Translated by simone_remy with slight modifications. Originally posted on the Vieux Cordelier Translation Project.
LE VIEUX CORDELIER no. 5 by Camille Desmoulins
VIVRE LIBRE OU MOURIR
Quintidi Nivose, first decade, year 2 of the republic, one and indivisible
Patriots you are hearing nothing. Oh my God, allow me to speak; we have not pulled down too much. [Quote from Marat]
Friends and Brothers,
St. Louis was no prophet when he developed a great love for the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, two orders which, history teaches us, he cherished with a father’s tenderness. The good man did not foresee that they would give their names to two slightly different orders who would dethrone his descendants and become the founders of the French Republic, one and indivisible. After this insinuating introduction and this praise which is not flattery, and which you all share, I hope to be allowed in the course of this apologetic writing to bring to your attention a few truths which will be less agreeable to certain members.
The ship of the Republic drifts, as I have said, between two reefs, moderation and extremism. I began my journal with a profession of political faith which should have disarmed calumny: I said, with Danton, that to exaggerate the revolution had fewer dangers and was better than to fall short; on the course set by the ship of state it was more often necessary to come close to the rocks of extremism than the sandbank of moderation. But see how Père Duchesne and nearly all the patriot sentinels stand on the deck with their telescope only concerned with crying: Watch out! You are touching moderation! It has been necessary for me, old Cordelier and senior Jacobin, to take charge of the difficult duty which none of the younger people wanted, fearing loss of popularity, that of crying: Beware! You are going to touch extremism! And in this is the duty which my colleagues at the Convention gave me, that of sacrificing my own popularity to save the ship in which my cargo was no stronger than theirs.
Forgive me, friends and brothers, if I dare take up again the title of the Old Cordelier, after the club’s decree banning me from using this honourable name. Nevertheless, in truth it is unheard of arrogance in these grandchildren to rebel against their grandfather and ban him from using his own name; I want to plead my case against these ungrateful children. I want to know with whom the name resides, the grandfather or the children he was given, who is never recognized nor even known in the slightest degree, and who want to drive him out of the family home. Oh hospitable gods! I will abandon the name of Vieux Cordelier when the elders of the district, not the Club, forbid me; as for you, novices, who expel me without a hearing:
Hiss me as much as you like; I give it back, brothers.
When Robespierre said, “What difference is there between Le Peletier and me except death?” he was being modest. I am not Robespierre; but death, disfiguring the features of a man, does not enhance his memory in my eyes, nor enhance the luster of his patriotism to such an extent that I would believe, in spite of being expelled by these Cordeliers, that I was not serving the Republic better than Peletier in the Pantheon. Since I am reduced to speaking for myself, not only to give weight to my political opinions but also to defend myself, I will soon put both the denouncers and the denunciation in their proper place, in spite of the great anger of Père Duchesne, who, as Danton says, claims that his pipe resembles the trumpet of Jericho and that when he has puffed three times around a reputation it will fall of its own accord.
It will be easy for me to show that I had to call out to the pilots of the vessel of state: Take care, we are going to touch extremism. Already Robespierre and even Billaud-Varenne have recognised the danger. It is a journalist’s job to prepare public opinion; to reveal the reef; that is what I have done in the first four issues.
Do not judge me on a single line taken out of context. There are twenty phrases in the gospels, says Rousseau, all calling their author sublime and divine, on which the leiutenant of police “would have had him hanged, taking them separate and detached from what precedes and follows them.” In the same way I should be judged not on one issue but on the entirety of my works.
I read in the Public Safety Committee’s paper an article from the Jacobin’s meeting, primidi Nivose: “Camille Desmoulins, says Nicolas, has come close to the guillotine for a long time; and to offer you proof it is only necessary to tell you about the steps he took with my Section of the Revolutionary Committee to save a bad citizen we had arrested by order of the General Security Committee, charged with having intimate correspondence with conspirators and with sheltering the traitor Nantouillet in his own house.”
Friends and Brothers, you can judge what sort of a scoundrel I wanted to save. Citizen Vaillant was accused of what? You will never guess: of giving dinner, in his own country, two leagues from Peronne, to a citizen who had been living in that town for fifteen months, and to have invited him to stay the night at his house. Is this not the absurd crime of which Tacitus spoke? A counter-revolutionary crime for your farmer to give a friend of Sejanus a bed for the night. What can I say? The friends of Sejanus have been outlawed, Tacitus was wrong to protest; but here it is much worse! More than a year ago, Vaillant extended hospitality, no more than two days, to a citizen who was active then, to a citizen who was not, at that time, on the list of suspected people. It is true that this person was called Nantouillet; it is true that this Nantouillet had come, in 1791 or 92, to see Vaillant, who by the way is a cousin of mine, and this man did not show him the door even though he was a ci-devant. But Good God! Does it make you a scoundrel, a conspirator, not to have chased a former nobleman away from your house two years ago? If these are crimes, M. Nicolas, I offer some for you to judge. I saw André Dumont, who is not yet suspected of moderatism, shrug his shoulders in mercy at this arrest and set citizen Vaillant free. If I come close to the guillotine for having requested my relative’s freedom for such a minor peccadillo, what will you do to André Dumont, who granted the request? Is it fitting that a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal should be so lightly sent to the guillotine?
I cannot hold my tongue, and there may be some danger in having a set-to with a juror on the Revolutionary Tribunal, denunciation for denunciation. Last January, I saw M. Nicolas eating a baked apple, and this is no reproach. (Please God, in a cabin, unnoticed in the depths of some department, I have had similar meals with my wife.) So this was Citizen Nicolas at that time. In the first years of the Revolution, when Robespierre ran more dangers than any of us because his talent and popularity were so dangerous to counter-revolutionaries, the patriots would not let him go out alone; it was Nicolas who accompanied him all year, and who, big and strong, armed only with a simple club, was alone worth a company of musketeers.
Just as all patriots love Robespierre, so at heart Nicolas is a patriot and it is only the seduction of power and the novelty of having such a huge power of life and death in his own hands that has turned his head. We have appointed him a juror on the Revolutionary Tribunal, and he is also a printer. Now, and here is where I wish to conclude, allowing myself no further reflection, can one believe that this sans-culotte, who lived so soberly in January was paid, in Nivose, more than 150,000 francs by the Revolutionary Tribunal for his printing, while I, whom he accuses, have not increased my savings by a penny. So it is thus that I am an aristocrat who approaches the guillotine and that Nicolas is a sans-culotte who approaches a fortune.
