#frev friendships

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

robespierre family dynamics... what were augustin and charlotte like? how did maximilien act towards them? wasnt charlotte into horse riding, and didnt her brothers discourage her from doing that? wasnt augustin known as the more goofy, lighthearted version of maximilien? oh! and why was augustin nicknamed "bonbon"?

(these are questions mixed in with random facts ive heard about the robespierre family... since you know a lot about frev, im hoping to get some more context and clarification on some of these!)

To start off with Augustin’s nickname Bonbon: Élisabeth Duplay Le Bas confirmed in a note written around 1847 that it stemmed from the fact Augustin’s middle name was Bon. Interestingly, we actually have no recorded instance of Maximilien and Charlotte using the nickname, even if it can be assumed that they did.

As for the family dynamics, pre-revolution we more or less only have two sources to rely on —  La Vie et les Crimes de Robespierre, surnommé Le Tyran: depuis sa naissance jusqu’à sa mort (1795) by Le Blond de Neuvéglise (abbé Proyart), who was an acquaintance of the family and teacher of Maximilien, and Charlotte’s Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835). For both authors, the primary point is not necessarily to tell the full truth, but rather to denounce/rehabilitate (or if you want, vilify/glorify) Maximilien, and as a consequence, the pictures they paint are radically different from one another (and perhaps not always to be treated that literally). According to Proyart, the child Maximilien ”was tyrannically harsh towards his brother and his sisters. As he spoke little, he found it bad that they spoke more than he did, he did not grant them common sense; nothing they said was well said. He missed no opportunity of mortifying or humiliating them; he lavished on them, for the smallest of subjects, the reproaches of rudeness.” Charlotte on the other hand writes that her older brother ”loved us tenderly, and there were no caresses he did not lavish on us.” She does however subscribe to Proyart’s description in some sense, as she right before this states: ”since [the death of our parents] he saw himself, in the quality of eldest, as the head of the family, he became poised, reasonable, laborious; he spoke to us with a sort of imposing gravity; if he joined in our games, it was to direct them.”

Following what more reliable sources can tell us about the early family dynamics (see this post for a more complete timeline), we know the siblings lost their mother on July 16 1764, when Maximilien was six, Charlotte four, Henriette two and a half and Augustin one (according to Charlotte’s memoirs, he was still with a wetnurse when this happened). Shortly thereafter (unclear exactly when) their father cut contacts with his children. According to Charlotte’s memoirs, she and Henriette were then taken in by their two paternal aunts, while the two brothers got looked after by their maternal grandparents. They did however make sure that the children got to see each other every Sunday. On December 30 1768, the eight year old Charlotte was enrolled at Maison des Sœurs Manarre, “a pious foundation for poor girls” situated in modern day Belgium, which she presumably left in 1778, aged 18. On October 13 1769, eleven year old Maximilien left for the boarding school of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, from which he graduated on May 15 1781. Henriette was sent to join her sister at Maison des Sœurs Manarre on May 3 1771. She died in March 1780, it’s unclear exactly where. As for Augustin, he presumably studied at the college of Duoai until October 11 1781, when he got to overtake Maximilien’s scholarship to Louis-le-Grand. It can in other words be concluded that the siblings (with the exception of Charlotte and Henriette) didn’t see much of each other for the majority of their childhood.

From 1781 to 1789, Maximilien and Charlotte live together in Arras, first on Rue du Saumon, then on Rue Teinturiers, Rue des Jésuites and finally Rue des Rapporteurs 9. In 1787 they are joined by Augustin who has finished his studies at Louis-le-Grand. The information we have regarding the family dynamics for this period continue to be very lacking, we still more or less only have Charlotte’s memoirs and Proyart’s La Vie et les Crimes de Robespierre… to rely on. According to the former, Maximilien worked much, from six or seven in the morning to seven or eight in the evening, spending the rest of the day with his friends or family. Charlotte nevertheless also remembers that he was often rather distracted in these gatherings — ”when we played cards, or when we spoke only of insignificant things, he retired to a corner of the apartment, ensconced himself in an armchair, and gave himself up to his reflections as if he had been alone” —  something which she and the two aunts often reproached him for. She still insists that ”he was naturally gay; he knew how to be pleasant, and sometimes laughed until he cried” and that the same aunts would often tell her: “Your brother is an angel; he has all moral virtues, he is made to be the dupe and the victim of the vicious too.” Charlotte notes that she and the aunts ”spoiled [Maximilien] by a crowd of those little attentions of which women alone are capable,” but also that she often had to decide for herself what they were having for dinner, Maximilien responding he had no idea when she asked him what he wanted.

As for Augustin, Charlotte writes that he had less aptitude for study than Maximilien, and was sometimes reproached for ”his idle tastes” by his big siblings — ”we exhorted him to create some occupations for himself; sometimes our remonstrance made Augustin withdraw into himself; he put himself to his work with an ardor to lively to be durable; enclosed in his chamber he passed many days with books; but he could not long support this constraint.” Regardless, Charlotte concludes by describing the bond between the three siblings as strong — ”never had a family been as united as my two brothers and I.” An image that Proyart doesn’t exactly agree with, here is all he has to say regarding the family dynamics during the same period:

In his domestic affairs, [Maximilien] was neither less despotic nor more amiable than in his external relations. He treated with equal harshness and heaped the same reproaches on both his brother, who could deserve them, and a sister, who did not deserve them. The first was twenty-five years old, and he still addressed him with a brutal "shut up, stupid beast." At a time when his sister, although economical with her time, earned very little from the work of her fingers, he did not grant her even the necessary supplement for the most modest maintenance.

When Maximilien in 1789 set out to get elected for the Estates General, Proyart claims that Augustin helped in the campaign: ”Robespierre the younger went from village to village, seeking votes for his brother.” In an undated memorandum presumably written in March 1795, Armand Joseph Guffroy, an associate of the three siblings, claims that Charlotte also helped here, selling for her brothers the capital of her 400 livres income to help them get to Paris, and this in spite of ”the prediction of an aunt.”

In her memoirs, Charlotte claims that the siblings wrote to each other frequently during Maximilien’s time as deputy of the National Assembly: ”[Maximilien] gave me the most emphatic testimony of friendship in his letters. “You (vous) are what I love the most after the homeland,” he told me.” However, we have zero letters conserved from Maximilien to his brother and sister, as well as zero from Augustin to his sister. Both brothers did however write several letters to the family friend Antoine Buissart while away in Paris (we have a total nine from Maximilien between 1789-1792, and eighteen from Augustin 1789-1793). In said letters, they often tell Buissart to say hello from them to his wife Charlotte, but never ask about their own family… We do however have signs of Maximilien having corresponded with at least Augustin. One can be found in a letter from Maximilien to Buissart dated May 1 1790, where he mentions that he’s ”sending you a letter for my brother,” not daring to address it to him directly ”out of fear that my name would incite aristocratic hands to violate the secrecy of the letters.” The other sign is in a letter from Augustin to Maximilien dated April 10 1792 where there is to read: ”You are mistakenly complaining about the bad address I sent you.” These letters from Maximilien have then either gone missing or gotten destroyed.

Throughout 1790 we also have a total of nine letters from Augustin to Maximilien, most of them undated. These are entirely business related, and can’t really be used to say much about the dynamics between the two brothers, other than the fact Augustin was utterly loyal to his big brother. In one of the letters he complains that Maximilien is hesitant to publish a response to Briois de Beaumetz who in an open letter had accused him of having charged the people of Arras with failure to pay their taxes — ”This is an insult you are doing to your greatest friend.” He also doesn’t hide his fears of the risks Maximilien’s position puts him in: ”I tremble, my friend, when I think of the dangers that surround you. […] Farewell, I embrace you with tears in my eyes,” sentiments he repeats in a later letter, though this time with some resolve added in: ”I cannot hide my fears from you, dear brother, you will seal the cause of the people with your blood, perhaps these people will even be unfortunate enough to strike you, but I swear to avenge your death and to deserve it like you.” Augustin was also ready to give his brother political advice: in one of the letters he suggests dropping his motion for the marriage of priests, since it causes too much uproar:  ”[the motion] is well within my principles, but few people are at the same level! You would lose the esteem of the peasants if you renewed this motion. This weapon is used to harm you; people only talk about your irreligion, etc.”

As for Charlotte, we have one letter from her to Maximilien dated April 9 1790, in which she mentions a local whip-round that she and other ”patriots” have occupied themselves with, a falling out she’s had with the journalist Thérèse Merchand — ”I took the liberty of telling her what the good patriots must have thought of her journal, and what you thought of it. I reproached her for her affectation of always putting infamous notes for the people, etc.” — and which she ends by asking him to ”to send what you promised me. We are still in great trouble” and to see if he can’t find a place in Paris for her and for Augustin, ”because he will never be anything in this country.” 

That the two younger siblings were in dire straits back in Arras is also confirmed by two letters from Augustin to Maximilien from 1790. In the first one he writes that “We are in absolute destitution, remember our unfortunate household,” in the second one he reports that ”my sister has payed your rent. She has very few things left. She begs me to tell you this. I don’t know what to become, I don’t find any resources.” That Maximilien helped them out economically is confirmed by Souvernirs d’un déporté (1802) by Paul Villiers, who claimed to have served as his secretary in 1791. Villiers recalled that Maximilien at the time sent half of his fees to ”a sister he had in Arras, whom he held a lot of affection for.”

While Charlotte wouldn’t see her older brother again until 1791, Augustin went to visit him at least two times during the lifespan of the National Assembly. The first visit came in September 1789, as seen through letters from Augustin to Buissart dated September 3 and September 10. Through the second letter we learn that Augustin and Maximilien had gotten into some kind of argument prior to the latter leaving for Versailles, but that they had now made up — ”My brother has righted his wrongs against me.” Through the address given on both letters, we see that Augustin moved in with Maximilien on Rue d’Étang 16, a place he shared with three other deputies from Arras before the National Assembly moved to Paris in October 1789. It is unclear if Augustin was still with his brother when this move took place. We do know he was back in Arras by at least April 1790. In June the same year he writes to ask Maximilien to supply him with the means to go to Paris for July 14, in order to compensate for the lack of ”patriotic enjoyment” in Arras. We don’t know if he got his will through here. He was however back by his brother’s side again by September 1790, as revealed through a letter from the same month from him to Buissart. Augustin seems to have been ready to go back to Arras by the end of the year but gotten hindered by his brother, as revealed through letters from him to Buissart dated dated November(”My brother has delayed my departure, I will not announce it anymore; I will arrive, I will embrace you, everything will be forgiven.”) and December 13 (”I thought you would have received me at your home today instead of receiving my letter the day after tomorrow; but my brother did not allow me to leave and I’m staying in Paris for the week.”) Though the first letter we also learn that Charlotte would not appear to have been so fond over Augustin having left for the capital once more: ”A thousand things to my sister, she must be very cross with me, but she easily forgets, that consoles me, I will try to bring her what she wants.” Augustin nevertheless appears to have stayed in Paris until at least March 1791, as seen through a letter from him to Buissart the same month. Maximilien’s secretary Paul Villiers gave the following portrait of Augustin during the stay: ”…a miserable lawyer, without means, false, drunkard, base and villainous; he did me the honor of esteeming me and borrowing money and linen from me which he then never returned.” 

On September 30 1791 the National Assembly was closed down, and a few days later Maximilien settled for Arras for a short stay. According to number 289 of the journal La Feuille du jour (October 16 1791), Augustin, Charlotte and ”many other young ladies” traveled to Baurains to meet him, dressed in fine clothes and equipped with music and a so-called ”civic crown,” but were forced to return empty handed when no Maximilien appeared. This was something the people of Arras could not stand for, proposing that Augustin serve as substitute for his brother and be given civic honors in his place. Augustin did however manage to shut this project down with the words: ”No, I refuse, they would make fun of me almost as much as they would of my brother.” 

Recounting this episode in her memoirs forty years later, Charlotte does however claim that Maximilien had written to her about his arrival beforehand, recommending her to keep it a secret. She still writes that she and Augustin went to meet him on the way and had to return empty-handed, but that they were accompanied only by the family friend Charlotte Buissart, and were quite surprised to on their return to Arras see ”a considerable crowd; already the rumor of Robespierre’s arrival had spread in the city, whether by some indiscretion of Madame Buissart’s, whether because our servant had understood the reason for our trip to Bapaume, and had divulged it.” The next day, Charlotte, Augustin and Madame Buissart did however set out again early in the morning, and this time Maximilien eventually did appear: ”Finally, we held him in our arms, and we tasted the ineffable pleasure of seeing him again after an absence of two years.”

