Sylvain Maréchal, the Godless Man 9004543945, 9789004543942

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Sylvain Maréchal, The Godless Man

Historical Materialism Book Series Editorial Board Loren Balhorn (Berlin) David Broder (Rome) Sebastian Budgen (Paris) Steve Edwards (London) Juan Grigera (London) Marcel van der Linden (Amsterdam) Peter Thomas (London) Gavin Walker (Montréal)

volume 287

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hm

Sylvain Maréchal, The Godless Man By

Maurice Dommanget Translated by

Mitchell Abidor Introduction by

Jean-Numa Ducange

leiden | boston

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2023014383

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 1570-1522 isbn 978-90-04-54394-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-54395-9 (e-book) Copyright 2023 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands, except where stated otherwise. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Foreword vii Jean-Numa Ducange Introduction

1

part 1 Before the Revolution Chapter 1

13

Chapter 2

38

Chapter 3

67

Chapter 4

94

Chapter 5

119

part 2 During the French Revolution Chapter 6

139

Chapter 7

162

Chapter 8

198

Chapter 9

234

Chapter 10

254

Chapter 11

269

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part 3 After the Revolution Chapter 12

293

Chapter 13

319

Chapter 14

341

Chapter 15

376

Chapter 16

401

Conclusion

425

Bibliography Index 438

433

Foreword Anyone with an interest in the French left knows how heavily the French Revolution, the Republic, and anti-clericalism have weighed on it over the course of its history. The Revolution? From Robespierre till the 1970s the revolutionary idea has regularly reappeared in the history of the country. The Republic? The political regime it embodies has been a controversial subject from its first steps in 1792 until our time. As for anti-clericalism – the at times bitter struggle against the influence of the Catholic Church – it, too, constitutes a lasting marker of a political identity and was even for some time a means to differentiate the ‘clerical’ right from a ‘secular’ and ‘republican’ left. Unless we keep this in mind it would be all but impossible to understand the trajectory and writings of Maurice Dommanget (1888–1976). This historian was, in fact, the perfect incarnation of the generation born at the end of the nineteenth century at a time when the Third Republic was still struggling to assert itself against its enemies. He died in the mid-1970s, at a time when the struggle in France against clericalism seemed to have gone out of fashion in favour of models emanating from the Third World. ‘Maurice’ is a first name that was common in that generation: it is thus not a matter of chance that the most famous ‘Maurice’ of that generation – a contemporary of Dommanget’s – was the Secretary General of the French Communist Party (pcf), Maurice Thorez (1900–64). The pcf was, from 1945, the most powerful party of the French left; its decline began at the very moment when Dommanget passed away. It was in 1978 that the Socialist Party definitively passed the pcf on the electoral level. Dommanget had frequented the Socialists and Communists, but he had also combated them. He was anything but the man of one party or organisation. He was, instead, an individual who maintained his freedom and possessed a deep knowledge of and passion for the French Revolution and the working-class movement. He was ever on the alert against partisan blindness. We will follow the thread of his existence in just a few words.1 Born in 1888, a few months before the grand commemoration of the centennial of the French Revolution of 1789, Maurice Dommanget was raised in an anti-clerical environment. His father, a butcher, refused to have him baptised. He thus grew up in a left-leaning milieu where his family read Le Radical. The Radical Party was, at the time, the majority current on the left. Attached to small-scale property, the

1 For a brief biography see: https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article22830

© Jean-Numa Ducange, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_001

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Radicals had almost nothing socialist about them. On the other hand, most of them professed a vigorous anti-clericalism. Ferociously attached to the heritage of the Revolution and ardently republican, they often raised their children in the cult of the Republic. From the end of the 1890s it dominated political life and would remain influential until the 1930s.2 From the time he was a schoolchild, little Maurice, like many Frenchmen socialised in a left-wing environment, had a passion for the history of the French Revolution. This gave birth in our young student to a project that decades later would lead to a work of considerable scale: a biography of Sylvain Maréchal (1750–1803), an actor in one of the radical currents of the French Revolution. A free-thinking spirit was born.

A Life of Political Commitment Before arriving at this, Dommanget joined the Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (sfio), then the name of the Socialist Party, founded in 1905. He became a schoolteacher in the department of the Oise, one relatively close to the Paris region, yet distant from decision-making centres. In 1909, while teaching in the small town of Montataire, he published his first articles in local newspapers, pieces with the strong anti-clerical and anti-militarist bent that would mark his entire oeuvre. After Montataire and his military service, he was appointed to a post in Morvilliers, a small village in the Aube, where he founded the first teachers’ union. Dommanget was thus a primary school teacher and would remain one all his life. As a teacher, it was he who embodied the regime, who relayed the republican message to the four corners of the country against the ‘reactionaries’, the ‘clericals’. Teachers, the ‘instit’ as they were familiarly known, sometimes called the ‘black hussars of the Republic’, were the heart of the social base of the Republic, and many of them would become involved in politics. Many remained Radicals but some took the step of becoming Socialists. From 1920 and the creation of the Section française de l’Internationale communiste, (sfic), which quickly became the pcf, French socialism swung to the left. Dommanget admired the Bolshevik Revolution and chose to accompany the movement. In the newspaper Le Franc-Parleur de l’Oise on 7 August 2 Please forgive this personal note: the author of this introduction is named ‘Numa’, a name that has passed from father to son since the 1880s. This choice is owed to the fact that people had developed a taste for first names that were not those of saints, searching for alternatives drawn from non-Catholic sources.

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1920, he expressed his personal conviction: joining the Third International meant ‘finding the correct socialist and syndicalist road’. Becoming a Communist, for him as for other revolutionary syndicalists (the ideology that inspired many unionists of the cgt), went without saying. This adherence to communism, in the words of the historian Francois Hincker, constituted a ‘stupefying misunderstanding’:3 at the same time that the Bolsheviks employed coercive measures to repress their enemies in France, libertarian syndicalists saw their future in the road traced by Moscow. The honeymoon did not last long, but it spoke volumes of an aspiration for a ‘regeneration’ which traversed the ranks of socialist activists profoundly disoriented by the shock wave of World War i.4 Dommanget remained in the ranks of the Communists longer than many, but he too would end up distancing himself from the party. He spent ten years as a Communist before breaking with them, refusing the Stalinist imposition of the party line. He was particularly shocked by the line of a Communist Party that, at the time, failed to distinguish between republicans and bourgeois. In keeping with the International’s line of class against class, the pcf did not hesitate to call the republican school a pure instrument of bourgeois propaganda.5 Dommanget, who had been raised in the cult of the Republic, could not accept this simplistic lumping together. Though he engaged in politics, Dommanget was, above all, an activist in the schoolteachers’ union movement. Syndicalism was even – after anti-clericalism, which was manifested in his involvement in freethought movements – second nature to him, a steadfast commitment. There is no surprise in this for anyone who knows the history of school teachers: teachers and particularly primary school teachers have historically been one of the most unionised milieus. The particular role of the primary school teacher is owed to the fact that they often rub shoulders with children of the popular classes, secondary education then being limited to a limited number. This attachment to unionism is also characteristic of a certain French left and allows us to better understand who Dommanget was. The syndicalism of the cgt prior to 1914 was animated by revolutionary syndicalist ideology. Refusing the union’s submission to a party, the cgt considered the union the centrepiece of the future and distrusted

3 François Hincker, ‘La lignée jacobine’, Communisme, Nº 45–46, 1996. 4 Romain Ducoulombier, Camarades! La naissance du Parti communiste en France, Paris, Perrin, 2010. 5 For a general history of the pcf see: Jean Vigreux et alii, Le parti rouge. Une histoire du pcf 1920–2020, Paris, Armand Colin, 2020.

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political parties.6 Inspired by the prospect of a general strike which would be the embryo of the future society, many of them, as we saw, saw the radicalism of the Bolshevik Revolution as a political response that was adaptable. Dommanget was not exactly part of this circle, maintaining an attachment to the Republic that was lacking in many militants of the cgt and that would remain in contact with different currents. What is more, he was also animated by a libertarian sensibility which made him distrustful of political apparatuses. A sign of Dommanget’s influence in union circles is that he was invited to Moscow in August 1931 (after his break with the pcf) by Lozovsky, secretary of the Red International of Trade Unions, which brought together proCommunist unions with a delegation of the Unitary Federation of Teachers. Dommanget reached Berlin, where he was to receive false papers that would allow him to make it to the ussr. But, in the end, lacking documents, he never crossed the border. Had the Soviets in the end considered him a Trotskyist and so not to be trusted? Whatever the case, he had many contacts with opposition circles in the ussr, including Trotsky himself. In August 1934, Dommanget, accompanied by his wife and a handful of militants, met the founder of the Red Army then hiding in the town of Domène in the Isère at the home of Laurent Beau, an activist in the Unitary Federation of Teachers. It was nearby, at the home of another militant, that they met. Trotsky, who had spent time in France and had closely followed the evolution of the pcf, put forth the idea of union unity (the union movement having been fragmented by the pro-Soviets with their cgtu, distinct from the cgt). Trotsky also invited the teachers’ union to join the left-wing of the sfio. This was the period known as ‘the French turn’. Seeing the impossibility of working within a pcf following the orders of Moscow and hunting down oppositionists, Trotsky invited them to return to the ranks of the Socialist Party, more democratic and pluralist, in order to develop a revolutionary policy.7 But Dommanget, along with many like him, did not take Trotsky’s suggestion. Several witnesses reported Trotsky’s bitterness. One can easily imagine the reciprocal mistrust between the two men. The leader of the opposition to Stalin always more or less considered French trade unionists, jealously attached to their independence, as archetypes of the old worker’s movement that had to be ‘Bolshevised’ from top to bottom. What was more, though an orator of the first order, Trotsky could also be curt and arrogant. It is easy to see that Dommanget, a provincial schoolteacher who 6 Miguel Chueca, Déposséder les possédants. La «grève générale» aux temps héroïques du syndicalisme révolutionnaire (1895–1906), Marseille, Agone, 2008. 7 Jean-Jacques Marie, Le trotskysme et les trotskystes, Paris, Armand Colin, 2004.

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remained attached to his region, his origins, and the specificities of the French working-class movement could hardly feel in sync with him. There was a large sociological gap between the two men. Dommanget had a solid Marxist education, as well as an erudite and impressive knowledge of the history of French socialist currents. Though sympathetic to the Trotskyists and their ideas, he could not truly blend in with an environment where the intellectualist tendencies were often pronounced. In all likelihood, this was one of the explanations why, until his death, he would remain (despite his structural opposition to the Soviet regime) in contact with historians who had remained faithful to the pcf. He was never able to view the Communist milieu as solely composed of satellites acting on the orders of Moscow, that is to say, as they were perceived by certain Trotskyists. Many members of the pcf probably seemed to him, despite their flaws, to exemplify what was best in the French socialist and revolutionary traditions, even when perverted by the Stalinist deviation: a certain fidelity to their popular origins. In fact, from a sociological point of view, his trajectory, that of a teacher close to the people, puts us more in mind of that of a Thorezian cadre of the pcf than that of a far-left militant who crossed borders. But that is as far as the comparison goes. In 1936, he participated in the circles of ‘revolutionaries of the Popular Front’,8 critical of the first socialist government in French history, presided over by Léon Blum and supported by the Communists. Dommanget found himself again defending certain republican gains, like public schools, now defended by the pcf. But his libertarian and revolutionary sensibility was now offended by the moderate character of a political coalition little disposed to going any further than the adoption of a few social measures. He was circumspect about placing the Marseillaise – the French national anthem – and the Internationale – the internationalist song composed by Eugène Pottier in homage to the Paris Commune – on the same level. For him, the former represented the past, the latter the future. For him the reconciliation of the blue, white and red national flag with the red alone of the working class, ardently preached at the time by Maurice Thorez and the pcf and its extensive network of militant and sympathisers, held little attraction.

A Non-Academic Historian Politically committed, a union activist, part of the Ecole emancipée movement, which still exists today, Dommanget was also, and above all, a historian. He pub-

8 Jean-Pierre Riou, Révolutionnaires du Front populaire, Paris, 10/18, 1973.

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lished many articles and books on a variety of subjects, especially after 1946, the year of his retirement. For thirty years, his activity as a historian was abundant. His works fit into the following categories: regional history (often connected to revolutionary history, notably the revolution of 1789); the history of the radical currents of the French Revolution, from the Enragés of Jacques Roux to the Babouvistes, with particular attention to Sylvain Maréchal; the history of Blanqui’s trajectory and that of the Blanquist movement; that of the Paris Commune of 1871; the history of the workers’ movement in general; and finally, the history of education. He was particularly attracted to biography. Aside from that of Sylvain Maréchal, he wrote a biography of Edouard Vaillant, the third man among the founders of the Socialist Party, along with Jean Jaurès and Jules Guesde. The history of ‘the Great Revolution’, as it was called in France in the nineteenth century and in the Soviet Union throughout the twentieth, i.e., that of the Revolution of 1780–1799, was unquestionably the great affair of his life, from his youth as a republican to his final breath. In 1922, he published his first monograph on dechristianisation in Beauvais and the Oise. His free-thinking nature led him to be one of the first historians to take an interest in the details of the radical dechristianising movement, led by a section of the far-left currents of the Revolution, a virtually virgin field of research at the time. The historian Michel Vovelle, who occupied the chair in the history of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne from 1983 to 1993, and who was also interested in these movements, sees Dommaget as a precursor as historian, attentive to a reality few had considered until then: ‘Maurice Dommanget, a free thinker and godless man, for almost his entire career carried out with rare stubbornness an investigation in the field of religious history extremely personal in its formulation’.9 In this context, one figure particularly held his attention: Sylvain Maréchal.10 The biography, which appeared in 1950, was the fruit of forty years of research. Though somewhat dated, this Sylvain Maréchal remains so well documented that it has aged marvellously well. Through the telling of Maréchal’s life, it is not only a singular history of the Revolution that is placed before us, but also the history of the origins of free thought, of socialism, and of anarchism. Dommanget even sees in certain of Maréchal’s views the foreshadowing of Marxist formulations. It is possible that the enthusiasm that arose from a researcher’s discoveries led him to slightly exaggerate the singularity of Maréchal’s ideas. 9 10

Michel Vovelle ‘Maurice Dommanget et le problème religieux’, in Maurice Dommanget. Actes du colloque international de Beauvais, Beauvais, Conseil général de l’Oise, 1994, p. 149. Erica J. Mannucci, ‘La recherche de Dommanget sur Sylvain Maréchal’, in ibid., pp. 215–21.

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But the visionary side of Babouvism – from the name of Gracchus Babeuf, organiser of an egalitarian conspiracy against the Directorate in 1797 – was recognised by Marx himself, who pointed out that Babeuf and his comrades had formed the first ‘active communist party’. Sylvain Maréchal (1750–1803), a man who served as the meeting point of atheism and communism, was, in many ways, the ideal subject for Maurice Dommanget. Maréchal was the intellectual heir of the country priest Jean Meslier (also the subject of a study by Dommanget) whose uncompromising attack on religion and all its works was discovered only after his death, can be seen as the first great figure of modern atheism, and was a man to whom Maréchal paid homage in his writings. The body of Maréchal’s atheist work is vast, and thanks to the work of Sheila Delaney, who has translated three of his books in their entirety – The AntiSaints, The Woman Priest, and For and Against the Bible, and Mitchell Abidor, the translator of the volume you are currently holding, who has also translated extensive excerpts from Maréchal’s works for the Marxist Internet Archive,11 English-language readers now have access to some of his most important writings. Maréchal was not only a significant voice for atheism, but we can also credit him with having written the first truly communist text, the Manifesto of the Equals, the programmatic statement of Babeuf’s failed conspiracy of 1796. This manifesto is the recipe for a future society in which all will share equally in society’s riches in a kind of barracks socialism. As Maréchal (anonymously) wrote: ‘We aspire to live and die equal, the way we were born: we want real equality or death; this is what we need. And we’ll have this real equality, at whatever the cost. Woe on those who stand between it and us! Woe on those who resist a wish so firmly expressed’. His vision of the socialist future could not have been more austere: ‘let the arts perish, if need be, as long as real equality remains’. From this manifesto, the movement it spoke for, and the goals it espoused, flows the great revolutionary working-class movements that arose in the nineteenth century. Though Babeuf would be guillotined for his attempt to overthrow the existing order, and other members of the conspiracy would be forced into exile, Maréchal escaped virtually unscathed and was able to continue his atheist work until his death. The one area of interest to Dommanget in which Maréchal’s ideas were far from congenial was pedagogy. Maréchal was a rabid misogynist, and his main

11

https://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/marechal/index.htm.

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contribution to pedagogical theory was his opposition to schooling for women. His opposition to this was so virulent that not even the most generous critic can make allowances for it based on the era in which he expressed it. Even in late eighteenth-century France, he was extreme. As you will see, Dommanget is admiring of his subject, but well aware of his flaws and shortcomings. Thanks to his labours, the schoolteacher was widely recognised by the historical community. He had a graduate degree in the French Revolution that was the equivalent of what is now a masters. This was a rare accomplishment for a provincial schoolteacher, one that contributed to establishing his legitimacy as a historian. He became vice president of the Société des études jaurèsiennes, founded in 1959 with the objective of making known the work and times of Jean Jaurès, founder of the Socialist Party. He also assiduously attended meetings of the Société des études robespierreistes, founded in 1908 by the great historian Albert Mathiez to defend the figure of Robespierre and to publish his works. Dommanget regularly published articles in the society’s journal, the Annales historiques de la Révolution française, whose academic prestige increased after 1945. Dommanget can be seen as a man who loved what is called in France ‘societés savantes’, which played a great role in structuring the discipline of history, building a bridge between the public and academics, a goal fully in accord with his pedagogical interests. Education was another of his main interests and in 1970 he published a manual entitled Les grands socialistes et education, a detailed study of the views of socialist leaders on the subject. Dommanget was also translated into many foreign languages and several of his books can be read in Italian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese and now English. The echo of his work, especially considering he was a provincial schoolteacher, is extraordinary. Dommanget won the prize of the Académie Française in 1965 for his book on Jean Meslier and was interviewed by the French paper of record, Le Monde, in 1973. He corresponded with historians from around the world, particularly with specialists in the history of the left of the French Revolution. His archive contains correspondence with the Soviet Babeuf specialist Victor Daline, who had been close to the oppositionists in the 1930s, as well as with the East German Walter Markov, the historian of the Enragés and their leader, Jacques Roux. As an example, Markov wrote to Dommanget on 17 June 1960: ‘I heard your name in discussions with Soviet historians, survivors of the period from 1920 to 1930’.12 And, indeed, a number of Soviet historians passing through France had

12

Letter cited in Jean-Louis Rouch, Prolétaire en veston: une approche de Maurice Dom-

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met Dommanget, whose works had retained their notoriety since their original translations into Russian in the 1920s. In France, all the great Socialist, Communist and Marxist historians knew Maurice Dommanget and admired his unstinting labour and devotion. If he had a teacher, it was almost certainly Albert Mathiez (1874–1932), brilliant and passionate historian of Robespierre and the Montagnards. Mathiez, a recognised academic (though he never had a fixed post at the Sorbonne) and editor of the Annales historiques de la Révolution française, took Dommanget under his wing. He invited him to continue and deepen his research into the history of the ‘Red Priests’ of the time of the Revolution and dechristianisation. He encouraged him to take an interest in Babeuf, then relatively little known. It was Mathiez who permitted Dommanget to publish selected writings of the celebrated precursor of communism. Their complicity was strong, and yet their pantheons, if we examine them closely, were not all that compatible. Mathiez defended the Incorruptible – as Robespierre was known – at times without any nuance, while Dommanget preferred the egalitarian wing that was crushed by Robespierre. But, above all, he admired Auguste Blanqui. Blanqui detested Robespierre, considering him to have been a ‘priest’, for he had quashed the dechristianisation movement, calling it ‘atheism’ and ‘aristocratic’. Dommanget, the vigorous anti-clerical, could not fully recognize himself in Robespierre, who always defended the idea that the people must have a religion, even if it was that of the Supreme Being. Even so, Mathiez and Dommanget were close. The Société des etudes robespierreistes, more than a group defending tooth and nail everything about Robespierre, welcomed all those interested in the defence of the Revolution. Like Mathiez, Dommanget was one of those disenchanted by communism, but like Mathiez, he maintained over a long period his friendship with Soviet historians, despite the evolution of the Soviet regime. In the memory of the Communists, they would also experience similar destinies, both annexed by the pcf as fellow travellers, though they could just as well have been seen as far-left elements hostile to the party.

Blanqui, Dommanget’s Other Great Figure Though among Dommanget’s many other books there is no volume as long as the one dedicated to Maréchal, if we look at his entire body of work, his great

manget, instituteur, syndicaliste, historien social et libre-penseur, Le Loubanel, Éditions Les Monédières, 1984, p. 84.

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attachment to Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881), to whom he dedicated several books and many articles, is unmistakable. A few words on this subject are thus called for. It is to Blanqui that we owe these words: ‘The duty of a revolutionary, always, despite it all, and unto death is the struggle’. An ardent revolutionary who traversed almost the entire century, ever in opposition, member of countless secret societies, notably the Society of the Friends of the People, which was persecuted by the July Monarchy, and the Society of the Rights of Man, Blanqui was one of the great political figures of the nineteenth century. Advocate of direct insurrection, Blanqui spent a large part of his life in prison. According to Dommanget’s calculations, Blanqui spent exactly thirty-three years, seven months and sixteen days behind bars. Adding in his time under government surveillance, he spent forty-three years and two months outside of normal life. Blanqui engaged in countless insurrections. In May 1839, with several hundred men he had organised in a Society of Seasons, he attempted to overthrow the government. A talented political journalist, he was held in high esteem by a large segment of the opposition and respected as a revolutionary of the first rank by Karl Marx, who viewed him as a key element of the proletarian party in France. Blanqui preached the seizure of power by an organised minority capable of exercising a dictatorship favouring the vast majority of the people. Blanqui would, despite his activity, be accused by his fellows of betraying the cause in 1848 by manipulating a number of people. In the 1860s, now grey haired, he became known as The Old Man, still a tireless opponent of those in power, i.e., Napoleon iii and his Second Empire, a period of Blanqui’s life closely examined by Dommanget. Blanqui was in prison at the time of the Paris Commune in March–May 1871. The term Blanquist was used to designate a political tendency supporting unthinking and hopeless insurrection. During his funeral on 5 January 1881, 10,000 socialist and free thinkers gathered to salute his memory. Dommanget, avoiding the polemics surrounding Blanqui, sought to write the history of this great figure of the nineteenth century.

The Refusal to Climb the Social Ladder Despite his many successes and the spread of his writings, often cited by academics, Dommanget remained a retired schoolteacher living a peaceful life in the Oise, in the town of Orry-la-Ville, where he spent most of his time. His home was that of a collector, and it was reported that it was filled with historical portraits of revolutionary and working-class leaders of various periods, with objects having belonged to Blanqui, with collections of journals old and

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new, along with rare editions and autographs. This was an approach that historians long shared: the gathering in their homes of pieces of history in order to feel in contact with the great figures of the past. This way of being inhabited by history has since become rare. How can we explain that output of such quality and scope should not have led to a rise in status, at the very least to one of the best high schools or even a university? Dommanget, if we are to believe certain eyewitness accounts, could have obtained at least a part-time university post at the beginning of the 1930s through the intervention of his friend Albert Mathiez. But he refused. The schoolteacher applied to the letter what was called ‘the refusal to climb the social ladder’, the determination to remain at the bottom of the social scale, close to the people and far from apparatuses and the seats of power. As the historian Claude Pennetier explained: ‘Nostalgia for the province of his childhood and his revolutionary syndicalist convictions combined to keep him in his post as rural schoolteacher’.13 From the publishing point of view, his notoriety was somewhat in contradiction with this attitude, since Dommanget did not settle only for small political publishing houses. Among his publishers were the major left-wing house Maspero, but also the important academic house Armand Colin. We must also mention Editions Spartacus, with which Dommanget was long closely connected. Founded in 1936 by René Lefeuvre,14 an important figure among the anti-authoritarian anti-Stalinist communists. Dommanget published his book on Sylvain Maréchal there, as well as other works on the ‘Red Priests’, Babeuf, and the French Revolution. Spartacus still exists today, despite the difficulties it has encountered since the 1980s and the diminished interest in Marxism. In 2017, they reissued this biography of Maréchal, after having published a new edition of Dommanget’s book on Babeuf in 2009.

∵ One can easily imagine a sociologist inspired by the works of Pierre Bourdieu studying Dommanget in terms of the field of his trajectory, at the crossroads of universes of different natures. His approach is revelatory of the way Dommanget saw the writing of history. Let us briefly analyse the kind of history written by this schoolteacher from the

13 14

See the aforementioned online biography. On Editions Spartacus, see the dvd on René Lefeuvre by Julien Chuzeville, which is available from the publishing house: https://spartacus‑idh.com/.

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Oise. Some of his works are still cited regularly, and others have been republished, like his books on the red flag and 1 May. Dealing with the history of symbols, these two books have aged well and remain refences for all who want to understand the extraordinary itinerary of the flag that originally served martial law under the ancien régime before becoming the emblem of revolts and revolutions during the nineteenth century and then the symbol of the communist regimes of the twentieth. But, aside from these few bold undertakings that would today be called history of representations, Dommanget remained a historian of the positivist school, in the best sense of the term. At the methodological and analytical level, he is in the camp of communist historians who maintained an attachment to a classical concept of history rather than those who sought to renew the human sciences. Here, again, the gap between him and leftist historians, more inclined to seek out new critical methodologies, seems obvious. His combat was less methodological than ideological. For Dommanget, the object was to lend historical events a social and progressive content. In the same way that he was open to new forms of pedagogy despite being unconvinced by the followers of Freinet, Dommanget, if he partook in the dynamic of nascent social history (particularly after the birth of the revue Le mouvement social in 1960), did not really participate in the discussions relating to the renewal of the historical discipline. And, yet, we cannot place him in the category of purely militant history, one lacking in distance from participants and events. To be sure, Dommanget was, at times, schematic and anachronistic, as when he spoke of a general strike in the eighteenth century.15 But his sympathy for his subjects did not prevent him from being rigorous in his research and writing, allowing the most solidly researched among them – like this biography of Sylvain Maréchal – to resist the passage of time.

Homages When Dommanget died in April 1976 at the age of 88, many paid homage to him. His funeral tool place in the presence of two men who had been close to Trotsky, Pierre Frank and Pierre Naville. Several eminent historians also travelled to the ceremony: Robert Mandrou and two pillars of the Sorbonne: the

15

These aspects are discussed in the long obituary of Dommanget by Serge Bianchi in Annales historiques de la Révolution française, nº 227, 1977, pp. 71–86.

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great Marxist economist Ernest Labrousse and Albert Soboul, at the time the most celebrated historian of the French Revolution. In a rare occurrence for the time, when the battle between Stalinists and gauchistes was at its height, favourable obituaries appeared in the Communist press as well as in that of some currents of the far left. On 7 April 1976, in L’Humanité, the organ of the pcf, the Communist historian Jean Bruhat wrote: ‘Despite all that separates us, Maurice Dommanget was, for us, a historian who contributed to the exalting of the great struggles carried out by the French people from the Jacquerie up till the Commune’. Many expressed their debt to this man who remained a modest provincial schoolteacher. One of those who best summed up his spirit was Pierre Frank: I know nothing that compares to Maurice Dommanget’s body of work on the history of the French working-class movement. For my part, it was essentially on the basis of his labours that I was able to arrive at a global vision of this movement in relation to French society since the Revolution, which allowed me, among other things, to understand what occurred at Tours in 1920 [where the pcf was founded] and since then … Do I need to mention that he sought neither honours nor posts that others, far less gifted than he, obtained. He had no ambitions in his fields of study and wanted above all to serve the cause of the workers.16 Dommanget’s oeuvre was saluted in countless militant publications in France as well as elsewhere, particularly in the ussr. And then the memory of his work evaporated. It is easy to imagine the confusion of a Dommanget in a world where the refusal to climb the social ladder has become unintelligible to so many contemporaries on the left, where careerism occupied the front of the stage far more than militant devotion. All the more reason to discover a body of work that greatly contributes to the discovery of heretofore unknown aspects of the French Revolution and the working-class movement. Jean-Numa Ducange Professor of Contemporry History Universite de Rouen Member of the Institut Universitaire de France

16

Letter from Pierre Frank dated 18 October 1979 cited by Jean-Louis Rouch, op. cit., pp. 209– 10.

Introduction 1

Aim of This Book

Sylvain Maréchal (1750–1803) was one of the strangest, most original, and most appealing figures of the second half of the eighteenth century. A light poet, moralist, scholar, atheist, journalist, revolutionary playwright, and anarchistleaning communist conspirator, in equal measure he belonged to literary, philosophical, and social movements. After having made his name in the pastoral genre and in Anacreontic poetry,1 through his honesty and boldness, by his repeated attacks against God, priests, kings, the great, and the wealthy, he quickly became ‘one of the most daring and brazen sophists of the time’, according to Feller; ‘the most daring thinker of the century’, as one of his contemporaries said. He was victim of persecution, being thrown in prison for several months for having openly posed the question of the secularization of the calendar (1788) to public opinion. These avatars, these ‘experiments at his own expense’ – to use his expression – incited him to greater circumspection, but since he vowed, whatever might ‘come, [to only] write under the dictates of reason’, he persisted in his philosophical and social productions. He enthusiastically greeted the Revolution, which he anticipated by twenty years. Throughout all the events, remaining outside coteries, factions, and clubs, he strived to remain himself. The importance of his role can be measured by this triple sign: after Loustallot’s death he was the principal editor of Révolutions de Paris, the most widely circulated Jacobin newspaper; he was the author of Le Dernier jugement des rois [The Final Judgment of Kings], the most sansculotte play of the Terror; he composed Dame Nature à la barre de Assemblée Nationale [Mother Nature at the Bar of the National Assembly] and the Correctif à la Révolution [Corrective to the Revolution], two works that were far in advance of the boldest critiques of the era. After a short period of skepticism at the time of the Thermidorian reaction he regained control of himself, and in the year iv rejoined the Jacobins who, gathered around Babeuf, worked for the overthrow of the Directory and the triumph of a plebeian dictatorship. Here again we can measure the impact of

1 [Poetry, mainly on love and wine, written in the forms developed by the Greek poet Anacreon. – Tr.]

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_002

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his activity by the fact that the essential document of the Babouvist plot, the Manifesto of the Equals, the first proclamation of revolutionary socialism, was his work. No sooner had Bonaparte imposed himself on public opinion than Maréchal, in a prophetic work, unmasked him as an ambitious man. In veiled terms he later returned to the attack against the triumphant general, while at the same time stepping up his anti-clerical and atheist productions aimed at checking the progress of the Church and deism. His Dictionnaire des athées [Dictionary of Atheists] (year viii) was particularly scandalous. His immense erudition also deserves more than passing mention. It is demonstrated by his collaboration in the largest publishing enterprises of the era and by the publication of the Voyages de Pythagore [Travels of Pythagoras], a work that would have ensured his glory had he not allowed himself to develop his ideas within the framework of a fiction of antiquity. One can easily see that such a man, through his bold theories, the ideas he cast to the wind and which would only germinate much later, and his pathbreaking activities, was not only influential in his lifetime, but even more so after his death. In fact, we can follow his trail throughout the nineteenth century in studying the formation and development of free thought, socialism, and anarchism. Nevertheless, his life and works are little or poorly known, and his bibliography has remained problematic. The present study, which is the fruit of forty years of research and prolonged intimacy with the writer and thinker, has no other goal, in repairing omissions, rectifying errors, and responding to lies, than that of tracing as faithful a portrait as possible of Sylvain Maréchal.

2

Previous Works

These works can be divided into three categories: a) Special notices; b) Dictionary articles; c) Partial studies. 2.1 Special Notices If we keep to chronological order, two autobiographies would be placed in the front line, the ‘Historical Notice on the author of the Psalms’ (two pages) at the beginning of the Livre échappé au deluge [Book Escaped from the Flood] (1784), and the notice on Sylvain Maréchal he wrote in his Chefs d’oeuvres de poésies

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3

philosophiques et descriptives du xviie siècle [Masterpieces of Philosophical and Descriptive Poetry of the Eighteenth Century] (1792). They were followed by two notices by Lalande inserted at the beginning of the supplements to the Dictionnaire des athées. The first, which bears the title ‘Notice About Sylvian Maréchal’, by Jerome de la Lande, is twelve pages long. The second, untitled, is nine. For the most part it is a reproduction of Madame Gacon-Dufour’s ‘Notice on Sylvain Maréchal’ whose manuscript she sent to Lalande. This notice, placed at the front of the book De la Vertu [On Virtue] was no less than seventy-two pages.2 Historical and critical concerns take up little space in Lalande’s notices. What the illustrious astronomer wanted was to braid wreaths for the intrepid atheist, the tolerant thinker, and the devoted friend. The revolutionary journalist and the Babouvist are never mentioned. This defect is even more evident in Mme. Gacon-Dufour’s writings. Not only is the revolutionary and systematic leveler pushed to the side, but the author casts a veil over the philosophical theories of her hero. It also contains a number of errors and is totally lacking in order. Nevertheless, even with all its faults and lacunae, Mme. Gacon-Dufour’s work is of great assistence in studying the character, home life, and final days of Maréchal. It wasn’t until 1833 that there was a new notice on Maréchal. It was written by J.-B.-L. Germond, publisher of a reprint of the Dictionnaire des athées. Elegantly written, this notice doesn’t really add anything to the previous works, of which it is little but a synthesis. New errors are grafted onto the old. The author has one merit alone, and that’s of having made skillful use of some of Marechal’s Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu [Fragments of a Moral Poem about God].3 In July 1841, in L’Humanitaire, organ of one of the many communist sects of the July monarchy, there finally appeared a biography of Sylvain Maréchal that highlighted his philosophical and social theories. It’s clear that the author of the article made use of the notices by Mme. Gacon-Dufour and Lalande, some of whose errors he repeats, but he goes far beyond these notices by revealing new information. Maréchal’s role in the Conspiracy of Equals is pointed out, and hitherto forgotten works like Dame Nature à la barre de Assemblée Nationale and the Correctif à la Révolution are mentioned. The author adds: ‘We would

2 This was supposed to appear separately in 12 volumes entitled La vie de Sylvain Maréchal by Mme. Gacon-Dufour. Girard, printer and bookseller, 70, Quai des Augustins. La Décade, 10 Ventôse, year xi, no. 16, p. 144 announced it in this way and claimed it was in the process of being printed. Bibl. Nat. Z 23.233. 3 Notice Nouvelle sur la vie et les ouvrages de Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 9–23 of the reprint of the Dictionnaire des Athées. It is dated 11 November 1832.

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introduction

have much more to say about Sylvain Maréchal if the limits of this article didn’t force us to stick to this simple exposé. The simple listing of the titles of all his works would lead us much further than we would want to go. More than fifty of them can be counted’.4 Gabriel Charavay, the presumed author of these lines, is certainly not bluffing. One feels he knows Maréchal, and however brief his article, it constitutes quite a complete biography and one that, for its period, is remarkable. In 1847, Collin de Plancy, author of The Infernal Dictionary, dedicated one of the volumes of the Library for the Encouragement of the Good, edited by the Society of Saint Victor, to Sylvain Maréchal. This is more a pamphlet directed against a past enemy than a note. This insulting production is worthless. Maréchal is presented in it as a friend of Robespierre and Marat and, despite the fact that he stammered, he is presented as giving speeches. He goes mad and dies in ‘a strange state of idiocy’.5 As was the case in the preceding notices, there are no references. Ten years later, in 1857, Damiron, a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, wrote an interesting paper on Sylvain Maréchal to be read at one of that assembly’s sittings.6 It is less a biographical note than a detailed and conscientious analysis of the Le Lucrèce Français [The French Lucretius] and the Dictionnaire des athées. Such as it is, or rather because it examines only one side of Sylvain Maréchal’s personality, which it does in depth, this paper deserves serious consideration. In 1868 a supposed subscriber to the Autograph Collector, whose name is unknown to us but in all likelihood is none other than G. Charavay, worked on a complete bio-bibliography of Maréchal. M. Sohier of Mantes, a former solicitor, scholar, and an amiable bibliophile, placed at his disposal Maréchal’s notes, letters and manuscripts, a great number of which he had assembled. Amateurs who own autographs or manuscripts by Maréchal are invited to make themselves known. The Autograph Collector announced that the work was well under way: the bibliography and the philosophical and literary critique were completed, and all that is left to complete is the purely biographical section.7 4 L’Humanitaire, no. 1. 5 Sylvain maréchal, episode des fastes de la philosophie du dernier siècle, Par le neveu de mon oncle, Plancy and Paris, 1832, with an illustration representing a pig and its trough and an old woman taking snuff. The caption reads: ‘The Atheist and his student’. The pig is S. Maréchal; the woman taking snuff his wife. The bishop of Châlons approved the manuscript on 25 November 1846. The 18 February 1865 issue of La Petite Revue contained excerpts. 6 Mémoire sur Naigeon et accessoirement sur Sylvain Marechal et Delalande, Paris 1857, pp. 75– 79. 7 No. 149–150, 1 and 16 march 1868, pp. 78–79 under the title ‘La vie et les oeuvres de Sylvain

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5

Here was a study that promised to be definitive, one that would settle the various problems posed by Maréchal’s life. Based on unpublished documents, it would finally show the author of the Dictionnaire des athées in his true light. Unfortunately, the study never appeared; as for the manuscript, no one knows what became of it. Dr. Robinet, who had also planned to write Maréchal’s biography, and with this in mind assembled several notes that have since then passed into the hands of Charles Léger, also never completed his project. It is said that learning of Maréchal’s supposed religious end led the fervent Positivist to renounce his project.8 In January 1920 Otto Karmin, doctor of philosophy, privat-docent of the University of Geneva, one of the leaders of the Free Thought International, who had collected a great number of works and notes either about or by Maréchal with the intention of writing a complete study of l’Homme Sans Dieu [The Godless Man], renounced this work when he learned that I had undertaken an identical labor. Otto Karmin would die three years later. Otto Karmin corresponded with Max Nettlau, the historian and bibliographer of anarchism. The latter, taking into account the work of his former correspondent, supplementing and even rectifying it on several points, in 1925 traced a biographical sketch of Maréchal in his gallery of precursors of anarchism.9 This well-written sketch naturally insists on Maréchal’s anarchistic theories, but fails to teach us anything new. A short while later two other notices were dedicated to Maréchal, one by G. Brocher, to serve as the introduction to the latest partial reprint of the Dictionnaire des athées (1926), the other by the Chevalier de Percefleur (Louis Perceau and Fernand Fleuret) to serve as the introduction to a reprint of the Contes saugrenues [Strange Tales] (1927). These two notices offer nothing original, but the former, which is serious, takes into account the latest works to appear, while the second, written in a tone of persiflage, doesn’t fear occasionally treating historical reality in a cavalier fashion. The latest work to appear (1936) is far and away the most complete. The book is titled Sylvain Maréchal ou L’homme sans dieu H.S.D. [Sylvain Maréchal or the marechal’. Dr. Cabanès, in volume xxvii, p. 17 of the Intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux wondered if the porposed study ever saw the light of day. An evasive response was given to this question in the same paper on p. 270. Charles Monselet also contemplated making room for Marechal – ‘a shepherd turned wolf’, as he called him – in Les oubliés et le dédaignés, but this was only a passing whim. 8 Letters from Charles Léger to Otto Karmin. 9 Max Nettlau, Der Vorfrühung der Anarchie. Ihre historische entwicklung von den anfängen bis zum jahre 1864, Berlin, 1925, chap. vi, pp. 43–49.

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Godless Man H.S.D.] (1750–1803).10 The author is C.-A. Fusil, doctor of letters and holder of the prize of the French Academy and the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, which gives an idea of the spirit in which he approaches the study of Maréchal. It was while working on Rousseau that M. Fusil came to take an interest in Maréchal. In doing so he saw what Maréchal owed Rousseau. But despite his pretentions that he tracked down ‘into every corner’ the details of a life about which he recognized he was lacking information, saying it was ‘quite poorly documented’, the fact is that he more or less limited himself to consulting the works by and about Maréchal at the National Library. But since literary concerns are predominant for him; since his knowledge of the French Revolution and history of socialism are superficial; and since his critical spirit is so weak that he approves the preposterous assertions of Collin de Plancy and almost all the attributions of books credited to Maréchal by the catalog of the National Library, the result is that he disfigured the Godless Man. Maréchal becomes a man of ‘the mud’; he ‘liked salty if not dirty stories’; he ‘had a taste for filth’, and ‘many pages of his oeuvre are nauseating’. He practices ‘the literature of the club and the dive bar’, and his life, which could have been that of a wise man, of an ‘elevated mind’, veers ‘now towards filth, now towards the canaille’.11

3

Dictionary Articles

In general, their common trait is that they each copy the other and put forth no new facts capable of correcting errors or clearing up ambiguities. The most salient of this type of article figures in the Bibliographie nouvelle des contemporains [New Bibliography of Contemporaries] by A.-V. Arnault, and A. Jay, etc., Paris, 1823, vol. xii, p. 412; Quérard’s La France littéraire [Literary France], vol. v, p. 521; the Nouvelle biographie générale [New General Biography], Paris 1863, vol. xxxiii, article by G.-P. Louisy; the Grand Dictionnaire Universel du xixe siècle [Great Universal dictionary of the Nineteenth Century (Larousse), vol. x, p. 1156; and the Grande Encyclopédie [Great Encyclopedia], vol. xxiii, article by Maurice Tourneux. The only ones that are an exception and deserve to be mentioned are the article by Weiss in the Biographie universelle Michaudc [Michaud Universal Biography, 1820, vol. xxvii, pp. 6–9; the article by Bartholomess in the Dictionnaire des Sciences philosophiques [Dictionary of Philosophical Sciences] published 10 11

Paris, Librairie Plon. See my review in the Annales historiques de la Révolution française. Vol. xiv (July–August 1937), pp. 368–371.

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under the direction of A. Franck, 1885, pp. 1042–1043; the article by Dr. Robinet in the Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution et de l’Empire [Historical and Biographical Dictionary of the Revolution and the Empire], no date, vol. ii, pp. 509– 511.12 The last two in particular are of real value. It goes without saying that philosophical concerns predominate in the article by Bartholmess and that Dr. Robinet above all looks at the historical side. It should be noted that if the former mentions Maréchal’s role in the Conspiracy of Equals, the latter doesn’t say a single word about it.

4

Partial Studies

These are concerned with a point of view, a work, or even a bibliography of Maréchal. The first was the article by Maurice Spronck on Maréchal and Richepin (1884),13 an excellent parallel between Les Blasphèmes [The Blasphemies] and the Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu. Then there is Albert Mathiez’s serious study of the Correctif à la gloire de Bonaparte [Corrective to Bonaparte’s Glory] (1903),14 in which the author demonstrates for the first time that Maréchal courageously fought Bonaparte in the Year vi. There followed two studies by Otto Karmin, Sylvain Maréchal et le Manifeste des Egaux (1910),15 and the Essai Bibliographique sur Sylvain Maréchal (1911).16 One in particular is very important because it compares two of Sylvain Marechal’s most influential works, the Manifesto of the Equals and Dame Nature a la Barre de Assemblée Nationale, and because it gives much space to quotes from the latter, extremely rare book. It lacks a conclusion. The Essai Bibliographique is a conscientious study but, as its author admits, it ‘is erroneous on several points’, and incomplete in others.17

12

13 14 15 16 17

Décembre-Allonier’s Dictionnaire de la Révolution, though mentioning Sylvain Maréchal several times, doesn’t even dedicate an article to him. As for Boursin and Challamel’s Dictionnaire de la Révolution, on page 468 it contains a twenty page notice on Maréchal, ‘who was noted for his excesses in 1793 and 1794 but never showed himself to be a persecutor’. ‘Un poète du xviiie siècle et un poète de nos jours,’ in Révolution Française, vol. vii, July– December 1864. ‘Une brochure anti-bonapartiste en l’an vi. Les predictions de Silvain Maréchal, in La Revolution Francaise, vol. xliv, 1903, pp. 249–253. Revue historique de la Révolution française, 1901, vol. 1, pp. 507–513. Revue historique de la Révolution française, July–September 1911. Separate publication Calon-sur Saone, 1911. Page 1 of the separate publication.

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For my part I’ve written concerning Maréchal: 1: ‘The Origin of the General Strike’;18 2: ‘Boileau, Sylvain Maréchal and Lafargue’;19 3: ‘Sylvain Maréchal and Diogenes’ Barrel’;20 4: ‘Le Dictionnaire des athees by Sylvain Maréchal’;21 5: ‘Sylvain Maréchal, Precursor of the Revolutionary Calendar’;22 6: ‘Sylvain Maréchal and Babeuf’;23 and finally an overall notice in ‘The Godless Man’.24 I’ve drawn greatly from all these works. I had to rectify here, fill things in there, destroy and confront elsewhere. But in order to produce a true and lasting work it was essential to consult other sources. These sources are so numerous and varied that I have no choice but to limit myself in enumerating them. These can be divided into two distinct categories, printed sources and manuscript sources.

5

Printed Sources

First, I must cite the memoirs and letters of the time which, are, in order of importance: Les Mémoires d’un homme de lettres [The Memoirs of a Man of Letters] by J. Lablée, friend of Maréchal, Paris, 1824. Mémoires secrets [Secret memoirs] by Bachaumont. Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique [The Literary, Philosophical and Critical Correspondence], by Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, etc, reviewed and corrected by Maurice Tourneux. The 1820 edition of the Mémoires of Mme. Roland. Both editions of the Mémoires of Brissot. The Lettres de Mme. Roland, published by Cl. Perroud. I also had to consult the biographies of the different individuals who had a relationship with Maréchal. The newspapers of the period, and most especially the Révolutions de Paris, naturally had to be closely examined.