M. Nicolas, you must challenge that personal interest which creeps in even with the best intentions. Because you are Bouchotte’s printer, is that a reason that I cannot call him “Georges” without risking the guillotine? In 1787, I certainly called Louis XVI “my fat imbecile of a king” without being locked up for it. Is Bouchotte to become a greater lord? You, Nicolas, who as a companion and friend of Robespierre have influence with the Jacobins; you know that my intentions are not counter-revolutionary, how can you believe the ideas held in certain committees? How could you believe them more than the speeches of Robespierre, who was at school with me almost since childhood and who some days previously gave this testimony on my behalf when I opposed the calumny: that he had not known a better republican than me; that I was republican more by instinct and sentiment than by choice; and that it would be impossible for me to be anything else. Tell me anyone who has been given a better recommendation?
Nevertheless, some have believed Nicolas rather than Robespierre; and already in their cliques they are calling me a conspirator. It is true, Citizens: for five years I have conspired to make republican France happy and flourishing.
I conspired for your liberty well before July 12th.
Robespierre has spoken to you of my lively tirade of verses, forerunners of the Revolution. I conspired on the 12th July when, pistol in hand, I called the nation to arms and to liberty and when I first seized this national cockade which you cannot attach to your hat without thinking of me. My enemies, or rather enemies of liberty for I can have no others, allow me to read this piece of evidence:
“So now Camille Desmoulins appears; he must be heard; it was half past two; I came to sound out the people. My anger against the despots was turned to despair. I saw nothing but groups of people, who although keenly moved, were not sufficiently moved to revolt. Three young people seemed to me possessed of a greater courage; they were arm in arm. I saw that they had come from the Palais Royal with the same design as me; some more passive citizens were following them; “Messieurs,” I said to them, “here is the beginning of a civic gathering; one of us must commit ourselves and climb on a table to address the people.” “Get up there.” “I’m going.”
Immediately, I was more lifted to the table than climbed it. As soon as I was there I saw that I was surrounded by an enormous crowd. Here is my short speech which I will never forget:
“Citizens! There is not a moment to lose. I come from Versailles; M. Necker has been dismissed; this dismissal sounds the tocsin for a St Bartholomew’s of patriots. This evening all the Swiss and German troops will leave the Champ-de-Mars and cut our throats. There is no alternative for us but to take up arms and to wear rosettes to distinguish ourselves.”
I had tears in my eyes and I spoke with an energy I could never repeat. My speech was met with great applause. I continued:
‘What colour do you want?’
Someone called: ‘You choose!’
‘Will you have green, the colour of hope, or the blue of Cincinnatus, the colour of liberty for America and for democracy?’
Voices were raised: ‘Green, the colour of hope!’
Then I cried out: ‘Friends! The signal is given; the spies and police lackeys are looking at me. I will not fall into their hands alive.’ Then, pulling two pistols from my pocket I say; ‘let all citizens copy me;’ I got down smothered with hugs and kisses; some clutched me to their hearts, others bathed me with their tears; a citizen of Toulouse, fearing for my safety, swore that he would never leave my side. In the meantime someone had given me a green ribbon; I put one first in my hat and then I gave some to those around me,”
Since then I have never ceased to conspire against tyrants, with Danton and with Robespierre. I conspired in La France Libre, in the Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens, in the Revolutions of France and Brabant, and in the Tribune of the Patriots. My eight volumes testify to all my conspiracies against aristocrats of all sorts, Royalists, Feuillants, Brissotins and Federalists. When you look you will see what a multitude of endorsements, the most honourable a man could receive, have come to me from all four quarters of the earth.
When you browse my writings, my opinions, my appeals, I defy anyone to find a single phrase in those eight volumes where I depart from republican principles, or deviate from a single line of The Declaration of Rights. From Necker and the two chamber system right up to Brissot and Federalism you cannot cite a single conspirator whose mask I did not rip away well before he fell. I have always been six or even eighteen months ahead of public opinion. I would be six months in advance, and would wait for you to come round to my opinion. Where would you have found your accusations against Bailly, Lafayette, Malouet, Mirabeau, the Lameths, Petion, D’Orleans, Sillery, Brissot, Dumouriez, if I had not prefigured it all in my writing beforehand, which time has since confirmed? And, although no one pays attention to it at this moment, I have already told you something which will resound to my credit with republicans in posterity more than my works: It is that I was linked in friendship with most of these men I denounced but I never stopped pursuing them from the moment they changed sides; I was more faithful to the patrie than to friendship; love of the Republic triumphed over my personal feelings; and it was necessary that they be condemned before I would offer my hand, as I did with Barnave.
It is very easy for patriots from August 10, patriots from the third or fourth year, now that money and high office are almost a disaster, to dress themselves up in incorruptibility for a day. Did Necker, at the height of his glory, and after his second recall to office look to appeal, like me, to the business of bakers? In the glory days of his fortune was Lafayette applauded by his aides de camps when they left his house and crossed his antechamber? Did those slippery, almost unavoidable traps encircle Bellechasse? Were their eyes tempted by more seductive charms? Their hands by the lure of a rich dowry? Their ambition by the opportunity of a ministry? Their indolence by a beautiful house in the Pyrenees? A more difficult test was put, that of renouncing the friendship of Barnave and Lameth and tearing myself away from Mirabeau whom I had idolised and loved like a mistress. With all their advantages they preferred to flee? Were they obliged to condemn so many of their friends with whom they had begun the revolution?
Oh people! Learn to recognise your old friends and ask your new ones who accuse me if they find a single one amongst them who could merit such a right to your confidence.
My real crime, I have no doubt, is that I said that before ten issues had come out I would again unmask more traitors, new conspirators and the cabal of Pitt who fear the revelations in my newspaper. They do not dare to pit themselves against the Old Cordelier who has taken up his pen again, distinguished by so many victories over past conspirators and they rake up worn out denunciations which Robespierre has made you trample underfoot. But let us look at the excuses for this relentless attack on me.
