Robespierre's Arras cont.

It is hard to find many traces of Robespierre in Arras. The Association des Amis de Robespierre pour le Bicentenaire de la Révolution [ARBR] has produced a bilingual walking guide with various sites itemised which I have followed it diligently on Google maps but, apart from the imposing central squares, it is mostly a tour of shopping streets, road works and wheelie bins.  Nor is there much official recognition of the town's most famous son - a 19th-century statue stands in the the Hôtel de Ville but there are no municipal plaques and, to the surprise of many visitors, no real Robespierre museum.

Here, such as they are, are the highlights:

Early years

Robespierre's early childhood is a matter of parish records. His parents were married in January 1758 in the church of  St.-Jean-en-Ronville, in the prosperous parish in the south of the old town, and  Robespierre himself was baptised on 6th May 1758 in the church of La Madeleine. The family moved around within the confines of the town: François de Robespierre is recorded living in four different parishes in as many years: St-Géry, Ste-Marie-Madeleine, St-Etienne (where Augustin was baptised) and St-Aubert (where Robespierre's mother was buried in 1764). At the time of Augustin's baptism, François gave his address as the rue des Jésuites.
(Jeunesse, p.13-14).

None of the churches survive today. The church in the place de la Madeleine where Robespierre was baptisted was demolished in his own time, swept away in the reconstruction of the Abbaye Saint-Vaast.

Robespierre as a boy: "After Boze", c.1800
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/license/173465633
(No clues as to where this strange painting might be )

12 rue Ronville

 Robespierre's maternal grandfather Jacques Carraut ran a small brewery in the rue Ronville on the edge of the parish of St-Jean.  After their mother's death in July 1764 Maximilien and Augustin went to live with their grandparents whilst the two girls were taken in by their paternal aunts: "So, although born into a long line of lawyers and officials, Maximilien was now to be brought up in a milieu of manuel work, with the sound of carts and workers shouting in the local Picard dialect in the rue Ronville."(McPhee, Robespierre, p.4-5)

This image is pretty hard to conjure up in the modern rue Ronville, a pedestrianised shopping street.  A plaque erected by Société des Études Robespierristes in 1994, marks the site of the house (no.12).

The Collège d'Arras  

The former Jesuit school, the Collège d'Arras, run by the Oratorians after 1775, counted both Robespierre brothers and Joseph Le Bon among its pupils.  Robespierre, who received a bursary from the Abbaye Saint-Vaaste, attended as a day pupil from 1765 until 1769 when he moved to the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris.

It was in the church  of the Collège  that the corporations of the Third Estate of Arras assembled in March 1789 to begin the process of electing deputies to the Estates-General.

The Oratorians were proscribed in August 1792 and the College closed a year later through lack of pupils. The buildings were sold as biens nationaux.  The school functioned for a time inside Abbey precinct, but in 1795 under the influence of Pierre Daunou the main departmental Collège was re-established in Boulogne rather than Arras.

Today the school is recalled only by the existence of the rue du Collège and rue des Jésuites.


Notice sur le Collège d'Arras, Les rues d'Arras (1856)
https://books.google.fr/books?id=RQpBAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q&f=false

History on the Lycée Robespierre website

http://www.lycee-robespierre.fr/www/Page025.html



The "Maison Robespierre"

The so-called "Maison Robespierre" is the only substantial piece of Robespierre heritage in Arras.

Robespierre returned to his hometown from Paris in 1781 to begin practising law.  By this time both his maternal grandparents had died and the family was in a dispute over Jacques Carraut's inheritance,  with Robespierre's paternal aunt Henriette and her doctor husband François du Rut laying claim to a share of his dead sister's legacy.  For a year Robespierre lived independently with his sister in the rue du Saumon, but in Autumn 1782, he gave a receipt for the residue of Henriette's legacy and accepted rooms at the Duruts' house in the rue des Teinturiers, close to the newly completed Abbey complex. In 1786 as his income improved, he and Charlotte moved back to the Basse-Ville, to the rue Lepelletier, then the rue des Jésuites.

It was in 1787 at the earliest that he took possession of what is now the Maison Robespierre. 