For Maximilien’s stay in Arras, Ghislain Morel, clerc of the priest Joseph Lebon, told the following anecdote (cited in La Terreur dans le Pas-de-Calais et dans le Nord. Histoire de Joseph Le Bon et des tribunaux révolutionnaires d'Arras et de Cambrai (1864) regarding a dinner the two brothers attended at his master’s house:

All they talked about was reforms and upheavals. The guests seemed to be preparing the plans that two years later they carried out. Robespierre the younger was a man of peace, who only asked to dine quietly; when he saw Maximilien and Lebon lose their temper, he exhausted himself in efforts to calm them down and bring them to other thoughts.

In late November 1791, Maximilien did however leave for Paris once more, to never see his hometown again. The following months we find three conserved letters from Augustin to Maximilien dated November 1791, December 14 1791 and April 10 1792, all entirely about politics, as well as a somewhat more personal one dated March 19 1792 from Augustin to Maximilien’s host Maurice Duplay:

Patriot Dupleix [sic], I learned indirectly that my brother is indisposed; I am worried; let me know about his situation as soon as possible. Send me also the cartridge that I asked my brother's friend to look for in his papers. Tell my brother that my sister is convalescing, and that I will send back Mme Witty's book in a few days. Don't waste a moment, send answers right away. My worry is at its peak. Nothing prevents me from flying to Paris. Also send me some copies of the speech on the war that your friend gave and the observations of Pethion [sic] and Robespierre. I embrace you and your family.

On September 16 1792, Augustin was elected to fill a seat in the National Convention, representing Paris. This time, Charlotte was not left behind when he once again set out for the capital. The two moved in with the Duplay family on Rue Saint-Honoré 366, where their brother had been lodging since a year back. The family, which consisted of father Maurice, mother Françoise-Éléonore, their three unmarried daughters Éléonore, Victoire and Élisabeth, son Jacques Maurice and nephew Simon, appears to have been on great terms with both of the brothers. This is what Élisabeth in her memoirs has her husband Philippe Le Bas tell her that Augustin had told him:

He praised you, told me that he had the friendship of a brother for you, that you were cheerful and good and that he liked you best of your sisters, that your good mother was excellent, that she had raised you well, as housewives, that your household was perfect and recalled the golden age, that everything there breathed virtue and a pure patriotism, that your good father was the most worthy and generous of men, that his whole life had passed in goodness. He told me that his brother was very happy to be among you, that you were a family to him, that he loved you like sisters and regarded your father and mother as his own parents.

In Histoire de Saint-Just député à la Convention nationale (1860), Ernest Hamel also publishes a testimony from Élisabeth’s son Philippe, revealing that Augustin, together with Simon and Jacques Maurice, once visited the house of saloon hostess Jeanne-Louise-Françoise de Sainte-Amaranthe, ”and this escapade was so severely criticised by Maximilien that, despite all the attraction of such a house for men, the oldest of whom was barely twenty-nine years old, they were careful not to return there.”

As can be seen above, Augustin also seems to have gone under his nickname ”Bonbon” within the Duplay family.

Charlotte on the other hand wrote in her memoirs that she got along well with Élisabeth and Victoire, but not so much with their mother and Éléonore. For the first, she writes that she ”looked constantly to put me in bad standing with my older brother and to monopolize him.” She also brings up (as she is not alone in having done) the claim that there existed marriage plans between Maximilien and Éléonore. Charlotte however, argues that only Françoise and Éléonore actually wanted this, her brother being too ”overwhelmed with work and affairs” to have time for either mistress or fiancée. She writes Maximilien ”told me twenty times that he felt nothing for Éléonore; her family’s obsessions, their importunities were more suited to make feel disgust for her than to make him love her,” and that he even told Augustin to marry her instead, to which he would have replied: “My faith, no.” 

Charlotte also insinuates Françoise was bullying her: ”If I were to report everything she did to me, I would fill a fat volume. […] [Élisabeth] often came to wipe away my tears when Madame Duplay’s indignities made me cry.” This ill treatment is however contested by the same Élisabeth, who in her memoirs instead reports that her mother ”regarded Charlotte as a daughter” and ”never refused her anything that could please her.” She does however imply that Charlotte did eventually fall out of favor with Françoise: ”At the time (April 1793), my mother liked [Charlotte] a lot, she still had nothing to complain about,” but without elaborating on why exactly…

Though Charlotte doesn’t write it outright, we might imagiene the feud between her and the Duplays was fueled by the fact she, who for the past ten years had had her own household to run, now had that role taken away from her by Madame Duplay. Another theory, that we’ll get to later, is that there was a political dimension to the feud, namely, Charlotte blaming the Duplays for Maximilien’s radicalization.

If information regarding the relationship between the three siblings and their hosts is far from lacking, it is more scarce when it comes to the dynamics between the siblings themselves at the time. But it can be observed that no general disagreements between the two brothers can be spotted as Augustin took the step from dealing with local politics as a lawyer in Arras to national politics as a deputy of the Convention in Paris, and that he in large parts seems to have kept the protective attitude towards Maximilien already seen in their correspondence. We know Augustin was moved by the open attack on his brother by the ”girondin” Louvet at the Convention on October 29 1793. Later the same day he exclaimed to the jacobins: ”I am somewhat ashamed to be speaking before you, because the brother of Robespierre should be calumniated, and he is not. […]  I heard men say that he would perish by their hands. Another one, whom I asked if he wanted to be the executioner of my brother, responded: ”He has been the executioner of a lot of others.” After this, it is possible to believe innocence will never be victorious!” And he ended by assuring them that Marat must be innocent of the charges currently directed against him as well, ”because he is persecuted by the same enemies that persecute Robespierre.” Augustin nevertheless also seems to have shared his brother’s 1, unwillingness to compromise and 2, belief that ideals are worth more than single individuals, when, five days later, after a jacobin proposed trying to reunite with the ”girondins,” he was firmly opposed and exclaimed: ”Citizens of Paris, be calm, let Maximilien Robespierre be sacrificed (cries of no! no! from the citizens in the tribunes). The loss of a man doesn’t entail the loss of liberty.” Finally, on December 31 1792, after having summarized the Convention session of the day for the jacobins, Augustin is recorded to have ”complained about attacks against his brother contained in the speech of Vergniaud.”

In Observations de Jérôme Pétion sur la lettre de Maximilien Robespierre (December 1792), Pétion insinuates Augustin getting elected to represent Paris in the National Convention must have been due to nepotism: ”your brother might be a brave and loyal citizen, I’m speaking neither for nor against him; but you must admit he wasn’t known to ten people.” Something which Maximilien hastily refuted when responding to Pétion a little while later:

As for my brother, he was known to the patriots of Paris and the Jacobins, who had witnessed his civic-mindedness; he was presented by members who, since the beginning of the revolution, have enjoyed public confidence; it was discussed solemnly and publicly, following the usage adopted by the electoral assembly; he was attacked more sharply than any other candidate; and were it true that one had counted, among the guarantors of his incorruptibility, the loyalty of his brother to the cause of the people, would one have to conclude with you that this choice was the fruit of the cabal, and that the electoral assembly, the purest that has yet existed among us, was a collection of intriguers and imbeciles?

As for Charlotte, Élisabeth Duplay writes in her memoirs that the two often visited the Convention together, where they sometimes met Augustin. On February 2 1793 the three siblings also had dinner with Rosalie Jullien, who the next day left the following portraits of them in a letter to her son. I would guess the idea of Augustin as more lighthearted than his brother has much to thank Rosalie’s description:

I was very pleased with the Robespierre family. The sister is naive and natural like your aunts, she arrived two hours before her brothers, and we had some women’s talk. I got her to speak about their domestic morals, and it is just like ours, simplicity and sincerity. Her brother had as little to do with the tenth of August as with the second of September. He is as suited to leading a party as he is to catching the moon between his teeth. He is abstract like a thinker and dry like an office man, but gentle like a lamb and gloomy like Young. I see that he does not possess our tender sensibilities, but I believe that he wants the best for mankind, more for the sake of justice than for the sake of love. Besides, you don't have to do more than look at his face to determine that never has nature given such gentle features to such a beautiful soul. Robespierre the younger is livelier, more open, an excellent patriot, but with a common mind and a contented temper which make him an unfavorable noise to the Mountain.

The siblings eventually move from Rue Saint-Honoré and into an apartment on Rue Saint-Florentin. No author has been able to identify when exactly this move took place. From what the different sources indicate, I personally think it’s most likely Charlotte and Augustin moved out before Maximilien, somewhere in the summer of 1793. Shortly thereafter, on July 19 1793, Augustin was was tasked by the Committee of Public Safety with going to the Army of Italy. Augustin set off a few days later together with fellow representative on mission Jean François Ricord. According to Charlotte’s memoirs, it was when she learned that Ricord was bringing his wife Marguerite for company that she asked Augustin if she too could join on the journey, something which the latter ”joyfully agreed to.”

Again according to Charlotte’s memoirs, up until this point ”nothing had altered the vivid harmony that reigned between us [three siblings].” Charlotte does however claim that it was during this mission a rupture took place between them that they would never recover from. The start of this episode, she writes, came when she, Augustin and the Ricords, after a while of having traveled from town to town with counter-revolutionaries constantly after them, finally settled in Nice for a longer period of time. There, Augustin and Ricord made frequent outings to different divisions while Charlotte and Marguerite occupied themselves with making shirts for the soldiers during the day and went for walks and horseback rides in the countryside in the evenings. This latter activity soon proved to be troublesome, as ”several journals paid by the aristocracy” back in Paris started accusing the two women of acting like princesses with their equestrian outings. As a consequence, Augustin vetoed further horseback rides after receiving a letter from Maximilien regarding the issue, and Charlotte promised to abstain from riding from then on (this is the horse controversy you were talking about in the ask) But not long after, while Augustin and Ricord were away, Marguerite, who according to Charlotte ”was the most frivolous and inconsiderate person in the world,” proposed the two should go on yet another ride, and Charlotte, after trying in vain to remind her of what her brothers had said, hesitantly joined her. ”During the entire ride, I was sad and had a heavy heart, because I was so affected by disobeying my brother.”

When Augustin reproached his sister for the ride three days later, Charlotte called on Marguerite to testify that it had been her idea. But Marguerite, instead of telling the truth, not only enforced the lie that it was Charlotte that had wanted the ride, but also added that she had taken her with her against her will. Charlotte was so stupified she couldn’t respond, but Augustin chose to believe in it, much to her distress — ”My brother knew I was incapable of lying. Why then did he not want to believe me?” After this incident, Augustin stopped speaking to Charlotte and started keeping a certain coldness towards her, a coldness which grew bigger everyday since Marguerite ”didn’t cease to speak ill of me to my brother and invent thousands of lies to make me lose his friendship.” Charlotte for her part cried a lot over Augustin’s behaviour when she was alone, but ”was resoluted to hide my pain and to not show it, especially to my brother.” She claims she didn’t understand what was causing his behaviour at the time, but chose not to ask for an explanation for it since ”I saw him so occupied, so burdened by work, that I couldn’t bring myself to.”

The straw that broke the camel’s back came when Marguerite a while later suggested to Charlotte that they should go to Grasse together to see a friend of hers, something Charlotte agreed to do. But hardly had they arrived when Marguerite came forward with a forged (so Charlotte writes) letter, telling Charlotte it was from Augustin and that he urged her to return to Paris as soon as possible. A shocked Charlotte obeyed and set out for the capital the following morning, ending her journey somewhere in the fall of 1793 (we don’t have a clear date as to when here either). Marguerite in her turn went on to slander Charlotte even more to Augustin, saying that the reason she had so abruptly left for Paris was because she didn’t care about him, and that Charlotte had caluminated both of them. According to Charlotte, Marguerite was seducing her brother, who for his part  ”believed it essential to his honor and duty” to respond to her advances. If there is any truth to that interpretation or if the story is actually such that Augustin and Marguerite were having a mutual love affair that Charlotte became an annoying witness to I will leave unsaid…

It is after Charlotte’s lone return to Paris that I think it’s most likely she got Maximilien to leave the Duplays and come live with her on Rue Saint-Florentin. According to her memoirs, the argument she used to persuade him was that, occupying such a high rank in politics, he ought to have a home of his own. ”Maximilien recognized the fairness of my reasons, but for a long time fought the proposal that I made to him to separate from the Duplay family, fearing to distress them. At last I succeeded.”

On December 18 1793, one day after the siege of Toulon, Augustin writes to let Maximilien know he’s coming back to Paris. We have two conflicting reports regarding his short stay in the capital. According to Charlotte’s memoirs, Augustin had swallowed all the bad things Marguerite Ricord had told him about his sister, and was therefore ”outraged” against her upon his arrival in Paris, refusing to see her during his stay and not even putting his foot in the house, choosing instead to lodge with his colleague Record (unclear to me if she means Ricord, which would be strange given the fact they were not given a leave at the same time). He did however make known to Maximilien that Charlotte had compromised him and Marguerite, and even though her older brother never spoke to her about it, ”I saw that he was unhappy with me.” Charlotte herself writes she was still completely unaware of what had caused Augustin’s change in attitude towards her, but that ”the purity of my conscience” stopped her from asking either brother for an explanation of why they were treating her like they did.

