Live Free or Die: How the Rhetoric of Marat and Desmoulins. Changed the Course of the French Revolution,

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1 Berger 1 Deborah G. Berger Humanities 257H April 13, 2014 Live Free or Die: How the Rhetoric of Marat and Desmoulins Changed the Course of the French Revolution, The French Revolution cannot be separated from its rhetoric, nor should it. It was rhetoric that lit the match in July 1789 and soon fueled the burning suspicion that every neighbor was a traitor to the Republic, which ultimately led to the execution of King Louis XVI and thousands of others beneath the blade of the guillotine amid the Reign of Terror. And it was rhetoric that helped to destroy the Terror in July In examining the writings of these early years of the Revolution, Jean-Paul Marat and Camille Desmoulins stand out. Both radicals and avowed believers in the Revolution, these two men were geniuses at rhetoric, and both died for what they wrote. When considered together, the words of Marat and Desmoulins, even in death, not only shaped and eventually reshaped the Revolution s early years but also created a powerful aura of righteousness that swayed political leaders as easily as the masses; it was by means of their words that the liberty of a nation went hand in hand with the liberty of the press. Their rhetoric powered the Revolution forward during three specific periods: the storming of the Bastille and its immediate aftermath; the escape, capture and execution of the king and later the queen; and the beginning and end of the Reign of Terror. If the Revolution can be said to have begun in a single spot, it was at the Palais-Royal on the afternoon of July 12, In the vast gardens there, a huge crowd had gathered in the summer heat. King Louis XVI had dispatched his foreign regiments to patrol the outskirts of Paris and it seemed all of Paris was angry about it, stirred by news reports that a full-scale counterrevolution of the Estates-General by military force was imminent (Israel 59). The

2 Berger 2 Palais-Royal was the perfect place to start a Revolution. A complex of galleries, arcades, cafes, theaters and exhibition halls, the Palais-Royale was also the place where public opinion is formed (Billington 26). Into this scene raced Desmoulins, who earlier that day had been at Versailles and knew that Finance Minister Jacques Necker had been fired. Because the charismatic Necker held an extraordinary hold on the populace, the crowd s response to the news Desmoulins brought was swift and dramatic. The crowd quickly became a mob and surged toward the young writer, who climbed onto a table taken from the nearby Café Foy and feverishly yelled, Aux armes! Delivering a particularly inflammatory speech, he told the nowunruly throng that a royal plot did indeed exist to suppress any revolt by using the king s foreign troops to massacre anyone who opposed the king s absolute rule. Four days later Desmoulins wrote a letter to his father, detailing the event in which he incited thousands to revolt: About three o'clock I went to the Palais-Royal. I was deploring our lack of courage to a group of people when three young men came by, holding hands and shouting, aux armes! I joined them and since my enthusiasm was quite obvious, I was surrounded and pressed to climb up on a table. Immediately six thousand people gathered around me.... I was choking from the hundreds of ideas that overwhelmed me and, my thoughts a jumble, I spoke: To arms! I cried, To arms! Let us all wear green cockades, the color of hope.... I grabbed a green ribbon and was the first to pin it to my hat. My action spread like wildfire! (Desmoulins, Oeuvres de Camille Desmoulins 91-92). His harangue moved the crowd to force the popular theaters to shut their doors that evening. Within hours, the crowd looted local gun shops and surged toward the Bastille. By Tuesday, the dank, imposing prison belonged to the radicals. That night, barricades were erected and trenches were dug in the streets of Paris. The armed Revolution was underway. There is no doubt

