THE ENRAGES: SOCIALISTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION? R. B. ROSE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS ON BEHALF OF THE AUSTRALIAN HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCILFirst published 1955 Printed and bound in Australia by Melbourne University Press, Carlton N.3, Vietoria Registered in Australia for transmission By post as a book Dewey Decimal Classification Number 944.042 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 65:25717 London and New York: Cambridge University Press ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ‘The foundation research for this monograph was completed at Manchester University in 1952 and 1953 while I held a University Scholarship in Arts and a University Studentship in Ars. Since thea, I have received help and encouragement from various quar ters, Among such contributions I should like to acknowledge, in particular, help from Professor André Bourde, who originally sug, gested the topic, and Professor Albert Goodwin, who encouraged me to undertake revision for publication. I should also like to thank Dr Richard Cobb for drawing my attention to some new sources and valuable indications, and my colleague, Professor John ‘McMenness, for a critical reading of the MS.weene wor) CONTENTS Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Jean-Francois Varlet Jacques Roux ‘Théophile Leclere Pauline Léon and the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women Claire Lacombe ‘The Enragés as @ Party ‘The Enragés as Socialists Conclusion Appendix: A List of Enragé Tracts Index ix 10 49 os B 8 93 95ABBREVIATIONS AHLRE. Annales historiques de la Révolution francaise RE La Révolution frangaise BVC. Bibliotheque Victor Cousin, Paris AN. Archives Nationales, Paris Tuetey, Répertoire A, Tuetey, Répertoire général des sources manuserits de Vhistoire de Paris pendant la Révolution francaise, Paris, 1870-1914aus 1 INTRODUCTION Mosr great revolutions have an unfinished air; they seem to stop short of an unrealized extreme. It is not simply that in the course of revolutions means destroy ends, and theories are defeated by realities. The act of revolt itself inevitably releases ideas and sub- merged or marginal forces which cannot be satisfied by any practical resolution of the immediate conflict. At the height of the revolution the ‘Left’ may triumph for a time, but only to act as midwife for the birth of a new ‘Left of the Left’ whose only conceivable fate must be destruction. Among such lost causes are ranged the Levellers and the Diggers of the English Revolution," the adherents of Daniel Shays’s Mascachusetts rising which followed the American Revolution,? perhaps the ‘Workers’ Opposition’ which emerged at the time of the consolidation of the Bolshevik Revolution. In the French Revolution of 1789 ‘extremist’ notions of political and social equality achieved a substantial break-through during the phase of Jacobin domination in 1793 and 1794, But during this period too there arose a new left-wing, ‘ultrarevolutionaties, as Robespierre called them, who embarrassed the Montagnard admin- istration by pressing for a more complete, a more wholehearted, and above all, a more immediate application of the declared principles of the régime. Some of these ‘ultras’ like Hébert and Chaumette, the leaders of the Paris Commune liquidated by Robespierre in March. 1794, have been recognized from the very earliest histories of the Revolution, while in a slightly different context Gracchus Babeuf has Iong been celebrated o the Revolutionary pioneer of Commun- ism for his role in organizing the ‘Conspiracy of the Equals’ of 1796. More recently, however, and particularly during the present century, general histories of the French Revolution have begun to give space to a different group of ‘ultras’, the so-called ‘Enragés’ of 1793. It seems likely that the English-speaking public first became “GED. W Peegoly, Lejewine Domacay inthe gst Cnt War ade ee FE een, "The Confederaon and the Shays Rebellion, Ameri Sed id Gat" Secrets dese 1 oriow he Site gore Fe eed a ath dete scan ace”2 The Enragés: Socialists of the French Revolution? significantly aware of the Enragés with the publication of a trans- Jation of Albert Mathiez’s history of the Revolution in 1928,3 and since that date most reputable general works have made at least incidental references to the subject. In J. M. Thompson's standard history the Enragés are forthrightly identified as a ‘small group of people on the extreme left of the Jacobin party whom, because they Joudly upheld the claims of the Have-nots, the Haves called enragés «century later they would have been “labour agitatars”* Else- where in the same pages we learn that the same enragés, ‘those who exploited the demands of the city poor for the punishment of hoarders and profiteers and for the control of food prices’, formed part of the opposition to the Jaccbins after the coup détat of June 1798, and that while the cenite of enrageé activity was in Pars, the movement had wide ramifications throughout the rest of France.S Professor Goodwin’s recent account tells much the same story except for a closer identification of the ‘extremists or Enragés’ with the leaders of the Paris sections, the addition of the revolutionary