The house is situated at the angle of the rue des Rats-Porteurs (now rue Maximilien Robespierre) and the little rue des Rapporteurs, only a few minute's  walk away from the  Palace of the Conseil d'Arras in the place de la Madeleine where Robespierre pleaded. His neighbour was the Chevalier de Mardre the Second President of the tribunal, for whom he acted as secretary.  Robespierre did not own the property, which belonged until 1830 to Defétel family.  Nonetheless, according to the ARBR, the choice of the quarter and the substantial nature of the house itself, were signs of "une certaine aisance"

It must have been here that Robespierre wrote his Adresse à la nation artésienne. He left the house in 1789 but Charlotte and Augustin presumably remained there until September 1793 when both moved to Paris after the elections to the Convention.  It would also have been to this house that Robespierre returned during his brief sejourn in Arras in October 1791.

The house was built in 1730; the date still survives on a brick under the eaves.  Early engravings, confirmed by modern investigations, show that it originally had a central doorway and rooms disposed off central corridor.  The bill of sale from 1830 also describes it as built round a court, with five rooms on each floor plus attic and cellars;  the ground floor consisted of a dining-room, sitting-room, ante-room and kitchen, with bedrooms and attics above.  The property survived the bombardments of 1914-18 but was extensively altered and long left neglected;  from the 1950s it served, under different owners, as premises for a private typing school.  (A"Sténo-dactylo Madame J Leprand" is listed on one website as having opened there in 1968.)

It was not until 1992 that the municipality was finally persuaded to secure the house for posterity.  In 1997 it was given over to the Compagnons du Tour de France, a society of traditional craftsmen, which the defrayed cost of renovations and converted it into a  museum. Only the lobby area was reserved for a modest Robespierre display - a copy of the statue in the Hôtel de Ville, and a few cases containing information.  However, finally there is promise of better things.  At the end of 2016 the Compagnons vacated the house and returned it to the town of Arras.  A committee of experts has since been appointed to investigate options for a new museum centred on Robespierre.

Postcard from before the First World War, showing the house with shutters

Recent photograph of the modest Robespierre display

Further photographs of the house can be found on the "Petit-patrimoine" website:

"Maison Robespierre", www.petit-patrimoine.com:
http://www.petit-patrimoine.com/fiche-petit-patrimoine.php?id_pp=62041_6

Some impressions:

 [The rue des Rapporteurs] is a long, crooked, dark street, at the end of which, and at the corner of a little street lit by a smoky lanterns, stands a two-storied grey house. Three steps lead to the door; the first floor has six high, narrow windows; the ground-floor has five, with ill-fitted shutters which do not close completely.  The whole place has an air of sadness;  it is grey and lugubrious, melancholy and distressing.
Fleischmann, Robespierre et les femmes (1909), p.19.
:
John Haycraft visited the Maison Robespierre in 1989 or shortly before. He describes the building as "sombre, with layers of red brick and grimy white stone, standing in a line of similar houses".  It had a first floor, attic windows in the roof, and the date 1730 visible under the eaves.  A dog or perhaps a drunk had urinated on the steps. A sign showed that even at this time it was still a school of shorthand-typing; the door was locked and Haycraft was told that the school closed for the holidays  He imagined it "normally full of young girls, who perhaps brought it the giggles and high spirits which Robespierre shunned".
John Haycraft, In search of the French Revolution, Secker & Warburg, 1989, p.245-6


The hôtel Dubois de Fosseux

The hôtel Dubois de Fosseux , in the rue du Marché-au-Filé was the  winter residence of Ferdinand Dubois de Fosseux, municipal counseller and leading member of the Academy of Arras.  It was bought by the State in 1952 and is now the seat of  the Chambre régionale des comptes.  Dubois de Fosseux was a sponsor of Robespierre - according to Peter McPhee, the Carrauts may have had links with him through his estates in Fosseux; in 1786 he wrote to Robespierre for missing a session of the Academy,"gambollng about in our district".  In 1785 Robespierre ran against him unsuccessfully as the Academy's perpetual secretary.  In 1789 he fell out with him over attempts by the nobles of the municipal council to dominate the deliberations of the Third Estate .(McPhee, p.30; 57) Dubois de Fosseux became the first elected mayor in 1790; he held various offices under the Revolution and Empire;  he was imprisoned during the Terror but narrowly survived to be liberated after Thermidor.