Maurice André Gaillard, who had known the siblings before the revolution, did on the other hand claim in his memoirs to have met Augustin when the latter made a stop in Melun on his way to Paris. Augustin, far from speaking ill of Charlotte, would then have told him that ”my whole family will be content to receive news from you. We often speak of you, my brother, sister and I, come and see us in Paris, public affairs shouldn’t hinder from cultivating old relationships.” Recalling a meeting he had with Charlotte five months later, Gaillard similarily has her say that both she and Maximilien got very happy when Augustin could deliver news about him, insinuating she and her younger brother were not on bad terms at all and that he, contrary to Charlotte’s memoirs’ version, stayed at same house as them during his leave.

We have one confirmed interaction between Augustin and Maximilien during the former’s brief stay in Paris, and it occurred on January 5 1794 at the jacobin club, in the middle of the flamewar between the journalists Hébert and Desmoulins. Augustin stood up to regret the quarrels infecting the club that were not there when he left on a mission five months earlier. ”I ask that Hébert, who has many reproaches to make, because it is he who is the cause of the movements in the departments, relating to worship [...] be heard in his turn. […] If Hébert has to respond to Camille, Père Duchesne  can enter the fray with the Vieux Cordelier.” This comment did however earn him a rebuke from Maximilien, who immediately after declared: ”It is easy to see that the last speaker has been absent from the Society for a long time. He has rendered great services at Toulon, but he did not sufficiently consider how dangerous it is to still fuel small passions which clash with so much violence.”

Soon thereafter Augustin left for another mission in Haute-Saône, this time accompanied by his mistress Guillodon La Saudraie (by now it can provably be seen that he appeared to have a much bigger appreciation for such activities than his brother, something I suppose it too has contributed to the image of him as the more light-hearted one). It wouldn’t be until June that he could see his family again.

Maximilien was for his part soon to return to the Duplays again. In her memoirs, Charlotte claims he moved back in with the family after Madame Duplay one day came to visit and found that he had fallen ill, whereupon she told Charlotte he would be better cared for at her house. The only period of illness in Robespierre’s last year alive that I’ve been able to identify is in February-March 1794, when he was away from public life for as much as a month, so it seems likely for this incident to have happened here. Charlotte claims that Maximilien first weakly refused to go, but when Madame Duplay ”doubled her instances or rather her obsessions,” he decided to follow her, telling Charlotte that ”they love me so, they have so much respect, so much goodness for me, that it would be ungrateful of me to push them away.” Élisabeth Duplay did for her part in a note written in her old age claim that Maximilien had in fact disliked living with his sister because her ”imperious character rendered him really unhappy.”

Charlotte was hurt by Maximilien choosing the Duplays over her. She writes she regardless of that often went to see him after he moved back, always being received in a ”disgraceful manner” by Françoise Duplay. Charlotte also often charged her domestic with bringing her brother jam and fruits that he liked. But one day Françoise sent the domestic and her jampots back with the words: ”Bring that back, I don’t want her to poison Robespierre.” (unclear if this is meant to be read literally or just as a joke about Charlotte’s cooking). Learning about this, Charlotte recalls she was ”stupifed,” but again chose not to tell Maximilien about what had happened since this would ”provoke a scene that could only be strongly disagreeable for him” and instead chose to ”devour in silence my grief and indignation.”

If Charlotte really was as reserved in front of her brothers as she portrays herself in her memoirs, she on the other hand appears to have been much more politically active in other places. In an undated letter probably from 1793 we do for example find her submitting papers to an unknown person and asking for a copy of ”the proclamation that you have given to M. La Jourdeai.” Charlotte seems to have been especially investigated in the situation in Arras, corresponding with both the Buissart couple, the daughter of a municipal officier and administrator in the army Claude-Louis Bruslé de Valsuzenay, who in a letter to her dated April 25 1794 paints a grim picture of the repression currently carried out in the city under the leadership of representative on mission Joseph Lebon: ”While we were relaying I fulfilled your errand. What has been said of your country is true; for six weeks one hundred and fifty people have been guillotined and about three thousand imprisoned.”

Charlotte also visited Convention deputy Armand Joseph Guffroy, who was also from Arras and had been an associate of all three siblings, even if, according to Élisabeth Duplay, Augustin and Maximilien ”held a great contempt for him” since at least 1793. In his work Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices (1795) Guffroy claims there was one affair concerning Arras that Charlotte got particularily invested in. It revolved around several members of the city’s revolutionary tribunal — the president Beugniet, public prosecutor Démouliez and committee of surveillance member Gabriel Leblond — who on April 19 1794 got arrested for not having voted for death in a recent trial (these would later be joined by Leblond’s brother, as well as a couple by the name of Danten). On May 4, all of them were taken to Paris to be transferred before the Revolutionary Tribunal of the city. While Guffroy since May 7 started mailbombing Maximilien denouncing and asking him to recall Joseph Lebon and receive declarations from the imprisoned, he writes that female relatives of the accused, alongside Charlotte and the aforementioned Charlotte Buissart, tried their best to approach him in person to tell him about the situation — ”Leblond’s sister, Demeulier’s daughter, Buissart’s wife, Robespierre’s sister, to whom he was almost invisible, took every means to reach him” (this claim is also confirmed through a letter from Guffroy to the Committee of Public Safety dated June 26 1794, where he writes Robespierre surely must remember what Charlotte and Madame Buissart have told him on this subject.) 

Charlotte’s attempts to get her brother to listen to her might eventually have motivated her to move back in with the Duplays as well. That is at least the place Maurice André Gaillard portrays her as living at when in his memoirs recounting a meeting the two had somewhere in May 1794. During said meeting Charlotte would have again ”named with great bitterness, the prodigious number of very honest people dragged to the scaffold by Joseph Lebon,” before again raging against the Duplay family. By now, it would however appear like the relationship with Maximilien it too has much deteriorated, and Charlotte comes off as deploring of her brother’s role in ”the terror,” while nevertheless blaming all his negative changes on his host family:

When my younger brother passed through Melun, all three of us were living together; I still hoped to be able to bring back the older, to snatch him from the wretches who obsess over him and lead him to the scaffold. They felt that my brother would eventually escape them if I regained his confidence, they destroyed me entirely in his mind; today he hates the sister who served as his mother… For several months he has been living alone, and although lodged in the same house, I no longer have the power to approach him… I loved him tenderly, I still do… His excesses are the consequence of the domination under which he groans, I am sure of it, but knowing no way to break the yoke he has allowed himself to be placed under, and no longer able to bear the pain and the shame of to see my brother devote his name to general execration, I ardently desire his death as well as mine. Judge of my unhappiness!… 

When Gaillard wants to see Maximilien to speak with him of an affair regarding 60 arrested judges from Melun (an affair on which Charlotte is quick at voicing her mind as well), Charlotte even suggests not mentioning her name to him. After Gaillard is refused at the Duplays’ door, Charlotte aims even more reproaches against the family, and hopes Augustin will eventually be able to get Maximilien to move away from there:

No one can approach my brother unless he is a friend of those Duplays, with whom we are lodging; these wretches have neither intelligence nor education, explain to me their ascendancy over Maximilien. However, I do not despair of breaking the spell that holds him under their yoke; for that I am awaiting the return of my other brother, who has the right to see Maximilien. If the discovery I just made doesn't rid us of this race of vipers forever, my family is forever lost. You know what a miserable state we found ourselves in, reduced to alms, my brothers and I, if the sister of our father hadn’t taken us in. It’s strange that you didn’t often notice how much her husband’s brusqueness and formality made us pay dearly for the bread he gave us; but you must also have noticed that if indigence saddened us, it never degraded us and you always judged us incapable of containing money through a dubious action. Maximilien, who makes me so unhappy, has never given a hold, as you know, in terms of delicacy. Imagiene his fury when he learns that these miserable Duplays are using his name and his credit to get themselves the rarest goods at a low price from the merchants. So while all of Paris is forced to line up at the baker's shop every morning to get a few ounces of black, disgusting bread, the Duplays eat very good bread because the Incorruptible sits at their table: the same pretext provides them with sugar, oil, soap of the best quality, which the inhabitant of Paris would seek in vain in the best shops... How my brother's pride would be humiliated if he knew the abuse that these wretches make of his name! What would become of his popularity, even among his most ardent supporters? Certainly my brother is very proud, it is in him a capital fault; you must remember, you and I have often lamented the ridicule he made for himself by his vanity, the great number of enemies he made for himself by his disdainful and contemptuous tone, but he is not bloodthirsty. Certainly he believes he can overthrow his adversaries and his enemies by the superiority of his talent.

Charlotte then helps arrange a meeting between Gaillard and Maximilien’s Committee of Public Safety colleague and friend Georges Couthon, so that Gaillard can discuss his errand with him instead. But when Couthon, once the conversation turns hostile, makes a move to call on his guards, Charlotte throws herself on him and holds him still while telling Gaillard to escape and go wait for her. Meeting up with him again, she claims that they both were fooled by ”the profound hypocrisy” of Couthon and that Gaillard would have been executed this very day if she had not intervened. But, not convinced that Couthon will stay put, she tells Gaillard to flee Paris and not to take the ordinary route, something which he also goes ahead and does. If Maximilien found out about this incident is something the anecdote leaves unknown, but we might imagine he wasn’t super happy with his sister if he did…

While all this was going down, Augustin was still away from Paris serving as representative on mission. Aside from letters to the entire Committee of Public Safety, he also penned down seven ones only to Maximilien during this one year long period. These are all entirely related to politics, with one exception, a letter that is undated but usually gets traced to May 1794:

My sister does not have a single drop of blood that resembles ours. I have seen and learned so much about her that I regard her as our greatest enemy. She abuses our spotless reputation to lay down the law on us and threatens to take a scandalous step in order to compromise us. We must take a decisive stand against her. We must make her leave for Arras, and thus take her away from us, a woman who causes our common despair. She would like to give us the reputation of bad brothers, her calumnies spread against us aim at this goal. I would like you to see the citoyenne La Saudraie, she would give you certain information on all the masks that it is interesting to know in these circumstances. A certain Saint-Félix seems to be from the clique.

What exactly Augustin is denouncing Charlotte for here is of course hard to know for sure. At first, a connection might be drawn to him having incorrectly come to believe Charlotte had ”caluminated” him and Madame Ricord, as Charlotte would have it in her memoirs. In said memoirs, Charlotte does however not make that connection, choosing instead to not mention this letter at all, making you suspect there could be something more serious it is alluding to… Indeed, it can be established that the Saint-Félix Augustin claims to be part of Charlotte’s ”clique” in the letter was a ”hébertist” since February 19 1794 held under loose house, and whose brother had gotten executed the following month. But regardless of whether the conflict between the two be personal, political or both, the fact Augustin could denounce Charlotte in this vague of a manner and expect Maximilien to act on it might tell us a bit on how the trust and power dynamics between the three siblings looked…

Augustin’s letter may be the reason (though it’s not confirmed) Maximilien on May 14 wrote the following letter on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, asking Joseph Lebon, the representative on mission to Arras that Charlotte according to Gaillard’s account repulsed, to make a short trip to Paris. He would however not appeared to have been affected by his sister’s feelings for him, instead telling him that the Committee of Public Safety is happy with his work:

Dear colleague, The Committee of Public Safety needs to confer with you on important objects, it does justice to the energy with which you have suppressed the enemies of the revolution, and the result of our conference will be to direct it in an even more useful way. Come as soon as possible, to return promptly to the post where you currently are.

Lebon quickly did as he was told. According to Guffroy’s Les Secretes de Joseph Lebon the following played out during his short stay in Paris:

Lebon returned to Paris for 24 hours. He spoke to the committee, to Lebas, to Saint-Just and to Robespierre. He was very diligent with the latter. His sister, worthy of the esteem of all good citizens, reproached him for his cruelty, he denied it, and under the pretext of making her an eyewitness, he brought Robespierre’s sister with him. Her brothers wanted to get rid of her: their correspondence proves it.

In an undated memorandum written after the death of the two brothers, Guffroy furthermore argues that it was Charlotte’s relationship with him that caused her fallout with them: …[The brothers] drove her out of their house because she did not think like they did, because she came to see my wife and because she saw citizens who were sincere friends of justice and truth.” A story that Charlotte’s going to somewhat subscribe to in her interrogation held July 31 1794, that we’ll get to later.

On May 17 Lebon reached Cambrai with Charlotte by his side, as announced by a letter written by Augustin Darthé two days later. From there, it didn’t take long before she was back in Arras again. If Charlotte had given her consent to be escorted back to her hometown by a man she allegedly had accused of bloodlust a few days earlier remains unknown. Gaillard for his part claims Charlotte willingly went there in order to ”collect evidence of the massacres carried out by Joseph Lebon,” but that Maximilien ”devoted mortal hatred to her” because of it.

