfounded you that your astonishment still lasts. You had deferred my answer to eight months; you see if you are a good prophetess. I inform you with a sensitive pleasure (which you will share, I am sure) that my sister and my niece did not perish; that they found a way to wear themselves out in the dreadful night which preceded the surrender of Toulon. She is about to give birth. I informed her of the interest you took in her sad fate; she was very sensitive and asks me to show you her gratitude. Answer me then, lazy that you are, and ungrateful, which is worse. One breaks the silence after a year, after centuries, and one gets, as thank you, a few words written in distraction, Bouli-Boula, what does it do to me? The bunny is desolute; he thinks of you constantly; he thought about you amid bombs and bullets, and he would have gladly said like that old gallant: Ah! if my lady saw me! I realize with sorrow that you are upset, since Camille has been denounced by the same men who have pursued me at the Jacobins. I hope he will triumph over these attacks; I recognized his original touch in a few passages from his new journal; and I too am one of the old Cordeliers. Farewell, Lucile, wicked devil, enemy of bunnies. Has your wild thyme been harvested? I shall not delay, despite all my insults, to implore the favor of nibbling some from your hand. I asked for a month's leave to recover a bit; for I am exhausted with fatigue; afterwards I fly back into the bosom of the Convention, and I stealthily amaze myself on the grass with Martin on the paths of Bourg d’Égalité, under the eyes of la grande lapin? and in spite of your pots of water. You'll have neither olives nor oil if I don't get a response from you. You can tell me whatever you like but I love you and embrace you, right under the nose of your jealous loup-loup. Goodbye once more. Do not forget me to our shared friends. What has become of citoyenne Robert? A thousand things to your old loup-loup; I wanted to write to him, but time is short and the mail rushes me. Tell him to keep his imagination in check a little with respect to a committee of clemency. It would be a triumph for the counter-revolutionaries. Let not his philanthropy blind him; but let him make an all-out war on all industrial patriots. Goodbye again, loveliest of rouleux. My respects to your good and beautiful maman. Give my regards to the baby bunny (Horace). The letter reached Lucile within a week, but it’s with a tone less playful than Fréron’s that she answered it with on January 13 (cited in Camille Desmoulins and his wife (1874) by Jules Claretie):

Come back, Fréron, come back quickly. You have no time to lose; bring with you all the old Cordeliers you can meet up with; we have the greatest need of them. If it had pleased Heaven not to have ever dispersed them! You cannot have an idea of what is going on here! You are ignorant of everything, you only see a feeble glimmering in the distance, which can give you but a faint idea of our situation. Indeed, I am not surprised that you reproach Camille for his Committee of Clemency. He cannot be judged from Toulon. You are happy where you are; all has gone according to the wish of your heart; but we, calumniated, persecuted by the ignorant, the intriguing, and even by patriots; Robespière (sic) your compass, has denounced Camille at the Jacobins; he has had numbers 3 and 4 read, and has demanded that they should be burnt; he who had read them in manuscript. Can you conceive such a thing? For two consecutive sittings he has thundered, or rather shrieked, against Camille. At the third sitting Camille's name was struck off. Oddly enough, he made inconceivable efforts to have the cancelling reported; it was reported; but he saw that when he did not think or act according to their the will of a certain number of individuals, he was not all powerful. Marius (Danton) is not listened to any more, he is losing courage and vigour. D'Eglantine is arrested, and in the Luxembourg, under very grave charges. So he was not a patriot! he who had been one until now! A patriot the less is a misfortune the more. The monsters have dared to reproach Camille with having married a rich woman. Ah! let them never speak of me; let them ignore my existence, let me live in the midst of a desert. I ask nothing from them, I will give up to them all I possess, provided I do not breathe the same air as they! Could I but forget them, and all the evils they cause us! I see nothing but misfortune around me. I confess, I am too weak to bear so sad a sight. Life has become a heavy burden. I cannot even think - thinking, once such a pure and sweet pleasure alas! I am deprived of it… My eyes fill with tears… I shut up this terrible sorrow in my heart; I meet Camille with a serene look, I affect courage that he may not lose his keep up his. You do not seem to me to have read his five numbers. Yet you are a subscriber. Yes, the wild thyme is gathered, quite ready. I plucked it amid many cares. I laugh no more; I never act the cat; I never play my piano; I dream no more, I am nothing but a machine now. I see no one, I never go out. It is a long time since I have seen the Roberts. They have gotten into difficulties through their own fault. They are trying to be forgotten. Farewell, bunny, you will call me mad again. I am not, however, quite yet; I have still enough reason left to suffer. I cannot express to you my joy on learning that your dear sister had met with no accident; I have been quite uneasy since I heard Toulon was taken. I wondered incessantly what would be their fate. Speak to them sometimes of me. Embrace them both for me. I beg them to do the same to you, for me. Do you hear! my wolf cries out: Martin, my dear Martin, here, thou art come that I may embrace thee; come back very soon. Come back, come back very soon; we are awaiting you impatiently.