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

La Franche-Comté Socialiste, 16 December 1911. L’École Emancipée, 12 April 1913. La Franche-Comté Socialiste, 1912, no. 66. Annales Révolutionnaires, vol. vii, March–April 1924, pp. 165–178. L’École Emancipée, 26 December 1926. International Review for Social History, vol. iii, 1928, pp. 301–332. La Revue Internationale, no. 8, vol. ii, Septemeber 1946, pp. 144–160. La Libre-Pensée, January 1949, no. 35, pp. 1–2.

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It goes without saying that Maréchal’s works were an object of attentive study. The Anthology of Works and Fragments of Works by Sylvain Maréchal Collected by Him and Demonstrating his Collaboration in Works Published by Prudhomme, in octavo, held by the library of the city of Paris,25 was of great assistance to me. This volume by Maréchal’s widow, acquired by Colonel Maurin, allows us to pick out passage by passage everything Maréchal composed for the General and Impartial History of the Errors, Misdeeds and Crimes Committed during the French Revolution. It also contains some of the many articles provided by Maréchal to the Révolutions de Paris. I was able to pick out most of the others by comparing the Free Thoughts Concerning Priests with Prudhomme’s paper.

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Manuscript Sources

In the first rank are Maréchal’s manuscript letters.26 Unfortunately, they are not numerous. The National Archives has very little. In series C, carton 249, in series F7 carton 101; in series F17 carton 1297 each furnished a letter by Sylvain Maréchal. Chaumette’s papers in T 604–605 contain a letter concerning Maréchal. Only bundle Y1007 rendered a real service in furnishing documentation on the trial of Le Tonneau de Diogène [Diogenes’ Barrel]. The manuscript department of the National Library which only holds two pieces of verse by Maréchal, is of no assistance. The Archives of the Seine, aside from information on the public records and family of Maréchal, have the purchase document for his property at Cloître St. Marcel and his wife’s inheritance declaration.

25 26

File 18.885. The collection of M. de la Sicotière of Alençon included one of his autograph manuscripts containing many excerpts and judgments on many matters. Gauthier Lachapelle owned one of his letters and Barbier, author of the Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes owned several volumes annotated in Marechal’s hand (L’Amateur des autographes, nos. 2 and 212,213,214). After the death of the widow Maréchal the following were sold: 1) Nine love letters from Sylvian Marehal to Mademoiselle Desprès from 1782 and 1783; 2) a letter to canon Mulot from 1792; 3) A six page letter to Mlle. Moreau, author of a book entitled Contes orientuax ou les nuits du Sage Catel. For my part, I own six autograph documents from Maréchal: an undated philosophical riddle, in-32 of fourteen pages; a musical score with annotation on the verso; four in-octavo letters, three undated and one dated 26 May 1775.

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The Departmental Archives of the Somme have several copies of unpublished letters by Babeuf to Maréchal or concerning him. The archives of the church of Montrouge have allowed us to establish that Sylvain Maréchal was buried at the church and that his wife was, in all probability, the instrument of the clergy. The Communal Archives of Montrouge and Saint-Germain-en-Laye (civil registry) furnished the death certificates of Maréchal and his widow. Finally, the archives of one of the notaries of Saint-Germain-en-Laye obtained information on the genealogy and the material situation of Maréchal and his wife.

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Disposition

In order to make this study clearer, three grand divisions were established: before, during, and after the Revolution. Bibliographic information is placed at the end. This method presents the triple advantage of lightening the body of the biography, avoiding repetition, and above all allowing for a systematic study of the bibliography. In order to render service to the workers, it seemed useful to indicate the information on Maréchal’s works found in the main public libraries of France. The author similarly thought it good to note those that figure in the rich collections of the Marx-Engels Institute (Moscow), the British Museum (London), and the Royal Library of Belgium (Brussels). An index of the names of persons and places cited completes the biobibliographic section.

part 1 Before the Revolution

∵

Chapter 1 1

Birth and Family of Sylvain Maréchal

Sylvain Maréchal was born in Paris, at 29, Rue des Prêcheurs,1 in the Halles quarter, near Rue Saint-Denis, also the house where Sylvie Germain grew up. Maréchal never forgot the street he grew up on and mentioned it several times in his works.2 The Halles having been expanded in 1853, a part of Rue des Prêcheurs was destroyed and the birthplace of Sylvain Maréchal disappeared. Sylvain was born 15 August 1750 and was baptized the following day. These two facts were noted as follows in the registers of the parish of Saint-Eustache: ‘The year one thousand seven hundred fifty, the sixteenth of August, was baptized Pierre Silvain born yesterday, son of Pierre Maréchal and Brigide Meunier, his wife. The godfather and godmother were Silvain Laurent and Bonne Fauvre, wife of Germain Labbé’.3

2

Youth of Sylvain Maréchal

Pierre Maréchal, father of Sylvain, was a wine merchant.4 We don’t know what year he was born, nor where; we only know he was born on October 21.5 In all probability it was he who took a vow on May 17, 1745 ‘to well and faithfully observe the Regulations and Ordinances of the Police on the sale of said merchandise (wine)’.6 In all likelihood Brigide Meunier died prior to 1793. She had a brother, a skilled engraver of seals, who died in Belleville, near Paris, at the beginning of the Revolution. He was an ‘undevout alchemist’ according to his nephew Sylvain, who was all too happy to give him a place in the Dictionnaire des Athees.7

1 Mme. Gacon Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal p. 2. 2 Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, Dictionnaire des Saintes (in the title Pensées libres sur les prêtres), p. 170. 3 Archives de la Seine, civil registry. 4 J. Lablée, Memoires d’un homme de lettres, Paris, 1824. 5 Almanach des Honnêtes Gens 6 Bibliothèque de la Ville de Paris, n.a., ms 477 folio 413. 7 Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 292, article on Munier.

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Sylvain Maréchal’s youth is quite obscure. He grew up in his parents’ dark shop. It was remarked that he experienced difficulty in speaking and that he demonstrated a lively sensibility and a fertile imagination. The cursing and cries of the herring-women, the teeming of the fetid steam of Rue Saint-Denis, the mire of the Halles, and the cruel slaughtering of the bleating lambs beneath the windows of the paternal home8 produced the most painful impression on the sensitive child. As good Catholics9 his parents made him take the parish path at a young age. And just as they baptized their son, they also made him take his first communion. In any event, this was the child’s inclination. He liked to take refuge in the calm of Saint-Eustache and found in the Gospels an echo of his private feelings and nourishment for his imagination. From the religious point of view he became an edifying example for his family and his schoolmates.10 His father wanted to make a merchant of him, but for young Sylvain this was too narrow a vision; having already developed a taste for letters, he had a foreboding of his true vocation. He opposed the paternal resolution.11 Sylvain was allowed to pursue his studies in secondary school with his brother Nicolas, his junior by three years.12 Latin culture and the exaltation of antiquity, an antiquity that was in truth Cornelienne and rather pedantic, reigned in the educational establishments of the eighteenth century. While familiarizing himself with the art of writing Sylvain acquired a rare knowledge of the men and things of the past. His passion for the Greeks and Latins dates from this period. He particularly admired Plutarch. The passionate reading of this author, as well as of Montaigne among the moderns, formed his soul while he was still young.13 Though studious and little given to dissipation, the student Sylvain seems not to have stood out in his classes in the humanities. He admitted in writing that ‘his intelligence, as well as the rest of his personality, was not in the least precocious’.14

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

See Chapter 4, conclusion. Décret de l’Assemblée Nationale portant Règlement d’un culte sans prêtres, conclusion of considerations. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, p. 196. Mme Gacon Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 2. Mme Gacon Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal and Deleuze, Notice sur Nicolas Marechal. Mme Gacon Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 2. Sylvain Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge. Notice histroique sur l’auteru des pasuames, p. 1.

chapter 1

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Nicolas Maréchal, like his brother, developed a taste for letters, but while his elder gave himself over to them more or less exclusively, the younger brother was destined for painting. On holidays Sylvain went to the countryside as often as possible. There his thoughts took rest in and were amazed by nature’s beauties. Even more, he found in the simplicity of village customs something that resonated with his nature and his tastes.15 And these pleasant images and joys of the heart are reproduced in his works, as they were in his memories.

3

Sylvain Studies Law

Upon leaving secondary school, and after consulting with a certain M. Philippe concerning the choice of a profession,16 Sylvain gave himself over to the study of law with the plan of becoming lawyer at parlement. At the time this title was indispensable for making a way in society for those who, like young Sylvain, had neither quarters of nobility, nor well-known parents, nor any notoriety of any kind. What is more, Maréchal thought that the bar constituted a ‘noble employment’ when it results ‘in the defence of oppressed virtue’.17 This opinion can be found again in his Epitre to M. de la Viéville [Epistle to M. de Viéville]. In it Sylvain examines the different roles he could play in the ‘slippery theatre’ that is society, and here is what Thémis, ‘suspending his scale and holding an avenging sword’, told him: Come, turn Laws in support of innocence Against their oppressor. Finally wrest from the hypocrite His fearsome and misleading mask. Sylvain adds: How I’d enjoy that estate, What charms I’d find in it: Extending my hand to the unfortunate,

15 16 17

Mme Gacon Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 2. Marechal, Livre échappé au déluge. Notice historique sur auteur des psaumes, p. 1. Catalogues d’autographes Charavay. Catalogues d’autographes Charavay.

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Drying the orphan’s tears Means becoming the equal of the gods. Alongside the ideal, here now is the reality: But Thémis sees with alarm His ministers are corrupt And uses his very weapons To persecute virtue. One must follow their example: Sooner die than …18 One can see that at the moment he composed this epistle that though Sylvain continued to pursue his legal studies, he has determined – firmly determined – not to take his place at the bar. This profession, as he would write to M. Philippe,19 would too harshly try his moral principles. Not only did he not feel disposed to convert tribunals into ‘bank offices’ and tilt the scales of justice for the benefit of the ‘culpable opulent’, but he had little taste for the twists and turns of chicanery, the cleverness of verbose lawyers, the subterfuges of subaltern officers, the contradictory interpretation of texts, the complications and multiplicity of laws.20 It must also be added that, having a stammer, Sylvain realised that he would draw greater advantage from his pen than his speech.

4

Literary Debut: Les Bergeries

The study of law in no way prevented Maréchal from devoting himself to literature. He felt attracted to Gessner’s pastorals, which were then in vogue. They answered to his taste for the country, his cult of virtue, and the love that was awakening in his soul. The young man took a stab at this genre. He composed a dozen idylls that the bookstore owner Gaugery, Rue des Mathurins, published under the title of Bergeries [Sheepfolds]. This short work appeared in early January 1770 with the approval of the royal censor Philippe de Pretot. As was appropriate for a beginner, in his foreword the author shows himself to be both timid and modest. 18 19 20

Bibliothèque Nationale, Manuscripts Department, New Acquisitions, 211–1096. Catalogues d’autographes Charavay Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 175.

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It’s not at my age and endowed with so little merit that one can presume to have acquired the so beautiful, so marvelous, and perhaps so rare talent of instructing while amusing. Whatever the case, it is permissible to measure oneself against the object that one pursues as one’s goal. Even the most skilled racers don’t burst out and fly on the first try. You see them running in the arena for a certain distance then and return several times to the starting line, finally leaving it behind them when the attentive spectator makes them hope for their success. This is precisely what I am doing here. Let the public be the judge of these essays and advise me whether to abandon or pursue this genre, of which we have so few examples and which nevertheless so pleased us under the delicate brush of the render Gesner [sic], who I took as my model. Let us see to what extent Maréchal followed his model. The heart of Gessner’s pastorals consists of small, rustic scenes in prose, mixed with love songs in which the shepherds are the actors. But these aren’t vulgar shepherds. Gessner’s characters are heroes whose perfection casts a somewhat monotonous note over most of the rustic scenes. It is true that they live in cabins with moss roofs and walls of green reed. They walk barefoot. They are nourished by the fruits of their gardens and their flocks. But they show such little interest in their lambs that we would be tempted to forget them if a few bleats didn’t bring us back to reality. When Gessner’s shepherds devote themselves to their labor it’s to make baskets, cages of wicker or bulrush, to sculpt tiny instruments for plowing, to weave garlands of flowers, and sometimes to card the wool of the flock. Religion plays a large part in their concerns: they build temples and altars to Love, to Venus, to tender Apollo, to the god Pan, to Aesculapius. Strangely yet understandably, they have the prejudices of city dwellers. They know how to read and write well enough to engrave the name of their admired shepherdess on the bark of trees. Some among them have received a good education. They are cultivated and endowed with the spirit of revolt, they allow themselves to thunder against the rich, courtiers, warriors, and even against royalty.21 These are Gessner’s shepherds. Though not the crude and boorish shepherds of Theocritus, the precious and mannered ones of Longus, or the sentimental and delicate shepherds of Virgil, they are also not implausible characters, shep-

21

Gessner, Oeuvres.

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herds of the salons and alley-ways like those of Honoré d’Urfé or Racan, though they still owe something to all of these. If they had to be characterised briefly one would say that it was both to edify us by their virtue and their ideas and to frolic and sing that they take their flocks to pasture. Rather than shepherds they are, in truth, lovers and music lovers who live in ‘beautiful and simple nature’ and hope for a return of ‘the fortunate centuries of the golden age’. In general, Maréchal’s shepherds are those of Gessner. They even often bear the same names. Their souls are forever ready to be moved by the cries and tears of the unfortunate; they console their parents, grown white by the snow of the years; they are ingenuous. All of this, joined to their skill, their vigilance, their musical taste, as well as their angelic beauty, turns them into refined and idealized shepherds who can only live in a land of chimeras, in the imagination of Sylvain Maréchal. Despite it all, Gessner placed them in various places in keeping with his whims: on the isle of Mitylene, on the banks of the Neoetus or the Triferme, in the region of Delphi. In Maréchal they are the inhabitants of no real country. They are neither Greek nor Sicilian, nor even French. Their homeland is the anonymous land of silvery streams and luxurious pastures adorned with a thousand fragrant flowers. It is the country of shimmering butterflies and delicate birds. The sand there is golden, and even the snow shines. Maréchal’s shepherds, like those of his model and more often than they, read and write: they are not illiterate. Sometimes, with their crook, they draw in the sand the name of their shepherdess. At other times they carve her name onto the crook itself. Finally, like Gessner’s shepherds, they confide to the bark of the trees the tender secrets of their hearts. They are only occasional shepherds. We never see them caressing or tending their animals. They are so intoxicated with love that they even go so far as to forget their duties and allow their flocks to die off or be defencelessly surrendered to the cruel teeth of the wolf. Such is the Corimène who has been rendered unrecognisable by love and passes his time kissing and moistening with his tears those places his love walked. He, it is true, is an exception. The rest, though less passionate, nevertheless do anything but guard their flocks or, if they guard them, we never see them do so. Outside the long hours marked with amorous transports, they play the flute. They participate in veritable musical jousts. Profoundly religious, in a wayside asylum on a small rise covered in moss, they dedicate to Love a dark wood sprinkled with the most beautiful flowers. But, it will be said, what are the shepherdesses doing? Outside the time spent in amorous effusions, they naively play tricks on their lovers, they work the sickle and the scissors; Philis even milks cows! One can see that in matter of shepherd girls Maréchal is slightly more realistic than his model.

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Except on this particular point, we can see that Sylvain Maréchal’s heroes are a rather servile imitation of the sheep- and goat-herds of Gessner. Grimm, in his Correspondance Littéraire, compared the Bergeries to Gessner’s idylls and found in them nothing but ‘the weakness and insipidness of a copy’,22 but the poet Mercier paid homage to the quality of the author: Your heart is made to inspire love To sing of it and taste its charms; I saw your precious tears flow And in turn, you’ll see mine. It is you who paints in lines of flame The sweetest feeling of the human heart Cease praising my art and talent For they are all deep in your soul.23 The Bergeries were well received by the public. They were so successful that it led the author to assume the name of the Shepherd Sylvain. He would also transform his first name from Silvain to Sylvain, killing two birds with one stone, adapting his name to his literary genre and freeing himself from the patronage of a saint and placing it under the aegis of the rustic god of the Romans, of the philosophes’ god of matter; of that divinity who, in the eyes of the learned, ‘presided over the forests, the sanctuary of the Muses, a resting place made for meditation’.24 This harmless substitution of a given name is like a de-baptising twenty years before revolutionary dechristianisation. Abbé Hooke was then the librarian of the Collège Mazarin, also known as the College de Quatres-Nations. Since he had the right to appoint functionaries of the library he thought of the Shepherd Sylvain and offered him the vacant post.25 Abbé Hooke took an interest in this young man, who seemed to have real abilities in the pastoral genre. Sylvain accepted a position that while procuring him a subsidy and facilitating his research, neither hindered nor interrupted his legal studies. This post

22 23 24 25

Correspondance Littéraire, 15 February 1770. Handwritten note by Maréchal in Bernstein’s copy of the Bergeries. Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iv, p. 40. Alfred Franklin, Histoire de la bibliothèque Mazarine et du palais de l’Institut, Paris, 1901, pp. 237–238. The only title Maréchal had was that of employee or attaché of the Bibliotheque Mazarine. He was thus not librarian or assistant librarian as biographers have claimed.

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grew to be precious to him. By devouring the books entrusted to his care Sylvain developed his intellectual faculties and acquired an erudition that was both solid and wide-ranging.

5

The Temple de l’Hymen

It was the moment when chancellor Maupeou broke the parlements, whose ceaseless opposition to the court was becoming bothersome. Montesquieu was fashionable and the salons took pride in commenting on each of his books. Women learned by heart the Temple de Gnide, which the Baron de la Brède had published shortly after the Lettres Persanes. Still fond of imitation, Sylvain Maréchal wanted to write the pendant to the Temple de Gnide by writing the Temple de l’Hymen. He several times invoked ‘the wise Montesquieu’ with his ‘austere brow’ but with a sensitive soul, ‘like all strong souls’. This, though, was not the only patronage. ‘The inimitable’ Virgil must be added and – yet again – ‘tender Gessner’, whose ‘good idylls … even in translation’ Sylvain admired.26 Had he been fair, he should also have cited the bard of the Nouvelle Héloise, to whom he owed the style of many of his pages. But above all these writers it is Love, in the allegorical and lovable form of Rose, who, in opening the heart of the young man, allows him to depict all the charms of Hymen and to reignite with its torch ‘the nearly extinguished taste for innocent pleasures and things’. We here can see his moralizing intentions. It bursts forth from the first lines and can be seen throughout the work. Showing the Good with the features of Beauty, transforming sensibility, the source of so many vices into ‘the fertile seed of all virtues’, reconciling Love and Hymen in order to return to Nature and obtain Happiness, which is inseparable from Virtue: these are the objectives pursued. In order to reach them the Shepherd Sylvain gives his imagination free rein. There are moments one would think one had been transported into some tale of the Thousand and One Nights. The sanctuary of Hymen is erected in an ideal land.27 The sky is ‘ever azure’. There is no winter, never a storm, no heavy rain. A thousand winged creatures glide above the flowers and make heard the most brilliant concert. The temple, round and open on all sides, is topped by a dome upon which is a golden tower whose point ‘is lost in the clouds’. In the middle

26 27

Sylvain Maréchal, Temple de l’Hymen, p. 2. Sylvain Maréchal, Temple de l’Hymen, pp. 11–27.

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rises a marble altar ‘whiter than a swan’s plumage’ on which burns Love’s sacred fire. An upright honest man writes on two pages of bronze the names of those who respected and those who violated the commitments made under the laws of Hymen. Upon their deaths spouses will be judged according to these books. All around it, in letters of diamonds and in a language ‘known to all men’, figures this inscription; Without blushing, we here take joy. Pleasure, in this Temple, Has become Virtue, and Virtue a Pleasure. As the Journal Encyclopédique remarked at the time, this is ‘the general maxim and morality behind the work’. The same paper adds: ‘The entire work is animated by clever fictions, agreeable allegories, varied images, and interesting episodes. This poem is the work of a young man, which can at times be seen in the poorly controlled fire of his imagination and a handful of errors in taste. But one feels it will not be difficult for the author to correct himself’.28 The ‘interesting episodes’ are the tale of Candor and Sophie and the anecdote of Emile and Sophie, which offer us ‘the naïve and touching portrait’ of two spouses who the charms of Hymen, supplemented by the joys of Family, render, on the one hand, happy and on the other, numb to fate’s bitter blows. The Shepherd Sylvain had a predilection for the first of these episodes. Mme. Gacon-Dufour tells us that once, when he was out in society, he recited it in payment of a forfeit.29 We also know that he took the trouble to add to his copy of Temple de l’Hymen a passage expressing the idea of the pleasure of Candor and Sophie savoring ‘for the first time the favors of Hymen’. He went so far as to compose a duo on ‘Le Coucher de la Mariée’ [The Bride’s Slumber] that a certain Dreux set to music. The true story of Emile and Sophie puts into relief the irresistible power of Virtue. Akarias, a tax collector who was once rejected by Sophie, wants to avenge himself by ruining the latter’s home. He momentarily believes that Sophie is going to throw herself in his arms, but in the face of the worthy and proud attitude of the young woman he feels remorse, and in the end showers the spouses with his benefactions.

28 29

Handwritten note by Maréchal in his copy of Temple de l’Hymen. Sylvain Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 53.

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The tirade about the rich Akarias, hard-hearted and base, ‘one of those men who could be called the scourge of society’, is worthy of attention. If we establish a parallel between these comments and his lines about the Golden Age, an era of liberty and innocence when justice had no need of the sword; about the ‘misery of the people’, the ‘oppressed’ peasants, ‘the ambitions of the great’; about the blows delivered against humankind by wars and ‘systems of a poorly understood politics’, we already clearly see the seeds of a social orientation in the young writer. But that is where things remain. Sylvain makes it understood that he hesitates to further commit himself on a path where he will be certain of losing his innocence and happiness. And yet, he candidly admits that neither Rose nor Victoire, prototypes of Hymenée, that charming goddess with her ‘noble and gracious face’, a ‘happy mix of joy, modesty, and passion’, did not respond to his desires. Doesn’t Sylvain write at the beginning of his ‘envoi’ to the Temple de l’Hymen: Fly into the hands of Victory Weak child of my sweet leisure: If you can do nothing for my glory Then at least favor my desires. .................................... You know the secret of my flames Having reached our beautiful one. Be their faithful interpreter. Make her read what my eyes Try to render her, Not that which hers, disdainful, Refused to understand.30 Responding to the envoi of a book so ‘charming and full of delicacy’, M. de la Viéville laments the dissolute mores of the century and regrets the past, where Love and Hymen lived happily together: In those times, my dear M… They’d have admired your work; But it is in vain that you show evil. The French spirit is too flighty: Self-interest signs the writings

30

Handwritten note by Maréchal.

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Placed before the notary. They laugh at the husband’s expense, They joke about adultery.31 Continuing his presentation, M. de la Viéville is surprised that so young an author demonstrates such maturity: How, at only age twenty Can you paint us a portrait Of two ever-loving spouses United by the purest friendship? What wit! What feeling! Friend, your work enflames me. To draw such touching traits You must have a beautiful soul.32 Such a debut, works that ‘aren’t of so tender an age’, presage both the conquest of glory and the conquest of Rose: With such ease You will one day have your place In the temple of immortality. Without obtaining it as a grace. You show all humans That a tender Hymen is worth as much as opulence: May you have as reward The Rose in your heart you guard.33 For his part the poet Bulidon, who would later become Maréchal’s friend, dedicated an ode in Latin to the author of the Temple de l’Hymen, and even a flattering distich: The elegant work, where you paint happiness Honors both your wit and your heart.34

31 32 33 34

Handwritten note by Maréchal. Handwritten note by Maréchal. Handwritten note by Maréchal. Handwritten note by Maréchal.

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Without going as far Mme. Gacon-Dufour by saying that the Temple de l’Hymen was a great success,35 one can at least say that the reception of this production supported Maréchal’s belief that his ambition to bear the honorable title of man of letters was not vain. Nothing was more encouraging than praise such as this to strengthen the first steps down the literary road of a ‘blind young man’ who had set out on it, by his own confession, ‘without a rod and even without a guide’. And so at the same period we see him attempting to tease the Muses by playing his shepherds’ flute and the bagpipe. But what is strange is that the sound he draws from them is somewhat serious, even when he sings of pleasures. This peculiarity, which cannot but surprise us in a young man, surprises us even more when we know that this young man will soon make his name in the Anacreontic genre. This did not escape M. de Viéville, nor did it go unnoticed by a certain lawyer named Billard, who saw in this a kind of transgression of the ‘law of the times’. M… unites with the flowers of spring The ripe fruits of autumn.36 And, in fact, the first poetic productions of the Shepherd Sylvian include, alongside madrigals and some light verse, a large collection of cantatas, stanzas, fables, odes, epistles, epitaphs, and quatrains. The young poet kept most of these ephemeral pieces to himself or sent them to friends and acquaintances, Colonel M. (Maurin?), Marquis de (Villette?), and the elderly Chevalier de Laurès, laureate of the floral games who had recently written a verse imitation of Lucan’s Pharsalus. They never had his complete approval. He only offered a few of them to the public, and would only gather at the back of his copy of the Temple de l’Hymen in order to retouch them, as is clearly indicated by his handwritten mention: ‘To be re-worked’. These were timid attempts. One clearly feels that Maréchal hesitates as much in this new field as he did at the time of the launching of the Bergeries. He doesn’t dare confront the public, and says so in no uncertain terms: O penchant! Is it you I feel in my heart? Have you sensed, in these verses, your delirium? Credulous voyager, I allow myself to be seduced

35 36

De la Vertu, p. 49. Handwritten note by Maréchal.

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By a perfidious glimmer. Hurriedly, without seeing it, I rush to the precipice. Apollo’s rays blind me … Too weak to enter the fray Let us applaud the game from the sidelines.37 But one doesn’t resist Nature’s wishes: it decides our penchants. This is what led a favorite of the muses like the Chevalier de Laurès to tell the young poet: In vain, dear M…, reason murmurs, You’ll surrender your soul to frivolous talents: Yes, your hand will adorn (this prophecy is certain) The flowers of your Spring with the flowers of Helicon.38 Maréchal would soon vanquish his final hesitations and publish several erotic pieces in the literary journals of the capital39 and even in the Almanach des Muses, ‘that ever green grove from which escapes the chirping of all the poets of France’.40 Through the charm and beauty, the grace and lightness of his verses, the Shepherd Sylvain showed himself to be in no way inferior to the other poets who ‘chirped’ at his side. And one can rightly suppose that the talent of the collaborator on the Almanach des Muses, or, to phrase it better, the guest of ‘so green a grove’, contributed to opening the doors of the Wasse salon to Sylvain Maréchal.

6

The Society of Wasse – Relations with Lablée

Guillaume Wasse – Maréchal writes it Vasse and calls him an Epicurean poet – 41 was a poetry lover ‘of a singular type’42 who twice a week brought literary men together at his home. The walls of the reading room were papered with his writings. They were original, striking, and often bizarre, as is shown by the singular epitaph he composed for himself:

37 38 39 40 41 42

Handwritten note by Maréchal. Handwritten note by Maréchal. Lablée, Essais de poésies légères, p. iii. Ch. Monselet, Les oubliés et les dédaignés. i, p. 103. Sylvain Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, ed. Of the year viii, article on Vasse, p. 439. Lablee, Mémoires, p. 53.

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He lies the equal of Alexander. Me: that is, a bit of ash.43 It was necessary to lie flat on the floor in order to read the quatrains low down on the wall. Roucher, Saint-Ange, the Marquis de Piis, Monvel, Imbert, Dussieux, Baculard d’Arnaud, Mangenot, Le Bailly, Le Noir de Laroche and sometimes Jacques Lablée constituted this witty society. For the most part they were non-believers, and so Sylvain Maréchal took pleasure in citing them later in his Dictionnaire des athées. It was 1775. Maréchal was twenty-five years old and Lablée twenty-four. They both demonstrated an identical taste for the gentlest and most graceful genres of poetry. Through their parents they also had commercial relations of a kind, Maréchal’s father obtaining his wine from Beaugency, Lablée’s hometown. The two young poets became friends and this relationship soon became a close one. They made a selection from among their previously published poems and assembled them in a short anthology they entitled Essais de poésies légères suvies d’un songe [Essays in Light Poetry, Followed by a Dream]. These essays were published on the beautiful presses of Couret de Villeneuve in Orleans, after Maréchal gave his friend carte blanche in selecting a ‘lovely format’ and ‘characters neither too tight nor too loose’. Lablée was even given latitude to make ‘a few changes’ in the ‘small pieces’ of the Shepherd Sylvain on condition, though, that he notify the latter before going to press.44 Was it this at the very least superfluous counsel that offended Lablée? Perhaps. Whatever the case, a disagreement concerning the anthology arose between the two friends. Maréchal, wanting to put an end to it, humbled himself in these terms: ‘The pain I feel, not in seeing my pride wounded, but at thinking it wounded by you, led me astray … I admit my wrongs, retract them, and I would offend you yet again if I were to think to inform you of what remains to be done’.45 The foreword – about which Sylvain had also made recommendations – as well as the first twenty pages are by Lablée. The ‘dream’ announced as the debut of a young author who wants to remain unknown, was also by Lablée. Maréchal provided nine Anacreontic odes and a few short pieces. ‘These essays’, Lablée would later say with bitterness, ‘served Maréchal’s reputation more than mine’.46 43 44 45 46

Sylvain Maréchal Dictionnaire des athées, ibid. p. 499. Letter of Maréchal to Lablée, n.d., author’s collection. Letter by Lablée, n.d., Charavay Collection. Lablée, Mémoire d’un homme de lettres. Paris, 1824, p. 53.

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Lablée having returned to his hometown after a second trip to Paris, the two young men continued their relationship. We know of several letters sent to his friend by the Shepherd Sylvain. In one, dated the last day of March 1775, Sylvain speaks at length of the situation of his heart and his amorous woes, and congratulates Lablée for having found happiness with a certain Adelaïde. Sylvain then gives literary news and speaks to Lablée of Gaillard, Diderot, and the Académie Française. He announces that he saw Palissot, who had had to do a reading for the queen of a comedy called the Courtisanes. This is a theatrical portrait of the preceding reign that he considered bold and which required the pen of another Aristophanes.47 Another letter, dated 20 January 1776, depicts the state of Paris at that time. Maréchal alludes to Linguet and Laharpe who ‘harry and make laugh a public they’d do better to educate, or at least amuse more nobly’. ‘Verses rain down day after day in Paris. The book sellers don’t want any more of them … The muses are in their iron age’.48 In a letter dated 26 May 1775 Sylvain Maréchal informs Lablée that ‘Our dear M. Vasse nearly died shortly after arriving in Brie-sur-Marne in the house of M. Duquenoi, grand master of the waters and forests. Our friend suffered a blood rush that for two hours caused us to believe that he was dead. Fortunately, it was before dinner and, more fortunately still, with some difficulty we found a surgeon who bled him. His governess gave me news of him on Wednesday. He still has a tertiary fever and is extremely weak, which, as he wishes, keeps him in the countryside. The air of the fields seem to him more salubrious that the convenience of treatment he’d find at his home in Paris’. The state of the poetry lover would not greatly improve, even more because an individual he thought his friend, a certain Mingard, after having sat by his side for a month, had vanished, having taken with him 600 livres in cash and two objects from the Compagnie des Indes worth 4,000 livres. ‘Our poor friend M. Vasse’, says a later letter of Sylvain’s, ‘is not much closer to being back on his feet. His mind is still disturbed. This is attributed to the austere diet he observes, but the physician, who is skillful and, what is more, is his friend, answers for the physical side, but says we can only hope about the rest’.49 Wasse’s literary society, dissolved in the wake of all these unfortunate events, wasn’t able to offer its hospitality to Lablée during his third trip to Paris. 47 48 49

Charavay Catalogue. Ch. Asselineau. Mélanges curieux et anecdotiques tirés d’une collection de lettres autographes. Paris, 1861, pp. 270–271. Author’s collection.

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Sylvain Maréchal and his friend, as we shall see, met again Rue Saint-Andrédes-Arts at the Musée de Paris.

7

The Evolution of the Shepherd Sylvain

Contact with the regular visitors to Wasse’s salon who were, for the most part, interested in the philosophy of their time, and that of the atheists Tréchaut and Fréville50 at the Bibliothèque Mazarine, crowned the evolution of the spirit of the Shepherd Sylvain. In fact, it must be said that until he was twenty he believed everything the world believes or pretends to believe. Assiduous in following the religion of his fathers, he could be cited as a model of piety.51 But from the age of twenty Maréchal began to reflect on all that occurred around him. It was then that the long and painful internal labor was completed that began another period of his life. How did this transformation occur? Sylvain always wondered what would later be thought of him, when ‘death’s body will collide with his too fragile edifice’. He thought of ‘the famous historian’52 who will retrace his life and, in order to assist the latter, on three occasions53 he laid out how he reformed his way of thinking. Let us then follow him on these pages where, full of confidence, he revealed his soul. ‘A friend of study and observation’, he said, ‘it was nevertheless only in my twentieth year that I began to reflect on all that occurred around me and compare it with what I felt within’.54 This important assertion is corroborated by these other lines by Sylvain: ‘At the age of twenty nature had barely explained what it wanted to do with him’.55 So by his own admission it was only at age twenty that Sylvain Maréchal began to draw apart from the faith of his fathers, that he opened his uncertain and wavering mind to new perspectives. Is this true? Yes. To be convinced of this it is enough to read those short poems he composed at age nineteen or 50 51 52 53

54 55

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, pp. 154–160, 433. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, p. 196. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des amans, p. 157. ‘L’histoire de ma vie et mon épitaphe’. Historical note on the author of the Psalms in Le livre échappé au deluge, 1784. Biographical notice on P. Sylvain Maréchal written by himself in Chefs-d’oeuvres de poésies philosophiques du xviiie siècle, 1792, partially reproduced in the Dictionnaire des athées, pp. 459–461. Letter on religion to a woman in Pensees libres sur les prêtres, pp. 195–203, year vi. Pensées libres sur les prêtres, p. 196. Dictionnaire des athées, year viii, p. 459.

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perhaps eighteen and that he published at twenty under the title Bergeries. It is often a question in them of ‘just and fair’ gods, ‘favorable to pure and innocent souls’. In them the wicked who are offended at hearing two lovers unite their voices ‘to sing praise of the Supreme Being’ are considered to be phlegmatic and hard-hearted.56 Heaven is just, and in loving each other two hearts become no less pure ‘nor less worthy of having their wishes fulfilled’.57 The tale of Micon is particularly revealing. Micon returned to his unbearably hot city and held it against the gods that they hadn’t tempered the sun’s burning rays. Philis, his lover, wipes his face, streaming with sweat. Micon then cries out with joy: ‘Forgive me, good and just gods, forgive my error. You have truly made everything good and for the best. What favour could you have accorded me just now that would have been worth that which I receive here?’58 If we examine the Temple de l’Hymen closely we can see that the author invokes heaven several times. He admires ‘Providence’s designs’, ‘the Eternal’, ‘the Being of Beings’, ‘the wise Oeconome of the Universe’. He utilizes the Christian vocabulary to such an extent that he speaks of ‘celestial treasures’, of ‘the Eternal’s throne’, and also of ‘a second life’.59 In the same way, in his first verses Maréchal invokes ‘the good gods’, ‘the protecting God’, and ‘the divine hand’.60 But this all appears quite cold and rather conventional. One has the impression that the young author, more or less contaminated by Rousseauism, sacrifices to habit. He no longer speaks of gods as in the Bergeries, and the word ‘God’ doesn’t figure in the collection. One feels that Sylvain is already burning his incense to his pagan divinities, in the first rank of whom figure Love and Hymen. The transition is in motion. The Temple de l’Hymen bears the publication date of 1771, but it could very well have appeared in 1770. At the very least that was the year in which it was completed. It is the epoch when Maréchal reached his twentieth year and fixes the beginning of his evolution. ‘I first realized’, he said, ‘that men, almost always in contradiction with themselves, act differently from the way they think, and that for them religion is not as powerful a brake as one would like him to think’.61 With this, a kind of new life offers itself to the Shepherd Sylvain. He is entrusted with the guard of

56 57 58 59 60 61

Maréchal, Bergeries, p. 169. Maréchal, Bergeries, p. 170. . Maréchal, Bergeries, p. 122. Maréchal, Temple de l’Hymen, pp. 2,5,14,103,128, 129. Maréchal, Temple de l’Hymen, Bernstein’s copy, poetry attached. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, p. 197.

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a vast library, and this ‘subaltern post’, ‘of little importance in the eyes of his fellows’,62 allowed him to seek throughout history a confirmation of his discovery.63 ‘I took note’, he said, ‘of the large numbers of great men who had been wise without the assistance of the gods, and also of the great number of rogues who had assiduously frequented the altars. I engaged in soul searching, and without realizing it I neglected several religious acts that had been recommended to me as essential. I traveled so great a distance in so short a time that I abruptly stopped to look at the road I had so quickly gone down. Frightened by my omissions I looked deep within me. And then, passing my obligations as a man in review, I wondered if I had neglected them as well. After the most severe of examinations, how relieved I felt in learning that in freeing myself of religion I had not become less punctilious in meeting the demands of Nature. I drew the immediate conclusion that there is thus no connection, no relationship between these obligations and religious practice. I concluded from this that man has no need of external reasons to be wise and happy. I repeated my examination and experiments. I secretly applied them to the people among whom I lived, and everything confirmed my way of viewing things. It was then that the moral revolution was completed within me’.64 How far we are from a conversion à la Rousseau, of that sudden inspiration and delirium that grabbed hold of Jean-Jacques on the Vincennes road when ‘that great mass of truths’ illuminated him. Sylvain Maréchal’s conversion, though less theatrical, was perhaps more sincere. We are not in the presence of a thinker who misleads us, who deludes himself, as does the too sentimental Genevan. He explains to us without beating around the bush, as naturally as possible, how, through observation, reasoning, and study he gradually managed to free himself of the ideas with which he has been imbued since his childhood, of the maxims which he had, as it were, sucked with his mother’s milk. It is, at bottom, the mental evolution of almost all freethinkers. Maréchal showed at the price of what difficulties this transformation occurred: As a child, the undecided man believes all without understanding. He begins to doubt at less tender an age; But, by a dear hand, imprinted at birth The error in our spirit is slowly erased 62 63 64

Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, p. viii. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, p. 197. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, pp. 197–198.

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There remains still a slight trace Truth seems strange for us for a long time.65 Even so, reason emerges and it gradually replaces the lies and the errors of youth, and the nonbeliever finally marches boldly outside the path laid out by the priests. Sylvain, greedy for knowledge, suspicious as one must be, and persuaded that we sometimes poorly judge objects when we are too close to them, didn’t stop there. ‘I opened books for and against. I saw errors on both sides. The defenders of the altars didn’t bring me back to them by their mildness. Their proud antagonists at times compromised the goodness of their cause by their peremptoriness, nor did their harsh air please me. Amidst all this I attempted to untangle their reasoning. I learned two things. The first was to mistrust human reason, which is so fragile and almost always stumbles around. The second was to listen to my conscience, freed of any outside considerations. From that moment I shut all the polemical books, which did nothing but hinder my march, and took nature by the hand. I resolved to do nothing but appeal to the facts, and in order to have a collection of them that would weigh in the balance I frequented priests and philosophers. My heart alone became the tribunal where I was the final judge. It didn’t take me long to reach my conclusions’.66 These lines, so precious for the history of the philosophical ideas of the Shepherd Sylvain, are at least partially verified by a strange letter he wrote to his friend Lablée in 1775. One clearly feels in it the spirit of investigation, the appetite for knowledge that elevated and tormented his soul. One sees in him a passionate man seeking to discover the truth and who, mistrusting ‘human reason, so fragile’, confronts his conclusions with those of others. He asks Lablée for ‘the greatest of services’. He wants his friend to give him an excerpt of his observations on a question he proposed but whose tenor we unfortunately know nothing of. As for himself, in order ‘to tear himself from the thorns’ he formulates his ‘universal response’ in these terms: ‘For me, outside morality everything is doubtful and almost indifferent. Doubt and a carefree attitude, outside of morality and pleasure: this is my system’. Still circumspect, mistrustful, half-confident in his treacherous reason, he implores Lablée to tell him if this philosophy is in conformity with that of his friends Lemaître and Bulidon: ‘For [my part]’, he adds, ‘I never reason: I can only feel’.67

65 66 67

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, fragment xix, p. 35. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres. pp. 199–200. Letter by Maréchal to Lablée, n.d. [1775]. Author’s collection.

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Reading another of Maréchal’s autobiographies again sheds light on the passion for investigation and truth that took Sylvain down a new road. As soon as he was appointed to the Bibliothèque Mazarine, ‘he did nothing but confront the great book of Nature and the best books issued from the mind of man. Surrounded by the errors of all eras and all places, he had one more advantage (if it is one): he became the table companion of the authors and fabricators of lies. He profited from this to examine prejudices at their source. He deigned to haunt the Hypocrites and frequented the Charlatans to learn how to unmask them … In order to make his mission easier he displayed frivolity and presented himself as a man of no consequence and consistency so as not to render himself suspect to those he proposed to examine up close. The result of this was that no one hid anything from his sight or kept silenced anything directed toward his ears. He was thought to see poorly and to be hard of hearing. In this way he succeeded in discovering the secret of the wicked and mad in order to one day have the right to bring it before the tribunal of Reason’.68 We must consider the end of the ‘Tableau de Paris’, which appeared four years later, the confirmation of these lines. After having painted the capital in the darkest colors, Maréchal added with a note of pride: ‘What feeble light shines at the far end of the city? It is the lamp of the wise man. He watches over the gates of crime. He has approached the home of vice in order to unmask and depict it … Like a worker bee he gathers his loot during the day, traversing all classes of society. He retires at night to note his observations and compose the remedies for the shameful wounds that over his fellows’.69

8

The Philosophical Formation of the Shepherd Sylvain

These confidences are precious, but they sin by omission. In fact, one thing that Sylvain Maréchal doesn’t say and that we must bring out is that the period from 1765–1780, which was decisive for his orientation, is precisely the era during which philosophical propaganda experienced its greatest success.70 It was the moment when Voltaire extended his influence and, by addressing the masses, now imposed himself on public opinion; when Rousseau published his greatest works, which reached new categories of readers; and when Baron d’Holbach’s society intensified its production. The Encyclopédie plowed deeply, attracting 68 69 70

Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, P viii. Maréchal, Apologues, Lesson lxxxv, p. 91. Concerning this period see the study by H. Sée on ‘La diffusion des idées philosophiques à la fin de l’ancien régime’, in Annales Révolutionnaires, 15th year, no. 6, pp. 458–502.

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the attention of all men capable of thinking. In short, moving from the great philosophical salons to which it was previously contained – reaching just a part of aristocratic society, an elite public that was all in all quite limited – philosophical propaganda reached the enlightened bourgeoisie, men of the law, and merchants. It was during this period that the books and manuscripts that corresponded to their interests and ideals were distributed among this revolutionary class, suffering under feudal and noble institutions. This explains why the 1770 assembly of the clergy reported to the king that ‘there was no longer any city or town that was exempt from the contagion of impiety’. Under such conditions, in such an atmosphere, amidst such cultural effervescence, how could a petit bourgeois intellectual, a sentimental law student with a penchant for reflection, like Sylvain Maréchal, not be gradually won over, all unawares, by the spirit of the time? If it were possible to re-do his reading, stopping at the pages that troubled or seduced him, we would be able to follow day by day the stages of his spiritual evolution. But there’s no way to even consider doing this. At the very most we can allow ourselves some deductions concerning the basis for his first works of philosophy and scholarship. In order to do this we must take into account the quotations he provides, clarifying them with his subsequent assessments. But while doing so, we must point out the fragility and imprudence of such a proceeding. And so Maréchal often praises Rousseau, ‘the modern Epictetus’,71 whose works hold a place of honor among his favorite books. There can be no doubt but that Rousseau, whose originality is summed up in the words ‘Nature and Feeling’, touched the heart of the tender Shepherd Sylvain. And yet we would be going down the wrong track if, based on this remark, we were to establish a transmission of doctrine on the religious plane, for it is all too clear that Maréchal cannot be included among the parishioners of the ‘Savoyard Vicar’. In the same way. Maréchal certainly found in Voltaire a complement to and illustration of his personal observations touching on ‘hypocrites’ and ‘charlatans’; the ‘authors and fabricators of lies’. Nevertheless, he rejected the deism of the lord of Ferney. What is more, an author like Condillac, ‘a wise and profound metaphysician’,72 who Maréchal would inscribe in his Dictionnaire des Honnetes Gens [Dictionary of Honest Men] ‘for the services he rendered to metaphysics’,73 is 71 72 73

Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. ii, p. 142; Maréchal, Tombeau de J.-J. Rousseau, p. 7; Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 145. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 85. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 31.