For Charlotte’s time in Arras, we learn through a letter dated May 23 that she seems to have worked as some kind of informant for one Solon, another enemy of Le Bon, visiting the Jacobin club of the town to hear what the word on the street was. In another letter, dated June 28, Antoine Buissart informs Maximilien that since a month back, he, his wife and Charlotte have been ”injured” by a certain Carlier, administrator of the department of Pas-de-Calais — ”You know that from this time on I am a conspirator in the eyes of the famous Carlier, and my wife and your sister two intriguers.” When Charlotte eventually set out for Paris again, Guffroy claims it was caused by Lebon’s ”cutthroats” having denounced her as an aristocrat to the Jacobins. Guffroy speculates that the pretext for this was that she had visited one Payen de Neuville la Liberté, ”an estimable farmer whom Lebon had guillotined, and brother of another Payen, member of the Constituent Assembly who had served as father and friend to Robespierre (Payen was indeed one of the men Maximilien and Augustin had shared an address with at Versailles in 1789) and who Lebon also had guillotined, for not having been at his constitutional mass.” In an undated memorandum he also adds: ”without Florent Guyot, who brought [Charlotte] back to Paris, she would have been imprisoned [in Arras].” All historians mentioning this claim also dismiss it as slander, but this seemingly only on the grounds that they find Guffroy untrustworthy. Considering the two letters above, as well as the fact the execution dates for the two Payen brothers (June 21 and June 26) match up pretty well with the date Charlotte would have departed from Arras (we know through a letter from Buissart to his wife that she was back in Paris by July 1), and the fact Charlotte in her interrogation is going to claim she had almost fallen victim to the Revolutionary Tribunal, I don’t think it deserves to get entirely thrown away. If we also endorse the idea that it was Maximilien who on Augustin’s insistance got Lebon to bring their sister back to Arras, that would mean Charlotte was put in a position to be prosecuted indirectly because of her brothers.

If there is any truth to this, Charlotte does however not let any of that show in her last (and only conserved) letter to Augustin, who had come back to Paris just days before her. In her memoirs, she describes the situation between the two was the same as in December, with Augustin ”fleeing my presence” and ”telling anyone who would listen that I am unworthy of him, that I conducted myself badly with him, that I no longer deserve his esteem” while she herself was entirely clueless as to what she could have done for him to do that. On July 6 1794 Charlotte therefore sat down and authored the following letter to Augustin. She would later try to declare certain parts of it to be fabricated by her brothers’ enemies, but an encounter with the fac-simile of it proves that this is not the case:

Your (votre) aversion for me, my brother, far from diminishing, as I flattered myself, has become the most implacable hatred, to the point that the mere sight of me inspires horror to you; also, I must not hope that you will ever be calm enough to listen to me, which is why I will attempt to write to you. 

Crushed under the weight of my sorrow, incapable of connecting my thoughts, I will not undertake my apology. Yet, it would be so easy for me to demonstrate that I have never deserved in any wise to excite this fury which blinds you, but I abandon the task of my justification to time, which unveils all perfidies, all darknesses. So, when the blindfold which covers your eyes will be torn apart, if you can distinguish the voice of remorse in the disorder of your passions, if the cry of nature can make itself heard, returned from an error which is so fatal to me, do not fear that I will ever reproach you for having guarded it for so long; I will only occupy myself with the joy of having rediscovered your heart. Ah! if you could read at the bottom of mine, you would blush for having insulted it in such a cruel manner, you would see there, with the proof of my innocence, that nothing can erase the tender attachment from it which ties me to you, and that this is the only emotion to which I relate all of my affections; without complaining about your hatred, what does it matter to me that I am hated by those who are irrelevant to me and who I despise? Their memory will never come to trouble me, but being hated by my brothers, I, for whom it is a necessity to cherish them, this is the only thing which can render me as unhappy as I am. 

This passion of hatred must be atrocious, since it blinds you to the point of bringing you to slander me among my friends. Nonetheless, do not hope in your delirium to be able to make me lose the esteem of a few virtuous persons, which is the only good which remains to me, along with a pure conscience ; full of a just confidence in my virtue, I can defy you to detract it and I dare to tell you that, beside the good people who know me, you will lose your reputation rather than harming mine. 

Thus, it is important to your tranquillity that I am far away from you, it is even important, as they say, to the chose publique that I do not live in Paris! I still do not know what I have to do, but what seems the most urgent to me is to clear you of the sight of an odious object, also, as from tomorrow, you can return to your apartment without fearing to meet me there. I will leave from today unless you formally oppose it. 

My stay in Paris should not bother you, I take care not to connect my friends to my disgrace, the misfortune which persecutes me has to be contagious, and your hatred for me is too blind in order not to fall on everyone who shows interest for me. Also, I only need a few days in order to calm the disorder of my thoughts, to decide on the place of my exile, because, in the obliteration of all of my faculties, I am in no state to take a course of action.

Therefore, I leave you since you demand it, but, in spite of your injustices, my friendship for you is so indestructible that I will not retain any bitterness from the cruel treatment which you make me endure. When, [being] disillusioned sooner or later, you will come to hold the feelings for me that I deserve, when shyness does not prevent you from informing me that I have recovered your friendship and, wherever I may be, may I even be beyond the seas, if I can be useful to you in anything, know how to inform me of it and I will soon be by your side.

I send you the exact summary of the expenditures which I have made since your departure for Nice. Sorrowfully, I have learned that you have singularly degraded yourself through the manner in which you have spoken of this affaire d'intérêt. Because of this, I oblige you to observe that, in all of these expenditures, there are debts for the shoemaker, the tailor, a washtub, and powder, prior to my return from Nice, you will also observe that the money that was returned to Madame Delaporte had been lent by her to René during my stay in Nice, that the 200 livres given to René are for his wages which had not been paid to him in the last year, finally, you will also distinguish postage for letters, and if you still have any doubts after this, you can share them with me, I will elucidate them, I will give all of my remaining money to you, and it this does not match my expenditures, this can only be because I have forgotten a few items.

PS: You will observe that the polisher is not paid, nor [is] the locksmith who has made a key for your secretary.

PS: You have to think that, while leaving your apartment, I will take all necessary precautions in order to not compromise my brothers. The quarter where citoyenne Laporte lives, [to whose home] I plan to retreat temporarily, is the place of the entire republic where I can be ignored the most.

Charlotte presumably then left this letter in the apartment on Rue Saint-Florentin before moving in with her friend Madame Delaporte on 200 Rue de la Réunion. Her husband, François Sébastien Christophe Delaporte, had at the time just been appointed judge at the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, a position that would land him in prison for several months after thermidor. In the defence he then worked out (cited in Charlotte Robespierre et ses amis (1961)) he had the following to say regarding the Robespierre family dynamics:

I never had relations with any member of the former government, nor with Robespierre. My wife having gotten to know his sister took her into our home, when she was proscribed by him because of her feelings which were quite opposed to his. Certainly, one could not be the friend of this implacable man, when one welcomed his enemies.

According to Charlotte’s memoirs, she never saw Augustin again. She did however meet Maximilien one or two more times, but in the presence of ”several people” (she doesn’t specify which ones) making it impossible for her to speak to him about the conflict with Augustin, since, again: ”I knew both of them were entirely absorbed by the dangers threatening the public sake; I postponed every explanation.” Another person she sometimes met when walking on Champs-Élysées was her former courtier Joseph Fouché. After learning that he was Maximilien’s ”declared enemy,” Charlotte does however claim she no longer wanted to speak with him. In a letter written a few months after thermidor, she reveals that she was offered asylum at the house of Maximilien’s childhood friend Guislain Mathon, something that her brothers protested against, and it would appear like she did indeed not move in with him until after their death.

Charlotte would also appear to not have made the fight between her and her brothers’ known to her friends in Arras, as can be seen through a letter from the siblings’ step-cousin Régis Deshorties to Augustin dated July 18: “Charlotte Robespierre had promised to inform me immediately of your arrival to the capital. Not receiving a letter from her either on this subject or on any other letter of which she should have acknowledged receipt, I imagined (as several people had assured me) that you were going to come to Arras and that this was the reason for your sister's silence.” And Deshorties ended by asking Augustin to ”embrace Charlotte Robespierre and her girlfriends for me.”

If the relationship between Charlotte and her brothers had cracked down by now, Augustin’s loyalty towards Maximilien was as strong as ever. If we’re to believe the memoirs of Barère, some time after the passing of the Law of 22 Prairial on June 10, which had caused a lot of frictions within the Committee of Public Safety, Augustin entered the committee ”under pretext of giving an account of his mission to Nice; but instead of fulfilling this duty, he addressed me in a furious tone. ”You have maltreated my brother. We missed you on the 31st of May 1793, we shall not miss you on the 31st of May 1794.” He left still threatening us.” A month later, July 11, Augustin appears at the jacobins and ”complains that the lowest flatteries are used to create division between patriots: they went so far as to tell him that he was better than his brother: “But in vain,” he cries, ”would anyone want to separate me from him: as long as he is the proclaimer of morality and the terror of scoundrels, I aspire to no other glory than to share the same tomb as him!” 

According to Guffroy’s Les Secretes de Joseph Lebon, Augustin, like his sister, also set out to help the six ”persecuted patriots” from Arras. Guffroy writes that he, following Augustin’s return to Paris in June, wrote a letter to him explaining the affair. Augustin, who ”soon seemed to want to seriously help and serve them” showed the letter to his brother and later also succeeded in organizing a few meetings between Danten, Demeulier, Leblond and Maximilien. Guffroy claims to have been present at one of the meetings where it was just Augustin and the ”patriots.” Augustin would then have reproached him for ”having sought to harm his brother” with a note in his journal where he’d written he had more humanity and sensitivity than Maximilien since he was a husband and father and Maximilien was not. Finally, on July 22 or 23, Augustin brought Leblond and another one of the ”patriots” to the room of his brother, who starts a discussion with them. But Augustin soon makes the conversation revolve around other things than Arras, encouraging Leblond to ”tell my brother what it is you know about Carnot, against whom Duquesnoy has said that he’s going to bring papers and proofs on fifteen facts capable of guillotining Carnot fifteen times.” When Leblond instead starts talking about the despotism of said Duquesnoy as well as that of his brother, Maximilien gets mad and tells Augustin: ”Let’s go!” The two leave, but in the middle of the stairs Augustin turns around and tells Leblond: ”Damn beast, we should only talk about Carnot; why talk about the two Duquesnoys? My brother and the Committee of Public Safety have the biggest confidence in them… You’re lucky to be free… Duquesnoy!”

Finally, on July 27 1794, Augustin made good on his promise to share the same tomb as Maximilien from sixteen days earlier, when he with the following words asked to be included on the arrest warrant just issued against his brother by the Convention:

I am as guilty as my brother: I share his virtues; I want to share his fate. I demand an act of accusation against me also. 

The two brothers, alongside Saint-Just, Couthon and Lebas, were declared under arrest by the Convention around 1:30 PM. Around 5 PM they were taken to the Committee of General Security and served dinner, before getting seperated and taken to different prisons between 6:30 and 7 PM. Shortly before midnight they had however been reunited at the Hôtel de Ville, Augustin writing and Maximilien and Saint-Just putting their signatures on a letter urging Couthon to join them as well. Not long after midnight the building was stormed, and two o’clock in the morning a severely injured Augustin was carried into the civil committee of the section of l’Hôtel de Ville. According to the medical report, the patient managed to state the following before the pain became too much:

Proceeding to learning of the causes of the accident, the patient told us his name was [Augustin] Robespierre; that he voluntarily threw himself from one of the windows of Hôtel de Ville, to escape from the hands of the conspirators, because, having been put under a decree of accusation, he believed his death inevitable; that he never stopped doing his duty well at the Convention, like his brother; that no one can reproach him for anything; that he regards Panis as a conspirator, because he once came over to him and declared that Collot d’Herbois does not desire the good of his country in order to deceive him; Carnot appears to him to be one of the conspirators, who wants to surrender his country... 

The two brothers were eventually taken to the Conciergerie prison, before they six o'clock in the evening got driven to the scaffold. According to number 675 of Suite de journal de Perlet, released two days after the execution, Augustin was the second first to be guillotined, Maximilien the second to last. 

In her memoirs, Charlotte recalled how she on July 28 had tried to visit her brothers in the Conciergerie prison but been refused, shortly after which she too found herself arrested:

On 10 Thermidor, I ran through the streets, my mind troubled and despair in my heart; I called out, I sought my brothers. I learned that they had been taken to the Conciergerie. I ran there, I asked to see them, I asked with hands joined; I begged on my knees before the soldiers; they repulsed me, laughed at my tears, insulted me, struck me. A few persons, moved to pity, led me away. I had lost my reason. I did not know what was happening, what became of me; or rather I learned it several days later; when I returned to myself I was in prison.

