--Pierre Verginaud
One of the most poignant reminders of the harrowing tragedy and overwhelming sacrifice that the French Revolution entailed can be found in the lives and deaths of the men and women who helped make the Revolution. They built it, lived by it, spoke of it, fought for it....and all too often died by their own creation
Georges Danton was found guilty and sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 13 Germinal 1794. He himself had created the Tribunal the year before.
Camille Desmoulins' indictment read like a laundry list of sundry dealings with "traitors" to the Republic---it was the method of accusation he had introduced against the Girondins in his "Secret History of Brissot." The Public Prosecutor who read these charges to Camille was Fouquier-Tinville, Camille's own cousin , whom he had gotten the position at the Tribunal a year before.
On 9 Thermidor, Saint-Just was declared an outlaw meaning that all that was necessary for his execution was his identification. Saint-Just had introduced this expedient concept against the Gironde a year before.
Robespierre and Couthon were sentenced to death 10 Thermidor 1794 without a word in their own defense (if they even could defend themselves at that point). They had invented this concept in their own Law of 22 Prairal.
At the wedding of Camille and Lucile Desmoulins in 1790, 52 members of the National Assembly--including Petion, Danton, Brissot, Robespierre and Verginaud---were in attendance. The four corners of the Desmoulins' wedding canopy were carried by Brissot, Robespierre, Sillery and Mercier. All were dead or jailed within 3 years. At the eve of his own execution in 1794 Desmoulins noted that "Of the 52 guests at my wedding all but two are lost to me through exile or death....those two are Robespierre and Danton." Soon those two were killed, along with the bride and the groom.
The three principal authors of the beautifully idealistic Consitution of 1793 (which was suspended in favor of martial law two weeks after it was written) were Herault d'Seychelles, Georges Couthon and Antoine Saint-Just. All three of these authors would be dead in 1794, killed by the very government they had helped to create.
The National Assembly in 1790 declared several foreigners "Honorary Citizens of France." These honored ones were invited to come share a seat in the Assembly. Notables included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, teh Baron deKlootz, Joseph Priestly and William Wilberforce. Of those chosen, only Thomas Paine and Baron deKlootz decided to accept the offer. In 1794, Clootz was executed with Hebertists and Paine was in jail on 9 Thermidor.
Fabre d'Eglantine, the poet, deputy and Dantonist who invented the Revolutionary Calender with its months such as Pluviose, Thermidor and Vendemaire in place of the "reactionary and superstititious" Gregorian, was himself executed on 13 Germinal.
Rouget de Lisle, the composer of what was to become the French national anthem, Les Marseilles, was arrested and awaiting execution in 1794 on charges of royalism. The namesake of the song, the city of Marseilles, was destroyed for rebelling against the Convention. and its name replaced by "the city without a name."