terror to their agitators’ stock-in-trade, and an extension of the period of joint action by the Enragés to include the anti-Girondin agitation in Paris in February and March 1793.6 Meanwhile, in A Decade of Revolution, an American textbook of equivalent influence, Professor Brinton had even eatlier extended the period during which the ‘Enragé party’ was active still further to the demise of the Heébertists in March 1794, made them responsible for ‘imposing the ‘macémum on an unwilling Mountain’ and endowed them with ‘a program of proletarian revolt much more in accordance with our modern notions of the class struggle than the blusterings of Hébert.” ‘The textbooks, therefore, create for the Anglo-Saxon reader a com posite picture of the Enragés as a coherent group ox party of agi- tators, drawing their support from the city poor and advocating a social’ programme which certainly anticipated and pechaps trans cended that of the Jacobins, a powerful, if hidden, driving force behind the Parisian insurrections of 1798, and an ulttz-Jacobin vat guard of the Revolution in the country as a whole, Clearly, if the Enragés did, in fact, represent 2 factor of so great & significance in the Revolution it is surprising that we still know so little about them in detail. Yer it emains true that in the past students secking a scholarly study and analysis of the ‘Enragé movement’ have been compelled to tun to French, Russian, and, latterly, East German 3 The French Revolution, trans. Alison Phillips (London, 1928). {The French Revolution (Oxford, 1947), 440 (first published, 1943), ST, 485, 440 6 rin, The French Revolution (London, 1953), 148, and passim, 7. Grane Brinton, A ‘of Revolution (New York ‘and London, 1934), 134, 190. Introduction 3 sources. It was partly in the hope of rectifying this situation that the present study vas begun, in 1950. ‘Whoever goes in search of the Enragés among the contemporary records is immediately faced with a problem of definition for which there can be io entirely satisfactory solution. Steeped as they were in Rousseau and the ‘(General Will, to the French revolutionaries the concept of party was alien, either in the sense of a parliamentary alliance, or of a mass patty outside the perliamentary assembly, All the chief political groupings of the Revolution, the Feuillants, the Gironde, the Mountain, the Dantonists and Hébertists, no less than the Enragés, were loose, shifting alliances of individuals, and though it is true that the Jacobin clubs anticipated many of the features of the modern mass party,® they zemained essentially a federation of autonomous debating societies, in each of which the strugele be tween factions followed a pattem of shifting personal alliances, Even should it prove possible to trace the broad outlines of an Enragé party, therefore, it would be less easy to establish its precise limits. The term enragé, like most colloguial expressions, is not easy t0 translate, Its literal English equivalent, ‘madman’, is hardly an ade- quste indication of its connotation in specialized political and his torica! usage. What contemporaries understood by it at the time of the Revolution is most closely translated as ‘fanatical extremist’, with overtones of wildness and rabid hysteria? Thus any politcal group of any complexion was likely to be dubbed enragé by its enemies. Tn October 1791 Queen Marie Antoinette wrote to Axel von Fersen to assure him that she had listened to his advice against tusting Duport, Barmave and Lameth, leaders of the moderate constitution- alist Club des Feuillants, I will not allow myself to lean towards the enragés? she observed, ‘and if I do move in that direction, or if T do establish relations with some of them, it will only be so hat I may make use of them.° Meanwhile, to the Club des Feuillants it naturally seemed that extremism was a vice of others. In February 1791 Gouverneur Morris, a visitor with ‘Feuillantine’ connexions, and a future Amer- jean sinbassador to France, had written to a correspondent that “The enragés, log since known by the name of Jacobins, have lost mach eh eSp amg Button The eons, oe Ey tthe Nev Hisar New “Srhis mote penecal interpretation, seems to ft the evidence more closely than that of Mathie: (flloned: by "Thompeon tothe effet that the ten East BC LAsdatee Atersly in Wk cane beng Sopeealaed wen {br a wild howe ‘or ‘maverick "Nos ct Engogés, ongine de ces dénomioa. tong’ AHL, 1929, 301; cf, Thompson, Prench Revolution, 238 10M. de Le Rocheterie et G. de Beaucourt, Lestres de la Reine Marie An- toinette (Pass, 1896), 319,4 The Enragés: Socialists of the French Revolution? in the public opinion, so that they are less powerful in the Assembly than they were’! Two years later we find an émigré pamphleteer, Coste d’Amobat, referring to the then dominant fraction of the Jacobins centred on Robespierre, Barére and Danton, as the ‘enzagés ‘of the Mountain’.3? At the same time, to 2 police agent with Mon- tagnard_sympathies, the enragés were those who continued 10 threaten the safety of the Jacobin goverment from the Left ig summer of 1793. Thus Dutaid, in a report to the Minister of ithe Interior, dated 11 June 1793, wrote of the conBlcting parties of trés enragés and modérés, who were competing for support in the streets