Some men, my enemies and secretly those of the Republic are still criticising me since I defended Dillon five months ago. But if Dillon was so culpable why did you not make a judgement then? Why do you only wish to see the one general that I defended without paying regard to that crowd of generals whom I accused? If the one I defended was a traitor, why would I accuse his accomplices?
If I am a criminal for having defended Dillon there is no reason why Robespierre is not a criminal too, for having defended Camille Desmoulins who defended Dillon. Since when is it a crime to defend someone? Since when is man infallible and free of error?
Collot d’Herbois himself, who, without naming me, fell upon me with such severity at the last meeting of the Jacobins, and who, on the subject of the Gaillard suicide, has created and set up a real tragedy to excite the passions of the tribunes against me, has, this very day, been paid 25 livres, such is the importance Mr. Pitt places on the expulsion from the society of the four denounced members; Fabre d’Eglantine, Bourdon de l’Oise, Philippeaux and me; Was not Collot d’Herbois himself wrong about a general who surrendered Toulon? About Brunet? Did he not defend Proly? If I wanted to retaliate against Collot I would only have to let fly with my pen, armed with facts more powerful than his denunciation. But, for the sake of the patrie, I bury my resentment of Collot’s attack on me: We are not too strong, all the true patriots united and pressed against each other, to stand against the aristocracy, connanading and fighting battles around the frontiers, and against false patriotism, or rather against the same aristocracy—more cowardly, conspiratorial, and surreptitious in the interior. I have been wrong, and can be fairly reproached for having listened too much to my wounded pride and ignoring the sharp mind of an excellent patriot – our dear Legendre; I want to show that I am not incorrigible, by surrendering today to very legitimate reprisals. I simply warn Collot to be on his guard against deceitful compliments and, like Robespierre, to reject with scorn the praise of Père Duchesne, from whose lips, as all Paris has noticed, flowed nothing but sugar and honey since the return of Danton and who, suddenly with the arrival of Collot d’Herbois, has rediscovered his moustachios, his anger and his great denunciations against the old Cordeliers and called out boldly: The giant has arrived – he will bring down the pygmies. The publicity from this phrase could not depopularise, but merely ridicule, the one who was the object of it, if he had not disavowed the sycophancy of Hébert, who sought to hide beneath the canon of Collot; this publicity will be the only pinprick of pride that I will allow myself against my colleague. I can still distinguish between Père Duchesne and the good father Gérard, between Collot Châteauvieux and Hébert Contre-marque.
So, a long digression on the subject of Dillon, whilst for my justification I have only to observe that the best patriots were not exempt from bias; and that Collot d’Herbois himself has defended people more suspicious than Dillon; so I suggest that in fact there is not a single deputy on the Mountain whom one could not reproach with some error and his own Dillon.
Forgive me, my dear readers, but do you believe that I am not well convinced that this general, whom you never stop throwing in my face, was a traitor?
I have said nothing, neither good nor bad, about him for six months. Three months ago I was content to pass on to Robespierre the note he gave me about Carteaux. Well! Cartaux’s treason was proved by this note.
Note here that four weeks ago, Hébert presented to the Jacobins a soldier who came to heap pretentious praise on Carteaux and to discredit our two Cordeliers, Fréron and Lapoype, who nevertheless had come close to taking Toulon in spite of envy and slander; because Hébert called Fréron, just as he called me, a ci-devant patriot, a muscadin, a Sardanapale, an imbecile. Take note, Citizens, that Hébert has continued to insult Fréron and Barras for two months, to demand their recall to the Committee of Public Safety and to commend Carteaux, without whom General Lapoype would perhaps have retaken Toulon six weeks ago, when he had already seized Fort Pharon. Take note that when Hébert saw that he could not influence Robespierre on the subject of Fréron because Robespierre knows the Old Cordeliers, because he knows Fréron just as he knows me; note that it was then that this forged letter signed by Fréron and Barras arrived at the Committee for Public Safety, from where no one knows; this letter which so strongly resembled one which managed to arrive two days ago at the Quinze Vingts, which made out that d’Eglantine, Bourdon de l’Oise, Philippeaux and myself wanted to raise the Sections. Oh, my dear Fréron, it is through these coarse devices that the patriots of August 10 erode the pillars of the old district of the Cordeliers. Ten days ago you wrote to my wife, “I dream only of Toulon, where I will either perish or claim it back for the Republic; I am leaving. The cannons will start as soon as I arrive; we will win a laurel or a willow – I am prepared for one or the other.” Oh, my brave Fréron, we both cried with joy this morning when we learned of the victory of the Republic and that we would go with laurels before you and not with willow before your ashes.
It was whilst mounting the first attack with Salicetti and Robespierre’s worthy brother that you replied to Hébert’s libel. It is the same in Paris as in Marseille! I am going to cite your words because those of a victor will carry more weight than mine: In the same letter you wrote: “I do not know if Camille sees it the way I do but it seems to me that they want to push the people beyond their goals and to make them, without doubt, counter-revolutionaries through ultra-revolutionary measures. Dissent stirs up its flames amongst the patriots. Some ambitious men who want to seize power make every effort to blacken the names of purer men of means and character, the first batch of patriots; what happened in Marseille is a proof.” So, my poor Martin, you were therefore pursued at the same time by the Père Duchesnes of Paris and of the Bouches-du-Rhône! And without knowing it, by that instinct which never misleads a true republican, from two hundred leagues away we made war on the same enemies, you with your resounding voice and I with my writing! But I must break off from my discussion with you and resume my justification.
Since I am needlessly absolved from 1789, it is necessary to repeat this for the hundredth time: It is not true to say that I defended Dillon; I demanded that he should be tried; Is it not obvious that if anyone is accused of defending him it is more likely to be those who, unlike me, did not demand his trial? So the constant denunciation of Camille Desmoulins falls at the first hurdle. What little evidence there must be against me in my adversary’s bag, since they are reduced to endlessly accusing me of having defended a general whose great service on the coast of Biesme no one contests!