In number 6 of the Vieux Cordelier, released January 30 1794, Camille responds to Fréron’s critique regarding a committee of clemency while informing him that his father-in-law has gotten arrested:

Beware, Fréron, that I was not writing my number 4 in Toulon, but here, where I assure you that everyone is in order, and where there is no need for the spur of Père Duchesne, but rather of the Vieux Cordelier's bridle; and I will prove it to you without leaving my house and by a domestic example. You know my father-in-law, Citizen Duplessis, a good commoner and son of a peasant, blacksmith of the village. Well! The day before yesterday, two commissioners from Mutius Scaevola's section (Vincent's section, that will tell you everything) came up to his house; they find law books in the library; and notwithstanding the decree that no one will touch Domat, nor Charles Dumoulin, although they deal with feudal matters, they raid half the library, and charge two pickers with the paternal books. […] An old clerk's wallet, which had been discarded, forgotten above a cupboard in a heap of dust, and which he had not touched or even thought about for perhaps ten years, and on which they managed discovered the imprint of a few fleur-de-lis, under two fingers of filth, completed the proof that citizen Duplessis was suspect, and thus he was locked up until the peace, and seals put on all the gates of this countryhouse where you remember, my dear Fréron, that we both found an asylum which the tyrant dared not violate after we were both ordered to be seized after the massacre of the Champ-de-Mars.

Fréron was back in Paris by at least March 14, less than a month before the arrest and execution of Camille and Lucile. He is not confirmed to have tried to do anything to save his friends. Following their death, he does however appear to have laid low. He is not proven to have spoken at the Jacobins following March 26, and so far I haven’t found any recorded apperances at the Convention either. I don’t think it would be completely out of the blue to speculate in whether his choice to play an active role in the fall of Robespierre (he was one of nine deputies designated in the thermidorian pamphlet Conjuration formée dès le 5 préréal [sic] par neuf représentans du peuple contre Maximilien Robespierre, pour le poignarder en plein sénat (1794) to on May 24 1794 have formed a plan to stab him to death, and also spoke against the robespierrists during the session of 9 thermidor) to some extent was motivated by the urge to avenge his dead friends, especially since I can’t find any instance of Robespierre openly denouncing Fréron or anything to that effect.

When Fréron shortly after thermidor revived his journal l’Orateur du Peuple, he used it to rehabilitate Camille’s memory, but also used said memory as a weapon against the Jacobins. These are all mentions made of Camille and Lucile in the part of the journal currently digitalized:

[The Jacobin Club] threw from its bosom and sent to the scaffold the unfortunate Camille Desmoulins, who was guilty of no other crime than of having wanted to uncloak and put an end to those of this detestable faction. Number 7 of l’Orateur du Peuple (September 26 1794).

Camille Desmoulins to the Jacobins of Paris: Citizens, I come to open your eyes to the abyss that is growing under your feet. I have just lifted you from the lethargic sleep into which it seems that a genius enemy of our joy and your safety had plunged you. Frenchmen, wake up! Never have the scroundels that do not show themselves, but who make their numerous beutenans act, according to the expression of Legendre, been more, in labor of the counter-revolution. They feel themselves lost, carried away, like in spite of themselves and tears; so to speak, in the tumbril of public opinion. [”Camille” then goes on to conduct Fréron’s politics for approximately seven pages, most of the entire number.] As it’s Robespierre who signed my passport for the other side, and who had the attention to send my wife there too eight days later, it’s him I must thank him for the good that I have now. […] Number 9 of l’Orateur du Peuple (September 28 1794)

Have they (the Jacobins) overlooked and denounced the abhorrent tribunal of Robespierre and his co-dictators? No, they’ve even sent innocents there, such as Phelippeux [sic], Camille Desmoulins and many others. Number 28 of l’Orateur du Peuple (October 19 1794)

In Réponse de Fréron, représentant du peuple, aux diffamations de Moyse Bayle (1795), we also find the following passage:

You (Bayle) who plunged the dagger (for your pen was the knife of our colleagues) into the bosom of Camille and Phelippeaux [sic]: your features cannot freighten me; I am stronger than your insults. […] A constant truth today, in Toulon, is that at most there were a hundred and fifty rebels immolated in the national revenge. In this regard, I appeal to my colleagues Barras, Ricord, Crevés, Rovére and all the inhabitants of the Medi: if I had only told Moyle Bayle this small number, we would have been recalled and guillotined as moderates and as being necessarily the same as this poor Camille, of the indulgent faction.

