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The Rise and Fall of a Revolutionary: The Political Career of Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron, Representative on Mission and Conventionnel, 1754-1802
Abstract
This dissertation examines the Revolutionary career of Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron (1754-1802). Fréron was born the son of Élie-Catherine Fréron, was a prominent author and literary critic who championed the traditional institutions of France against the philosophes. But, with the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Fréron made a complete break with his father's principles. He joined the Jacobin Club, embraced republicanism, and became a well-known, radical journalist through his notorious newspaper L'Orateur du Peuple. Along with his work as a journalist, Fréron pursued a political career. In 1792 he was elected to the National Convention and was subsequently sent as a representative on mission to the departments of southeast France (1793-94). It was here that Fréron gained a notorious reputation as a ruthless Terrorist, especially as a result of his activities in the cities of Marseilles and Toulon.
Fréron later played a leading role in the coup of 9 Thermidor (27-28 July 1794) that toppled Robespierre's government and began the process to dismantle the Terror. During the following chaotic period of the Thermidorian Reaction, Fréron sought to disassociate himself from his past activities as a Jacobin and agent of the Terror. But, public knowledge of Fréron's
past activities as a representative and participant in the Terror as well as his support and encouragement of violence after Thermidor ultimately brought him criticism and condemnation. His political career was irrevocably damaged.
In the final days of the National Convention, Fréron obtained one last assignment as a representative on mission to southeast France. On this mission Fréron showed great moderation and sagacity in the implementation of his duties, but found it impossible to cleanse his tarnished reputation or silence his political opponents. As a result, the last seven years of Fréron’s public and private life were plagued with disappointment and failure. Fréron drifted, debt-ridden, able only to obtain insignificant employment. In 1802 he was appointed to a position as sous-préfet to the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). But this mission was to be his last. He contracted yellow fever, just weeks after his arrival there, and died alone and forgotten.
Reactionary culture helped shape Thermidor's retreat from the ideologies, social policies, and political practices of the Terror. This article explains how it did so by examining the most popular newspaper of the French Revolution's Year III (1794-95), L'orateur du peuple, and editor Stanislas Fréron's appropriation of revolutionary inventiveness to discredit revolutionary activism. Between Robespierre's defeat in July 1794 and the adoption of a new constitution in late summer 1795, Fréron used radical language to condemn first the Terror and then radical republicanism, progressing from attacks on specific legislators to an assault on social welfare, political militancy, and universal suffrage. Elaborating a right-wing ideology that was neither Catholic nor royalist, L'orateur du peuple illuminates the conservative uses of revolutionary political culture. Fréron and the reactionary polemicists among whom he worked forged a virulent reactionary populism in the Year III whose legacy endures today.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s foreign policy was perhaps the crucial weakness in the First Empire’s fate. Through strength of arms on the battlefields of Europe, Napoleon was able to subdue and dominate Europe, yet it was this very strength which facilitated a belligerent course with France’s allies. This was exemplified by Napoleon’s use of twenty-two generals as ambassadors for the First Empire. Therefore, when Napoleon turned to Spain, he was not seeking to strengthen a historical alliance through mutually supportive policy; rather he sought to force his ally to subordinate its interests to France. From 1802-05, General Pierre Riel, the Marquis de Beurnonville, served as Napoleon’s ambassador to the Spanish court. Although Beurnonville’s character was at times a hindrance, the ambassador never flinched from the difficult course Napoleon demanded. Beurnonville forced Charles IV’s reluctant government to accept damaging commercial treaties, a subsidy of seventy-two million francs and finally to join its navy with France to battle the British fleet.
The focus of this dissertation is to shed light on a crucial period of Franco-Spanish relations. Under Beurnonville’s tenure, Napoleon sowed the seeds of his disastrous invasion of Spain. The renewal of war with Britain in 1802, led Napoleon to augment the French navy and prepare for an invasion of the British Isles. Spain became an important component of Napoleon’s strategy to invade England. Initially, the First Consul planned to substitute seventy-two million francs of Spanish gold, a sum that British leaders estimated would field fifteen ships-of-the-line and 200,000 French troops, for Spain’s martial commitment. Spain, under Manuel Godoy’s leadership, sought to avoid paying this financial burden because the nation could not afford it and payment could lead to war with Britain. The result of his efforts was an ultimatum and invasion scare from France. Once Spain reluctantly accepted its treaty obligations England reciprocated with its own ultimatum and attacked the Spanish treasure fleet. In the aftermath of this action, Spain declared war on England. Thereafter, Beurnonville and Godoy strove to rebuild the moribund Spanish navy. Ultimately, their efforts were capped with Spain’s contribution to the Allied fleet at Trafalgar.
