Camille Desmoulins

Lore & Background

Camille Desmoulins was born at Guise, in Picardy, northern France. His father was a lieutenant-general of the bailliage of Guise, and his mother was from Wiège-Faty. Through a friend's efforts, his father obtained a scholarship for the fourteen-year-old Camille to enter the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he proved an exceptional student alongside Maximilien Robespierre and Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron. He excelled in Classical Literature and Politics, gaining a particular affinity for Cicero, Tacitus, and Livy. Desmoulins initially pursued a career in law, becoming an advocate in the Parlement of Paris in 1785, but his stammer and lack of connections hindered his success, leading him to political journalism.

Reader's Guide

Desmoulins' significance lies in his catalytic role at the outbreak of the French Revolution and his later vocal opposition to the Reign of Terror. On 12 July 1789, after the dismissal of finance minister Jacques Necker, he delivered an impassioned call to arms outside the Café de Foy, urging the crowd to take up arms and adopt cockades. This agitation sparked widespread unrest that culminated in the Storming of the Bastille two days later. Through his pamphlets and the journal Histoire des Révolutions de France et de Brabant, he advocated for republicanism and revolutionary violence, contributing to the fall of the Girondist faction. However, during the Terror, he and Georges Danton distanced themselves from Robespierre's Montagnards, and his journal Le Vieux Cordelier criticized the Revolutionary Government's excesses and pleaded for clemency. This enraged Robespierre and led to Desmoulins' arrest, trial, and execution by guillotine on 5 April 1794 alongside Danton and other accused Dantonists.

Did You Know?

• Desmoulins was a schoolmate and close friend of Maximilien Robespierre at the Collège Louis-le-Grand.
• He initially wore a green cockade made from leaves, but it was quickly replaced with red and blue, the traditional colors of Paris.
• His pamphlet La France Libre, written in June 1789, explicitly called for a republic before public opinion had embraced that idea.
• Desmoulins was known as the 'Procureur-général de la lanterne' after his pamphlet Discours de la lanterne aux Parisiens.