of Paris. Two days later he again discussed the relative strength of the pari modéré and the parti enragé,> although he clearly meant by these classifications nothing more than the ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’ elements, Tn all these cases enragé is no more than a term used to describe those who held more ‘revolutionary’ views than the writer. But to contemporaries an entagé was not even necessarily an extremist of the Left. It is with something of a shock that we find Jacques Roux, the very figure appointed by later historians to be the leader of the Enragés, flinging the epithet back at the enemies of the Revolution, the aristocracy and the recalcitrant clergy. ‘To be gentle towards the enragés, he wrote in April 1792, ‘to show generosity towards rebels, is to share in their crimes.” Unlike the Levellers of the English Revolution, the Enragés would have indignantly rejected the name by which they have subsequently become known to history. ‘The process by which, alone amongst the extremists of their day, certain of the ultra-revolutionary opponents of the Jacobin xégime have been singled out as the enragés is, in fact, an artificial one, the product of the evolving historiography of the Revolution. ‘The first historian of the Revolution to devote serious attention to the anti-Jacobin leftwing agitation of 1793 was Thiers, Thiers {identified three of its leaders: the revolutionary priest, Jacques Roux; the Parisian agitator, Jean Varlet; and the extremist journalist, Théo- phile Leclere.!5 The first historian to christen the followers of Jacques Roux as enragés, howevei, appears to have been Pierre Roux, whose forty-volume Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution francaise, compiled in collaboration with Philippe Buchez, was pub- 2. Anne Caney Mets (1), Diary and Letters of Gonveneur Morris (New Yow, 1888), 392. Wp.'Cote dAcnobat, Ancedoes omieuses ct pow connues sur diferent ergnnager qui ont iow an rte dass a Revleton (Senet, 193) RW. Schmide, Pableace de Paris (Lespig, 1669), te 19, 34. 1s cuss moon de snr i Foes aie (is, 75, 15 Athi, Hisoive de la Récoution fangise (Brusele 1834) cope ‘i, 34. Ther stony was fest published herveen 1823 and 183 Introduction s lished in the 1830s.16 In the 1840s both Lamartine and Louis Blane gave further recognition to the existence of this ultrz-Jacobin and extcemist group in theit histories of the Revolution, although both were equally concerned to condemn and execrate its personnel.!? ‘At the same time it was Lamartine who enlarged the enragé ‘party’ to include the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, led by ‘Rose’ (properly Claire) Lacombe, whose members were described as ‘holding communist doctrines’ learned at a ‘Club des Enragés.18 Of this latter club there is, however, no trace outside Lamartine’s pages. By the middle of the nineteenth century therefore, the existence of the Enragés had been recognized, their names had been listed and reputable historians had described their role as the leaders of an ‘extremist antiJacobin faction in revolutionary Pers. ‘The earliest ‘canonisation’ of the Enragés as socialist pioneers was decreed by Marx and Engels in 1845, in a passage of Die Heilige Eanrlie which has subsequently served as a kind of signpost for those approaching the history of socialism in the French Revolu- tion. According to this, the Enragés were a link in the human chain by which the most progressive notions of the Enlightenment were passed down to the nineteenth century. ‘The revolutionary move- rent which begun in 1789 with the Cercle Social, whose main rep- resentatives were to be Leclerc and Roux, and which ended with Babeuf’s conspiracy’, Marx declaced, ‘gave birth to the communist jidea which Buonarott, friend of Babeuf, reintroduced into France after the Revolution of 1830." Before 1848, when socialism was scarcely more than one of the many purely intellectual ferments working among the Romantic ‘writers and artists of the period, it was sill possible for an avowed socialist, Etienne Cabet, 0 write a history of the Revolution which completely ignored the anti-Jacobin left, and tuested the ‘Girondin socialists, Rabaut Saint Etienne, Bishop Fauchet, and Condorcet as the sole French revolutionary progenitors of socialism. The events 16. J.B. Bucher et P. Row, Hise polomentne de ln Révolution reas Bt te flies de ta Revlon fone Pais, 187; fas pke lished 1847-62) i, 145: “The enemies of revolution cannot have more ehul sscomplices tien thom who exaggerte f° RG Lame, Hite des Cirondie (Pay 1840, vi 3504, 15 Mand Enge Di Hel ante J 186. The German feds ‘Die revolationire Bewegung welche 1789 im) Cock teesnt, in der Mite iver Bab Leclee tnd Rows 2m theen Flaupte- Gtentrien hatte und endlich mit Babess Veschworung fir euen Auge fc unteisg, hots de Kommunisiche Ide hervergenhoben, wsldne Babeuls Ecc Buotanoty ‘ach der Revlon von 1880 wed in Fanech SND Hise populaie de la Revolution frongaie (Pais, 1846), passim.6 The Enragés: Socialists of the French Revolution? ‘of 1848, however, and the growing influence of Marxism led later Qistonias to reuum to the records of the French Revolution not only to look, like Cabet, for evidence of Utopian speculation, but fax che remote origins of the existing working-class socialist mover wernt "In the very heatt of Paris herself’, wrote the radical democrat, ‘Michelet, in 1868, ‘in the dark and gloomy workers’ streets of Les “Arcis and Saint Martin, socialism was in ferment, # revolution be- Jond the revelution, and it was Jacques Roux and the Enragés whom Michelet, like Manx, identified as the leaders of this primitive socialism of the workers.