#lazare carnot

[iceblz]

[enlitment]

Frev-related snapshots from Paris compilation ✨

1. La Convention Nationale monument inside Pantheon

2. Louis le Grand (hopefully?) spotted in the wild, but it should be Robespierre and Desmoulins' school, right?

3. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (felt surreal seeing my old header design irl!)

4. Carnot's tomb inside Pantheon

5. Monument to French Revolution's generals

[citizen-card]

the cps wish they could have outfits as cool as the directors

[plrle]

more theatre kid collot pls ill give u everything

yes. 🙂

also @citizen-card your tags on the first Collot theatre kid post really deserved to be drawn too

[aedesluminis]

Today I finally decided to check something a friend told me a while ago. It was about Robespierre allegedly supporting and pushing for a full scale invasion of Italy, an idea that came from his younger brother Augustin and Napoléon.

The evidence for such claim is mentioned in Mary Young's biography on Augustin Robespierre. This is what Young has to say about it:

(page 142).

So not only was Carnot - someone who's considered responsible for turning a war of defense into one of conquest by robespierrist historians - unexpectedly against the idea of invading Piedmont, but Maximilien Robespierre, even more unexpectedly, was pushing for it.

And there's more: at page 154 - 155, Young mentions, quoting a work by J. Colin, that the reason why the CSP fell apart was because Robespierre interfered with war affairs to the point of alienating Carnot. While the latter was indeed against invading foreign countries, Robespierre, on the contrary, approved it and wanted it to be accomplished:

So it seems like the story about great advocate of peace, Maximilien Robespierre, is indeed just a story...!

Because of course a historian, whose book presents a foreword by Marisa Linton, wouldn't completely intentionally or unintentionally twist and misunderstand sources, right?

Right!?

Wrong.

The sources which Young uses to support her ideas are from Histoire de la campagne de 1794 en Italie by Gabriel Fabry vol 2, p. 438 and L’Éducation Militaire de Napoléon by J. Colin. Let's give them a quick look.

Fabry's histoire simply reports a CSP decree showing a certain eagerness in wanting to invade Piedmont. The excerpt, as you can see, doesn't include any signature.

(pages 438 - 439.)

Since Young said that Robespierre approved it, one would be inclined to think that it was Maximilien who wrote and signed the decree, with his signature being the first one. Of course the handwriting and signature of a CSP member isn't absolute proof of approval, but I usually see these two things used as arguments to show that a CSP member agreed; even by reputed historians; so I wasn't surprised to see Young making such a bold assumption. I then checked Aulard's Recueil and surprise surprise that decree was written and signed by Carnot only. No trace of Robespierre:

(I underlined in cyan the part similar to what Fabry reported, since Aulard made only a summary of the decree.)

Concerning the fact that Carnot was opposed to Robespierre's - yes, because Colin considers it as such - warmongering plans, the latter mentions a letter dated 26 Thermidor, in which Carnot complains about it:

I happened to find that letter in Correspondance générale de Carnot vol. 4, p. 575 - 576:

To sum up, it says that the plan comes from the mind of Augustin, but that it was the tyranny of his brother that inspired it.

Now, this is a letter written shortly after the fall of the Robespierrists, it doesn't take much to understand that this is purely thermidorian propaganda, not only because of its content, but also for the wording used. Moreover, it's not a personal letter, in which Carnot rambles with a friend or relative, it's an official one from the Committee of Public Safety.

Saying that Carnot didn't approve the conquest of Piedmont whereas Maximilien Robespierre did - I actually don't know if it was Augustin's idea, but this is not the point right now - is simply wrong since the decree of 19 floréal quoted above has been written and signed exclusively by him.

Thinking that a historian didn't care to double check their sources leading to such a misinformed mess is... truly appalling. This is proof of how one should always double check sources when possible, even if they come from historians we trust or appreciate!

Not that I personally trust or appreciate Young, considering that another of her bizarre claims based on dubious sources almost caused a sort of Thermidor in the community almost one year ago...

EDIT: Mary Young wasn't a historian, but a psychologist, so I did wrong in calling her as such. I do still think that someone of the reputation of Marisa Linton should have done a much better job in reviewing the book.

[josh-lanceero]

*looking disrespectfully

[senechalum]

Could you draw Napoléon and Lazare Carnot together? :3

(The former as First Consul and the latter like that 🥺)

Hellooo ! First of all, thank you so much the request <3

I don't usually color the requests I have, but since the outfits needed to be recognizable I did my best to do a quick but okayish thing 🫶 I hope you'll like it !! 👉👈 If you knew how much I struggled with Carnot's hair. OMG. *sobs*

[amateurvoltaire]

I am geographically challenged, and I really, really wanted a way to visualise what constituencies the members of the Third Committee of Public Safety ( July 1793 – July 1794) represented. So, this map was born.