How much truth there is to this account can be questioned. If there is no way to know for sure if Charlotte had attempted to see her brothers in prison, she on the other hand doesn’t appear to have ”lost her reason” more than necessary for her to take on her mother’s maiden name Carraut and for her and her hostess to leave their lodging and take cover at the house of one citiziness Béguin on rue du Four, section du Contrat Social n. 482. There, on 31 July, they were arrested alongside several other women. 

Brought before her interrogators the very same day (see this post), ”citiziness Carraut” admitted that she was ”Marie-Marguerite-Charlotte Robespierre, 28 [sic] years old, living on her income, residing with citiziness Laporte, rue de la Réunion n. 200, and this since about a month back.” When asked why she wasn’t residing with the Duplay family like her brother she responded that she had left since her brothers and Madame Duplay had asked her to, and that the latter also had ”reproached her for seeing counter-revolutionaries, among which was Guffroy, representative of the people.” As for her older brother, he ”resented her because she had the courage of letting him know the danger he ran by being sourrunded so badly,” his host family having taken on the quest to lose him. Asked about the fact her hostess’ husband was a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Charlotte responsed that she was unaware of it, but that ”she had known that, in the public spirit, her older brother passed for having appointed [people to] the Revolutionary Tribunal, of which she had almost been the victim.”

Finally, Charlotte was invited ”to declare if she had been aware of the infamous conspiracy that her older brother had been hatching and if she knew which were the men who frequently visited him.” Her answer was clear:

She responded that she loved her country so much that she had the courage to lament this diabolical conspiracy, that every time she had met him she had found the occasion to tell him that the men around him were trying to deceive him, that if she had suspected the infamous plot that was being hatched, she would have denounced it rather than seeing her country lost.

Charlotte ended the interrogation with implicating a man named Didier, who for a period of time served as secretary to her older brother, and who through that position had been appointed juror to the Revolutionary Tribunal.

At least three of the other women Charlotte had been arrested alongside of were they too interrogated on July 31, all three linking arms in insisting on the vulnerable position Charlotte had found herself in. Citiziness Béguin, Charlotte’s hostess at the time of her arrest, claimed that François Topino-Lebrun, juror at the Revolutionary Tribunal, had told a friend of hers to stop seeing Charlotte, ”given that Le Brun knew that all those who came to see citiziness Robespierre would be guillotined.” Like Charlotte, she claimed to know nothing about the conspiracy the two brothers were said to be involved in, ”she had however heard it said that if Robespierre came out victorious they would all be lost.” Citizinesses Girard and Canone did in their interrogation similarly reply that ”they did not know the people who habitually associated with the infamous Robespierre, that they had never seen him, that they only knew their unfortunate sister,” and that the reason they were arrested at citiziness Béguin’s house was because they had gone over there ”to congratulate [Charlotte] on the happiness she was currently enjoying when she was finally free from the infamous tyrants Robespierre who had never had another purpose but to sacrifice their sister.”

In her memoirs, Charlotte claims she remained imprisoned for a fortnight and got set free after her cellmate (a for her unknown woman) convinced her to sign a document, the content of which she didn’t read. No such document have however been found, and it might be suspected this is another attempt by Charlotte to portray herself as more loyal to her brothers than she really was… On the other hand, it seems like it would go against her goal to make her imprisonment shorter than it actually was, so that she only spent two weeks in jail is something I’m more inclined to believe. That would make Charlotte the one out of all of the women imprisoned for being related to a revolutionary I’ve been able to track so far that got out of prison by far the fastest. We might imagine she had her fallout with her brothers, as well as having contacts in the right places, much to thank for that…

Following Charlotte’s release from prison, we know through a letter dated November 18 1794 from her to her uncle that she stayed in touch with Antoine Buissart, who for his part already a few days after thermidor had hurried to abandon and denounce Maximilien and Augustin. Charlotte also appears to have kept contacts with Guffroy, whom the pamphlet Conjuration formée dès le 5 préréal [sic] par neuf représentans du peuple contre Maximilien Robespierre, pour le poignarder en plein sénat released shortly after Thermidor designated as one of nine deputies who since May 24 1794 had been planning on stabbing Maximilien to death in the middle of the Convention. This can be seen through an undated memorandum to the Committee of General Security where Guffroy can reveal that Charlotte’s health has deteriorated due to her many sorrows, that said sorrow is keeping her from making lace which she could use to make a living, that she owns nothing aside from her clothes, that her uncle has sent her some help, and that she at the moment is staying with ”one of our mutual friends.” He adds that he is ”well aware of the ingratitude and injustice of her brothers towards her, while she did everything for them in the just belief that they would not abandon her,” and ends by suggesting that the nation should ”offer her help so that she can procure furniture and a pension capable of sustaining her in the state of infirmity and languor to which grief has reduced her.” A while later, April 13 1795, we find a Committee of General Security decree signed by Guffroy and other enemies of the two brothers, proclaiming that ”wherever citoyenne Robespierre wishes to travel and retire, she deserves the confidence of good citizens and the protection of the constituted authorities, who are invited to lend her the aid and assistance that the purest and most civil good citizenship deserves and French loyalty must grant.”

The background to this is a letter dated March 14 1795 Charlotte wrote to the Committee of General Security to help her host Guislain Mathon who had come under suspicion. This is all she has to say about her dead brothers in it:

…One has assured me that citizen Mathon, commissioner of transports, has been denounced as having been a friend of my brothers, and I have no doubt that, whatever the pretext of this denunciation, I am the real cause of it for having accepted an asylum at his house since a few months back. […] I will not undertake the apology of Citizen Mathon. I will only tell you that, forced to leave my brothers, unjustly irritated against me, he had the courage to offer me an asylum with him in spite of their protests. He did not incite me into accepting it. I went to live with him when my misfortunes became greater and made me too burdensome to those who had first taken me in. 

This is the last conserved written material we have from Charlotte for over 30 years. When we find the next piece, her testament dated February 6 1828, her image of her brothers has however drastically improved, and she affirms that she has always recognized Maximilien as ”a man full of virtue” and wants to ”protest against all the letters contrary to his honor which have been attributed to me.” The story of how Charlotte following this moment reinvents herself into, as her friend Albert Laponneraye puts it in her funeral speech, ”[a woman who] shared [Maximilien’s] principles and his feelings, and had, like him, waged a fight to the death against the aristocracy,” might however be a topic for another day.

[quercusfloreal]

Published in France on February 15, 2024

[citizen-card]

president should’ve let them fight it out.

[ic-napology]

And Caulaincourt is that friend who wouldn't give a sh*t about reenactments but always supports you anyway

Seeing hot people in period dress at the reenactment like

[enlitment]

Too 5 Lucile Moments?

Thanks for the ask! It won't be easy to narrow it down to five, seeing how Lucile is my favourite frev lady.

First things first - my eternal thanks to @anotherhumaninthisworld for compiling so many amazing resources on Lucile! Also, be warned, this will get sad.

1. Lucile trying to appeal to Robespierre after her husband's arrest

I'm specifically talking about the letter in which she tries to appeal to Robespierre after her husband's arrest. You can tell she does not hold back, desperately trying to appeal to her husband's former friend's emotions ("Do you believe that the people will bless one who cares neither for the tears of the widow nor for the death of the orphan?") and even tries to use Saint-Just as a sort of rhetorical device to further her argument. But alas, it does not work.

Then there's of course the whole supposed Luxembourg Plot, which I still need to read more on so I can get a sense of what might or might not have happened. But one thing is clear to me: she did not sit idly after The Indulgents arrest.

2. Lucile becoming friends with Françoise Hébert before their execution

Apparently, the two struck an unlikely friendship while awaiting the guillotine. They are even reported to have hugged before the execution. (Sorry, I told you, this will get sad!)

(Read more about it here!)

3. Lucile standing up for Camille and his work

There's an anecdote that Brune, one of Camille's old college friends, warned him (quite reasonably honestly) about the risks he's likely to run into if he continues to write so openly in his newspaper.

To this, Lucile is said to have replied: “Let him do it, Brune, let him do it, he must save his country; let him fulfill his mission.” (& then poured them some chocolate).

(Read more about it here, including the assessment of the sources!)

4. Lucile's super secret teenage diary

The whole thing honestly! Lucile's angst, her questioning her role in the world, thinking about what it means to be a woman, a human being -- definitely worth a read. Again, thanks so much to @anotherhumaninthisworld for taking her time to translate it.

Some of my favourite parts include:

Her suffering from writer's block: I want to finish my story, I cannot finish it! I take up the pen, I want to write, but nothing comes…

Her writing down her strange dreams (this will most likely be relatable for anyone who's ever kept a diary)

Her philosophical musings: See, my mind is wandering. Do I know what I am?… My God, I don’t know myself. What spring makes me act? 

Her being worried that her mum will find (and read) her diary, which most likely already included some mentions of her fascination with Camille: Maman made me tremble last night: she came to fetch the inkwell, I was in bed, she opened my drawer to take a pen, I was afraid she would take my notebook…

Her secretly carving out Camille's name into a tree

5. Lucile and Camille briefly leaving Paris and enjoying some rest in the countryside

In 1793, the couple briefly visited Essonne and spent some time there. Some of the activities apparently included driving a boat (with Lucile noting her husband's less-than-perfect boating skills) and riding donkeys.

Taken from & more details included here!

(-> according to Google, you can picture the landscape looking a little something like this)

Bonus: Camille falling asleep on Lucile's shoulder during the night some time during the August 1792 Insurrection

Again, from Lucile's diary, as she was waiting for her husband to return from the fighting in the streets of Paris:

Alone, bathed in tears, on my knees by the window, hidden in my handkerchief, I listened to the sound of that fatal bell. In vain they came to console me, this fatal night seemed to me to be the last! 

and then:

C(amille) came back at 1 o’clock, he fell asleep on my shoulder. 

[theorahsart]

hello hello i was wondering if you have any pet peeves regarding frev or art stuff people do that put you off?

Interesting question 👀

Well with Frev, nothing in the community esp annoys me that much- I think I'm just so damn delighted to have found ppl who are into a niche thing as much as me! And everyone I talk to often is so nice and we ttly get each other, I got no complaints 💖

With Frev on a wider scale though, my pet peeve are these very patronising comments I get from non-frev enthusiasts mostly on IG. They always follow a pattern of being a (generally myth-based or reductive) critique of Robespierre, in the form of a question. Smth like 'wasnt that guy a dictator?' And then when I answer these questions, normally trying to debunk etc. Without fail each time, the commenter will reply to me with random facts, really emphasising the dates and names. It always comes across as if they're testing me (esp when these facts are put in the form of a question), or trying to prove they know more than me. And I have a feeling that if I was a cis-man, with a less cutey art-style, I wouldn't get responses like that.

With art related things, the kind of behaviour I dislike is generally more related to work, because it's my full time job, so these things pre-occupy me the most...

-The consistent dismissal from western publishers/editors, of various techniques and styles that are influenced by manga: Big expressions, rhythmic pacing, expressive hand drawn speech bubbles. These are just some of *many* examples that are sharing the 'feelings/emotions first' approach that manga has. This approach is what I love about comics. This approach is what has made manga the leading comic market all over the world.

Editors for whatever reason, really dislike this approach lol

If its feelings-first, they are quick to either designate you as a childrens-artist only, or will do their best to make you remove every technique that heightens emotions too much. So you'll notice most manga-influenced western comics remain in the middle grade, sometimes YA genres at bookshops. But pls listen editors, people *love* this kinda stuff! Manga sells more than western comics. Webtoons are huge, and follow these techniques generally. You will have so many best sellers on your hands, if only you'd stop with this very Western fear of feelings and push those stories a little further!

-The only other art thing that rly puts me off is like, heirarchy behaviour lol Art is hard enough without bringing all of that kinda stuff into it.

I'm a community-over-being the best kinda person. And some people do get very competitive, in the art/small press world. Such ppl will rapidly change their behaviour towards others depending on what they think they can get out of a relationship. Some people take sides in arguments based purely on popularity, or amp up their enthusiasm towards someone they think is gonna get them a good review/ a place at a comic con, or who is presently the most popular artist etc etc. Someone who was once really friendly with you will suddenly ignore you, for various reasons.

In my experience, someone ttly changed their relationship with me once *I got a book deal*, so for them it wasnt about being around the most popular people, but in fact, I think they needed to be around someone who wasn't as successful as them. Since they like completely ghosted me after a fairly close friendship, I'll never know for sure. I only came to that conclusion because more than one person had been through a similar experience and that was why. So thats a thing that happens....It's complex, and emotionally draining.