The shortest justification is boring. To sustain your interest I mix mine with elements of satire that will only lightly touch the patriot whilst piercing through and through the counter-revolutionary disguised beneath his red cap, which my hand will knock off. When I leave the Convention I go back to the Vieux Cordelier; and depending on how I am affected by the meeting a touch of gaiety or sadness will appear on the page I write and in my correspondence with my subscribers. Today Barère has made me gloomy and my work this evening will reflect my melancholy.
Is it possible, then, that a report was directed against me, whose degree presented completely my conclusions? My conclusions were such that Robespierre passed as the order of the day a decree resembling so closely my committee of clemency. My dear colleagues, it is appropriate that I have at least had the courage to open the big discussion here, and the honour of the National Assembly demands that it be taken on board. I will have the merit of having shone the first gleam of hope upon the imprisoned patriots. As far as peace is concerned, the houses of suspicion resemble nothing as much as Dante’s Inferno, where all hope is abandoned. I have done some good, I have merited more consideration from Barère, and he should not have struck so hard. For the rest, the greatest honour that could be done to my newspaper was assuredly this censorship by the Committee of Public Safety, and the decree ordering its insertion in the bulletin. It accords great importance to my pen. One day, posterity will judge between the suspects of Barère and the suspects of Tacitus. For the time being, the patriots are going to have to put up with me; because, after this serious criticism from the Committee of Public Safety, I am ready to burn my third number, like Fenelon making public the Papal brief which condemned the Maxim des Saints from the pulpit and tearing it up himself; and already I have forbidden Desenne from reprinting it, at least without putting it in a hardcover.
Since the Committee of Public Safety did not hesitate to refute my fourth number, in order to completely enlighten its religion I must re-establish one fact on which its reporter has altered Thucydides; I ask for an apology from Barère.
Athens was certainly not enjoying a “perfect peace” when Thrasybulus said in the general assembly of the people that no one would be disturbed or prosecuted except for the thirty tyrants. These thirty tyrants spoke for the population of Athens, who scarcely numbered twenty thousand citizens, just as our aristocrats speak for our population of twenty five million men. History clearly tells us that the wise decree put an end to civil dissent, reunited spirits and earned for Thrasybulus the title “Restorer of the Peace”
Moreover, Barère has finished a bitter criticism of the work with a public homage to the patriotism of the author. But in his list of suspects, and on the occasion of his judicious remark that these suspects were proven when instead of rejoicing at the taking of Toulon they wore a miserable expression, Barère could give me a different testimony. He could have said that, the same day, finding myself dining with him, I said to him: ‘Those who are not cheered by the conquest of Toulon, or who are untouched by it are the truly suspicious men, whose arrest I will be the first to applaud, and not, as I read in a certain denunciation, ‘those who had luxurious lodgings.’”
The impartial reader would be shocked not to see Barère seizing my idea and making himself honoured in the Convention, but in adding to this plagiarism the petty malice of telling them that I do not admit there are any suspect people. If Barère had mentioned me, if he had at least said that I shared his opinion, the most suspicious republicans would have seen that I too I supported houses of suspicion and that my opinion differed only in the identification of the suspects. But I see that Barère fears the great anger of Père Duchesne and the repeated denunciation of M. de Vieux Sac and in his report he has opened his whole hand to satire and just the little finger for praise.
Where do the splitters of the Mountain want to take us with these slanders they are whispering into the ears of the patriots? What is this treachery, to single out one phrase from my fourth number and to take it completely out of context from the sense which surrounds it? Nothing could be in worse faith. Already the Mountain is unrecognizable. If it was an old Cordelier like me, a genuine patriot, Billaud Varenne for example, who had berated me so sternly I would have put up with it; I would say: It is the insult of the hot headed St. Paul to the good St. Peter who has sinned! But you, my dear Barère! The happy tutor of Pamela [natural daughter of le Duc d’Orleans], the president of the Feuillants! Who proposed the Committee of Twelve, who on the second of June put the suggestion to the Committee of Public Safety that they should not arrest Danton! You, in whom I could easily discover other faults if I wanted to rummage around for them. That you would immediately become a channel for Robespierre and that you should attack me so fiercely! I swear that this insult made me see thirty-six candles and I am still rubbing my eyes. What! You accuse me of moderation! What! You, Mountain comrade of June 3, are going to give Camille Desmoulins a certification of public spiritedness! Without this certificate I am going to be deemed a moderate. What do I see? I speak of myself and already in the groups they dare to suspect Robespierre himself of moderatism. Oh, what a fine thing to have no principles, just to know how to blow with the wind and be happy to be a weathervane!
Think carefully, Citizens, of all those who accuse me of minor faults, and I guarantee that in their lives you will find similar and grievous mistakes which nevertheless out of love of peace and solidarity I have never reproached them with, but they accuse me of blackening the names of the patriots. I give you justice too, Barère, I admire your talent, your service, and also I proclaim your patriotism; concerning your mistakes, Robespierre has given you absolution and, like Mr. Nicolas, I am not questioning the judgement of Robespierre. But what reptile is so groveling that when he is trampled on will not stand up and bite back? And the Republic cannot ask me to turn the other cheek.
All of this is no more than a domestic dispute between my friends, the patriots Collot and Barère; but in my turn I am going to be angry with Père Duchesne, who calls me an intriguing wretch, an imbecile to lead to the guillotine, a conspirator who wants to open all the prisons to make a new Vendée; a sleeper paid by Pitt, an ass with long ears, “Wait for it Hébert! I will get to you in a moment. I will not attack you here with insults and abuse; it will be with facts. I will unmask you as I did Brissot and society can judge between us.
The ray of hope which I shone for the patriots detained in the depths of the prisons, the image of happiness coming from the French Republic, which I offered in anticipation to my readers, and the single name, Committee of Clemency, which I mentioned, wrongly for the moment if you will, has this single word affected you like the Furies’ whip, Hébert? Can you not support the idea that the nation will one day be happy and united in brotherhood? Since in response to this word clemency – which I have nevertheless amended so strongly by adding: put away the thought of an amnesty, put away the opening of the prisons – you are here eating your own blood, going into an idiot’s rage, losing your senses and fainting away, to the point of denouncing me so absurdly at the Jacobins, for having married, you say, a rich wife.