The grande salle of the hôtel was the meeting place in the town of the Society of the Rosati, an fashionable, somewhat effete literary society of which  Dubois de Fosseux was a leading member.  Founded in 1778, the Rosati had first come together in a garden at nearby Blangy, "from friendship, through their taste for poetry, roses and wine";  Robespierre became a member in 1787,  welcomed by his fellow lawyer Legay to share "the  grassy bank on which we become intoxicated, with the cup of Bacchus in our hand, by the volumptuous scents of the rose, born from the blood of Adonis". It was probably in the Rosati that he first encountered Lazare Carnot and Joseph Fouché, who from 1788 was a science teacher at the Collège (McPhee.p.45-6)

L'hôtel Dubois de Fosseux, bijou du XVIIIe siècle et lieu de rencontre des Rosati, Arras Maville.com, post of 26.07.2008.
http://www.arras.maville.com/actu/actudet_-L%27h%F4tel-Dubois-de-Fosseux-bijou-du-XVIIIe-si%E8cle-et-lieu-de-rencontre-des-Rosati_loc-675622_actu.Htm

L'hôtel Dubois de Fosseux au 14 de la rue du Marché-au-Filé à  Arras
https://prd.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2017-06/HDF_Historique_Calitte.pdf

Monument to the Rosati, sculpted by Augustin Lesieux in 1928.

A monument commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of the Rosati, formerly in the jardin des Allées can be seen today in the place de La Vacquerie behind the Hôtel de Ville. The figures were decapitated in 1996, apparently by vandals in 18th-century dress; an anti-Robespierre motive was suggested but never proven.


References

Association des Amis de Robespierre pour le Bicentenaire de la Révolution :
http://www.amis-robespierre.org

Text of the ARBR walking guide in English:
http://rbzpr.tumblr.com/post/146005427125/discover-arras-in-the-footsteps-of-robespierre

For Robespierre's early life, I have mostly followed Peter McPhee, Robespierre: a Revolutionary life (Yale University Press 2012)

Robespierre family genealogy
http://racineshistoire.free.fr/LGN/PDF/Robespierre.pdf

This site gives the following chronological summary:

Maximilien-Marie Isidore (de) Robespierre. Born 06/05/1758 (baptised in the Church of Sainte-Madeleine; parents François Derobespierre, a lawyer, and Jacqueline Carraut). 

Day pupil at the Collège d’Arras (1765), then scholar (450-500 livres per annum) of the Abbey 

Saint-Vaast at the Collège Louis-Le-Grand in Paris (10/1769 to 1782), Bachelor of  Law (31/07/1780), Licensed (15/05/1781, with a gratuity from the Collège of 600 livres).

Avocat of the Parlement of Paris (02/08/1781) then at Arras (1781; first case pleaded 02/1782);  avocat to the Conseil Supérieur of Artois (registered  08/11/1781), secretary to  M. de Madre, 2nd President of the Conseil d’Artois (1781), judge of the Siège de la Salle épiscopale (09/03/1782-1788, nominated by the Bishop of Arras Mgr Couzié).

 Member of the Rosati (literary club); member (1783) then elected Director of the Academy of Arras (06/1786).

Robespierre's Arras

The Arras which Robespierre knew in the 1780s was a bustling provincial capital. Following annexation to the French crown in 1652 the Artois had flourished, with a thriving textile trade and one of the biggest grain markets in the country. In the years after 1730 the clergy and nobility of Arras, with their vast rural estates, benefitted from a boom in grain production and an accompanying rise in land prices. The town was still on a relatively small scale, with population of just over 20,000 and, within the confines of its medieval ramparts, could be traversed in fifteen minutes.  Nonetheless, it was already divided into distinct districts: well-to-do central parishes; the crowded streets of the poor along the River Scarpe and its tributary the Crinchon, the military "citadelle" and the "town" which housed a plethora of lawcourts and administrative buildings.

Almost none of the original buildings survive today. The Hôtel de Ville, with its famous belfry, and the elegant 18th-century Flemish-style houses which adorn the two central squares are all replicas, the originals destroyed in the bombardments of 1915.  A sense of how the town once looked is conveyed by the Vauban relief plan preserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts:

This beautiful maquette by the engineer Ladevèze in 1716 was constructed as part of Vauban's plan for the defence of the north-east frontier. It is constructed of wood, cardboard paper and silk, to a scale of 1/600. It was bought by the town of Arras from the collection in Les Invalides in 1904  and has been patiently studied and restored  by M.Honoré Bernard over a thirty-year period.  The model shows clearly the cathedral, the central city around the abbey of Saint-Vaaste, the squares, the belfry, the crowded mass of houses, and the many churches and religious houses of the town, almost all of which were already destroyed in the Revolution.

