“Rira bien qui rira le dernier”: Mocking Terror after Thermidor

Nichole Lucero, Arizona State University

After the coup of 9 Thermidor had succeeded, the victorious Convention deputies found themselves with a difficulty to overcome. Men like Louis Fréron and Jean Tallien, both of whom would become leading Thermidorian deputies, had initiated the fall of Robespierre and his allies out of fear that they were going to be denounced. None of the plotters of the coup imagined that their actions would bring about the end of the Terror, and they believed as strongly as ever in the reasons for the Terror’s existence. But they needed a reason for the coup. The desire for self-preservation was not enough to justify sending the Robespierrists to the guillotine. Bronislaw Baczko argues that the Thermidorian deputies deliberately set about creating a myth in which Robespierre was a would-be tyrant king and they had saved the nation from the conspiracy of the Robespierrists.1 But the Thermidorians had been as intimately involved with the machinery of the Terror as the Robespierrists had been, and they had to be careful to keep their narrative in sharp relief while separating themselves from the faction of tyranny. The Robespierre-king myth thus served two purposes: it gave the Thermidorians a reason for staging the coup and it gave them a scapegoat that would siphon off any anger directed at the Convention and confine it to the Robespierrists. Unfortunately for the Thermidorians, their skill at manipulating public opinion was not as great as they had hoped. On 15 Thermidor, just a few days after the coup, petitioners began besieging deputies with pleas for the release of family and friends from the prisons of the Terror, indicating that, for many, it was not only the Robespierrists who had been called into question, but the entire apparatus of the Terror. Despite the Thermidorians’ attempt to confine opprobrium to the Robespierrists, a coalition of journalists, writers, and young bourgeois men known as the Gilded Youth seized hold of the meaning of 9 Thermidor. They shaped it into a repudiation of the Terror and all of its personnel, threatening the Convention itself because every deputy had been complicit in some way with the Terror. The prodigious outpouring of anti-terrorist pamphlets that appeared during the Thermidorian Reaction played a large role in shaping public opinion on the Terror.2 These pamphlets can be divided into two broad categories. The first genre used serious language to convince readers that all those who had actively supported the Terror had done the French people a grave injustice and that they still posed a threat. The second genre used satire to delegitimize the Terror and its

1 Bronislaw Baczko, Comment sortir de la Terreur : Thermidor et la Révolution (Paris : Gallimard, 1998), 34-46. 2 Ibid., 244. The period of the Thermidorian Reaction lasted from 9 Thermidor at the end of July 1794 to October 1795, when the Directory regime began.

“Rira bien qui rira le dernier”: Mocking Terror after Thermidor 33

supporters. Both genres had the same ends: to communicate the wrongness of the Terror. A common feature of the satirical pamphlets is the authors’ willingness to use the death and violence engendered by the Terror as fodder for ridicule. Though satire, death and violence had been a part of the Revolution’s political landscape from its beginnings, it was only during the Thermidorian Reaction that the three became so closely linked. This unusual characteristic of the period begs further study. This article examines anti-terrorist pamphlets that satirize two of the most notorious moments of the Terror in the Thermidorian political imagination: the brutal repression of the cities of Nantes and Lyon. While the French tradition of political satire and its power to delegitimize made satire a natural choice, the lived experience of terror created links between satirical humor, death and violence for anti-terrorist pamphleteers. They expressed this link by satirizing the death and violence of the Terror.