3 Berger 3 Desmoulins believed there was a conspiracy by the royals to use force against the people, but the words he chose that day make it equally clear such a threat needed to be vanquished by violence. Pointing to his breast with one hand and waving a pistol in the other, he warned the crowd that police spies were among them and demanded defiance to the king s tyranny, Yes, yes, it is I who call my brothers to freedom; I would die rather than submit to slavery! (Desmoulins, Oeuvres de Camille Desmoulins 146). Those words, underscored by the dramatically visible threat of the pistol, made the 26-year-old Desmoulins an instant hero. The idea of freedom versus slavery was a recurring theme for both Desmoulins and Marat. Members of the radical Jacobins, they were well-acquainted with the political thought behind England s republicanism and with Jean-Jacques Rousseau s ideology as found in The Social Contract, the notion that government exists for the people and should be controlled by the people. Rousseau argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate; only the people, who are sovereign, have that right. In fact, Marat would later incorporate this political philosophy in an essay designed to influence the National Assembly s debate on August 4 over whether to allow the king to have absolute veto power. In July, however, it was Desmoulins who carried the torch of freedom a little brighter with his pamphlet, La France Libre, or A Free France, which was published shortly after the fall of the Bastille. In it, he summed up the main charges against France s rapidly crumbling ancien régime and argued that all patriots of the Republic deserved liberty and all enemies of the Republic deserved death. He also made clear his opposition to the monarchy, Do the facts not cry out that monarchy is a detestable form of government? (38). For Desmoulins, it was not an issue of a particular king. I like Louis XVI himself, Desmoulins wrote, but Monarchy is no less odious to me (59). Throughout the manifesto, the words he uses (purge, exterminate,

4 Berger 4 extinction) not only show his gift for the dramatic but also that he accepts violence as a way to achieve the goals of the new Republic: The nation everywhere has uttered the same wish. Everyone wants to be free. Yes, my dear fellow-citizens, we will all be free; who can stop us?... We are sure to triumph. Our provinces are filled with threatening cockades.... The nation will be purged, and the foreigners, the bad citizens, all those who give precedence to their own interest before the public good, will be exterminated. But we will turn our eyes from these horrors, and may Heaven deign to withdraw them from above our heads! No, without doubt, that which we dread will never take place. I only wish to frighten the aristocrats by showing them their inevitable extinction if they resist longer the call of reason, the wish and supplication of the people (9-10) Desmoulins ends his tract by boldly comparing himself to Otyrhades, the mortally wounded warrior who wrote in his own blood on a captured standard, Sparta has triumphed : I who have been timid now feel myself to be a new man.... I could die with joy for so glorious a cause, and, pierced with blows, I too would write in my own blood France is free! (73). Where was Marat on these crucial first days of the armed rebellion? Marat, 46 at the time, had written a few pamphlets that spring ahead of the Estates-General. Most notably, he had urged the convention to meet as a single body rather than three separate estates, with vote by head rather than each Estate having a single vote. With this, he fell in with the reformists who wanted each deputy of the Estates-General to have a vote equal to any other deputy; this meant the First Estate (the nobility) or the Second Estate (the clergy) could no longer dominate the Third Estate ( Everything, is how the Abbé Siéyès described it) because the Third Estate had so many more delegates since it represented so many people. Marat s writings, however, were far

5 Berger 5 from a call for revolution because at heart he was a monarchist. According to historian Louis R. Gottschalk, Marat s faith in Louis XVI remained constant and offered to him a ray of hope and he still regarded the King as a tender and generous father to his subjects (Gottschalk 40). Despite attempts to glorify his role in the fall of the Bastille, Marat might as well have been invisible on July 14. He later claimed to have foiled a conspiracy in which a contingent of the royal cavalry planned to massacre the Paris rebels, but Gottschalk called this account by Marat characteristically exaggerated (Gottschalk 43). In fact, Marat was more focused on local politics at this point. Paris had been sliced into 60 districts, and each district sent five delegates to the new National Assembly. Marat was on the committee for his district yet failed in his bid to be among the five sent to the convention after the rival Girondins had strenuously objected. Marat hit his stride soon thereafter, though, not as a politician as much as a political commentator and self-made journalist. In September 1789 he launched a daily pamphlet that averaged eight pages and cost subscribers 12 livres every trimester, L Ami du Peuple, or The People s Friend. Under the title appeared more revolutionary rhetoric: Free and Impartial, By A Company of Patriots (Marat, L Ami du Peuple, September16, 1789). Despite assuring readers in his prospectus for this daily paper that his pen would be guided by his love for truth, humanity and justice, this former scientist used fiery and often vile rhetoric that incited violence, wrecked lives, and eventually condemned people to death merely by publishing their names as suspects, because he, like Desmoulins at this point, nurtured a blinding zeal to destroy every one of the Republic s enemies. Marat s influence as the self-appointed eye of the people seemed unstoppable and paved the way for the bloody and horrifying Reign of Terror. It took Charlotte Corday to stop him. His words seconds before he was assassinated by Corday on July 13, 1794 were true to form in his utter disregard for truth and fairness. Corday, who was disguised as a supporter but had come to assassinate Marat, presented him with a list of