Le plan relief de la ville d'Arras, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras
https://www.patrimoine-histoire.fr/Patrimoine/Arras/Arras-Musee-des-Beaux-Arts.htm

Honoré Bernard, "La restauration du plan en relief d'Arras ", Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, no 12-13,‎ 1976-1977, p. 99
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bulmo_0007-473x_1979_num_137_2_5816



The ecclesiastical establishment

Adam Frans Van der Meulen, Arras Cathedral in the late 17th-century.
The Cathedral was entirely demolished in the Revolutionary period 

Arras was above all an ecclesiastical centre, a "city of a hundred steeples" dominating its flat hinterland.  Foundations included the great Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Vaast, the cathedral, twelve parish churches, eighteen monasteries and convents, plus a myriad of smaller chapels and houses. There were as many as eight hundred clergy in all. The Bishop of Arras, Monseigneur de Conzié, was one of the best-remunerated prelates of the kingdom; the cathedral chapter alone had thirty-nine canons, forty-four chapelains and eleven curates, and an annual income of 150,000 livres from rents, tithes and dues.(McPhee, Robespierre, p.2-3)  Many of the shopkeepers and craftsmen were directly or indirectly dependent upon them - Robespierre's relative on his mother's side, depicted by Dominique Doncre, is referred to as "Carraut, brewer of the l'abbaye de Saint-Vaast."

Plan of the parishes of Arras in 1710.  All these churches have since been destroyed

In Robespierre's day, the Abbey, which had stood for generations,  was reduced to a "vast building site", entirely demolished and in the process of being rebuilt following collapse of the belfry in 1742. The Abbey church, the present-day cathedral, was begun in 1778 in neo-classical style by Contant d'Ivry, the architect of the Madeleine in Paris.

Almost all the churches of Arras were destroyed during the Revolution.  St-Nicolas-des-Fossés alone survived, transformed into a Temple of Reason - renamed St-Jean-Baptiste, it served as Arras cathedral until 1833. The present church, however, dates only from the 1920s.

Abbey of Saint-Vaast, now the Musée des Beaux-Arts

Present-day cathedral, the former Abbey church

Entrance to the Abbey in the place de la Madeleine

www.abelard.org, "Arras Cathedral"
http://www.abelard.org/france/germans_in_france-arras.php#pronunciation

Fabrice Mrugala, "L'abbaye Saint Vaast d'Arras" - medieval.mrugala.net
http://medieval.mrugala.net/Architecture/France,_Pas-de-Calais,_Arras,_Abbaye_Saint-Vaast/

The entrance to the Abbey in the  place de la Madeleine  Lithograph by Charles Desavary, 1877.
 Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, 4 J 484/83

An administrative and legal centre

In Arras the military, royal and provincial administrations of the Artois converged.  The great citadel to the southeast of the town made the army a constant presence; the garrison held up to 5,000 men and many more were billeted in the town.  The military hierarchy was closely integrated into Arras society : it may be observed that one of the two witnesses at Jacqueline Robespierre's burial was Antoine-Henry Galhant, lieutenant-major of the garrison (McPhee, p.9). In addition, Arras was the seat of the provincial Estates of Artois, an aristocratic body which met annually under the presidency of the Bishop. The Palais des États also housed the Arras Royal Academy of Belles-Lettres. The site, in the Place des États d'Artois, is now occupied by the High Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance).

The complexity of local administration was reflected in Arras's interwoven complex of legal jurisdictions;  there were no less than four ordinary and five Royal courts serviced by a professional body of 85 lawyers. (Paris, Jeunesse de Robespierre, p.30-31).  The supreme court, the Conseil d'Arras, was located in the rue de la Gouvernance, off the place de la Madeleine, in a site now occupied by the Collège Saint-Joseph.

In 1722  Maximilien de Robespierre, grandfather of the revolutionary, moved to Arras to become a lawyer in the Conseil d'Artois. He enjoyed income from property and settled in the prosperous parish of Saint-Aubert. (McPhee, p. 3).  He was to be followed in due course by his son François and in 1781 by his grandson and namesake.


Private luxury

Arras in the 18th century was a  place of busy construction, both public and private. In the thirty years before Robespierre's birth,  1,500 permits for building or rebuilding were issued in the town (McPhee, p.8).  The great central squares had already taken on their 18th-century appearance.  An ordinance of  1692 required new owners on both squares to match the facades of their gabled homes to those of the newly completed  Maison de l'Ecu d'Or (now destroyed).  A further ordinance of 1718 stipulated  that all rebuilt facades be identical "brick for brick or stone for stone". 

The surrounding area was home to the elegant townhouses of a wealthy landed elite, mostly drawn from the fifty noble families of Artois. A dozen or more grand hôtels are recorded in the district of  known as the petit-Saint-Germain, bounded by the modern rues Gambetta,  Pasteur and Emile-Legrelle.  The best surviving examples are the hôtel Dubois de Fosseux in the rue du Marché-au-Filé and the hôtel de Guînes, rue des Jongleurs, formerly the residence of the First President of the Conseil d'Artois, now a cultural centre.  