# Ir is in Michele’s Histoire de la Révo- Tution francaise, published in 1853, thet les enragés are for the first sei deated as & distinct and coherent party, headed by Leclerc, Roux, "Rose? Lacombe, Vatlet and Gracchus Babeuf, the author of the communist conspiracy of 17962? By 1870 the Enragés, 39 de- fed, were safely ensconced in ‘Larousse? They have stil, how- sian be officially received by the Dictionnaire de PAcadémie, “The Enragés’ special role as socialist pioncers was further empha: saad in Jean Jaurey Histoire socialste® which began 0 appear at the beginning of the twentieth century, To Jourés however, the Enragés’ role was only marginally significant, Following the tradition long since established by Louis Blanc, the Histoire ‘socialiste acknow- edged Rebespiere and the Jacobins as the true precursors of soca: ism and democracy in the revolutionary era. “jaurés acknowledged disciple, Albert Mathiez, inherited the same Robespierts tradition. But while the main force of his masterly study of the economic factors underlying popular participation in selationary polities, La Vie chere et le mouvement social pendant Te Teneur (1927) was to explein and justify Jacobin policies, Mathice was compelled by the logic of his research to undertake 2 fuller and more sympathetic exemination of the Enragés than had yet been attempted. ‘The result was an uncomfortable synthess ie hich the Jacobins and the Encagés weze at once depicted as the Honeess of «common body of democratic and socialist doctrine vedas the most irreconcilable of political enemies, Tn the years which followed however, ‘before his death in 1932, Mathiez seems qo have begun a new approach to the problem of the Enragés, more free from Jacobin. parti pris. The Enragés were now 10, be con Biered as a group worthy of a closer study in their own sight, repre: Seating 2 distinct and original departure in democratic socialist fhought and not merely as unseliable Jacobin auniliries, The omgan 2a], Michelet, opt. ars, 1853), oh 22} Michelet: alee miverel du Xie dele, sx. "Enrage a I Michelet, Histoire de le Réoolution francaise (Paris, 1868), i, 28, 24 J. Jounes (eddy 0p. cit. (Pars, 1901-4), passin Introduction 1 of the disnhesited classes, « prey to famine and misery,’ Mathi _ disinhesi , misery! Mathiex wrote in 1930, ‘the Enragés are rt agitator "proposed remedies for the sarcity of SPR aadPtccntale al oe exces Sve tse in their pice requisition, taxation, ox the oficial regulation of prices, and the repression of speculative hoarding. Such a def nit, and the stady of Tabousesu de Montigny, an alleged enragé Jnconmas of Orleans, which i was used t0 justify, seemed © imply a fresh revision of the concept enragé, which would now be ex. tended ftom the narcowr group of Pars extremists to embrace whole host of obscure individuals who might be discovered to have played an analogous role in the revolutionary history of provincial In the event, however, the new trend stopped short wit pletion of 2 second ele on Taboureau by Cones Lethe fs 1931.26 Instead the older tradition was given a new definitiveness by the publication in 1930 of a special study restricted to the Paris Enregés, Roux, Leclere, Varlet and Claire Lacombe, prepared by JM, Zacker, a Soviet historian and a former pupil of Mathiea27 Neither in the Soviet Union, nos in the West, however, was this neor initiative followed up, and there followed a period ‘of almost twenty years, including World War II, during which the Enragés seemed to have been virtually forgotten by historions of the Revole- tion. In pare this seems to have been due to the tendency of the Marxist Historians, the most inteested parties, to rally to the defence of Robespierre and the Jacobins, in France, perhaps as a more suit able historical analogue’ of the Popular Front2* in Russia, peshay Se an acceptable arelogue of the Dictatship of the Proletariat, and one les contaminated than the Enragés with the taint of Leftist deviation.®® In 1947, however, an independent Marxist, Daniel Guécin, nominated the Enragés for an important role as spokesmen for the nascent proletarian revolution of the ‘bras nus’ that he chose to discover in the events of 1792-42? While Guésin’s basic hess, 25 A. Mather, ‘Un Boag incon, ALR. 1920, 209 EArt joe anf ar door, ANE. si spe A fella oy psn the Foch Reon (Londo, 5 cm. Willa Zak ho ibe mm 199, ack Fe ats teen Commie pln: tnd chy sone of Sauce mm wr ap © th tea plane ie see enone Exc stom oye Be Hie Fo "SCP" stare Epals. Lenin and Stalin on the French Reh sro rt ta el nm HE, an Sem TE apni man 2 ty nage g gpsation From Die ‘Heilige Familie is conspicuously absent. ae ops nee clas ss Jo premidre république, bourgeois et ‘bras-nus’8 The Enragés: Socialists of the French Revolution? that a proletarian revolution, however ‘nascent’, could occur in the circumstances of Paris in 1793, has been rightly critcized.