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Readings in Modern European History: A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen With the Purpose of Illustrating Some of the Chief Phases of the Development of Europe During the Last Two Hundred Years, Volume 1: The Eighteenth Century: The French Re
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Historical SummaryIn the succeeding number of his newspaper (issued Decadi, 30th Frimaire, second year of the republic, one and indivisible) Desmoulins no longer extenuates the work of the guillotine but pleads for clemency.
"Le Vieux Cordelier," No. III (opening), Œuvres de Camille Desmoulins (1872), No. IV (opening), III, 27 sqq. World History 138.
Camille Desmoulins Makes a Plea for Clemency (December 20, 1793)
Some persons have expressed their disapproval of my third issue, where, as they allege, I have been pleased to suggest certain comparisons which tend to cast an unfavorable light on the Revolution and the patriots,—they should say the excess of revolution and the professional patriots. My critics think the whole number refuted and everybody justified by the single reflection, "We all know that the present situation is not one of freedom,—but patience! you will be free one of these days."
Such people think apparently that liberty, like infancy, must of necessity pass through a stage of wailing and tears before it reaches maturity. On the contrary, it is of the nature of liberty that, in order to enjoy it, we need only desire it. A people is free the moment that it wishes to be so,—you will recollect that this was one of Lafayette’s sayings,—and the people has entered upon its full rights since the 14th of July. Liberty has neither infancy nor old age, but is always in the prime of strength and vigor. . . .
Is this liberty that we desire a mere empty name? Is it only an opera actress carried about with a red cap on, or even that statue, forty-six feet high, which David proposes to make? If by liberty you do not understand, as I do, great principles, but only a bit of stone, there never was idolatry more stupid and expensive than ours. Oh, my dear fellow-citizens, have we sunk so low as to prostrate ourselves before such divinities? No, heaven-born liberty is no nymph of the opera, nor a red liberty cap, nor a dirty shirt and rags. Liberty is happiness, reason, equality, justice, the Declaration of Rights, your sublime constitution.
Would you have me recognize this liberty, have me fall at her feet, and shed all my blood for her? Then open the prison doors to the two hundred thousand citizens whom you call suspects, for in the Declaration of Rights no prisons for suspicion are provided for, only places of detention. Suspicion has no prison, but only the public accuser; there are no suspects, but only those accused of offenses established by law.
Do not think that such a measure would be fatal to the republic. It would, on the contrary, be the most revolutionary that you have adopted. You would exterminate all your enemies by the guillotine! But was there ever greater madness? Can you possibly destroy one enemy on the scaffold without making ten others among his family and friends? Do you believe that those whom you have imprisoned—these women and old men, these self-indulgent valetudinarians, these stragglers of the Revolution—are really dangerous? Only those among your enemies have remained among you who are cowardly or sick. The strong and courageous have emigrated. They have perished at Lyons or in the Vendée. The remnant which still lingers does not deserve your anger. . . .
Moreover it has not been love of the republic, but curiosity, which has every day attracted multitudes to the Place de la Révolution; it was the new drama which was to be enacted but once. I am sure that the majority of those who frequented this spectacle felt a deep contempt in their hearts for those who subscribed for the theater or opera, where they could only see pasteboard daggers and comedians who merely pretended to die. According to Tacitus, a similar insensibility prevailed in Rome, a similar feeling of security and indifference to all issues. . . .
I am of a very different opinion from those who claim that it is necessary to leave Terror on the order of the day. I am confident, on the contrary, that liberty will be assured and Europe conquered so soon as you have a Committee of Clemency. This committee will complete the Revolution, for clemency is itself a Revolutionary measure, the most efficient of all when it is wisely dealt out.1
1 In spite of Desmoulins’s eloquent and wise plea for clemency, his friend Robespierre refused to support him, and he was brought to the scaffold, along with Danton, by the party which held that moderation was synonymous with treason to the cause of republican liberty.
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Chicago: Camille Desmoulins, "Camille Desmoulins Makes a Plea for Clemency (December 20, 1793)," Readings in Modern European History: A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen With the Purpose of Illustrating Some of the Chief Phases of the Development of Europe During the Last Two Hundred Years, Volume 1: The Eighteenth Century: The French Re in Readings in Modern European History: A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen With the Purpose of Illustrating Some of the Chief Phases of the Development of Europe During the Last Two Hundred Years, Volume 1: The Eighteenth Century: The French Re, ed. James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936) and Charles A. Beard (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1908), 306–308. Original Sources, accessed October 13, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DDCUWA9LUYEYCTZ.
MLA: Desmoulins, Camille. "Camille Desmoulins Makes a Plea for Clemency (December 20, 1793)." Readings in Modern European History: A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen With the Purpose of Illustrating Some of the Chief Phases of the Development of Europe During the Last Two Hundred Years, Volume 1: The Eighteenth Century: The French Re, in Readings in Modern European History: A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen With the Purpose of Illustrating Some of the Chief Phases of the Development of Europe During the Last Two Hundred Years, Volume 1: The Eighteenth Century: The French Re, edited by James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936) and Charles A. Beard, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1908, pp. 306–308. Original Sources. 13 Oct. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DDCUWA9LUYEYCTZ.
Harvard: Desmoulins, C, 'Camille Desmoulins Makes a Plea for Clemency (December 20, 1793)' in Readings in Modern European History: A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen With the Purpose of Illustrating Some of the Chief Phases of the Development of Europe During the Last Two Hundred Years, Volume 1: The Eighteenth Century: The French Re. cited in 1908, Readings in Modern European History: A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen With the Purpose of Illustrating Some of the Chief Phases of the Development of Europe During the Last Two Hundred Years, Volume 1: The Eighteenth Century: The French Re, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.306–308. Original Sources, retrieved 13 October 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DDCUWA9LUYEYCTZ.
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