The Role of Pamphlets during the Thermidorian Reaction Ironically, it was Tallien who set off the storm of anti-terrorist pamphlets. Though Tallien reinvented himself as an enemy of the Terror government’s abuses of power, his actions while a deputy on mission to Bordeaux had marked him as its zealous instrument. Seeking to distance himself from his past, Tallien requested that Jean-Claude-Hippolyte Mehée de la Touche write a pamphlet that both argued for freedom of the press and poked fun at the principles of the Terror. It was titled La queue de Robespierre (Robespierre’s Tail) and enjoyed enormous success. 70,000 copies were printed and distributed throughout France in the first week of its publication.3 Encouraged by the relaxation of censorship after Thermidor and the success of La queue de Robespierre, an “incredible crowd” of pamphlets descended on France, according to the Courrier républicain.4 Most pamphlets were written anonymously, thus making it difficult to get a sense of who wrote them and what experiences motivated the writers to add their pen to the anti-terrorist movement. However, François Gendron has determined that the Gilded Youth played a large role in the pamphlet literature of the period.5 In my previous research, I have traced the Gilded Youth to their origins as the young men of 1793 who protested recruitment to the Vendée. Many of them were later arrested for this after the Law of Suspects’ passage in September 1793, and they remained in prison until after 9 Thermidor. It thus seems likely that the recent experience of prison informed pamphleteers’ construction of their narrative of the Terror. Ange Pitou and Alphonse Martainville, two of the few authors of anti-terrorist pamphlets whose identity can be confirmed, were imprisoned during the Terror. 6 Both men also wrote pamphlets that satirized the death and violence of the Terror.

Thermidorian Satire The satire in Thermidorian anti-terrorist pamphlets drew on a rich tradition of French political satire that stretched back at least as far as the Wars of Religion. This tradition lent itself well to the revolutionary periodical press. According to Fabrice Erre, the royalist newspaper Les actes des apôtres (1789-1791) introduced a new chapter in French political satire by adapting it to the challenges of a regularly

3 François Gendron, La jeunesse dorée : Épisodes de la Révolution française (Sillery : Les presses de l’Université du Québec, 1979), 36. 4 Courrier républicain, 3 vendémiaire, Year III. 5 Gendron, 38. A few journalists were also members of the Gilded Youth. 6 Pitou was not considered a member of the Gilded Youth, but rather of the wider anti- terrorist movement.

Journal of the Western Society for French History 34 Lucero

published periodical.7 Writers of Les actes des apôtres “theatricalized” reality.8 The newspaper simplified the complicated world of politics into the actions of a few key personages, who were then recreated as buffoon caricatures that inspired ridicule. Like any good caricature, they were based on reality. Yet authors of the newspaper inserted the caricatures into fictional narratives, without regard to the corresponding reality. Revolutionaries responded to Les actes des apôtres with their own political satire. Once the revolutionary government began to censor the press in 1793, the war of satire stopped. After 9 Thermidor, pamphleteers renewed the satirical tradition begun by Les Actes des apôtres.9 Anti-terrorist pamphleteers followed the pattern of theatricalizing the political world, creating easily recognizable caricatures and placing them in narratives that were frequently fictionalized. These caricatures rarely deviated from pamphlet to pamphlet. There was, for example, the hypocrite deputy Bertrand Barère, known as the “Old Bag,” and the deputy François Granet of the perpetually filthy clothing that resembled rags.10 Pamphleteers also relied on several tropes based on caricatures of non-specific people, such as the woefully ignorant revolutionary committee member. One of the most common fictionalizations was the pamphlet that masqueraded as a legitimate document written by someone else. Fictionalizations were deliberately obvious by their outlandish claims. No one was expected to believe, for instance, that Robespierre had truly bequeathed to Granet his knee breeches in his will.11 I have located 120 anti-terrorist pamphlets, all written from September 1794 to the start of the Directory in October 1795.12 Thirty-five of them are satirical. To qualify as satire, pamphlets had to include a significant proportion of characteristics associated with revolutionary-era satire and caricature: irony; the caricature of people and groups as comic buffoons; word play; zoomorphism; role switching; exaggeration; themes of the grotesque (the lower body and bodily orifices, carnal appetites, ribaldry); and, finally, deliberately obvious fictionalization of the narrative. Nearly all the pamphlets satirize death and violence at least once. Antoine de Baecque has argued that laughter was not killed during the Terror, but instead altered. Laughter became bound with violence, fear, and the terrible to become what Mikhail Bakhtin christened ‘troubled laughter’.13 The troubled laughter of the Terror continued to shape satire during the Thermidorian Reaction. For the pamphleteers who were imprisoned during the Terror, the melding of laughter and fear had been a lived experience. The text of the successful Almanach des prisons, written by a man who claimed to have been imprisoned in the Conciergerie for six months, described prisoners who lived in