6 Berger 6 names, most of them Girondins, and identified them as terror suspects. In a few days, I will have them all guillotined in Paris, he told her (Bax 303). Marat s apparent blood lust when it came to those he saw as traitors to the cause was evident in his most of his writings. In the July 26, 1790 issue of L Ami du Peuple, for example, Marat wrote of the thousands of émigrés who had fled or were trying to flee France and were reputedly bent on destroying the Revolution: Five or six hundred heads cut off would have assured you peace, liberty and happiness. A false humanity has restrained your hand and delayed your blows. It is going to cost the lives of millions of your brothers. Let your enemies triumph for an instant and torrents of blood will flow. They ll cut your throats without mercy, they ll slit the bellies of your wives,, and in order to forever extinguish your love of liberty, their bloody hands will reach into your children s entrails and rip their hearts out (Marat, Les Pamphlets de Marat 209). Marat s often vile and always urgent words, day in and day out, created an atmosphere in Paris in which The Terror could thrive. The Revolution had started out as a quest for freedom from the chains of the monarchy but the rhetoric of the Revolutionary press turned the next few years into a nightmarish hunt for suspected enemies of the new Republic, leading to trials that were far from fair or just. Marat, openly embittered by his lack of recognition as a scientist and writer, used his gift of rhetoric to drive the Revolution forward more than any other man, even Desmoulins, because this was Marat s own philosophy coming to life. The heart of it had been espoused in a book he wrote in 1774 when he was in England, Chains of Slavery, and in it, Marat eloquently describes the chains of society and how they suppress freedom. He goes on to warn his readers of the threat of despotism, cautioning people to be as wary as he. Men are never so easily undone, as when they suspect no danger; and too great security in a nation is almost always the forerunner of slavery (Marat, Chains of Slavery 67). This is exactly how the

7 Berger 7 government of King Louis XVI was being seen. Unlike Rousseau, Marat did not believe in the original goodness of human beings before corruption overtook them. Moreover, Marat made reference to virtue as necessary if there is to be freedom, emphasizing the need to elect virtuous representatives. Yet he also believed even the most virtuous candidates would yield to corruption. Chains of Slavery influenced many French revolutionaries, perhaps none more so than Maximilien Robespierre, the incorruptible. The leap Marat made in calling for the death of anyone who was against the Revolution, or against him, was not so great given his belief that enemies must be destroyed because they have been corrupted. In examining his words in which he laid out the vision that became the Reign of Terror, Marat attacks people unceasingly, ironic for the man who was synonymous with L Ami du Peuple, through which he gained enormous political and cultural power. Historian Louis R. Gottschalk underscores the fact that Marat felt overlooked by those in power and was embittered as a result. Vengeance seemed to cloud his thoughts. A scientist, he felt persecuted by the Academy of Sciences. Yet he also studied politics and became involved in England s politics. Marat also came to realize the power of propaganda, especially when a little truth was mixed in for subterfuge. Marat often lied, often planned to mislead by false implication, often employed innuendo where directness and candor might have been unwise (Gottschalk 52). An example of Marat s diatribes is from August 1790, in which he responded to a soldiers mutiny at the royal garrison at Nancy: Apathetic citizens! Are you going to watch in silence as your brothers are crushed? Will you sit by as legions of assassins slit their throats? The soldiers of the Nancy garrison are innocent, they are oppressed, they are resisting tyranny (Marat, Les Pamphlets de Marat 244). Conspiracy is another recurrent theme for Marat as well as for Desmoulins. Conspiracy, in fact, was a national obsession with the French, as evidenced by Desmoulins not only in that

