Jacques Hébert

Jacques René Hébert was born in 1757 at Alençon to a goldsmith father who died however when Jacques was only nine.  He went on to study law and worked as a clerk this however did not work out.  He found himself in Paris living on the margins and writing plays.

With the coming of the Revolution at Hébert became popular writing pamphlets condemning aristocrats. He soon became a prominent member of the Cordeliers Club.  It was his journal Le Père Duchesne however that led to his fame.  As Hébert became increasingly republican in the wake of the flight to Varennes and the Champ De Mars massacre so did the journal.  The journal was known for its use of foul language and first person perspective a method to draw in the less literate members of Revolutionary society.  This could explain why at times it was purchased by the war ministry to be distributed free to soldiers.

The journal and Hébert himself supported the September Massacres of 1792 and applauded the removal and subsequent arrest of the Girondins in June 1793.  However his views over dechristianisation where he supported the need for a creation of a Cult of Reason ran contrary to Robespierre’s beliefs.  He had the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and some 2,000 other churches converted to Temples of Reason.  His increasing power allowed him to rally thousands of French workers to his cause and demand more punishment for the counter revolutionaries and more assistance to the poor.  

He was increasingly seen as being too extreme for the other factions of the Revolution.  His attacks on Danton annoyed both the large orator and Robespierre.  At a time of great food shortages Hébert called for an uprising but his calls fell on deaf ears.  The Committee of Public Safety ordered that he should be arrested alongside other Hébertists.  He had a three day trial at the end of which he was found guilty and ordered to be executed.  He was executed on the 24th March 1794.

Gouverneur Morris comments on the crushing of the Dantonists and Hébertists.  Taken from Witnesses to the Revolution American and British Commentators in France 1788-1794, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London (1989) p190

Both the Dantonists and Hébertists are crushed.  The fall of Danton seems to terminate the idea of a triumvirate.  The chief who would in such case have been one of his colleagues has wisely put out of the way a dangerous competitor…. It is a wonderful thing sir that four years of convulsion among four and twenty millions of people has brought forth no one, either in civil or military life, whose head would fit the cap which fortune has woven.  Robespierre has been the most consistent.