Léonard Bourdon: The Career of a Revolutionary, 1754-1807 illustrates the ways in which one individual was affected by and influenced the long and turbulent course of the French Revolution. It also rescues an active, intelligent and interesting man from a prolonged period of scholarly neglect and redeems his reputation from being perceived as a particularly cruel revolutionary terrorist. Sydenham follows Bourdon's political career from the final days of the old monarchy through Bourdon's active participation in the Revolution. Bourdon was always aware that political development must be accompanied by educational change, and his lifelong interest in education is an integral part of his story.Bourdon left remarkably few personal papers. During the painstaking exploration for details of his life, several critical as well as unfamiliar events of the period have been illuminated, suggesting that similar misrepresentations of many other relatively unknown French revolutionaries have distorted current understanding of this period, crucial to the growth and development of modern democracy.
Although historians have tended to focus upon the battles of Valmy (20 September 1792) and Wattignies, (15-16 October 1793) as the decisive moments in the defence of republican France, contemporary politicians, journalists, poets, playwrights, and artists instead celebrated the sieges of Lille (29 September - 8 October 1792) and Toulon (27 August - 19 December 1793). Their representations of these two sieges provide a valuable insight into the way the war was perceived in the revolutionary imagination and into the links between war and terror in revolutionary discourse. Both sieges, despite their differences, gave revolutionary publicists the opportunity to celebrate the myth of the nation-in-arms. While the realities of incompetent leadership and ill-disciplined, poorly equipped troops could not be denied, the myth of republican invincibility could be sustained by dramatizing the exploits of the volunteers and civilians who, regardless of age and gender, rallied to the defence of the Republic. Such heroism was contrasted with the brutality and cowardice of an enemy who depended upon French treason for his success. By insisting that the enemy had put himself beyond the pale of humanity, revolutionary propaganda justified a ruthless conduct of the war and a merciless repression of the foreign enemy's internal collaborators.
Recent scholarship has undermined the interpretation of the Terror as a practical necessity of patriotic defence; it has been shown that even the revolutionaries’ own justifications of terrorist measures placed little emphasis upon the demands of the war. Nevertheless, in their interpretations of the sieges of Lille and Toulon, revolutionary publicists sanctioned the use of terror as an essential instrument in compelling citizens to choose the path of heroism over that of treason, thereby depriving the enemy of his only hope of victory. The sieges of Lille and Toulon figured so prominently in the revolutionary imagination because they illustrated so well the idea that no citizen was exempt from making that choice.
The dockyards and the development of Toulon in the late 18th century Toulonnais society at the end of the "Ancien Regime" tension, conflict and change, 1750-1788 1789 - the outbreak of the Revolution the Jacobins seize power, 1790-1792 the revolt of 1793 bastions of the Republic, 1794-1799 the return to order - from Consulate to Empire the imperial decade and the Hundred Days the Restoration at Toulon.
The electronic version of this book has been prepared by scanning TIFF 400 dpi color and greyscale images of the pages of the text. Original source: Memoirs of the history of France during the reign of Napoleon / dictated by the emperor at Saint Helena to the generals who shared his captivity; and published from the original manuscripts corrected by himself. v.3; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821.; 7 v. : ill., fold. maps ; 22 cm.; London :; This electronic text file was created by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). No corrections have been made to the OCR-ed text and no editing has been done to the content of the original document. Encoding has been done through an automated process using the recommendations for Level 2 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Digital page images are linked to the text file.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1971. Includes bibliography. Microfilm. s
Inaug.-dis.--Heidelberg. "Contemporary accounts and bibliography": p. [iii]-iv. Microfilm. s
Apparently, Fréron and Barras were concerned that these two 62 Fréron to la Croix
- Augustin Ricord
- Robespierre
Ricord and Augustin Robespierre. Apparently, Fréron and Barras were concerned that these two
62 Fréron to la Croix, 25 December 1793, Ibid, 98.
Fréron Demasque, denoncé et mis en jugement par le peuple
- S Maurice
Maurice, S. Fréron Demasque, denoncé et mis en jugement par le peuple. France: 1795.
See also Lourdes, Histoire de la Révolution à Marseilles
- Mémoire Fréron
- Historique
Fréron, Mémoire historique, 87. See also Lourdes, Histoire de la Révolution à
Marseilles, 411-12.
will find him a man very ready to oblige, loyal and of a good sort…. I have told him of the friendly feelings I have for your family, so he will look out for opportunities to make himself useful to you
- Marseilles
Marseilles, will hand you this letter…You will find him a man very ready to oblige, loyal and of
a good sort…. I have told him of the friendly feelings I have for your family, so he will look out
for opportunities to make himself useful to you." Napoleon Bonaparte to Madame Clary, 11
I feel that it is impossible for me to renounce Fréron after all the promises that I have made never to love any but him
- Napoleon She Wrote Later To
She wrote later to Napoleon: "I feel that it is impossible for me to renounce Fréron
after all the promises that I have made never to love any but him." Pauline to Napoleon, (no
date). Revue Retrospective, III, 108-09.