8 Berger 8 impromptu July speech in which talk of police spies enraged the crowd but also in much of his writing. Marat was no different; if anything, Marat raised the level of this conspiracy obsession to impossible heights thanks to his own obsession to root out and expunge every last enemy of the Republic. According to historian Lynn Hunt, conspiracy and rhetoric during these early years of the Revolution were united in purpose and proved to be a deadly combination for the people of France. In France, conspiracy was fraternal and hence fratricidal, she writes, and preoccupation with it only grew more intense after 1789 (Hunt 84). Words tainted by royalism or aristocracy were taboo and thus, dangerous; words of the new Republic took on an almost divine glow. Nation was perhaps the most universally sacred, but there were also patrie (fatherland), Constitution, Law, and more specific to the radicals, regeneration, virtue, and vigilance (Hunt 79). By late September and into early October, the most pressing issue in Paris was the price of bread. Marat was relentless in his accusation that the Subsistence Committee created by the Paris Commune had conspired with Necker to hoard grain, thus driving up the price and forcing the people to go hungry in order to discredit the Revolution. When he demanded his readers to rise up in arms, march on Versailles, and compel the king to leave that nest of intrigue (Marat, L Ami du Peuple, October 5, 1789), tens of thousands heeded the call. Parisians believed the unceasing rumor of a royal conspiracy aimed at crushing the Revolution militarily and lived in constant fear of being slaughtered by royalist troops. Outnumbered, the royal guard surrendered; the king had no choice but to accede to the crowd s demand and was brought to Paris. After the October march to Versailles, Marat was chased into hiding by Paris authorities who had become increasingly agitated over his writings and ordered a police crackdown. The authorities were outraged not only over his anti-monarchy attacks in his editorials, but also for his personal attacks on those who were Louis XVI s closest advisers, including Necker, the Marquis de

9 Berger 9 Lafayette and the mayor of Paris, Jean-Sylvain Bailly. Still, the People s Friend somehow managed to keep the presses running for a few days. By October 8, when a warrant for his arrest was issued, Marat was underground, using a series of safe houses provided by his friends and neighbors; he was, after all, a hero to the people. He also had valuable sources inside Versailles as well as the police. His eyes and ears at the Châtelet and at City Hall were the secret of his survival (Conner 53). Eventually, Marat was able to come out of hiding and his L Ami du Peuple started up again with the November 5 issue. A week later, Marat defended those who marched on Versailles, and their right to commit violence: The people rise up in revolt when it is driven to despair by tyranny. What evils does he not suffer before revenge! And revenge is always right in principle, it is not always in its effects; instead he endures oppression has its source in criminal passions of tyrants.... Is there any comparison to be made between a small number of victims the people sacrificed for justice, in an insurgency, and the huge number of subjects reduced to poverty or killed in the king s fury, his greed, his glory, his whims? What are a few drops of blood spilled by the populace... to recover its freedom? (Marat, L Ami du Peuple, November 11, 1789). Marat s closest journalistic ally during this tumultuous period was Desmoulins, who had started his own daily journal Rèvolutions de France et de Brabant. In the autumn of 1792, Desmoulins rose to Marat s defense at the Convention: Say what you will, Marat... is perhaps the only man who can save the Republic. By then, Marat had joined with Desmoulins in attacking the king. For Marat, it began with his suspicions that a conspiracy was afoot to get the king out of the country, where he then could lead a counterrevolution. In the June 21, 1791 issue of L Ami du Peuple Marat warned: The royal family is only waiting for Paris to go to bed before taking flight. Eerily he was exactly right, for on the night that issue went to press, June