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never quoted in support of his positions in any of his early writings. Nevertheless, from this time forward, Sylvain Maréchal is indebted to him for the ‘sensualist’ arguments with which he already perhaps – and later for certain – backs up his atheism. Let us refer back to the suggestive passage in the abovecited letter to Lablée (1775) and not forget that at this time Condillac, who was cordial and engaging, lived on his small plot of land in Flux, near Beaugency,74 Lablée’s region. And finally, something that definitively makes us suspicious of the classic method of seeking out sources by relying on quotations, is that Maréchal, while admitting to having read the ‘proud antagonists’ of the pious authors, though having unquestionably been influenced by them – since he adopts their theses and the essential parts of their arguments – never quotes them in his early books. The year 1770, which marks the turning point in Sylvain Maréchal’s religious orientation, is nevertheless the year during which the Système de la Nature appeared.75 It is not credible that that central work, ‘the most important demonstration of materialism and atheism’,76 escaped the investigations of Sylvian Maréchal, who studied the pro and the contra. Nevertheless, even in his Dictionnaire des Athées, which appeared in the Year viii, the article on d’Holbach is strikingly dry. Maréchal doesn’t even spell the name of the materialist philosopher correctly, writing Olback. In this article, which contains no quotes from d’Holbach and which limits itself to listing books by the baron, insisting on the assistance given by Diderot and Naigeon, Maréchal doesn’t even mention the Système de la Nature.77 And yet, in the body of his dictionary, Maréchal cites this important book. But it appears that despite a note by Lalande that presents d’Holbach as the author of the Système de la Nature,78 he is not certain of this and he might not have known Meister’s note (March 1789) formally designating the baron as author of the book.79 The proof is that he refers to Mallet du Pan, who views Diderot and Damilaville as the authors of the book, also seeming to accept Naigeon’s participation.80 We also note that on several occasions Maréchal cites the author of Système social and the Moral universelle while avoiding using his name, while this time 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Damiron, Memoires pour server a l’histoire de la philosophie au xviiie siecle, vol. iii, p. 247. Paris, 1864. Two editions of d’Holbach’s work that same year. Henri Lion, Le Système de la Nature, Annales Révolutionnaires, 14th year, pp. 265–280. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, p. 312. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, p. 108. Pierre Naville ‘D’Holbach’, nrf [1943], p. 457. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées pp. 99–299.

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he unhesitatingly considers the works to be by d’Holbach and in his index he cites, by name, Dr. Aug. Roux, Mme. Geoffrin, and Lagrange, three of the baron’s friends.81 This way of proceeding, with d’Holbach’s name absent from the Almanach and the Dictionnaire des Honnêtes gens, as well as from the Almanach des Républicains, leads one to suppose that, like most of his contemporaries, Maréchal believed in a Baron d’Holbach who was a simple translator of no serious intellectual importance and, all in all, according to the common expression, ‘the maître d’hotel of philosophy’. We can also infer from this that Maréchal did not frequent the ‘Olbackic Club’ on Rue Royale-Saint-Roch or at GrandVal, and that he was consequently unable to appreciate the polished and kind reception reserved for any man with a name and merit, as long as he ‘was good’.82 Maréchal revealed the secret of his attitude toward d’Holbach when he placed Diderot in his Dictionnaire des Honnetes Gens ‘though with restrictions, because he slandered Jean-Jacques Rousseau’.83 Now the cat is out of the bag! Just like the habitués of the ‘Holbachian coterie’, Maréchal could rise up and threaten the majesty of heaven, but he still didn’t forgive these ‘jealous contemporaries’, these ‘fervent detractors’, for having pursued Jean-Jacques with their ‘blind wrath’.84 Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Sylvain Maréchal’s reservations about the atheists of the ‘Great Boulangerie’, as Baron d’Holbach’s society was then called, did not touch the man under whose patronage they gathered. N.-A. Boulanger, the author of Antiquité devoilée [Antiquity Revealed], was always held in particular esteem by Maréchal, who was grateful to him ‘for having lifted the veil on religious prejudices’, for having demonstrated ‘through history and reasoning, that of all the world’s vanities, the most foolish is that of priests’.85 In his admiration, Maréchal didn’t fear taking inspiration from Diderot in comparing Boulanger to Socrates. He said of the author of Recherches sur l’origine du despotisme oriental [Investigation into the Origins of Oriental Despotism]: ‘His face bore a striking resemblance to that of Socrates;

81 82 83 84 85

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, pp. 167, 226, 403, 463, 295, 312, 313. H. Lion, ‘D’Holbach, maitre d’hôtel de la philosophie’, Annales Révolutionnaires, vol. xiv, p. 91. H. Lion, ‘D’Holbach, maitre d’hôtel de la philosophie’, Annales Révolutionnaires, vol. xiv, p. 36. Maréchal, Tombeau de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, p. 7. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 99.

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he also had his morality’.86 And further, ‘More learned than Socrates, who he resembled in appearance and morals’.87 Though a regular of the ‘Holbachic Club’, Helvétius was also looked on kindly by Maréchal, and was even one of the few philosophers to whom he applied his favorite phrase: ‘Ecce vir’,88 in consideration of ‘his enlightenment and virtues’.89 It should not be lost sight of that Helvétius, as Maréchal stressed, ‘reassured his contemporaries’,90 and in particular Rousseau, who, while opposing the doctrine of the Spirit, never included his benefactor in his reprobation of the philosophes.91 This would seem to explain the favourable treatment Helvétius enjoyed. As for Boulanger, his death in 1759, before Rousseau found himself in conflict with the philosophes, perhaps allows us to understand why he, too, was treated in a privileged fashion in Baron d’Holbach’s group. But Maréchal didn’t restrict himself to the philosophers of his time: he reflected on those of the first half of the century, and first of all on Jean Meslier, whose Testament was widely known, thanks to countless copies that circulated. Maréchal has him figure in his various catalogues of atheists and honest men. He quotes the notes of the Curé of Etrépigny on Fenelon’s treatise on the existence of God, and it’s not by chance that he would compose a Catechisme du curé Meslier.92 We can count among the young Maréchal’s spiritual fathers, Count de Boulainvilliers, who he recognised not only as ‘the most learned gentleman in the history of the kingdom’, but also ‘having at times been a profound philosopher’;93 Dumarsais, ‘one of those’, he would say in 1793, ‘who for fifty years labored in the silence to emancipate us’; Fréret, who he recognized was owed much because ‘he had to begin by shaking off the yoke of religious prejudices before smashing those of despotism’;94 and finally Mirabaud, whose Les lois du monde physique et du monde moral [The Laws of the Physical and Moral World] he quoted.95 He also knew the works that appeared in the decade preceding

86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, p. 19. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 99. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 184. However, in the Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens on p. 54, in the article on Helvétius, Maréchal expresses reservations about De l’esprit. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 18. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 18. A. Keim, Helvétius, p. 455ff. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, p. 281; Almanach des Républicains, p. 120. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, p. 19. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, pp. 68 and 26. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, p. 74; Dictionnaire des athées, p. 286.

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his birth, those of the bishop of Avranches, Huet, the famous Jordanus Brutus redivivus, ou Traité des erreurs populaires, not to mention l’Homme-machine, l’Homme-plante, and other writings by Lamettrie.96 Going further back, the century also gave him Fontenelle, with his ‘excellent Histoire des oracles’, and the whole series of English deists and materialists: ‘The strong character’ Collins, David Hume, Tronchard, Tindall, Toland with his Pantheisticon, and above all Hobbes, whose long and noble life so impressed him that he applied to him his highest praise, ‘Ecce vir’.97 He had closely studied the skeptics and the ‘libertines’ of the first half of the eighteenth century, especially Gabriel Naudé, Gassendi, and La MotheLevayer.98 And we cannot omit that, like all of the philosophers of his century, Maréchal was strongly influenced by Spinoza. He was able to discover behind the mask of Spinozism’s Christian verbal forms its true atheist nature. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he didn’t content himself with gathering information on Spinoza’s life and doctrines from Bayle’s Dictionnaire. He read the works of the ‘subtle non-believer’ and was able to clarify them by surrounding himself with various biographies and commentaries. The German disciples of the master, and in the first instance Mathias Knutzen and Lau, didn’t escape his investigations.99 Naturally, as he developed, Maréchal, as a lover of antiquity, sought in the teachings of the materialists of that period, notably ‘the wise Epicurus’,100 arguments capable of supporting his new non-belief. This did not fail to have some effect on this new soul, this young man greedy for knowledge. And so it is, under the triple sign of reading, observation, and frequentation – for we cannot forget these two other factors in spiritual evolution – that the pious parishioner of Saint-Eustache blushed at his errors, took back his incense, deserted the divine temple and, in his own words, ‘dedicated himself to Philosophy’.101

96 97 98 99

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101

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, pp. 197–198, 52–53, 233. Same sources, various articles. Fontenelle and Toland were already cited in volume iii of Antiquités.d’Herculanum (1780). Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, p. 164, pp. 234–235, pp. 303–304. See in the Dictionnaire des athées, the Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, and the Almanach des Républicains the articles on Cuper, Foucault du Viviers, Knutzen, Lau, Toland, and Spinoza. In volume vi, pp. 33 and 36 of Antiquités d’Herculanum, which appeared in 1780, favourable considerations about Epicurus and his disciples can be found. Maréchal sketches Epicurus’s portrait in this quatrain: ‘Once the wise Epicurus/Gave lessons in his garden/And sent back to Nature/Those who angered Reason’. Chefs-d’œuvre de poésies philosophiques et descriptives du xviiie siècle, 3e partie, p. 95.

Chapter 2 1

The Garret and the Study Hall of the Bibilothèque Mazarine

Let us now address this period of the life of the Shepherd Sylvain, a period of uncertainty and transition, during which the light and serious genres rubbed shoulders and were intertwined. Anacreontic odes, moral quatrains, philosophical verses, historical commentaries and dialogues were all tackled by Maréchal. This period of trial and error was also and above all a period of study. The young writer lived in one of the garrets of the Bibliothèque Mazarine, above the lions where the Institut Français is currently located.1 Like his former friend Wasse, he hung those verses he was fondest of on the walls.2 It was in this peaceful solitude, surrounded by his favorite works and his tools as a writer and rhymester, that Maréchal abandoned himself in complete safety to the charms of reverie, that he surrendered to the patient labour of composition, that he completed the formation of his intellectual baggage. When night fell, Sylvain, seated at his little bedside table, took notes, filed his references, or else wrote down the fruit of his inspiration on the docile page. The crinkling of the paper, the scratching of the goose quill, and the squeaking of the chair were all that disturbed the silence of this corner of Paris, so favourable to meditation and study. But often, when he had research to do, instead of returning to his modest lodging, Sylvain preferred to remain in the library. He could be found there many hours after the departure of his colleagues.3 There he was able to confront books at his leisure, correcting some, supplementing others. What a pleasure it was as well to re-read, to enjoy his dear Latin writers: ‘gallant Ovid’, several verses of whom he translated into French;4 Virgil, Horace, and Martial, whom he tried to imitate in several of his epigrams; Plautus, Seneca, Catullus, and Euripides, not to mention Propertius and Callimachus.5 All the Greek tragedians passed before the eyes of the young litterateur, who appreciated Tibullus, Aristophanes, the ‘good Homer’,6 and, as can come as no surprise, Theocritus, ‘the lovable poet of the shepherds’, all of whose idylls he studied.7 1 Note from Dr. Robinet. This note adds: ‘One of our colleagues, M.-L. Larchey was able to point out the apartment’. 2 See Chapter 1, The Wasse Society. 3 Mme. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 4. 4 Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. i, pp. 68, 72, 84; Vol. v, p. 55. 5 Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, passim. 6 Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. x, p. 36 and passim. 7 Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. i, pp. 38, 104, 165; vol. iv, pp. 13–24.

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Alone in the middle of the vast hall, Sylvain didn’t miss the pleasures of society ‘which he gladly weaned himself from’.8 He found his pleasure in constant study. ‘Buried alive’, as he himself said,9 he cared little about the late night passersby along the quay, and remained deaf to the sounds of the carriages that rolled over the cobblestones. The rain could beat the windows or stream from the gargoyles, the wind could blow in mighty gusts around the great building, Sylvain, plunged into antiquity, absorbed in his study, noticed nothing. But was he really alone? After having been in communication with the great gods of the Greek and Latin Olympus, now he was in contact with the philosophers. He opens the Antiquité expliquée of ‘the scholarly Benedictine’ Montfaucon,10 leafs through Philostratus, refers to Diogenes Laertius.11 What was he searching for? Information concerning the leaders of the Cynic philosophers, on Diogenes and Antisthenus, ‘[w]ho didn’t write any books but who proved over the course of their private lives that morality could have its heroes, and virtue its enthusiasts’.12 Maréchal wanted to know their lives better, dig deeper into their private selves. So it is not surprising that he would later take his first steps in journalism under the sign of ‘Diogenes’s Barrel’. Even so, the philosophy of the Cynic sages seemed to him a bit somber, their habits too indecent, but the austerity of their morals provoked his wonder and admiration.13 And he didn’t fail to note with obvious satisfaction that Diogenes was suspected of atheism.14

2

The Scholar

After Diogenes, Plato. After Heraclitus, Democritus. Maréchal found joy in the society of the wise men of antiquity. So many subjects for contemplation! Sylvain, as he developed, enrichened, and adorned his intelligence, not only obtained the sweetest consolations, the highest intellectual pleasures; he also amassed the material that would allow him to write his Antiquités d’Herculanum [Antiquities of Herculaneum] and, thanks to his excellent memory, he became a remarkable scholar.

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 55. Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 83. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, passim. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iii. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 76. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 76. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 77.

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Maréchal, Mme. Gacon-Dufour claimed, was perhaps the most learned man in Europe.15 Even allowing for exaggeration, it is nonetheless the case that by living among books Sylvian acquired precious knowledge on the most varied subjects. It was impossible to quote something in his presence that he didn’t already know, yet he listened as if he needed to be educated. When someone made a mistake he didn’t display the rigidity of a scholar: he acted as if he doubted himself in order not to mortify his interlocutor’s pride.16 It’s not that this erudition didn’t have its inconveniences: it attracted importunate visitors.17 Many young authors pressed him to give his opinion of their books. He gladly satisfied them and even though he already considered ignorance one of a woman’s virtues, he nevertheless corresponded at length with female writers, among others Mlle. Moreau, the author of the Contes Orientaux [Oriental Tales].18

3

Relations with Jaucourt, Berquin, Gerbier

It was around this period that Sylvain Marechal found himself in relations with Chevalier de Jaucourt, Berqin, Gerbier, and many other personalities of the time. Jaucourt, a ‘hard-working and peaceful philosopher’,19 whose sole passion was to be of service, communicated historical notes to Maréchal.20 Berquin composed charming romances, so charming that Sylvain only dared write them while trembling at the thought their inferiority to those of his confrere. Another path that Berquin followed alone was the dialogue. Maréchal exhorted Berquin to practice it, and he even offered him advice: ‘Lucian’s are simply nasty, and it is only in those of Fontenelle that there is any wit. In correcting the salty acridness of which the Greek author is so prodigal, and through moderate use of clever ideas of the Frenchman, you are able to add a healthy morality that gives a taste of the sentimental traits of which our too-enlightened century has perhaps grown greedy. I have ever in my thoughts the worthy character of your beneficent man: if in your triumph of the truth some authors condemn a cutting sally, I send them to this dialogue and peace is soon concluded. I can’t say this

15 16 17 18 19 20

Mme. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 22. Mme. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 22. Mme. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 7. Recueil de pièces de Sylvain Maréchal (manuscript note). Author’s library. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athees, editon of year viii, p. 203. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 68; vol. iv, p. 41.

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often enough: Monsieur, write a collection of dialogues like this one, which I gladly call a course in practical morality. The taste of our young people would be educated by its purity and elegance of style. Their wit would be illuminated by the sallies of yours, and their hearts, if they are good, will become better for it, and if corrupted will blush and correct themselves’.21 Gerbier, former advocate general of parlement, who was involved in the trial of the Jesuits, a renowned orator and dignitary of the ‘Happy Sympathy’ Lodge,22 was very close to Maréchal. He was the leading light, the eagle of the courts, who regularly called the Romans and Greeks to the rescue.23 This taste for antiquity, which was becoming a mania, would on its own explain the relationship between two men so totally different, one the magician of the spoken word, the other a stammerer; one built like Hercules, the other short and thin. One can even wonder if Maréchal didn’t to a large extent contribute to filling Gerbier’s speeches and pleadings with illustrious borrowings. Like a character from Florian, Gerbier could have said to Sylvain: ‘I’ll speak for you, you’ll write for me’. As the ultimate sign of friendship – and perhaps also of gratitude – Gerbier left Sylvain, officially a lawyer, a complete collection of his pleadings, five volumes in-quarto of manuscripts.24

4

The Bibliothèque des Amans

We have reached 1777. Sylvain decides to bring together his light poetry in a short volume he entitled Bibliothèque des Amans [The Lovers’ Library]. ‘The lover’, he says in his epigraph, ‘will prescribe its reading to his beloved’. But an amusing paradox is that the book opens with a rather serious dedication to the grave Hellenist Dansse de Villoison. In his preface the poet openly declares himself a ‘faithful imitator’ of ‘voluptuous Anacreon, of the burning Sappho, and the tender Tibullus’.25 Sylvain knew the French translations of Anacreon that had appeared in his time. He specifically spoke of that of Vigenète Barnès.26 But it was in Greek that

21 22 23 24 25 26

Charavay autograph catalogue. Mémoire pour M. Gerbier … Paris, 1775, and G. Bord, La Franc-Maçonnerie en France, vol. i, p. 370. Primo, La jeunesse de Brissot, p. 81ff. Catalogue de livres de feu M. P-Sylvain Maréchal … in-8 of 32 pages. Pages iii and iv. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, passim.

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he read, re-read, and studied the odes of ‘the patriarch of lovers’,27 ‘in order to feel all the charm, all the pleasure, all those beautiful nothings that are part of the genius of a language’.28 And yet, Sylvain Maréchal’s love for Anacreon was not unalloyed, for in the eyes of the Shepherd Sylvain ‘the most loveable of poets’ is not the most tender. He toys with love and is touched neither by its languors, its transports, its raptures, or its sufferings. As a result, his light and voluptuous songs invite gaiety, provoke pleasure, and move the senses, but never cause a sigh. This, according to Maréchal, is why Sappho has the great advantage of portraying love in all its energy.29 The name alone of ‘that toosensitive woman, inspired by Venus alone’ recalls ‘all that is most ardent in love, all that is most animated about poetry’.30 It is certain that Anacreon and, above all, Sappho inspired the Shepherd Sylvain, but in truth, an Anacreon and a Sappho who would feel at home with Evariste Parny, Dorat-Cubières, Chevalier de Langeac, Bonnard, Masson de Morvilliers, and all the beautiful spirits who sang of love at that time. Flipping through the collection we note many items of interest. In the first place, as is fitting in a book aimed at lovers, what stands out is an obsessive concern with love, a love that a man ardent in his pleasures, which the Anacreontic poet desires, seems to desire in vain. It is true that on several occasions Sylvain sings of his Glycère and his Néris, but these are only artificial loves. It is appropriate to chalk up these poetic and hardly compromising confidences to the account of the imagination, an imagination benevolently nourished by ancient memories that dictated voluptuous verses to the young poet, that eased his heart, burned his mind, and, though they betrayed him, brought him happiness.31 In several of his odes Sylvain gives the impression that he has had little success with the ladies: Come! Come, my beauty Surrender to my desires Come, so that I can count At least one happy day.

27 28 29 30 31

Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum vol. i, p. 93. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 137. Maréchal, Dictionnaire d’Amour, second part, article on ‘Sapho’. Maréchal, Dictionnaire d’Amour, first part, article on ‘Femmes auteurs’; and Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. vi, p. 44. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, P. 117, Ode xiii of the book ii: ‘A l’imagination’.

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Do you see the sun disappear Behind those happy hills? Tomorrow shall I see it reborn Before my ills come to an end?32 In his ode to a young satirical poet, Sylvain speaks of the ‘sweet martyrdom caused by two beautiful eyes’.33 But it is especially when, addressing Néris, he depicts his torment, that Maréchal reveals his secret: I die of love, my beloved, Every instant adds to my flame. With violent desires my soul is consumed; My heart is tormented with the need to be happy. Oh, how long the days are and cruel the nights For an impatient lover. You, the most beauteous of all beauties, Néris, do you know my torment?34 In the ode to the ‘future mistress’ at the beginning of the first book, the poet compares himself to the lily that fades before its time. He speaks of his ‘languid youth’, admits that ‘something is missing in his heart’, that ‘a pressing need devours him’, and adds: In the season of contemplation I waste my time in vain desires. Autumn sees the leaves fall, I wither in my Spring. I have no one all day To whom I can say: You. I bathe in tears in my bed Finding no one but me.35 Don’t we seem to be listening to a lament?

32 33 34 35

Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans P. 102, Ode vi of book iii: ‘A la nuit’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans P. 53, Ode iv of book ii. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans p. 150, Ode ii of book iv. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans pp. 11 and 15.

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Placing these two passages alongside various passages of the envoi at the beginning of the volume and the ode to Mme. L.B.D.S.J. (la Baronne de …?)36 we have reason to doubt that the Shepherd Sylvain received recompense for his amorous effusions. Why? Is it because of excessive blandness, not enough banter, a lack of daring and boldness?37 Perhaps. And yet, Sylvain isn’t lacking in attractiveness. At least, this is what he says when he sketches his self-portrait: Come, rule over a tender Lover, Love me, charming Shepherd girl. I’m not to be disdained: You look on me with too severe a gaze. I am a Shepherd all the way through, Who still believes in innocence, Who would keep on living without Love, In peaceful ignorance. I was born for the Golden Age My heart is good, my soul is pure; Art hasn’t yet touched me: I come straight from the hands of Nature As simple as your lambs, More than your dog, I am faithful. Every Shepherd of our hamlets Compares me to the Turtledove. I’m the least handsome of the canton, But there is no one more tender. Yesterday I wrote a song That more than one Lover wants to learn.

36

37

The Shepherd Sylvain’s tender feelings for this ‘Inestimable beloved/ Daughter of innocence, beautiful without knowing it/Practicing virtue never ceasing to be lovable/Surrendering to pleasure without failing in her duties’, lasted at least until 1787, since in the Almanach de Grâces of that year (Cailleau, 1789, p. 89) Maréchal dedicates these verses to ‘the object of his love’: ‘From the throne to the ferns/And from Shepherds to kings/All is vanity on earth/ A sage once said./Friendship, that divine passion/Is not subject to this law;/ At least, this, Claudine, is what I feel/ when I am close to you’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, page 178. ‘Quart d’heure de misanthropie’.

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I have neither treasure nor grandeur: Virtues are my inheritance. Heaven gave me but one heart To love is all I can do. Peace reigns in my tiny room And it is thatch that covers me. Sound never enters my home; My door opens to Love alone. My bed is scattered with flowers My bagpipe hangs from the table at its side. At night, in flattering dreams, It’s your name alone I repeat. A bread whiter than the fleece Of your most loved sheep, A few ripe fruits of the season: This is my staff of life. Pure milk, honey as sweet As a shepherd girl’s breath; My meals would make jealous The greatest Princes of the earth But I’d be happier even than they If you granted me your visit; Prideful castle, what are you Compared to a hut in which Love lives? Come rule over a tender Lover Love me, charming Shepherd Girl. I’m not to be disdained, You look on me with too severe a gaze.38 This piece perfectly reflects the bitterness and melancholy of a young man scorned. We reproduce it in its entirety not only because the Shepherd Sylvain

38

Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, Book iii, Ode i. ‘Mon Portrait’.

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artlessly depicts himself, but because the feeling for nature, the idyllic dream of rural felicity so firmly anchored in him, is joined to the passion inspired by ‘the God of the Kiss’.39 In other pieces Sylvain doesn’t fail to denounce ‘the ridiculousness of the city’,40 after which comes the inevitable conclusion: Flee the City, where gold grips Faithless hearts. In the peace of the village Let us enjoy pure pleasures.41 On his morning stroll the shepherd poet again caresses his dream of rustic happiness: On the banks of a tranquil stream, Between two leaning willows, A thatched roof offers an asylum Dear to lucky Lovers.42 How can we reconcile this humble thatched roof with ‘the most seductive of boudoirs’ provided with a ‘little wine cellar’ that the poet asks of his architect?43 Sylvain could not care less. In this case Anacreon clearly wins out over Theocritus. And just as the poet of love sang of good wine, Sylvain praises the alliance between the table and the boudoir and speaks highly of the charms of the bottle, which even so is incapable of replacing ‘the true nectar’,44 that of a lover’s kisses: Let us get drunk in honor of our Fair Ones, Let us open our hearts to Bacchus; In wine let us extinguish our quarrels: To be a Lover, a drinker you must be.45

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 155, book iv, Ode xiv. ‘Hymne au Baiser’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 138, book iv, Ode vi. ‘Le petit concert’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 175. ‘Complainte’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 140, book iv, Ode xi. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, pp. 63–64, book ii, Ode viii. ‘A mon architecte’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 114, book iii, Ode xi. ‘Le petit souper’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 31, book i, Ode x. ‘Orgie’.

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But if Maréchal expresses himself in this way it is in order to drown his sorrows in faithful imitations of Anacreon. It should not be thought, though, that he descends into vulgar Epicureanism. His enthusiasm for abundant drink, his voluptuous songs, his forced bursts of laughter stand alongside counsels that are wisdom itself. He calls on lovers to respect innocence, even amid sensual pleasures.46 He invites them to learn ‘the science of economising pleasures’.47 Finally, the Anacreontic poet sometimes allows himself more daring incursions into the realm of philosophy, for example when, in order to better enjoy his happiness, along with his Glycère he deserts the common road, leaving, he says, the crowd to its errors.48 He would go even farther if he were to listen to himself, but he intends to profit from his youth, from his springtime, the season of Love: We must, in the course of our lives, Pluck the flowers before the fruits.49 This is why the Shepherd Sylvain, in his famous instructions ‘to his doorman’ Jacques,50 reproduced several times in the poetry anthologies of the following century,51 and which seems to have inspired Lisette’s bard,52 does not only cast aside Fortune and Ambition: If blind Fortune wants, by chance, My home to enter; If importunate ambition Wants to reach as far as me; Don’t open the door: dark cares In their train always follow. They’ll soon drive away Happiness, Peace, and Laughter.

46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 165, art. iv of the Code d’Amour. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 144, book iv, Ode xx. ‘Conseil’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 110, book iii, Ode ix Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 70, book ii, Ode x ‘A un philosophe amoureux’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 48, book ii, Ode i. ‘A Jacques mon portier.’ Mme. Gacon Ducour also reproduced it n De la Vertu, p. 42, finding this piece ‘lovely’. On p. 42 she recounts that Maréchal was still reciting it two days before his death. Cf. Eugène de Mirecourt, Les Contemporains: Béranger, édition of 1869, pp. 59–60.

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Feigning belief in the ‘learned boredom’53 of Philosophy, the poet gives Jacques this final instruction: If Wisdom feels the urge To speak to me, without driving it off Tell it your master requests He wait, or comes by another time. But beforehand, as appropriate for a ‘librarian’ of Lovers, Maréchal recommends giving the little god Eros a good reception: If he presents himself at the door, A beautiful child with a sweet smile, With an interesting voice, Young Cupid, son of Cypris, Friend, receive him well: It’s for our mutual happiness. At whatever hour he arrives, open the door; Cupid is never importunate. It can’t be said that Maréchal had any illusions about the success of his verse. He wrote somewhere: It is said that my verses have not yet Achieved that happy harmony, The charm, the grace, the tone That Catullus learned from Lesbia.54 Elsewhere, declaring he wrote only for his shepherdess, ‘always a lover, never an author’, he seems to disdain the laurels of Parnassus: My heart takes the place of genius, And Love alone inspires my words. Loving and being loved is all I desire; Pleasure, not Glory, is the object of my songs.55

53 54 55

Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 70, book ii, Ode x ‘A un philosophe amoureux’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 85, Book iii. ‘Prologue’. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 126, book iv. ‘Prologue’.

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It should be noted that five years later André Chénier would write in response to an epistle by Lebrun: Let another be jealous of making his memory glorious; I need only to love: what need do I have of glory? ................................................................... Love alone created genius in my soul, Love alone is my only judge and God.56 Even in their pretentions, what similarities between our poet and Chénier, who seems to have a foreboding of the fate that lay in store for him! Whether Maréchal, before Chenier, was sincere in indicating his preference for pleasure – he who demanded his turn in the romantic groves of Gnide57 – and if he truly disdained glory is a question impossible to answer. Whatever the case, the Bibliothèque des Amans did not go unnoticed. Métra would speak of it in his Correspondance secrète.58 The Almanach des Muses, after having singled out some pieces as ‘empty and careless’, also noted some that were ‘charming’, finding in the work ‘sweetness, sensitivity, and weakness’.59 For his part, Abbé Sabatier, while finding the title Bibliothèque des Amans ‘too lacking in modesty’, was willing to recognise that most of the pieces in the anthology could be read ‘with a kind of interest’, thanks to the author’s skill ‘in varying his paintings and frames and sprinkling his expressions with such naturalness, grace, and delicacy’. The poet’s style seemed to him ‘at times prosaic and lacking in the images that ennoble ideas’, but he recognised in him ‘the rare merit of being accessible, harmonious, simple, and correct’.60

5

The Tombeau de J.-J. Rousseau (1779)

It was Cailleau, a printer on Rue Saint-Séverin and brother of the widow Duchesne who’d published the Bibiliotheque des Amans. Less than two years later

56 57 58 59 60

Félix Hémon, André Chenier, p. 50. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. iv, ‘Préface’. Métra, Correspondance secrète, politique et littéraire. Vol. iv, pp. 222–234. Almanach des Muses pour 1778, p. 291. Abbe S. de Castres, Les trois siècles de littérature françoise ou Tableau de l’esprit de nos écrivains depuis François Ier jusqu’en 1779 par ordre alphabétique. 4th edition, The Hague, vol. iii, pp. 37–38.

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Maréchal delivered, one right after the other, the stanzas of the Tombeau de J.-J. Rousseau [Tomb of J.-J. Rousseau] and a collection of moral quatrains. We have little to say about the first of them. We know Maréchal’s great esteem for Rousseau, and so we can easily understand his consternation at the announcement of the cruel bereavement that struck the Republic of Letters. It was to sublimate his regrets and relieve his heart that he thought himself obliged in these cruel circumstances to pay tribute to the ‘unbending republican’, the ‘virtuous mortal’ who reignited ‘the sacred flame of innocence’. Oh my friends! Rousseau is no more! Cry! And with a faithful hand Raise a temple to the Virtues On the tomb of their model.61 As we can see – and as the Bibliothèque des Amans foretold – the Shepherd Sylvain, despite his commitments, only burns his incense on the altar of Love. With the Livre de tous les âges, ou le Pibrac modern [The Book of All Ages], the light-hearted poet tunes his lyre to the grave tones of the moralists and sings of Virtue.

6

The Livre de Tous les Âges (1779)

Still inclined to imitation, Maréchal this time intended to walk in the footsteps of Guy du Faur, Signeur de Pibrac, whose quatrains he found to be full of wit, naiveté, and philosophy.62 The verses of the Chevalier de Pibrac, which appeared in 1542, had enjoyed great success.63 Mme. de Maintenon liked to tell of how at age twelve she spent part of her day with a cousin her own age watching over the turkeys. ‘A little basket would be put over our arms, and in it was our dinner and a booklet of quatrains by Pibrac, a few pages of which we were to learn off by heart’.64

61 62 63

64

Maréchal, Le Tombeau de J.-J. Rousseau, p. 8. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. vi. Catalogue des ouvrages et ed. de Guy du Faur, seigneur de Pibrac, depuis 1542 jusqu’à nos jours avec la nomenclature des livres parlant de cet illustre personnage, Orleans, 1901. Count Guy de Faur, the last descendant of Chevalier de Pibrac, who maintained the floral games of Toulouse and was an excellent painter, died in February 1937. G. Bizos, Fénelon éducateur, Paris, 1886, p. 18.

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During Maréchal’s time one could still meet in the provinces old men who continued to quote Pibrac,65 who works had been translated all over Europe.66 A whole lineage of moralist poets had worked in this genre: president Favre; Pierre Mathieu, the historian of Henri iv, author of the Quatrains de la vanité du monde [Quatrains on the Vanity of the World] and Tablettes de la vie et la mort [Notebooks of Life and Death]; Raoul Parent, author of Quatrains spirituels; Pierre Enoch, Colony, the gentle Ronsard, Jean Claverger, Louis d’Orléans, Pierre Forget, Antoine Godeau, and even the tender Fénelon.67 These various authors, to whom Maréchal did not fail to refer,68 had been more or less happy in their efforts at imitation. A young author and, what is more, a light one, thus had something to fear in trying his hand in a career ‘more difficult to enter than one would at first think’. Sylvain, feeling there can’t be too many moral books ‘even if all of them are mediocre’,69 did not fear entering the lists. He appreciated the form of Pibrac’s quatrains. He says in his preface: ‘A moral point narrowed down to four metrical and rhymed lines must be more striking than a tirade in prose, however concise it might be’.70 Nevertheless, since a philosophical proposition cannot be fully developed in a quatrain, Maréchal, in imitation of the Abbé de la Roche, the latest of Pibrac’s commentators, decided to accompany each of his quatrains with a gloss.71 Finally, Pibrac, contrary to common belief, addressed himself not only to children, but to adults.72 Maréchal, seduced by the hope of being useful, resolved, again in imitation of his model, to address himself ‘to all ages’. From which the fully justified title; the subtitle, as he would later confess, was perhaps ‘too little modest’.73 According to Maréchal, the book was written ex abundantia Cordis, from an abundance of heart and in the spirit of the epigraph taken from Bacon: ‘Morality does not seem made to receive the law from Method’.74 Which is to say that one would seek in its pages in vain for grand moral ideas or lengthy reasoning: Leave at the lectern the professor in furs, Whose too faithful echo is his sole listener; 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. v. Catalogue des ouvrages et ed. de Guy du Faur. Le Magasin Pittoresque, 1842, p. 231, article on ‘Poètes français moralistes’. Recueil de poètes moralistes français, Préface, pp. x–xiv. Recueil de poètes moralistes français, p. iv. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. vii. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, Préface, pp. vi and viii. Recueil de poètes moralistes français Préface, p. vi. Recueil de poètes moralistes français, Préface, p. xiv. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. ii and v.

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Let us choose Nature as our teacher. The morality of the Just is the cry from his heart.75 Maréchal thinks, with and after Rousseau, that we learn morality and, even more, come to appreciate it, not as a result of ‘obscure arguments’ and ‘specious syllogisms’, but simply by consulting our hearts.76 Instead of arguments dictated by cold pedantry and scholarly definitions, it is a constant appeal to sensibility that we find in his moral opuscule. This lack of concern for the great questions, this firm determination to avoid the higher realms of the moral order, this refusal to condense into an ordered and methodical system the rules fixed by the heart, condemns Le livre de tous les ages in advance to a certain mediocrity. Maréchal, who scrutinises the general problems of ethics in the company of the scholars he disparages, seems to realise this. Nevertheless, he persists in striving for his positive and, we might say, prosaic goal, feeling himself sufficiently rewarded for his pains if he is well received in a handful of honest families, if he produces ‘a single return to Virtue’.77 The practical spirit with which the book was conceived compels us, if we are to avoid falsifying the author’s aims, to remain within narrow limits from the speculative point of view. There is no reason to consider this or that moral assertion of Maréchal’s as having any grave doctrinal consequence, but we should note in passing a few favorite themes attesting to the solid connections between the Pibrac modern and the Bibliotheque des Amans, despite the widely different orientations of these two works. We find in the two works the same wise advice to libertines: that they respect in the ‘beautiful novice’ the precious simplicity of Nature;78 the same advice on the use of the four seasons of life, nature here again being taken ‘as the model’;79 the same invitation to leave the big cities and enjoy happiness in the fields, especially in a secluded spot.80 We even meet again with Cupid, though he has abandoned his quiver in the land of the shepherdesses. Imposing on himself a truce with pleasure, it becomes ‘the foundation of all our duties and a universal bond for society’.81

75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 191, Des Moralistes. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 191. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, Préface, p. viii. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 77. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 129. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, passim. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 75.

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Looked at from a certain angle, the Livre de tous les âges is nothing but a continuation, adaptation, and expansion of the Bibliothèque des Amans. But things are quite different if we study the history of Maréchal’s political and social ideas, since for the first time publicly and under his own name he touches on a certain number of problems he would frequently address later. He approaches them boldly, with so large a spirit that he immediately places himself in the vanguard of the philosophical army.

7

The Political Importance of the Livre de Tous les Âges

Oh, if only he’d limited himself to formulating the idea that became popular, one that was applauded in theaters, that ‘a king is nothing but the first subject of the state’, that he must be ‘the slave of the National Code’, that ‘he must be the first to bow his head beneath the yoke of the laws’,82 and the book would have been seen as no more than the manifestation of a spirit in complete conformity with that of his contemporaries. The idea of a citizen king was then in the air. Though republican ideas were in vogue, almost all Frenchmen, and almost all philosophers, were in agreement about maintaining the monarchy while improving it. Even in the Eleuthéromanes, that intrepid work of Diderot’s that circulated in manuscript and by word of mouth from 1772, a wobbling throne is spoken of, as is a furious people revolting against an ‘imbecilic despot’, but one would seek in vain for the idea of establishing a republic.83 On the contrary, in the Livre de tous les âges it is explicitly said that ‘a well constituted government should have the law alone as its true sovereign’. Sylvain Maréchal cites as an example a nation he ironically calls barbaric and whose customs would be worthy of general application. The throne is occupied by the book of the Law. ‘Four tried and tested elders are its guardians, but never its interpreters’. Is it necessary to negotiate a treaty? To impose a new tax? The holy book is consulted. ‘This wise collection, composed of all the lights of the people, assembled to this effect and with its consent, serves as its king and forestalls all those disastrous revolutions caused by deaths, imbecility, passions, the minority, etc’.84 Is it possible to draw a more striking portrait of a republican nation? The word is never spoken, but it is clearly the thing that is under discussion. And so we have, without foolhardy exhortations, without the encouraging of

82 83 84

Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 49. Diderot, Les Eleuthéromanes, Paris, 1884, 104 pages in-12. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 48–49.

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revolt, ideas capable of contributing to illuminating the consciousness of the French, already very much enlightened by America’s example. Further on, a clever comparison between the profession of shepherd and that of king again provides Maréchal the occasion to confront the institution of monarchy. ‘A citizen has difficulties governing his family’, he says, ‘so what can we expect when we put him at the head of 20,000,000 citizens!’ Nevertheless, Sylvain would like to envisage the hypothesis of ‘a good king’, one who has the good fortune of finding on the throne a wise code. But he quickly recovers and exclaims: ‘Where is this wise code? Every empire has its own, and yet this code is yet to be written’. Kings are thus reduced to standing in for it, and it is here that the precariousness of an institution based on the conduct of one man alone stands out. If the king is virtuous, the influence of his example can cause ‘a hundred thousand virtues’ to blossom. If, on the contrary, he is depraved, ‘his contemptible qualities sooner or later become the character of the entire people’.85 This argument has all the more savour because in 1779 five years separate us from the reign of Louis xv. Naturally, violent attacks against the courtiers supplement his remarks against the monarchy. But Maréchal is even more cutting when he compares commoners and the nobility, indigence and wealth. One feels he is profoundly shocked by the spectacle of political and social inequalities, and we catch a glimpse of the future writer of the Manifesto of the Equals. The criticisms that Maréchal directs against wealth can be grouped under three distinct headings. Wealth is inequality, and there should be no other distinctions between men than those of age, sex, intelligence and virtue. Wealth engenders idleness, the source of almost all evils afflicting humanity. Finally, wealth is inseparable from luxury, which is virtue’s bitterest enemy. Let us examine the place these arguments occupy in the Shepherd Sylvain’s social criticism. According to him, there are only two classes of men: the good and the wicked. Need and a thousand other circumstances forced society to establish differences among the members who compose it. The great are thus wrong to look with scorn on those they consider their inferiors and who are often worth more than they.86 What is more, noble titles have no value, being ‘written by the hand of falsehood on a worm-eaten parchment’.87 In his ‘Notice to the Rich’ Maréchal also makes felt the iniquity of social distinctions. He invites those privileged by fortune to put themselves for one moment in the place of the poor. Everything would then change for them. 85 86 87

Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 61–62. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 47. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 40.

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Then they would be neglected and scorned by their brothers, would be refused what they need. Without bread or shelter, they would seek to have their rights spoken of. A waste of effort: Thémis, dazzled and corrupted by gold, closes his ears to their clamor. They are condemned to suffer in silence ‘the yoke of iniquity’, to beg for assistance, and life becomes a humiliating burden for them. Such, though, is the lot of the poor.88 This is why the rich should only think of ‘enjoying the superfluous when they have allowed their fellows to enjoy the necessary’.89 But Maréchal attacks wealth not just because it is at the source of an inequality his sensitive soul finds repugnant, but also because it is synonymous with idleness. Gold does not dispense you from labor; it does not train either the spirit or the heart, and the correct usage of wealth is at times difficult. And so, in order to conquer the esteem of their fellows, the rich must work. The main charges fall upon them, but does gold give the ability to properly fulfill them? It is through shared labour with their fellows that they will render themselves worthy.90 Sylvain provides us with his conception of society in just a few words. He presents it as a vast building raised through shared costs and maintained by all. Some dedicate their arms and their strength to it, others their minds. The wise watch over the foundations and the women its decoration. ‘We are within our rights’, he says, ‘in not allowing the coward who harms our labours by his uselessness and his bad example, to seek shelter within it from the inclemency of the different seasons of life’.91 The same ideas can be found in different passages, notably where Maréchal compares the universe to a colossal machine in movement. If just one piece remains inactive, confusion spreads to the others and chaos rules. The moral world being subject to the same laws, any lazy citizen must be punished as a thief. Birth and property are not sufficient titles to idleness.92 This idea of a social debt weighing on the rich, which they can only free themselves of through work, is best expressed by Maréchal when he presents the rich benefactor entering ‘the hut of the unfortunate like a debtor into the home of his creditor’.93 Along with idleness, the luxury of the great finds no grace in the eyes of Maréchal. In principle, he says, every sumptuous palace houses a vandal;

88 89 90 91 92 93

Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 161–162. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 65–66. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 65–66. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 109–110. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 44.

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all fancy attire attests to a madman or a rogue. Consequently, good men can only be found in the modesty: O modesty! It is to you that the sage Owes all his virtues, his talent, and his happiness.94 But what, in fact, is modesty? It is, Maréchal responds, ‘a private lifestyle that doesn’t take us out of ourselves, that doesn’t makes us seek our happiness outside ourselves’.95 An assertion that is admittedly vague, but which will later be clarified. Sylvain is clearer and more prolix in his bitter criticism of luxury, ‘that hundred-mouthed monster that is so pernicious for all levels of society’. He asks what the pompous and cumbersome train that accompanies the culpable fortunate few signifies, and energetically condemns useless display: ‘Gold and jewels are the liveries of vice’. Or again, ‘Scarlet garb hides a gangrened heart’.96 ‘How contemptible they seem to me’, he writes, ‘these proud castles, adorned by taste, sullied by vice, at whose doors impudent butlers, worthy representatives of their masters, ridicule the honest man on foot, who walks without an entourage. If during the absence of one of these successors to Apicius the sage were to deign to honor with his steps this temple of iniquity, he would be revolted! Every object would retrace a crime. This porphyry vase cost the honour of an entire family. This priceless painting saved a vile monopolist from the sword of justice’.97 We now know the triple basis upon which the author of the Pibrac modern supports his accusations against wealth. At bottom, this is nothing really new. Not a single one of Maréchal’s arguments wasn’t known. But what is new, what is original, is the method of propaganda employed, for under cover of short moral philippics, Sylvain slips, as Montaigne said, ‘into the naiveté and ease’ of the reader, causes him to reflect and impels him to combat political and social inequalities.

8

Maréchal’s Social Sources

What facts and readings influenced Maréchal in his social critique, which would later grow stronger and broader? What does it owe to Rousseau? What 94 95 96 97

Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 99. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 149. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 94. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 68.

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is the correlation between his social vision and the fiery pages written on the same subject by Mably, Morelly, and other bold authors of the era? What was he able to draw from the writings of the Physiocrats? Before ending our analysis of the Livre de tous les âges we think it opportune to respond to these questions by opening a parenthesis. In doing so we will elucidate the problem of Maréchal’s social sources, the indispensable complement to the already resolved question of his philosophical and literary acquisitions. A man of the library and study in his occupations, frequentations, and lifestyle, Maréchal barely penetrated the life of manual workers. It was in all probability in the course of business in his father’s shop, while listening to customers and entering into relations with them, as well as in the rural assemblies of the suburbs on festival days, where ‘the Hymen between Love and Friendship’ could be found at the same table, that Sylvain learned from lived experience those traits that led him to prefer the energy, simplicity, and truth of the little people to the ‘studied sentiments’ of the brilliant circles.98 It was in this way, and not on the plane of labour and its demands, that Maréchal got to know the working classes. He didn’t know – and with reason – the workers of large-scale industry. In Paris in particular, in the dank faubourgs Saint-Marceau and Saint-Antoine, from which would soon issue the legions of pikes of the great revolutionary days, there were at that time nothing but artisans, an industrial class made up of small-scale employers and wage earners. It must be added that Maréchal didn’t grasp the appearance of technology, the embryonic concentration of industry, or the investment of big capital in industry, a triple phenomenon that in a sporadic form was the prelude to the capitalist organization of industry and the birth of proletarian socialism. It would thus be an error in method to seek the source of Maréchal’s socialist ideas in the economic and material conditions of the pre-proletariat of the period. Such proceedings, correct in our century, would be artificial in the eighteenth. Like a good number of utopians before the Revolution, Maréchal was above all influenced by the intellectual atmosphere of the era, and it is to the extent that his ideas were connected to the philosophy of the eighteenth century that they were led towards socialism. Rousseau unquestionably made the strongest impression on Maréchal, who, as a fervent disciple, read and re-read the works of the philosopher from Geneva. We can safely assert that Sylvain adopted a large part of the social theories of Jean-Jacques.

98

Marechal, Dictionnaire d’Amour, part i, pp. 97–100.

