Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From the Rights of Man to Robespierre (136 page)

Lafayette, Marie-Joseph Paul, marquis de
(1757–1834), general in the American Revolution from June 1777, appointed commander of the Paris National Guard after the Bastille’s fall. Gained control of the 5 October 1789 march on Versailles when he escorted the royal family back to Paris. Committed to constitutional monarchy, participated in the Feuillant ascendancy of 1791–92. Fled Paris during the rising of 10 August 1792, defecting to the Austrians.

La Harpe, Jean-François de
(1739–1803), playwright, man of letters, and ardent disciple of Voltaire. Originally an enthusiastic revolutionary, was imprisoned by the Montagne in April 1794. Released after Thermidor, became an implacable foe of the Revolution and the “philosophy” that caused it. Punished for constantly denouncing the Republic, was prevented from teaching after the coup of Fructidor.

Lakanal, Joseph
(1762–1845), philosophy professor, directing many of the Republic’s educational and cultural initiatives during the Montagnard ascendancy, including establishment of the Paris Natural History Museum (June 1793) while deferring to Montagnard school policy. After Thermidor, reversed Robespierre’s education priorities as president of the legislature’s education committee, among other undertakings founding the écoles centrales secondary school system.

Lalande, Jérôme
(1732–1807), renowned astronomer, atheist, and philosophe, doyen of French astronomy in the late eighteenth century and together with Romme the main theorist and designer of the new republican calendar presented to the Convention in November 1792.

Lally-Tollendal, Trophime Gérard, marquis de
(1751–1830), with Mounier headed the monarchiens in the National Assembly from August to October 1789, striving for mixed government on the British model, including bicameralism and a permanent royal veto. Briefly imprisoned after the 10 August 1792 rising, fled to England on his release. At the Restoration, Louis XVIII made him a peer of France and member of the royal privy council.

Lameth, Alexandre de
(1760–1829), an Artois noble and leader of the Feuillant faction. A cavalry colonel and veteran officer of the American war, defected from the nobility to the Third in the Estates-General of 1789 and opposed the constitutional monarchy retaining any significant powers. A left-centrist anticlerical opposed both to Mounier’s monarchism and to democratic republicanism, he defected to the Austrians with Lafayette after 10 August 1792.

Lameth, Charles de
(1757–1832), an Artois noble and, like his brother, a prominent Feuillant faction leader. Veteran of the American Revolution, wounded at the siege of Yorktown, defected from the nobility to the Third in the Estates-General of 1789. After 10 August 1792 resided in Hamburg. Adhered to Napoleon, the Restoration, and the 1830 revolution.

Lamourette, Antoine Adrien
(1742–1794), prominent Catholic democratic republican popularly “elected” constitutional bishop of Lyon in February 1791. Long urging reconciliation of the Brissotins and Montagne, from June 1793 opposed the Montagne in Lyon. Guillotined in Paris on 11 January 1794.

Lanjuinais, Jean Denis
(1753–1827), Rennes university professor and founder of the Club Breton, the antecedent of the Jacobins. Opposed the trial of Louis XVI and the Montagnard ascendancy. After surviving in hiding, concealed for eighteen months in Rennes, reappeared in the Convention in 1795 and participated in drafting the 1795 constitution. Opposed the coup of Fructidor, Napoleon, and Louis XVIII.

Lanthenas, François Xavier
(1754–1799), physician, educationalist, and translator of Tom Paine, a protogé of Roland prominent among the Brissotin faction. After Thermidor, secretary of the Convention and until 1797 a leading critic of the Directory.

La Revellière-Lépeaux, Louis-Marie de
(1753–1824), fervent anti-Catholic republican and egalitarian idealist from Angers. A Commission de Douze member forced to hide during the Terror, reappeared in the Convention in March 1795. Among the drafters of the 1795 constitution, was afterwards elected one of the five directors. Backed the coup of Fructidor (1797), patronized the deistic sect of the Théophilanthropes.

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent
(1743–1794), the eighteenth century’s greatest chemist, also an agronomist and among the weights and measures reformers during the Revolution who introduced the kilogram. A keen supporter of the “real” Revolution, was guillotined in Paris on 8 May 1794. From 1795, became the object of the republican cult of the “martyred” scientist.

Le Bon, Joseph
(1765–1795), Oratorian priest who renounced the priesthood after 10 August 1792 and became mayor of Arras. A friend of Robespierre, uninterested in revolutionary issues and ideas, directed the Terror in Arras and the Pas-de-Calais with pathological ferocity. Guillotined in Amiens for his crimes, 16 October 1795.