*" his special preoccupation nevertheless led him to emphasize end rede- fine the nature of the political and ideological conflict between the Robespierrst Jacobins and the Enragés. Shortly afterwards, in 1948, ‘Jacques Roux found his first definitive biographer in another inde- pendent Marxist scholar, Maurice Dommanget.»* Since then sev- eral important and closely documented studies on revolutionary Paris have been published: by George Rudé on The Crowd in the French Revolution, and by Albert Soboul and Kare D. Ténnesson. on the Paris sans culcttes.*# These, however, by definition are con- cemed primacy with the ‘rank and file’ and not with ‘spokesmen’ They therefore deal with the Enragés only incidentally and within a much broader context. On the other hand, and especially since the death of Scalin, Communist historians, particularly in the Soviet Union and East Germany, have revived the study of the develop ment of the Socialist tradition during the Revolution, free from. undue deference to Robespierre and the Jacobins. At a Congress ‘on Problems of the Jacobin Dictatorship held at Odessa in 1958 papers were read by’ Professor Sytin of Ulianovsk University on Roux and Leclere in 1793% and by Professor Zacker on Jacques Rous,%6 while a new and revised edition of Zacker’s study of the Enragés was published in Moscow in 196037 Meanwhile at Leipzig University, where there is a special interest in the Revolution and the sansculotte movement,2° Professor Walter Markov has also been act, i fone, AFLRF., 1947, 173; . cle take Be sey Beak ected, "ba bas, Shae Spe 52 Jacques Rove, leeuré rouge (Pari 1988) 35 The Crowd in the French Revolution (London, 1959) 438 A"Sohoul, Las Sinsoulotten pariions on Yaw II; mouvement populire ef goisernomen revolulopncre, 2 juin 1793-thormider am It (Baroy 1958 fife Tpanewon, La Défete dor taurculotion, mouvement populate et re action bourgense en Pan Ill (Oslo, 1958). 3°'S. L. Sytin, ‘Poiticheskaya programa f taltika beshenyih (Jacques Roux { Leklerka) Iyetom 1793 1, Meshversovshaya Konferenciya po tort Jake binski Diktatary (Odessa, 1958), 47-53; cf by the same author, ‘Borba ple- beiskish Mass Parisya vo glave s’Roux i Lekleskor., Ut sapises Uignovskono bes. pedagog initia (University of Ulisnovsk), 1958, no. 8, p- 253, which Seems to have pionaored the revieal of intaest in the Eoragés in the USSR, 36]. M. Zacker, ‘Jacques Rous i Jakobinskaya Konstcutsiya 1793 7, Mesh: vergotshayea Konfercnciya, 43-6. 57. M. Zacker, Dvesheme Beshenyih (Moscow, 1960). See ako, by the same “author, “Posyedaih period Dyeyartelnosti Zaka Rul, Franzuskii Yezho- sgodnik French Annual), 1959, 165-83 (with zésume in French) ‘Jean Varlet Vo wremya Jakobinskoi diktatury’, Novaya i Noveyseya istoria, 1959, no._>, 113-26: "Warlet pendant la reaction thermidorienne,, AR. 1960, 19-36 3€ Witness the publication of an important collection of dacaments on the popile movement’ daring the Revolution: W. Maskaw and’ A. Scboal (eds), ie Sanseulotton von Paris, Dokumonto eur Ceschichte der Velkabewesung ¥793 bis 1794 Beclin, 1957). Introduction 9 rehabilitating the Enragés, editing valuable new texts®? of the Enragé works and encouraging fresh research into the background of the Enragé movement.“ Tn view of the recent intemational revival of interest in the history of the popular and movement during the Revolution, and in the Enragés in particular, it seams more than ever necessary that there should be a summary of the state of the question readily available in the English language. Such a work cannot pretend, in the present fluid state of research, to be definitive; on the other hand it may render service, if only by investigating some of the major questions which occur on any close examination of the history and development of the Enragé concept. An attempt will be made in the present work, therefore, to consider firstly, who exactly the Enragés were and whet was their personal contribution to the his: tory of the Revolution; secondly, whether in any sense, it is permiss- ible to speak of a coherent ‘Enragé Party’, and finally whether the Enragés were, in fact, the socialists of the French Revolution. (ed), ‘Zu einem Maousript von Jacques Rows’, Wis seaedefadks Mate fet, ttt Viens asp 858 oo. 8 PGCE W. Markov, ‘Les Jecquesoutin’, AH.RE, 1960, 16282.2 JEAN-FRANCOIS VARLET Wan the EstatesGeneral met, JeanFrangois Varlet was twenty- five yesis of age'—a few years younger than Robespierre and Danton, and a few years older than Bonaparte and Chateaubriand. He belonged, therefore, to that ‘generation of 1789" which the old régime had educated, but which made its career during the Revolu- tion. A Parisian by birth, at the outset of the Revolution Varlet was living with his mother in the Rue Tiron? in a district slightly to the east of the centre of Paris, and on the right bank of the Seine. At that date Madame Varler had been more than seventeen years 4 widow? but she seems to heve been in fairly comfortable cizcum- stances for on her death in 1793 Jean inherited a substantial annual income of 5,800 livres from property At some time during the 1780s he attended the Collige d'Harcourt of the University of Paris, the college of Laharpe and Talleyrand, where, he tells us, his preceptor forecast that he would be ‘tout bon ou tout diable” (all ‘good or all devil)? pethaps a reflection on the one hand on his un- doubted talents, and on the other, on a mental instability bordering con derangement which even Varlet himself, as an old man, was ready to edmit.