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Let us take as an example a book by Rousseau that is not specifically social, Emile. In it we find an apology for nature, the golden age, patriarchal life, paternal power and, without actually using the word, personal autarchy, which allows Emile ‘to do without the assistance of others in all he was capable of doing for himself’, a worthy pendant to the much vaunted Montagnons of the Lettre sur les spectacles. We also find in it a critique of cities, ‘the abyss of humankind’; of the arts that pervert; of the society of a time when it is impossible to find ‘a bit of land’ on which to live freely and independently; of great states that stifle liberty; of civil laws ‘that consecrate private interest’; of the rich, ‘insolent and base’, ‘pitiless and harsh’, ‘haughty spectators to the miseries of the lower classes’. We find in it this attribute of humanity, that if ‘all kings and [philosophers] were to be removed from it it would hardly be noticed and things would be none the worse for it’, which is the germ of one of Maréchal’s most oft-repeated ideas.99 When Rousseau leaves generalities behind, he is rather timid from a constructive point of view, and he is far from original, since more often than not he copies antiquity. It was not in Rousseau that Maréchal found the models for Salente, but rather from writers like Mably and Morelly, who were far more advanced in the realm of the positive. It cannot be said that Maréchal was not aware of the writings of the latter thinkers, for there are too many points in common between them, but it is nevertheless a fact that there is absolutely no trace of these two utopians in any of his works. Was this an oversight? If push comes to shove, this hypothesis can be accepted when it comes to Mably. This is not the case for Morelly, given that Maréchal, like all his contemporaries, attributed the 1775 Code de la nature to Diderot. This paternity seemed completely normal to anyone who had read the bold propositions in Jacques le Fataliste and the Supplement au voyage de Bougainville, from which several expressions can be found verbatim in Maréchal’s social works. It is true that the Supplement au voyage de Bougainville was only available in print form in 1796, but it is not credible that Maréchal didn’t have knowledge of one version of it or another from 1772, the year it was written. And since the name of Bougainville has appeared under our pen, it must be said that it is not without reason that Maréchal would give him a place in his Almanach des Honnêtes Gens. It is obvious that he read with passion the tale of the voyages of Bougainville, and that he was especially struck by the enchanting descriptions of the island of Tahiti. More than the community of 99

J.-J. Rousseau, Emile ou l’Education, Garnier, Paris, 1904, pp. 32, 256, 413–416, 501, 523, 565, 574. Outside the social realm, Maréchal could have found the source for – or had strengthened – his ideas on women and the lapidary style in Emile.

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Jesuits in Paraguay, ‘the new Cythera’ served Maréchal as the type of society likely to procure happiness, because the customs there were simple and natural, because ‘everything belonged to everyone’, at least when it came to life’s essentials, and everyone was allowed to pluck the fruit from the first tree they came across. In this isle he finally saw realised ‘the fables of mythology and the dreams of philosophy’. Perhaps, like so many others, Sylvain Maréchal hurried to see the ‘noble savage’ Aotourou who, before returning to Tahiti, turned so many heads, and who La Dixmerie, whom Maréchal knew, interpreted for the Parisian public.100 In any case, it was in the lyric mode that he glorified Otaïti, for he generally adopted the name given by the English in 1769, at the time of the second voyage to the island: Oh you, who in our days realise The fabulous tale of the ancient Golden Age, People of Otaïti, fortunate islanders, Who live without scholars, without symbols of state. In your happy climate, Love, the sole divinity, Has an altar within beauty’s breast.101 There is certainly a correlation between many of the utopian visions that Maréchal places, as if by chance, in the isles, and the ideal of happiness that, based on Bougainville’s word, he thought realised in Tahiti. The antiquity that Maréchal admired, as did all his century, naturally provided him with other models. On the literary plane there are the descriptions of the Golden Age written by Virgil and Ovid, taken up later by Tasso in his ‘beautiful poem’,102 and by Cervantes in his Don Quixote.103 Cervantes, with his eloping couples, already heralds marriage without formalities, in accordance with natural law, and it’s not impossible that Maréchal either drew or reinforced his tendency towards free unions from the Exemplary Novels and the Persiles.104 On the historical plane, Maréchal had the example of Sparta. There was also Plato, whose ‘beneficent speculations’ and whose depth of vision bears a ‘character of sublimity fit to earn him proselytes well beyond his

100

101 102 103 104

Bougainville, Voyages autour du monde … Paris, 1772, vol. ii, particularly pp. 69, 70, 75, 76, 80, 95, 108. Maréchal, Costumes civils de tous les peuples. Diderot, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, Chinard édition, Introduction, p. 231. Pages 84–85 speak of Maréchal. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poeme moral sur Dieu, fragment xvii, pp. 32–33. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 35. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, p. 25 and Almanach des Républicains, p. 49. Jean Cassou, Cervantès (Collection Socialisme et Culture), pp. 71–72.

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hopes’. It is true that in his lifetime Plato temporised, prudently abstaining from applying the laws of his Republic to men he hadn’t prepared to receive them, but Sylvain Maréchal considered that new Platos must now ‘join practice to theory’.105 Alongside Plato, and not forgetting the legislators of Athens and Sparta, Maréchal lingered over several great figures who stand out against the social backdrop of antiquity. In the first instance Pythagoras, who he revered as a demigod for having wanted ‘to regenerate humankind’,106 and whose spirit he would attempt to grab hold of in the labyrinth of his legislation and doctrines. Sylvian principally maintained from Pythagorean practice the principle of the community of property and its applicability as an example to isolated associations. Diogenes ‘scolded the rich and lived poor’,107 condemning social inequalities through the austerity of his way of life: an entire school of social teachings can be drawn from his exemplary philosophy. And when Sylvain, worn out by injustice and oppression, retrenched within himself as if in a citadel, he thought of Timon the misanthrope, ‘wise and a bit sad, it is true … but who only hated men because he knew that at all times and in all places, even today, they have been dupes, rascals, slaves, or despots’.108 One can see that at times Sylvain ignored the ‘Elysian Fields’ of Tahiti! What speaks volumes is that among the moderns Sylvain Maréchal admired the Dominican Campanella, ‘though with restrictions’109 that were doubtless due to the community of women, Campanella being ‘prevented [by prison and torture] from going as far as he could have’.110 He knew Utopia111 and admired Thomas More, ‘certainly worthy of another end’.112 Both were given pride of place in his calendars of great men, as was Swift, ‘an independent spirit’113 to whom he was grateful for having created the fiction of Lilliput, as he was grateful to Fénelon for having painted Salente. There is hardly any need to add that Maréchal found in Cyrano de Bergerac and his main heirs, among

105

106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. vi, pp. 37–38. In 1793 he would write, ‘A good book, which would serve us well at this moment, who be excerpts of what is best in Plato’s Republic’. Almanach des Républicains, pp. 45–46. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 17. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 73. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 73. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 93. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 62. Maréchal, De la vertu, p. 120. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 76. He has him figure with his daughter Margaret, ‘worthy of her father’, in his Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, p. 76. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 105.

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others Gabriel de Foigny (Jacques Sadeur) and Veiras d’Alais, not only arguments supporting his non-belief, but descriptions that fed his utopian opinions. The community of Jesuits in Paraguay naturally could not but attract his attention. He condemned its despotic character, but in his eyes its existence ‘demonstrated the possibility of an establishment capable of attempting to create a society of sages’.114 Maréchal drew arguments from the works of Hubert Languet, Sydney, and La Boétie in support of tyrannicide.115 But we must not lose sight of the fact that Maréchal, in the period under review, had just finished his legal studies, and the judicial theories on property then in fashion formulated by Grotius and Puffendorf contained, as A. Lichtenberger demonstrated, ‘a potent seed of socialism’.116 Nor should we forget that Maréchal’s mind was in a state of ferment at the moment the Physiocrats became fashionable. Their rural economy pleased the Shepherd Sylvian, as well as their theory of the right to happiness, their appeal to the natural order, their critiques of luxury, the abuses of finance, and the obstacles to labour. Maréchal knew and admired Quesnay, ‘a profound thinker’,117 whose essential book, Physiocratie, ‘is not read as much as it should be’.118 Mercier de la Rivière,119 Turgot,120 and above all La Trosne, whose writings would one day furnish ‘the thread that must guide us through the labyrinth of our new legislation’.121 He would seek in the Journal économique and the Socrate rustique of the Marquis de Mirabeau details on the familial communities in the Auvergne and the Vosges.122 If we add to this abundant literature his commerce a short time later with authors like Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Brissot, and others, who for the most part tended towards utopianism and social criticism, we will have given a more or less complete idea of Maréchal’s ‘socialist’ background.

114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, pp. 50–59. See the articles on these thinkers in his dictionaries and almanacs. A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au xviiie siècle, Paris, 1893, grand in-8, p. 13. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. 1, p. 156. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 37. Catalogue des livres de feu M.P. Sylvain Maréchal [Jurisprudence]. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 37. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 61. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 286.

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The Cosmopolitan and ‘Religious’ Content of the Livre de Tous les Âges

Alongside its social pages, one remarks in the Livre de tous les âges a few noteworthy statements of a cosmopolitan spirit. Sylvain applauds the progress realised in the relations between men of all nations who, far from mutually considering each other barbarians, ‘offer each other their hand’. From this premise he predicts that the peoples obeying the same laws, following the same religion, closely connected by their needs and pleasures, will form but one nation. All the children of the earth – viewed as ‘the common mother’ – will be ‘brotherly friends’ and peace will be ensured.123 After having examined the moral, political, and social content of the book, it is only right to now analyse its religious content. Doing so will clarify Maréchal’s ideas in 1779, and at the same time we will determine the religious position beyond which he felt he could not go. What is significant is that while the author devoted the body of the book – ninety-nine quatrains with ad hoc commentaries – to a number of subjects, it is only in the hundredth quatrain that he deigns to speak of God, and this in a skeptical mode: Far from deciding anything about the Supreme Being, Let us maintain, as we adore him, a profound silence. The mystery is immense and the spirit loses its way: To know what he is you must be him.124 A no less significant fact: this quatrain is the only one that is not followed by any commentary. In its place is the title of another quatrain, ‘De la réligion’, which the author refused to compose on the pretext that ‘this subject requires no commentary or analysis’.125 There is more. A close examination of the work allows us to say that Maréchal, while openly refusing to make any pronouncements on religion, nevertheless here and there lets fly many Parthian shots at ‘superstitions’, at ‘temples serving religion’, at ‘religious ministers’, etc. He goes further: he erects Truth and Virtue into divinities, dedicating prayers to them. He even outlines a religion of Virtue ‘which can plant the seed for the more developed project

123 124 125

Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 127–129. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 199. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 199.

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of an establishment that would be the equal of so many others’.126 Maréchal thus does pronounce himself while seeming to shy away from doing so. How is it that, after having so categorically combated the institutions and vices of society, he avoids any difficult choices in the realm of religion?127 Is it from fear of the injustices he had a foreboding he would one day be ‘more than the witness’ to?128 One would be tempted to think so when contemplating the persecutions inflicted on the writers of the philosophical party. But upon further reflection we must abandon this hypothesis, since Sylvain exposed himself to blows every bit as much by his attacks against the regime as by his impiety. Instead, one must see in this a simple question of opportunity, for there is no doubt that at this time Sylvian Maréchal was already working on verses against God, several of which would be little more than amplifications of his moral quatrains.129 It is also possible that Maréchal, in agreement with his publisher, did not want to harm books sales by speaking out too categorically against religion. But the informed could not be fooled by such a feint. It was obvious that the Livre de tous les âges pursued the establishing of a morality that was independent of established religion. So Maréchal, with his inoffensive and unpretentious opuscule, not only imitated Pibrac in his form, but also d’Holbach in his content. Employing more accessible methods, ones within the reach of the masses, he tended towards the same end as the Ethocratie and the Morale universelle, which had appeared three years earlier. These two books earned the honors of proscription; Maréchal’s book made no great noise. Nevertheless, Maréchal did not abandon a genre of which he was fond. Four years later he would publish his Receuil des poètes moralistes francais [Anthology of French Moralist Poets]. He would also have the satisfaction of finding several imitators among his contemporaries: Francois de Neufchatel, like Maréchal a lawyer at parlement, would compose three hundred quatrains under the title Anthologie morale and, in the middle of the Revolution, the teacher Fréville would make great use of the Livre de tous les âges in his Temple de la morale, ou Receuil de pensées gnostiques.130

126 127 128 129 130

Maréchal. Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 196. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 63. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 46. Compare repectively pages 3 and 72; 195 and 67; 200 and 89; and 45 and 30 of Le Livre de tous les âges and Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu. Fréville, Temple de la Morale, Paris, Geuffler, second edition, year iii.

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The chain of Pibrac’s admirers and imitators would continue through the nineteenth century, thanks to a peer of France, a member of the Institut, a prefect of the Empire,131 and finally, Jules Claretie.132

10

Various Works – The Antiquités d’Herculanum

While engaging in attacks on kings, the great, and the wealthy, Sylvain did not neglect either light-hearted verse or historical works. We must always have before us the image of him in his studious solitude, pursuing several genres at once. Though his spirit took a more serious direction, Maréchal never ceased being the Shepherd Sylvain. Through his fertile imagination he sought refuge in the woods, the vales, and the fields, that silent and gentle world he loved. He loved to frolic with shepherdesses. This was his preference.133 It suffices to browse through the Livre de tous les âges as well as the newspapers of the period, which gave the pieces of verse a warm reception, or the collection of Etrennes lyriques [Lyrical Gift] and Almanach des Muses, to find the proof of this. In its 26 March 1780 issue the Journal de Paris inserted verses by Maréchal dedicated to the author of ‘Les Mois [The Months]’. ‘Still imprisoned within the walls of the capital’,134 the Shepherd Sylvian insisted on paying homage to the virtues of Roucher. In springtime he would have liked to be reading, under his thatched roof, ‘the beautiful poem’ of the Mois, and in winter, alone and silent, he would go to Ermenonville: … to weep over the virtuous mortal, Wise, sensitive, and yet unhappy …135 The kindness of the Almanach des Muses in providing a home for his writings convinced Maréchal to repay it. He wrote the preface to the Almanach des Muses ou Dialogue entre l’Almanach royal et l’Almanach des muses. The scene, which takes place in a bookstore, is a dialogue in which Maréchal places the two journals in parallel.

131 132 133 134 135

Le Magasin Pittoresque, 1842, p. 231. Jules Claretie, Les Quatrains, Lemerre, 1874. Letter by Sylvain Maréchal to Lablée [n.d. 1775]. Author’s collection. Journal de Paris, no. 86. Journal de Paris, no. 86.

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Simultaneously with this short pamphlet, the booksellers put on sale the first issue of the Antiquités d’Herculanum, whose delicate engravings are by F.A. David, student of J.-P. Lebas, with historical commentaries by Maréchal. Since the founding of Patrici’s cabinet of antiquities in 1750, to the satisfaction of scholars around the world, digs carried out at Herculaneum had allowed the assembling of a mass of materials of great historical importance. It soon became urgent to produce an inventory and a detailed description of the riches brought to light. With this as the goal the King of Spain created an Academy which published in Naples the results of these labours in the form of large infolio volumes. The first tome dates from 1755, the first volume of paintings from 1757. Maréchal clearly used the Italian text as the basis for his commentaries. But even though he made use of the science of the scholars of Naples, Sylvain was still able to produce a truly personal work, at times by taking the liberty of reducing and rewriting the original text, and at still others by discussing and extending the research and offering conjectures clarifying certain points, but most often by offering his personal reflections. We should not underestimate the value of the notes that the Abbé Gédoin and Leprince (the Younger) of the Bibliothèque Royale as well as Jaucourt amicably provided him. These commentaries do Maréchal honour. The Mercure de France, speaking later of the Antiquités d’Herculanum, would award a kind of certificate of erudition to Maréchal, saying: ‘Those scholars who consult them will draw information from them capable of removing their doubts about history and mythology’.136 In order to complete the arduous task entrusted to him, Maréchal had not only to overcome the difficulties inherent in any work of this kind; the burning desire to externalise his ideas constituted an additional stumbling block. Under the rule of his new faith ‘the little rascal Maréchal’, as the Abbé Mulot, canon and librarian of Saint-Victor, familiarly called him, could not remain silent. He allowed his attitude toward religion to show through everywhere. In the first issue did he not find a way of slipping in a few of his impious verses? And in another one he pushed his impudence so far as to use the expression, ‘the Christian mythology’. The censor of the work, Robin, thought he had read ‘Christian theology’, which caused an incident. David was invited to reform the heterodox expression by reprinting the first volume.137

136 137

Le Mercure de France, 23 April 1792, p. 164. Tourneux, Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, Bibl. Nat. Lu 27/49.872, p. 100.

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Under these conditions Abbé Mulot had a premonition that nothing good would come of Sylvain Maréchal’s collaboration in the Description générale et particulière de la France by Béguillet-La Borde. The only way to avoid trouble would have been for Maréchal to break once and for all with his method of constantly intruding into the realm of ideas,138 but this was asking too much of him. In his verses, ‘children of his tenderness’;139 in his historical and descriptive works, children of his scholarship; and even in prospectuses for booksellers,140 children of his vibrant pen, everything he wrote was imbued with his philosophical ideas.

138 139 140

Tourneux, Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, Bibl. Nat. Lu 27/49.872 [17 February 1782, p. 86]. Maréchal, Bibliotheque des amans, p. 159 [Épilogue. A mes vers]. ‘M. Marechal must shortly write the prospectus for the Essai de musique on M. Laborde to be sent to Italy’. Tourneux, Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, Bibl. Nat. Lu 27/49.872 [17 February 1782, p. 86].

Chapter 3 1

Sylvain Maréchal, Freemason

We spoke in the appropriate place of Maréchal’s relationships with the regulars of the Wasse salon, with Lablée, Jaucourt, Berquin, Gerbier and, finally, Abbe Mulot, doctor of theology and future deputy in the Legislative Assembly. But in order to have a full picture of him in 1780 and demonstrate the notoriety of an author who was hardly thirty years old, we must situate Maréchal in the various milieux he frequented. As a result, we cannot ignore his affiliation with Freemasonry, a secret – or rather discrete – philanthropic and humanitarian organization that became fashionable after the founding of the Grand Orient in 1773. It must be noted that, contrary to what is commonly believed, before 1789 Freemasonry did not have an anti-Christian attitude, the lodges having a great number of ecclesiastics among their members. They generally took an interest in religion, and their annual assembly often opened with a mass. Finally, more often than not it was priests who designated the poor for whom they provided support. Nor is there any indication that ‘philosophical’ discussions took place during regular meetings at the lodges. These assemblies were mainly composed of well-off bourgeois, mostly belonging to the liberal professions, and the bourgeoisie being the revolutionary class of the time, it can easily be seen that the Masons, like other bourgeois groups of the period, served as a vehicle for philosophical ideas. This parenthesis is important, since more than one reader would perhaps have been tempted to establish a relation between Maréchal’s non-belief and his affiliation with Freemasonry. We learn from notes found on Masonic diplomas that in 1785 Maréchal was a member of the Celestial Friendship Lodge of the Orient of Paris,1 but it can be conjectured that he was a member of that lodge, or perhaps another, since 1777. At that time, he already showed too much interest in the Masonic order to be one of the profane. What is more, we find his brother Nicolas second expert of the Saint John of Jordan Lodge of the Orient of Paris from 1779.2 What influence did the two Maréchal brothers have on their lodges and what influence did Freemasonry have on them? To what extent did they take part in 1 Dossiers Bord. L’état des loges existant en France en 1771, compiled by G. Bord, mentions neither the Celeste Amitié nor the lodge St-Jean de Jourdain. Albert Lantoine’s Histoire de la Franc-maçonnerie also does not mention them. 2 Dossiers Bord. ‘L’état des loges existant en France en 1771’.

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the ‘puerile but innocent labours’ of their lodges? This would be interesting to know, but difficult to establish. Here and there in Sylvain’s writings we can pick out mentions of Masonry, which allow us to see how Maréchal viewed the clandestine milieu he frequented. In the Bibliothèque des amans (1777) he twice speaks of the Freemasons. Ode vi of Book ii3 is dedicated to a critique of the famous Lodge of the Nine Sisters which, in its destructive fury and rigorous purism, subjected everything ‘to the right angle’. But there is nothing to be learned from this piece of verse. Ode viii of Book iv4 is dedicated ‘to the Freemasons’. Maréchal apologises for not celebrating their ‘mysterious days’ with them. He amicably calls on them to enjoy themselves, to ‘fly from conquest to conquest’ until the day when, exhausted, worn out by these ‘splendid pleasures’, they will, like him, rejoin the road to true happiness by adoring some fair maiden in a dark recess. We can infer from this ode that Maréchal had little taste for the amusements and banquets that occupied the life of many lodges, but it doesn’t permit us to grasp his thoughts on Masonry in general. These thoughts are made clear in a later work. In it he says in substance that Freemasonry is not all it could be, but that nevertheless it is impossible to too greatly increase the bonds of benevolence and brotherhood among men. In this work he considers the Masonic order ‘the miniature, or rather the charge’ of ancient initiation rituals. The ‘tests of the terrible brother’ seem to him to be a reminiscence of the sinister examinations of the Egyptian hierophants. According to him, it was in order to give itself consistency that Freemasonry deemed it necessary to ‘imitate in miniature’ the harsh practices of the ancients.5 Speaking in the same work of the harsh penitence of the gentiles, he showed that the latter went as far as pretending to kill the initiate so as to prepare him for death, and he considers the Freemason’s custom of having their newly elected female members meet face to face with a skeleton a parody of this trial. ‘Masonic lodges’, he added, ‘more than once served as a theater of tragic scenes caused by the frights given women or weak men’.6 After having recalled that the ancients established confraternities and mysteries to the glory of Ceres, Maréchal noted: ‘The pagan religion revealed itself

3 Maréchal, Bibliothèque des amans, p. 58. 4 Maréchal, Bibliothèque des amans, pp. 142–143. 5 Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. ii, p. 113. See also Voyages de Pythagore, vol. ii, p. 152, note. 6 Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. ii, p. 127.

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to initiates with the most fearsome of apparatuses. Our Masonic lodges are probably a holdover from this and offer a caricature of it’.7 Maréchal believed that Masonry not only parodied the initiation ceremonies of antiquity, but also the degrees through which a person had to pass in order to learn the most profound mysteries.8 He felt it Frenchified the awe-inspiring trials imagined by Triptolemus.9 As for the hand signals used by the Masons, they remind him of the Tessera Hospitalitatis of the ancients in which, according to him, they originated.10 Maréchal also found a connection between Freemasonry and Bacchus, notably in the number three, sacred in Masonry, which symbolizes the mystery of silence in the secrets of Bacchus.11 He accepted, as did the anonymous author of the Histoire des Franc-Masons (1745), that Pythagoras founded several lodges in greater Greece, and that the Grandmaster Masons of Italy were Pythagoreans.12 But unlike Captain G. Smith, author of The Use and Abuse of Free-Masonry, he didn’t believe that the internal regime of the Masonic lodges bore a total resemblance to the internal regime of the Pythagorean School.13 In his Dictionnaire des Athées [Dictionary of Atheists] Sylvain Maréchal shows himself to be favorable to the Freemasons, though he disapproves of ‘the ridiculous trials admitted in the ordinary Masonic lodges’. ‘In Germany and elsewhere, several atheists, friends of peace, take this name in order to gather without causing umbrage or being persecuted’.14 Speaking of the Rosicrucians, he complacently notes that several atheists are enrolled in its associations. He adds that in order to enjoy philosophical peace these brothers even agree to pass for ‘wretched alchemists’. In support of his statements he invokes the authority of the scholar Georg Paschius.15 As he approached his final days, in his treatise La Vertu, Maréchal again alludes to Freemasonry, ‘an old coterie that still exists’. He announces that the Masons recognise each other at all ends of the earth by a certain mysterious hand signal. ‘Two virtuous men, thrown among the mass of bipeds, have less

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Maréchal, Tableaux de la Fable, vol. i. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. ii, p. 121. Maréchal, Tableaux de la Fable, vol. ii. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 159. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. ii, p. 107. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 401. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 438. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 151. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 399, article on Rose-Croix.

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ambiguous signs in order to communicate and make each other understood. They rarely misunderstand each other’.16 Though the ornate signature of a Masonic sign was never mandatory for initiates, Maréchal’s Masonic zeal went as far as ornamenting his signature with the symbolic points placed at the angles of a cross: this is one of the least frequently employed Masonic signatures. His notices to the directors of theatrical spectacles regarding his Jugement dernier des rois [Final Judgement of Kings]17 and his 1794 letter to Payan,18 written at a time when the lodges were dormant, are signed in this symbolic fashion.

2

The Musée de Paris

The step from Freemasonry to the Musée de Paris was one quickly taken by a poet like Sylvain Maréchal. The reason is that, at bottom, the Musée de Paris, which is today considered to have been the first attempt at the vulgarisation of higher education in France, was a cenacle largely made up of Freemason men of letters. There is thus nothing surprising in finding Maréchal rubbing shoulders there with Court de Gébelin, author of the Monde primitif, an influential Masonic dignitary and future adept of Mesmerism; the Creole Léonard, imitator of Gessner; the kindly Dumoustier; the agreeable Pons; the stormy J.B. Cloots; Roucher, Imbert, Lenoir de Laroche, not to mention Le Bailly, Lefevre de Villebrune, Ovide St. Ange, president Tascher and so many other literary lights of the period.19 As we can see, Sylvain here had the good fortune to again meet some of the former regulars at the Wasse salon. He was also able to profit from the ‘extensive and well-written correspondence’20 that interpreters in every language maintained with literary and scholarly societies throughout the world, something of inestimable assistance for a worker like him. The inaugural session of the Musée de Paris took place on Rue Saint-Andrédes-Arts on 23 November 1780, amidst a large and select audience. Most of the 16 17 18 19

20

Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 261. Maréchal, Le Jugement dernier des rois, p. iv. Archives Nationales F17, carton 1012. Mémoires d’un homme de lettres, pp. 69–70. Djob: Revue internationale de l’enseignement, vol. xvii, p. 568. Dulaure, vol. viii, p. 372. Mathiez, La Theophilanthropie et le Culte décadaire, p. 179. Bachaumont, Memoires secrets, vol. xvi, 1 and 4 December 1780. Amiable, Révolution française, vol. 31, December 1896 ‘Les origines maçonniques du Musée de Paris et du Lycee’, vol. xl, August 1901, article by Bauling, pp. 138–139. M.T …, Alamanch du voyageur de Paris, 1783, pp. 323–324.

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associates who spoke at that solemn session were from the famous Nine Sisters Lodge. Court de Gébelin spoke ‘on man’s need to live in society’. Fontanes read a translation of a chapter from Pope’s poetic Essay on Man, after which Legrand de Laleu declaimed a piece of ‘dark poetry’. La Dixmerie then read a few fragments of his Eloge de Montaigne. Three other members, who didn’t belong to the Nine Sisters, communicated writings of their own. Abbé Rozier, a dignitary of the Grand Orient, read a scholarly dissertation on the music of the ancients. Lefebvre and Villebrune produced a translation of an unpublished ode attributed to Homer, and, according to Lamiable, ‘a M. Maréchal delighted the listeners with gallant and Anacreontic odes’.21 There can be no doubt that these few words of Lamiable designate Sylvain Maréchal, ‘the Anacreon of the day’. Abbé Mulot for his part signaled the presence of Sylvain Maréchal at the Musée de Paris in February 1782, the day of the reception of Benjamin Franklin, an honorary member of the assembly. Maréchal composed an impromptu for that occasion, a small ten verse piece that Abbé Vogler, one of the most learned musicians of the time, immediately set to music and played on the pianoforte.22

3

The Salon of Mme. Lépine

It should not be forgotten that the late eighteenth century was the era of salons or, as Maréchal said, ‘bureaus of fine minds that took control of the hundred mouths of renown’.23 It was a time when all the golden-tongued, all the philosophers and litterateurs, met at the homes of beautiful ladies. There they declaimed, sang, discussed, and divulged the events of the day, the gossip of the capital. These cenacles were of great importance in the launching of a book, and their opinion was the final word. Along with writers of quality, the least scribbler sought the honor of being admitted to them. ‘The influence of women, always considerable in a society at its height’, wrote Desnoireterres, ‘was then sovereign, and it would be difficult to cite a man of letters who succeeded despite or without the assistance of Mesdames Geoffrin, de Lespinasse, du Deffand, de Boufflers, and de Beauveau’.24 These were the key influences of the time. But beyond the stars of the first order, how many constellations of lesser greatness were indispensable in making one’s way in the Republic of Letters! 21 22 23 24

Révolution française, vol. 31, December 1896. Tourneux, Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, p. 79. Maréchal, Antiquites d’Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 131. Desnoireterres, Le chevalier Dorat, p. 165.

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One of these salons, that of an Italian singer Mme. Lépine, met on Rue Neuve Saint-Eustache, two steps from the Rue des Prêcheurs where the parents of the Shepherd Sylvain had their shop. It was inevitable that the young poet would one day make his appearance there. It was Manon Philipon, the future Mme. Roland, one of the regulars of Mme. Lépine’s salon, who tells us in her Mémoires that Maréchal frequented that society. ‘Mme. Lépine’, she says, ‘had formed in her home a concert of amateurs composed of clever individuals, to which she admitted only what she called “good company”. It met every Thursday and my mother took me there quite often. It was there that I heard Jarnowick, SaintGeorge, Duport, Guérin and many others. It is there that I saw the fine minds of both sexes, Mademoiselle de Morville, Madame Benoît, Sylvain Maréchal … as well as insolent baronesses and handsome abbots, old chevaliers and young writers. What an amusing magic lantern!’25

4

Portrait of the Shepherd Sylvain

In a letter to her friend Bosc, Manon Philipon again spoke of Maréchal: ‘I used to see the Shepherd Sylvain, a short, dark haired man who stammered. Trust me, he expresses himself more clearly in writing’.26 These few lines are so exquisite that we just had to repeat them here. And in fact, they are the sole truly living portrait we have of Sylvain Maréchal. This portrait is confirmed by Lalande: ‘He wasn’t of an imposing height, and did not have either a distinguished figure or an attractive tone: he stammered. From the start, everything was against him and there were very few people who looked beyond this. What is more, his talents lacked backers and advocates’.27 Mme. Gacon Dufour for her part spoke in more or less the same terms. She added, however, that Maréchal’s face sparkled with wit.28 Lablée, who shows us the Shepherd Sylvain in society reading a moral epistle, made no allusions to his friend’s natural defects. We see Sylvain attacking the fashionable and speaking of morals before society women and fine minds. Aside from compliments, which he had no gift for, his modest tone and appreciation of virtue produced

25

26 27 28

Mémoires de Mme. Roland, 1820 edition, p. 165. It was at Mme. Lépine’s concert that the painter Greuze presented her first pretender, Pahin de la Blancherie, to Manon. Cf. Miss Wilcocks, Mme. Roland, ch. iii. Lettres de Mme. Roland, vol. ii, pp. 36–37. Mme. Gacon Dufour, Notices sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 10. Mme. Gacon Dufour, Notices sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 3.

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‘a magical impression’; people applauded him.29 But we must make allowance for the role in friendship in this flattering portrait. In any event, it is clear that though little favored by nature, the Shepherd Sylvain could not expect much from salons. As he candidly admitted, ‘Women’s hearts are too much at the mercy of their eyes and ears’.30 The pointless decorum and affected mannerisms that prevailed in the salons went against his tastes. He very quickly tired of frequenting high society, which is why we will no longer encounter him in any other salons. This also explains the fact that, named to many literary societies where he would have fit in perfectly well, he refused to become a member. ‘I swore’, he once said to Mme. Gacon-Dufour, ‘to flee large assemblies. I shared the sentiment of Plutarch, who said that in order to be happy in society one must never be less than the graces and more than the muses’.31

5

The Fragmens d’un Poème Moral sur Dieu (1780)

Delighting the select audience of the Musée de Paris or Mme. Lépine’s society salon by the reading of a gallant ode or a moral epistle was little more than an hors d’oeuvre or a stopgap for Maréchal. The poet, who felt his philosophical talents growing ever stronger, was anxious to make himself known in this realm. He grew impatient at the idea that his atheist verses remained unknown, locked away in a drawer in his attic. In the century of the Enlightenment would pious lies, coarse sophisms and frivolous glosses be the only ones with a legitimate place alongside the Muses? More than once, in the silence of his solitude, when he would leaf through or put the final touches to the fruit of his long nights, Sylvain, with all the passion of his young soul, would feel his fingers burning, and he was tempted to take his manuscript to the printer. But he always stopped at the thought of the heinous attacks and police persecutions he was likely to suffer. After much hesitation, tired of waiting, he resolved that whatever the cost he would enter the fray. The future member of the National Convention Brissot, at the time more or less associated with the bookseller Desauges on Rue 29 30 31

Marechal, Essais de poésies légères suivies d’un songe, pp. 19–20, Vers a M. Marechal. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. vi, p. 38. Mme. Gacon. Dufour, Notices sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 27. Mme. Gacon. Dufour, Notices sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 27. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 459. Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, p. 77. At that time Brissot was registered as a student at the Law School in Reims (Annales historiques de la Revolution française, 6th year, 1929, p. 346), but as he wrote in his Mémoires (re-publication by Perroud, vol. 1, p. 193) this was merely ‘a vain formality’.

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Saint-Louis near the Palais de Justice, took upon himself the publishing of the clandestine work.32 Given the business relationship Brissot had with the Typographical Society of Neufchatel, in Switzerland,33 everything leads us to believe that the book was printed by this important firm. It appeared with the publication date of 1781, though it came off the presses in 1780.34 Obviously, there was no question of the author’s name appearing on it. The work thus went into circulation with the glow of mystery appropriate to dangerous books. The title, the epigraph, and even the mention that replaced the name of the publisher constituted a bold exposé of a doctrine. There was no mystery here: people knew just what they were reading! It is hardly possible, from the first page and in so limited a space, to make a stronger impression on the reader. Right at the start, opposed to the celebrated motto ‘Ad majorem Dei gloriam’, is a new motto, ‘Ad majorem gloriam Virtutis’. The epigraph affirms the idea of God’s creation by man, which Volney would take up almost verbatim ten years later:35 Man said: Let us make God, and let him be in our image. God came into being, and the worker adored his creation. The place and date of publication are indicated by these significant words: ‘In Atheopolis, the Year One of the Reign of Reason’. After this, the title: Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu [Fragments of a Moral Poem About God], which seems orthodox, inoffensive, and unpretentious, but fools no one. It can be seen that this is in reality Fragmens d’un poeme contre dieu [Fragments of a Poem Against God]. The quotations favorable to atheists found on the following page quickly confirm our initial impression.

32

33

34

35

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 459. Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, p. 77. At that time Brissot was registered as a student at the Law School in Reims (Annales historiques de la Revolution française, 6th year, 1929, p. 346), but as he wrote in his Mémoires (re-publication by Perroud, vol. 1, p. 193) this was merely ‘a vain formality’. Ch. Guyot, Pelerins de Motiers et prophetes de 89, pp. 81–126. As a clue in support of this hypothesis we can also note that the vignette, p. 268, of L’Homme Sauvage by Mercier, published by the Society in 1783, is the same as the vignette, p. 44 of the Fragmens. Vol. i of the Antiquités d’Herculanum, which appeared in 1780, on pages 132–133 already gives an excerpt of Fragment xvii with the pagination. Vol. i of the Antiquités d’Herculanum, which appeared in 1780, on pages 132–133 already gives an excerpt of Fragment xvii with the pagination. Volney, Les Ruines, ch. xii, p. 25, Oeuvres, 1838 edition. Volney, Les Ruines, ch. xii, p. 25, Oeuvres, 1838 edition. Prologue, pp. 7–8.

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It required courage to publish such a book, even when taking the precaution of covering oneself in the veil of anonymity. Indiscretions are always possible, and during this period things seemed to be turning against writers who were too freethinking and had too impetuous a pen. Ignorant inquisitors condemned writings judged subversive. The following year would see the Abbé Raynal subject of an arrest warrant, and the author of the Tableau de Paris seriously harassed. What is more, the Church was still powerful: only fourteen years before the Chevalier de la Barre had been burned alive, and nineteen before Calas had been broken on the wheel. These brutal executions, provoked by a ferocious clergy, gave cause for reflection, and Sylvain could expect to be slandered, vilified, and his house searched. But that made no difference to him! He now asserted himself with a kind of boastfulness that contrasted strangely with the prudent reserve of the Livre de tous les âges, not only as God’s denier, but his detractor. August truth, be the soul of my verses; I’ll plead for you against all universes. Replacing a God, useless or accomplice in crime, The thunder not sounding, they will hear my rhyme. Rage against lies, crush its authors. Contemptible creators of sacred prejudices, You won’t escape my outraged Muse: Fear reason, freed of your bonds.36 Maurice Spronck has cast light on a psychological state that has been almost identically reproduced in our time in Jean Richepin’s work, Les Blasphèmes. Here is the just comparison Spronck establishes between the two poets: ‘Neither the one nor the other invented atheism. What distinguishes them from their many predecessors is the relentless and almost fanatical ardour with which they defend their idea of nothingness. They make of it a kind of natural divinity, at whose feet they burn their incense and sing their most enthusiastic psalms … They seem almost to provoke their adversaries, and their defiant attitude seems to be designed to incite the crowd, to call for a riposte, and to cause scandal’.37

36 37

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème contre Dieu, Prologue, pp. 7–8. La Révolution française, vol. vii, July–December 1884, p. 33.

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Before exploring this book, following from beginning to end the path of this moving hand-to-hand combat between the poet and the divinity, there is something it would perhaps not be superfluous to note, if we are to truly appreciate Maréchal’s merit and emphasise his originality. It is generally considered an arduous task to fill the sails of the great vessel of reason with the weak breeze of poetry. Poets, particularly those inspired by Theocritus and Anacreon, don’t usually use their talent to serve positive knowledge and systematic atheism. And yet, this is what Maréchal dared to do. He made his task all the more difficult by proposing to prove that man can be virtuous without believing in God. This did not escape Bartholmess in the notice he dedicated to Maréchal. The word virtue, he said, plays as important a role in Maréchal’s works as the word atheist. ‘Whoever needs to admit the existence of a moral legislator, judge, and remunerator of consciences in order to be good in not truly virtuous. On the other hand, whoever refuses to live morally is not worthy of the privilege of doing without God’.38 Here is one of the prologues in which this personal idea is made particularly clear: Of guilty pleasures: mad sectarians! Of mad passions: abused slaves! Don’t think that my novice muse Deigns to expand vice’s career. I don’t write for you. In your eyes my morality, O degraded mortals, will appear exalted; I leave you to your gods to be punished: Only the virtuous man has the right to be an atheist.39 Maréchal stands on firm ground here. Believers in fact claim that in destroying God all the foundations of morality are overturned. Not being able to sew atheists’ mouth shut, they throw mud on their cloaks and slander their morals in order to avoid embarrassing questions. It was in this way that at a certain moment the word ‘libertine’ became synonymous with ‘atheist’. It is impossible to resort to such proceedings with Maréchal. The philosopher erects a veritable cult of virtue on the ruins of the divinity. Already, in his Livre de tous les âges he gave virtue all the attributes of a divinity and even

38 39

A. Franck, Dictionnaires des Sciences philosophiques. Article on Maréchal, p. 1043. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Prologue, p. 6.

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dedicated a prayer to it. Now he returns to the same idea, which, because of the negation of a Supreme Being, presents itself with greater force. O Virtue! It is for thee that I deny a God: Perhaps I go astray in confessing this! There is a God, it is said, my creator, my master: I know nothing of him … Let him make himself known, This God until now a stranger to my soul. Mine is Virtue, and I don’t want to change it.40 Here we leave the paths beaten by all the atheists of the century. Confronted with Maréchal’s writings, the situation of the believer is obviously very delicate, and that of God himself singularly uncomfortable. What would happen to the virtuous atheist who would appear before the Supreme Being? Would he be punished? Jurieu, in days gone by, claimed not only that God could not punish an atheist in good faith, but he owed him a reward. And in our days Abbé Naudet was willing to promise paradise to Félix Le Dantec. It is quite certain that God could not punish an atheist without being unjust: all he would have to do would be to reveal his existence through proofs that all can grasp and that are, so to speak, mathematical. Even less could he punish an atheist who had been virtuous without the assistance of an external force. In several of the fragments Maréchal examines this problem. He quite happily demonstrates how serenely the man who had no use for belief in God in order to behave irreproachably would greet either hell or heaven: Were the supreme existence proven to me, That of a judge who punishes, a God who rewards; Were hell and its fires before my very eyes to Execute their fabulous torments; Repining in the Golden Age, when welcoming Elysium, Peopled with its houris, upon my abused soul Tests the power of the divine lure; I won’t be seen at the foot of the holy altars, Begging basely for the mercy of a master: Without braving his rule and without recognizing it,

40

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xliii.

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Fearing nothing of the evening, using wisely the morn, I await my destiny, fruit of my virtues.41 As we see, even if the existence of God were proved, Maréchal would persist in his atheism. Virtue is his God. However much the believer might repeat the most ingenious the most apparently reasonable arguments in favour of the need for a God, the poet has an answer for all of them: What need have I of a God, what need have I of a master If I’m virtuous for the pleasure of being so?42 ...................................................................... You ask for gods, mortal? What do you want to make of them?43 ...................................................................... We have virtue, so why seek gods?44 ........................................................................ Useless to the wise and little feared by the guilty What use are gods? And what is the goal of their fables?45 ............................................................................... Why would we seek a master in the heavens? We already have too many here down below.46 It’s not only the same idea, but at times even the same expression, the same words that, however difficult to believe, we find coming from the pen of Victor Hugo. For this parallelism in inspiration to become clear it suffices to quote these verses by the great poet: Oh, human darkness, you want a god? What will you make of him? Would you have less pride, man, and more virtue?47 ................................................................... A God takes up room in a sphere Before wanting one, one must know what to do with him.48 ..................................................................... 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xl, p. 26. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xlviii, p. 79. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xxvi, p. 48. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xl, p. 69. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xxiii, p. 45. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xxxii, p. 56. Victor Hugo, Religions et Religion ii. Philosophie. Victor Hugo, Religions et Religion ii. Philosophie.

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Poor man, useless and mad below the blue sky, You can’t make a monster yet you want to make a God!49 Maréchal thus rejects the idea of a God as useless; he combats the mania for imploring heaven, for calling on the unseen and the darkness as witnesses; for creating a phantom to remedy evil and sound the unknowable. Yet again, this being the case, what impact could arguments aimed at proving God’s existence have on him? However numerous, however convincing they might be or seem to be, for Maréchal they were simply puerile, since they were no more capable of changing his conduct than of changing the course of nature. Given this, it is surprising that he agrees to discuss the matter. Which he does at length. The most famous proofs are the so-called physical proofs. They relate to the existence of the world and universal harmony. Has the world existed for all eternity or is it the work of a God? Is the sequence of events of which nature provides us an endless spectacle the result of chance, or is it a grandiose plan issued from a sovereign intelligence? These are the two formidable questions that are immediately posed. To the first, Sylvain responds: Does the universe have chance as its sole cause? Chance is but a word; Is God anything different? Nothing is born, nothing dies: everything, necessarily, Exists, subject to the play of change. Turn and turn about; matter, differently disposed Vegetates in the plant; in man is thought: Everything attracts, everything repels, and in the same object We find, at the same time, a principle, an effect: By its own influence nature acts on it, And endlessly takes on new forms.50 But the theist can’t resolve himself to consider the universe without cause and without a supreme regulator. Maréchal replies: In order to exist, does the world need a master? The vase was clay before belonging to the potter. Matter is before form and the worker. 49 50

Victor Hugo, Religions et Religion ii. Philosophie. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, First Fragment, p. 9. S. Maréchal developed the same idea in vol. iii, p. 57 of Antiquités d’Herculanum.

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If nature exists, it exists through matter: Its mode can change, but it is eternal.51 He shows that in giving God as cause we don’t resolve the problem of origins, but rather double the obstacle, a God without cause being no easier to understand than matter without cause: And why wouldn’t the universe, that great All full of life Exist on its own energy? Do you know matter and its properties? Passive, inanimate, in your eyes dull and numb. Before judging it, before giving it a master, Shortsighted scholar, you must know it. What is that spirit acting on bodies, Combining, guiding their most primitive gears? Is it the hand of a God who, weighing on the stone, Pushes it and drives it to the center of the earth? ......... The Universe is its own cause; there is nothing outside it: Placing it in others means obscuring it.52 Note the two last lines. They concisely sum up one of Maréchal’s favorite arguments. In fact, at all times the materialism of the poet rebels against the idea that we can substitute God for Nature. He sees this to be an intolerable usurpation. And we understand why a bit later. Nature deigning to explain itself through his voice, poses embarrassing questions: There is nothing outside of me: I fill all of space. I am everything. What is God? What Being surpasses me? God is nothing but me under a different name. O ignorant mortal, why, in your mad thoughts Did you want to distinguish me from myself? Nature is one: why, in your system Give me an author drawn from within me, And seek in the circle a principle, and end?53

51 52 53

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment ii, p. 13. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment iii, pp. 14–15. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment v, p. 17.

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Maréchal thus rejects the idea of God as superfluous, inconsequential, and even an insult to nature. In his fatalistic system everything happens necessarily, invariably, in its time, in its place. Everything is order through generation, mixing, conservation, destruction, and modification, without our being able to conceive this order as the expression of any design. The theist and deist argument, drawn from the laws of universal harmony, are of no worth in Maréchal’s eyes, since in his system universal harmony is an attribute of Nature. And so, he doesn’t bother examining this so-called proof of the existence of God. He leaves to others the task of exploiting inclement weather, the eruption of volcanoes, earthquakes, storms and cyclones to refute the thesis of universal harmony. For him, all of this flows from the immanent dialectic which sees to it that The elements, friends and rivals at the same time Tend toward the same goal through contrary laws.54 The conclusion is clear: In vain I would complain: a useless murmur! Everything is as it must be within nature.55 At bottom, in the physical order Maréchal takes up the concept of universal palinogenesis formulated to differing degrees in antiquity by Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Lucretius, and more recently by Toland, Diderot, and d’Holbach. It is also worthy of note that at the very moment that Maréchal exclaims with striking turns of phrase that ‘nothing dies, nothing is born’, and ‘life and death: everything is of equal weight’,56 or that Everything is altered, everything changes, and time The destroyer, raises to bring down, brings down to reconstruct,57 Lavoisier reached his fundamental idea through experimentation: ‘Nothing is created, nothing is lost’, in this way excluding any supernatural intervention, any miracles. A strange conjunction of the poet and the scientist!

