“And Congressman Tallmadge, Well, You Know I Never Stop Talking About Him.” - Abraham Woodhull

I’m sorry Robespierre but it’s the truth 🙏😔

ANOTHER SIX VOTES FOR BENITEZ

Who are Camille's siblings? Do we know their names or anything about them?

In total, Camille’s parents Jean Benoît Nicolas Desmoulins and Marie Madeleine Godard had nine children, four of which died during childhood:

Lucie Simplice Camille Benoît (March 2 1760 — April 5 1794)

Henriette Aimery Angélique (21 February 1761 — 17 June 1770)

Marie Élisabeth Émilie Toussaint (November 1 1762 — December 20 1839)

Stillborn girl, buried at the day of her birth (January 15 1764)

Armand ”Dubocquoi” Jean Louis Domitille (May 5 1765 — 1793)

Anne Clotilde Pélagie Marie (June 20 1767 — ?)

Lazare ”Sémery” Nicolas Norbert Félicité (June 6 1769 — January 1811)

Clement Louis Nicolas (November 23 1770 — April 16 1778)

Charles Maximilien Yves Nicolas Reignier (June 17 1772, probably didn’t reach adult age)

We know Camille was the only one of the siblings that was given a higher education in Paris. Something we might find an explanation for in a letter to him dated January 23 1791 (cited in Hervé Leuwers’ Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un rêve de république (2018)), where the father places his oldest son on a higher level than the rest of his children:

Your brother Dubocquoi has always had a rather limited peak, he has just acknowledged it to you; but it is not his fault. In the portion of nature and in the lot of the spirit, why have you exercised your birthright so copiously and taken such a great precipitate, to leave your siblings’ afferent share so small?

Camille expressed himself in similar terms in a letter to his father dated October 8 1789. I’m just gonna let this part of this hilarious comic by @theorahsart illustrate the passage:

Camille spending the majority of his time away from his family seems to have ended up in him not knowing his siblings all that well, as we in 1792 find a letter where his father has to tell him the name of his brothers as well as their occupations (cited in Camille Desmoulins, a biography (1909) by Violet Methley):

You ask me, my son, for the name of your brother, Du Bucquoy, as well as for that of Semery. The former is called Armand Jean Louis Domitille, who was born on May 5th, 1765. For the past seven years he has served in the late Royal Roussillon cavalry regiment, or the 11th Regiment of the Army of the Midi, and which I believe is either in the interior at Saumur or at Saint-Jean-d'Angely, for I have had no news of him for the last twelve months. The latter is named Lazare Nicolas Norbert Félicité, born on June 6th, 1769, and for the past two years in the loth Battalion of Chasseurs, late Gevaudan, with the Army of the North, in which he shows much zeal. He tells me in his last letter that he is a forlorn sentinel in a wood, and congratulates you on the birth of a son. As for me, I also am married. My wife is a musket, and I take greater care of her than of myself.

On February 8 1793 Lucile has written in her diary: ”C(amille’s) brother came. We had dinner at Madame Brune’s.” In a letter dated July 9 1793 Camille shares more details on his brothers, who by now are both serving in the revolutionary army. These parts got censored when the letter was published for the first time in 1836, and restored in Hervé Leuwers’ biography:

I have received unfortunate news of my brother, who has been lost to drunkenness and expelled from his regiment. I don't know if he wrote to you about his mishap. He has not dared to write to me about it, and he is right in not to. It is most unworthy that I should take an interest in him, and I am really angry that he has taken my name, which he has sullied in the army. Nevertheless, I had advised him to pour water into his wine. I don't know what has become of him since he was forced to resign as an officer. His conduct might have caused you grief under the old regime, but it is a duty that a family of republicans and good men consists of nothing but those who are republicans and good men. […] I am very sorry that Sémery was killed. I would have had no reason to be ashamed of him, and I would have procured for him a speedy promotion of which he proved himself worthy, for things are going well and will be better.