© His writings during the revolutionary period show LICE, Vaget, Dédratgn des deity de Thome martingg et du role (Sante, unded), gee Vad, tntrdate a V7ea, “OO se Ceeray” Luan Secure de Pare Pets 1965), it 53, bas hp ae 6 Thon al ees is ae tenvaien 173 SE. Nc, feo Varlet@ es ches conttoyess et de fee bing icy a oth "t Deportion of Leymesie, Courier frangsis, 30 October 1793, SVerler a ser chers conctoyens. ‘The selevant reaiter, of the College nd HS Scot AYRES, rs exp Bx TRL. Var aye hac he ‘id ‘ecentyGnighed his studies fo, 1789 eee ' Job. Varlet, "Nantes, Fan deuxiéme de Vhéroisme parisien’ (Nantes, 1831): “Yai avers ln premitre révolution avec ma tte chaude, Le sage de Femnay dit uses pat sen tut nour ta fcr ewe de dable 2 crs. en fos lan les Evenements dont Vai €té le tmoin quelque pew sams pu cela sok alae de susie JH Laure") Giondin who fad cause be re ‘grmpahet, emembeced Vasetsimrly at "une eice de fou Eien Suite lr mémoires de Louvet et mémoyes pour servic 3 Thistore de Ta, Convention le, par Dawenou (Paris, 1648), 264, In 1813 the Brefecr of Police for is simllacly described Vaeet as “ane espice de fou! (A.N. F* 8586). "These Jean-Fransois Varlet 1 Varlet to have been a fervent disciple of Rousseau,” but at the same time an empiricist of the school of Helvétius and the Encyclopae- ists Both intellectual traits may have been the product of Varlet’s ‘student days; Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins both became in- passioned Rousseauists as students at Louis le Grand. With no need fo work for his living, his mind fermenting with the advanced ideas of the century, Varlet seems to have plunged into revolutionary politics as a sort of allenthralling hobby, haunting the public gal Teries of all the revolutionary assemblies, attending the clubs, par- ticipating in the journées, He followed no fixed employment and seems to have had no private life distinguishable from his public revolutionary career. Varlet’s biography in fact summarizes in itself the history of that democratic revolution which was bom in 1789, survived for a while as an uneasy partner of the liberal revolution fand was finally extinguished by Bonaparte in 1799. It is partly for this reason that, despite the comparatively greater notoriety of Jacques Roux, it is most convenient to begin a study of the five Enragé leaders with an outline of Varlet’s life and career. Tt begins to be possible to sketch in the details of that career from the middle of 1790, We know that Varlet attended the great Fédér ation of July 1790, at which £6dérés from all over France came to ‘swear, on the Champ de Mars, an oath of loyalty to the constitu: tion?” and that he became a member of the Jacobin club! the Cordeliers club,!1 and the Fraternal Society of both Sexes? a Jacobin auxiliary which by 1791 provided 2 link between the Jacobin club and a network of popular societies for education and ‘ce unftiendly estimates, but even a fellow demceret, Charles Germain, in an sentially ‘gmt eo, Ss deed Ves ete hs Sande Bee Bese ISOS ee Eas a father Gicuedon of Vales ad nest ace p32, FOE PE, Valet, Pion Pune nowwelle organization de la Socdvésmire des aqui tl Gonstuon Po 192), ea pie des pdt det Ro, des grands, des financiers, des gens de robe, fat de vous tenir a Tombce de Mignfranee’ ©. Roustesa @ para, les princpes, les Tumlzes prevalent” In Le Panthéon janes, composed in the Plessis prison in 17950), Varlet re Inosks that he wa spending his imprisonment rereading, Rousseaa. Bee EE Vas How ane aowvele ramninton: (De phloonbes je ors digs ros fiona persons, me event sh des pes pulls SVarlet, Varlet a. ses chers concitoyens. Tn 1792 Varlet had a job at, the Administration des Postes (Tuetey, Répertoire, v. no, 3578), but he aban- oped this quielly (A.N. F685 ‘Adland Le Sous. des jacbins Pars, 185997), i. 6275 J. M. ‘Thompjoo, Hobeptre (Oxted 1930) oe in sae aie, Le Cha des Cordlers pendant ta cee de Varennes Pai, 10), 151m.12 The Enragés: Socialists of the French Revolution? propaganda scattered throughout the capital.!? Before the end of 1791, too, Varlet had begun a career of street-comer agitation which was to be his most distinctive contribution to revolutionary politics.!4 His favourite ‘pitches’ were the gardens of the Palais Royal, where he could stand on the convenient stone benches, and, after August 10 1792, the Terrasse des Feuillants, a part of the Tuileries Gar- dens,}5 close to the Legislative Assembly and the Convention. Here, however, he was forced to compete for the public ear with such rivals as Théroigne de Méricourt, the feminist agitator.16 Contem porary descriptions depict Varlet arriving at the Terrasse in sans- culotte regalia, with a red bonnet of liberty and pike, and preceded by a grubby ‘standard-bearer’. Four other acolytes carried a mobile pinewood tribune dressed with red drapes and bearing the inscription ‘Apostle of Libecty’7 By May 1793 Varlet had pattiotically exchanged his frst costume for National Guard uniform.38 The ‘Apostle of Liberty’ was hence- forth one of the public spectacles of the capital; even, apparently, as late as 1799.1 Meanwhile a steady stream of revolutionary propa. ganda flowed from Varler’s pen. From 1789 to 1795 he was the author of fourteen or fifteen pamphlets? ranging from ephemeral 13 Thid,, 14; see also A. Macty, Les 9 et 10 Thermior (Paris, 1908), 5, for the founding of five such societies in egy 1791; and on the populer societies fof 1791 in general, 1. Bourdin, Les ‘Sociés populaires @ Parks pendant la Revolution (Pars, 1937). wa Fl d'Herhois's teibute in gh, Jacobi, club on, 1 Jay 1793: cat lai gut le promise a congu cette grande idée quil flat haranguer le pewple dans les places publigues; stoma le premise femplic cete tche importante, Journal fontagne, 00. 