54 55 56 57

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment i, p. 9. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment ii, p. 13. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment i, pp. 9–10. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment vi, p. 19.

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In the sixteenth century Ronsard also rose to the highest scientific speculation, divining more than he knew when he sang: O Gods, only that philosophy is true Which says that in the end everything dies, And that in changing form, another is donned! The valley of Tempe will one day be a mount, And the peak of Athos a broad field. One day wheat will cover Neptune: Matter remains, and the form is lost.58 And so, at the same time as the famous chemist and in the footsteps of Ronsard, Maréchal instinctively attempted to reconstruct the universe without God. He boldly entered the path upon which Lamarck and Darwin would later proclaim the system of natural creation. But it wasn’t as if the poet didn’t realise that most of his readers, rooted in their prejudices, would not accept his way of viewing the problem of origins; that they would continue to believe in ‘a phantom usurping all the rights of Nature’.59 Consequently, he resolved to force them to explain themselves about nature and the character of the divinity. The philosophy of sensation prevailed at the time and Maréchal, like so many others, intended to limit his ideas to what appeared before his senses.60 We should thus not be surprised to see him use in his riposte to the arguments for God’s existence reasons drawn from the sensible world: My heart loved Daphne when I saw her lures: How can I love a God I can’t conceive?61 ....... Impalpable, odorless, invisible and mute, He escapes our senses and hides what he is.62

58 59 60 61 62

Maréchal quoted the last four verses in his Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year vii, p. 398, adding this note: ‘Lucretius never said anything more philosophical’. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment v, p. 17. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xxx, p. 53. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xli, p. 70. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment iii, p. 15.

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Nevertheless, Maréchal sees the power of scientific demonstration: Did Euclid ever meet a non-believer? Did Baremus ever need a stick To prove that a triangle always needs three sides? Or that two plus two equal four?63 Finally, tired of compiling statements against God’s existence, Sylvain states: I seek God everywhere, and everywhere he flees me.64 After which he triumphantly exclaims, forcing the theist to confront this fearsome dilemma: Either God doesn’t exist, or else his existence Is a fruit forbidden our intelligence.65 These verses, sharp as a blade, should close any discussion of the existence or non-existence of God. But Maréchal does not stop there. He investigates the source of the idea of God and, like so many others, he hazards an explanation. At the time he wrote, two main hypotheses were accepted concerning the origin of the divinity: revelation and deception. In Maréchal’s eyes there could be no question of the first, which relied on the authority of theologians. The second was accepted by the philosophes, by Voltaire and even by Rousseau, as well as ‘the Holbachic sect’. What is more, mixed in with it is the idea of terror: ‘It was ever in the workshop of sorrow that unhappy man fashioned the phantom he made into his God’, wrote the author of the Systeme de la Nature.66 This is Maréchal’s explanation as well. He shows primitive man frightened by thunder’s redoubled blows. At that moment, an imposter, wanting to consolidate the power that a tyrant had just established, asserted that the thunder announces God’s might: In the distance the earth trembled; the clouds were aflame: Where to flee? Where to hide? What to do? … We believed in God.67

63 64 65 66 67

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment i, p. 10. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment ii, p. 13. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment iii, p. 15. D’Holbach, Systeme de la Nature, edtion of 1793, vol. ii, p. 11. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment vi, p. 20.

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The woods, through the fear their dark depths inspire and the silence that reigns within them, could also have given birth to the first Gods: Religious resting place, majestic fortress, Temple of nature inhabited by fear Forests! Whose thickness hides the skies from us. Within you, man conceived the first Gods.68 But Maréchal can’t be satisfied with these explanations. Let us not forget the epigraph he placed at the head of his Fragmens: Man said: Let us make God, and let him be in our image. God came into being, and the worker adored his creation. This was an anthropomorphic assertion ahead of its time. Maréchal shows that man transposed himself into his God, and in adoring him he does nothing in the end but adore himself. In the same spirit, Sylvain hazards an explanation that does not appear out of place under the pen of a ‘librarian of lovers’, to wit, that the fair sex might also have given birth to the idea of God: Superstition owes you its origin: Beauty appeared to be a thing divine. The most beautiful among you had the first altars. But beauty perished and immortal Gods Were imagined to take your place. Your empire destroyed, dupes of that bold act, O women, we saw you on your knees adoring A fragile and vain God who owed everything to you; And since then error has been accredited by you … Without you, man would still perhaps be an atheist.69 If now, from the physical plane that we have gradually left behind, we were to pass over to the moral or, to phrase it better, the social plane, we will see that Maréchal, this time making little case of determinism, denies universal harmony. His ideas are summed up in this lapidary formula:

68 69

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment vii, p. 21. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xix, p. 36.

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Everywhere the weaker is the victim of the stronger; This, in the universe, is the illegitimate course of things.70 Admitting the existence of God is equivalent to admitting that everything that exists proceeds from him. Error, iniquity, and crime, as well as truth, justice, and goodness were thus the children of God. What then becomes of his sovereign goodness? This is an argument that Sylvain Maréchal found in contemporary writings, in the works of Boulanger, in the testament of Father Meslier, and in his fragments he greets it warmly. He looks around him. What does he see? A monstrous heap of iniquities, the murderous labour of the many feeding the corrupting idleness of a few; a society that is a wicked stepmother, where joy belongs to the evil and suffering to the good. So much usurpation, so much exploitation, so much misery. Doesn’t this prove God’s ferocity, his savagery? Maréchal bolts upright in a jolt of revolt at the mere thought that such a criminal can be adored, throwing in his face the worst insults, the most horrific blasphemies: Without any problem he believes in God, that indolent Midas, Who, from the table to the bed, Walks on carpets of roses without thorns: He is paid to believe in divine goodness, He sees no evil: everything is good in his eyes, And he never knew the names of the unfortunate. But I, placed closer to the roof where live the wretchedly poor, Too impotent witness to the ills of my fellows, An impious anger sets me aflame, And if I think of God it’s to blaspheme him.71 The poet’s atheism is based in large part on a bitter and distressed love of mankind. An ‘infinitely good’ God? Cruel irony! Maréchal sees nothing but horrors on the earth, nothing but infamies in society. Everything suffers; cries, sobs, tears, moaning, death rattles climb to the heavens in a heart-wrenching symphony. He is too humane to believe in God: If a God existed everything would doubtless be good; Evil is close to good;

70 71

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment i, p. 10. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xxix, p. 51.

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Far and troubles mass in a thousand different guises on my route, Turn the universe into a prison for me. If there existed a God, Astrée’s happy days Would still glow over the tearful earth.72 …. And yet, under God’s eyes interest rules over all And modest virtue inspires disgust.73 …. Whatever the future might hold in this terrestrial place Unhappy virtue testifies against God.74 …. The laughter of prosperous crime, the tears of innocence; Everything attests to God’s malice or absence.75 Nevertheless, for some 1,200 years man has been a religious animal. At various times he has importuned heaven, earth, and the ocean in order to populate them with chimeras. He has forever prostrated himself, pale and contrite, before the giants he created from whole cloth. Under these conditions, it can be easily understood that it is only with difficulty that he escapes his ancestral influences. There can be no question that Maréchal’s contemporaries had made some progress over their ancestors. They were the men of the great century, of the century where the light of philosophy dissipated the fog and darkness of ignorance. But for every person who dared liberate himself from the supernatural and banish all dogmas, those who demanded some kind of belief were still legion. It was the former that Sylvain Maréchal had in mind, and in order to satisfy them while remaining on atheist ground, he proposed for their homage virtue, truth, love, moderation, and nature. These divinities were totally human, intimate, familiar, and sometimes tangible, and, far from causing fright, degrading and tyrannising, they raise man towards the heights of courage, knowledge, liberty, and well-being. No cult to them, no altars, no ridiculous vows and childish festivals, and above all, no priests. At most, one can adore them:

72 73 74 75

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment i, pp. 10–11. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment i, p. 11. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment i, p. 12. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xvi, p. 31.

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If we needed a God, couldn’t we, without crime, Render a legitimate cult to honest love?76 … Adore Virtue and avoid error. Fear giving it a rival in our hearts.77 …. The Being we adore is the universal soul; Active nature provides the model.78 …. If we needed Gods as our models As faithful guides on the path of truth, Why not choose a Socrates or a Cato? These gods would not be phantoms, vain names. Let Antoninus be our God of prudence, And let us bless Henri, the God of clemency.79 And gold? Is it not a God whose power is sovereign and uncontested? It brings division into the family, war to the city, and corruption, hatred, despair and misery to society. It takes the place of knowledge, intelligence, virtue, and beauty, and despite religious hypocrisy and mummery, it alone shines brightly over the ruins of the ancient idols. This is how Maréchal ironically presents it to the reader. He dwells on its omnipotence and he shows with precision the false weights that this infernal God places on the social scale: There is a God, no doubt, for whom all is possible. Every mortal is sensitive to his rare virtues. From the scepter to the crook, honored everywhere; This God, the best served of them, father of the other Gods Also has his martyrs; he works miracles, His presence strikes oracles dumb or makes them speak Who touches his altar is cured of his ills; Having received his favours, one has no defects. His dearest favorites can do anything without scruple. This God has not yet met a non-believer, Everything celebrates this divinity: 76 77 78 79

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xvii, p. 32. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xliii, p. 74. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment iv, p. 16. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xvii, p. 32.

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Virtue, talent, and even beauty Only have worth through him, and are nothing without him. He is the first cause of all that is done, Without him, man would still be in the void Bend your knee mortals, this God … is Gold.80 Never, not even in the boldest pages of his Livre de tous les âges, had Maréchal pushed his critique of the society of privilege and rapine so far; never had he attacked wealth with such mastery. A century before, Boileau, the immortal author of the Art poétique, put gold on trial in the same terms,81 to such a point that one wonders if Maréchal wasn’t inspired by his illustrious predecessor. Paul Lafargue, a century later, would supplement and update Maréchal’s ideas by constructing, still in the ironic mode, a total religion of Gold and Capital, with actual prayers, a credo, an ave miseria, and even a catechism.82 As we see, Maréchal gave his atheism a pronounced social tint, and it is often the case that the combat against God appears in his writings as only one of the aspects of the struggle against the hegemony of aristocrats and the rich. He thought that in order to liberate men they must be rid of the belief in God. This is the language that Auguste Blanqui would employ, while Marx, a more consequent materialist, reversed the elements of the problem, making material liberation the condition of spiritual liberation. Whatever the case, we can only underline the energetic assurance with which Maréchal sketched the portrait of the future man, finally free of the God prejudice: No, you weren’t born be to be a base slave. Raise your head at last and smash your fetters, Take back your dignity, mortal! Open your eyes And look without trembling towards the heavens: They don’t house a master armed with thunder Ready, in his anger, to reduce you to powder. Beyond this world there lives the void. The God you feared was naught but a false giant, Born of your ignorance and fed by your priests, Who pulled his strings, hidden from your fathers. 80 81 82

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xiii, p. 28. Boileau, Œuvres poétiques, Sat, I and viii. Ep. v. Lafargue, La Religion du capital (various editions, the first in 1887).

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March towards happiness with a sure step, He’s finally destroyed, the sacred phantom Who long caused you great fright. Fear nothing from your God, but fear everything from yourself: Of your good and your ill, you alone are the author, Hell or Elysium are nestled in your heart.83 A bit further on Maréchal insists not only on the social, but on the political harmfulness of belief in God: The name of a God silences the laws, earns them scorn, And serves to consecrate the caprices of kings.84 … By the grace of God become tyrants Kings, under this holy name, order Ignorant peoples to end futile quarrels With shameful treaties or cruel wars.85 God is thus, in fact, according to Maréchal, an instrument of slavery, a force for oppression whose name sanctifies crimes, whose altars are covered with victims. We can now better understand why in his preliminary invocation the poet preferred denying God to degrading him.86 If we had to summarize Sylvain’s poetic Fragmens we could say that it basically aimed at two goals: for the world to substitute the eternity of matter for original causes, and nature for God; and for man to substitute reason, love of family, veneration of great men, and the cult of virtue for faith. All of this is in large part metaphysical. It is appropriate to add that in ‘the solemn war he makes on the divinity’87 Maréchal aimed at freeing men from all forms of slavery. Like two burning flames, his atheism and his ‘socialism’ are joined.

83 84 85 86 87

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xxvii, p. 49. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xxxviii, p. 63. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment L. p. 84. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, p. 5. Damiron, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la philosophie au xviiie siècle, Paris, 1858, vol. ii, p. 447.

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Parallels Between Lucretius and Maréchal

After having examined Maréchal’s poetic oeuvre in itself, it seems opportune to compare it to Lucretius’s sublime poem. This comparison is quite natural, since it was done by Maréchal’s contemporaries and earned him the flattering titles of New Lucretius and Modern Lucretius. Not that Maréchal placed himself under the patronage of Lucretius in his verses. He evoked Spinoza and Socrates several times, and only names the somber Roman once. This was a mark of ingratitude that was quite common among men of letters, for there is no doubt that Sylvain owes much to Lucretius. In order to admire the fragments left by Molière and Hénault, to treat with scorn ‘the mediocre labours’ of Leblanc and Guillet, and to say that ‘Lucretius is not fortunate in our language’,88 Maréchal had to have studied him in the original. Let us see what he might have borrowed from his illustrious predecessor. Like Lucretius, Maréchal considered fear to be the origin of the divinity, but he goes much further than Lucretius, believing that rascality also contributed to providing humanity with so pathetic a belief. He also shows how religion and politics, in mutually supporting each other, allowed the subjection of souls and bodies. Lucretius, who was not much involved in political struggles, did not study that aspect of the religious problem. He only glimpsed the analogy and the connection existing between celestial and terrestrial tyranny. The two poets are also in agreement in declaring that religion produces the most villainous acts. Lucretius, with the stern indignation to which he held the secret, points out how the young Iphigenia was coldly murdered by the priests of Aulis, and ends with this famous verse: Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum! [To such depths of evil has religion been able to drive man!] Sylvain, though reaching the same conclusion, proceeds differently. Instead of speaking of a particular crime, of a fleeting calamity, he brings together a group of acts of various kinds and, armed with this overwhelming testimony, puts celestial barbarism on trial. Richepin would later do no differently. But these evils are of a human order. If we look at the world from a purely physical point of view, as Lucretius did, what is it if not a combination of atoms, an imperfect work whose structure offends the eyes, whose negligence sickens the heart? Lucretius insists on this point while Sylvain, a convinced determinist, limits himself to a few discrete allusions to volcanoes and storms. Nevertheless, like Lucretius, Maréchal shows that man must fight for his life

88

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. 291–292. See also pp. 237, 238, 256, 257.

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and his food without expecting anything from God, whose ‘infinite’ power didn’t even allow the seed to awaken from its sleep through the play of natural forces. Maréchal shared Lucretius’ attitude in the face of death, combatting the fear of the beyond that spreads a lugubrious veil over life. Like Lucretius, he provokes objections to which he responds with firm reason and a serene philosophy that attains to eloquence. The two poets are not in agreement on several points. Lucretius, as a good Epicurean, fought against love, which troubles the tranquility of the soul in the same way superstitious terrors do. Sylvain who, though an atheist, is nonetheless an Anacreontic poet, cannot follow Lucretius down this road, any more than he can deny the Golden Age. Comparing the content in Lucretius and Sylvain thus allows us to note that if Maréchal owes much to his predecessor, he at times opposes him. As for the form, Lucretius is, of course, far greater than his imitator, though Maréchal’s poetic oeuvre is notable for the vigour of its expression and the heat and purity of its language.

7

Impact of the Work – The Opinion of Abbé Mulot

Damiron, who in studying the Fragmens examined closely ‘just how far this kind of delirious fanaticism against God could go’,89 wondered what would be the effect produced by ‘all these atheist ideas proffered directly in impious verses’.90 The scholarly professor does not believe it exerted any serious influence. He wrote: ‘We are reassured and remain free of the fear that this poison can affect [the reader]. In order for it to be dangerous it must be otherwise prepared and proposed. It’s not through vulgarity, but rather through the subtlety of a harmful principle that peril lies in wait. But everything here is so open and undisguised that prudence and repugnance are awakened, and because patent the evil ends up being innocent’.91 This is obviously an opinion, or rather an impression, and there is nothing that allows us to accept or deny it. But one readily sees that the first page of

89 90 91

Damiron, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la philosophie au xviiie siècle, Paris, 1858, vol. ii, p. 443. Damiron, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la philosophie au xviiie siècle, Paris, 1858, vol. ii, p. 448. Damiron, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la philosophie au xviiie siècle, Paris, 1858, vol. ii, p. 448.

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Maréchal’s book, which is too brutally honest, by causing repugnance in the believer, cannot but prevent its being purchased, consequently forestalling any real influence. Colliding head on with the belief in God, and piquing the curiosity, made some contribution to its being read, and thus passing into the spirit of a certain number of people. Whatever Damiron might say, the ‘poison’ distilled by Sylvain, precisely because it wasn’t ‘prepared’ in as scholarly a way as was d’Holbach’s, precisely because it was ‘proposed’ in the agreeable form of poetry, was all the more capable of contaminating the greatest number of individuals. As for what is commonly called the elite public, it doesn’t appear that it greeted Maréchal’s poetic work warmly, at least if we are to believe the latter. People of taste found much not to like in it; timorous philosophers said it was too soon to write in this manner. Priests gnashed their teeth; journalists smiled at the ineffectual daring of the poet.92 There was not even one writer courageous enough to publicly review the book, and in order to find one we have to wait for the late date of 25 January 1786, in the Mémoires secrets de la République des Lettres. Among other things, it is said there that the work ‘is marked with originality’, and there can be found in it ‘powerful things against kings and authority’, and that it is regrettable ‘that an author so gifted was too lazy to tie together his fragments’.93 Thanks to Brissot’s Mémoires we learn that the latter admired ‘several verses’ of Sylvain’s ‘very energetic poem’, while ‘disapproving their object’.94 In his private journal Abbé Mulot speaks of Maréchal’s collection. On 6 February 1782, he says that he purchased it at Desauges’ and adds, ‘This book … is not good. There is nothing holding it together. It is disconnected blasphemies. There are lovely verses, but generally they are weak. I hope to respond to this short work’. Though Sylvain didn’t want to admit he was the author, taking all sorts of measures to mislead the public, Mulot certifies this fact. In the first place, Maréchal told him personally that he composed these verses, and even told him where he could find them. In addition, the verses of the epigraph are clearly by Maréchal, since he had them framed in two or three spots in his room. What is more, Maréchal was connected to Fréville and other atheist economists whose theses he supported. Finally, Mulot, following a ‘personal dispute’ with the Shepherd Sylvain, was convinced of the latter’s atheism.95

92 93 94 95

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, Article on Sylvian Maréchal. Mémoires secrets de la République des Lettres, vol. iii, pp. 60–61. Reproduced in the Lucrèce français, pp. 20–21. Brissot, Mémoires, Paris, 1830, vol. i, p. 303. Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, p. 77.

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On 12 February 1782, Mulot, who had been assured that the author of the Fragmens had completed a new poem, wrote again, ‘Too bad for him, this poem is no better than the Fragmens, and it can be wagered it will earn him the Bastille. He more deserves the madhouse, but it’s certain it will not bring him honour’.96 Two weeks later Mulot, visibly intrigued by Maréchal’s book, sought to verify the passages placed at the front of the book. He ‘worked hard at it’ and reached this conclusion: ‘The author is in bad faith; this is what causes me the most pain. He quoted incorrectly and truncated passages or perhaps, what I would more willingly believe in order to excuse him, he copied the incorrectly cited passages from several anti-religious books. But he should have verified them before quoting them’. Mulot continued by telling us of the corrective to the Fragmens he was preparing: ‘If I don’t make any changes to it, this work will paint a picture of a republic of atheists where all my adversary’s principles, put into practice, demonstrate just how pernicious they are’.97 We can consider that these thoughts of a distinguished prelate, who was a notorious Freemason, reflected the common opinion of the clergy of the lodges concerning Maréchal’s book. What cries these devout men must have issued after each of the blasphemies of the new Lucretius! What profound and silent internal labor Maréchal’s short book must have produced on minds cloistered in a reposeful deism. Mulot assures us that the police impounded some of the copies of the work and paid a visit to ‘that little rogue Maréchal’.98 This explains both the pains Sylvain took to reject the paternity of the Fragmens and the extreme rarity of the book. The Revolution having occurred a few years later, the book, re-published in Nimes,99 was reviewed in issue 180 of the Annales universelles et méthodiques of 28 December 1790. B…n, who is perhaps none other than Bulidon, a friend of Maréchal, presents a lengthy and detailed analysis, from which we will only mention the parallels he draws between Lucretius and the Shepherd Sylvain: ‘Both surprise us, as much by the boldness of their reasoning as by the vigour of their expressions. But Memmius’s friend, an unskilled versifier and mediocre physician, at times suffers from this parallel’. Dieu et les prêtres [God and the Priests] (1793) and the Lucrèce français [The French Lucretius] (1797) are nothing but considerably augmented re-prints of the 1781 fragments. We will have the occasion to return to them.

96 97 98 99

Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, p. 84. Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, p. 98. Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, p. 100. Journal intime de l’abbé Mulot, p. vii.

Chapter 4 1

At the Mercy of Booksellers

The goad of need, the temptations of publicity, his inexperience, and even his honesty didn’t allow Sylvain to cross the threshold of notoriety without getting to know booksellers and their deceptive promises. From his first steps in the thankless career of literature, with the Bergeries and the Temple de l’Hymen, Sylvain had experienced difficulties with the booksellers Gauguery and Roset, those ‘accursed corsairs’.1 He later had more cause to complain about ‘accursed booksellers’. What recourse could he have, almost always being at fault? None. His too tendentious books were never submitted for the censor’s approval, and with reason. As for his others, he willingly submitted them to the censor, but only after arranging matters so the book was on sale before the authorization was received. This is how he proceeded with the Essais de poèsies légères. Of the two packages of pamphlets that Lablée had addressed to him, one was sent to the Chambre Syndicale and the other was transported directly to the bookseller Fétil at the sign of the Italian Parnassus2 on Rue des Cordeliers. Naturally, such trickery couldn’t pass without consequences. Maréchal alludes to one of them in a letter. He compares what happened to his books in Fétil’s shop with something that occurred in our wars in America, where two English commissioners, appointed by the victors, presided over the demolition of two forts raised by the French and then torn down by the latter before their enemies’ eyes.3 Fétil speculated on the talent of his writers. He was one of these booksellers of whom Diderot said that they condemned their authors ‘to chewing laurel leaves’. And so, when the time came to pay Lablée and Maréchal he dealt with them ‘from the height of his grandeur’, agreeing, at most, to giving them books from his stock.4 It is probable that the following year Maréchal was more fortunate. Widow Duchesne, on Rue Saint-Jacques, paid well, if we are to go by the honoraria she paid to Retif de la Bretonne when he was starting out.5 We can thus assume that the Bibliothèque des Amans left some profit to an author, like the Shepherd Sylvain, who was already known.

1 2 3 4 5

Letter from Maréchal to Lablée, n.d., 2 pp. ½ in 4, Charavay Collection. Letter from Maréchal to Lablée, n.d., 3 pp. in-8, author’s collection. Letter to Maréchal, n.d., 2 pp. in-4, Charavay Collection. Letter from Maréchal to Lablée, n.d., author’s collection. Ames et visages d’autrefois …, Funck-Brentano, Retif de la Bretonne, Paris, n.d, p. 144.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_006

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After Fétil, Hénique de Chevilly, ‘a big man for making plans’, whose wife ran a salon, later pressured the too confident Sylvian. He proposed to the atheist poet that he collaborate for a modest fee in the elaboration of a Dictionnaire ecclésiastique de toute la France [Ecclesiastical Dictionary of All of France]. However strange this might seem, Maréchal accepted, mainly because he found in this the occasion to denounce certain men who, under cover of scholarship, received church benefices. He wrote a few articles for which he was never paid a cent. The future member of the Convention, Brissot, was paid in the same coin.6 When we consider that Diderot, cut off from his paternal pension, composed sermons for preachers who had run out of ideas, and even wrote decrees for bishops,7 there is no cause for surprise in seeing Maréchal, in order to earn a living, manufacture passages on religious history at a rate of such and such a page.

2

L’Age d’Or (1782)

These difficulties, which were encountered at that time by almost all who worked in literature, ‘first of the fine arts and last of professions’, as Voltaire wittily observed, didn’t stop the Shepherd Sylvain. The year 1781 had barely come to a close when the Almanach Littéraire, ou Etrennes d’Apollon [The Literary Almanach, or Apollo’s New Year’s Gift] for 1782 announced a new work by Maréchal that was going to appear under the title L’Age d’Or [The Golden Age].8 This short book is a collection of thirty pastoral tales, three of which are nothing but shortened reproductions of idylls already in the Bergeries.9 The characters in these pastorals have the same personalities as those in the Bergeries, though perhaps more urban in their sentiments, language, and occupations. The tales themselves read better: one feels that the Shepherd Sylvian had made progress since his literary debut. The ‘Tableau d’une matinée champêtre’ [Depiction of a Rustic Morning]10 is particularly successful. In a note placed at the front of the book the author, like a real shepherd, defends himself against the charge of writing for ‘people of taste’. He proposes 6 7 8 9

10

Brissot, Mémoires, edited by M. de Lescure, Paris, 1877, pp. 153–154. Brissot, Mémoires, edited by F. de Monterol, vol. i, pp. 303–305. Primo, La Jeunesse de Brissot, pp. 66–68. A. Séché and J. Bertaut, Diderot, pp. 13–14. Almanach Littéraire ou étrennes d’Apollon pour 1782, p. 143. ‘L’aimable couple’, pp. 69–117 of the Bergeries provided ‘L’Heureux Berger’, ‘La Rivalité heureuse’; pp. 139–150 of the Bergeries provided ‘Les Deux rivaux’, ‘Qu’il est doux d’être vertueux’; and pp. 183–197 of the Bergeries provided ‘L’Homme juste’. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, pp. 66–70.

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his tales be read ‘to young men who have not yet been made blasé by the pleasures of the capital’ and ‘to the women who have been able to preserve that flower of sensitivity that a sojourn in the city soon withers’. This is his avowed objective and, to be sure, at first glance ‘the innocence of the subjects’ seems to back this assertion. But upon examination of these short, rustic tableaux one realises that the author isn’t pursuing just this one objective. Under the frivolous grace of the pastoral he hides his sacrilegious ideas and delves deeper into his dream of social regeneration. Transforming the eclogue into a weapon of war against official religion is certainly a singular and original accomplishment. The wise Fontenelle, according to Maréchal, ‘worthy of serving as a model to philosophers’,11 that intelligent and curious mind who discoursed at length on the eclogue12 would never have suspected this genre of such flexibility in adaptation. The process is clever, the skill refined, the malice assured and serious. A remark not lacking in a certain piquancy that must immediately be made is that Sylvain’s new shepherds, more than their predecessors, are penetrated with religious sentiments, and this precisely at a time when Maréchal affirmed himself to be a convinced atheist. But the religion of these simple and naïve country folk is totally pagan. Their divinity is Love, eternal master of men and things, or else its surrogate, Hymen, the palladium of happy couples. Here we are taken back ten years to a period when the young Shepherd Sylvain constructed a temple to Hymen in the heart of nature. As is often the case with Maréchal, his oblique attack on Catholicism here consists in the outlining of a veritable ‘religion without priests’.13 And what is this religion? The pure and simple transposition of Catholic practice. Temple, chapel, prayers, festivals: nothing is missing. As in the Catholic religion, birth and marriage are closely bound to religion. On the other hand, ceremonies for the dead are omitted. Maréchal limits himself to telling us that the ashes of the two most faithful spouses are preserved in a transparent vase, a kind of sacred reliquary that only newlyweds kiss.14 Birth is celebrated by the father, who simply offers thanksgiving to beneficent Nature. Friends and relatives participate in the festival.15 Marriage is celebrated ‘in the presence of Nature’,16 in a rustic temple at the foot of the altar to Love and Hymen. Either the two contracting parties give 11 12 13 14 15 16

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 149. Discours sur la nature de l’églogue. See chapter vii. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, p. 10. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, pp. 69–70. See the end of this chapter.

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each other their hands and, with a tender kiss, place a seal on their union, the husband then removing his belt and placing it before Love while his companion places her crown of white roses on the head of Hymen;17 or the pontiff, that is, a good and sensitive elder, meditates briefly in the sanctuary along with the two lovers, calls the families of the future couple and, after having spoken a few deeply felt words, proceeds to the conjugal union.18 At other times a nuptial tree is planted: it serves as a kind of witness, the guarantor, and the glory of Love.19 After fifty years of marriage the conjugal union is renewed, and a new festival celebrates the happy day. The spouses are led to the foot of the altars by their children, accompanied by a crowd of joyous guests.20 Along with these purely domestic festivals, the pastoral religion includes four great public festivals, one in honor of Friendship, another of Gratitude, the third to solemnize Love, and finally a fourth to sanctify Marriage.21 Sunday exists in another form. It is marked by religious dances and choruses in honor of the divinities of the fields.22 This abundance of pastoral ceremonies, sacraments, prayers, symbols, and hymns proves beyond a doubt that despite his atheism, Sylvain’s sprit was profoundly religious. No great research is required to find the seed of his cultural edifice – as well as so many others – in his previous works, particularly in the Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu. Even though he warns against the birth of a religion and the institution of priests, ‘the first two steps towards corruption’,23 does he not raise altar after altar to human virtues? The indirect attack on the society of the time consists here in the description of an ‘innocent people’ who watched over their flocks and whose ‘sole occupation’ was agriculture. It had forbidden itself commerce and the arts, ‘which lead us too far from rustic morals’. A patriarchal code, ‘dictated by nature’, maintained a state of concord. This proud and simple people ‘thought that man could not, without degrading himself, obey any other man that his father’.24 The allusion is clear. But in fact, isn’t the mere title of the work an entire programme? Does it not indicate the author’s ideal? If he strums Anacreon’s lyre or that of Lucretius; if 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Maréchal, L’âge d’or, p. 38. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, pp. 11–12. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, pp. 62–65. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, pp. 74–77. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, pp. 9–10. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, p. 23. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, Fragment xxxviii, p. 66. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, p. 23.

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he takes inspiration from Theocritus or Gessner; or if he imitates Pibrac, Sylvain always sings of the Golden Age. It was the era when ‘the innocent people’ lived. And so: Under nature’s eye and the wings of love, The happy mortal lived out his days.25 Until the moment when: Man dared attend the school of the tiger. Stronger than his fellow, he imposed his law, Put his hand on his sheaf and told him: This is mine!26 The families that had until then lived in friendship descended into civilization, and the Golden Age vanished. This was Maréchal’s schema for the evolution of society. To be sure, he does not lay it out in L’Age d’Or – the book doesn’t lend itself to this – but it is visibly inspired by it. Let us add that, far from having doubts, as was the case with Boulanger,27 about the existence of the Golden Age, Sylvain firmly believed in it. He was even certain that travelers discovered vague traces of it, among other places in Tahiti, and that it was only the poets who inspired doubts about this marvelous era by weighing it down with artificial ornaments.28 He thinks we can get close to it by returning ‘to the fields and [getting] closer to nature’. His preface, taken, incidentally, from the Livre de tous les âges, is quite clear on this subject. Despite its literary merits L’Age d’Or does not seem to have had great success, if we are to go by only article about it that has come down to us. We read in it: ‘These new tales are nothing but weak imitations of the rustic poems of M. Gessner’.29 Nevertheless, ‘to pay homage to genius’, Mayeur de Saint-Paul thought it right to address to the Journal de Paris the following verse dedicated to Sylvain Maréchal as author of L’Age d’Or:

25 26 27 28 29

Maréchal, L’âge d’or, Fragment vi, p. 19. Maréchal, L’âge d’or, Fragment vi, p. 19. Boulanger, Recherches sur l’origine du despotisme oriental, 1762, p. 135. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. iii. Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, etc, Correspondance litteraire, philosophique et critique, edited by Maurice Tourneux, Paris, 1879, vol. xiii, p. 241.

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When you agreeably paint That Golden Age, that happy age That Ovid, in harmonious verse Traced with such elegance: From your lute seductive sounds Fill our happy soul. The virtue your Muse sings of Enters our hearts as we read you. Good taste enlivens your style, Love prepares your brushes, And we find in your tableaux That happy and easy touch That distinguished from their rivals Gesner [sic], Theocritus, and Virgil.30

3

The Commentaries on the Litanies de la Providence (1783)

We have reached 1783. It was the year of the Litanies de la Providence [Litanies of Providence] by a certain Baron Joseph de Luzec, a work dedicated to a canoness, which Maréchal had no fear of publishing and commenting on. In truth this seems strange, and one can understand why Maréchal’s paternity of these commentaries has been contested. In fact, Lalande tells us that Maréchal’s brother, Mme. Gacon-Dufour, and Mme. Maréchal herself did not know this pamphlet. He views this attribution as either a slander or a pleasantry.31 Had he carefully examined Sylvain Maréchal’s library he would have found the Litanies de la Providence, beautifully bound and annotated by Sylvain himself, who recopied not only Bachaumont’s remarks on the book, but the approval of the royal censor Abbé Duvoisin, stating, on 24 April 1783 that the manuscript ‘breathes a tender and affectionate piety’.32 In this copy Maréchal took pains to indicate in a handwritten note that the pious baron was the author of the Litanies and he had had the bookbinder print and gild the mention ‘Commentaries on Providence by S. Maréchal’.33 People do not act in such a way and are not so attached to a book that is incorrectly attributed to them, and even less to a book aimed at doing them harm. 30 31 32 33

Etrennes du Parnasse pour 1784, p. 50. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, second supplement by Lalande, 1838, p. 71. Author’s colection. Author’s collection.

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In any case, Maréchal formally admitted authorship of the commentaries at the end of his introduction to the Livre échappé au déluge [The Book that Escaped the Flood]. There is thus no possible reason for doubt. And yet the book, ‘full of unction’, is of an unquestionable Christian orthodoxy. It is true there is no mention in it of priests or religious ceremonies, something worthy of note, but the commentator places his hopes in God alone, wishes to raise himself up to him, and to mix his hymns ‘with those of the angels’. He writes: ‘May the incense of our hymns rise day and night and from the four corners of the globe to the foot of the throne where sits the supreme creator and the divine preserver of all things!’ Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Church, the ‘holy scriptures’ are associated with ‘the infinite wisdom of Providence’ and its ‘inexhaustible bounty’, to He who the just man alone will see in the life to come.34 Maréchal knew full well that he would be criticised for writing these pages. This is why he provided the following explanation in the Dictionnaire des athées: ‘The author of a commentary on the Litanies de la Providence au Paraclète et à Paris of 1783 appears to have imitated Buffon. If we were to add the word ‘nature’ to that of ‘providence’, this treatise seems very philosophical’.35 And later: ‘The ancients, more enlightened than their descendants, spoke of the Providence of Nature. They didn’t commit the pleonasm of saying the Providence of God, unless by God we are to understand Nature, in which case the ancients and the moderns walk hand in hand’.36 If, however, we refer to the Buffon article, we see that the latter wanted a religion for the people; that he used the word ‘creator’ instead of the word ‘nature’; and that in this way he gave the Sorbonne satisfaction.37 In another of his writings Maréchal puts these words in the mouth of Pythagoras, which he supports with the authority of Laertius and Plutarch: ‘Let the people, echoes of their priests, call God and Providence of Nature what we mean by the necessity of things and destiny’.38 What is unfortunate is that if we can, in fact, replace God and Providence with ‘the Providence of Nature’ in a certain number of commentaries, this is not possible in a large number of others. As a result, Maréchal is unable to make us believe this was a simple display of wit on his part, and his duplicity is obvious. Nor can we accept the hypothesis of a mock devotional text or a parody, as would be the case the following year with the Livre échappé au deluge, a work

34 35 36 37 38

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 252, Article ‘Litanie’. Commentaires, pp. 72–73, passim. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, p. 371. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, eidtion of year viii, p. 56, Article ‘Buffon’. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 323.

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in which, under cover of familiar words, Maréchal hides the collapse of religion from timorous souls. The commentaries are unquestionably of another type. Was Maréchal really touched by what is commonly called grace? Or had he, more prosaically, written these pious pages to make money, as he did when he collaborated on the Dictionnaire ecclésiastique de la France? Or else, as he himself explained, did he for tactical reasons present himself ‘as a man lacking in consequence and consistency in order not to seem suspect to those he planned to observe from up close?’39 Or had he been forced to make amends? We are within our rights in asking these questions without being able to firmly answer any of them, though giving the last of them priority. Whatever the case, for the edification of the reader it is only right to quote and discuss the most significant of the commentaries. One might think, for example, that Maréchal is speaking of himself when he wonders how man could have become ‘an ungrateful child, so unfeeling of the benefits and marvels of providence that his faith has grown cold’. He attributes this fall to the ‘vain dissipations of a frivolous century’, to the ‘vain disputes of inconsequent but skillful rhetoricians’. He sees in this the work of the ‘sages of the century’ who strayed into ‘a false philosophy’, those ‘false scholars’ who consume precious time in reveries that should have been filled with good works.40 Maréchal beats his breast when he evokes the ‘bold thinkers’ who, at the sight of ‘the apparent disorders of the universe’, dared ‘demand that Providence justify itself’, and others, ‘even bolder’ who ‘were so mad as to deny ineffable Providence, through whom they exist’.41 But how to disarm God? How to obtain pardon for weakness and the crime of impiety? This is the question asked by the sinner, brought willingly or not back to his lost faith. The solution lies in ‘the sincere return’ to the divinity through the humbling of reason, pride, and self-esteem by ‘sacrificing our reason and our feeble talents’.42 These final words are worthy of note, for they prove the introspective value of these commentaries. Maréchal does not forget that he is a man of letters. He even writes that the Christian ‘who aspires to celestial goods [and] who has already obtained some of the treasures of grace’, is intoxicated by their delights without being sated, while ‘the sound of applause, which at first tickles the ear of profane authors, becomes a vain noise, a monotonous sound when he sees them lavished on his competitors’.43 39 40 41 42 43

Maréchal, Livre échappé du déluge, p. 4. Joseph Luzec, Les Litanies de la Providence, commentary by Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 59, 65, 67. Joseph Luzec, Les Litanies de la Providence, commentary by Sylvain Maréchal, p. 65. Joseph Luzec, Les Litanies de la Providence, commentary by Sylvain Maréchal, p. 67. Joseph Luzec, Les Litanies de la Providence, commentary by Sylvain Maréchal, p. 56.

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It is because he knows or pretends to know that Providence pardons sinners ‘who repent in the bitterness of their hearts’,44 that Maréchal claims to allow himself to be ‘forever [guided] by the flame of faith’.45 ‘Yes, divine Providence’, he writes, ‘we will henceforth allow ourselves to be guided by you’.46 Knowledge of the commentator’s later life causes such a commitment assumes a singular flavour. The hypothesis that Maréchal was forced to make amends is explained by the fact that he insisted on annexing to his personal copy of the Rélation véritable et remarquable de la vie et mort de Damoiselle Vérité [The True and Remarkable Account of the Life and Death of Damsel Truth], written by him in the Journal de Deux-Ponts. And this was not by chance for, in the middle of this witty allegory full of Voltairian spice we find a curious passage.47 In the course of ‘her brief appearances in Paris’, Mademoiselle Truth wandered about, finding no place in which to settle. After much trouble she found a post at the Academy of Sciences ‘behind the bust of Descartes’, and after having found refuge at Jean-Jacques’s home on Rue de la Platrière, she went to have a drink ‘in a cabaret on Rue des Prêcheurs, around the middle of the block (no. 29), where she was served wine that wasn’t watered down’. It was then that ‘through complacency’ she ‘allowed herself to be kissed by the oldest son of the house, who had had his eye on her for some time’. As we might guess, this is Sylvain. A short while later, the beauty presents herself at the door of a library that is none other than the Bibliothèque Mazarine. A white-haired priest, syndic of the community of theologians, heads this establishment with his assistant, a young man, the same young man who kissed her on Rue des Precheurs. This young man hastens to guide her around every nook, but the damsel smiles or shrugs at every book she is shown. It was then that the old priest appeared, who harshly scolds his young colleague for having allowed a woman to enter the library. Let us allow Maréchal continue: ‘But this is Damsel Truth, the young man angrily responded. Even if it was Lady Reason, replied the old syndic of the community of theologians, pushing the strange woman to the door. The latter, feeling herself out of place, squeezed the hand of the young librarian, who wanted to leave everything behind and follow her. – No, my friend, she said, don’t follow me: you would have too ill-fated a mistress. – I would be all the more attached to her. – You will have success in business. She escaped from his arms and promised him she’d see him again at a more opportune moment’. 44 45 46 47

Joseph Luzec, Les Litanies de la Providence, commentary by Sylvain Maréchal, p. 64. Joseph Luzec, Les Litanies de la Providence, commentary by Sylvain Maréchal, p. 84. Joseph Luzec, Les Litanies de la Providence, commentary by Sylvain Maréchal, p. 87. Maréchal, Relation véritable et remarquable de la vie et mort de Demoiselle Vérité. Pp. 3–4.

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The words are carefully chosen, and nothing is lacking in this section of the allegory, where Maréchal is personally involved: the stern observation of the librarian of the Mazarine, the fleeting idea of giving up his post, the retreat before the possibility of success in ‘affairs’, and the truth momentarily set aside with the commitment to take it up again ‘at a more opportune moment’. The profound meaning of these skillfully limned allusions seems unmistakable. But it wasn’t known to contemporaries, the relationship only having been made known well after the appearance of the commentaries, as is proved by the signature Sylvain Arlamech placed near the end. Bachaumont was surprised to see a young poet, devoted until then to the graces and gallantry, ‘Leave behind the seductive and playful lyre to take up the austere tones of the language of religion’.48 The surprise must have been general.

4

The Livre Échappé au Déluge (1784)

It wasn’t to last long. The Livre échappé au déluge, which appeared in 1784, would show that Marechal, alias Ar-Lamech or Lahceram (anagrams of his name), without abandoning the word ‘Christian’, was capable of vigorously combatting religion. Vigorously but insidiously, for based on the title, which promised psalms, the pious reader believed he would draw from the book a renewal of his belief and hope in religion, when in reality doubts were being planted in his soul. But what in fact is this book, with its strange title? As Maréchal admitted, it is nothing but a bold imitation of the style of the prophets. For an atheist, the idea is hardly common. Naturally, Sylvain was not the first person to parody the psalms of David; others before him had approached this genre, notably Clément Marot, Racan, and J.-B. Rousseau.49 What Maréchal wanted was to adapt the psalms of the past to his era, while preserving their original cachet. In a word, all he wanted to retain was the form and the unction: in this he differed from his many predecessors, for he intended to draw the substance of the psalms from within himself. All of them short, Maréchal’s psalms are philosophical, covering religious objects and points of morality. The style is correct and elegant, sometimes even elevated. In them are neither the excessive metaphors nor the overblown 48 49

Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets …, vol. 23, p. 89. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, pp. 113–115. Livre échappé au déluge, ‘L’éditeur bien intentionné au lecteur bénévole’.

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hyperbole of the prophets. Bachaumont attributes this to the fact that Sylvain, a profane author, ‘not being inspired by the divinity, can have neither their sublime ardour nor their excess’.50 What goal was he pursuing? As in the Age d’Or, Maréchal proposes ‘bringing his degenerate fellows back to the original simplicity of patriarchal life’, or again to ‘preach penitence to corrupted nations’: in other words, to ‘convert the wicked’.51 But this somewhat abstract objective hides a more positive one that can be easily divined by a simple inspection of the book. In fact, the state of nature, primitive equality, wise moderation, the tyranny of kings, the usurpation of wealth, the lies of priests, all the contradictions that the eighteenth century liked to point out between the man of nature and the civilized man, everything Rousseau and Mably had first demonstrated, all these ideas, which Sylvain Maréchal had made his own and, in certain places, considerably expanded upon, can be found in these psalms. And this time Maréchal has the terms God and Providence frequently followed by varied determinatives: Truth, Nature, Peace, and Justice, which leaves no doubt concerning his private sentiments, despite the cloak he covers himself in. Psalm xxviii says, ‘Father of Nature, recall your children to you; return them to their primitive customs … You subjected them only to paternal power … If they had always been recalled to the law of the God of nature they would be ignorant of absolute power and arbitrary authority … God of my fathers, make it so that man reassumes his original dignity and teach him to govern himself. Make him remember that you didn’t create him to serve or to be served. The children of the Father of Nature must all be free. The Father of Nature did not make slaves’.52 Mother Nature addressing the deputies of the National Assembly in 1791 would say nothing different. The same idea appears when the psalmist asks the Lord if there exists a corner of the earth where it is possible to live in accordance with nature. Alas, war and despotism so dominate the universe that not even a hillock can be found that can serve as an asylum for Liberty! ‘In order to be happy and good’, the author concludes, ‘man must return to and remain within nature’.53 War is the subject of psalm xx. What are its causes, according to Maréchal? Interest and vengeance. And this is why man ‘cold-bloodedly murders his fel-

50 51 52 53

Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, vol. 29, p. 130. Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, psaume xxviii, pp. 79–81. Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, ‘L’éditeur bien intentionné au lecteur bénévole’. Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, psaume, xxix, p. 88.