I will say only one word about my wife. I have always believed in the immortality of the spirit. After all the sacrifices I have made of my personal interests for liberty and the welfare of the people in the face of harsh persecution I told myself; there must be rewards for virtue waiting elsewhere. But my marriage is so happy, my domestic joy is so great that I fear I have received my reward on earth and I have lost my chance of immortal happiness. Now your attacks on me, your cowardly libels, have given me back my hope.
On the subject of my wife’s fortune, she brought me 4,000 livres in private income; that is all I possess. In this revolution, where I can claim to have played a fairly big part, where I have been a writer of polemic sought on all sides by people who found me to be incorruptible, where sometimes before August 10 people tried to buy my silence, and at a high price, too; well, in this revolution, since I have successively been Secretary General in the Department of Justice and people’s representative in the Convention, my fortune has not increase by one sou. Could Hébert say differently?
How dare you speak of my fortune, you who all Paris saw two years ago collecting tickets at the door of the Variety from where you were fired for a reason you cannot have forgotten? How dare you speak of my 4,000 livres in private income, you, a sans culottes, in a nasty linen wig, with your hypocritical rag, you live in your house as luxuriously as a suspect, in receipt of 120,000 livres from minister Bouchotte for supporting the motions of Cloots and Proly in your counter-revolutionary paper, as I will prove?
120,000 livres for this poor sans culottes Hébert to slander Danton, Lindet, Cambon, Thuriot, Lacroix, Phillipeaux, Bourdon de l’Oise, Barras, Legendre, d’Eglantine, Fréron, Camille Desmoulins, and nearly all the commissars of the Convention! To inundate France with his writings so likely to shape the heart and spirit! 120,000 livres! From Bouchotte! After this, will anyone be surprised by that filial statement of Hébert’s at the Jacobin’s meeting: “To dare to attack Bouchotte! [to dare to call him Georges!] Bouchotte whom no one can reproach with even the slightest fault! Bouchotte who put sans culotte generals at the head of the army, Bouchotte the most pure patriot!” I am surprised that in the transport of his gratitude Père Duchesne did not cry out “Bouchotte, who has given me 120,000 livres since the month of June!”
What contempt citizens will have for this impudent Père Duchesne, when at the end of this edition number 5 they learn through a note from the Treasury Register that the cockroach who reproaches me for giving away for free a paper which all of Paris runs to buy, received on a single day last October 60,000 francs from ‘Maecenas’ Bouchotte for 600,000 copies; the reader will see by a simple process of addition that the villain Hébert stole, on that day alone, 40,000 francs from the nation.
Already there must be some indignation amongst all patriots who can think and have some memory, because when I reclaimed in my paper freedom of the press for writers and freedom of opinion for deputies, that is to say the first principles in the rights of man, Hébert could be seen to hurl abuse at me, this cheeky climber who two months ago, at the very moment when a series of victories spurred on the revolutionary movement, when the necessity of revolutionary measures was felt by all patriots, dared to complain in his paper about the Constitution and asked for the executive to be organised according to the terms of the Constitutional Act because it seemed to him that he could not fail to be one of the 24 members!
The least of your sins is that on a single day in the month of October you received 60,000 francs from Bouchotte to shout in your paper to all four quarters of France, “Psaphon is a god,” and libel Danton. With your numbers and your contradictions in my hand I am ready to prove that you are a scoundrel, degrading the French people and the Convention, already in the eyes of patriots and clear-sighted people you are unmasked like Brissot whose successor you have been made by the agents of Pitt and a purveyor of counter-revolution by another extreme. It is easy to see that, as the Girondins were of no further use to them, Pitt and Calonne would want to try using ignorance and stupidity to make this counter-revolution, which they could not achieve with people of character, from Malouet to Gensonné.
I have no need to immerse myself in research. You who speak to me about the company I keep, did you think I wouldn’t notice that among your social circle is a woman, Rochechouart, an agent of the émigrés, and the banker Kocke, in whose house you and your Jacqueline passed the fine days of summer?
Do you think that I would ignore the fact that the great patriot Hébert, after having libelled the purest men of the Republic in his rags, went off joyfully with the Dutch banker Kocke, an intimate of Dumouriez, and with his Jacqueline, to drink Pitt’s wine and raise a glass to the ruin of the reputations of the founders of liberty?
Do you think I wouldn’t notice that you never said a word against such a deputy until you fell upon Chabot and Basire?
Do you believe I wouldn’t guess that you only raised this clamour against two deputies because, having been enticed, perhaps without suspecting anything, into the conspiracy of your ultra-reactionaries, soon seeing the evil men who were going to destroy our country, having recoiled with horror, having seemed to falter, having opposed many of the drafted decrees which were no more than distant precursors to the motions of liberticide which you and your accomplices were preparing, you were keen to avoid Basire and Chabot and to abandon them before you were abandoned by them?
Do you think that no-one has told me that in 1790 and 1791 you persecuted Marat? You wrote for the aristocrats. You will not be able to deny it; you will be exposed by witnesses.
Finally, do you think that I do not know for sure that you interfered with the liberty of the citizens and that I don’t remember that a colleague told me and more than twenty deputies that you had received a very large sum of money to enrich yourself, I am not sure whether it was from an émigré or a prisoner, and that since then a witness to your venality threatened to reveal it if you continued to abuse Chabot in your papers, a fact which the people’s representative Chaudron Rousseau promises us he will put before the Surveillance Committee? These are more serious facts than those you have imputed to me.
Consider your life, from the time when you were a respectable brother whom a doctor of our acquaintances bled for 12 sous, right up to this moment where, becoming our political doctor and the quack Doctor Sangrado of the French people, you have ordered such copious bleeding in return for a 120,000 livres salary which Bouchotte gave you: Consider your entire life and tell me in what capacity you dare to make judgements on the Jacobins?