The hôtel de Guînes

The duc de Guînes, governor of Artois from 1788, is
the chosen guide for modern tours of the historical town

Also of note is the Corne d'Or guesthouse, just round the corner from the Grand-Place, which boasts an intact set of 18th-century wallpaintings. 

http://intohistory.com/the-corne-dor/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SWVVf4yh_k

Outside the medieval walls, in the marshy ground in front of the citadel the municipality was developing a whole new quarter, the Basse-Ville, with wide tree-lined avenues and an imposing octagonal central square; at time of Augustin's birth the Robespierre family lived in the rue des Jésuites (rue du Collège) in parish of St Etienne on the edge of the new district.

The present-day place Victor Hugo, centre of the Basse Ville

To be continued.


Historic Arras on the internet: 

En voiture pour une visite d' Arras - YouTube video, published June 2017
https://youtu.be/8BoxqgFWYOg

Monumentum. fr  - Pas-de-Calais
http://www.monumentum.fr/pas-calais-d-62-carte.html

Arras - Histoire (Nordmag.fr)

http://www.nordmag.fr/nord_pas_de_calais/arras/histoire_arras.htm

Website of Fabrice Mrugala - photographs of Arras and the Pas-de-Calais, including parish plan (Mrugala.net)
http://medieval.mrugala.net/Architecture/France,_Pas-de-Calais,_Arras/index.php?page=4

Arras -Flickr album
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/51366740@N07/tags/arras/

Who invented the tricolour cockade?

Greetings on Bastille Day!

To celebrate, here is one of the most enduring symbols of the Revolution, the tricolour cockade.

The following is taken from the website of the historian and illustrator, Bernard Coppens.

There are two popular theories for the origins of the cockade. The first dates it to Louis XVI's reception in the capital on 17th July 1789 three days after the fall of the Bastille. The King was presented by Mayor Bailly with a cockade in the red and blue of Paris, and fixed it onto his existing white one thereby creating the tricolour cockade.  In the second version the invention is credited to Lafayette who proposed the adoption of the tricolour as the official symbol of the Revolution to the Hôtel de Ville,  on 16th July or shortly after, in the context of  the creation of a uniformed National Guard.

Reception of Louis XVI by Bailly , Painting  of 1891 by Jean-Paul Laurens in the Hôtel de Ville, Paris. 

Bernard Coppens show that neither explanation is wholly satisfactory.  Red-white-and-blue cockades are clearly documented in accounts of the popular movement before the 17th July.  For instance, the journals of two deputies of the Third Estate, Adrien Duquesnoy and J.-A. Creuzé-Latouche,  both mention its existence on the 15th.  The design of the cockade presented to the King on the 17th is also uncertain.  According to Lafayette's Memoirs it was the plain red and blue of the citizen militia, but the Gazette de Leyde  quotes a letter written on the evening of the 17th which states clearly that  Bailly presented the King with "la cocarde royale et bourgeoise",  which was "blue, white and rose" in colour.  See also Histoire parlementaire de la révolution française, Volume 1, p.415, where it is stated that  the King accepted " a cockade like the one which the citizens had adopted". (At this time the personal colours of the King were already red, white and blue, hence perhaps his willingness to accept a tricolour cockade.)

What is the truth of the matter?

In reality though the idea of cockades spread rapidly, there was at first a great deal of confusion and variation in colours between the different districts.  However, the sources agree that there were three main designs adopted   -  a green cockade, a plain blue and red one and finally the tricolour, which combined the colours of Paris with the white of France.
As Bernard Coppens emphasises, the three did not follow in simple succession.  The green cockade was adopted spontaneously on 12th July by supporters of the Third Estate on the initiative of Desmoulin, who was said to have grabbed a leaf from a tree and placed it in his hat. (On 13th July a noble deputy from Marseille noted that it was necessary to have a green rosette in one's hat to remain untroubled by the new Revolutionary authorities.)

The blue and red cockade, on the other hand, was officially decreed by the electors of the Hôtel de Ville in an arrêté of 13 July, as the official  insignia of the citizen militia, which at this time had no other uniform.  Its use by unauthorised persons was strictly forbidden:
Since it is necessary for the Parisian militia to be distinctive, the General Assembly has adopted the colours of the town; as a result each member will wear a blue and red cockade.  Any man found with the cockade who has not been registered in one of the districts will be referred to the justice of the permanent committee.