7 Fabrice Erre, “L’Invention de l’écriture satirique périodique,” Orages, no. 7 (March 2008), 107. 8 Ibid. 9 There were three satirical periodicals printed after Thermidor, but these were short lived and unable to recreate the success of Les actes des apôtres. 10 Old Bag (Vieux-Sac) was a pun on Barère’s pre-Revolutionary title, the Baron de Vieuzac. 11 Testament de I. M. Robespierre, trouvé à la maison commune ([Paris] : L’Imprimerie du journal du soir, n.d.), Bibliothèque nationale de France, NUMM-41115, 8. 12 Among the pamphlet count, I have included two plays that were printed as pamphlets, as well as three short-lived series of publications whose content and style conforms more to the pamphlet style than to the style of newspapers. I have counted each series as one pamphlet. 13 Antoine de Baecque, Les éclats du rire : La culture des rieurs au XVIIIe siècle (Paris : Calman-Lévy, 2000), 289-295.

2017 “Rira bien qui rira le dernier”: Mocking Terror after Thermidor 35

the gray area between life and death, mixing despair with a desperate attempt at gaiety. They laughed about the guillotine and about their upcoming executions.14 The author wrote that their way of life was a “mixture of horror for what they have seen and a type of ferocious gaiety, for we often joke about the most terrible things.”15 Fear of death and laughter intersected in the prisons of the Terror, creating a link between the two that found expression in the anti-terrorist pamphlets that satirized death and violence.

The Repression of Lyon and Nantes as Satire The deputy Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois arrived in Lyon in November 1793. He was later joined by the deputy Joseph Fouché. Both had been sent by the Convention to oversee implementation of its revenge on the city that had risen up in rebellion. The Convention decreed that “the city of Lyon will be destroyed,” and the ensuing repression was accordingly brutal. By April 1794, nearly 2,000 Lyonnais had been executed.16 The guillotine had proved too slow a method of punishment, so the representatives on mission used firing squads for mass executions. On two occasions, an experimental method of execution was tried: the mitraillades.17 The Revolutionary Army bound together, first sixty prisoners, and then, 200 prisoners, and fired cannons loaded with grapeshot at them. The result was a field littered with mutilated bodies, most of whom were still living. The military commander of the operation had to order his men to spear the survivors with their bayonets. The repression of Lyon became a major symbol for the horrors of the Terror after 9 Thermidor. The same was true for events that occurred during the repression of the city of Nantes. Nantes had never been in rebellion against the revolutionary government, but it was the seat of operations for the Revolutionary Army’s war against the insurgent Vendée. The deputy Jean-Baptiste Carrier was sent to the city in October 1793; his charge was to purge the area of counter- revolutionaries. Occupied with the war against the Vendéen rebels, Carrier left the city largely in the hands of an over-zealous revolutionary committee and their armed force, called the Company of Marat. Between the numerous arrests of suspect Nantais and the capture of Vendéen rebels, the prisons quickly overflowed. As a solution to the epidemics of disease and acute lack of food that was ravaging the crowded prisons, Carrier ordered the noyades, mass drownings of prisoners, many of who had not been convicted by trial. Prisoners were bound together, loaded onto boats installed with plugs, then pushed out into the Loire River after the plugs were pulled. For weeks afterwards, bodies continued to wash up on the shores of the Loire. Neither Collot d’Herbois nor Carrier had been solely responsible for the extreme violence that took place in their respective cities, but the anti-terrorist movement nevertheless placed the blame squarely on their shoulders. The authors of serious pamphlets used the emotive language of the sentimental novel to provoke horror at the atrocities and pity for the victims. Descriptors such as “clotted blood,” “torn limbs,” and “twitching cadavers” made frequent appearances. Pamphlets frequently inflated numbers of the dead and related uncorroborated anecdotes. Collot d’Herbois was characterized with names such as “assassin” and

14 L’Almanach des prisons (Paris : Michel, Year III), BnF, LC22-57, 29-30, 43. 15 Ibid., 30. 16 Chantal Thomas, “Terror in Lyon,” trans. by David F. Bell, SubStance 27, no. 2 (1998), 40 17 There is no suitable English translation for this term. Literally, it means ‘grapeshottings’, a reference to cannon grapeshot.