Is it by qualification of your past services? But when Danton, d’Eglantine and Paré, our three old permanent presidents of the Cordeliers (of the district of course) supported a seat for Marat; when Thuriot besieged the Bastille; when Fréron brought out the Orator of the People; when I, almost alone, not fearing the assassins of Loustalot or the writings of Talon, dared to defend the friend of the people three years ago and to proclaim him the Divine Marat; when all those veterans whom you abuse today turned out for the popular cause, where were you then, Hébert? You were selling theatre ticket and I can guarantee that the directors complained about the receipts. I can guarantee too that you opposed the August 10 insurrection in the Cordeliers. I am also assured, and you cannot deny it because there are witnesses, that you denigrated and pursued Marat in 1790 and ‘91; but that after his death you claimed that he had left you his mantle and you immediately became his universal heir and disciple. What is certain is that, before trying to steal the inheritance of Marat’s popularity in this way, you had stolen another inheritance, that of Père Duchesne, who was not Hébert; for it was not you who, two years ago, were Père Duchesne; I’m not saying the Trumpet of Père Duchesne, but the real Père Duchesne, the memento Maury. That was a different person from you, whose names, arms and oaths you took, and from whom you seized all the glory, according to your custom. What is certain is that you were not with us in 1789 in the wooden horse; you were never seen amongst the fighters in the first campaigns of the Revolution; churlishly you were not noticeable until after the victory when, like Thersites, you distinguished yourself by denigrating the victors and carrying off the best part of the spoils; and by heating up your kitchen and your stoves for calumnies with the 120,000 francs and the coals of Bouchotte.
Will it be in the role of writer and fine intellect, Hébert, that you claim to weigh our reputations in your scales? Is it in your role as journalist that you claim to dictate opinion to the Jacobins? But is there anything more filthy and disgusting than the bulk of your rags? Hébert, don’t you know that when the tyrants of Europe want to vilify the Republic, when they want to make their slaves believe that France is covered with the darkness of barbarity, that Paris, this city so renowned for its culture and good taste, is inhabited by Vandals; don’t you know that unfortunately it is the scraps from your rags that they publish in their Gazettes, as if you would like Pitt to believe that all the people were equally bestial and ignorant, as if we could only speak to them in an equally coarse language, as if that was the language of the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, as if your filthy words were those of the nation; as if the Seine was a sewer of Paris?
Finally, will it be in the role of sage, of great politician, of a man to whom it is given to govern empires that you assume the right to serve us up your ultra-revolutionary ideas when the representatives of the people don’t have the same right for fear of being hounded from society? But, to give only a single example, have not three or four numbers published by Hébert following Gobel’s masquerade of dechristianisation been the main cause, through their foolish politics, for the religious sedition and murders in Amiens, Coulommiers, in the Morbihan, l’Aisne, l’Ille-et-Vilaine? Is it not Père Duchesne, this deep-thinking politician, who with his latest writings is the obvious reason that in the Vendée, where official information on the 21st September said there were no more than eight to ten thousand brigands to exterminate, it has already been necessary to kill more than a hundred thousand imbecilic new recruits, created by Hébert for Charrette and the royalists?
And it is this vile toad, in receipt of 120,000 livres, who reproaches me for the 4,000 income from my wife! It is this intimate friend of Kocke, Rochechouart and a multitude of crooks who reproaches me for my friends! This politician without opinions and the most foolish of the patriots, if not the most cunning of the aristocrats, reproaches me for my ‘aristocratic’ writings; so says he whose rags as I will demonstrate are the delight of Coblenz and the only hope of Pitt!
This parvenu patriot will be the eternal defamer of the original patriots! Fired from the list of theatre workers for theft, this man will be expelling deputies who are the immortal founders of the Republic from the roll of the Jacobins for their opinions! This writer of the charnel house will become the legislator of opinion, the mentor of the French people! No representative of the French people can have any other sentiment than that of this great personage, without being treated as an donkey dick and a conspirator in the pay of Pitt. Oh time! Oh morality! Oh freedom of the press, the last refuge of the people’s liberty, what has become of you? Oh! Freedom of thought, without which there would be no more Convention, no more national representation, what will become of you?
Society is now in a position to judge between me and my denouncers. My friends know that I am the same now as in 1789; since then I have not had a single thought that was not for the affirmation of liberty, for the prosperity and happiness of the French people and for the maintaining of the Republic, one and indivisible. Well! What other interests would have driven the newspaper that I put out except zeal for the public good, why else would I attract such all-powerful hatred against myself and call such implacable resentment down on my head? What did they do to me, Hébert and all those I wrote against? Did I too receive 120,000 francs from the National Treasury for calumny? Or do you think that I want to reanimate the ashes of the aristocracy? Barère says that moderates and aristocrats never meet without asking, “Have you read le Vieux Cordelier?”; Me, a patron of the aristocrats! Of the moderates! When the ship of the Republic, which sails, as I have said, between two reefs, comes too close to that of moderation, you will see if I assist that manoeuvre; you will see if I am a moderate! I was a revolutionary before all of you. I have been more: I was a brigand, I made my name on the night of 12th and 13th of July when General Danican and I broke open the arms warehouses to arm the first battalions of the sans culottes. Then, I had the audacity of the Revolution. Today, as a deputy of the National Assembly, the audacity that suits me is that of reason, that of stating my opinion frankly. I will maintain unto death this republican audacity against all despots; although I will not ignore Machiavelli’s maxim: there is no sort of tyranny more unbridled than that of petty tyrants.
Let them despair of intimidating me with the rumours and fears of my arrest which are flying all around me! We know that these scoundrels are contemplating a May 31 [attack] against the most vigorous of the Montagnards. Robespierre has already born witness to this in the Jacobins; but, as he observed, we will see what a difference there is between the Brissotins and the Montagnards. The acclaim which the Convention received on the day of the Feast of Victory showed the opinion of the people and that in no way do they accept the slurs on their representatives which foreigners have tried so hard to impress on the nation. The people place their hope in the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, not in Georges and the Georgians. But, in a republic, whenever a citizen like Bouchotte has 300 million a month and fifty thousand positions at his disposal, all the intriguers, all the birds of prey, will inevitably gather around him. Here is the seat of evil, and we all know that the plague itself, with such a powerful civil list, could get a place in the Pantheon.