My love, all the world is against us. I see by your letter that your friends are ingrates, as much as Napoleon's wife whom you believe is on your side. She has written to her husband that I will be dishonored if I marry you…
- Pauline Wrote To Fréron
Pauline wrote to Fréron: "My love, all the world is against us. I see by your letter that
your friends are ingrates, as much as Napoleon's wife whom you believe is on your side. She has
written to her husband that I will be dishonored if I marry you…." Pauline Bonaparte to Fréron,
10 July 1796. Ibid, I, 147.
the 1824 edition of Fréron's Mémoire state that this second volume never appeared. In his pamphlet, Isnard had told Fréron: "I await the publication of the second volume of this monstrous work…to respond to all the inculpations against me
- Mémoire Fréron
- Historique
Fréron, Mémoire historique, 80. In a footnote on this page, the editors of the 1824
edition of Fréron's Mémoire state that this second volume never appeared.
In his pamphlet, Isnard had told Fréron: "I await the publication of the second volume
of this monstrous work…to respond to all the inculpations against me!" Isnard à Fréron, 3.
Pierre-François Bounel and Marie-François Moreau were also elected. See Stanislas Fréron and Garnier (de l'Aube), Faussetés Avancées par Isoard, dans son rapport sur les elections de Cayenne. Par Fréron et Garnier (de l'Aube), députés de la Guyane française
- Besides Fréron
- Joseph Garnier
- Alexandre-Edme Sévestre
- Charles David
- Blutel
Besides Fréron and Garnier, Joseph Sévestre, Alexandre-Edme David, Charles Blutel,
Pierre-François Bounel and Marie-François Moreau were also elected. See Stanislas Fréron and
Garnier (de l'Aube), Faussetés Avancées par Isoard, dans son rapport sur les elections de
Cayenne. Par Fréron et Garnier (de l'Aube), députés de la Guyane française, au corps
legislative, (Paris, 1796), 4.
On 9 March 1793, he was sent on mission, charged with surveillance and recruitment, in the departments of Aube and Yonne. On 18 June he was sent to the departments of Ain , Côte commission also raised questions over Guyana's status as a department
- Antoine-Marie-Charles Garnier
Antoine-Marie-Charles Garnier (de l'Aube) was born in Troyes on 7 September 1742.
He was a lawyer and had served as procurer of the commune of Troyes when he was elected, in
1792, to represent the department of Aube in the National Convention. There he became a
Dantonist. On 9 March 1793, he was sent on mission, charged with surveillance and recruitment,
in the departments of Aube and Yonne. On 18 June he was sent to the departments of Ain, Côte
commission also raised questions over Guyana's status as a department, and whether it had been
properly districted for electoral purposes at the time of Fréron's election. 78
and Meurthe to serve as inspector of salt works. He did not return to the Convention. After his election to the Council of 500, as député of Guyana, was annulled, he retired to private life in the department of Aube, where he died in Blaincourt on 9
- Or
- Jura Doubs
d'Or, Doubs and Jura, to suppress a federalist insurrection. Returning to the Convention at the
end of 1793, he later took part in the coup of 9 Thermidor in which he is best remembered for his
admonishment of Robespierre: "The blood of Danton chokes him!" From November 1794 to
March 1795 he served as a member of the Committee of General Security and in April 1795 he
left for the departments of Doubs, Haute-Saòne, Jura, Mont Blanc, Bas Rhin and Meurthe to
serve as inspector of salt works. He did not return to the Convention. After his election to the
Council of 500, as député of Guyana, was annulled, he retired to private life in the department of
Aube, where he died in Blaincourt on 9 September 1805. Kuscinski, Dictionnaire, see Antoine-Marie-Charles Garnier (de l'Aube), 279.
He had been released only when Fréron and Barras had intervened to obtain his freedom. Fréron had also shown devotion to Lucien and protected his interests during his second mission to the Midi. Iung
- Lucien Here
- Doubt
Here, Lucien, no doubt, refers to his imprisonment on 20 July 1795. He had been
released only when Fréron and Barras had intervened to obtain his freedom. Fréron had also
shown devotion to Lucien and protected his interests during his second mission to the Midi.
Iung, Lucien Bonaparte, II, 121.
Lucien especially admired Fréron for his literary talents, and had often asked Fréron to proofread his manuscripts
- I Bonaparte
Bonaparte, I, 149. Lucien especially admired Fréron for his literary talents, and had often asked
Fréron to proofread his manuscripts. Ibid, II, 144-45.
If it was his pride that had kept Fréron from taking that ship, then he would pay dearly for it, for it would be several weeks before another ship left for Saint-Domingue
- Marseilles
Marseilles. If it was his pride that had kept Fréron from taking that ship, then he would pay
dearly for it, for it would be several weeks before another ship left for Saint-Domingue.
Pauline was allowed to accompany her husband to Saint-Domingue, but that was a family matter
- Ibid
Ibid. Pauline was allowed to accompany her husband to Saint-Domingue, but that was a
family matter.
Récueil des documents pour l'histoire du club des Jacobins de Paris
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