Soon thereafter, Camille does however find out the information regarding his youngest brother’s death is false, whereupon he writes a new letter to his father:

I am very sorry to have written to you that my brother Sémery would have died fighting for his homeland. I had no other certainty of a loss so grievous to you than the indication of his long silence, and I eagerly laid hold of your doubts of his death to fix my hopes upon them. May he be returned to you by the enemies into whose hands he may have fallen captive. I feel even more now, when I see my son, how sensitive this blow must have been to your heart.

Sémery had indeed not died in battle, but been captured at the siege of Maestricht. According to La jeunesse de Camille Desmoulins (1908) he was released after three years. In 1802 he was admitted to the 27th legion of gendarmerie on foot, and was serving in Piémont à la Chiesa as gendarme of the Stura company when he died by an accident in January 1811. The other brother, Dubucquoi, did however die in Vendée in 1793, I’ve not discovered on which date.

As for the two surviving sisters, we seemingly only know that they got married. According to geneanet, the eldest sister Marie Élisabeth Émilie Toussaint married one Théodore Morey in Guise, December 25 1793, while Anne Clotilde Pélagie Marie married Simon Isidore Lemoine in the same town on June 5 1794. Leuwers cites a document showing the two couples were still together by March 4 1797. He adds that both husbands were gendarmes and their wives left Guise to be with them at their posts. Somewhere after 1797 Marie Élisabeth Émilie Toussaint got remarried to one Théodore Lagrange before dying in Paris on December 20 1839, with one Antoine Nicolas Desmoulins as witness. When and where Anne Clotilde Pélagie Marie died I’ve not been able to discover.

hi

"the frontman HATES gihun, stop making everything gay"

meanwhile the literal creator of the series:

i've been reading eugene newton curtis's saint-just, colleague of robespierre & he provides a quote from a letter from le bas & saint-just to robespierre:

Saint-Just added this postscript: Too many laws are made, too few examples: you punish only striking crimes, hypocritical crimes are unpunished. Punish a slight abuse in every party; that is the way to frighten evil persons and to make them see that the government has its eye on everything. Hardly does one turn his back when aristocracy becomes the fashion of the day and does harm under the color of liberty. Engage the Committee to give much prominence to the punish- ment of all faults in the government. You will not have done so for a month before you will have cleared up this labyrinth in which counter-revolution and revolution march pell-mell. Direct the society's attention, my friend [i.e., the Jacobins], to strong maxims of public welfare; let it occupy itself with the great measures needed to govern a free state. I invite you to take measures to find out whether all the factories and workshops of France are active and to favor them, for in a year our troops would be without clothing; the manufacturers are not patriotic, they do not want to work, they must be forced to and no useful establishment must be allowed to fail. We will do our best here. I embrace you and our common friends.

and then describes how saint-just talks to him in such a way that i can't help but think... why would you say that...

In this letter, Saint-Just's strong, dominating character stands out in sharp contrast to the chatty, amiable Le Bas. He talks to Robespierre as though he were the master. There was more in this than youthful bravado, for Saint-Just had wit and experience enough to realize that no one could reach the guillotine by any quicker road than by incurring Robespierre's hatred. That statesman was too serious to smile indulgently at the pertness of a handsome boy, too egotistical to listen patiently to advice from an inferior, hardly from an equal. It is clear that he was used to listening to it from Saint-Just, almost clear that he was used to taking it.

saint-just's strong, dominating character... talks to robespierre as though he were the master... almost clear that he was used to taking it... like that sure is some loaded language eugene

Keeping warm 🐈🐈‍⬛

[ID: Digital artwork of Vincent, in a simple white cassock sitting with two kitties on his lap- a black one perched on his knees and an orange one purring as he pets it gently. He's smiling, humming a tune to the little ones. Over his clothing he wears a bucky navy jacket to keep warm. /end ID]

into that toxic old men yaoi shit or whatever