10 Berger 10 20, the king and his family fled to Varennes. Unfortunately for Louis, he was recognized despite being in disguise and he and his family were escorted under armed guard back to Paris. As for Marat s prophecy, it should be noted that he had created an underground organization of informers and spies; thus, he had good enough information to believe in conspiracies. The king s flight, eventual imprisonment and subsequent trial intensified the Revolutionary rhetoric that was influencing the rapidly changing political landscape. The people of Paris, no matter their politics, had an insatiable appetite for the words of journalists. The words of Marat and Desmoulins in particular carried weight. Both men also underwent a change of heart, however, each changing the course of the Revolution. For Desmoulins, the change of heart came in how he viewed the Reign of Terror. For Marat, the change of heart came in how he viewed the king; Louis XVI s abortive flight was a betrayal, a treasonous move. Four months before the king s flight eastward, Marat feared that a federated republic would soon degenerate into oligarchy and so supported a limited monarchy, saying it fits us best today, in view of the depravity and baseness of the supporters of the ancient regime (Quoted in Gottschalk 25). As for the king, Marat wrote in L Ami du Peuple on February 17, 1791: All things considered, he is the King we need. We ought to thank heaven for having given him to us. News of the king s flight caused great apprehension across France because if it succeeded then civil war inevitable. His forced return to Paris transformed the political landscape as more and more people stood with the republican left. The king s flight also transformed Marat s thinking. The People s Friend had long preached radical and democratic reforms and was unyielding in his call for those loyal to the Revolution to spill the blood of aristocrats, royalists and priests who stood in the way of such reforms. While his terroristic patter might have been considered too extreme in the first phase of the Revolution, by 1792 Marat looked prophetic. On August 10 of that year, the king was

11 Berger 11 deposed and imprisoned, but it came amid bloodshed as an armed crowd overwhelmed the 1,200 or so troops guarding the king. Marat was now free to come out of hiding for good and published some key recommendations to solidify what he saw as a great victory at a time the French were battling foreign invaders. Among those recommendations: Above all things, hold the king, his wife and son hostage and until final judgment is pronounced, they are shown four times daily to the people.... If within fifteen days, the Austrians and Prussians are not twenty leagues beyond the border never to reappear, his head will roll.... Order the immediate expulsion of all foreigners and Swiss regiments who have been enemies of the revolution.... Arrest all former ministers and keep them in irons.... Execute all the counterrevolutionary members of the Parisian general staff.... Require the convocation of a convention to judge the king.... (Marat, Oeuvres de JP Marat: L'Ami du Peuple ). Three weeks later came the September Massacres, a slaughter that many felt Marat had instigated by repeatedly calling for mass executions. Over five days, as many as 1,600 prisoners, many of them political prisoners, including hundreds of priests who refused to take the Revolutionary oath, were taken out and killed. Marat had helped spread the rumor of yet another conspiracy that the people of Paris quickly believed, one in which political prisoners in the Paris jails would rise up as part of a counterrevolutionary plot. Two weeks after the massacres, on September 21, a Constitutional Convention proclaimed France a republic. Marat s final swipe at the king he once admired came in January 1793 when, as a delegate to the Convention, voted three times against Louis, that he was guilty, that his punishment should not be decided by a vote of the people and that he be put to death. The king was guillotined on January 21, 1793.

12 Berger 12 The king s flight to Varennes affected Desmoulins in a different way. He long despised the monarchy and this only intensified his call for the king s overthrow in his newspaper, Rèvolutions de France et de Brabant, and constantly invoked the Rights of Man and freedom of the press. His attacks on the royals were relentless. In June 1791, Desmoulins took aim at the queen, Marie Antoinette, and spread news of more conspiracies, inflaming fears that the royal family would flee. His reference to the Austrian Committee implied that the queen was conspiring with other members of the Hapsburg family who ruled Austria: It is known that the ambassadors of Naples, Spain, and Sardinia go to the Tuileries almost daily.... This naturally leads one to believe that there are important negotiations in progress between our court and theirs, the aim of which is certainly not to help the new regime but rather to restore the old one.... It is also certain that in the quarters of the King's wife at the Tuileries, a committee meets... [including] a secret agent, but one who is well known to the Viennese court. The ambassadors of Naples, Spain, and Sardinia are also said to be summoned occasionally to this committee. This committee could be called the Austrian Committee, because it reportedly was there that, against the best interests of France, the decision was taken to renew the alliance with the Court of Vienna, and to try to return the Low Countries to Austrian domination (Desmoulins, Révolutions de France et de Brabant ) On July 22, 1791, the National Assembly apparently finally had had enough and ordered his arrest. Like Marat did several times in his editorial career, Desmoulins went into hiding. He did not reemerge until he was granted amnesty in September. While he firmly believed that the king must be deposed and that enemies of the Revolution should be publicly executed, and said so repeatedly, Desmoulins decreased his journalistic activities. It wasn t until his political mentor