And in Mémoire historique sur la réaction royale et sur les massacres du Midi (1824, published posthumously?) he writes:

During a dinner at citizen Formalguès’ where I found myself together with Legendre, Tallien, Barras and other deputies, the conversation fell on Camille Desmoulins, this child so naive and spiritual, murdered for having proposed a committee of clemency. I tell Lanjuinais, whom Camille had pleasantly called le pape of the Vendée, and who was sitting in front of me: ”But, Lanjuinais, if the poor Camille had lived, would you have him guillotined?” ”Unquestionably,” responded the jansenist. As I was very glad that other witnesses heard, from Lanjuinais' own mouth, this sweet monosyllable, in which his beautiful soul was depicted, I turned a deaf ear and began my sentence again. "Without difficulty, there is no question," resumed the holy man in an impatient tone; and thereupon one rose from the table, he made the sign of the cross, joined his hands, and said his graces.

Furthermore, Fréron stayed in touch with Lucile’s mother Annette Duplessis, helping her get back the objects confiscated by the state after Camille and Lucile’s execution, obtaining the pension their son Horace in 1796 had been promised by the Council of Five Hundred, and making sure Horace got a good education at the Prytanée Français (former Louis-le-Grand):

I have just written to Fréron, as we agreed. This is what I think you ought to ask of him: 1. Being your children’s friend, that he should take all neccesary steps in Horace’s favour with the committees. 2. That he should claim for him the family papers and his father’s manusscript. 3. That he should claim for Horace the family books; they also will be useful for his instruction; they are indispensable for the supply of his wants; besides, this justice has already been done to Citizen Boucher’s widow, therefore there is a precedent for it. Committees composed of the friends of justice ought to be proud to being useful to the orphans of patriots. Fréron and his friends cannot refuse to act in concert with you. Greetings and friendship. Brune in a letter to Annette Duplessis, March 3 1795

22 vêntose year 8 I’ve spoken to the Minister of the Interior, Madame, about your (votre) position and that of Horace with so much interest that you inspire in me. He finds it right that the son of Camille Desmoulins enters the Prytanée Français. He told me about it, but it is essential that the child knows how to read and write perfectly before his admission. I will have the honor of seeing you over the next décade, and we will discuss together the procedure to follow; I do not doubt for a single moment the success, based on the way the minister responded to me. You personally have not been forgotten. I told him (because he was unaware) that the National Convention had granted you a pension, which was not paid, and has never been paid, I fear. He is equally prepared to make you receive it. You must send me, 1. the Convention’s decree or the copy of it; 2. your demand or petition, without forgetting to specify since when your pension has not been paid. Citizen Omae? will arrive in 15 days. Yesterday I saw his wife who had just learned of the news through a letter he sent her this Thursday. A thousand hugs to the charming little Horace, and a thousands attachments to his good maman. On the first fine day I’m going to early in the morning read and re-read all the packages from Bourg Égalité and the idyll of the most lovable woman I have known. Salut and respect. Fréron. Fréron in a letter to Annette Duplessis, March 13 1800

Aside from these two letters, there’s also several unpublished ones, one dated February 20 1795 through which we learn that Fréron, with the help of deputies Aubry, Tallien, Ysabeau and Rovère obtained a reprieve on the sale of Camille’s confiscated bed and libary, which they managed to save for Horace, one dated March 1 1795 and co-authored by Fréron and Laurance to the commissioners handling the sale of the property of convicts of the section of the Théatre-Français, one dated June 17 1800 from Fréron to Annette regarding Horace’s schooling (all of these were mentioned in Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un rêve de république), and finally one dated April 27 1800 Fréron adressed to Duplain, promising his support to Napoleon so that Horace could enter the Prytanée Français (mentioned in Journaliste, sans-culotte et thermidorien: le fils de Fréron: 1754-1802 (1909).

Finally, according to Marcellin Matton, Fréron named his two children Camille and Lucile in honor of his dead friends. However, I’ve not found any information about said children (which, if they existed at all, must have been illegitimate since Fréron never married) anywhere, neither in Fréron’s family tree nor in the 1909 biography, so perhaps Matton is mistaken here…

#fréron helping take care of horace and selling his soul to naps so that he could get a good education is like his 1 redeeming quality #guy srs wrote ”i dream about banging you in that bed you’ve got there lucile” 🤤#desmoulins #camille desmoulins #lucile desmoulins #fréron #stanislas fréron #horace desmoulins #frev friendships #frev #ask #fréron having the dead camille guest write in his journal though…#brings a whole new meaning to the term ghost writer

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