At a certain point  green, which was the personal colour of the comte d'Artois, was abandoned for the popular cockade and red-white-and-blue adopted in its stead.


When and why did this happen?

Bernard Coppens has assembled various pieces of  evidence, which establish that the use of the tricolour cockade for ordinary citizens was ordered by Hôtel de Ville late on the 13th July and was the subject of a formal arrêté, probably issued on the 14th or 15th (the text of which is no longer extant):

•  A letter written by a merchant called Failly, dated  23 July 1789, observes that on 13th July the authorities were arresting anyone found armed on the streets and imprisoning them if  they failed to name their district.  Cockades were given out as passports; at first these were green but by evening, after it was realised that green was the colour of Artois's livery, they were "rose, blue and white".

• The bookseller Hardy wrote in his Journal on the 14th that, "They are beginning to change the colour of the cockades, substituting the rose, blue and white for the green colour."

•  The printed chronicle La Quinzaine Mémorable  has an entry dated 14th July at 8am in the morning, in which the author observes that "the great and small, from all ranks of society, are sporting, by order of the town, the blue, red and white cockade."

• A MS letter to Mayor Bailly from M. de Gouvion, Major-General of the National Guard, dated 28 March 1790, notes that the three colours had been fixed by an order of the Assembly of Electors dated either 14th or 15th July 1789. 

• An arrêté of the Commune, dated 4th October 1789, confirms previous orders, and repeats the declaration that the red, blue and white cockade is the only one permitted to citizens to wear.

It is possible that the prévôt de marchands  Flesselles, killed on the 14th,  was instrumental in the initiative.  A letter in his hand was said to have been found on the body of the governor of the Bastille, Launay, instructing  him to stay put until evening and await reinforcements, while Flesselles "amused the Parisians with cockades and promises".

Jean-Baptiste Le Sueur, A Citizen is obliged to wear a cockade,  c.1790.  Musée Carnavalet

Why the tricolour?

This is not in fact absolutely explained, though it may be supposed that the Assembly anticipated Lafayette's idea of incorporating white as a symbol of the French nation as a whole, or else sought to assimilate the Revolutionary colours to those of the King.

It may be noted that Lafayette's proposal that the tricolour cockade form part of the National Guard uniform had the incidental consequence of abandoning the distinction between official and popular cockades;  in future there would be a single revolutionary emblem common to both the military, civilian officials and ordinary citizens.


References

Bernard Coppens, entries on www.1789-1815.com:
"Le Mystère de la Cocarde"[original article published in 1989]
https://www.1789-1815.com/mystere_cocarde.htm
"1789 : La cocarde tricolore"
https://www.1789-1815.com/1789_07_cocarde1.htm

Account from the Memoirs of Lafayette, vol. 2,  p.252-3
When the king had received at the Hotel de Ville, from the mayor, the cockade of the revolution, which was only, at that time, of two colours, he was conducted by the commander-in-chief to the picket of the gardes-du-corps, which had remained outside the gates of the city.

At the end of the deliberation of the assembly of electors of the 16th, a project of organisation was fixed upon by Lafayette, in concert with the military committee, the staff of the provisional guard and General Mathieu Dumas, reporter.  It was from his proposal that, after the new colours had been adopted by the king, the Hotel de Ville added to them the ancient white colour*

In this manner was formed the tricoloured cockade, which had become the national one.  Lafayette, when presenting to the Hotel de Ville the project of organising with that cockade a national uniform, pronounced these words:

I bring you a cockade that will traverse the whole world, and an institution, both civil and military, that must triumph over the ancient tactics of Europe...

Note  *The cockade was at first red and blue; these were not only the colours of the town but, by a singular accident, those of the livery of Orleans.  Lafayette, struck by this circumstance, and wishing to nationalize the ancient French colour by uniting it with the colours of the revolution, proposed to the Hotel de Ville the tricoloured cockade, which was adopted.  (Note of General Lafayette)
https://archive.org/stream/memoirscorrespo02unkngoog#page/n262/mode/2up

Robespierre, Letter to Buissart, 23rd July 1789
Robespierre describes with evident pleasure the popular enthusiasm which greeted the King's entry into  Paris on 17th July.  He noticed cockades on the cassocks of monks and even on the stoles of robed and surpliced clergy.  Sadly he does not specify the colour.
https://archive.org/stream/oeuvrescomplte03robe#page/46/mode/2up