Journal of the Western Society for French History 36 Lucero

“bloodiest executioner.”18 The “bloodthirsty” Carrier breathed “blood and carnage” and found joy in the cries for help of his victims.19 Authors of satirical pamphlets used this emotive portrayal as a foundation for their writings. When moderate and right-wing newspapers promoted pamphlets they approved of, journalists did not make a distinction between the serious and satirical, which indicates that the readership of these texts likely consumed both genres. The reader of a satirical pamphlet was likely familiar with the serious narrative. Even though Collot d’Herbois and Carrier were two of the most common targets for satirists, they were not recreated as buffoon caricatures as others were. Instead, the most frequent caricatures for the two men were a portrayal of them as sweet, sensitive, and beneficent. Satirists counted on their readers’ familiarity with the serious pamphlets to get the irony: the masterminds of the horrific mitraillades and noyades were anything but sweet, sensitive, and beneficent. Irony was one of the tools used by anti-terrorist satirists. In La queue de Robespierre, Mehée de la Touche wrote that people ought to admire Collot d’Herbois for his ingenious invention of the mitraillades that had made so many friends of the Revolution. He continued, “How Louis the Great [Louis XIV], with his converting dragonnades, was petty compared to Collot, who people will name, I hope, the very great!”20 Not only did Mehée de la Touche utilize irony in naming Collot d’Herbois the very great, but the word play insulted the deputy by comparing his actions to the tyranny of an Old Regime monarch. Other satirists ironically praised the events in Lyon and Nantes as well. Alphonse Martainville called Carrier an “ingenious shipwright” in his Nouvelle montagne en vaudeville, a joke which referred to the boats installed with plugs that were used for the noyades.21 In Tableau de Paris en 94, Ange Pitou created an elaborate fictionalization that described the performance of a grand tragedy on stage. The name of the made-up play was “The Death of Humankind.” Pitou detailed each scene as it unfolded. One of the scenes opened with the “great and sublime” Collot d’Herbois surveying the results of his work in Lyon. Pitou, posing as a spectator of the tragedy, described the scene to his readers thus:

900 men are annihilated, in the same strike, there, 1,200 are shot down, further out, 3,000 are stabbed, under my eyes; pregnant women, daughters, children, the aged are cut into pieces, a great river crosses the theater stage and flows into the sea, 30 or 40 million cadavers.22

18 Labil, Barrère [sic], Collot et les complices de Robespierre au Tribunal révolutionnaire (n.p. : n.p., Year III), BnF, LB41-1531, 7 ; Leboinel, Le cri du sang qui demande vengeance (n.p. : L’Imprimerie Philantropique, n.d.), BnF, 8-LB41-1677, 2. 19 Vie sans pareille, politique et scandaleuse du sanguinaire Carrier (Paris : Prévost, [1795?]), BnF, 8-LB41-1526, 24-27 ; Oraison funèbre de Carrier, ex-représentant du peuple (Paris : n.p., [1794]), BnF, 8-LB41-1525, 5. 20 Jean-Claude-Hippolyte Méhée de la Touche, La queue de Robespierre, ou les dangers de la liberté de la presse (Paris : Rougyff, 1794), 4. Dragonnades refers to the forced conversions of Protestants, often accompanied by violence, that Louis XIV ordered his troops to carry out. 21 Alphonse Martainville, La Nouvelle montagne en vaudevilles, ou Robespierre en plusieurs volumes (n.p. : n.p., [1794]), BnF, NUMM-9749547, 13. 22 Ange Pitou, Tableau de Paris en 94, ou Tableau de Paris en vaudeville, ([Paris] : L’Épilogueur, [1794], BnF, 8-LC2-850-851, 54.