32, 3 July 1793, TS anes, Varler a ses chers concitoyens. The Brith Museum, example is ‘endorsed im pencil ‘Regu fe 28 avril 1792 en TEalice des Jacobine’. For refer ‘ences to, Varlet on the Tezrasse des Feuillants in 1792, see Aulard, La Socisté es Jacobins x, 467,489; for references to Varket on the Terrase in, 1793: ‘AWN. AEW 1476 (16' March 1793); A. Schmidt, Tableau de Paris pendant Révolution (Leipzig, 1867), ii. 181 (+ May 1793); Bucher et Roux, Histoire lementaire, xxvii, 119 (16 May 1793). Identification of this ‘orator 9s facet is by LM. Prudhomme, Les Crimes de ta Révolution (Paris, 1797), v.53. won Hyde de Neuville, Memoirs, wans. F. Jackson (London, 1913), 8 2 Paul ase, “Varle,Je tun valine, Centre de Pars, 1914, 105. The pike was probably part of the stendard or banner. Cf, Buches et His. Ene parldmontaire x. 403, for Vatlet im the public tribune at the Jeesbin ou, eth fall presphernala TW Bucher ef Hows, Hutcice parlowentsire, xvid, 1195 Prudhomme, Les CESS T Become, Bop moderne Vase: ‘youl 138 T Besion, Biopaphic modeme (Leiig, 1804), sv. Varlet: Tl woulut reprendce, en 1789, son tile Gorscur,smbulact, mal i eat peu de sucrds takin pata lee Jecobins du Mangge’ For Varies intention Yo resume His Gampeign in November (793) after an imprisonment, sae Montew, 17 November 1793, sesion of the Commune, BW Appendix: pp. S64. One politcal wast, published after the fight to ny ii ican Jean-Frangois Varlet 3 leaflets to a work of fifty-eight pages,?? and numerous other public petitions and addresses. No less than five of the pamphlets were published from prison.2 Circulated in printings of as many as 5,00023 and at the author's expense, such works doubtless contc- buted to the steady impoverishment which Varlet suffered during the Revolution.2* Varlev’s fist emergence os an active leader of the revolutionary Left dates from June 1791, when the light of Louis XVI and his family to Varennes inspired the publication of certain ‘political re flexions’ of a republican tinge.* In June and July the Cordeliers club and the Fraternal Society, along with the Cercle Social, were swept into a republican campaign culminating on 17 July in the famous petition and ‘massacre’ of the Champ de Mars. Two days before the ‘massacre’ Varlet had been one of six delegates of the Cordeliers club who lobbied the Legislative Assembly, without success, for a plebiscite on the issue of Louis’ dethronement.2 His part in this agitation was soon to eam Varlet the first of five im prisonments suffered between 1791 and 1795.27 We do not know hhow long Varlet was held, oz when he was released, but by April 1792. he was back again in the thick of politics, this time with a pamphlet assailing General Lafayette, the first commander of the army of the frontier in the new war against Austria, and a man suspected by the Left of dictatorial ambitions. Varlet also csiticized Lafayette’s ‘private army’, the National Guard, for its anti-demo- cratic leanings and attacked the retention of the royal power of veto. On 29 May he was arrested and briefly held by the Paris National Guard for posting up a blunt placard which pilloried their idol as a scoundrel and a traitor; his temerity also won him a repri- ‘Varennes anc referred to in Veret 2 ses chers conctoyens, and one other teict Have yet 00 be sented. 33 | dobre dea Ur pcan, & ses constovens lies (Pass, 1793); e's Wher, prisoner, 2 ses conctovens lbgos (Pars, 1793); Bagoton (wig AG) re esate Bars Bi Be Blt as TPSHOK, Le Panton fren Pars, 1795 BE aie Binion colonel doe droits de Thowme dans Vat sock Pari, 1793). BFJe ingest comme Je bon La Fontaine le fonds avec ls seven, ‘Nantes, Fan dousiéme de Therotsme paren BCE Varet 3 ser char conchoyens: The pamphlet has not ben identified 26 Thompson, Robespare, 1.166. 27 Veter ss chap cncigen cf. the sept of Led Gower, the Bas lish anlarador, on 22 July 1731: A wonder change fas taken Blace snes the disturbance of she 17%h compelled the majority of the Avembly to be sensble of Ws power. It is calulsted chat two hundred people have been ‘prone since st event on suspicion of fomenting selilen by wet or dber means’ J. M, ‘Thompson, English Wuncres of the Franch Revolution (Orford Bish, 143,14 The Enragés: Socialists of the French Revolution? mand from the Jacobin club for compromising them in this thought- less way.?