13 Berger 13 Georges Danton encouraged him to start writing again that Desmoulins began another newspaper Le Vieux Cordelier in December While it is true that Marat had long been a champion of terror as the most ideal way to rid the Republic of enemies of the Revolution, he also had grown more bloodthirsty and more reviled by those in authority, and even by his own Jacobins. His words were rants but they had a tremendous effect on the populace, particularly in death when his name became synonymous with martyr. His death, in a way, gave a green light to Robespierre to carry on Marat s fight, famously saying, Let terror be the order of the day. The Reign of Terror was formally adopted as a governing policy in September 1793 when the Committee of Public Security passed the Law of Suspects, which was written so generally that, as historian R.R. Palmer put it, almost anyone might find himself compromised (67) as enemies of liberty, while nobles and émigrés were automatically suspected. Desmoulins also supported the terror, but preferred the old regime s methods: Give me back my wooden gibbet, give me back my gallows (Quoted in Fife 57). Now as he began Le Vieux Cordelier, with the October beheading of the Marie Antoinette still fresh in his mind, Desmoulins had one mission: to persuade Robespierre and the Committee of Public Security that there should be clemency, that the killing must stop. First, however, he would lay out his arguments. In the following excerpt from the third issue, dated December 15, 1793, Desmoulins drew uncomfortable parallels between the Committee on Public Safety and the second Roman Emperor, Tiberius, who once had said, Let them hate me, so long as they fear me : Terror, as Machiavelli said, is only an instrument of despots, and an allpowerful instrument upon simpler souls, those timid and made for slavery. And today, with the People awoken and the sword of the Republic drawn against the Monarchies, let the Royals return to France. It is then that these medals of

14 Berger 14 tyranny, so well crafted by Tacitus and which I just placed under the noses of my compatriots, shall be the living image of what evil they will have to suffer for fifty years. But must we look so far for examples? The massacres of the Champ de Mars and Nancy, what Robespierre recounted the other day at the Jacobins... the violence of the parties clearly shows that despotism has returned, furious amidst its destroyed possessions, and can only become stronger by ruling like the Octaviuses and Neroes (Desmoulins, Le Vieux Cordelier 55-56). The reference to Robespierre in this essay is to the Jacobins victory over the rival Girondins and the eventual executions of the party s leaders. Desmoulins, in a sense, helped to destroy them after publishing a book, Histoire des Brissotins, or History of the Brissotins, that spring in which he portrayed (falsely, it turned out) the Girondins as agents in the pay of foreign enemies. On June 2 the Montagnards, led by the Jacobins, expelled the leading Girondins from the National Convention and took control of the Revolution. As historian Graeme Fife wrote, Desmoulins in the Le Vieux Cordelier essay referred to ancient Rome, but he wept for the Girondins and, in those tears, was substance of suspicion. The world had gone mad under the terrible mask of reason, of considered public good (Fife 242). Desmoulins finally had recognized the evil that was the Reign of Terror; the killing, he suggested, was out of control and must stop. Robespierre was irate and embarrassed. One of the twelve men on the ruling Committee on Public Safety and the man who had essentially become the face behind The Reign of Terror, Robespierre had been childhood friends with Desmoulins. The two men were still close, with Robespierre going so far as agreeing to read through the first few issues of Le Vieux Cordelier as a kind of shadow editor, a favor to his friend. The third issue, which Robespierre did not see in advance (Hammersley, Camille Desmoulins's Le Vieux Cordelier: a link between English and French republicanism 116) changed that relationship forever. Robespierre ordered