Le Bivouac des sans-culottes

Taunay, Le bivouac des sans-culottes

48 × 49 cm, oil on canvas

Musée des beaux-arts d'Orléans 

This painting, by Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, is one of very few which depict French Revolutionary combattants sympathetically without any overt ideological message.  It is included in the Bridgeman Art Library, so it is reproduced many times on the internet but  there does not seem to be much information available about it.  The original is from the Musée des beaux-arts in Orléans, but it was acquired only in 1975. The title is usually given as Bivouac of the sans-culottes, but may not be original -  the date of 1790 seems a little early for sans-culottes. On the other hand, to judge from their pikes and civilian clothing,  this is clearly a group of Revolutionaries.  The scene conveys a sense of their quiet comradeship and weary determination - I particularly like the man on the right puffing tranquilly on his clay pipe.

Taunay was a well-regarded landscape and genre artist, who studied initially with the history painter Nicolas-Guy Brenet and later with Francesco Casanova.   There is only one other Revolutionary scene by him known, a Fête de la Liberté, now in a private collection in  São Paulo.  It appears that during the Revolutionary years he continued to submit to the annual Salons mainly traditional historical and Biblical subjects, as well as landscapes of the Italian countryside.  In July 1792 he exhibited "The taking of a town" ("La prise d'une ville") which was bought "for the nation" and in 1798 "The exterior of a provisional military hospital", now in the Louvre. He is known to have taken refuge with his family in Montmorency during the Terror and perhaps showed his disillusionment in the large canvas "The Guillotine in Hell" in the Hermitage, which is ascribed to him on stylistic grounds.  Under the Empire he enjoyed the patronage of Josephine and received numerous commissions for battle paintings, many of which are now in the collections at Versailles. In 1816, following the defeat of Napoleon, he journeyed to Brazil where he was invited to participate in the newly formed Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro.  He returned to Paris in 1821 and died there in 1830.

References

Biographical notice in Jayne Wrightsman, The Wrightsman Pictures, Metropolitan Museum of Art 2005

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Gh_4yssGQgcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA289#v=onepage&q&f=false

There is a full scale study,  Nicolas-Antoine Taunay (1755-1830) by Claudine Lebrun (ARTHENA, 2003).  However, from what little I can make out from Google "snippet view", this does not have anything new on Le Bivouac des sans-culottes.

Saint-Just - Angel of Death?

By Jean-Baptiste Greuze, oil on canvas, 1,44 m x 1,20 m
Musée de Saint-Omer

The following is (mostly) taken from the opening chapter of Bernard Vinot's biography of Saint-Just, the  French text  of which is available on Google Books.

The physical appearance of a man of state has rarely assumed such importance as it has in the case of Saint-Just.  History is facinated by the image of Saint-Just as the ruthless angel of the Revolution, by his androgynous beauty.  But was he really so handsome?

Attributed to Jacques-Louis David.  oil on canvas
50 cm x 71 cm. Private collection

Even contemporary witnesses do not entirely agree with each another.  His sister Louise, reminiscing to her grandchildren, recalled his "great beauty", whilst his childhood friend from Soisson, Lejeune, spoke only of his "honest appearance".  His colleague Levasseur de la Sarte described him as "physically weak", whereas Desmoulin insisted on his stiff carriage  ("raideur"): "You see from his way of walking and his posture that he considers his head the cornerstone of the Republic, and  he carries it on his shoulders like the object of some holy sacrament".  Paganel,  a fellow  member of the Convention, left a more detailed portrait:

 Of middle height, with a healthy body, proportions which show strength; a big head, thick hair, bilious colouring, small lively eyes, a disdainful expression, regular features and an austere appearance, strong, but veiled voice, with a note of anxiety, a sombre air of preoccupation and determination, an extreme coldness of tone and manner - thus appeared to us Saint-Just, who was not yet thirty years old.

Outside the traditions of the family, none of these recollections is free from antagonistic bias. Later literary accounts further distorted Saint-Just's appearance for effect, mostly to vilify his memory. Thus Mignet: "He had a regular face, with large features and a strong, melancholy expression;  his eyes were staring  and penetrating, his black hair flat and long". Lamartine described him "immobile at the tribune, cold like an idea...the calm of absolute conviction spread across his almost feminine features".   But it was Michelet above all, who was responsible for the image of Saint-Just as the Angel of death, a pitiless androgynous youth, with steely blue eyes:

Engraving by Bosselman fils

Without his fixed, hard eyes, his heavily drawn brows, Saint-Just might have passed for a woman.  Was this the virgin of Tauris?  No, neither the eyes nor the skin, though white and fine-textured, suggested a sentiment of purity.  This very aristocratic sin, with its singular lustre and transparency, seemed too lovely, and led one to suspect its healthiness.  The huge, close-knitted cravat, which he alone wore at that time, made his enemies say, perhaps without reason, that it concealed cold humours.  The neck was virtually suppressed by the cravat and by the high, stiff collar; an effect all the odder in that his long waist did not lead you to expect this foreshortening of the neck.  He had a very low forehead, the top of his head appearing depressed, so that the hair, without being long, almost touched his eyes.  But strangest of all was his gait, of an automatic stiffness which was entirely his own.  Robespierre's stiffness was nothing to this.  Did it derive from a physical oddity, from his excessive pride, from a calculated dignity? - No matter.  It was more intimidating than absurd.  One felt that a being so inflexible in his movements must also be inflexible in his heart.  Thus, when in his speech, taking up the Gironde and abandoning Louis XVI, he turned stiffly, all of a piece, to the right of the Chamber and released along with his words his whole person as well, particularly his hard and murderous stare, there was no one present who did not feel the chill of steel.  History of the Revolution  V, ix.5  1851.

Christophe Guérin, Portrait assumed to be Saint-Just, 
Sanguine, 34cm x 24.2 cm Musée Carnavalet

Visual representations are almost equally unreliable.  In the years following the Revolution, Saint-Just often came to be seen as the embodiment of beauty and youth. Portraits of elegant young men, with or without high cravats, were identified as him, for example the sanguine attributed to Christophe Guerin in the Carnavalet which has no established connection. (Saint-Just is not usually portrayed as wearing an earring!) Numerous representations created after his death, such as the medallion and bust by David d'Angers or the engraving by Bosselman fils to illustrate Lamartine's History of the Girondins, show just how quickly the myth of Saint-Just's beauty hardened into received fact.

Pierre-Jean David d'Anger, Medallion, 25 cm.  Musée Carnavalet

Bust by David d'Angers, 1848

Some  portraits, however, can lay claim to authenticity. One is the anonymous pastel, created when Saint-Just was at the hôtel des États-Unis, which was later retrieved by Élisabeth Le Bas and kept by the Le Bas family as a venerated souvenir. 

Anonymous pastel, 75.5 cm x 59 cm.  Musée Carnavalet 

 Another is the portrait by Prud'hon; the artist was a fervent admirer of Robespierre and a regular at the Duplay household where he probably met Saint-Just.  In the corner of the canvas is a personal dedication: "A Saint-Just.  P.-P. Prudhon 1793".  The two portraits are similar; they show the same oval face, the same lips, clear eyes (brown rather than blue), long nose and long chestnut hair.  These features are also evident in the portrait by David and in one by Greuze, where the young deputy poses with his ceremonial sabre as Représentant en mission close by.

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, oil on canvas, 1793 
Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon

Also worthy of note is the engraving by François Bonneville, an artist who specialised in portraits of Revolutionary celebrities. It is the only representation of Saint-Just  which gives his title, the date and place of birth (albeit inaccurately) and the date of his death. It is incontestably more or less contemporary.  The engraving which appeared in 1796, at the height of the Thermidorean reaction, is unflattering....but it at least contradicts Michelet's claim that the habitual cravat concealed a blemish to the throat. The subject is portrayed with an open collar, hard features, and the long nose of his father.  He ressembles the man depicted by Greuze and David, but appears older or more fatigued.  

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6950400m

Bernard Vinot concludes that in reality Saint-Just was not particularly feminine, or even all that good looking.  He  inherited the unappealing features of his two parents: a long face, long nose and long neck.  These were were softened by his youth and camouflaged by his sure dress sense, but no doubt the passage of time would have accentuated them. Had he lived to middle age he would have come to resemble his father - strong, masculine and serious to be sure, but without beauty.  (I think Bernard Vinot is being  kind here;  what he really wants to say is that Saint-Just would have been ugly, just like his dad.)  This aging process, aggravated by stressful days and nights without sleep was probably perceptible even in 1793.

References

Bernard Vinot, Saint-Just, Fayard, 1985.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2IRy8h1P0ZQC

On images:
Iconography and portrait sections on the "Site Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just"
http://www.antoine-saint-just.fr/images.html
The Association pour la sauvegarde de la Maison de Saint-Just has several interesting portraits and engravings among its acquisitions/
https://associationsaint-just.jimdo.com/nos-activit%C3%A9s/acquisitions/