Lebrun-Tondu, Pierre
(1754–1793), journalist, leader of the Liège revolution of 1789, and vigorous critic of Belgian conservatism. Exiled in Paris and close to Brissot and Roland, he became the Republic’s Foreign Affairs minister in August 1792. A prominent internationalist republican and critic of Marat and Robespierre, guillotined in Paris on 27 December 1793.

Le Chapelier, Isaac René
(1754–1794), participated in drafting many of the National Assembly’s legislative enactments in 1789–91. Prominent in the Feuillant defection from the Jacobins. Denounced for modérantisme, guillotined in Paris 22 April 1794.

Lepeletier (de Saint-Fargeau), Ferdinand
(1767–1837), younger brother of Louis-Michel, fervent Jacobin nobleman and participant in Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals. An active opponent of Napoleon’s dictatorship, was expelled from France first by Napoleon and then by Louis XVIII.

Lepeletier, Louis-Michel
(1760–1793), leading magistrate of the Paris parlement before 1789, defected from the nobility in the 1789 Estates-General and vociferously supported abolition of noble titles in June 1790. After voting for the king’s execution, was assassinated in a Paris restaurant a few days before Louis was guillotined, becoming the object of an extravagant Montagnard heroic martyr cult.

Lequinio, Marie-Joseph
(1755–1814), lawyer, landowner, and promoter of peasant adult education, a leaders of Jacobin de-Christianization on the French west coast in 1793–94 and a rapacious director of the Terror in La Rochelle and Rochefort. After Thermidor, escaped punishment in hiding. Under Napoleon, spent several years as French vice-consul in Newport, Rhode Island.

Levasseur, René
(1747–1834), Jacobin surgeon and Marat disciple, among the Convention’s fiercest anti-Brissotins. Loyal to Robespierre, the latter considered him insufficiently ruthless. After Thermidor, a leading Jacobin critic of the Thermidorian reaction. Implicated in the Germinal rising (April 1795), was imprisoned for some months in 1795.

Lindet, Robert
(1746–1825), lawyer and mayor of Bernay, elected to the Convention, voted onto the Committee of Public Safety in April 1793. A Jacobin leader discreetly hostile to Robespierre, tried to save Danton in April 1794. Imprisoned after Thermidor, following his release joined Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals.

Louis XVII
(1785–1795), France’s dauphin after his older brother’s demise in June 1789 until Louis XVI’s execution, subsequently deemed king of France by royalists. Held at the Temple prison in Paris from 10 August 1792, died of tuberculosis after three years’ confinement, at the age of ten.

Louvet (de Couvret), Jean-Baptiste
(1760–1797), book-seller’s agent and man of letters turned journalist, editor of
La Sentinelle
. Led the republican denunciation of Robespierre in the Convention in late 1792. Concealed during the Terror, reentered the Convention in March 1795, remaining a stalwart antiroyalist and anti-Robespierriste republican.

Lux, Adam
(1766–1793), Mainz University philosophy lecturer and representative of the Rhenish democratic republic of 1792–93 in Paris. Published stirring anonymous pamphlets defending the Brissotins and Charlotte Corday. Guillotined in Paris 25 November 1793.

Mallet du Pan, Jacques
(1749–1800), Genevan patrician and disciple of Voltaire based in Paris who propagandized against democracy and republicanism. Edited the royalist paper
Mercure de France
(1789–92), and was a secret intermediary between Louis XVI and the émigré princes at Coblenz.

Malouet, Pierre Victor
(1740–1814), royal official and intendant of Toulon before 1789, a leader of the National Assembly’s right-center monarchists in 1790–91, closely aligned also with the Saint-Domingue white planters. Fled to England after the 10 August 1792 rising. From there, with other émigrés he plotted a British takeover of the French Caribbean colonies (where his main income derived).

Manuel, Louis Pierre
(1751–1793), tutor, book-seller’s agent, and author, elected
procureur
of the Paris Commune in December 1791. Among the organizers of the 10 August 1792 rising. Aligning with Brissot, loudly condemned the September
massacres, including in the Jacobins. Arrested during the Montagnard coup d’état, guillotined in Paris on 14 November 1793.

