#i am more concerned that boulant's book relies on blanc

[frevandrest]

Hi,

Boulant mentions that Buzot accused Saint-Just of embezzlement and that Saint-Just was further accused of speculation when he bought national property, especially when he supposedly acquired national property in 1793. Do you happen to know anything about these claims? Because I have read quite a few biographies about Saint-Just and this is the first time I have come across anyone even implying that he was not 100% honest when it came to money.

Thanks a lot in advance.

The moment I read this, I thought about Olivier Blanc, the resident conspiracy theorist. He is big on proving that Montagnards had a lot of money and were all involved in speculations with property to amass a great wealth. His sources are highly dubious - it's not even Thermidorized view in the strict sense of the word; the man simply does not know (or pretends he doesn't know) how to analyze a source. For example, he finds a slander pamphlet that someone wrote randomly about someone and take it at face value. (Like when he took a pamphlet allegedly written by Tallien about being the lover of his father's master at face value.) It doesn't mean that these sources are useless - they can tell us a lot about what people at the time gossiped about and what tensions/slanders existed, AND there could be some truth in some of them, but they need to be approached carefully. (It would be like claiming Marie Antoinette definitely took female lovers just because revolutionary slander pamphlets said so.)

Another Blanc's claim was that the Duplays were super wealthy and had properties all around France. He provides as a "proof" the death certificate of a Duplay boy who died as a baby outside of Paris. It is clear to anyone that the child was given to a wet nurse, which was a common practice at the time. But nah, Blanc claims it's the proof that Duplays had property outside of Paris! (Even though the death certificate gives Paris as the parent's address). Stuff like that. So nah, Blanc's cannot be trusted on his word. He is good at digging up sources, but he doesn't know how to interpret them. It is very concerning to me that Boulant, the author of the newest study on SJ, not only cites Olivier Blanc (his ramblings from Geneanet, since no reputable historical journal would publish it), but thanks him in the foreword! So, all this stuff is taken directly from Blanc, and is therefore highly unreliable, to say the least. Is there some truth to it? We know SJ bought some property around 1791 (early 1792?) in order to have enough property to be eligible to be elected. At the time, there was still the requirement that you had to be rich enough to become a deputy. He took a loan to buy this property, but in the end, it was not needed because the wealth requirement was removed from the 1792 elections.

I don't know anything about other stuff. I cannot claim that it's absolutely untrue, because we have no proof. But SJ was more broke than anything, and I guess the idea of buying nationalized property is to amass wealth (which is what Blanc tried to prove all this time). No trace of this wealth is found (same for Robespierre, Le Bas, Couthon, etc.) so I guess Olivier Blanc has to work harder to prove his theories. What he offers so far is not a proof.