It is up to the Convention to prevent us from raising one altar against another. But, oh my colleagues! I will say to you, as Brutus said to Cicero: “We fear death, poverty and exile too much.” Nimium timemus mortem et exilium et paupertatem. Is it worthy for a representative to prolong this life at the expense of honour? There is not one of us who has not arrived at the peak of the mountain of life. Nothing more remains for us now but to descend across a thousand unavoidable chasms, just as it is for the most obscure man. This descent will open up no landscapes, no sites, which were not presented a thousand times more delicious to Solomon, who, amongst his seven hundred wives and surrounded with all the appurtenances of happiness, would say “I have found that the dead are happier than the living and that the happiest man is one who was never born.”
And so! When every day 1,200,000 French soldiers face enemy armies bristling with weapons of the most murderous type and still steal victory after victory, shall we, deputies in the Convention; we, who can never die like soldiers, in the dead of night, shot in the shadows, with no witness to our bravery; we, who can suffer no death for the sake of liberty that cannot be glorious, solemn, and before the whole nation, Europe, and posterity, shall we be more cowardly than our soldiers? Will we be afraid to leave ourselves exposed, to look Bouchotte in the face? Will we not dare to brave the great anger of Père Duchesne, to win the victory the French people are expecting of us: victory over the ultra-revolutionaries as well as the counter-revolutionaries; victory over all the plotters, all the crooks, all the power-hungry, all enemies of the public good?
In spite of the divisive factions, the Mountain remains one and indivisible, like the Republic! let us not allow the national representation, in its third session, to be degraded. Freedom of thought or death! Let us concern ourselves, Colleagues, not with defending our lives, like invalids, but with defending liberty and principles, like Republicans! And even if, which seems impossible, calumny and crime should have a moment of triumph over virtue, do you believe that, even on the scaffold, sustained by this personal belief in my country and the Republic which I have loved passionately, sustained by the eternal testimony of the centuries, surrounded by the respect and regrets of all true Republicans, I would want to exchange my agony for the fortune of this wretched Hébert who drives twenty classes of citizen and more than three thousand French people to despair in his paper, by anathematising and condemning them en masse in a common proscription; who, stunned by his calumnies, needs intoxication stronger than wine and ceaselessly laps up the blood at the foot of the guillotine? What then is the scaffold for a patriot if not the pedestal of Sidney and Jean de Witt? What, in a time of war, when I have had my two brothers hacked and butchered in the name of liberty, what is the guillotine if not a sabre cut, and the most glorious of all, for a deputy, victim of his courage and his republicanism?
I have accepted, even wished, for the position of deputy because I said to myself: Is there a better opportunity for glory than to regenerate a state about to perish through the vice and corruption which reign there? What could be more glorious than to introduce to it wise institutions, to make virtue and justice reign there; to preserve the honour of the magistrates as well as the freedom, lives and property of the citizens, and to make one’s country flourish? What could be happier than to make so many other people happy? Now I will ask of true, enlightened patriots: are we as happy as we could be, even in revolution?
I could be wrong; but even so, even if I am mistaken, is that a reason for Hébert to call a representative of the people a conspirator who deserves to be guillotined for his opinion? I have seen Danton and the finest minds of the Convention, outraged by this edition of Hébert’s, exclaim: “It is not you who is attacked here, it is the national representation, and it is our freedom of thought! And I will have no difficulty proving that with this single edition Hébert deserves the death penalty. Because, after all, when you make a mistake you alone cannot form a conspiracy; and the Brissotins did not die for an opinion; they were condemned for a conspiracy.”
Passion will not make me deviate from my principles; I am not of the opinion that Hébert deserves a decree of accusation over this number. I persist in my belief that not only should freedom of thought be unlimited for deputies, but so should freedom of the press for journalists. Allow Hébert to be the Zoilus of all the old patriots and a salaried liar! But, instead of blaspheming against freedom of the press, he should beg mercy of this limitless freedom, which is the sole reason he is not led to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and is sent only to the guillotine by public opinion.
For me, I cannot closely shave this same guillotine in the judgment of enlightened republicans. Undoubtedly I could have been mistaken:
Oh! What an author, great God! he never goes too far!
There is more; as soon as the Committee of Public Safety criticized my third edition, I would not be an determined heretic and submitted to its decision like Fenelon to that of the Church. But shall I confess it my dear colleagues? I reread chapter 9 of Seneca, the memorable words of Augustus, and this reflection of the philosopher which I will not translate so as not to be once again a whipping boy for the weak; and at this fact without rejoinder; post hoc nullis insidiis ab ullo petitus, [from Seneca on Clemency] at this fact, in spite of the report of Barère, I feel all my persuasion that the idea of a Committee of Clemency was wrong escape me. Because note well that I never spoke of a clemency of moderation, of clemency for leaders; but of a political clemency, a revolutionary clemency which distinguishes those who have only been led astray. To this fact, I said, without reply, that I have all the trouble in the world subscribing to the censure of Barère, and not crying out like Galileo, condemned by the holy college of Cardinals, “And yet it moves!”
Certainly, in 1789, the procureur de la lanterne was at least as revolutionary as Hébert, who at that time opened theatre boxes for the ci-devants practically bowing to the ground in his reverence. But then, when I saw the ultra-revolutionary assassination of the baker Francois, faithful to my character, did I not cry out that it was the Court itself, Lafayette and the Héberts of the time, the patriotic aristocrats, who had committed this murder to make the lantern objectionable? This man still today is a revolutionary who said before Barère: We must arrest all those who do not rejoice at the taking of Toulon as suspects. This man is a revolutionary who says, like Robespierre and in terms no less powerful: If it is necessary to choose between the exaggeration of patriotism and the stagnation of moderation, there will be no choice. This man is a revolutionary who advanced as a first political maxim that, “in the management of affairs of state, it is sad but inevitable to deviate from the strict rules of morality.”
No.1: The man is a revolutionary who has gone as far as Marat in Revolution, but who says that beyond these motions and borders which have been established it is necessary to write, like the geographers of antiquity at the edges of their maps: beyond here there are no more cities or habitations; there is nothing but deserts and savages, glaciers and volcanos.
No. 2: The man is a revolutionary who has said that “the Committee of Public Safety needed for a time to make use of the power of despots and to throw a veil of gauze over the Rights of Man; this is true and transparent.”
