Camile Desmoulins

Lucie Simplice Camille Benoît Desmoulins was born in 1760 in Picardy.  He was able to attend Collège Louis-le-Grand where he met Maximilien Robespierre and Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron. He excelled at school and would leave to pursue a career in law working as an advocate for the parlement of Paris.  Unfortunately Desmoulins suffered from a chronic stammer which put paid to his fledgling career.

He was elected as a deputy to the Estates General.  He would appear to be heading towards historical obscurity when Jacques Necker was dismissed as finance minister in July 1789.  On the next day Desmoulins leapt unto a table in a café and began castigating the government and calling on the people of Paris to act.  His stammer seemed to evaporate as he rallied the crowd to raid the Hôtel des Invalides for weapons in defiance of the troops sent by Louis into the city.  This led on the 14th July to the Storming of the Bastille.

In this heightened climate of political unrest he would produce a series of pamphlets calling for a Republic at a time when only a minority was asking for the same.  By November 1789 he was producing a regular publication criticising not only the monarchy but the church and the aristocracy as well.  He was known for swimming against the tide of public opinion and upon Mirabeau’s death he would pour scorn on someone who had earlier been considered a patron of the young revolutionary.

The state of distrust worsened in Paris when a crowd gathering to call for the end of the monarchy were shot upon by the National Guard.  This was known as the Champs de Mars Massacre.  It was unclear how much Desmoulins was involved in the incident he did however keep a lower profile unlike his friend Danton who fled the country for a time.  He would later be directly involved in the fighting surrounding the attack on the Tuileries Palace on the 10th August 1792 and became Secretary General to Georges Danton.  When he was elected to the National Convention he would vote for the execution of the King and he seemed to be more than happy to align himself with the Mountain and Robespierre.

He would have an increasingly bitter relationship with Jean Pierre Brissot whom he would repeatedly dismiss as a betrayer of the Revolution. Brissot in turn would condemn Desmoulins and call for  an end  to the Paris Commune.  This would lead in turn with the march of the Paris Commune with attendant sans-culottes and National Guardsmen surrounding the National Convention and demanding the removal of the Girondin.  This the Convention would be forced into after a few days.  The leading Girondins would go into exile or be executed.

There are suggestions that he felt some form of regret in his actions.  This would be evident when he published Le Vieux Cordelier. This short lived journal lambasted the progress of the Revolution and how everything had rapidly turned into paranoia and accusation followed by counter accusation and factional fighting.  He called for a Committee of Clemency to counter the work of the Committee of Public Safety.

With the destruction of the radical Hébertists in March 1794 the attention of the Mountain turned towards those they considered too weak on counter revolutionaries.  The Committee of Public Safety issued arrest warrants for Desmoulins and Danton.  The Revolutionary Tribunal denied them the opportunity to defend themselves or to call witnesses on their behalf.  Unsurprisingly they were found guilty.  They were not even present when the verdicts were read out.  Fearing that Danton would use the opportunity to criticise the Committee of Public Safety.  He would be led to the guillotine on the 5th April 1794.  Apparently hearing that his wife had been arrested he had to be restrained.  Not knowing that she would be executed eight days after him.