Anyway, I dont like it when ppl build relationships or a community around these factors- I prefer when ppl are upfront/honest and simply either like or dislike your work in an upfront and honest way, if that makes sense 😅

[usergreenpixel]

JACOBIN FICTION CONVENTION MEETING 37: CHÉVALIER (2022)

1. The Introduction

Well, hello there, Citizens! I’m back and I hope you missed me! Sorry for the multiple delays and all, but luckily I’m back at it now!!!

Okay, so this movie has been on my radar ever since it got announced. A story featuring a real Black man who lived during Frev? Sign me up! This has excellent potential and also, to my knowledge, at least a partially Black crew so we get more representation of marginalized groups in crews and on the screen!

At least, those were my thoughts before I actually watched the movie, but we’ll get to whether it was a good media piece later.

I found the movie on Russian language streaming websites, but it’s available on Amazon Prime and Disney Plus for those who would like to watch the original English version.

This review is dedicated to @idieonthishill , @vivelareine (who has a review that unpacks the movie from a historical pov and is welcome to add to the review 😊), @theravenclawrevolutionary , @sansculottides , @citizentaleo , @saintjustitude , @avergehistoryenjoyer , @lanterne and @jenxiez .

Okay, let the Jacobin Fiction Convention reopen!

2. The Summary

The movie tells a story of a real man, Joseph Bologne aka Chévalier de Saint-Georges. Recognized son of a white French nobleman and an enslaved black woman, Bologne must navigate the cutthroat world of the Parisian high society, dealing with racism and trying to reconcile his “white” upbringing with his African roots.

Sounds interesting, but let’s see how the premise was handled.

3. The Story

The Introduction scene - a musical duel between Mozart and Bologne, was actually quite good in my opinion. So were the other beginning scenes of kid Bologne growing up in France as an aristocrat and being bullied by his white peers, plus his father telling him not to let society break him.

These scenes establish quite well that Bologne has to carve out a place for himself among French nobility and make a lot of effort to get even a hint of acceptance. Sounds like a nice setup, right? Well, unfortunately at times Bologne in the movie doesn’t seem to have much agency at all.

For example, his title is granted to him by Marie-Antoinette basically on a whim, handed to him on a silver platter because the queen was impressed by his fencing skills, which in my opinion isn’t enough to show a character who has to work hard to be accepted. I think it would’ve been better if Bologne had at least several impressive fencing performances to prove himself and show more of his skills.

On the flip side, there are characters who have a bit too much agency. For example, in the story it’s Marie Antoinette who is calling all the shots and giving all the orders in France, even though Louis is alive and well. It’s definitely jarring to see how people say “by the order of the queen” when the king should be the one mentioned instead.

I didn’t care much for the love triangle storyline, but it’s my own personal preference and also the fact that it, like many parts of the story, isn’t all that nuanced. So yeah, very bland and boring.

Yes, Citizens, unfortunately nuance has officially left the chat, especially when it comes to the main character. See, at first Bologne doesn’t give a shit about poverty and famine plaguing France. He is enjoying his cushy life and his friendship with the queen of France instead. However, you know what makes him join the Jacobins? A fucking PERSONAL FALLING OUT WITH THE QUEEN. Not promises of abolishing slavery or granting rights to black people, not his own ideals… Just fucking pettiness!

It would have been much better if he didn’t have a falling out with Marie Antoinette and signed up for fighting with the Republicans because he genuinely wanted to do what was right, not due to personal beef. Especially since that was why he joined Frev in reality – the real Bologne made a choice to do the right thing simply because it seemed to be the right thing to him. Not out of petty desire to get back at the queen.

Also, the conflict between Bologne and his mother about how he is acting “too white”… eeeehh. To me it felt very anachronistic but maybe I’m wrong and there is more nuance missing because EVERYONE at court had to carry themselves in a certain way to make it. If you couldn’t do it, you were socially FUCKED. Besides, Nanon (the mother) and her friends crack really mean jokes about Bologne being “too white”, which is… well, an INTERESTING way to endear him to his mother’s culture…

The movie is juggling admittedly anachronistic theme about black culture, anti-slavery message, court drama and love triangles… and the juggling is done quite sloppily too, I’m afraid.

Also, just to illustrate how inaccurate this movie is, the events of 1789 are shown happening in 1776 for some reason, which shows just how much the creators didn’t give a shit about research.

Moving on.

4. The Characters

I really didn’t care for Bologne to be honest. He shows selfishness and pettiness, doesn’t have enough agency in the story and is also very inconsistent. After falling out with Marie Antoinette, he claims he defended her, which… he didn’t! At least it’s not shown in the movie! What the fuck happened to “show, don’t tell”?! Also, his incredible talents aren’t really shown in the way they could’ve been, more on that in the soundtrack section. A missed opportunity, really.

Nanon, Bologne’s mother, is a real embodiment of the themes of slavery and trauma present in the the movie. She merely exists to push him to embrace his African heritage and to remind him that he will never be truly accepted by other nobles. I honestly wish there was more to her character, because she ends up being little more than a walking theme embodiment.

Marie Antoinette here is a capricious, fair weather friend. She CLAIMS to support Bologne, but does it in indirect ways out of fear that nobles wouldn’t appreciate her openly backing a black man. Even though she is an absolute monarch so she can afford to show her support more openly. Actions speak louder than words, and she is clearly not a true ally of Bologne.

Marie Joséphe, Bologne’s love interest, is a woman trapped in a miserable marriage and yearning to act in Bologne’s operas. While I do sympathize with her, I believe that there really isn’t much depth to her either. We just don’t learn much about her. This is becoming a common theme…

Also, just as a side note while we’re talking about characters, many white characters in the movie are shown as mere flat caricatures. I can understand why, but, again, this doesn’t show nuance as in reality, while Bologne definitely had to deal with racism, he was not only accepted, but adored as a celebrity, but we don’t see that reflected in the attitudes of other people towards him. Because apparently the brains of the spectators will implode when they see nuance in a modern movie, it seems.

5. The Setting

Personally I wasn’t that impressed by the costumes or the settings. I’ve seen much better ones. Nothing bad, but nothing outstanding either.

6. The Soundtrack

Where the fuck is actual music from that time period?! Where is music by Bologne himself?! It’s a fucking missed opportunity and I don’t know what prevented the creators from including the music written by the MAIN DAMN CHARACTER into a biopic about him. A shame that they missed yet another opportunity.

7. The Conclusion

Honestly… I can’t say much when it comes to what this movie is fucking about. The story is bland, lacks nuance, doesn’t follow basic historical facts and is pulled in a million directions.

For a movie about an obscure figure, it doesn’t show much of the things Bologne was known for and at times even strips him of agency. We need to have better POC representation, because this is just not it.

The movie is mediocre, bland and forgettable. Don’t waste your time on it.

With that, I declare today’s meeting of the Jacobin Fiction Convention to be over. Thank you for your patience and support during this hiatus of mine.

Stay tuned and stay safe!

Love,

Citizen Green Pixel

[stalinistqueens]

I keep having this problem on mobile. I’m so sorry if it takes me a little bit longer than usual to reply/reblog things. ;-;

(if there’s a terrible friendship emergency, please boop me on discord.* my inbox/messages are still a mess while I’m going through the backlog of situational emergency stuff, and I know I must be missing a lot.)

*(wanting to talk about frev things and/or frilly dresses counts as a friendship emergency.)

anyway here is are apology kitty photos:

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Frev Friendships — Robespierre and Couthon 

…Moreover, don’t forget to remind me of the memory of Lacoste and Couthon. Robespierre in a letter to Maurice Duplay, October 16 1791, while away on a leave in Arras.Couthon, Lacoste and Pétion are the only of his friends that he mentions in the letter. Considering Couthon came to Paris after being elected for the Legislative Assembly on September 9 1791, while Robespierre was away from the capital between October 14 and November 28, the two must have befriended each other quite rapidly. In a letter dated September 29 1791, Couthon reveals that he has moved into the house of one M. Girot on Rue Saint-Honoré (the same street where Robespierre lodged), and according to Robespierre (1935) by J.M Thompson, the Almanach royal for 1792 gives Couthon’s address as 343 Rue Saint-Honoré. So the proximity between their lodgings might have been a contributing factor.

My friend, I anxiously await news of your (votre) health. Here, we are closing in on the greatest events. Yesterday the Assembly absolved La Fayette; the indignant people pursued some deputies at the end of the session. Today is the day indicated by a decree for the discussion of the forfeiture of Louis XVI. It is believed that this matter will be further delayed by some incident. However, the fermentation is at its height, and everything seems to presage for this very night the greatest commotion in Paris. We have arrived at the outcome of the constitutional drama. The Revolution will take a faster course, if it does not sink into military and dictatorial despotism. In the situation we are in, it is impossible for the friends of liberty to foresee and direct events. The destiny of France seems to leave it to intrigue and chance. What can reassure us is the strength of the public spirit in Paris and in many departments, it is the justice of our cause. The sections of Paris show an energy and wisdom worthy of serving as models for the rest of the state. We miss you. May you soon return to your homeland and we await with equal impatience your return and your recovery.  Robespierre in a letter to Couthon, August 9 1792 (incorrectly dated July 20 1792 in the correspondence)

I saw [Couthon] towards the last days of the Legislative Assembly; he appeared to me to be in a mood similar to mine; enemy of the anarchists and of the authors of the massacres of the first days of September, enemy of Marat and Robespierre; he constantly declaimed against them. Supplément aux crimes des anciens comités de gouvernement, avec l'histoire des conspirations du 10 mars, des 31 mai et 2 juin 1793, et de celles qui les ont précédées, et tableau de la conduite politique d'un représentant du peuple mis hors la loi (1794) by Jacques-Antoine Dulaure.

Couthon, whose infirmities give a new value to his patriotism… […] Lettres de Maximilien Robespierre à ses commettans, number 1 (September-October 1792)

During the first three months of the session of the National Convention, the members of the Puy-de-Dome deputation fraternized and dined together once a week. Couthon then never ceased to pour out invectives against Robespierre. Once I told him that I thought Robespierre an intriguer. ”So you call him an intriguer,” he answered me with vivacity, ”You are too nice, I regard him as a great scroundel.” I heard him, in the presence of several of my colleagues, one day when the deputation was summoned to his house, say: ”I no longer want to live in the same house as Robespierre, I am not safe there; every day we see a dozen cutthroats coming up to his house to whom he gives dinner. I do not know how he managed to meet these expenses before being elected to the Convention, while my allowances are barely enough for me to live with my family.” He often applauded the fact that the entire deputation professed the same principles, and that, consequently, we would always be united in heart and mind. This was Couthon's opinion at the time, and he held to it until the constitutional committee was formed. He had the ambition to be a member; he becomes furious at not being inclined to it. This was the time when Couthon changed his opinion, abandoned his conscience to indulge in his passions. Supplément aux crimes des anciens comités de gouvernement, avec l'histoire des conspirations du 10 mars, des 31 mai et 2 juin 1793, et de celles qui les ont précédées, et tableau de la conduite politique d'un représentant du peuple mis hors la loi (1794) by Jacques-Antoine Dulaure. Dulaure’s claim that Couthon for a time lived in the same house as Robespierre is confirmed by l’Almanach national, an II (cited in Paris révolutionnaire: Vieilles maisons, vieux papiers (1906) by Georges Lênotre) as well as by a letter dated October 4 1792 Couthon wrote to Roland from Rue Saint-Honoré n. 366 (Robespierre’s address) asking for rooms in the Tuileries, saying that he must move out of the house within eight days (Roland responded with a negative answer four days later). When exactly he moved in is however harder to pinpoint. According to Robespierre (1935) by J.M Thompson, the Almanach royal for 1792 still gives Couthon’s address as 343, not 366, rue St. Honoré, and in the article The Evolution of a Terrorist: Georges Auguste Couthon (1930) Geoffrey Bruun writes that Couthon moved to Cour de Manège 97 in 1792. It can therefore be concluded that Couthon’s stay on Rue Saint-Honoré n. 366 was most likely rather short. Couthon’s motivation for moving out, aside from Dulaure’s claim that he disliked Robespierre, could also be related to the fact Robespierre’s brother and sister moved in with the Duplays shortly after he wrote the letter to Roland.