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lows’, and why, with a ferocious pride, he places on his own head a laurel crown, ‘dyed with the blood of his brothers’.54 What a bitter mockery! The wealthy, of course, are far from spared. Maréchal settles their account in well-constructed, simple, and beautiful phrases that Lamennais seems to have later taken up. ‘I sometimes listened at the gates of the rich, and what I heard consoled me for being poor. O, my God! Never heap wealth upon me if it is true that we can’t be rich and compassionate at the same time. How good it is to say to your fellow: my table is yours. It is sweet to feel your hand drenched in tears of gratitude. But where is the rich man who is unable to sleep as long as a poor man shivers with cold on his doorstep? Where is the rich man who rises early to surprise an indigent man and ease his awakening? Wealthy man, you have exhausted all pleasures, but there remains one for you to taste: try the pleasure of doing good; it will disgust you with all others’.55 Priests, whom Maréchal carefully abstained from speaking of in his commentaries, were treated no more kindly. He recalls, in his ‘portrait of the present time’, that ‘the lords’ priests blushed at their costumes and disguised themselves. The cloak of the Cenobites weighed on their shoulders: they were ashamed to wear it’. But he is particularly rough with them in psalm iv: ‘The cowards! I saw them tremble before the kings of the earth. I saw them deck out Truth in the seductive livery of lies. The cowards!’56 To be sure, these ideas were not precisely orthodox, and no one would have said anything had the author stopped there. But certain that he ran no risk, believing, in his own words, that he was ‘speaking to the deaf and writing for the blind’, the psalmist dared to confront kings. He undertook to discredit them and show that men could do without their betters. ‘Crowned worms! The world after you will be what it was before you. Does the anthill notice the absence of the ant?’ ‘Haughty king, have you done any good? A hundred thousand others could do as much and even more than you. Learn that kings, when they are good, do nothing but their duty. Learn that men can do without even good kings. And that kings will never do enough good to men, their like, to make them forget that they were all equals’.57 All of psalm xviii is in this spirit. The two final verses that have come down to us are incomplete: the censor intervened. But thanks to the curiosity, the zeal, 54 55 56 57

Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, psaume xx, p. 54. Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, psaume iii, pp. 5–6, psaume xii, pp. 31–34. Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, psaume iv, p. 7, psaume xxx, p. 93. Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, psaume xviii, pp. 48–49.

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or the faith of an intrigued writer, an interested censor, or a friend of Sylvain, we are able to reestablish the text: ‘[Haughty king,] know that royalty is [an evil that men have thought necessary]. Finally, know that my God only allowed men to have [kings in order to punish men for having dared demand kings]’.58

5

Maréchal Loses His Post at the Bibliothèque Mazarine

What is strange is that apart from this simple cut the work was approved by the royal censor, Abbé Roy. It ‘cannot but bring back to religion those who are furthest from it. It is a satisfactory testimonial to the talents and good principles of the author’,59 we read in the approval letter of 23 July 1784. This opinion was not widely shared. The priests and scholars of the Collège Mazarin, who felt themselves targeted by certain sentences in the introduction and in several stanzas of the psalms, protested. A private professor denounced the book as a burlesque parody in the style of the prophets and a treatise of impiety and atheism. He insisted on the fact that the author in a way rendered the entire college accomplice to his attack by harbouring this work.60 As a result of this denunciation, the librarian, Abbé Hook, along with a judge, questioned Maréchal in the presence of a crucifix. This parody of justice failed to shake the accused, who courageously assumed full responsibility for his acts. Consequently, he was told he could no longer be kept on at the Bibliothèque Mazarine.61 And so it is that at age thirty four, a new victim of fanaticism, Maréchal lost the sole post that assured him his means of existence. Along with the joys of prescience, he would henceforth come to know all the rancour and suffering of an ill-adapted life.

6

The Noël Anacréontique

As a result of a complaint addressed to the Guardian of the Seals by the Grand Master Riballier, Abbé Roy was summoned to explain himself. He said he was ready to support the doctrine of the patriarch Ar-Lamech with passages in the Holy Scriptures, and the matter was dropped.62 58 59 60 61 62

Maréchal, Livre échappé au déluge, Author’s copy, p. 49. This letter is reproduced on the verso of the title page. The book was sold at the Bibliothèque Mazarine. Bachaumont, Memoires secrets, vol. 29, 9 July 1785, pp. 134–135. Bachaumont, Memoires secrets, vol. 29, 9 July 1785, p. 136.

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In order to avenge himself on his critics and his persecutors, Sylvain ridiculed all of them, always in the sugary and mystical style appropriate to religion. A final psalm was inserted in the Journal des deux Ponts. The priests spit fire and flame. M. de Miromesnil was questioned again. The patriarchal production, placed in the hands of the Grand Master of the Collège de Navarre, was the object of an examination followed by a report. The publication of the Journal de deux Ponts was indefinitely suspended.63 The fuss caused by these psalms gave them publicity, and they soon became quite hard to fine. The Année littéraire vulgarly slaughtered the Shepherd Sylvian, which led the future Madame Roland to say that it was shameful to see the critics ‘arm themselves with the thunder of Jupiter against a few flowers of the field’.64 To infuriate the believers, Maréchal thought of putting to use the Noël anacréontique, which had been dozing among his papers for some ten years. It is an extended allegory of love and Jesus Christ, composed of thirteen couplets sung to the tune of ‘A la venue de Noel’ [When Christmas Comes]. The ‘Apôtre de Cythère’ [Apostle of Cythera] invites lovely ladies to listen to his sweet sermons: Of the little God that I preach, All recognize the immensity; He wasn’t born in a manger: He is for all eternity. This God, whose mother is Venus, also has thorns in his crown and, like Jesus, came to save us. He has his priests, his martyrs, his pleasures, and his punishments: he even has his purgatory with the ‘Temple of Marriage’. But he only received sacrifices two by two and after having sounded hearts. His festival ‘comes every day’, and he is far better than the God of Christians: No fasts, no abstinence In the ritual of love. As penitence, all that is ordered Is to do better the next time. It is clear that the Anacreontic poet stands in for the Lucretian poet who wrote:

63 64

Bachaumont, Memoires secrets, vol. 29, 9 July 1785, p. 136. Lettres de Mme. Roland, ed. Claude Perroud, 1900, vol. i, p. 480.

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It’s a truth that should no longer be kept quiet: Yes, Love is God, the only God on earth.65 The Noël Anacréontique, this ‘trifle’, had already had a certain success ‘in many houses’ in Paris. Many had asked Sylvain about it and, acquiescing to public opinion, he charged Lablée with publishing it. Maréchal had said to him: ‘Try to arrange things in a way favourable to my Noël’. Though Maréchal, in an effort to spare his friend any difficulties, suggested the possibility of sending the book beyond the Paris barriers to the home of his ‘library confrere’, Lablée, either from negligence or fear, turned a deaf ear.66 The book, printed in the capital, now circulated. Manon Philippon received a copy from her friend Bosc and much appreciated ‘the loveliest little Noel rascal imaginable’.67

7

Maréchal Descends into Poverty

Sylvain now bore the weight of all the hatred raining down on him. After having suffered the shameless exploitation of booksellers, he found himself more than ever under their yoke. Since he was proud, he knew poverty; and since he was extremely sensitive, he felt an unspeakable bitterness that only increased his aversion for society. This was the source of the touch of misanthropy that would subsequently mark his social writings. Put to the test, his convictions grew stronger. The dreams of social regeneration with which he had lulled himself continued to haunt him, his hatred of the great and the rich, ‘who ordinarily distinguish themselves by their narrowmindedness and the splendor and cumbersome accoutrements of their retinues’68 was equaled only by his hatred for priests, and both grew with his destitution. In his Pibrac moderne [The Modern Pibrac] Maréchal dedicated a quatrain to friendship: In prosperity friends are without number: We find them everywhere, and nothing is more common;

65 66 67 68

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème contre Dieu, fragment vxii, p. 33. Letter from Maréchal to Lablée. Author’s collection. Lettres de Mme. Roland, ed. Claude Perroud, 1900. On the subject of Noël Anacréontique see also Bachaumont’s Mémoires secrets, vol. xxxi, p. 27. Excerpt of a note written by Maréchal on the back of a playing card. Author’s collection.

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But in adversity we see nothing but their shadow; Happy the unfortunate man who can find even one.69 The moralist poet didn’t suspect that he would one day personally experience this judicious thought. In fact, few friends came to his assistance. In order to obtain shoes and stockings – for he was barefooted – he was forced to borrow 100 francs from his confrere from Parlement P.-F. Réal, future prosecutor at the Châtelet (1789) and assistant prosecutor of the Paris Commune. ‘In order to present myself with a modicum of decency’, he wrote to his benefactor, ‘I also need a shirt, a jacket, and a cravat’.70 Finally, properly attired, he obtained a position and was able to envisage better days.

8

His Relations with Mme. Gacon-Dufour and the Després Family

It was around this time that Sylvain entered into relations with Mme. d’Humières, later Mme. Gacon-Dufour.71 She had the post of reader at the court of Louis xvi. This femme de lettres, three years younger than Sylvain, belonged to a wealthy family. Her marriage with a provincial landowner, M. d’Humières having allowed her to share her time between literature, domestic economy and agriculture, she had become learned in the latter science, to the point that she founded, along with the famous Sonnini, the Bibliothèque Agronomique.72 This taste for things rural explains her connection to Maréchal. It is not as easy to explain the circumstances under which the Shepherd Sylvain got to know Marie Anne Nicolas, known as Després, who would later become his spouse, his Zoë. We note in any case that he started writing to her from 1782.73 Those who knew her aren’t very prolix concerning her charms and wit, which would have excited Maréchal. They haven’t left us a single portrait of her. Only Mme. Gacon-Dufour speaks of her gentleness, her amiability, and above all, ‘her extreme honesty’.74 Originally from Dijon, where her father was a merchant,

69 70 71 72 73 74

Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 97. Signed letter from Maréchal to Réal, n.d., I page, in-4. L. Bigard, in Réal, ancien jacobin, makes no mention of the relations between Real and S. Maréchal. Mme. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 1. Michaud, Biographie universelle, supplement 1838, vol. 65, pp. 10–11; and Nouvelle Biographie générale, published by Firmin-Didot, 1858, vol. xix, p. 123. Recueil de pièces de Sylvain Maréchal. Author’s library. Mme. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 19.

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she was born there 16 February 176475 and was raised religiously. What were her occupations? This is a point that remains in darkness. All we know is that she lived in Paris and Mezières. During the six years she was in the latter city Sylvain Maréchal wrote her touching letters, ‘charming in style and very original’.76 According to Lalande, never was a more passionate correspondence written by a lover.77 Jean-Baptiste-Denis Desprès, Maréchal’s future brother-in-law, two years younger than he, had been a star student at the Collège Mazarin. A Latin ode whose subject was snowballs, which he composed in rhetorical form, having earned him his moment of fame, he was called to an important post by the Baron de Bezenval in 1781. Until the Revolution he distinguished himself there by his honesty and knowledge of business.78 In his youth he had seen Voltaire and frequented those who gravitated to the orbit of that ‘literary monarch’. Despite this, his Christian principles were so unshakeable that they grew stronger in contact with non-belief.79 This difference in beliefs didn’t prevent Maréchal and Després from being good friends, the tolerance of one equaled only by the gentleness of the other.

9

A Few Serious Works, Others Light (1785–1788)

The year 1785 was marked by the appearance of a new work by Maréchal, the Tableaux de la Fable, a lovely little book decorated with elegant engravings. The author’s main concern seems to have been to give women and the young the taste for antiquity, and to spread his philosophical and moral principles as widely as possible while at the same time obtaining subsidies. In the Actions célèbres des grands hommes de toutes les nations [Celebrated Acts of Great Men of All Nations] that began to appear the following year, there are no blatantly non-believing passages. It is true that in writing of Joan of Arc the author abstains from explaining the maiden’s conduct by the intervention of voices, but it is nonetheless true that he doesn’t deliver any attacks on the priests who condemned her. It is in this work that Maréchal appears to have first made use of the lapidary style.80 75 76 77 78 79 80

Archives notariales of Saint-Germian-en-Laye. His parents married 14 October 1748 and his grandparents 24 January 1717. Recueil de pièces de Sylvain Maréchal. Author’s library. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, 1st supplement, p. 11. Michaud, Biographie universelle …, vol. lxii, pp. 411–413. Michaud, Biographie universelle …, vol. lxii, pp. 411–413. The biographies at the beginning include an inscription on lapidary style, but this practice is no longer respected starting with the third installment.

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Continuing his series of historical and descriptive studies, from 1785 we see Maréchal working on various books, the most remarkable of which is the Costumes civils de tous les peuples connus [Civic Customs of All the Known Peoples]. That three editions were published testifies to its success. Faithful to his method, Sylvain naturally took the opportunity to here and there slip in tirades reflecting his opinions. They can be found in the continuation of the Tableaux de la fable, in Paris et la province [Paris and the Provinces] and the Histoire de Grèce [The History of Greece], which appeared over the course of 1786 to 1788. In the Tableaux de la Fable there is a prayer to Fortuna composed by ‘a friend of wisdom who is occasionally misanthropic’. This wise man – Maréchal – ‘angered by the countless wishes addressed to Fortuna from all sides’, exclaims: Divinity worthy of your capricious sex, O Fortuna, be on your way. My selfesteem still matters to me above all: don’t take it from me by inscribing me on your list of favourites. I warn you: I’ll repay you with ingratitude. In forcing me to accept your gifts you can’t stop me from blushing because of them. If I wore your livery I would no longer dare show myself for fear of being confounded with so many people I would scorn if I didn’t pity them. I have none of the characteristics one needs to figure among the wealthy and great of the earth. I was never able to serve, and I wouldn’t know how to command. I don’t have the temperament to be arrogant. Whatever gold and power you would give me I would use against you. I would use them to reestablish around me equality of conditions and the community of property, these two laws as old as nature and which, like her, do not fade with each passing year. In any case, the wobbliness of your wheel will soon cause me to lose my balance. Your wings aren’t fitting for someone who glories in walking on the earth. Your blindfold displeases me: I am too fond of what can be seen. O Fortuna, shrug your shoulders at my prayer if you wish, but I beg you, be on your way.81 The invocation of Comus also deserves to be pointed out, for once again Maréchal affirms his egalitarian and communist ideas. ‘Good Comus! Minister of Nature and mother of all men: distribute equally your favours among all your children. Don’t allow some to gorge themselves on the superfluous while others lack the necessary. Don’t allow there to be several tables, and that at one all that is eaten are the leftovers from the other. Good Comus! When will we see

81

Maréchal, Tableaux de la Fable, vol. ii, pp. 5–8.

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those happy days shine when men, all equals, all brothers, will sit at the same table, like the children of one family’.82 Maréchal allowed himself other incursions into the social realm under cover of the Golden Age,83 a time ‘when this metal was unknown’, a century ‘during which everything belonged to everyone and theft was unknown, because it wasn’t yet of any use’. In Paris et la province there is a lengthy description of Notre Dame cathedral. Quite a scabrous subject for an atheist! But Maréchal isn’t in the least bit bothered. The psalmist substitutes the paraphrase ‘Father of nature’ for God.84 The writer even allows himself to criticize Vassé’s statue of the Virgin as not sufficiently rendering ‘the distinctive and supernatural character of Mary’.85 Jesus becomes ‘the wise legislator of Christians, who drove the merchants from the temple who profaned the asylum’.86 He also slips in this point concerning Nicolas Letourneux: ‘A priest and scholar, modest and pious: these four qualities aren’t always found together in one person’.87 The first installment contains a colourful passage. Exaggerating a bit, in today’s terms it could be entitled: ‘The class struggle as seen from the towers of Notre Dame’. From the top of the edifice Maréchal contemplates the marvels at his feet: ‘The genius of the arts reigns here in all its glory’. But he quickly reins himself in: ‘All these pleasures, daughters of luxury, are they pure and exempt from suffering? Do all these palaces contain happy people, and those who are, do they deserve to be so? It seems that religion raised these towers to recall the faithful to salutary thoughts’. And what are these thoughts? A ‘short digression’ provides some of them. Every year, the brow still covered with the ashes of Christian humility taken at the foot of the holy altars, the pontiff would have one of the happy ones of the century climb the towers, and it would then be said to the first of them: Rich men and great, all you see from here is yours, and yet it is the work of the poor. Go back down and never forget that the superfluity of some is a crime when others lack the necessary. And you, we would say to the latter, don’t murmur or be discouraged at the sight of the impudent opulence of your fellows. The great who disdain

82 83 84 85 86 87

Maréchal, Tableaux de la Fable, vol. v, p. 9. Maréchal, Tableaux de la Fable, vols. i and vi. Maréchal, Paris et la province, first installment, p. 5. Maréchal, Paris et la province, first installment, p. 12. Maréchal, Paris et la province, second installment, p. 19. Maréchal, Paris et la province, first installment, p. 16.

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you, the rich who insult you will leave life as naked as you. Know that this distressing idea corrupts all joys and serves as sufficient vengeance: descend and take up again your various labours, telling yourself all the while: one is always rich with a sensitive heart, always noble with an elevated soul.88 It is true that in the end the poor, instead of rising up, consoled themselves by thinking that virtue and death reestablish equality in the ranks. Maréchal who, we will see, was already thinking about the general strike,89 does not brandish its specter here. Nevertheless, it must be agreed that it required uncommon imagination and conviction to give us so colourful and striking a portrait of the conflict of the two great rival classes in 1786. Political allusions can be found in the Histoire de Grèce, which appeared in 1788.90 For example, it is recalled that before Lycurgus, the Greek nation ‘vegetated’ under two nearly absolute kings. But Lycurgus ‘reduced’ the kings within the state to nothing but ‘the first among equals’. He saw to it that the sovereign would no longer distribute rewards because he was too often tempted to use them to pay for the silence of the law. He prohibited ‘the pomp of the representatives’, from which flowed ostentatious display, ‘the scourge of the best constituted states’. Through this method, Maréchal adds – and the allusion here is more direct – ‘the personal expenses of the monarch can never be the motivation for taxes; never will they cause the poverty of the people’. A bit further on, casually relating the stoning of the king of the Arcadians by his ‘rebellious subjects’, the author gratuitously attributes to the latter the following inscription, which he placed on the column raised at the ‘place of the execution’. Here The Arcadians Rendered justice On their sovereign Convinced That a perfidious ally Could not be a good prince. In just a few years it is Louis xvi who will pay with his death, ‘the fruit of his treason’. 88 89 90

Maréchal, Paris et la province, first installment, pp. 7–8. See chapter vi. Maréchal, Histoire de la Grèce, pp. 9, 15, and 16.

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In order to more fairly appreciate the intense labour that Maréchal undertook, we must take into account that he composed all these works simultaneously, along with the continuation of the Antiquités d’Herculanum. Given these conditions, the artists and printers who worked with him might have experienced some delay in receiving copy. But this was not the case, so great was Maréchal’s concern that no one have any reason to complain about him.91 Fou pour amour [Mad for Love] (1786), a simple anecdote, and the Dictionnaire d’Amour [Dictionary of Love] (1788) stand apart from his serious publications. These two writings are the final ones in a genre that Sylvain Maréchal would soon publicly abandon, though it is to be noted that both of them are works of prose. But this is not to say that the Shepherd Sylvain deserted the Temple of the Muses. In the Almanach des Grâces [Almanac of the Graces], in the Etrennes de Mnemosyne [Mnemosyne’s New Year’s Gift], and in the Almanach des Muses he continued to sing of love. But it seems that once again a glimmer of bitterness pierces through his verses: Is it no longer possible to love? Ah! Tell me, my dear friends: Where will I find a sensitive heart? Are there no longer any in this country? Must I all my life through Languish alone, or flutter about? I so need to have beside me A true woman to love.92 Having learned from his disappointments how much we ‘blind ourselves’ by hoping to enflame women – who are so distractible, and who don’t even take ‘the time to love’,93 our shepherd would be satisfied with a little bit of love at the time when the sparrows flutter around his imaginary flock. Addressing ‘sensitive women’ he writes: To your goodness we recommend A lovable shepherd. As wage he asks only For a bit of Love when May comes. 91 92 93

Mme. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 26. Almanach des Muses [pour 1788], p. 35. Almanach des Muses [pour 1788], p. 35.

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He’s a good creature: But if no one deigns Share the evils he endures He will die before April.94 An anonymous women responded quite wittily to the unhappy shepherd, remarking that forest creatures [‘sylvains’ in French – tr.], more favoured by Nature than the warbler, ordinarily ‘made love all year ‘round’.95

10

Sylvain and Lucile Duplessis

It was during this period that Maréchal rhymed for Lucile Duplessis, Camille Desmoulins’ future wife, amorous romances that the tender maiden transcribed in her little notebook.96 Let us recall that Duplessis père hardly viewed Camille Desmoulin’s love for his daughter favourably. He opposed a marriage that responded to the reciprocal aspirations of the two young people. The sorrows of the two lovers are found in the verses copied by Lucile in her notebook. Sylvain Maréchal composed several pieces to depict the lovers’s torments. To be honest about it, it was perhaps not only compassion that was behind the Shepherd Sylvain’s poetic impulse. Lucile was delectibly beautiful. According to a contemporary, ‘She was an adorable little blonde’.97 Maréchal, though thirtyseven years old, could very well have been seduced by Lucile’s irresistible grace and the dreamy and romantic soul. When he recounts the story of the unfortunate shepherd Sylvandre, who falls in love with Nice, the daughter of ‘a proud labourer’,98 was Sylvain thinking only of Camille? And was Nice Zoë or was she Lucile? What is more, one can’t but be struck by the fact that Sylvain’s verses occupy a large place in Lucile’s little notebook. When the young girl, in the silence and solitude of the evening, plucked the petals of her life as if it were a daisy, and with sensual delight transcribed the poetry that best expressed her aspirations 94 95 96 97 98

Almanach des Muses [pour 1788], p. 192. Almanach des Muses [pour 1788], p. 192. J. Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins. Etude sur les Dantonistes, 1875, in 8, pp. 143–144. J. Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins. Etude sur les Dantonistes, 1875, in 8, p. 133. This play is titled Le Trésor, Romance Historique. Tune: ‘Au find d’une sombere vallée’. It was reproduced in its entirety in G. Lecoq, Le cahier rouge de Lucile Desmoulins, 1880.

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and dreams, it was Sylvain she turned to. And when she transcribed in her notes, ‘Write on my tomb: She loved’,99 Lucile does nothing but make use of the Shepherd Sylvain’s epitaph,100 unless she was responding to it directly. All conjectures are possible: perhaps Sylvain and Lucile abandoned themselves to the mutual attraction of their natures. Lucile needed friendship, someone to confide in at the age of great revelations; she sought asylum at the side of the bard of love, with the ‘librarian of Lovers’. And so the Shepherd Sylvain, from faithful and passionate friend, gradually nearly became, under the charm of amorous secrets, Camille’s rival. We can also suppose that the intimacy that was established between Lucile and Sylvain, a result of a rare set of circumstances, resembles those bonds known only to refined natures, and which, though they don’t procure the intoxication of love, nevertheless provide a taste of its most delicate pleasures. All of this is wrapped in the most complete uncertainty, for the light shed by the documents grows faint when we try to discern the ties that united two human beings, especially when these ties were cause – as would later occur – of insinuations that give cause for thought.101 In any case, prudence is called for, and Sainte-Beuve was right when he said of historians who make assertions on such delicate questions: ‘Monsieur, how can you be so certain in these matters?’ The strangest piece Sylvain composed for his friend Lucile was certainly Le contrat de marriage par devant Nature [The Marriage Contracts Made Before Nature], ‘a childishly idyllic poem’, like the story of Sylvandre, in which our ‘atheist Rousseau’ makes an appearance. It bears the date 3 September 1787. Hylas and Hélène loved each other; ‘Only the crown of Marriage was missing from their tender hearts’. Their families opposing their marriage, what were they to do? Come, said Hylas to his Hélène, Follow me deep into the forest. Let us abandon the human race, So little worthy of our respect. Their laws, made for imposture, Don’t allow us to wed; Let us appeal to nature, And before it, let us unite. 99 100 101

J. Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins. Etude sur les Dantonistes, 1875, in 8, p. 142. See chapter xv. See chapter vi.

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Our two lovers flee to an untamed region where ‘hearts aren’t tortured’. There, in the solitude and ‘on an altar of new grass’, they unite without any need for priests or notaries.102 This was always Sylvain Maréchal’s concept of free marriage. Around the same time he gave this to Lucile Duplessis, did he not rise up against the remarriage of a widow: Love is a born republican: It suffers under a master. Woe on whoever persists In offering it a chain.103 This figures in a playful poem, but in his serious publications, reinforced by references, Sylvain displays his libertarian concept of marriage. During this the same period he would point out that in the Molucca Islands the residents of Amboina contract marriage only before Nature. ‘The two spouses’, he adds, ‘remain together as long as they deem fit. If not, they leave each other the same way they were joined. It is claimed that despite this defect in form there are as many happy marriages on the Isle of Amboina as anywhere else’.104 Two years before his death Maréchal was still condemning absurd laws imagined by the ambitious that prohibited, ‘by who knows what foolish proprieties’, the most legitimate of unions.105 During the summer the Duplessis family, in keeping with the usages of the old bourgeoisie, spent the holidays on a property they owned in Bourg-laReine.106 There is no doubt but that that Maréchal, like Camille Desmoulins, took part in the picnics and strolls in the fields: he was too much of a regular of the Duplessis household not to be admitted to the hermitage in Bourg-laReine. Accompanied by the charming Lucile, we can easily imagine him in this rustic décor, under the linden trees that lined the garden, in the nearby valley filled with willows, amidst nature, which he adored. He scouted the area, in the direction of ‘the pleasant hill that separated the two lovely villages of Ivri and Vitri sur Seine’,107 in the quarries illuminated ‘here and there by openings’,108 as 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

G. Lecoq, Le cahier rouge de Lucile Desmoulins, pp. 7–9. Almanach des Muses [pour 1788], p. 120. Maréchal, Costumes civils de tous les peuples, vol. i, p. 5. Maréchal, La femme-abbé, p. 222. J. Claretie, Le roman de Lucile Desmoulins, Journal de l’Universitedes Annales, 1916, Vol. i, pp. 89–91. Maréchal, La femme-abbé, p. 199. Maréchal, La femme-abbé, p. 200.

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well as in ‘the charming groves of Marly’,109 near ‘the astounding machine’:110 the Shepherd Sylvain drew from a large part of his poetic inspiration from the area. Later, after having trodden upon the grass and dreamed at the edge of the brook, he returned to Paris, ‘its ground hardened by exhausting and muddy cobblestones’.111 When he again saw ‘the fetid stream’ of Rue au Fer his aversion for big cities turned to disgust. He would at least have liked his birthplace to be less repugnant and, filled with memories of antiquity, he amused himself by constructing in his dreams, in the heart of the capital, a joyful flower market composed of a glass rotunda with a fountain in the middle. He thought that ‘the daily sight of a flowerbed in the heart of Paris could have an unimaginable influence’. Indolent Parisian women, attracted by this spectacle, would awaken earlier and ‘the lovers of beautiful nature, forced to stay in town for business, would gladly steal an hour from their sleep to amuse themselves with fresh and pleasant images’.112 The Halles, where hardly any air circulated, where a thousand commodities piled up and mixed together corrupted each other, and where the merchants, become objects of repulsion after spending their time in the muck, were also subjected to his criticism.113 Here again he would have liked people to be inspired by antiquity. A practice he found revolting was the slaughtering of bleating lambs under the window of the house he was born in on Rue des Prêcheurs between Easter and Pentecost. Concerned about the interests of children, he asked, in the Journal de Paris, for the promulgation of a regulation prohibiting butchers from carrying out these executions before the public’s eyes.114 As a diversion from these brutal scenes of realism and from his forced exile from nature, Sylvain liked to go to the outdoor taverns around Paris. Under these ‘pleasant vaults of verdure’, he watched the common folk full of joy and good nature forget ‘the struggles of the day before’ and ready themselves for ‘the labours of tomorrow’. He observed there ‘all the gradations of love’, and learned more than one philosophical lesson.115

109 110 111 112 113 114 115

Marechal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. ii, p. 73. Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 157. [note: Marly was the site of a large hydraulic system used to pump water from the Seine to the palace of Versailles]. Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 157. Journal de Paris, May 1786. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 140. Journal de Paris, 25 May 1787. Maréchal, Dictionnaire d’Amour, part i, p. 99.

Chapter 5 1

The Almanach des Honnêtes Gens

A letter from the period tells us that ‘there was a strong appetite for almanacs in Paris at the beginning of every new year’.1 In Paris but also in the provinces, for almanacs were among the most widely distributed of publications, reaching the mass of the people. Consulting the lists of books sold by peddlers, they were for some time the only books read in the countryside. So there’s no great surprise that Sylvain Maréchal thought to profit from this fad and launch an almanac of his own, using one of the oldest frameworks of human thought to advance the philosophical propaganda to which he was passionately attached. It is not surprising that an almanac like his, one of a new kind, caused no small stir. Breaking with the Christian era, with the Gregorian calendar, with the saints and the traditional festivals of the church, meant both satisfying the swaggerers of impiety and offending the prejudices that still dominated the era. It above all meant provoking and causing scandal, and as a result confronting new persecutions. This time Maréchal would pay for his boldness, not with his position, but with his freedom. The Almanach des Honnêtes Gens [Almanach of Good People] is the title of the work we are going to examine and which gives Maréchal his place as the principal precursor of the revolutionary calendar. We say ‘principal’ for Maréchal was preceded in this bold foray to varying degrees by three men: Gency, Vasselier, and Riboud, the latter two inspired by the philosophical spirit. Henri Welschinger is thus in error when he writes that Maréchal was ‘the first man who, on the eve of the Revolution, had the idea of composing a political almanac’.2

2

Maréchal’s Predecessors

Gency, who pursued no political aim, and had the sole goal of educating the young military nobility, had substituted saints on every day of the year with warriors in his Calendrier des héros, ou Manuel des militaires [Calendar of Heroes, or The Soldier’s Manual], published in 1772 by the widow Duchesne.3 1 Bibliothèque de la Ville de Paris, N A ms. 108 folio 21. 2 Les Almanachs de la Révolution, no. 1. 3 In fact, only six months were composed. They constitute an imposing volume of 450 pages, which Maréchal reviewed in his Dictionnaire des Hônnetes Gens, p. 126.

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The postal employee Joseph Vasselier, born in Rocroy, a friend of Voltaire and a poet himself,4 had published a strange pamphlet in Geneva in 1785 entitled Almanach nouveau de l’an passé [New Almanach of the Year Gone By].5 In it the saints are replaced, not only by great warriors, but by the famous of all kinds and of all countries. In this mix of illustrious names Ninon de Lenclos stands alongside Marie Antoinette, ‘our dear queen’, and Louis xvi, ‘our good king’, stands with Saladin; 31 December was dedicated to the author of the almanac. The rest of the calendar was identical to the Gregorian one. At almost the same time, Thomas Riboud, a magistrate and venerable of the Lodge of the Chosen of Bourg-en-Bresse, as well as a future deputy in the Legislative Assembly,6 put out a calendar conceived in the same spirit. The work was called Etrennes litteraires, ou Almanach offert aux amis de l’humanité [A Literary New Year’s Gift, or Almanac Offered to the Friends of Humanity].7 This in-octavo volume of twenty-four pages began with ‘observations’ in which the author laid out the goal he pursued. He noted that the ordinary calendar only offers as models to imitate individuals who ‘honoured religion through uncommon virtues or extraordinary sacrifices’. And yet, he said, ‘there exists another class of benefactors of humanity’. For him, along with men of religion, literary figures and scientists are also capable ‘of exciting our admiration and gratitude’. He adds: What do we not owe to the men who, in the career of the sciences and letters, have dedicated every instant of their lives to our happiness and our education? Consolers and ornaments of humanity, don’t they also have sacred titles that should make them cherished and respected? Man owes what he is to science and letters; without their assistance he would hold but an obscure rank in nature, and it is through them that he acquired the superiority that distinguishes him from the mass of beings. But in admitting that man’s grandeur and prosperity is their work, he is frequently ungrateful towards those who labour on his behalf. 4 Michaud, vol. xvii, 99. 677–678 and Quérard, vol. x, p. 63. Vasselier’s poetry can be found at the Bibliothèque Nationale, octavo, Ye 5692. 5 Bibl. Nat. octavo, Z 2112. According to Count d’Ideville (cf. John Grand Carteret Les Almanachs français, p. 210) Vasselier was nothing but the ‘arranger’ of this book. One need only compare the table of contents of the almanac with the list of poems to see that Vasselier is unquestionably the author. Even though the almanac is undated, it appeared in 1785 for 1784, 1 January was indeed a Thursday and February had twenty-nine days. In any event, its title leaves no room for doubt on this subject. 6 Cf. Philippe Le Duc, Vie et poésies du Président Riboud, Bourg, 1862. 7 Bibl. Nat. Z p. 1832.

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Riboud placed these illustrious men in his calendar in order to ‘pay a portion of society’s debt’ to them. He thought that doing so led people to know them better and read them. Though he didn’t openly say so, one feels that he saw this as an efficient method for combatting the cult of saints. The clever magistrate replaced religious solemnity with purely civic festivals that recalled the works and benefactions of celebrated individuals. There were thus six festivals in January: the Festival of Kings, on the sixth, the day dedicated to Marcus-Aurelius; on the eleventh the Festival of the University, dedicated to Rollin; the Festival of Agriculturalists on the sixteenth, dedicated to Columelle; etc. The most important festival of the year took place on 11 August, the day dedicated to the chancellor of the Hospital: in this case it was a matter of recalling men to greater tolerance. The 9 September, dedicated to Galileo, was marked as the festival of persecuted literary figures. Several days bore the names of saints, and there were even festivals dedicated to theologians, orators of the pulpit, and penitents (tolérance oblige). It is nonetheless true that on a whole, given the choice of the men celebrated as well as the festivals celebrated, Thomas Riboud’s calendar was composed in a rationalist spirit. Did Maréchal know this volume? This is certain, since he wrote a brief analysis of it. But there is reason to suppose that he only saw it after the appearance of his Almanach des Hônnetes Gens. In any case, he defended himself against having found in it the source of his idea for a new calendar: ‘This almanac, which preceded that of the Good Men, contains its germ, but it didn’t provide the idea. This isn’t the first time that two good men have met up’.8 As for Vasselier’s calendar, it does not appear that Maréchal was aware of it. He makes no mention of it in the bibliographic notice dedicated to almanacs related in some way to his own, and there is no more reason for him to have forgotten Vasselier and not Riboud or Gency. One thing that is certain is that in 1779, six years before the appearance of the Vasselier almanac, Maréchal, in his outline of a religion of virtue, already dedicated every day of the year to the memory of a wise man whose life and writings were to be read contemplatively by the civic pontiff. What is more, to reach ‘the temple of morality’ it was necessary to pass through several circular ranks of busts representing ‘wise men commendable because of their intellectual value and beneficence’, and whose pedestal contained a selection of their writings ‘or, more precious still, the story of their lives’.9

8 Maréchal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes gens, p. 126. 9 Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 195–196.

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In 1780, still before the appearance of the Vasselier almanac. Maréchal spoke at length on the division of time among the ancients and on the wider, international level, posed the larger question of the reform of the calendar. He said: ‘Despite the successive reforms of every people, the calendar is still susceptible to this … and it would be desirable for there to be but one for all nations illuminated by the same sun’.10 As for Gency’s almanac, which Maréchal plainly knew, if not in the year of its appearance at least in the following years, and given the relationship he had with its publisher, the widow Duchesne, it is quite possible that Maréchal drew from this work the idea of replacing the names of saints, not with those of military men, but with the names of illustrious civic personages. The publication of these various almanacs within a few years of each other proves, in any case, that the idea of a transformation and ‘secularisation’ of the calendar was already in the air at that time.

3

Design and Spirit of the Calendar

How is Maréchal’s calendar presented? To what extent does it resemble the almanacs of his predecessors? To what extent does it differ? And in what way is it more innovative? This is what we must now examine. We should first note, without weighing ourselves down with scholarly considerations of the etymology of the word, that the name ‘almanac’ Maréchal gave to his book is not the correct one. Gency, Vasselier, and Riboud had produced almanacs, that is, they’d added various glosses and articles to the distribution of time. With Gency this resulted in a hefty volume, with Vasselier a little in-duodecimo of 204 pages, and with Riboud an in-octavo of 24 pages. Maréchal’s work is of a completely different design. It is not even a book. Rather, it’s a double leaf in-quarto: purely and simply a calendar. Its sole material difference from calendars of the period is that the lower quarter of the leaf, the ground floor, if you will, is reserved for explanations by the author, with the upper half containing, above the title, the mentions: ‘The first year of the reign of Reason’, and ‘For the present year’, with as an epigraph the proverb: ‘Tell me who you frequent and I’ll tell you who you are’. In truth, Maréchal, who loved research and certainly consulted many almanacs before composing his calendar, could not have failed to note the rather

10

Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. p. 167.

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summary content of the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens. He realized that, like Gency, but in a more cursory fashion, he had to provide a summary of the lives of the ‘good people’ with whom he replaced the saints. He wrote that one would like ‘each of them to be painted with one stroke. We will attempt to supplement this in a short, portable book that will appear over the course of the year under the title Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens’. This complementary volume would, indeed, appear, but after a delay of three years. In the meanwhile Maréchal, through a serious practical effort, supplemented the modest theoretical content of his work. He had made a small rotunda with twelve columns forming a calendar in relief, and he notified those interested that when cut out each month could be placed one of the twelve columns of the rotunda. He informed readers that the model could be seen at his address, 29, Rue des Prêcheurs. The almanac was also distributed there, ‘either in leaves, or pasted to cardboard, or folded into a case’. Maréchal was thus both writer and publisher of his calendar, which gives no name for the printer. This fact, unnoticed until today, has some significance. It attests to the fact that Sylvain sought in vain an artisan of the book who would assume responsibility for the launching of the almanac. This demonstrates the fears inspired by this model. These fears doubtless seemed exaggerated to the Shepherd Sylvain. Strong in the immunity from which his predecessors had benefited, and refusing to accept the idea of the repression of the publication of two simple in-quarto leaves, Maréchal placed his name at the bottom of the calendar. This was not an act of bravado, and Beyerlé11 is correct when he says that the Shepherd Sylvain, in composing and publishing his almanac, did not think he would incur the thunderbolts of power. If he thought otherwise his engaging his pious parents in the adventure, for he whom felt such strong filial loyalty, would be inexplicable, for the address he gave was that of his parents. Like Vasselier and Riboud, Maréchal made the apostles, confessors, martyrs of the faith, Church fathers, and the blessed of both sexes disappear from the calendar. He replaced them with philosophers, litterateurs, scientists, artists, even sovereigns: in a word, all those who were humanity’s consolers and guides. But instead of placing them in a disordered fashion and producing a hodge podge, he methodically inscribed them either on their birthdays or their date of death, following each name with the mention ‘n’ [naissance – birth] or ‘m’ [mort – death], apologising that the lack of space did not allow for the year of birth and death for all. Every day is then an anniversary festival dedicated to illustrious men. 11

Almanach des femmes célèbres … pour l’an vi, p. ix.

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Sylvain did not content himself with this innovation. Much bolder than his predecessors, he overturned the Gregorian calendar by making the greatest of modifications, one that affected the very notion of time. In fact, as we saw, the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens is dated ‘the first year of the reign of Reason’. With a sweep of the pen Maréchal crossed out the Christian era. He went further: in order not to use a publication date computed according to the ecclesiastical calendar, he resorted to the vague formula: ‘For the present year’. This meant deliberately placing his calendar under the sign of Philosophy. Maréchal was a recidivist in this regard, for seven years earlier he already dated his poetry against God as ‘the first year of the reign of Reason’.12 And this was not all: Maréchal began the year on 1 March. Why? Was it on order to return to an ancient tradition? Was it to begin the year as the Freemasons did? Perhaps for both reasons. In any case, it can be supposed that on this point the Freemason Maréchal was inspired by the Masonic calendar. Another innovation: in the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens the names of eight months are changed. March is called Princeps, April becomes Alter, May bears the name of Ter, June of Quartile, July of Quintile, and August of Sextile. The months of September, October, November and December, resuming their proper place, abandoned since Numa, keep their names. January and February, one consecrated to a king the other to a god, are henceforth Undecember and Duodecember. In this case Maréchal is not only carrying out a rationalist labour; he was supported by popular tradition preserved in certain provinces which still called these months ‘eleventh’ and ‘twelfth’. Each month was divided into décades or periods of ten days, in imitation of the Greeks and the Egyptians, who distributed time in weeks as well as décades. The five or six days over the 360 days were called epagomenes, as in ancient Egypt. They were dedicated to purely moral solemnities. Thus, a Festival of Love took place in early spring, on 31 March, or Princeps; a Festival of Marriage at the beginning of summer, on 31 May, or Ter; a Festival of Friendship in winter, on 31 December. A Festival of all the Aëmere Great Men, that is, whose dates of birth and death are unknown, was set for 31 January or Undecember. Through the substitution of civic for religious festivals, Maréchal obviously joins with Thomas Riboud, but he sets himself apart from him at the same time by the character and small number of these festivals. As we can see from the few examples cited above, Riboud in fact multiplied the number of festivals and abstained from giving them any moral importance.

12

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur dieu.

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There is proof that in 1782, three years before the publication of Riboud’s calendar, Sylvain Maréchal had already had the idea of organising the same pagan festivals in his calendar. In the Age d’or, his collection of pastoral poems, the touching tale of Zulmis and Daphne, who ‘loved the way people love when their love is forbidden’, tells us that four great festivals were celebrated every year in their hamlet. In the middle of winter three whole days were dedicated to friendship; the worst time of year was chosen to teach that ill fortune was the touchstone of friendship. During autumn harvests they celebrated the divinity who presided over gratitude: they seized the moment of its benefactions to give thanks to nature. The first of May was the great festival of love. During summer they also thought to sanctify marriage and give a festive air to the conjugal state. It was normally during this festival that marriages were contracted.13 These lines perfectly summarize Maréchal’s ideas and unequivocally establish that despite the official publication dates of the almanacs, the Shepherd Sylvain preceded Thomas Riboud. What is more, at an even earlier date, in 1780, alluding to the Festival of Love, or Erotin, which the Greeks celebrated every five years, Maréchal wrote: ‘We have great need of such festivals today, but it is only that Greeks that could invent them. Perhaps among modern people it will be the French who will imitate the Athenians’.14 As concerns the choice of figures, Maréchal announced that there was complete freedom to substitute for the names he chose those that deserved preference, and for everyone to imitate within his family what he did for his own. And in fact, on 21 October he celebrated the Festival of his Father. ‘An almanac entirely composed in this spirit’, he notes, ‘cannot but benefit morals’.15 Maréchal would then go further, prescribing that each family make a special calendar containing the domestic events of the year.16 This was a firm idea of his, since in 1779 in his religion of Virtue he proposed that after the elegy to a sage in the Temple of Morals, every father should ‘follow this example in his household [by] having the memory of his ancestors celebrated through the mouths of his children, jealous to one day deserve the same honours’.17

13 14 15 16 17

Maréchal, L’Age d’or, pp. 9–10. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. i, p. 132. Maréchal, Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, nota bene. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 57. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 196.

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Let us now examine the ‘good people’ who Maréchal included on his list. According to Eugène de Mirecourt, we find in the Maréchalian catalog ‘those names most worthy of scorn alongside the most respectable’.18 Obviously everything depends on your point of view, and it is pointless to enter into a discussion on this subject. This is not the question. What must be done is enter into the author’s intentions. Riboud, though as tolerant as Maréchal, in his calendar avoided associating saints with philosophers. At the very most, he agreed to introduce a few of the latter, but as litterateurs. In this way, as Lalande said, he avoided ‘too sharp a contrast’.19 Maréchal worked differently, which provoked the irritation of believers. Without claiming ‘to lay down the law’, through his calendar he nevertheless proposed to bring all men together ‘in a common bond of fraternity’. But ‘since unfortunately (and we should note this term) the inhabitants of the earth are divided into religions’, and since, as the proverb says, ‘there are upright men everywhere’, he decided to bring together in his almanac personalities of all confessions, all opinions, and all nationalities. ‘The Almanach des Honnêtes Gens’, he said, ‘could just as well be consulted by a Catholic, a Protestant, and an Anglican; by a Christian and a Mahometan; an idol-worshipper and a Hebrew’. And so, to satisfy men attached to philosophy he placed in it Voltaire, Spinoza, Pope, and Giordano Bruno, just as, to be agreeable to Catholics, he inscribed the names of Bossuet, Fénelon, and Bourdaloue. It was quite logical. The name of Jesus Christ can be found among these upright people. It has been thought and believed that he enjoyed special favour, since he figures in it twice: on 25 December, his presumed date of birth, and on 3 April, the presumed date of his death. But when we examine the calendar a bit more closely we realise that the God of the Christians is treated no differently from Epicurus, Helvétius, J.-J. Rousseau, Michelangelo, Marcus Aurelius and so many others listed on the anniversaries of their birth and their death. One realises that despite the tokens he offers religion under cover of tolerance, he gives away the game and visibly tips the balance to the side of philosophy. Is it not Socrates who is the only person to be distinguished among all others? He is inscribed in italics on 6 April and on 16 October. Admiral de Coligny figures on 24 August in order to recall the horrible Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. In addition, on 1 June – or Quartile – we read ‘Brutus drives out Tarquin’; on 25 February – or Duodecember – ‘the Edict of

18 19

Mirecourt, Avant, Pendant et Aprs la Terreur, 1866, vol. 1, p. 14. First supplement to the Dictionnaire des Athées, p. 3.