Finally, the man who wrote the first and last pages of my third issue is a revolutionary; but it is regrettable that the journalists, and I know there are men of good will amongst them, have not yet quoted one of these passages. While the majority will take the filthy word of Père Duchesne and only extract from my issues that which lends itself to malignity and foolishness they would not be forbidden from looking more scrupulously at all the quotations which prove me to have the spirit of patriotism; and it is truly a miracle that on the words of Hébert and the untrue and malign statements of several of my dear journalistic colleagues, the Jacobins who remained in the Club at ten o’clock at night did not cry out like Vice-President Brochet: What need do we have of other witnesses? And that the opinion of the jury did not declare that they had been sufficiently instructed and that in their soul and conscience I was convicted of moderation, Feuillantism, and Brissotism.
And however wrong I was, weary of having been cowardly, of having lacked the courage to speak my mind, even if it were false, I have no fear that society will blame me for doing my duty. But if the cabal were stronger, I say this with a suitable feeling of pride; if I were expelled, so much worse for the Jacobins! What! You have commanded me to tell the Tribunal what I believe to be most useful for the safety of the Republic! I have said in my paper what I don’t have the physical ability to say at the Tribune, and you have made me a criminal? Why did you tear me away from my books, from nature, from the borders where I would have gone to be killed like my two brothers who died for freedom? Why have you appointed me your representative? Why have you not given me cahiers? Is there any treachery or barbarism like sending me to the Convention to ask me what I think of the Republic, forcing me to speak, and then condemning me because I could not tell you things as agreeably as I would like? If you want me to tell the truth, that is to say the relative truth and what I believe, how could you reproach me even if I should be wrong? Is it my fault if my eyes are weak and if I have seen everything in black, through the crêpe which the pages of Père Duchesne have put before my imagination?
Am I to blame for not believing that Tacitus, who up to now has passed as the most patriotic of writers, the wisest and greatest political historian, was an aristocrat and driveller? What can I say, Tacitus? This very Brutus, whose image you drew, Hébert is to have have him expelled from society, like me; because if I have been a hollow dreamer, an old fantasist, I have been so not only with Tacitus and Machiavelli, but with Loustalot and Marat, with Thrasybulus and Brutus.
Is it my fault if it seems to me that when the department of Seine and Marne, until today so tranquil, became dangerously agitated when they could no longer attend mass; when mothers and fathers in their simplicity wept tears because they had given birth to a child they could not baptise; that soon Catholics will be like the Calvinists in the time of Henri II, saying psalms in hiding and illuminating their minds through prayer; they will be saying mass in cellars when they can no longer say it on rooftops; from this the mobs and the Saint-Barthelemys; and that we were going to have the obligation, mainly to the b…… patriotic sheets of Father Duchesne, peddled by Georges Bouchotte, for scattering these fertile seeds of sedition and murder throughout France?
Finally, is it my fault if it seems to me that subordinate powers have departed from their legal limits and exceeded them; that a Commune, in place of confining itself to carrying out the law, has usurped legislative power and passed actual decrees on the closure of churches, on certificates of citizenship, etc. Aristocrats, Feuillants, Moderates, and Brissotins have dishonoured a word in the French language by the counter-revolutionary use to which they put it. It is uncomfortable to use this word today. However, Friends and Brothers, do you believe you have better sense than all historians, than all politicians, are you more republican than Cato and Brutus, all of whom used this word? They all repeated this maxim: Anarchy, in making all men masters, soon reduces them to having only one master. It is this one master that I fear; it is the annihilation or at the very least the dismemberment of the Republic. The Committee of Public Safety, this committee for salvation, carries the remedy; but I do not have less merit for having first turned their eyes upon those of our enemies the most dangerous and clever enough to have taken the only possible route for counter-revolution.
Friends and Brothers, will you make it a crime for a writer and a deputy to be afraid of this disorder, of this confusion, of this decomposition of the body politic, where we are headed with the speed of a torrent which will carry us away and uproot our principles; if, in his last speech on revolutionary government, Robespierre, whilst putting me in my place, did not, himself, throw an anchor to the fundamental maxims of our Revolution, on which alone freedom can be affirmed and can defy the efforts of the tyrants and of time?
EXTRACTS FROM NATIONAL TREASURY REGISTERS, JUNE 2:
Given to Père Duchesne: 135,000 livres
On June 2, while all of Paris had swords in hand to defend the National Convention, at the same time Hébert had his hand in its purse.
More, in the month of August, to Père Duchesne: 10,000 livres
More, on October 4, to Père Duchesne: 60,000 livres
We calculate this last haul:
Valuation of the 600,000 copies of Pere Duchesne, funded by Bouchotte at 60,000 livres:
For the first thousand:
Typesetting: 16 liv
Printing: 8 liv
Poor quality paper: 20 liv
TOTAL = 44 liv
Each of the other 599 thousands:
Printing: 8 liv
Paper: 20 liv
TOTAL = 28 liv
And so:
First thousand = 44 liv
599,000 at 28 liv = 16,772 liv
TRUE TOTAL COST OF 600,000 COPIES = 16,816 LIV
Which was accounted as 60,000 by Bouchotte to Hébert on October 4, 1793, and which, with outrageous cynicism, Hébert in his last issue calls the “vital fuel to heat his stove.”
Remove [as genuine expenditure] 16,816 liv
The remaining amount stolen from the nation on Oct 4, 1793 = 43,184 liv.
[1] One day one of the actors of the Théâtre de la République was told that Père Duchesne was on the verge of getting angry with them: “I find it hard to believe it,” they replied, “we have the proof in our registers, which he stole from us before he became procureur of the Commune.” These registers must be suppressed, Père Duchesne; you must pay your court at the Théâtre de la République, and I am no longer surprised at your great anger against La Montansier in one of your last numbers, and that you gave such pompous, such exclusive praise of the theater where you made your debut. (Note by Desmoulins.)
[2] “I am being calumniated,” said Bouchotte the other day to the Committee of Public Safety. “At least,” replied Danton, “it is not the Republic that has been paying 120,000 francs since the month of June to slander you; at least it is not the ministry which has made itself the peddler of the calumnies against Bouchotte.” This comeback was unanswerable. 120,000 francs to Hébert to rent Bouchotte! Not so Georges, Mr. Bouchotte! It is, by my faith, not so Georges! (Note by Desmoulins.)
Camille Desmoulins Database 