Bertrand Barère: Hautes-Pyrénées

Jacques Billaud-Varenne:  Paris

Lazare Carnot: Pas-de-Calais

Jean-Marie Collot: Paris

Georges Couthon: Puy-de-Dôme

Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles: Seine-et-Oise

Robert Lindet: Eure

Pierre-Louis Prieur de la Marne: Marne (hence the name…)

Claude-Antoine Prieur: Côte-d'Or (ditto)

Maximilien Robespierre: Paris

André Jeanbon Saint-André: Lot

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just: Aisne

PS: It’s fascinating and telling how many of them represented provinces in the north of France.

[filipinawritcr]

Rare footage of what happened after spending a late afternoon at the Rosati with the Trio™ (c. 1788):

Left guy with the cap holding a beer can, who then drunkenly faints: Robespierre

Center redhead with a pizza cutter: Fouché

Right brunet who holds a Bourbon drink and drops it after the first guy falls: Carnot

[historicconfessions]

[magicmagic09]

Today witnesses my another shitpost (my apology for not good at coloring), showing blonde young engineer Carnot singing in Rosati with a rose in his hand. He looses his braid at the same time.

SJ whips the roses so you can see roses in the sky. (This scene is from the beginning of Saint Just et la force des choses. Though they didn't meet each other in 1780s)

[nigrit]

This one’s for @aedesluminis . Special delivery via the Musée de l’Histoire Vivante. You’re welcome! I think he adopted this as one of his slogans. Probably framed it and hung it in his office. Next to his idiot’s guide to provisioning revolutionary armies

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Apart from C-A Prieur, did anyone else in the CSP remain a friend with Lazare Carnot after Thermidor?

I think @aedesluminis and @sieclesetcieux are better suited to answer this than I am, I’m generally pretty unfamiliar with the Office CPS dynamics (I honestly don’t even know which of the members were friends of Carnot beforethermidor). But I’ve at least managed to dig out the following:

In volume 3 of his memoirs, Barère writes that he, following getting relieved of his legislative duties, wrote two or three letters to Carnot expressing some ideas on European politics and the power of the Directory, but that Carnot expressed no interest towards neither the letters or the man Barère had sent to hand them over. ”From this time my correspondence with the Director Carnot ceased; he either could, or would, do nothing for me, he forgot me altogether, and himself disappeared soon afterwards from this disunited, ill-matched, and utterly incapable Directory.”

Barère also writes that he in 1800, after having returned to Paris, had dinner with Fouché and Lamarque, ending with another encounter with Carnot: 

After dinner Lamarque told me that he wished to be reconciled to Carnot. I thought that the circumstances were favourable for the reconciliation of true patriots, as misfortune ought to unite all shades of opinion. I went to Carnot, and introduced to him my friend Lamarque, who had defended me during my proscription from the tribune of the Five Hundred.  "No doubt," replied Carnot ironically, "but he was the president of that council when I was transported as a member of the Directory." I perceived somewhat too late that there are some men whose memory is too good, and we parted rather disconcerted at this misunderstanding.

Later that year, Barère claims Carnot walked in on him and Napoleon having a conversation, and tried to help Barère obtain a position in the new regime: 

The conversation had reached this point when the Minister of War, Carnot, arrived with his portfolio to work with the First Consul. To give Carnot his due, he seemed very pleased to see me in close conversation with Bonaparte. He thought when he saw us tete-a-tete in the audience chamber that I was about to be appointed to some important office. In a few moments he said to the First Consul: "General, can you not usefully employ the talents of Citizen Barère?" The First Consul, who certainly had no desire to do so, and who had only offered me a miserable editorship, was silent, either because he did not choose to be catechised by one of his ministers, or because he had no favourable reply to make. I saw his embarrassment, and I replied to Carnot: "The First Consul would like to make me a bard to celebrate the glorious exploits of his warriors; but the age of Ossian has passed." This reply appeared to displease the First Consul, and I took my leave, considering myself very fortunate to have escaped being requisitioned as a journalist.

Collot d’Herbois mentioned Carnot once in his defence written 1795, attesting that the latter was hardworking. However, it doesn’t exactly tell us anything regarding if the two had stayed in touch or not:

I hastily ate a frugal meal every day in the vicinity of the committee. Carnot was forced to do the same, as was Prieur (de la Cote-d'Or.) They know of my assiduousness; only theirs and that of Lindet could surpass it.

As for Saint-André, I could find nothing when searching for ”Carnot” within the 1848 work Jean-Bon Saint-André, sa vie et ses écrits by Michel Nicolas. The same thing when searching for him Billuad-Varennes — mémoires et correspondance (1893)

That leaves us with Lindet and Prieur de la Marne, both of whom have left so little written material behind that I can’t say anything for the moment… There might be something in Notes et souvenirs inédits de Prieur de la Marne, but I don’t have access to those…

[citizen-card]

dinosaur named ‘Carnotaurus’ discovered by a man named ‘Bonaparte’

[plrle]

frev doodles 🫡

hope you like it :]

[aedesluminis]

Reading a post on a certain RP blog I remembered that someone actually depicted a possible representation of Carnot's desk:

The painting is called Le bureau du citoyen Carnot and was made by Hippolyte Pierre Delanoy in 1880.

Source