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Nantes’; and on 15 March – or Princeps – ‘Brutus kills Caesar’. These are the only facts mentioned, but they take on particular significance, since they mark the triumph of the republic or the proclamation of the freedom of religion. Looking at the calendar more closely we see that only one date has no name or act attached to it, 15 August, which happens to be the author’s birthday. Having placed his father in the almanac, and counting himself in the category of upright people, Sylvain – as Vasselier had done – certainly thought of including himself, but being more modest than the latter, he left it to the reader to fill in the lacuna. This is the explanation that we can and must provide. But Génin, publisher of a reprint of the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, saw an ‘extraordinary particularity’ in this lacuna,20 in that 15 August is the birthday of Napoleon i. Génin implies that Maréchal had a foreboding about the young Napoleon, then a completely unknown simple lieutenant on leave, about the man who would fill ‘the world with his name and his glory’.21 This is not the first time that there has ever been a coincidence, and it is enough to point out this explanation in passing, one every bit as ‘extraordinary’ as the oddity it rests on.

4

The Intervention of Parlement

A ruckus accompanied the appearance of the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens. Believers issued cries of rage and demanded sanctions be taken against an author with the effrontery to give his full name and address and publish his almanac himself. Maréchal was considered wicked. ‘It’s impossible to imagine he could achieve the impudence and irreligion his almanac demonstrates’.22 In short, the two in-quarto leaves caused so much agitation that the authorities had to step in, which ten years later led a literary publication to make this reflection: ‘France is the only country on earth were the government concerns itself with an almanac’.23 In fact, Maréchal’s almanac was denounced in Parlement. Events then moved quickly, and on 7 January 1788 the counselor Louis Antoine Séguier, king’s counsel, pronounced at the court of Parlement a long speech24 on the incriminated almanac: ‘A wretched production’; ‘a work of impiety, atheism, and madness’.

20 21 22 23 24

Maréchal, Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, 1836 reprint, p. 3. Maréchal, Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, 1836 reprint, p. 6. Mirecourt, Avant, Pendant et Après la Terreur, vol. i, p. 4. Paris littéraire, year vii, part 1, p. 51, article ‘Sylvain Marechal’. It appears in the Arrêt de la Cour du Parlement qui condamne un imprime sans nom

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Séguier began with the title of this ‘truly scandalous book’, seeking to discover the author’s goal: Does he want this to be an almanac for the use only of ‘upright people’, or did he want this catalog to serve to forever place before our eyes the men who are supposedly ‘upright’, whose names he thinks left a lasting mark on mankind? This question might have been difficult to solve if the writer of this almanac hadn’t taken the trouble to educate us concerning his intention. We read in a note: There are upright men everywhere, and it is of and for them that we are concerned. This admission causes the least doubts to vanish. The new calendar was made for ‘upright people’ and contains the names of nothing but ‘upright people’, that is, those included here have the right to claim the title of “upright men,” an honourable title widely granted but modern philosophers to the sectaries of materialism, and yet so rare among them, since, given the absurdity of their principles they could never believe the doctrine they teach. Moving from the examination of the title to the details of the names included in the necrology, the king’s counsel saw ‘with pain’ Moses in the same class as Mohammed; Hobbes, Spinoza, and Voltaire honoured in the same way as Pascal, Bossuet, and Bordaloue; Spartacus likened to Cicero; and Cato said to be no more or less virtuous than Caesar’s assassin. In Séguier’s eyes this ‘monstrous’ combination, theses ‘insane’ parallels, this assembling side by side ‘of the men who were the glory and the delight of the earth with those who were the shame and misfortune of humanity’, announced ‘the long formed project of annihilating, if it were possible, the Christian religion through the ridicule he wants to spread over its most zealous defenders’. Séguier was also angered at seeing the almanac present itself as having been published in ‘the year one of the reign of Reason’, as if Reason Could only date its rule from the time a base herd of non-believers decide to fix it, as if the world had been judged to be living in darkness until then, as if the innovators of this century had come to illuminate it with the d’imprimeur, ayant pour titre: Almanach des Honnêtes Gens … in-4, 8 pp. Reproduced in the 1836 reprint of the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, published in Nancy.

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flame of truth. But what does it consist of, this new light of reason they want to shine in our eyes? It consists in removing from our ancient calendars the names of all those who distinguished themselves by their piety and their virtues, and substituting for them the names of pagans, atheists, sceptics, actors, and courtiers, in a word, flagrant detractors or declared enemies of our holy religion. And if these latter are mixed together with respected and respectable names it is in order to accord the former a political celebrity that, as the author intends, goes along with his plan for the destruction of all religious institutions. Finally, a particularly horrific blasphemy, one Séguier would never have believed if he didn’t have the proof in his hands, was that the author placed ‘the holy name of Jesus Christ in the middle of that crowd of imposters and the impious’, of that ‘multitude of idol-worshippers and villains’. This was too much, but there was perhaps something worse still. Séguier remarked that in his destructive rage Sylvain Maréchal did not just settle for eliminating the mysteries of ‘the holy religion’ as the fruits of ignorance and credulity, but he also erected a cult to ‘pagan divinities’. According to Séguier, these festivals, substituting themselves for the ‘solemn festivals’ of the religion of ‘the divine Saviour’, manifested the firm intention to plunge the people into ‘the blindness of idolatry’. The lawyer ended by thundering against Maréchal, that ‘mad and frenetic spirit who produces nothing but extravagant, irreconcilable, impious, and blasphemous ideas’. In conclusion, he proposed the flames for the writings and legal prosecution against the author. After having examined the calendar and Séguier’s written conclusions, the court of Parlement, upon the report of the counsellor Gabriel Tandeau, decided that the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens would be ‘torn and burned in the courtyard of the palace, at the foot of the great stairway of that place, by the executioner of high justice as impious, sacrilegious, blasphemous and aiming to destroy religion’. Booksellers, printers, and peddlers were enjoined to bring any copies they might have to the clerk of the court, under penalty of prosecution. The decree also stated that ‘the body of the named M.P. Sylvain Maréchal shall be seized and apprehended and constituted prisoner in the prisons of the Conciergerie of the palace, to be heard and interrogated’. It was specified that in case Maréchal could not be arrested a search shall be carried out at his home and all his property seized and inventoried. Wednesday 9 January 1788, in execution of the decree, the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens was torn and burned by the executioner in the presence of

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Etienne Timoléon Ysabeau, esquire, a clerk of the grand chamber, assisted by two bailiffs of the court.25 In accordance with usage, the following day Parlement’s decree was posted on the palace fence.26 Only six hundred copies were seized at the author’s home. The printer, André-Charles Gailleau, who lived on Rue Galande, was protected by the approval of the censor, M. De Sauvigny.27 The latter was exiled thirty leagues from Paris.28 Everyone sought to obtain a copy of the calendar that was causing such a fuss. The crush was such that it soon no longer had a set price.29 From six sous it was soon sold for as much as thirty-six livres.30 As for Séguier, he was much written about. People did not fail to draw a comparison between his grandiloquent speech at the court and his private conduct. They gossiped about his sally against ‘the kind of shameful celebrity that Ninon de l’Enclos had acquired’, as well as his words about ‘the honour and virtue of the fairer half of humanity’. People maliciously noted his protests against Sylvain Maréchal’s imagined festivals. Nine years later, this led a man who was far from being a non-believer to say: Those who knew Séguier were not surprised by his aversion for honest love and marriage. This grand censor of morals preferred the impure divinity to whom we make sacrifices in the palace of prostitution that was the residence of Messalina and her son, the most degraded, the most corrupt, the most cowardly of villains, to holy wedlock and chaste love. What likely stirred the bile of the attorney general was the epigraph of the Alamanch des Hônnetes Gens, which he perhaps feared would be applied to him: ‘Tell me who you frequent and I’ll tell you who you are’.31

5

Sylvain Is Imprisoned at Saint-Lazare

In order to save him from Parlement’s pursuit, the friends of the unfortunate Sylvain requested a lettre de cachet from the lieutenant general of the police,

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Arrêt de la Cour du Parlement … See below Maréchal’s letter. H. Monin, L’Etat de Paris en 1789, p. 220. Hardy, 9 January 1788, Vol. vii, p. 340. H. Monin, L’Etat de Paris en 1789, p. 220. Prudhomme’s Révolutions de Paris, no. 212, 28 Oct. 1793, p. 108. J.-P.-L. Beyerle, Almanach des femmes célèbres … pout l’an vi, pp. xix–xx.

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Thiroux de Crosen. But either through error or malevolence, the letter was sent ordering him to Saint-Lazare.32 It was there that, fifteen years earlier, another precursor of socialism and free thought was imprisoned, Count Henri de SaintSimon, at the time a rebellious child who refused to take his first communion.33 It was said that all those who entered that prison had to run the gauntlet,34 but it would appear that Maréchal escaped this ignominious treatment, since he never alluded to it. It seems that the people who constructed the 160 cells of this prison ‘had made an art of intercepting sunlight and daylight: no air or light entered there’.35 It was in this dark asylum that Sylvain Maréchal spent three long months of detention. ‘This is how they treat people who take it upon themselves to speak reason’, he would write bitterly to M. Duplessis, the father of his friend Lucile.36 Such treatment, following on the heels of other unfortunate experiences, did little to reconcile Maréchal with the established order. That said, though he wouldn’t abandon his ideas, Sylvain would henceforth be more prudent, and so most of his works published after 1788 would be anonymous, as would be his articles in the Révolutions de Paris. During his captivity, the Shepherd Sylvain received the visits of his parents and friends. How agreeably surprised he would have been if one of the latter, gifted with the faculty of prophecy, would have told him that a few years hence France, freed of its king and priests, would have no almanac but his, modified in accordance with the circumstances.37

6

The Steps Taken by Després – Sylvain’s Release

In the meanwhile, he had to bear up under the consequences of his boldness. Several friends used their influence to obtain his release, but this did not occur without difficulties. It was primarily his future brother-in-law, JeanBaptiste Després who was able to intercede with people of note through Baron de Bezenval. Maréchal placed great hope in the measures he took and, in order for them to succeed more quickly, he gladly swore that he would never again write against religion.

32 33 34 35 36 37

Arnault, Jay, Jouy, etc., Biographie nouvelle des contemporains, vol. xii, Article ‘Maréchal’. Leroy, La vie du comte de Saint-Simon, 1925, p. 60. Mirecourt, Avant, Pendant et Apres la Terreur, vol. i, p. 14. Prudhomme’s Révolutions de Paris, no. 10, 20 September 1789, pp. 13–14. Catalogue Charavay, Letter of 18 January 1788, 2 pp., in-4. Maréchal alludes to this prophecy in Révolutions de Paris, no, 212, 28 October 1793, p. 108.

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We know how well this promise was kept, but what mattered to the prisoner was his freedom. Reading the strange letter he wrote from Saint-Lazare on 12 and 13 January, in the heart of the ‘squall’, one feels that the prisoner was ready to promise anything that was asked for. Here is the letter addressed ‘to Mesdemoiselles Desprez, house of the café owner at the corner of Rues Saint-Jacques and Cordiers in the second’.38 Saturday evening Great hopes, but not yet reality. Things will soon be fine. And so I need hope, and I would lose it if you were give up, but I repose in your friendship. Zoë’s demarche at the home of M. Delneuf was well thought of. According to this I can attempt to have my decree changed to a personal adjournment, but all of this takes time, and more than anything else I need my freedom. I would have liked to know what road your brother is taking. Everything, I think, depends on Baron de Breteuil, and I don’t ask for total exoneration. I only request the treatment accorded my censor, guiltier than me: exile instead of my detention. Sunday My dear demoiselles: I cause you much trouble, but if I’m set free from here you can be certain that this would be the last service of this kind I would ever be rendered. I won’t be caught a second time. I am too fond of my tranquility and that of my friends to expose myself any more to such a squall, but in any case, I’m in the middle of one. I have to get out of it and I am counting on your good offices. When you see your brother I ask you to reiterate to him all my thanks and, in order to hasten the success of the steps he’s taking, that you remind him that I ask nothing but exile to the outskirts of Paris so as not to be too far from my family and my affairs, which are suffering greatly. In doing this, my dear ladies, you will be accruing acts of mercy; at the very least you can count on the eternal gratitude of your unfortunate friend. The last time I saw M. Letourneur I would almost have predicted his death. This is a loss from all points of view, but there are living men more to be lamented than the dead. I beg of you that you not forget to send my greetings to those who still think of me. My brother wrote that the decree on my almanac was posted Friday, the day before yesterday, on the palace walls. Please try to save me a copy; someone already obtained a copy of the one read out by the crier.

38

L’amateur d’autographes, no. 126, 16 March 1867, pp. 82–83.

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Please also tell your brother to promise everything on my behalf; that I will in future no longer write on these matters, for word was brought back to me that several bishops told the minister that I will not stop here. In truth, when he wrote optimistically ‘things will soon be fine’, Maréchal was taking his wishes for reality. The ‘unheard of scandal’ caused by his almanac and the position taken by Parlement prevented him from achieving rapid satisfaction. It was only around mid-April that he was released, on condition that he leave the capital. On 18 April he settled in Bourg-la-Reine on the Duplessis property, which was graciously placed at his disposal. He almost immediately gave his host ‘a true and not very remarkable account’ of his ‘capture’.39 A short while later he sent Lucile’s mother Retif de la Bretonne’s best book, adding to it ‘a small sketch of hell’. He cheekily added: ‘One should know the map of a country one will someday inhabit’.40

7

Public Opinion and the Almanach

By this time there was much less interest in the Almanach, but what a deluge of articles, epigrams and letters at the beginning of the affair! We learn from a letter from the prisoner himself that the bishops had their say, implying that Sylvain would renew his offense if given the occasion. For his part, Meister in the Correspondance littéraire41 spoke of the new calendar as ‘foolish’, finding its form ‘vulgar’. After having retraced the twists and turns of the affair he ended with this sally: ‘So many misfortunes for so minor a subject: and yet the poor almanac was presented to us as being that of the year one of Reason!’42 A piece of verse that we are told had much success mocked Sylvain and his persecutor, Antoine Séguier: Is it true? Did I hear right? O mores! O century of silliness! So much time wasted For having done something foolish!

39 40 41 42

Catalogue d’une jolie collection de lettres autographes dont la vente a eu lieu le 8mars 1862, Paris, Charavay, in-8, Bibl. Nat. 9.862, p. 13, no. 107. Charavay sale 1 November 1887. 1879 edition, vol. xv, p. 194. 1879 edition, vol. xv, p. 194.

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Where will you flee, my good friends? Being stupid isn’t allowed? For our lords, wit and glory! At yet it is too unjust That the author of the indictment Have the exclusive privilege.43 Among the countless letters relating to the event of the day, let us concentrate on two of them. One, dated 12 January 1788 and giving news of the court and the capital, approved the ‘opprobrium’ incurred by a work that caused ‘quite a scandal’.44 The other, dated 6 January was written by a lawyer to a counsellor in Parlement who was angered by Maréchal’s calendar. The lawyer, wanting to know to what extent Sylvain deserved the indignation of the magistrate and ‘that of all those with some respect for religion’, declared he had obtained a copy of the incriminated almanac and had felt the same sentiment as his correspondent upon seeing ‘Jesus Christ placed on the same line as his greatest enemies’. Nevertheless, elevating the debate, he added: But the moment of reflection gave rise in me to an idea I don’t think unworthy of being communicated to you. It’s that this almanac is nothing but a consequence of those who propose to extend to all sects and all opinions the civic tolerance that the king wants and must accord to Protestants. In reality, if the adorer of [Daniel] Defoe, the Mahometan, the Socinian, the Spinozist, the Anabaptist, and the Quaker must share the benefits of civil status, it is obvious that this constitutes express permission to everyone to venerate what he believes he should regard as the object of his homage and admiration. And so, there is nothing more natural or consistent than listing in a column the names of the different personages who might be the object of the homage of all the individuals who compose society as a whole, made up of all sects and all nations, whatever their opinions on the matter of religion. Is there any more evil in placing these different personages on the same table in order to remind those who believe they owe them homage of their existence, than in placing on the same line and allowing to enjoy the same civil advantages all those with human form, however dangerous, ridiculous, extravagant, and licentious their religious opinions might be, even on the existence of the Divinity? 43 44

1879 edition, vol. xv, p. 194. Bibliothèque de la Ville de Paris, n.a. ms. 108, folio 108.

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The sovereign and those magistrates who find no problem in this mixing together of all sects and opinions cannot condemn a writing that does nothing but express in a different fashion that from here on in everything will be tolerated in France, and it will be permitted to each and every person to think as he wishes, and even to regard Saint-Evremond, the elder of the atheists, as a great man. This almanac could very well seem to many to be nothing but a tableau vivant of what would happen in France if, against all likelihood, all nonCatholics were called there. And so the gentleman who is the author of the Almanach, without having wanted to, will have carried out the most well-founded critique of the project of the enemies of religion to underhandedly undermine the Catholic religion in France by introducing into it all sects and all opinions. What is certain is that the author would never have had the idea of dating his almanac the first year of the reign of Reason if he didn’t hope to see extended to all sects what the magistrates requested and only could request for the Protestants.45 On the whole, these reflections are quite judicious. There is no doubt that Maréchal’s philosophical demonstration had a political element. When he prepared his almanac in 1787, the ‘lawyer at Parlement’ Sylvain was not unaware that an edict was being prepared giving Protestants civil status. He wanted to show that France should go even further down the road of freedom of religion by treating all religions the same way. ‘We have not had the pretention to make the law’, he wrote at the bottom of his calendar; and he added, ‘Nevertheless, this should not be regarded as the formless outline of a more important text, as the sketch of the portico of the building of peace where men will one day feel more at ease than anywhere else’. We should not be fooled by this sibylline language, commanded by the fear of possible repression: Sylvain, through his Almanach, gave his backing to those who called for the general extension of the tolerance granted only to Protestants. A curious fact: the edict that granted Protestants civil status was registered on 19 January 1788 by the same Parlement that had condemned the Almanach de Honnêtes Gens just a few days earlier. ‘Obtained amidst the storms’, wrote F. Rocquain, ‘this precious victory of the spirit of tolerance, prepared over the course of half a century by Philosophy, went almost unnoticed’.46

45 46

H. Monin, L’Etat de Paris en 1789, p. 221. Rocquain, L’esprit révolutionnaire avant la Révolution, 187, p. 463.

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It could not go unnoticed by Sylvain Maréchal, and in his cell he must have felt great satisfaction that Parlement, intolerant towards his attempt, was nevertheless forced to make a great concession to the spirit of tolerance. Parlement’s decree against Maréchal was far from being approved by all. 1788 had hardly ended when the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens was already being reprinted in the Chefs-d’oeuvres politiques et littéraires de la fin du vxiiie siècle [Political and Literary Masterpieces of the Late Eighteenth Century] with a note that, in its brevity, was nothing more than a prudent condemnation of Parlement’s severity.47 A few years later Beyerlé – who we have had the occasion to cite on two occasions – was still astounded by the Parlement decree condemning to the flames ‘this poor little quarter leaf almanac as impious, sacrilegious, etc. through the magic of 365 unconnected words and two squares of paper’.48 And he added; ‘Oh sages of our day! Your decree was denounced at the tribunal of reason, and healthy philosophy pronounced your condemnation and your shame’.49 To avenge himself on Antoine Séguier, who died in 1792, Sylvain Maréchal composed a witty epitaph: Here lies Séguier who, in his day In both the flesh and the pen Burned all upright men. He was not at risk, the lawyer Antoine.50 But more than through this epitaph, Sylvain had already been avenged by all the Mathieu-Laensbergs of the patriot party who, following his example, populated the calendar with great men, benefactors of humanity, martyrs of liberty, and famous women, and in doing so prepared the way for the establishing of the republican calendar. We will return to this subject.

47 48 49 50

Chefs-d’oeuvres politiques et littéraires de la fin du vxiiie siècle Paris, 3 vol. in-8, vol. i, pp. 169–176. Almanach des femmes célèbres pour l’an vi, p. x. Almanach des femmes célèbres pour l’an vi, pp. x and xi. Révolutions de Paris, vol. xi, no. 194, p. 254.

part 2 During the French Revolution

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Chapter 6 1

The Approach of the Revolution

The announcement of the calling of the Estates General provoked an extraordinary literary outpouring. It was felt that great things were in the making. In countless cahiers de doléance the Third Estate called for the abolition of the feudal regime and absolutist rule. But if we read these cahiers, so varied in nature and origin, we see that the Third remained profoundly attached to the monarchical idea. It didn’t consider holding either the dynasty or the crown responsible for the current situation. The peasants and the bourgeoisie, even when their desire for reform was at its height, turned their eyes to the consoling throne. The thinkers and writers who so firmly criticised abuses didn’t go as far as their illustrious predecessors, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, and Mably, whose ideal was a constitutional or parliamentary monarchy. All the men who later founded the Republic were monarchists. Jérôme Pétion, for example, aimed only at giving kings ‘preeminent prerogatives and what was required to sustain the splendor and majesty of the throne’.1 As for the thousands of pamphleteers who eloquently spoke of justice, law and reason, however full they were with the republican spirit, they nevertheless remained monarchists. Their current aimed not at the destruction, but rather the reform of the monarchy. Consequently, we should consider Camille Desmoulin’s assertion in 1793 that ‘in Paris we were only ten republicans in Paris on 12 July 1789’2 as more than a mere quip. And it is likely that Camille counted Maréchal among this tiny nucleus of republicans.

2

Maréchal’s Republicanism before 1788

We have already pointed out the republican opinions formulated by the Shepherd Sylvain in his different works, but before addressing his role during the Revolution, it would be useful to provide additional information on this subject. Sylvain’s totally exceptional position imposes on us the obligation to insist on the nature of his republican opinions. 1 Pétion de Villeneuve, Avis aux Français sur le salut de la Patrie, in-8 of 272 pp. p. 113. 2 A. Aulard, Historie politique de la Révolution française, 4th edition, p. 5.

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To start with, what, according to Maréchal, was the origin of the monarchy? It was born at the same time as ‘civilisation’, on the day when a bold mortal arrogated to himself the right to personal property and subjugated his equals. He became ‘a master, and soon a tyrant’. The belief in God inculcated by an imposter then consolidated his power. The throne and the altar, politics and religion, henceforth opposed ‘their shackles to the bonds of Nature’: And of these two powers, united though rivals, Degraded mortals became the vassals.3 The monarchy is thus anything but legitimate. Nor is it necessary. Woe on you, sovereigns, If the assembled state were to weigh your divine rights; If, resorting finally to the wise laws of a Code, It saw in you nothing but a worthless cog, An unneeded spring to regulate the states Which, without kings, need only their magistrates.4 These verses, so abundantly clear, date from 1781. We can measure their boldness by recalling that Kersaint, in his 1788 book on Le Bon Sens [Common Sense], was one of the rare pamphleteers declaring that we could do without kings, on condition men were virtuous.5 This was another way of saying that in 1789 the French weren’t ripe for a republic. It is true that Maréchal occasionally amused himself by imagining kings making good laws, honouring merit, and condemning vice. But he did so for poetic effect. He affirms that as soon as the holy oil is poured over their heads at the coronation ceremony in Reims, sovereigns think that everything is permitted them, adding: … absolute power Will in all times be their rule and duty.6 In the Livre échappé au déluge, psalm xviii, ‘against proud kings and also against royalty’, demonstrates that Maréchal in no way accommodated himself to the then current theory of ‘the good king’. 3 4 5 6

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, fragment vi. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, fragment xxxviii. Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française, p. v. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu fragment xxxviii.

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141

Premières Leçons du Fils Ainé d’un Roi [First Lessons of the Eldest Son of the King] (1788)

But this psalm dated from 1784. Around the end of 1788 the atmosphere allowed him to go much further. As ‘presumptive deputy to the future Estates General’, and under the fallacious pretext of giving lessons to the king’s eldest son, we will see Maréchal express anti-monarchical affirmations of a rare violence. His pamphlet contains a hundred tales, all of them aimed at the future sovereign. It wasn’t a new idea, that of, under cover of educating the presumptive heir, catechising the king and enlightening his citizens. Let us recall in this regard Fénelon. More recently, thanks to this artifice the versatile Puget de Saint-Pierre was able to lay out several of his conservative ideas.7 In truth, nothing seems more appropriate for satirizing institutions and men than tales. They seem to be childish, but it is clear that without such a method a strong, implacable, and thorough critique of the monarchy – like that which Maréchal would engage in – would never have seen the light of day. In the ‘Leçon d’artithmétique’ [Arithmetic lesson] Sylvain remarks that if the king, equivalent in his kingdom to the unit, were to be tempted to look on each of his subjects as a zero, it could be replied that it is the zeroes that give the unit its value, which would be nothing if reduced to itself.8 In the ‘Epreuve’ [Test] Sylvain shows that a king is kneaded of the same clay as other men.9 In lesson iv we see the Estates General sentence a young king inclined to debauchery – a ‘hereditary vice’ – to guarding a herd of pigs.10 In lesson xxii a man rises up against the generosity of kings: ‘Woe on a people whose king is generous! The king can only give what he was able to take from his people. No one is tight-fisted with other’s property’.11 The story of the dethroned King of Siam is aimed at showing that the scepter is ‘a gewgaw for diverting the people’.12 In ‘Les atomes’, the name of a people without a mouth, a tyrant learns that a people that is never hungry is not easy to keep under the yoke.13 One after the other Maréchal places on the throne a marmot, a monkey, and a parakeet: these animals do no better and no worse than a king.14 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Dommanget, La Révolution dans le canton de Neuilly-St-Front, p. 98. Henriquez, Epitres et Evangiles du Républicain, year ii, pp. 11–12, will develop more or less the same idea. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon iii, pp. 8–9. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, p. 9. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, p. 25. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon xxv, p. 40. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon xl, p. 45. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, pp. 40, 46, 175.

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In the ‘Conte de fée’ [Fairy Tale] Maréchal formally invites his student to abdicate, ‘the best intentioned of kings’ not being necessary to men, his equals, ‘who are quite capable of guiding themselves’.15 But since this act of magnanimity might be slow in coming, another tale alludes to the people’s right to insurrection.16 Does Sylvain stop there? No. Kings being the enemies of the people, their degradation and fall aren’t enough for him: he wishes for their death. This idea so strongly haunts him that he returns to it several time in his tales. In one we see that a people, tired of suffering, immolated its tyrant. The storyteller adds: ‘If such funereal honours awaited all tyrants, the race would soon exhaust its supply of them’.17 In the Cours d’anatomie [Anatomy Lesson] Maréchal announces that lessons were taught to a young king inclined to despotism by using ‘the skeleton of tyrant who’s been decapitated in accordance with the law’.18 The Chasse à la grand’bete [The Animal Hunt] shows the people, the king’s game, turning around like a wild boar at bay and ‘mixing its blood with that of its killer’.19 The section on the Social Contract takes us to an island inhabited by several happy families having neither king nor law. A stranger washes up there and wants be named sovereign. The islanders agree to this, but on condition that, being responsible for the laws he will issue, he must also be responsible for the evil that will result from them, and that he consequently pay with his head for the first murder committed under his reign.20 In the Ile déserte [Deserted Isle] it is the monarchs themselves who, to mankind’s great satisfaction, destroy each other.21 Finally, the story of Damalder, the Swedish king whose superstitious subjects sacrificed him to their gods, offers Maréchal the occasion to pose this somewhat subversive question: ‘When will the people do from the spirit of justice that which they have occasionally allowed themselves to do from a spirit of superstition?’22 Is it not true that with all these parables we are quite far from the loyalist sentiments formulated regarding the highest personality of the kingdom by most pamphleteers and satirists of the time? We find here a kind of prelude to the campaign of the Révolutions de Paris during the winter of 1790–1791 in favour of ‘the holy battalion of tyrannicides’. Even so, Maréchal would have been more 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon xxx, p. 32. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon xliii, p. 49. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon xxxiv, p. 39. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon ix, p. 14. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon lxv, p. 71. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon liii, p. 59. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon xxviii, pp. 30–31. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon, lxxxvii, p. 219.

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surprised than anyone if he had been told that four years later Louis xvi would suffer the fate reserved to the monarchs in his tales. We can understand why the police placed the work on the Index.23 In that period of agitation, tumult and effervescence, when all opinions were in a state of confrontation, such violent diatribes against kings could not but displease the authorities. But it was not only from the political point of view, but also from the social that Maréchal was remarked on for the boldness of his seemingly inoffensive tales. Maréchal magisterially brought out the vices and disorders of the society of his time, comparing it to a slave market. He showed the small selling themselves to the big, the poor to the rich, and the big and the rich selling themselves to the bigger and richer. Courtiers sold themselves to the kings, believers sold themselves to priests, who then sold themselves to tyrants. Women sold themselves to men, and sometimes the latter to the former. The storyteller ends with this bitter reflection: ‘The wise man alone belongs to himself and has nothing to do with this shameful traffic. And so he is scorned by all those he pities’. In another tale, Maréchal expresses himself in this way: ‘The chaos which is said to have preceded creation was nothing in comparison with that which reigns on the surface of this created world, and the hell with which I was threatened can be no worse than life led in a society, where the citizens are all free and equal but where even so three-fourths are slaves and the rest masters’. Sylvain recalls the happy time when the people went out and harvested acorns.24 People only ate acorns then, but at least everyone had some. ‘Everyone ate from the same plate, and each according to his needs’. I underline this purposely, for Maréchal expresses one of the aspects of the modern formulation of communism. The other aspect, the community of labour, is spoken of in several tales. Maréchal also returns to communism of consumption in regard to the galette des rois, [a traditional cake – Tr.] that all the people in a canton eat separately. ‘Since you are all men and all equal’, he has a stranger say, ‘pile up all the flour that would serve to make your galettes and knead only one that you will all eat in common, as is fitting for brothers’. In the Prédiction veritable et remarquable [True and Remarkable Prediction] Sylvain provides one of the first visions of the social revolution, as in it

23 24

Révolutions de Paris, vol. xvii, p. 219. Later, in his Chanson nouvelle a l’usage des faubourgs (5th couplet) Marechal will say: ‘Yes, a million of the opulent/For too long force the people/ Rooting for what they need;/ We don’t want in the faubourgs/ Either the Chouans of the Luxembourg Palace/Nor those of the Vendée’.

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we already find the general strike outlined. There is nothing surprising about this: one of Maréchal’s most cherished ideas was the general and concerted stoppage of all labour as the ultima ratio of producers. In his Livre de tous les âges, ten years earlier, after having said: Too often the people groan under the insolence Of the nobles who, without them, would have no existence.25 He added: ‘What would become of them, those ungrateful nobles, if the people who fed them withdrew their hard-working and beneficent hand?’26 Here, thanks to the veil of fiction, the social consequences of the general strike stand out starkly. The scene occurs in the capital of a great empire. ‘The ostentation, the selfishness, the harshness, and the impudence of the least numerous class of inhabitants, that is, the masters, was carried to such a point that the most numerous class, that is, that of the valets and all those who serve in the homes of the rich and the great, after a patience whose duration made even the wise indignant, suddenly and all together ceased their labour and service’. Vain demands and threats on the part of the rich. The most eloquent of the workers takes the floor and addresses the wealthy: ‘Those who you called your valets form three-quarters of the inhabitants of this city, and those we called our masters make up but one-quarter. My friends: we know how to count at least to four, and the science of mathematics leads directly to liberty. Beware of three versus one. The sides, as is said, are not equal. Fear that the stronger don’t take reprisals and inflict an eye for an eye’. The orator continues in this vein. He recalls the Golden Age, that heroic era when men were all equals and, after having reassured the wealthy about the goodness of the poor, he lays out the demands of the working classes. I quote: Put the land in common among all inhabitants. If there can be found among you someone with two mouths and four arms it would only be fair to assign him a double portion. But if we are all made in the same pattern, then let us share the cake equally. But at the same time, everyone must knead the dough together. Let everyone return to his family and serve his relatives. Let him command his children. And let all the people from one end of the earth to the other offer their hands.27

25 26 27

Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 47. Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 48. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Lesson xxxi, p. 33.

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For the period, this outline of the general strike followed by an image of the social revolution constitutes, as Maréchal himself stressed, a truly ‘remarkable’ prediction. We are often reminded of Mirabeau’s words to the privileged of his time: ‘Do not disdain this people that produces all, this people who, in order to be formidable, needs only to remain immobile’. But the great tribune did nothing but repeat an idea that Sylvain developed with all its consequences. Let us note that Maréchal is a pessimist. He says, ‘Alas, I will long be nothing when my fellows will have become something’. And further: ‘All of this is nothing but a fable at the time I am writing it’. In other words, Maréchal does not count on seeing his prophecy realised in his lifetime. He does not think the people will soon know how to handle as fearsome a weapon as the general strike or that, even without making use of that weapon, it will establish communism. In this he differs from Chappuis and a few rare contemporaries, who for their part believed communism was imminent. It must again be noted that Maréchal gave the revolution he predicted a communist and internationalist character. But after involving the poor of a great city, what solution does he propose? The holding in common of lands, that is, a communist solution adapted to a rural environment. This is indisputable proof that Maréchal viewed the social question from an agrarian angle. He was in the direct line of the ‘socialists’ of the period who, in general, barely alluded to the artisans and industrial workers.28 And yet, in 1788 there already existed a dispersed mass of workers, for example in the immense majority of metallurgical enterprises or concentrated in mining and nascent manufacturing. The numerical importance acquired by the working class can be seen in the Compagnie d’Anzin, which employed 4,000 miners, and in the fact that unemployment at the beginning of the winter of 1788–1789 reached 12,000 in Abbeville and 20,000 in Lyon.29 It seems that Maréchal perhaps unwittingly attached to the workers of the cities, and particularly industrial workers, some of the opprobrium he felt towards cities themselves. To be sure, in his pamphlet there is a ‘lesson’30 in which he evokes glaziers, – whom he even calls manufacturers – quarrymen, and ‘women workers’, but this is an exceptional case. What is more, in all of Maréchal’s previous works there was only one passage in which he showed an interest in artisans in a spirit that is the least bit socialist. This was when, 28 29 30

Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au xviiie siècle, le Socialisme utopique, passim. H. Sée, Les origines du capitalisme moderne, 1926, passim. J. Jaurès, Histoire Socialiste de la Révolution française, second edition, vol. i, p. 62ff. Maréchal, Premières leçons du fils ainé d’un roi, Leçon xxiii, Versailles et Bicêtre.

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after having spoken of cobblers among the ancients, he draws our attention to ‘a respectable community that was established in France in 1645 under the name the Shoemakers’ Brotherhood and which was only certified in 1664 by M. Hardouin de Péréfixe’. ‘The members of this little-known but estimable society placed all the fruits of their labours in common. Once economic expenses were disbursed, the rest was distributed to the poor. They did not take an oath and had in view only charity and inequality’.31 It can be seen from the commentary that followed these lines that Sylvain Maréchal strongly approved ‘those wise labourers who practiced virtue in silence [and] were without a doubt worth every bit as much as the mass of idle speculators who disdained them’, adding with a hint of malice: ‘The latter have crowns so they can be well spoken of; the former so they can do good’.32 Maréchal was careful to inscribe Buche, the cobbler from Luxembourg, to whom the establishment of the Cobblers’ and Tailors’ Brotherhood is owed, in his Almanach des Honnêtes Gens. He would later include him in one of his almanacs, noting that the Cobblers’ Brotherhood was worth as much as ‘the best book or the most brilliant victory’.33 It thus appears that the Shepherd Sylvain’s method of accommodating communism to cities was realised either in the system of productive communities constructed on the basis of Buche’s plan, three houses of which existed at the time ‘for the good of humanity’,34 one on Rue de la Grande-Truanderie, another Rue Pavée-Saint-André-des-Arts, and a third Rue Bertin-Poirée,35 or in the system of professional associations called for by Retif de la Bretonne,36 an author whom Maréchal ‘felt it a duty’ to recommend to his readers.37

4

Maréchal’s Dual Attitude during the Revolution

And then came the Revolution. What would Sylvian Maréchal do, atheist in philosophy, republican in politics, and communist in social economy? He en31 32 33

34 35 36 37

Maréchal, Antiquités Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 131. Maréchal, Antiquités Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 131. Marechal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes gens, p. 20. Almanach des Républicains pour servir à l’Instruction publique, p. 126, article on ‘Buche’. Buche also figures in the Dictionnaire des athées. Details on Buche and the Cordonnier Brothers in Migne, Encyclopédie théologique [Dictionnaire des orders religieux, vol. i, pp. 1139–1148]. Maréchal, Antiquités Herculanum, vol. iii, p. 131. Almanach du voyageur à Paris … Année 1783, pp. 153 and 205. Lichtenberger, le Socialisme au xviiie siècle, passim. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. vii, p. 96.

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thusiastically acclaimed this great event and followed its day to day adventures with a passionate interest. The dough was ready, and it was a matter of making it rise. He would, like so many others, work at this as best he could, but he could far less than they hope to make a name for himself. It was a time for agitation, and Sylvain had nothing of an agitator: it was necessary to give speeches, to impose yourself on the crowd, and Maréchal stammered. He settled for acting with his pen in order to have the ideas dear to him prevail with the public, his friends, and in assemblies, as well as to wrest the greatest possible number of reforms compatible with the existence of civil society. And this was already a great deal. Let us open here an indispensable parenthesis. There were always two men in Sylvain Maréchal: on the one hand was the thinker, casting his gaze beyond the horizon, considering a great people an unnatural institution, scoffing at political change and calling for the return to a patriarchal communism. On the other hand, there was the pamphleteer and journalist, putting a brake on his wishes, moderating his desires in keeping with human weakness, compromising with reality and consequently applauding the correcting of injustices, granting a certain degree of importance to new assurances and means of action conquered in combat by the revolution on the march. Listen to him: Philosophers, and in particular ancient sages, have been reproached their dual doctrine, not thinking that it is not they who should be attacked. They were forced into this by civil society, whose happiness they concerned themselves with. There are some truths that aren’t forgiven in a certain order of things. For example, when a state has the stupidity of the people and the despotism of its leaders as its basis, wise men can only teach their lessons without fully spelling things out. Happy are those who can understand their hints, and they are not the largest number. The philosophers who have spoken loudly have done nothing but importune the most highly placed personages without making themselves better understood by the degraded plebes. As long as people dare call into question whether the people must be educated; as long as such a problem is not resolved a double doctrine will continue to be necessary.38

38

Maréchal, Correctif a la Révolution, pensée clxxxv, p. 138.

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To be sure, Maréchal does not deny that such an attitude harms the truth: ‘It knowingly sows in the fields of evidence a number of doubtful expressions which are the seed of many errors’.39 But how can this be done differently? Truth is guided by prudence: As long as mankind, divided into herds, Accepts masters under the name of the law; As long as it requires the God of its ancestors; Wise men, wrapped in their double cloaks Far from public charges, prudently Will give themselves over to peaceful labours, Pouring, in equal doses, in their domestic games, Bitter shame, scorn, and sarcasm On both governors and governed.40 Circumstances alone can make wise men take a position. They allow them to brave civil society’s chains and to show, if not the people, at least the elite to road of reason. But a great revolution is never the same on two consecutive days. Maréchal notes: ‘Like the moon, it has its diurnal phases’.41 Through uncertainty and storms it thus ensures the thinker the possibility of pursuing the fulfillment of his golden dream. In late 1791 Maréchal explained the spirit that would guide him through the complexity of the revolution. It is worth quoting the passage in its entirety, despite its obvious exaggeration: Anyone else would have benefited from his position. He remained always in his place, without going on the highways to beg for a bit of reputation he kept himself free among a mass of slaves, advancing without let up towards his goal, passing through the environing circumstances, taking on the colour of none of them, faithful to his verses, in which he presented his moral and political profession of faith: Don’t idolize splendid honours. On the world’s stage, happy is he who, a spectator, A mute character in the corner of the theater, Will live without being seen, and die without being an actor. 39 40 41

Maréchal, Correctif a la Révolution, pensée clxxxv. Maréchal, Le Lucrèce français, fragment cxxix. Histoire générale et impartiale des erreurs, des fautes et des crimes commis pendant la Révolution française. Introduction [by Sylvain Maréchal], p. 14.

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Don’t bother with the quarrels of kings: Leave this pastime to idle slaves, Set your house in order, cultivate your fields, And remain a stranger to great events. To the side and silently, walk alone with yourself; Avoid acquaintance with peoples and leaders. Keep an equal distance from all shoals, Far from people and chiefs, the sage remains silent. As a consequence of these maxims more in conformity with his personality than the spirit of the day, held back by his domestic duties, he wandered Paris like Robinson Crusoe on his island, questioning things, following no path but his own, and ever preoccupied with his chimera, that is, his project to bring his brothers back to a more natural lifestyle and the moral instinct that alone can make them happy and keep them good. Despite its exaggeration, this haughty declaration, with a bitterness bordering on misanthropy, helps us understand Maréchal’s double attitude. If now, going beyond the thinker’s introspection and his psychological self-analysis, we were to dig deeper, if we were to place Maréchal in the social environment of the era, we would doubtless find the key to this double attitude. It then appears as the reflection of the economic contradictions of the time. As Maréchal gave free rein to his subjective aspirations he collided with material conditions, with the weakness of objective elements. His communism, his pastoral anarchism, his ‘chimera’, as he said, rested on no solid foundation. For the era it was an arbitrary, purely utopian concept which he stubbornly clung to, and which could not but lead him into an impasse. To be sure, without going as far as Maréchal, there were few among the revolutionaries of 1789 who weren’t guided in their daily struggle by some distant aspiration. But at least the exercise of power, with the difficulties of its great tasks and the slowness of any accomplishments, moderated their ambitions. Maréchal, though, never assumed any political charge: he always lived far from the realm of reality and even strived to be, as we would say today, ‘above the revolutionary fray’. Under such conditions it is not surprising that this singular lover of the Revolution was somber, sad, worried, and wavering, and that he would often go it alone. Do we need to say in exculpation of Maréchal that history offers us many examples of strong personalities who, like him, never succeeded in reconciling opposites? And after all, who can flatter himself that he has done so? Just as the conflicting needs – the ‘social antitheses’ evoked by Fourier – provide the key

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to collective evolution, contradictory notions, personal antitheses command intellectual evolution. Without them there is no movement, no life. But inexorable action imposes a choice. This is man’s tragic destiny. This was Maréchal’s destiny.

5

Initial Revolutionary Steps

‘Everything ends in song’, said Beaumarchais. It can equally be said that ‘everything begins with song’. In particular, if we are to believe Hardy it was with a song that Sylvain Maréchal began his revolutionary combat. The song is said to have been composed for the usage of the ladies of the Halles who went to compliment the deputies of the Third Estate on 19 May 1789. In it the ‘big-hearted’ king is praised along with Necker, ‘saviour of France’. It also predicts equality in taxation: You who so politely treat us Like scum, Will, like us, pay the tax Very nobly.42 Two months later the fall of the Bastille awakened the poetic ardour of the Shepherd Sylvain: he addressed verses to the people about the events of 14 July.43 He defined it as ‘the Easter festival’ of patriots, ‘the day of French freedom’s first communion’.44 Aside from these two poems nothing that Maréchal composed over the course of the decisive events that separate the assembling of the Estates General and the taking of the Bastille has come down to us. Nevertheless, we can situate the Shepherd Sylvain’s position with the assistance of one of his later publications, full of wit and mocking verve. In it he asserts that the aristocracy

42

43

44

L. Chassin, Les Elections et les cahiers de Paris en 1789, p. 253. The song is reproduced in its entirety in this work. We believe it to be by Sylvian Maréchal. Lacking certain expressions whose attribution are unmistakable, it should be noted that through his father, a wine merchant, he was in contact with the vulgar women of the Halles. Robinet, Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Révolution, vol. iii, p. 510. In his Mémoires (Paris, 1830, vol. i, pp. 303–305) Brissot simply says: ‘Freed at the beginning of the Revolution he [S. Maréchal] took advantage of this by celebrating the fall of the Bastille and of despotism’. Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, pp. 101–102.

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suffers from ‘a malady’ that can only be cured ‘through a violent operation’ and indicates as a method for curing it, ‘lacking linens in lamp oil’, Dr. Guillotine’s machine.45 In an epitaph for the nobility, he wrote, alluding to the assembly of the three orders: Here lies Lady Nobility; In the antechamber of our kings She died of weakness Practicing a pas de trois.46 He was already suspicious of the National Assembly. He asserted that ‘it is not always the pulpit of truth’ and mocked the parliamentary usages practiced there: amendments which are ‘patches placed alongside a hole’; preliminary questions and passing to the order of the day are ‘card tricks for the conjuring away of worthwhile motions’.47 Always violent and pitiless toward former nobles who were deprived of their cordons of all colours, he urged them not to cause a ruckus, since they had been charitably left a cordon with which to be hung.48 The suppression of feudal privileges and ecclesiastical tithes was only a first step toward the complete abolition of feudal and clerical landholdings. An ardent polemic, a harsh combat was beginning. The suppression of ecclesiastical properties loudly called for by the public was brought before the Assembly. It is difficult to accept that Maréchal did not take some part in this fight. One thing is certain: he set to song the decree of 2 November 1789 that closed the debate: Charbonnier is master of his own home This word is only true since today. The fat prior in his charterhouse, Stuffing himself on the treasure of others: Is the law so scandalous that says, ‘Be gone with you!’49

45 46 47 48 49

Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, p. 110. Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, p. 70. Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, p. 105. Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, p. 30. Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, pp. 41–42.