2017 “Rira bien qui rira le dernier”: Mocking Terror after Thermidor 37

He literally theatricalized political events by creating a theatrical spectacle as a medium for discussing politics. But there is nothing satirical in this description. In fact, it reads like lines from one of the serious pamphlets. The theatricalization is two-fold: Pitou was actually setting the stage for the joke. Still posing as spectator of the tragedy, he continues:

Ho! The delicious spectacle… my eyes cannot stop contemplating it. My voice is too feeble to sing the praises of the authors, my heart bounds with the pleasure of it, and I would like to enfold in my arms the legislators, the composers, and the inventors of the piece and the machines at the theater. Here finally, a drama worthy of a people poor, but industrious.23

The irony is that the “delicious spectacle” is a performance of the mitraillades, which in reality were not a theatrical production, but a very real and terrible event. Anti-terrorist satirists often employed word play in their texts. Water, with its association with the noyades, appeared frequently in texts. In his Journal des rieurs (Journal of Laughers) Martainville wrote a fictionalized dinner given for Carrier that reads like the textual description of a caricature image.24 Jacques- Nicolas Billaud-Varenne provided the head of a lion as the main course, an allusion to his famous speech at the Jacobin club in November 1794 that the “lion is not dead when he sleeps and, at his awakening, he exterminates all his enemies.”25 Billaud- Varenne intended the sleeping lion as a metaphor for the Jacobin club, and so when Martainville depicted Carrier and the others feasting on lion, they were, in fact, eating themselves. The grotesque satire of carnal appetites and self-cannibalization also included word play: the lion head and all the other dishes were cooked using a bain-marie, presumably because Carrier preferred it that way. Bain-marie, a method of preparing food in a hot water bath similar to a double boiler, was a reference to the noyades, but its extreme violence was reduced in satire to nothing more than a bath in water.26 Word plays on water as an allegory for the noyades appeared several times in Martainville’s satire. He described a fictionalized scene at Carrier’s execution, when a water seller passed by, calling out his wares for sale, “Water, water!” In the text, Carrier responded, saying, “Damn! I have the consolation in dying of seeing that there still remains a good patriot.”27 Carrier was portrayed as comically misunderstanding the water seller’s purpose as a call to drown people, and Jacobin principles are insulted with the connection between ‘good patriot’ and ‘water/noyades’ In another issue of Journal des rieurs, Martainville wrote an article masquerading as Carrier writing his last wishes. “Carrier” defended his actions in Nantes by objecting that the noyades were not as horrible as people made them seem. He complained that his detractors would make a crime out of his having “domiciled” the people of Nantes in the Loire.28 ‘Domiciled’ as a euphemism for drowning is comically unexpected, an absurd pairing that equated living in a fixed residence to dying violently. There are darker undertones to the word play: since

23 Ibid., 54-55. 24 Martainville, Le journal des rieurs, ou le Démocrite français, (Paris : Vachot, n.d.), BnF, 8-LC2-853, no. 1, 3. 25 A. Aulard, La Société des Jacobins : recueil de documents pour l'histoire du club des Jacobins de Paris (Paris : Léopold Cerf, 1897), 6 :633. 26 Bain translates as bath. 27 Martainville, Le journal des rieurs, no. 11, 4. 28 Ibid., no. 9, 7.