® Varlet was already unpopular with the Jacobins, ie of the members considered him an irresponsible madeap and a bad advertisement for the club. He could, on occasion, waste their time swith quite ippant projects. His solution to the problem of the non- juring clergy, for example, submitted on 20 May 1792, was that two seditious priests might be bartered for each French prisoner of the Barbary pirates.” During the summer of 1792 the members seem to have quite lost patience with Varlet, and he was repeatedly shouted down or cut short when he attempted to speak.30 At the same time the club apparently retained a certain tolerant affection, and when during the winter of 17923 a chill forced Varlet to aban- don the Terrasse for a while a special Jacobin commission was ap pointed to find out if he had been assassinated.3! Varlet was not to be mollified, however, and he carried his dis- illusion with the club into the arena of open controversy. An upper caste, he declared, had gained control of the Jacobins; headed by a powerful group of deputies it had succeeded in turning the society into a kind of parliamentary club and debating society, and per verting its true function as the mouthpiece of democratic opinion.33 Tn the meantime a fresh republican campaign began to gather strength during the summer of 1792. On 20 June a demonstration ‘of workers from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine was called out, directly in support of the Girondin proposal to assemble a camp of fédérés in Paris as a reinsurance against Lefayette’s supposed treach- exy, and, dircetly, to protest against the royal veto, which had been ‘used to prohibit this measure. A deputation of twenty petitioners, of whom Varlet was one,3* marched at the head of a column of per haps 20,000 sans-culottes to carry the petition to the Legislative Aseembly. The petitioners were duly weleomed by Guadet and ‘Vergniaud, who secured a hearing for them. Later, however, the ccowd became disorderly and iavaded the Tuileries, threatening the royal family and forcing the King to don publicly the red cap of Uberty. Associated in this affair with veteran agitators of the Faubourg like Santerze, Fournier YAméricain and Lazowsky, Varlet 28 Aulard, Le Société des Jacobins, iii. 627. 2 Ibid, st 395 30 Cf. iid, iv. 96 (or ap occasion on 12 July 1792), Bucher et Rows, nie Bb B98 Oo ain 2 Jeb BD Dah ‘nouvelle organisation, published about this time, Vaclet complained that eight sep aren mabe ig ‘31 Anlard, La Société des Jacobins, iv. 648-9. 2 Bike a St Re 90, 18 mento he compitane nee amiga fe, Sh, 23 eet te tion (Les Cours de Sorbonne, Paris, 1944-5), i. Benes ee Jean-Frangois Vartet aS now threw himself into the heart of the struggle as the conflict between the court and the republicans moved towards the crisis of August 1792, and the attack on the Tuileries. On 24 July the general assembly of his section, the RoideSicile (soon io be re hamed the Droits-del’Homme) chose him as one of its two repre- sentatives on a central meeting of delegates from the forty-eight Paris wards or sections convened to discuss the King’s dethronement.4 Tn the next few days two main projects for a petition were actively canvassed among the delegates. One, with majority support, was presented to the Assembly by Mayor Pétion on 3 August, and re- stricted itself to purely political demands for the end of the mon- archy and new elections. The other, presented by Varlet three days later, reflected the views of a minority of the sections, and of the ‘most actively political wing of the fédérés then encamped at Paris. Placed on the ‘Alter of the Fathe:land’ on the Champ de Mars* on 30 July, it lay there gathering signatures until 6 August, when a mass meeting appointed twenty delegates to carry it to the Legisle tive Assembly.2” Along with the sime demands as the majority petition, Varlet’s petition contained also a violent attack on money- speculators and food-hoarders, and a demand for a purge of aristo- ctats from the army cadres. It thus represented more extreme views than thoce of the Girondins of the Assembly, who were now feebly talking about ‘suspending’ the King, or the orthodox Jacobin repub- licans, who were not yet committed to the economic and social measures which were now being demanded.*® Shortly after the petition had been presented Varlet’s faction lost control of the DroitsdeYHomme section, nor did they regain it until the very eve of the journée of 10 August.» It was probably for this reason that Varlet was not nominated to the new central delegate assembly of the sections which helped to plan the attack on the Tuileries on the 10th and which, reconstituted as the Revo- lationary Commune, exercised municipal power from August until the convening of a new legal Commune in January 1793. Varlet was, however, chosen as one of the second-degree electors of the Department of Paris who met at the former archbishop's palace on 34 Mortimer‘Ternaur, Histoire de la Terreur (Pars, 1862), ii. 3935. 3 Monitur, 7 August 1793. 36 Mortimer Ternatn, Histcre de le Terrowr, i 201. 27 Ly Rookery, Chronigue de cinquante fons (Par, 1832), 324, 34 For a pated text of the petiton, sce J. Vatles, Vocus formes par des Francois bres (Pais, 1792). E™ Braesch mentions three distnee eons of {his La Commame tu di aode (Pars, 1911), 165 mn. This version (con- Served at the Beidsh, Masen) was exalicly drawn up’ and published by a ‘pedal commision of the Horde Sill section, 39 Mortiner’Temaux, Histoire dele Terreur, i, 4304.