15 Berger 15 Desmoulins to stop questioning the committee s policies or Desmoulins himself would be seen as an enemy of the Republic. Desmoulins, after much soul searching, could not turn back. He ignored Robespierre s threat of the guillotine and argued in the next issue that the committee must find its way back to the old values, where clemency and good sense can once again prevail. Desmoulins made a direct appeal to Robespierre to acknowledge that clemency was consistent with patriotism. Desmoulins further argues that freedom of the press allows him to write this. He was wrong, however, for the Committee on Public Safety decided he has gone too far (Methley 238). In the seventh and last issue, published posthumously, Desmoulins would not give up the fight: Those who say to you that terror must remain the order of the day, I am certain... that liberty will be consolidated... if you have a Committee of Clemency (Desmoulins Le Vieux Cordelier). The undeniable role of the press during the French Revolution made subsequent rulers of France fear journalists; Napoleon was one of them and systematically imposed restrictions on the press. Indeed, if not for the rhetoric that was the magic of early journalism, would the French Revolution still carry such a deep impact centuries later? It is doubtful. Courage in and a gift for the written word served both Desmoulins and Marat beyond measure, but ultimately served humanity. Each man wrote powerfully and sometimes madly, but always fighting for freedom of the press. Through their journalism, each played critical roles in the Revolution. Desmoulins gave the call to arms. Marat was the self-appointed accuser who hammered on the benefits of public executions for opponents of the Revolution. And it was his murder that allowed the Jacobins to consolidate power, pass the Law of Suspects and usher in the Reign of Terror. Ending the Reign Terror belonged to Desmoulins who, in defying his childhood friend Robespierre with lucid and eloquent arguments against The Terror, was guillotined, alongside Danton, on April 5, Allowing Desmoulins to die this way, however, made Robespierre a

16 Berger 16 suspect himself; the Incorruptible One was guillotined on July 28, 1794, and the Terror was over. Desmoulins, whose Live free or die became the motto for generations of rebels trying to break free of dictatorships, wrote these words in his final days: What is the last bulwark against despotism? It is the liberty of the press. And the next in line? It is the liberty of the press. And after this? It is still the liberty of the press.... (Desmoulins, Le Vieux Cordelier ).

17 Berger 17 Works Cited Bax, Ernest. Jean-Paul Marat: The People's Friend. London: Grant Richards, Print. Billington, James H. Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faithful. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Print. Conner, Clifford D. Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution. London: Pluto Press, Print. Desmoulins, Camille. La France Libre. Paris, 1 January Web. Google Books.. Le Vieux Cordelier. Paris: Baudouin Brothers, Electronic Book.. Oeuvres de Camille Desmoulins. Vol. II. Paris: Librairie de la Bibliotheque Nationale, Electronic Book.. Révolutions de France et de Brabant. Paris: De l'imprimerie de Laillet & Garnéry, Electronic Book. Fife, Graeme. The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine. New York: St. Martin's Press, Print. Gottschalk, Louis R. Jean Paul Marat: A Study in Radicalism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Print. Hammersley, Rachel. "Camille Desmoulins's Le Vieux Cordelier: a link between English and French republicanism." History of European Ideas (2001): Web. via USC Libraries and Boston University Libraries Hunt, Lynn. "The Rhetoric of Revolution in France." History Workshop 15 (1983): Web. J-Stor. 15 February < Israel, Jonathan. Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual Historyof the French Revolution from "The Rights of Man" to Robespierre. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Print.

18 Berger 18 Marat, Jean Paul. L'Ami du Peuple. March Web. 10 April < Marat, Jean-Paul. Chains of Slavery. London: printed for T. Becket; T. Payne; J. Almon; and Richardson and Urquhart, Print.. Les Pamphlets de Marat. Ed. Charles Vellay. Paris: Librairie Charpentier et Fasquelle, Electronic Book.. Oeuvres de JP Marat: L'Ami du Peuple. Ed. A. Vermorel. Paris: Decembre-Alonnier, Electronic Book. Methley, Violet. Camille Desmoulins: A Biography. London: Martin Secker, Print.