Journal of the Western Society for French History 38 Lucero

death is permanent and the bodies were left in the Loire, Carrier did, in fact, give the Nantais a new ‘fixed residence’. Other satirists also made word plays on the idea of water. The anonymous pamphlet Pétition de tous les chiens de Paris (Petition from all the Dogs in Paris) created a zoomorphic fictionalized scene in which all the dogs in Paris met in an assembly to draw up a petition to the Convention. The dogs, whose “goodness of heart is their dominant quality,” and who “aspire to the esteem of all the respectable folk [gens de bien]” represented the innocents of Paris victimized by the Terror.29 A sans-culotte wearing a liberty cap, and portrayed as a crafty, cunning fox, barged in on their assembly and tried to incite violence in the dogs’ peaceful assembly. The dogs planned to draw up a petition because they were starving. All of Paris was suffering a shortage of food, and the human masters have barely enough for themselves. In response, the humans “chase us from the house, and fearing to see us augment the number of rabid people [enragés] who have devastated and depopulated France for six years, they kill us or have us drowned in the Seine [italics mine].”30 The satire took place after 9 Thermidor during a famine, which dates the pamphlet as being written during the terrible winter of 1794-95, when Paris experienced one of the coldest winters in memory and famine conditions. The same winter, the Convention voted to put Carrier on trial for his actions in Nantes in December, and his trial was highly publicized in the newspapers. Thus, the author and readers of Petition de tous les chiens had both a multitude of anti- terrorist pamphlets and Carrier’s trial to hold the noyades at the forefront of their mind. The dogs’ complaint that they were being drowned in the Seine because of a shortage of food- recall that a shortage of food for prisoners had been Carrier’s motivation- was a deliberate allusion to the noyades. Despite the fantastical zoomorphism of the satire, the animals represented real social groups. This strengthened the link between fictionalized satire and reality, thereby giving weight to the connection between dogs being drowned in the Seine and the noyades. The final type of satire discussed here is the masquerade, the pamphlet that pretends to be a legitimate document written by the target of censure. I have already introduced Martainville’s letter purporting to be written by Carrier in which he protests that he only “domiciled” the Nantais in the Loire. The masquerade allowed satirists to delegitimize political opponents by placing absurd words in their mouths and making them appear ridiculous. The anonymous Bibliothèque choisie des Jacobins masqueraded as a true catalogue of books published by the Jacobin club. One of its listed works is “The Avenged Histrion, or Lyon Reduced to Ashes, patriotic drama, represented by the Jacobin artists, and followed by a ballet composed by Fouché.”31 Before becoming a deputy of the Convention, Collot d’Herbois had been an actor in Lyon, where he had supposedly been slighted by the Lyonnais bourgeoisie. Histrion, the same word in French as in English, was an old term that had once signified a dramatic actor. As early as 1694, the Dictionary of the Académie française reported that the word was mainly used to designate the comedians of the sort of vulgar farces to be found at fairs. By

29 Pétition de tous les chiens de Paris à la Convention nationale, relativement aux subsistances (n.p. : L’Imprimerie du journal des chiens, n.d.), BnF, NUMM-6218622, 2. 30 Ibid., 4. Enragé has two meanings here. A chien enragé referred to a rabid dog, and enragé was a name for radical revolutionaries. 31 J. Nomophile, Bibliothèque choisie des Jacobins, ou Catalogue des principaux ouvrages publiés par cette société ([Paris] : L’Imprimerie Philanthropique, [1794]), BnF, NUMM- 41177, 4. Fouché had also been a deputy on mission to Lyon.

2017 “Rira bien qui rira le dernier”: Mocking Terror after Thermidor 39

1762, the dictionary had added that the term was only used in scorn.32 This supposed work published by the Jacobins was thus a “patriotic drama” about a bad actor who, in revenge for being slighted, reduced an entire city to ashes. The title simultaneously insults Collot d’Herbois’s skill at his former profession and insinuates that his character is petty. By ironically naming it a ‘patriotic drama’, the satirist juxtaposed the positive concept of patriotism with the negative memory of mass violence and the mitraillades. The masquerade that the work was published by the Jacobins allowed the satirist to imply that mass violence and the mitraillades was truly the Jacobin ideal of patriotism. The role switching- Jacobins as actors and Fouché as a ballet composer- emphasized the link between the distorted Jacobin view of patriotism and violence. The absurd juxtaposition of death and violence with positive concepts in masquerade texts provided a way for satirists to paint targets as bloodthirsty monsters, while at the same time making them appear ridiculous. The anonymous author of Lettre du sensible Carrier au bienfaisant Collot d’Herbois (Letter from the Sensitive Carrier to the Beneficent Collot d’Herbois) made every effort to immerse his readers in the masquerade. The title page gives bibliographic information that is written in the normal format, yet clearly not accurate:

At Paris, from the Jacobin printing house.