The Lamenths and Pétion in the early days, quite rarely Legendre, Merlin de Thionville and Fouché, often Taschereau, Desmoulins and Teault, always Lebas, Saint-Just, David, Couthon and Buonarotti. The elderly Élisabeth Le Bas on visitors to the Duplays during the revolution

Robespierre notes this expression: “for fear that Couthon’s speech will not be heard.” Couthon will be heard, he said, and I maintain that the representative assembly has no right to stifle his voice any more than that of anyone else, because the Convention is not a power above the rights of its constituents who have invested every deputy with the sacred right to express their wish, and one could only obstruct this by an attack against liberty, and by trampling on national sovereignty. Robespierre takes this opportunity to recall the maneuvers of a large party of the Convention, to violate this sacred right that each member has to make his voice heard; and we see, he says, this game of intrigue played out every day with incredible modesty. In the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, which despite their perversity, at least knew how to respect the freedom of opinions, Couthon's patriotism, which his infirmities make more interesting, never served the most perverse men as a pretext to stifle his voice. Robespierre therefore invites us to come out strongly against this new system of villainy, and to never allow a deputy to ever be deprived of the ability to express his opinion. He ends by supporting the impression of Couthon's speech; it is put to the vote and adopted. Robespierre makes sure the Jacobins print one of Couthon’s speeches regarding the trial of the king, after protests that they ought to wait until it’s been pronounced at the Convention as well, January 6 1793

If you want, and it would be a crime to doubt it, to preserve the liberty, unity and indivisibility of the Republic, you cannot hesitate to adopt Couthon's proposal [to issue a proclamation that the Insurrection of May 31 saved liberty] at once. To begin a discussion on this question would be to allow the conspirators to come to this rostrum to make new declarations against Paris, with their ordinary perfidy. Robespierre at the Convention June 13 1793

The proposal [to have Robespierre enter the Committee of Public Safety] was made to the committee by Couthon and Saint-Just. To ask was to obtain, for a refusal would have been a sort of accusation, and it was necessary to avoid any split during that winter which was inaugurated in such a sinister manner. The committee agreed to his admission, and Robespierre was proposed. Memoirs Of Bertrand Barère (1896) volume 2, page 96-97. Couthon was elected to the Committee of Public Safety on June 10 1793, Robespierre on July 27 1793. In his memoirs, Barère pushes the thermidorian idea that the two plus Saint-Just formed a ”triumvirate” within the committee. On page 146 of the same volume he nevertheless also writes that Robespierre and Saint-Just rarely came to the committee, instead working together in a private office.

Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon were inseparable. The first two had a dark and duplicitous character; they pushed away with a kind of disdainful pride any familiarity or affectionate relationship with their colleagues. The third, a legless man with a pale appearance, affected good-nature, but was no less perfidious than the other two. All three of them had a cold heart, without pity, they interacted only with each other, holding mysterious meetings outside, having a large number of protégés and agents, impenetrable in their designs. Révélations sur le Comité de salut public (1830) by Prieur-Duvernois. Later in the revelations, Prieur nevertheless also writes that ”Couthon was never difficult on the Committee; there was no altercation until the day before 9 Thermidor, when the moment to throw away the mask had arrived.”

The National Convention, citizens colleagues, witnessed with pleasure your entry into Lyon. But its joy could not be complete when it saw that you at the first movements yielded to a sensibility way too unpolitical. You seemed to abandon themselves to a people who flatter the victors, and the manner in which you speak of such a large number of traitors, of the punishment of a very few and the departure of almost all, have alarmed the patriots who are indignant at seeing so many scoundrels escaping through a gap and going to Lozère and mainly Toulon. We therefore won’t congratulate you on your successes before you have fulfilled all that you owe to your country. Republics are demanding; there is national recognition only for those who fully deserve it. We send you the decree that the Convention issued this morning on the report of the Committee. It has proportioned the vigor of its measures to your first reports. It will never remain below what the Republic and liberty expect. Beware above all of the perfidious policy of the Muscadins and the hypocritical Federalists, who raise the standard of the Republic when it is ready to punish them, and who continue to conspire against it when the danger has passed. It was that of the Bordelais, of the Marseillais, of all the counter-revolutionaries of the South. This is the most dangerous stumbling block of our freedom. The first duty of the representatives of the people is to discover it and avoid it. We must unmask the traitors and strike them without pity. These principles alone, adopted by the National Convention, can save the country. These principals are also yours; follow them; listen only to your own energy, and carry out with inexorable severity the salutary decrees which we address to you.  Committee of Public Safety decree to the representatives in the newly entered Lyon, among them Couthon, written by Robespierre on October 12 1793. Couthon had left Paris for a mission to the army of the Alpes already on August 21 1793.

Send Bô. Montaut, recall the others, except Couthon and Maignet. Notebook note written by Robespierre sometime before October 19 1793, when a CPS decree tasked Bô with going to the army of Ardennes.

…Farewell, my friend, embrace Robespierre, Hérault and our other good friends for me. Couthon in a letter to Saint-Just, October 20 1793, while on mission in Lyon. Couthon was called back to Paris on November 23.

[Collot] has been strongly denounced for his conduct in Lyon, after the recapture of that city. But I was witness to the fact that he only accepted this mission with the greatest reluctance, and that Robespierre skillfully employed the strongest solicitations to persuade him to do so, alleging that he alone was capable of combining justice with the necessary firmness, that Couthon had become moved on the scene and cried like a woman; finally a host of reasons to highlight the importance of exemplary punishment against the rebels of this unfortunate city. Révélations sur le Comité de salut public (1830) by Prieur-Duvernois. While Prieur’s testimomy is written long after the fact and therefore deserves to get treated with some caution, the claims he makes here are to an extent collaborated by a letter from Collot to Robespierre dated November 23 1793, where he claims it was ”on your (ton) invitation” he went to Lyon.

Couthon proposes that the Society take care of "drafting the indictment of all kings", and that it for this purpose appoints commissioners responsible for collecting the particular crimes of tyrants. This proposal, warmly applauded, is adopted. On Momoro's motion, the Society appoints Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, Couthon, Collot d'Herbois and Lavicomterie as commissioners. Jacobin club, January 21 1794

…Yesterday, Robespierre held a very eloquent speech on our political situation. As soon as this speech has been printed, I will send it to you, it deserves to get read. Couthon in a letter dated February 6 1794, regarding Robespierre’s speech On Political Morality, held the day before.

Couthon and Robespierre enter the hall; all the members and citizens in the tribunes demonstrate through their applause the satisfaction of seeing these two patriots again.  Journal de la Montagne describing a triumphant entrance to the Jacobin club made by Couthon and Robespierre on March 13 1794, after both had been ill for a few weeks.

“In the absence of my brother,” said Mlle Robespierre to Gaillard, would you like to try to see Couthon? He prides himself on being good for me, I will ask him to receive you, he will not refuse me, I will precede you by a quarter of an hour, he will give the order to let you in and we will exit together.” Gaillard gratefully accepts, takes the address of Couthon who lived at n. 97 of the Cour du Manège, today rue de Rivoli, near rue du 29 Juilliet, and the next morning arrives at the indicated time. Couthon, whose face was truly angelic, wore a white dressing gown. A child of five or six years old, beautiful as Love, was between his father's legs; he had a young white rabbit in his arms which he was feeding alfalfa. Mme Couthon and Mlle Robespierre stood in the embrasure of a window overlooking the Tuileries.

“You are,” said Couthon to Gaillard, a friend of Mlle Robespierre, you therefore have every kind of right to my interest, tell me, citizen, how can I be of use to you?” [Gaillard then goes on to explain his errand to Couthon] “Citizen,” continues Gaillard, with great emotion, you are convinced that the signatures of these addresses have not committed a crime, you are all-powerful in the Committee of Public Safety where your opinion always prevails. Today, seventy unfortunate people are being led to the scaffold, their condemnation based on nothing other than the signing of these addresses…”

Couthon's face changed, he suddenly takes on the tiger's mask, makes a movement to grab the bell pull... Mlle Robespierre rushes at him to stop him (he was paralyzed from the legs down), turns towards Gaillard and says to him: “Save yourself!” In the confusion into which all this throws him, Gaillard takes Couthon's hat, she notices it, warns him, he runs across the apartment and reaches the stairs. He had barely gone down eight or ten steps when he heard Mlle Robespierre shouting to him: “Go and wait for me at the Orangerie.” […] [Gaillard] has barely gone down into the courtyard of the Orangerie when he goes back up onto the terrace, looking anxiously to see if his good angel was arriving. As soon as he sees her, he runs towards her, loudly asking her five or six questions at the same time without paying attention to the crowd around them. Mlle Robespierre, calmer, tells him in a low voice that she will answer him when they have reached the Place de la Révolution.

“Explain to me, please,” said Gaillard to Mlle Robespierre as soon as they were offshore, ”your haste to tell me to take flight flee and why you held back Couthon in his chair?”

“You were fooled, my dear monsieur, by the profound hypocrisy of Couthon, I was completely fooled myself; I believed your judges saved and you forever at peace like all the signatories of these addresses to Louis XVI... Couthon only showed himself to be so good-natured in order to get to know the depths of your thoughts, you fell into his trap, I could not have avoided it more than you. Your bloody and so justly deserved reproach regarding the 63 victims of today struck in the hearth, my presence, even my confidence could not have stopped his vengeance. The members of the Committee of Public Safety each have five or six men at home who are resolute at their command, because they are constantly trembling. Had he reached the bell pull, this very afternoon you would have been placed in the tumbril alongside the 63 unfortunate people you wanted to save... Fortunately, I succeeded in making him ashamed of the crime he was going to commit by immolating a friend that I had brought to his house... Will he keep his word to me? I followed your conversation very attentively, you did not say a word from which Couthon could conclude that you do not live in Paris... Return home quickly, do not follow the ordinary route out of fear that, remembering the name of the city where your judges were to sit, he sends for men to follow you on the road to Melun.”  La Révolution, la Terreur, le Directoire 1791-1799: d’après les mémoires de Gaillard (1908) page 268-273. Anecdote described as taking place in May 1794. Evidence Couthon had contacts with not only Robespierre, but his sister as well. If the dynamics between the three changed after this incident is however something the anecdote leaves unknown…

Is it not known to all citizens since the sessions of 12 and 13 Fructidor, that the decree of 22 Prairial was the secret work of Robespierre and Couthon, that it never, in defiance of all customs and all rights, was discussed or communicated to the Committee of Public Safety? No, such a draft would never have been passed by the committee had it been brought before it. […] At the morning session of 22 floréal [sic, it clearly means prairial], Billaud-Varennes openly accused Robespierre, as soon as he entered the committee, and reproached him and Couthon for alone having brought to the Convention the abominable decree which frightened the patriots. It is contrary, he said, to all the principles and to the constant progress of the committee to present a draft of a decree without first communicating it to the committee. Robespierre replied coldly that, having trusted each other up to this point in the committee, he had thought he could act alone with Couthon. The members of the committee replied that we have never acted in isolation, especially for serious matters, and that this decree was too important to be passed in this way without the will of the committee. The day when a member of the committee, adds Billaud, allows himself to present a decree to the Convention alone, there is no longer any freedom, but the will of a single person to propose legislation.  Réponse des membres des deux anciens comités de salut public et de sûreté générale… (1795) by Bertrand Barère, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d’Herbois and Alexis Vadier. It is unclear if Robespierre and Couthon really were alone in having drafted and/or supported the Law of 22 Prairial. The idea that they were was also lifted by Prieur-Duvernois in his Révélations sur le Comité de salut public (he claims Saint-Just was also in on it), Fouquier-Tinville in his Requisitoires de Fouquier-Tinville (he claims that, in the days the law was being worked out, Billaud-Varenne, Collot d'Herbois, Barère, Carnot and Prieur told him it was Robespierre who had been charged with the project) and Laurent Lecointre in Robespierre peint par lui-même et condamné par ses propres principes (1794) (he claims Robespierre wrote the law and confided only Couthon with it). If all these sources are to be treated with caution given their authors and the time they were written, it can nevertheless be established that Couthon and Robespierre (the first one in particular) are the only ones where any direct involvement in the development of the law can be traced, and that they did fight side by side (and harder than any other committee member) against the Convention to get it passed on both June 10 and June 12.  I’ve written about this more in detail in this post.

Couthon: All patriots are brothers and friends, as for me, I want to share the daggers directed against Robespierre (here the entire hall rises with cries of: Me too!) […] Couthon at the jacobins July 11 1794

Couthon, all the patriots are proscribed, the entire people have risen up; It would be a betrayal not to join us to the Commune, where we are now. Signed: Robespierre the older, Robespierre the younger, Saint-Just. Letter urging Couthon to come to Hôtel de Ville. According to Hervé Leuwers’ Robespierre(2014) this letter is in Augustin Robespierre’s hand. According to 9-thermidor.com Robespierre and Couthon, alongside Augustin, Saint-Just, Le Bas were all declared under arrest by the Convention around 1:30 PM. Around 5 PM they were taken to the Committee of General Security and served dinner, before getting seperated and taken to different prisons between 6:30 and 7 PM. Couthon was the last to reunite with his friends at Hôtel de Ville at around 1 AM, less than an hour before the building was stormed.