Marat, Jean-Paul
(1743–1793), Swiss physician and anti-philosophe, and the greatest populist hero of the Revolution. Editor of
L’Ami du peuple
, the most chauvinistic and blood-thirsty of the revolutionary papers, consistently called for Robespierre’s dictatorship. Among the main instigators of the February, March, and May 1793 risings in Paris, was a principal organizer of the coup of 2 June 1793. Assassinated by Charlotte Corday on 13 July 1793, becoming the chief cult figure and “martyr” of the authoritarian populist anti-intellectuals.

Maréchal, Pierre-Sylvain
(1750–1803), librarian, poet, and materialist philosophe among the regular journalists of Prudhomme’s
Revolutions de Paris
. A leader of Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals in 1796–97, he composed its manifesto, the
Manifeste des Égaux
.

Marie Antoinette
(1755–93), France’s queen from 1774, whose indiscreet behavior and inadvisable choice of companions generated torrents of scurrilous scandal concerning the royal marriage bed seriously depleting the monarchy’s ebbing prestige in the 1780s. Rightly suspected of exercising undue influence over her husband, opposed the principle of constitutional monarchy and Louis’s reconciling himself with Lafayette, preferring an underhand counter-revolutionary strategy allied to her native Austria. Guillotined on 16 October 1793.

Maury, Jean Siffrein, Abbé
(1746–1817), brilliant court preacher and staunch defender during 1789–91 of the royal prerogatives in the National Assembly. With Malhouet headed the center-right monarchist bloc. In 1792 fled France, transferring to Rome, becoming a cardinal in 1795. Following reconciliation with Napoleon became archbishop of Paris in 1810 in defiance of the pope. At the Restoration, expelled from France by Louis XVIII and imprisoned in Rome by the pope.

Mercier, Louis Sebastien
(1740–1814), prolific author famous for his
Tableau de Paris
(1781–88), journalist, and utopian. A key promoter of Rousseau’s standing during the Revolution, at first tried to steer between the Brissotins and Montagne, but signed the Convention deputies’ protest against the coup d’état of 2 June 1793 and, in October 1793, was imprisoned. After Thermidor, resumed his place in the Convention, loudly denouncing the Montagne and the “sanguinocrat” Robespierre.

Merlin de Thionville, Antoine Christophe
(1762–1833), corrupt Metz lawyer and Montagnard Convention deputy allied to Chabot and Basire, appointed main French representative to the Rhenish democratic republic of 1792–93 (to the disgust of Forster). Joined the Thermidorians and subsequently lived peacefully, enjoying the riches extorted from his numerous victims.

Merlin de Douai, Philippe-Antoine
(1754–1838), lawyer prominent on the National Assembly’s committees drawing up the decrees abolishing feudalism in 1789–90. Later, a Montagnard and prime author of the Law of Suspects (17 September 1793), in September 1797 was among the chief organizers of the coup of Fructidor, after which he was elected one of the five directors.

Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, comte de
(1749–1791), dissolute philosophe, internationally renowned before 1788 as a radical critic of enlightened despotism and ancien regime legal systems. A leader of the revolutionary ferment in Provence in 1788, dominated the National Assembly in 1789–90 through force of oratory
and a large retinue of aides, speech writers, and researchers. A key promoter of all the major Radical Enlightenment reforms of the early Revolution, he did not, however, seek to eliminate royal authority completely, preferring a limited veto and continuing role for the monarch.

Miranda, Francisco de
(1756–1816), Spanish army officer from Venezuela converted to radical ideas in the 1770s through reading Raynal. After 1783, circulated among the radical networks in Europe, forming an alliance with Brissot and Pétion and becoming deputy commander of the revolutionary army of the north in 1792–93 under Dumouriez. From around 1800, first major instigator of the early nineteenth-century South American rebellions against the Spanish crown.

Momoro, Antoine-François
(1756–1794), Parisian printer and book-seller, among the principal printers of the revolutionary Commune and a powerful orator of the Cordeliers. Invented the device “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” and persuaded the Paris mayor, Pache, to have it inscribed on all the capital’s public buildings. A prominent de-Christianizer and vociferous egalitarian frowned on by Robespierre, guillotined in Paris, on 4 March 1794.

Monge, Gaspard
(1746–1818), professor of mathematics, protégé of Condorcet and the Revolution’s navy minister from August 1792 to March 1793 reorganizing the Republic’s naval bases and fleet. Sent with Daunou to Rome in 1797–98, helped establish the new Roman Republic. Accompanied the expedition to Egypt in 1798, where he participated in founding the French Institut d’Égypte.