Located at Nantes, on the banks of the Loire; at Lyon, on the wharves of the Rhône; at Paris, at the Abbey of Germain.

Year I of the noyades, cannonades, etc., & Year II of the 2nd of September.33

Jacobins are thus to be found on the banks of the Loire, where the noyades took place; on the wharves of the Rhône, from where the Revolutionary Army bombarded Lyon; and at the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where prisoners were killed by the crowd during the massacres on September 2-7, 1792. The dating referred to violent episodes of the Revolution while mocking the new calendar implemented by the revolutionary government. The author of the pamphlet then informed his readers that he printed this letter written by Carrier to clear the deputy’s good name of the slander written about him, after which he proceeded to attribute words to Carrier that blackened his character. “Carrier” advised Collot d’Herbois to remember when he spoke to people about the noyades that Carrier may have given the orders, but it was not his fault if people carried them out. “Besides, our enemies have over exaggerated the account of this operation. We only drowned old people useless to the Republic, children without patriotism, and pregnant women loyal to their husbands!”34 In other words, “Carrier” proudly claimed that he drowned the elderly, who by their age could not fight for the Republic; children, who by their age were unable to grasp the concept of patriotism; and pregnant women, who by their gender and condition were impelled to follow their husband’s direction. And yet, “Carrier” did not comprehend this obvious truth, making him appear as a buffoon. All three groups, by their vulnerability,

32 “Histrion,” Dictionnaires d’autrefois, The ARTFL Project, University of Chicago, web resource. 33 Lettre du sensible Carrier au bienfaisant Collot d’Herbois (Paris : L’Imprimerie des Jacobins, n.d.), BnF, NUMM-5651557, 1. 34 Ibid., 6.

Journal of the Western Society for French History 40 Lucero

held a protected social status, but “Carrier” did not care, which rendered him a heartless monster while linking the Jacobin version of revolutionary ideals- patriotism and the Republic- with the death and violence of the noyades.

Why Satire? The eighteenth-century tradition of satire and the troubled laughter of the Terror provided a path for anti-terrorist pamphleteers to follow. The experienced connection between death and laughter while in prison helped them choose the path of satire while also shaping the narrative that they created of the Terror. But the authors of these satirical pamphlets gave us their own reasons for choosing to treat death and violence with satire. Pitou headed every issue of his Tableau de Paris en vaudevilles with a Latin phrase that translates as “what prevents me from speaking the truth with a smile?” The full title of Martainville’s Le Journal des rieurs included the addition ou le Démocrite français, a reference to the ancient Greek Democritus, a philosopher known for expressing his contempt for human folly with laughter and thus attaining a measure of wisdom through the moderating effect of mirth. Every issue started with the quote: “To laugh at everything, it is my folly… He who laughs well, laughs last.”35 The satirical Le Jacobiniade also began with a Latin phrase that reads “it is pleasant to be foolish at the appropriate time.” The author went on to say that he had written the pamphlet to make people laugh; now that the fear has passed, and the Terror is finished, the people of France must laugh at the Jacobins’ expense. By this, the Jacobins could compensate the people in some small way for all the harm they caused. 36 The authors give us two motivations, then, for using satire. The first motivation is for revenge and the desire to hold the Jacobins to a position of powerlessness by undermining their moral authority, a motivation similar to satirists of the revolutionary period and earlier. The second is a search for truth and wisdom. The experience of the Terror- its troubled laughter and the mingling of the fear of death and laughter encountered while in prison- shaped the way that satirists narrated the Terror and helped them find the truth and wisdom to process what they had experienced.

35 Rire de tout, c’est ma folie,… Rira bien qui rira le dernier. 36 La Jacobiniade ou le délire et l'agonie des jacobins, poème héroï-comique en quatre chants et en vers (Paris : n.p., [1794]), BnF, NUMM-5797039, 3-4.

2017