19 Berger 19 Bibliography Bax, Ernest. Jean-Paul Marat: The People's Friend. London: Grant Richards, Print. This book is slightly dated but provides insight into the man, whether as a politician or as a lover. Billington, James H. Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faithful. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Print. This is a meticulously researched book that provides lively detail about the early years of the French Revolution. Conner, Clifford D. Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution. London: Pluto Press, Print. This biography has a number of excellent excerpts from Marat's madmanlike writings. Desmoulins, Camille. La France Libre. Paris, 1 January Electronic Book. The electronic form is easy to search though only 73 pages.. Le Vieux Cordelier. Paris: Baudouin Brothers, Electronic Book. It gives us verbatim what Desmoulins wrote in all seven issues.. Oeuvres de Camille Desmoulins. Vol. II. Paris: Librairie de la Bibliotheque Nationale, Electronic Book. A fine compendium of Desmoulins' writings.. Révolutions de France et de Brabant. Paris: De l'imprimerie de Laillet & Garnéry, Electronic Book. This was more difficult to search and it wasn't clear this contained all of his writings for this publication. Fife, Graeme. The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine. New York: St. Martin's Press, Print.A wonderfully written and detailed look at how the Reign of Terror came to be and how it died. Gottschalk, Louis R. Jean Paul Marat: A Study in Radicalism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Print. This is considered a classic examination of the man many considered a madman. Hammersley, Rachel. " 'The Chains of Slavery' in Britain and France, " The Historical Journal (2005): Web. J-Stor. 3 April This helped me understand the original work by Marat.. "Camille Desmoulins's Le Vieux Cordelier: a link between English and French republicanism." History of European Ideas (2001): Web. Via USC Libraries and Boston University Libraries. This provided additional detail on his last newspaper. Hunt, Lynn. "The Rhetoric of Revolution in France." History Workshop 15 (1983): Web. J-Stor. A terrific look at rhetoric and its impact on the French Revolution. Israel, Jonathan. Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual Historyof the French Revolution from "The Rights of Man" to Robespierre. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Print.He looks at the radical ideas behind the French and the radical men (and occasionally women) who played critical roles.

20 Berger 20 Lohrer, Jane. "Letter of Brissot to Desmoulins." The Journal of Modern History (1934): Web. J-Stor. Marat, Jean-Paul. Chains of Slavery. London: printed for T. Becket; T. Payne; J. Almon; and Richardson and Urquhart, Print. This was a good test for my French but helped to know I had his exact words.. L'Ami du Peuple. March Web. 10 April < A wonderful website through the University of Chicago that allows a search of most of the publication's issues.. Les Pamphlets de Marat. Ed. Charles Vellay. Paris: Librairie Charpentier et Fasquelle, Electronic Book. A fabulous compendium of his primary works.. Oeuvres de JP Marat: L'Ami du Peuple. Ed. A. Vermorel. Paris: Decembre-Alonnier, Electronic Book. A collection of most of his best-known essays and editorials. Mayer, Arno J. The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, Print. A well-researched and detailed book that compares and contrasts the French and Russian revolutions. Methley, Violet. Camille Desmoulins: A Biography. London: Martin Secker, Print. This is a fragile book, literally, but packed with interesting anecdotes about Desmoulins and his interactions with politicians and fellow journalists. Miller, Stephen. Three Deaths and Enlightenment Thought: Hume, Johnson, Marat. London: Bucknell University Press, Print. Provides vivid detail of Marat's death. Porter, Lindsay. Assassination: A History of Political Murder. NewYork: Overlook Press, Another book that provides insight into Marat's death. Schama, Simon. Citizen: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, This book delivers what it promises. A chronicle packed with details, including Marat and Desmoulins. Weber, Caroline. Terror and Its Discontents: Suspect Words in Revolutionary France. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, Print. This book is not as well written as the others listed here, but it does have a strong chapter on Desmoulins and Le Vieux Cordelier.