The two Robespierres were [in the meeting room], one next to President Lescot-Fleuriot and the other next to Payan, national agent. Couthon was carried into the room a moment later; and what is noteworthy is that he was still followed by his gendarme. On arriving he was embraced by Robespierre, etc. and they passed into the next room, which I entered. The first word I heard from Couthon was: “We must write to the armies immediately”. Robespierre said: “In whose name?” Couthon replied: “But in the name of the Convention; is it not still where we are? The rest are only a handful of factions that the armed force we have will dissipate, and of whom it will bring justice.” Here Robespierre the elder seemed to think a little; he bent down to his brother's ear; then he said: “My opinion is that we write in the name of the French people.” He also, at that moment, took the hand of the gendarme who entered with Couthon and said to him: “Brave gendarme, I have always admired and esteemed your body; always be faithful to us; go to the door and ensure that you continue to embitter the people against the rebels.” Letter from H. G. Dulac to Courtois, July 25 1795, regarding the night at the Hôtel de Ville on 9 thermidor. 

As soon as Couthon entered [Hôtel de Ville], three or four members led him away, and two or three presented him with papers and ink. Robespierre and Couthon said: ”We cannot write to our armies in the name of the Convention or of the Commune, given that this would be stopped, but rather in the name of the French people, that would work much better,” and, instantly, Couthon began to write on his knees saying: ”The traitors will perish, there are still humans in France and virtue will triumph.” Robespierre took the hand of gendarme Muron and said to them both: “Go down to the square immediately and energize the people!” Testimony of gendarmes Muron and Javois, who escorted Couthon to Hôtel de Ville. Cited in Autour de Robespierre… (1925) by Albert Mathiez, page 224-225. The Hôtel de Ville was stormed somewhere before 2 AM. At 5 AM, the injured Couthon was brought to l’hospice d’humanité (Hôtel-Dieu de Paris), before joining Robespierre at the Committee of Public Safety. At 11 AM the two plus Gobeau were escorted to the Conciergerie prison and locked up in individual cells. According to number 675 of Suite de journal de Perlet, released two days after the execution, Robespierre and Couthon sat in different tumbrils when they around 6 PM got driven to the scaffold. Couthon was executed first, Robespierre second to last. 

—

Throughout his first year as a deputy, Couthon appears to have been closer to the ”girondins” than the ”montagnards.” In a letter dated January 3 1792 he calls Brissot and Condorcet ”two distinguished patriots with superior talent” apropos of their recent works calling for war. On January 19 1792 he expresses his own support of France going to war in another letter, and on April 20 1792 he was among the deputies that voted in favor of war with Austria (only seven did however vote no). In a letter dated September 1 1792 Couthon calls the Insurrectionary commune to which Robespierre belonged (and, according to some, dominated) ”[a] municipality led by a few dangerous men [that] seems to ignore decrees, and believes itself above the first power,” expressing his hopes that ”this distressing confusion will soon end and that the Municipality of Paris will cease to consider itself the Municipality of the whole Empire.” A week later, September 8 1792, he reports that ”the functions of the ardent chamber of the people have been broken since the evening before last, due to the care of the brave and virtuous Pétion.” In the letter to Roland dated October 4 1792 previously mentioned, Couthon still calls him “brave and estimable minister.” But just a week after said letter had gotten penned down, October 12, he more or less broke with the girondins, when he at the Jacobins said they were a group composed ”of gentlemen, subtle and intriguing, and above all ambitious” that ”wish a republic because popular opinion has demanded it, but they wish it aristocratic, they wish to maintain their control, and to have at their disposal the offices, the emoluments, and especially the finances of the state,” and ending by calling for all energies to be turned against ”this faction, which desires liberty only for itself.” (Bruun speculates this was due to him not having gained a place on the Committee of Constitution within the girondin dominated Convention the day earlier). This move surprised Madame Roland, who in a letter dated October 14 urged Bancal to ”go and see Couthon and reason with him; it is incredible that such a good mind allowed himself to speak out in a strange way against the best citizens.”

Throughout their time on the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre and Couthon often rose up together at the Convention and the Jacobin club to speak for or against certain subjects. Besides the law of 22 prairial, the two also joined sides against petitioners talking with their hats on (December 20 1793), against Dufourny (March 18 1794), the establishment of a police bureau (April 16, April 18 1794). They helped contribute to the expulsion of both Rousselin (May 25) and Dubois-Crancé (July 11) from the Jacobins, and joined hands in speaking for arresting ”any individual that dares to insult the Convention” (July 24 1794). It was Couthon who asked for the printing of both Robespierre’s On Political Morality Speech on February 5 1794 as well as for his report on Religious and Moral Ideas on May 7 1794. As for Robespierre’s final speech on July 26 1794, Couthon proposed and got through ”that it be distributed throughout all of the Republic.” At the jacobins later the same day he proposed the immediate exclusion of all those who had voted against the printing of the speech, and once again he had his way.

On July 3 1794 we find a CPS decree signed by Collot, Carnot, Saint-Just, Barère, Billaud and C-A Prieur ordering Couthon to go to the army of the Midi, an order that he never followed through with. This could be interpreted as Couthon understanding Robespierre’s enemies were plotting againt him by trying to send him away, but choosing to stay at his side and share his fate.

[oiphity]

i was reading choosing terror and um.

hello??????? why did brissot do this to himself at least six fucking times???

opening the confessions is akin to dumping several tons of sewage directly into your brain. it’s like wading through a river of shit, looking for less shitty shit but finding shit all the same.

i feel as though i am passing on a curse to myself whenever i even hold that unholy tome. how the fuck did he tolerate it that many times

[citizen-card]

Controversial frev opinion: I truly don't get, nor understand the appeal of "saintspierre", especially considering that it seems like it mostly comes from those terrible movies like Danton 1983 and LRF, where their relationship is presented as abusive and manipulative. So imho shipping them, using gifs and pics from those movies as material only endorses a twisted view of what was at most a genuine friendship, to which there's no proof it was anything more than that. (I don't think Saint-Just "died for Robespierre", at most he did it for the ideas that Robespierre embodied, ideas that Saint-Just knew that they would have never been put into practice if the Incorruptible had gone)

now THIS is a hot take

[werewolfetone]

[impetuous-impulse]

The Napoleonic era in fiction could make a series that goes on forever with all the interesting lives those historical figures led. Look, TV companies! Unlimited revenue!!!

Hijacking this post (by the way, it's lovely to see your enthusiasm for Davout!!!) with some scenes I'd love to see off the top of my head, at least for the hypothetical two seasons:

Interactions between Napoleon and Augustin Robespierre aka. Bonbon, and how that related to Naps' political trajectory

Napoleon arriving to the HQ of the Army of Italy and meeting Augereau, Masséna, and Sérurier for the first time; Augereau later confiding to Masséna that Naps frightened him (if that was Real History at all)

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas should at the very least be featured in Italy, if not deserving of a few episodes of his own or a mini-series himself. To remain relevant to Naps, Dumas' clashes with Naps and Berthier could be highlighted. Would be interesting to examine the Chevalier de Saint-George in early FRev as well.

Was going to say what about all the other armies of France?!?!?!?!?! but then I realised this was a Napoleon-centric TV series...

On future important figures: If working in a larger FRev-Napoleon scope, I would absolutely love to see episodes centred on the Nord and the Sambre et Meuse armies in their various configurations, because they were the ones slogging it out and winning accolades in early FRev while Naps was trying to establish himself via the Siege of Toulon. Later generals and marshals that there included Mortier, Macdonald, Murat (for a bit!) Oudinot, Lefebvre, Saint-Cyr, Bernadotte, Ney, Soult, Moreau, Desaix, etc.

Jourdan as commander of the Nord and the Sambre et Meuse!!!! Maybe he wasn't all-important but his successes perhaps helped secure some measure of French public confidence in the military? Would love to see him dodging disgrace and executions, coordinating the representatives and helping shape the army, and having Kleber as a reliable second in command after the latter is transferred from the Vendée. I'd like to see how he negotiates the Council of Five Hundred (possibly meeting Joseph Bonaparte?) and his reaction to Brumaire as well. -> Other relationships in the same time-space: budding trust and friendship between Bernadotte and Ney, camaraderie and rivalry between Desaix and Saint-Cyr (!!!) as they advance up the ranks (which throws Saint-Cyr's later loneliness into sharp relief). They have a whole subplot going on in my head. -> Scenes from Bernadotte's career as Minister of War, his involvement (or lack thereof) in Brumaire.

Fouché doing... *see Lyon*, the Thermadorian reaction, Barras in the Directory, Naps forming his Triumvirate with Cambacérès and Sieyès.

The Tumblr's own Napoleon movie

Okay, I don't usually post but at this point I'm so disappointed about Ridley Scott's Napoleon that I certainly think, the napoleonic fandom on Tumblr could make a historically more accurate film about the era. Who knows more about our beloved&hated historical figures or who is a bigger chaotic genius than the people of Tumblr? We should make our own movie as a protest. I mean, this was meant as a joke but seriously we should do it one day. Whether it's a historical drama, a comedy or even a musical - I think, even online, separately we could make a bigger blockbuster than that merde-dans-un-bas-de-soie. If there was a Napoleon 2002 (not the best one either), there should be a Napoleon 2023, too. I mean, a second one.

[enlitment]

Lucile, Simonne and Charlotte’s bags?

Thank you for the ask and sorry for taking forever to answer!

What's in their Bag: Frev Ladies Edition - I.

Her diary of course! Can't leave it lying around and let any sneaky family members read it

How to Win Friends and Influence People: Revolution Edition - okay, this may not make a ton of sense but I've always been impressed how she always tried to appeal to people (e. g. letter to Robespierre...) or how she managed to make friends in the unlikeliest places (see: her starting a friendship with Hébert's widow)

Box of Matches - in case she runs into Marie Antoinette. If you know you know.

[theorahsart]

I’ve been happily dragged into the French Revolution, do you have any recommendations on where to start learning about this??? My brain doesn’t hold French names very well so I literally only know Robespierre and the dude that got killed in the bath

OH NO my enthusiasm has caught on, welcome to the insane drama that is French Revolution 😆

So if you're able to listen to podcasts, I feel like Grey History is a good place to start because it paints a really good picture of the situation, culture and feelings of the public leading up to the revolution.

It then delves in a straightforward timeline into the various events during the revolution and gives all the different points of view from each side (there's so many different 'sides' it's a lot like modern day politics where everyone is quite divided in their motivations).

So I feel like it's a good starting point before going into the many books, that in contrast tend to look at more individual moments without giving much overall context.

If you'd prefer reading books to listening, I'm reading currently 'Liberty or Death' by Peter McFee which also (so far, I haven't finished it) feels also like something that is painting a good overall picture in a straightforward timeline, and giving loads of cultural context that helps you understand various people's motivations and actions.

My favourite book in English that I've read so far is 'Twelve Who Ruled'- but it's very specific to the one 'reign of terror' year which is pretty far along in the first part of the revolution. But I think I would recc reading this anyway- you might not understand all the context but it's so riveting I think it helps you see why the topic and people involved are so fascinating.

As I'm not an academic/easily remembers facts kind of person, I really like that it so vividly painted a messy situation in a story telling kind of way, without being particularly biased to any side. Each politicians very different personality shines through, which is one element of Frev that makes it so interesting. It also does a great job of sharing in this story telling way, the overall culture at the time, psychology/sociology of the public and individuals, and various messy af situations that had to be dealt with.

It basically breaks down really well something horrific and complicated so that you understand how it came to be that way, and how people ended up making the decisions they made. Also, SO much drama in this one year, so many friendships broken down, so much back stabbing lol

Outside of that, I think actually the online community is really amazing and there's so many people on here translating stuff into English and answering questions to info that is normally scattered across several books/archival information, and then these amazing ppl just like bring it together in Tumblr posts. Looking through the Frev tag is a good way to piece together all the various details when you're just starting out.

[quercusfloreal]

Can I say the film "La révolution française" is also a film about friendship during revolution, especially between Maxime and Camille ?

I mean, the movie starts with them in high school, then their reunion at the Estates General, Camille inviting Maxime at his wedding, Maxime warns Camille to be careful after the king's escape, Camille going to the Duplay's to see Maxime after the fall of the monarchy, working together, Maxime playing with baby Horace.

And then when the revolution becomes difficult, their friendship follows the same road. When Camille has doubts, Maxime continues. The situation worsens to the breaking point. Camille leaves to get closer to Danton and Maxime gets closer to Sain-Just. Camille even asks Danton to help Maxime. But it’s too late...

There is a beginning of reconciliation but their ideals are too different. Maxime wants to save Camille as well. But there is a point of no return when Camille is beaten and he believes that Maxime is responsible. There is no turning back when Danton confronts Maxime about this. He even makes things worse by telling him he has no balls.

When Camille is sent to the scaffold, Maxime is sad. He falls little by little, dragged down by the revolution which will devour him too. The film ends with him being decapitated by the guillotine.