Here is a translation/ summary of Hervé Leuwers's article, "Danton et Robespierre: le duel réinventé", published in Biard & Leuwers (ed): Danton: le mythe et l'Histoire (2016). A close reading of the evidence suggests that there was no profound conflict between the two men and that Robespierre moved against Danton only reluctantly, when he felt that the elimination of factions was "necessary to the Revolution."
Rodama: a blog of 18th-century & Revolutionary France
Wednesday 17 April 2024
The Robespierre-Danton duel reconsidered
Saturday 13 April 2024
"Even unto death" - Robespierre's letter to Danton
In March of last year an iconic piece of Revolutionary history went under the hammer when the Versailles auction house Osenat offered for sale the original manuscript of Robespierre's famous letter of 5th February 1793 to Danton. Heavy with the resonances of betrayal to come, Robespierre offers his condolences for the death of Danton's wife and expresses his friendship and love "even unto death".
ROBESPIERRE (Maximilien de). Autograph letter... - Lot 18 - Osenat
Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre, vol.III-1, p.160.
https://archive.org/details/oeuvrescomplte03robe/page/160/mode/2up?view=theater
Wednesday 10 April 2024
Robespierre - what's new?
May 2022 saw the publication of Volume 12 of the critical edition of the works of Robespierre, containing - among other items - the long awaited transcripts by Annie Geoffroy of the Le Bas manuscripts acquired by the French state in 2011. [On which see my post of 15.05.2015]
The event was marked on 8th February 1793 with a lecture by Hervé Leuwers, given at Arras as part of a series hosted by the ARBR-Les Amis de Robespierre. Here is a summary/English translation of his talk which has been made available on YouTube. As always, it is a great pleasure to rediscover that the foremost French expert on the Incorruptible is such a cheerful and unassuming scholar.
Professor Leuwers begins by reviewing briefly the background to the present publication. The work of editing the complete works was begun by the Société des Études Robespierristes as long ago as 1910. Ten volumes were eventually published, followed in 2007 by a supplementary volume edited by Florence Gauthier. Until the unexpected discovery of the Le Bas collection in 2011, it was thought that the Robespierre corpus was more or less complete.
Friday 19 January 2024
A little-known heroine of the Nancy Affair
It is a curious footnote to the story of Désilles to discover that a second person was credited with heroism the "Nancy Affair" - and that this was a woman, indeed a "woman of the people": the wife of the Concierge at the Porte Stainville. Here she is in Le Barbier's painting, serving the cause of peace by determinedly pouring a bucket of water over one of the cannons:
Wednesday 17 January 2024
Le Barbier's "Heroic courage of Désilles"
Le Barbier, Heroic courage of the young Désilles (1794) - detail |
The making of an artist
Monday 15 January 2024
André Désilles - forgotten Revolutionary hero
Le Courage héroïque du jeune Désilles, le 30 août 1790, à l’affaire de Nancy
1794
Huile sur toile
H. 317 ; L. 453 cm
Inv. 512
Dépôt par le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy au Musée de la Révolution française, Vizille
Friday 28 April 2023
Lavoisier and religion
Lavoisier "anti-clérical"?
Was Lavoisier a sceptical Enlightenment rationalist or (as a number of websites insist) a Christian believer?
This is a difficult question to answer: in the his writings and in his many letters which have come down to us, there is almost no mention of religion.
However, in October 1791 he penned the following tirade against clerical education:
Public education as it exists in almost the whole of Europe, has been set up not to form citizens but to produce priests, monks and theologians. The spirit of the Church has always opposed innovation, and because the first Christians spoke and prayed in Latin...it has been deemed necessary to pray in Latin to the end of time. For this reason the European education system is almost entirely directed towards teaching Latin.
If one reviews the public acts, the thesis of metaphysics and ethics defended in the Colleges, one sees that they are only an introduction to theology, that theology is the highest form of knowledge, which shapes whole education system.
The only goal of public education is to form priests. For a long time the Colleges were open only to those who studied for the priesthood. Since an ecclesiastical career led to honour and fortune, the catholic nations were naturally divided into two classes: ecclesiastics, who had all the instruction and the illiterate who formed almost all the rest of the nation. This is how, at first by chance, and then by strategy, all the means to destroy errors and prejudices was concentrated in the hands of those who had an interest in propagating them.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k29289p/f62.item
Wednesday 26 April 2023
Lavoisier - The Republic has no need for scientists?
La république n'a pas besoin de savants et de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu
[The Republic has no need of savants and chemists. Justice must run its course.]
This Revolutionary condemnation of scientific endeavour is so notorious that the geneticist and writer Steve Jones used it for the title of his book on late 18th-century science (No Need for Geniuses: Revolutionary Science in the Age of the Guillotine. Little, Brown, 2016).
However, there is no convincing evidence that it was ever really said. It is yet another example of a small distortion of the historical record which has resulted in significant misrepresentations.
The dictum was supposedly delivered at the trial of Lavoisier and his fellow Farmers-General by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 8th May 1794. Lavoisier had asked for a stay of execution in order to finish a scientific project. The speaker was variously identified as the Vice-President of the Tribunal, Jean-Baptiste Coffinhal, his colleague René-François Dumas, or even Fouquier-Tinville himself.
The trial of Lavoisier - 19th-century engraving from Louis Figuier's Vies des savants illustres. |
Friday 21 April 2023
Lavoisier, Revolutionary: 4. The unravelling
Engraving of Lavoisier by M.R.G. Brossard presented to the Institut de France in 1806. Grimaux identified this portrait as a last image made during Lavoisier's imprisonment. However, in an accompanying letter of dedication, the artist explains that the work was done from memory on the basis of previous sketches. See Beretta, Imaging a career in science (2001), p.12-14. |
Lavoisier in 1790-91
In late 1789 order was temporarily restored in Paris and the work of national reconstruction could begin. Despite the ambiguities of his personal position as a Farmer-General, Lavoisier was a natural member of the new liberal élite and his financial and administrative expertise were much in demand.
In 1789-91 we see Lavoisier take his place in Revolutionary Paris, resume his social position and continue to play a prominent role in the international scientific community. :
Although denied a place in the Assembly, he was active in the administration of Paris.
In September 1789 he was elected to the reconstituted Commune of Paris as one of the five representatives for the district of Saint-Louis-la-Culture. His colleagues, besides Lafayette and Bailly, included Condorcet, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu and other members of the Academy of Sciences; Louis Lefèvre-Gineau, Professor at the Collège de France, the chemist Demachy and the Farmer General Duvaucel. When the Civic, later National, Guard was formed, Lavoisier was enrolled in the section for the Arsenal.
Sunday 16 April 2023
Lavoisier, Revolutionary: 3. A letter to Franklin (1790)
There was no denying Lavoisier had a close call in 1789; he can have been left in little doubt that his personal position remained vulnerable. Nonetheless, by early 1790 the cause of Constitutional monarchy seemed to be triumphant. The spectre of popular revolution had receded and power appeared safely consolidated in the hands of Lavoisier's friends and allies. He looked forward to the work of national regeneration which lay ahead.
A rare piece of evidence as to Lavoisier's state of mind at this time is provided by a letter dated 2nd February 1790 written to Benjamin Franklin. Lavoisier informs his illustrious correspondent that the Revolution has succeeded but expresses regret that popular armed intervention had been necessary. One sense a certain unease:
Translation from the Edinburgh Review (1890), p.98 ["Even while announcing to Franklin, the "successful and irreversible accomplishment" of the political revolution in France, it is plain that Lavoisier was troubled, in his view of the rising sun of democracy, by some vapour of misgiving..."]