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What was Maréchal’s attitude on the other questions that were raised over the following months? He opposed the decree on the marc d’argent, a veritable ‘slap in the peoples’ face’;50 he greeted with joy the founding of the Jacobin club, ‘the forge of the National Assembly … the anvil that is beaten hot … the furnace of the patriotism that heats all of France’.51 He even dedicated a couplet to the division of the kingdom into departments.52

6

The Tonneau de Diogène

But Maréchal was lacking in a tribune to daily spread the ideas fermenting within his mind, to stigmatise the timorous and the traitors, to attack aristocrats, the wealthy, and especially the Church and the clergy. It was necessary to live, as well, and Maréchal, like all writers, had – as he said – ‘to blacken paper to have white bread’.53 Having come to an agreement with the publisher Champigny, he resolved to launch a small in-octavo thrice-weekly paper bearing this dual title: Le Tonneau de Diogène ou les Révolutions du Clergé [Diogenes’ Barrel or the Revolutions of the Clerg]. The first issue appeared on 9 January 1790, and for almost two months Maréchal wrote this polemical paper, which joined the growing number of patriotic newspapers and, in keeping with its subtitle, worked fiercely at ‘revolutionising’ the clergy. It seems to have had some success, if we are to judge by this passage from issue no. 3: ‘The reception Diogenes received from the public will redouble his zeal in order to merit new encouragements: he hopes the grape harvest will be good since in that case many barrels are sold’. Maréchal having claimed in one issue that the university didn’t want to change any of its old habits, a professor at the Collège de Navarre protested in the Année littéraire against ‘a new Diogenes politicking in his barrel, barking left and right and attacking the university and the Collège de Navarre for no reason’.54 The Tonneau was involved in no other polemics. The first issue is entirely dedicated to attacks on the upper and middle clergy whose members, since 2 November 1789 – the day of the decree placing ecclesiastical property at the disposal of the nation – ‘are going around saying we’ve reduced them to beggary’.

50 51 52 53 54

Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, p. 100. Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, p. 108. Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793, pp. 36–37. Maréchal, Calendrier des Républicains, 1793. L’Année littéraire, 1790, vol. ii, p. 184.

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Well, messieurs, Diogenes puts his heart into his work, so why don’t you resign yourself to meeting your obligations to a party for the love of it that Diogenes had the courage to take on for the love of philosophy? Come now, gentlemen of the upper and middle clergy, allow yourself to be spurred on by honour and the spirit of emulation and don’t allow yourself to be surpassed in generosity by a profane philosopher. Let a noble competition be established between you and he and thrice a week allow the image of Diogenes in his barrel to remind you of the virtues of the first Apostles. Contemplate without blushing Diogenes’ beggar’s bag, white rod, and wooden bowl. Just to make things easier for you, we’ve removed the lantern from your sight. The writer’s manner is immediately clear. It should be noted that he never says a word about the lower clergy. There is nothing surprising on this. The philosophes always spared country priests, often even depicting them in a favourable and sympathetic light. Maréchal, educated at the school of philosophy, had imbibed all its errors and probably had no doubt that his appeal to ‘the virtues of the first Apostles’ also applied to the lower clergy. It is now more or less established that as a whole the lower clergy was not as poor and virtuous as Voltaire and the other philosophes thought.55 It was likely also for tactical reasons that Maréchal handled the lower clergy gingerly. In the same issue we also read an attack on Abbé Maury who ‘preaches Christian humility and evangelical poverty with a bond for an annuity of 30,000 livres in his soutane pocket’. In conclusion, the writer had a priest from Chaillot paint a somber portrait of the fate the Revolution reserved for the Church of France. Sylvain saw things so clearly that most of his predictions were realised. He said: In just a short while desolation will visit the holy places. Grass will grow in the temples stripped of their ancient ornaments, and the pontiffs, become wage labourers, will no longer be honoured by the assemblies of the faithful. Irreligious citizens will lose control of themselves and will attack both the temporal and religious powers. O unheard of attack! The children of the Church will be disinherited and the patrimony of the sanctuary will pass into the hands of the tax authority.

55

Annales Révolutionnaires, no. 1, January–February 1914, pp. 1–20, and Dubois-Dessaulle, Mémoires secrets de la lieutenance générale de police, 1902.

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The clergy is still in the hot seat in the following issues. This can be seen from the table of contents of issue no. 2: ‘The coach of the bishop of Chalons found at the Pinet sale – Abbé Sabathier caught in flagrante delicto – The Abbé de Vermond, Queen’s reader, fainted and why? – Placards in the faubourg St-Antoine against the aristocrats – Establishment of a synagogue in Paris – Aristocracy of the fathers of charity of Charenton’. Issue no. 3 deals with the liquidation of ecclesiastical property, a burning question already evoked by the editor in the first issue. This appeared when the decree of 19 November 1789, putting 400 million worth of property on sale, was being applied. Maréchal thought it good to return to the ‘great discussions’ that took place on this subject before the Assembly. He recalled the ‘verbal sophisms’ of the Archbishop of Aix, of Abbé Maury and the ‘fraudulent declaration’ of the Abbé de Montesquiou calculating the revenue of these properties as 180 million. It was only the ‘thundering eloquence’ of Barnave, Chapelier, Thouret, and Mirabeau that repelled the arguments of the ‘leaders’ of the clergy. Arming himself with the report of the assembly of the clergy held in Paris in 1665, in which they admitted to an ecclesiastical revenue of 312 million, Maréchal estimated that the clergy’s revenue at this time was 1,248 million, giving a capital fund of 30 milliards. Still addressing the emoluments of the upper and middle clergy, who had the effrontery to maintain that their property was worth no more than their needs, Maréchal recalled them to evangelical poverty: The Bishop of Tours once shared the only cloak he owned with a naked man, and this act of humanity earned the prelate a temple and altars. Eh quoi! Gentlemen of the higher and middle clergy, every year you celebrate a festival to perpetuate from one era to another the humanity of Saint Martin, and precisely a few days before this solemn act we see you turn your eyes away from the fatherland dying of hunger at your feet … Far from clothing the poor with half your garb you – the representatives of a God who protects the unfortunate and was an unfortunate himself – have the courage to pull tighter your clothing so as not to share them with your brothers groaning in total destitution. The writer closed by denouncing to the fatherland ‘the ingratitude of a class of its children for whom it has nevertheless had a predilection’. It appears that some readers, alarmed by the subtitle of the newspaper, feared finding in it the declaration of a struggle between philosophy and religion, Diogenes-Maréchal thought it best to explain himself on this subject in

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no. 5. He did so in sibylline terms that betrayed his embarrassment. One feels he doesn’t want to rush things for fear of offending – and losing – certain patriotic readers who were still believers. But if behind the straw of words we seek the grain of things, there is no doubt possible about the nature of the goal pursued. Maréchal aimed, diplomatically and denying that he was doing so, at the total victory of philosophy. Here is what he had to say: Religion and philosophy are two good sisters meant to live together, who Diogenes never separated. He only wants to do in Paris and in France what he once did in Athens and all of Greece. Let me explain myself. For some time, religion has needed officers charged with guarding the temples. Since this subaltern but important post has been neglected, the impurely soiled temples have become dens inaccessible to the delicate faithful. Who will see to the cleansing of the temples? It can only be Diogenes. An indefatigable sentinel, he will watch day and night to see that the priests, upon entering the sanctuary, are careful to shake off from their feet the foul dust of ancient prejudices. To specify how he intended to exercise the function of guardian of the temple, the new Diogenes announced that he would place his barrel ‘at the very door of the temple’. He added: ‘Reason gave him instructions to recall to order the faithful who frequent the altars as well as the ministers who serve them’. The attacks on the clergy reached a crescendo in the following issues. They would be augmented in issues nos. 10 and 11, which were particularly violent, with points against the dogmas of the Christian religion and even against belief in God. In issue no. 10 Maréchal reproduced several chapters of the Catechisme du Curé Meslier [The Catechism of Father Meslier] and the Anti-moine [The Anti-Monk], a work indicating ‘the means and necessity for abolishing the religious orders in France’. He gives the beginning of the Credo du Sage [The Wise Man’s Credo], hoping the reader will seek out the continuation in the new book from which it was excerpted. ‘I believe only in virtue. If God exists I don’t believe he had a son, that this son was hung, or that he will one day judge the living and the dead; nor do I believe in the Holy Spirit of the Church and even less in its infallibility. I would like to convince myself of the resurrection of the flesh and I would quite like eternal life’. And the writer adds, with a straight face: ‘We strongly urge our readers to believe that we are far from adopting the principles contained in this book and drawn from the most modern philosophy’.

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Issue no. 11 was originally intended to include the continuation of the famous catechism, but either the author understood that he had to stop there, or he had gotten wind of what was being prepared for him, for these excerpts did not appear. ‘We run less risk’, wrote Diogenes, ‘by offering a new fragment of the book entitled the Anti-moine’. This notice was followed by a diatribe against the religious orders and an unflattering portrait of monks. All of these attacks clearly reinforced the position of the adversaries of the clergy at a moment when the fight, having grown bitter, would result on 13 March 1790 in the suppression of monastic orders, a measure that inspired in Maréchal, always predisposed to teasing the Muse, the following verse dedicated ‘to the former nuns’. Go out, dance, amuse yourselves. Amuse yourselves, young nunettes! Come make up with us The time wasted in your retreats. Together let’s make, with little noise, The office of night and of day.56

7

Judicial Proceedings against Sylvain

The patriotic press of the time was suffering harsh trials. Judicial proceedings were begun against the Ami du people, and a warrant was issued for Marat’s arrest. Issues nos. 10 and 11 of the Tonneau de Diogène were considered ‘an attack on the respect owed religion’. A judicial investigation was opened.57 On 8 February 1790 Magin, police superintendent, visited Brune, the newspaper’s printer, in order to begin the proceedings. The year one thousand seven hundred ninety; the eighth of February, seven o’clock in the morning, We, Jean Baptiste Magin, bailiff, police

56 57

Maréchal, Etrennes de la Révolution française, p. 31. All of the documentation on the Tonneau de Diogene Affair comes from the National Archives (Y 10.007). Tuetey, in his Repertoire générale des sources manuscrites de l’histoire de Paris pendant la Révolution française, vol. ii, p. 312, erroneously speaks of another bundle, Y 10.710, that supposedly has to do with the Tonneau. More details on the book and the trial can be found in Maurice Dommanget ‘Sylvain Maréchal et le Tonneau de Diogène’.

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superintendent of the bureau of the city of Paris, residing there, quay des Miramionnes, Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet parish, the undersigned, went in this city to Rue du Théâtre Français, the home of the printer Brune, as a result of an order addressed to us by the Prosecutor of the Commune, where being and in conformity with said order, we have questioned said Sieur Brune, speaking to his person, which he confirmed being, he declared: The name and the home of the author of no. 10 of a periodical paper entitled the Tonneau de Diogène ou les Révolutions du Clergé and in particular of the article in that issue entitled ‘Catechisme du Curé Meslier’ and, upon the representation we made to him, was summoned and called upon to declare whether he recognised said paper bearing the no. 10 as having been printed by him. He responded that the author of the paper is Sieur Silvain [sic] Maréchal and that he does not know his address. But that said papers were signed by said Sieur Maréchal and Sieur Champigny residing Rue HauteFeuille no. 36, that Sieur Maréchal indeed comes to his home with said Sieur Champigny but he was never concerned about his home; that nevertheless he affirms that said paper was well and truly printed by him and signed the present minutes. At the moment when we were going to leave the domicile of said Sieur Brune he told us that when he learned through us the subject of our visit to his home he had sent his clerk to the home of said Sieur Champigny who knew the exact address of said Sieur Silvain Maréchal, that said clerk had just arrived and told him that said Sieur Silvain Maréchal resides in Paris, Rue du Sepulchre, and signed. Two days later Maréchal appeared in person and spoke before the police tribunal of the city of Paris in the company of Brune and Champigny. The tribunal acknowledged receipt of the denunciation. It also ordered that the incriminated issues be sent to the king’s prosecutor at the Châtelet ‘in order for the appropriate conclusions to be drawn’. The affair followed its course. The king’s prosecutor, after having examined the dossier, sent it to the criminal lieutenant along with a request for follow-up. Your reading of the two articles will convince you of the need to bring the weight of the law down on the authors of these two articles. You will see, Monsieur, with what impiety these authors permit themselves to attack the holy mysteries of our religion and sully it with the most odious sarcasm. You will certainly consider the bitter satire against religious orders inserted in number eleven extremely reprehensible.

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Criminal Lieutenant Bachois agreed and named superintendent Guyot to prosecute the affair. A new investigation was begun. This time Maréchal failed to appear. He also failed to appear 17 and 20 March as well as 12 April. We have to believe that the investigation was suspended; nothing is heard of after that date. The newspapers of the period are silent on the subject. It was only a few months later, as a result of the arbitrary fines inflicted on Camille Desmoulins and the court order demanding the appearance of Fréron, that Prudhomme’s newspaper spoke out against the persecutions inflicted on patriotic writers.58 The same lamentations can be found in Brissot’s Patriote Français.59 The hypothesis that the affair was closed is also justified by the fact that Brune, during his first interrogation about the Champ de Mars, indicated he was never sentenced.60 Whatever the case, the Tonneau de Diogène affair is not without interest. It proves that the coalition of the court, the Châtelet, and the provisional municipality of Paris intended not only to gag the patriot press, but to maintain Catholicism as the dominant religion. Maréchal, who had suffered the thunder of ‘Séguier the Reason-burner’, now experienced the harassment of the Bailly municipality.

8

The Citizen Soldier of the Cordeliers District. Relations with Family and Friends

He understood that in order to continue writing without fear of being harassed he had to take refuge in ‘sacred’ territory, in other words, the Cordeliers district. This district occupied more or less the current territory of the Monnaie and Odéon quarters. It extended from the Luxembourg to the quays and from the Sorbonne to Saint-Sulpice church. It was the most radical of Paris’ sixty districts; it had stood up against the municipality or, as Fabre d’Eglantine, one of its influential members wrote, ‘to municipal despotism’. It was thanks to the Cordeliers district that Marat was able to escape certain imprisonment. On 18 March 1790, in the middle of the Tonneau affair, the district had effectively ensured the protection of patriot writers by naming five ‘preservers of liberty’, with the mission of affixing their visa on decrees depriving a citizen of his freedom, lacking which these decrees would remain a dead letter.61 58 59 60 61

Révolutions de Paris, no. 52. Le Patriote français, no. 328. Information provided by Dr. Labrousse. The complete text of this decree appears in Danton … by A. Bougeart. The complete text of this decree appears in Danton … by A. Bougeart.

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What a blessing for Sylvain! Even more so because his friend Lablée, drawn to Paris by the Revolution and now one of the column leaders of the district, was one of the five ‘preservers of liberty’. We can now easily understand why Maréchal would set up domicile on Rue de Paon,62 in the very heart of the Cordeliers district. Rue de Paon, become Rue Larrey after a decree of 9 April 1851, began at Rue Jardinet and ended at the cul de sac of the School of Surgery (today the Medical School).63 It was near the famous Cordelier refectory, seat of the district assembly, where Danton’s voice thundered. It was also nearby to the Cour de Commerce, where Brune, the former printer of the Tonneau, continued to make typographical characters pivot before doing the same with soldiers as Marshal of France. It wasn’t far from Rue Hautefeuille, from whence the bookseller Champigny, publisher of Tonneau, victim of patriotic peddlers, would one day be led on the back of an ass to the Hôtel de Ville ‘more dead than alive’, for having published a fake Père Duchêne.64 Two steps away, on Rue des Poitevins, lived Lerouge, lawyer at Parlement, the very one who assisted Brune and Champigny during their depositions in the Tonneau affair. The tumultuous Cordeliers district was the meeting place of independent and stormy individuals, of unfettered patriots, of a large portion of those who, in various degrees, would make a mark on the Revolution. Properly speaking, there was the assembly, the club, the press, the theater, and the battalion of the Cordeliers: a world of its own that Paris synthesized under the expression ‘the Cordeliers Republic’. Chaumette lived on the same street as Maréchal, and not far away, on Rue Serpente, was Manuel, another future prosecutor of the Commune. Marat, Loustallot, Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Momoro, and Prudhomme: the pride of the patriotic printers and journalists could be found distributed around the neighboring streets.65 In the Cordeliers battalion, the most active of the Parisian National Guard, Sylvain – who had joined as a volunteer – was assigned to the Second Company, strong in its complement of 116 men. Its captain was the lawyer Lerouge and Vincent was one of its corporals. Paré, Danton’s former clerk, one of the five ‘preservers of liberty’, and Prudhomme, the printer of the Revolutions de Paris, were among the citizen soldiers of that company. Lablée, for his part, was sublieutenant in the First Company.66 62 63 64 65 66

Robinet, Dictionnaire de la Révolution, Vol. i, p. 484. Lazare, Dictionnaire des rues et monuments de Paris, p. 469. Lazare, Dictionnaire des rues et monuments de Paris, p. 469. Martel, L’Orateur du peuple, no. lxi. Madelin, Figures du passé, Danton, pp. 25–28. Robinet, Dictionnaire de la Révolution, p. 484, article on ‘Bataillon des Cordeliers’.

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Though he claimed to hold himself ‘far from the people and their leaders’, despite claiming that he lived ‘apart and without fuss’, this was the popular and feverish atmosphere in which we find Maréchal after the Tonneau de Diogene affair. He left it only to remain in contact with his friends. In the first place, and in the hope of a marriage that would soon fulfill his wishes, he maintained relations with the Desprès family. Did he not still passionately love his ‘Zoé’, as he familiarly nicknamed Marie-Anne? He was already bound to her ‘by ties stronger than civil ones’.67 Jean-Baptiste, Zoe’s brother, who lost his boss, Baron Bezenval, and his position in the first days of the Revolution, quickly became one of the most ardent royalists, and, since he was skilled with the quill, the Feuille du Jour made him one of its regular writers, along with Viscount de Ségur, Dillon, and Parisau.68 How did the two opposing journalists, Sylvain and Jean-Baptiste, react when they met at Zoe’s side? We don’t know. What is certain is that this new situation did not seem made for smoothing the way for the union Maréchal so desired. Camille was luckier. He managed to overcome M. Duplessis’ paternal resistance, and his marriage with Lucile was celebrated 29 September 1790 at Saint-Sulpice. There is nothing that allows us to affirm that Maréchal attended this ceremony, but he would soon afterward compose a rhyme in honour of the happy newlyweds.69 To all appearances this union changed nothing in either the basis or the expression of the friendly and tender relations between Lucie and Sylvain. A feuillant journalist, Antoine Estienne, editor of Contre-Poison, a newspaper that backed Lafayette,70 after having claimed that Camille hadn’t been able to ‘consummate’ his marriage, went so far as to insinuate on 31 March 1791 that Lucile had let herself go with Sylvain: With her bonnet, the playful Lucile Amused herself by coiffing gentle Shepherd Sylvain, When suddenly the mocking Camille appeared (Doubtless returning from the Jacobin senate). He sees them and his rage is extreme, He scratches his brow, he detests the day,

67 68 69 70

Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, p. 195 {Lettre à une femme sur la religion]. Michaud, Biographie universelle, 1837, vol. lxii, p. 411, Article on ‘Després’. The article incorrectly states that Després collaborated on Point du Jour, Barère’s newspaper. Claretie, Camille Desmoulins. Lucile Desmoulins. Etude sur les Dantonistes, 1875. Bibl. Nat. Lc2/2.471.

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But Lucile calms him, saying: I love you friend, And your turn to be coiffed will come.71 Camille, who could be very philosophical about matters, does not seem to have replied, not even with blows of his cane, to this biting epigram. Nor did Maréchal. But the breach was opened. From that month of March 1791, the royalist gazetteers and pamphleteers and a patriotic columnist as brutally realist as Retif de la Bretonne, cast doubts on Lucile’s virtue. She would be called ‘a poor grisette’ with a weakness for the noble and proud Marquis de Saint-Huruge and General Arthur Dillon. However, in the year viii Sylvain would protest that she practiced ‘all the domestic duties and virtues’.72 Naturally, Maréchal did not neglect his ‘domestic duties’. His father was still a wine-seller on Rue des Prêcheurs and Sylvain often went to visit him there. He also saw his brother Nicolas, now a citizen of the Saint-Opportune district, who dedicated his brush and pencil to the ideas of the day.73 It was in all likelihood through him that the Shepherd Sylvain was introduced to the patriotic and Freemason engraver Michel Picquenot,74 who dedicated to him his print of the Grotto of the Shepherds.

71

72 73 74

A. Mathiez reproduced this epigram and all the attacks of Contre-poison on Camille in his article ‘La lune de miel de Camille Desmoulins’, Annales Révolutionnaire, vol. viii, 1916, pp. 567–571. Marechal, Dictionnaire des athées, p. 117. La Bouche de fer, no. 22, 22 February 1791. S. Lacroix, Actes de la Commune de Paris, vol. iv, pp. 345–346. S. Lacroix, Actes de la Commune de Paris, vol. iv, pp. 345–346. Arnaud, Recueil de tombeaux des 4 cimetieres de Paris, 1815, vol. ii, planche 78.

Chapter 7 1

The Year of Philosophical Pamphlets (1790)

The Tonneau de Diogène could not suffice for Sylvain Maréchal in his fight against the Church and the clergy. He intended to take advantage of the revolutionary agitation, of the schism pitting the two factions of the clergy against each other, and of the patriots’ discontent with the refractory priests to expand the struggle by shifting it from the political to the philosophical realm. Maréchal busied himself with producing simple, amusing, and popular pamphlets in order to turn as many consciences as possible from the realm of dogma and to push for the total abandonment of ancient prejudices. And so there appeared, one right after the other, the Catechisme du Curé Meslier, the Dictionnaire des saintes, the Decret de l’Assemblée Nationale portant reglement d’un culte sans prêtres [Decree of the National Assembly Regulating a Religion without Priests], as well as a reprint of the Fragmens d’un poeme moral sans Dieu. The Catechisme du curé Meslier, which we have already had the occasion to speak of, and which appeared in 1790, in truth includes no excerpts from the work of the famous curé from the Champagne region, contrary to the assertions of Carl Grünberg and Benoit Malon.1 Sylvain composed this work in its entirety. In it he furiously attacks religion and belief in God, employing humour and puns. To give an idea of the new catechist’s mode of peroration, here are a few passages taken from chapter xx, which deals with the Pater: Q: Why do you say ‘Our Father?’ A: In fact, I have no idea, since God doesn’t treat us like his children. Q: Why do you say ‘Who art in heaven?’ A: I say it this way because this is the way it is written, since for some time I’ve found a lack of consistency in these few words and even a manifest contradiction. Isn’t God everywhere? Q: Explain for us: ‘Thy name be hallowed’. A: I’d have a hard time doing so, since I don’t see how an atom can glorify and sanctify God.

1 Carl Grunberg, ‘Jean Meslier’, Revue d’Economie politique, 1888, vol. i, p. 284, and B. Malon, ‘Jean Meslier’, Revue socialiste, 1888, vol. viii, p. 148.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_009

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Q: Explain for us: ‘Thy kingdom come’. A: Indeed, it is time that the master come, since we’re beginning to be thoroughly sick of his valets.2 Maréchal says in his foreword ‘that we can only destroy [certain prejudices] with the weapon of ridicule’.3 We see that he was greatly inspired by this principle in writing his catechism. Nevertheless, the work ends in the most serious of modes with a philosophico-moral prayer to God that begins: Thou, whom I never saw and who I only know by name; thou whose existence is presumed from the harmony of this universe and disproved by the disorder of this same universe; thou, of whom it is said I am the child: do not hide my father from me. To have me embrace virtue, explain to me how comes it that in thine empire it is so often unhappy? To turn me away from vice, tell me why thou allows it to go almost always unpunished? Answer me otherwise than through the mouth of thy foolish and roguish priests.4 As in the Catechisme du curé Meslier, in the Dictionnaire des Saintes5 pious acts provide the pretext for the most ‘impious’ allusions, which doesn’t prevent the author, in a ‘dedicatory epistle’, from requesting his ‘dear pastor’ to recommend its being read from pulpits during mass and in nuns’ convents. The saints file by in alphabetical order and serve as a pretext for precisely the kinds of jokes one would expect. It’s not that Maréchal strays from the ‘golden legend’; on the contrary he follows Adrien Baillet and occasionally other authors step by step. But by putting in italics ‘the most edifying traits of the life of each saint’ he obtains the desired results. Others would later scientifically establish the traits common to mystical and carnal love that did not escape Maréchal. It is hardly necessary to say that at a time when the Christian religion was still integrated into the state Sylvain Maréchal could only have such writings appear under the veil of anonymity. What is more, printers and publishers avoided doing anything foolish: one seeks in vain for their names and addresses. In their

2 3 4 5

Maréchal, Catéchisme du curé Meslier, p. 32. Maréchal, Catéchisme du curé Meslier, p. 4. Maréchal, Catéchisme du curé Meslier, pp. 53–54. In the ‘Epitre dédicatoire’ of this book, pp. v–viii, Sylvain Maréchal signs off ‘Great-nephew of Adrien Baillet, on the women’s side.’ This should doubtess be viewed as a joke. Our research on this point in the civil registries of La-Neuville-en-Hez (Oise), birthplace of the famous author of the Vie des Saints, were fruitless.

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place we find in the Catéchisme du curé Meslier the vague mention ‘In Paris. The first year of the reign of Reason and Liberty’, and in the Dictionnaire des Saintes the indication ‘In Rome, Rue des Prêcheurs’. The reprint of the ‘wise, philosophical, and true principles’, previously formulated in the form of poetic fragments that Sylvain Maréchal produced in that same year of 1790, also bear the notice ‘In Rome’, with the mention ‘From the print shop of the Pope’. In fact, this work, whose ambition was that of ‘forever destroying the stupid, false, pernicious, illusory, misleading and harmful idea of a God imagined by priests and tyrants’ was probably printed in Nîmes under the significant title: Les erreurs religieuses et politiques enfin dévoilées ou le Poète sans préjugés [Religious and Political Errors Finally Revealed, or the Poet Without Prejudices]. The Décret de l’Assemblée Nationale portant règlement d’un culte sans prêtres is both a direct attack on Christianity and an indirect attack on the civil constitution of the clergy, which pleased Sylvain more than it did the reformist priests, of whom the Feuille villageoise would become the organ six months later. The anti-clerical campaign was then at its height. The Chronique de Paris of Condorcet and Rabaut and the Révolutions de Paris of Prudhomme were at the forefront of the combat. Anacharsis Cloots, ever impetuous, did not want political and theological interests to be mixed. He considered insoluble the question of whether ‘a dominant religion can adapt itself to the principles of the Declaration of Rights’ and demanded the separation of religion and the political body.6 Naigeon, Diderot’s old friend, also demanded the complete separation of Church and State and energetically spoke out for doing away with the salaries of priests in a pamphlet that made a great impression.7

2

Maréchal’s Domestic Religion

Both Cloots and Naigeon rose to the concept of an a-religious state. Though they were bold in saying that in principle religion is not necessary to the society, in maintaining the private manifestations of religion they ensured Catholicism’s life.

6 Chronique de Paris, 29 March 1790, article cited by Baulig in La Révolution Française, vol. xli, p. 319, by G. Avenel in Anacharis Cloots, l’orateur du Genre Humain, vol. i, pp. 168–169, and by A. Mathiez in Les Origines des cultes révolutionnaires, pp. 70–71. 7 Mathiez, Les Origines des cultes révolutionnaires, pp. 71–72. Maréchal did not fail to mention Naigeon’s pamphlet in his Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 299.

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Maréchal’s ideas were different. For him, far from being neutral, the state, from a religious point of view, should establish and regulate a religion that would obliterate Catholicism. His theory was that from the moment men form a ‘large association’, a veritable ‘monster in the eyes of nature’, unnatural methods are imposed in order to contain its members within it. Consequently, a religion is necessary. We should then benefit from this by establishing a domestic religion. The priesthood being both superfluous and an impiety, Sylvain turns the evangelical ministry over to the eldest member of the hamlet or, lacking that, the head of the family. Maréchal had already expressed this idea, which was visibly inspired by antiquity and which more or less satisfied Cloots.8 We should recall that in 1779 he considered the paternal home a sacred temple in which the parents are gods.9 He made the father a pontiff and outlined a religion of virtue adaptable to each family.10 In 1781, he exclaimed, in speaking of sons and daughters: The counsels received from the head of the family, Faithfully transmitted to his son, his daughter, Are a sacred code carefully observed. What need of cult or laws? An honest elder, learned thanks to his years, Guiding the destiny of his many children; Can’t he better teach virtue than priests? Is he not garbed in a saintly character?11 According to Maréchal, making the elder or the head of the family a natural pontiff meant ‘recalling men to the simplicity of the gospels and purifying the social system’. At the same time, it meant simplifying and reforming a religion that was never ‘more august, more holy than when there were no priests exprofesso living off the service of the altars’. What is more, the head of state, in his quality as father, being ‘the first pontiff of the religion’, the latter would preserve the precious unity, ‘the natural hierarchy that the abuses and excesses of civil society made disappear under a scaffolding of complicated regulations and absurd practices’.

8 9 10 11

Mathiez, Les Origines des cultes révolutionnaires, p. 71. Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, p. 55. Maréchal, L’Age d’or, see chapter iv. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, fragment L, p. 87.

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Pressing on in our investigation, if we examine this ‘religion without priests’ we will see that Maréchal’s witticisms and imaginings, as Mathiez said, ‘gradually undermined the civil constitution as effectively as did the logic of Cloots and Naigeon’.12 It required no less than twenty-four articles to regulate the new religion, to specify the obligations of the pseudo-priests, and to fix the date, time, and form of the ceremonies. The priest, ‘whose venerable beard will replace sacramental ornaments’, will preside not only over marriages and certify births, but his mission would also include the comforting of the ill and the honouring of the dead. He will also impose making amends for offenses. In summer ‘his doorstep’, and in winter ‘a warm and cozy fireplace’ or ‘the oldest tree of the canton’ will serve as sanctuaries for the pronouncing of a ‘short and touching homily to his children and even those neighbours younger than he’. Occasionally, at sunrise, he will place himself on a height and, one hand leaning on a pastoral rod, with the other he will bless his progenitors and neighbors in the name of ‘the God of Nature’. Children of twelve to fourteen years of age of both sexes, choirboys and girls, as it were, will assist him, singing hymns, holding ‘the Bible, the Gospels, and the small number of book necessary for religion and purified to that effect’. The ceremony will end with ‘a fraternal kiss’ and an abundant and frugal feast. Twice a year the priest-head of family will give his children communion: at the end of the harvest in the form of bread represented by a cake of finely ground flour from the new wheat, which will ‘be equally distributed’; and at the end of the grape harvest in the form of new wine, which will be handed around the table in a large ciborium. There will be four great festivals during the year. On 1 April, the former feast of Rogations, the priest-head of family, preceded by his children, will process around his domain invoking ‘the god of fertility’. In early winter, around the time of the former festival of All Saints, the illustrious dead will be commemorated, that is, those individuals who did the most honour to the family by their virtues. At Christmastime he will celebrate the birth of ‘a male child’. The day of the former Good Friday he will publicly console the unfortunate who suffered the most during the year, either from illness or ‘sufferings of the sprit or heart’. Confirmation shall be conferred on young men at age twenty before the assembled family by the priest-head of family, and at fifteen on young girls by the mother in the following fashion: ‘The young man shall offer himself bareheaded … The pontiff shall cover his head with a liberty bonnet while saying

12

Mathiez, Les Origines des cultes révolutionnaires, p. 73.

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to him: ‘I salute you in the name of your parents and your peers. Nature made you a man like us. We confirm these rights for you; confirm for us the duties’. The same ceremony applied to young girls’. Examining this religious edifice, one is struck by its analogies to the Catholic religion. One feels that the main concern of the author was to accommodate tradition, to spare ancient customs and habits in order to gradually arrive at eliminating the old religion, incapable of adjusting to the new environment. The clearly patriotic character of the confirmation ceremony gives an indication of the service vainly expected from the constitutional religion. In the final analysis, Maréchal’s project was nothing but one of the many attempts of the period to have the state absorb religion in order to create moral and religious unity. The Tonneau de Diogène, which was supposed to include the complete regulations for the new religion, did no more than announce it,13 and the Mercure Universel of 2 March 1791 reproduced its most characteristic passages without commentary.14 This silence of the press in no way diminishes the impact of Sylvain Maréchal’s project; at the very most it temporarily weakened its influence. As the Revolution freed itself of Catholicism we see it entrusting a kind of priesthood to the elderly. It is the elderly who Saint-Just charged with maintaining the incense that is to burn night and day in the holy temples. At the festival of 10 August they would be placed at the top of the mountain on the Champ de Mars on the day of the Festival of the Supreme Being. Francois de Neufchâteau would reserve place of honour for them at the décadaire assemblies. It is they who, glorified by a special festival under the Directory, would preside over the Festival of Spouses.15 Fathers would finally be incorporated into Daubermesnil’s Cult of Adorers and Theophilanthropy.16 During year vii,17 under cover of giving ‘the Nine Commandments of Reason’ of Moschus, a legislator of the Perizzians, a pastoral people of the ante-Lebanon, Maréchal again called for his new ‘religion without priests’, at times in the same terms as in 1790. Finally, in 1801, despite the progress of religious reaction, Maréchal did not renounce his domestic religion and, in a century when ‘heads of household had to know how to count’, he stressed the importance of frugality.18

13 14 15 16 17 18

No. 6, p. 48. Mercure Universel, p. 25. A. Sicard, L’éducation morale et civique avant et pendant la Révolution, edit. of 1913, p. 431 ff. Mathiez, La Théophilanthropie et le culte Décadaire, pp. 54 and 98. Maréchal, Voyage de Pythagore, vol. i, p. 279. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. xiv.

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The Anti-Clerical Campaign of the Révolutions de Paris

An anonymous individual who, according to Albert Mathiez,19 was none other than Boissy d’Anglas, preferred a state theism to Maréchal’s domestic religion. In a pamphlet entitled Le magistrat-prêtre [The Priestly Magistrate] he proposed the uniting in the same hands of the priesthood and the magistracy. Far from banishing priests, he made them the support of the new order of things. This system, in accord with the initial ideas of the patriots and in disagreement with facts and the ‘religion without priests’, nevertheless satisfied Sylvain Maréchal at those moments when he was guided by tactical necessity. Indeed, in one of the first articles in the Révolutions de Paris, after having fulminated against the priests, those ‘two-faced individuals’, those ‘birds of the night’, those ‘dangerous hosts’ who ‘for professional reasons and from principle’ oppose ‘the progress of reason and the rule of liberty’, Sylvain Maréchal envisaged the benefits to be expected if they were to rally en masse to the Revolution, if they were to agree to represent the nation at the same time as heaven. Priests of the Lord, interpreters of a law of equality and peace, speak more softly! We do you the favour of regarding you as citizens and we are prepared to forget your past scandals. There is still time: swear an oath along with us. Become our brothers, profit from our moderation, for it is reaching an end. We agree to no longer look back as long as you march forward with a firm step on the straight path that we cleared through so many dangers. Strip away the old man so you can put on the cloak of the regenerating principles of the new Constitution … Prelates of France! Come down from your pulpits, make way for pontiffs in keeping with the heart of the nation;20 or, from the weathervane of the church pass into the bosom of the fatherland. It has more need of citizens than of bishops; it has more need of morals than dogmas … Convert to patriotism and pronounce along with us the oath to be citizens: you’ve taken others that were more painful and less honourable.21 All of which is clear and forthright. We are in December 1791 and despite persistent setbacks, Maréchal, like almost all revolutionaries, still returned to the

19 20 21

Mathiez, Les Origines des Cultes révolutionnaires, p. 74. Underlined in the article. Révolutions de Paris, no. 75, 11–18 December 1790, article, ‘Adresse au people des campagnes touchant le clergé’. The quoted lines lead one to think of the ‘Epistle to the Ministers of all Religions’ in Pour et contre la Bible and Fragment cxviii of the Lucrèce français, p. 152.

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chimerical dream of basing national sovereignty on the altar. He even believed that we would soon reach the epoch when ‘metaphysical abstractions’ will be completely banished from religion because it will have become ‘completely national’. ‘The Church’, he says, clearly influenced by Abbé Raynal, ‘is everything in the state; the state is nothing at all in the church’. And he later adds these important lines: Religion is nothing but a fraternal tie dreamed up to tighten political bonds. With time, through a tissue of abstractions, this tie became a heavy chain. It is time to have a simplified religion serve as a vehicle of education. Priests don’t sufficiently feel all the beauty of the role they still have to play … Before the Revolution they were nothing but wasps in the nest. They were parasites we were so weak we put them up in the municipal building. At present, if they want to promise us to stick to the Gospel and apply its morality to the new Constitution … if they content themselves with the honest wages allocated them, it is then and only then that we will fraternise with them and that our children, raised by them, will honour them as second fathers.22 This, laid out as precisely as possible, is the point of view that still dominated the Jacobins at the end of 1790. The civil constitution of the clergy had failed in its goal. One could feel that the clergy on a whole was hostile to the task demanded of it, and Maréchal particularly felt this, since in his anger he went so far as to suppress them in the civil religion. Despite everything, the revolutionaries made one final, hopeful attempt to win them over to the new order. They couldn’t accept the idea that the lower clergy persisted in an oppositional attitude, because they were nourished on Voltaire and especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had drawn so flattering a portrait of ‘the Savoyard vicar’. Until then the rural clergy had been considered in a favourable and sympathetic light. Its attitude at the moment of the summoning of the Estates General had allowed for the highest hopes. Maréchal himself, in his ‘religion without priests’, asserted that village priests ‘deserved the greatest consideration in the eyes of reason’s reformers’,23 and a year later he would write that the Revolution ‘owes much’ to patriotic priests ‘and still expects much of them’.24

22 23 24

Revolutions de Paris, no. 75, same article, p. 507. In the “Notes historiques servant de pièces justificatives’. Révolutions de Paris, no. 124, vol. x, p. 335.

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In simple French, this meant that they could become the most useful of citizens, that they could be made to serve the progress of philosophy. But in late 1790 reality put the lie to these notions. Maréchal had no illusions about the advances he had made to the priests. He wanted to try his luck one more time. He had far more expected that the clergy would ‘put itself to use in some counter-revolutionary drama’ than that it would become one of the pillars of the nascent Revolution. This is why he recommended to the peasants that they impose silence on the ‘false doctors’, that they ‘cover their impious blather with jeers’, and drive from the temple these ‘sellers of holy things’; that they bring them ‘to the foot of the ancient elm’ in front of the tribunal of village elders and ‘hand them over to the mocking laughter of women and children’. ‘From the moment they become ridiculous they will no longer be feared’.25 Prelates should be spared no more than priests. Moderation and patience had gone on long enough. And the people should consider the right to surveillance the complement to the right to elect priests and bishops. For too long we have demonstrated an apathy and weakness that are no longer fitting for a nation that has become free. Through some striking examples you must contain those bishops tempted to halt the Revolution by hindering its march. Two or three of these gentlemen brought before the people’s tribunal and judged without appeal would have rendered the others better patriots and more circumspect. The aristocracy of the clergy has always been more perfidious than that of the nobility. Fear a secret coalition of all the prelates of France, shrewder than parlements: it could perhaps suffice to overturn the new order. Maréchal again slipped his project of a domestic religion into these prophetic lines: Woe on prelates who persist in preserving any relics of the ancien régime! Citizens! They will do nothing but hasten the revolution in religious ideas that is being prepared. It won’t be long before we realise that the costs of religion can be reduced still further. Perhaps we will do more and, the text of the Gospels in hand, who will prevent us from saying to the eighty-three prelates of France: Messieurs, our family heads propose to henceforth fulfill your functions and the only wages they demand is a tribute of filial

25

Révolutions de Paris, 11–18 December 1790, article, ‘Adresse au people des campagnes touchant le clergé’.

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love and respect. And so leave your pulpits, your rings and your pastoral rods, your miters and all the episcopal paraphernalia whose maintenance weighs too heavily on us. Go in peace and allow each of us to attend to our religious duties in our own hearts and homes. An enlightened people needs no other check than a national code.26 This article dates from mid-November 1790, but already, in the Révolutions de Paris of 30 October, Maréchal expected nothing good from the clergy, and in order to safeguard national liberty he demanded a series of extra-religious measures, like popular education, freedom of thought and speech, and the establishing of patriotic committees in the cities and countryside. In a word, he attempted to free himself from a tenacious school of thought and pushed his ‘religion without priests’ so far that all that was left was the purely civic part: ‘Let the most capable father gather his children and neighbors beneath the portico of the church or the doorway of his cottage and read them the decree of the National Assembly so it can be discussed by the attendees’.27 Two months later, either as a result of his suggestion or from necessity, the district of Rostrenen in the Finistère put Maréchal’s idea into practice by instituting a reader in each municipality, whose mission was replacing the priest in proclaiming decrees of the Assembly.28 In this way patriotic readers were created whose role would expand during the process of revolutionary dechristianization. The Journal du journal de Prudhomme, attributed to Stanislas de ClermontTonerre, responded to Sylvain Maréchal’s homily on the clergy. Its title seemed to him to be crude, its content ‘oafishness not worth four sous’, and its form a ‘confused, bombastic sermon’.29 But these attacks, like the creation of municipal readers, attest to the fact that Sylvain was not wasting his time by using the Révolutions de Paris to combat the Catholic religion and clergy.

26 27 28 29

Révolutions de Paris, no. 71, 13–20 November 1790, pp. 303–304. Mathiez comments on this article in Rome et la clerge francais sous la Constituante, pp. 384–386. Révolutions de Paris, no. 68, 23–30 October, article, ‘Motions populaires, suavegarde de la liberté nationale’. Mathiez, La Révolution et l’Eglise, p. 49. Le journal du journal de Prudhomme ou petites observations sur de graves réflexions. Bibl. Nat. LC2/173.

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Prudhomme’s Newspaper. Maréchal Succeeds Loustallot

The weekly paper the Révolutions de Paris, founded by Louis Prudhomme at the beginning of the storm, had an enormous influence on the public spirit. Its popularity was unprecedented, with a print run that reached 200,000 copies, an enormous number for the period. The paper owed its success to the talent of Elysée Loustallot. Young Loustallot attacked kings while censuring the people and attacking the court, without sparing unworthy patriots. He never hid weaknesses or flattered the people’s passions. This patriotic writer, with his firm and calm spirit, his sober and sincere language, was gifted with a considerable capacity for work. He alone wrote more or less all of the Révolutions de Paris until September 1790.30 His death on 19 September 1790 abruptly posed a worrisome problem for Prudhomme: how to keep all the readers that Loustallot’s talent had brought to the newspaper? Prudhomme obtained the collaboration of a certain number of patriotic journalists and made an appeal to Sylvain, his comrade from the Cordeliers Battalion. Maréchal, like Loustallot, maintained his anonymity. But his bombastic style, his anti-Catholic diatribes, the expressions and turns of phrase particular to him, his simplistic and occasionally chimerical solutions allow us to pick out his many articles with great ease. What a contrast with Loustallot’s prose! The language of cold reason and practical solutions gave place to declamations, angry shouts, calculated violence, abstract theories, and at times to studied language and erudition. These articles provide a glimpse Sylvain’s mentality and character in parallel with the ever more pronounced progress of the Revolution. And so we must examine them closely, placing them within the framework of their time and clarifying them, if possible, through other writings by the author.

5

The Fight against Marie-Antoinette and Louis xvi

In early October 1790, it was ‘the king’s wife’, Marie-Antoinette, who Maréchal attacked first. The article, though moderate in form, is no less stinging. Maréchal reproaches Antoinette for remaining Austrian, for raising her children with counter-revolutionary principles, for maintaining a mysterious correspondence with her brothers, for encouraging the king to violate the constitution and flee, and for intriguing and even exercising a pernicious influence over

30

Pellet, Elysée Loustallot et les Révolutions de Paris (July 1789, September 1790), ch. i.

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the National Assembly. These were not vague and insignificant words given rise to by circumstances and aimed at excusing these wrongs in the eyes of the people. He added: ‘Fear that they don’t attribute to you a part in all the unfortunate events of which they will be victim. The blood still steaming in Nancy was spilled under the orders of a man the nation considered suspect but who was sworn to by the court’.31 These complaints were all too well founded. There would later be proof that Marie-Antoinette was in constant correspondence with her brother Leopold and the Count de Mercy, the Austrian ambassador. It would be learned that she never stopped begging for an armed intervention, and that her plan was to mislead a number of patriots in the Assembly. The abortive flight to Varennes and the tragic end of the Austrian woman proved how well-founded Maréchal’s article was. At bottom, what shocked Maréchal was that ‘the King’s spouse’, or, if you will, ‘the first citizeness of the kingdom’, ignored or scoffed at the people. It was for and by them that Louis xvi ruled; it was for them and by them that the Revolution existed. They were wiser than the Queen thought. Their assemblies, though noisy and crude, gave more satisfaction than the National Assembly. Almost every decree that bears the mark of reason, Maréchal would admit, was nothing but the echo of popular motions. On the contrary, the decrees that left something to be desired, like the marc d’argent and the royal veto, were disavowed in advance by the people. The popular assemblies forged men and transformed frivolous and idle young men into useful citizens. They were able to foil the aristocracy’s most subtle intrigues. Let us have no base flattery! The people yet had great defects. They were too idolatrous. Didn’t they decorate Louis xvi with the beautiful title of ‘Restorer of French liberty’ when that irresolute monarch played a passive role? Did they not lack the boldness to look liberty in the face? Nor did the people feel that they were the true sovereign, the only legitimate and supreme one ‘before whom it is as if kings do not exist’. If they had any dignity would they tolerate the decree that kept them away from voting? Would they accept that the revolution be profitable for a tiny minority?32 These are the reflections Maréchal delivered to the readers of the newspaper. For him, they must gradually win over the most idolatrous over to the repub-

31 32

Révolutions de Paris, no. 65, pp. 661–664. Révolutions de Paris, no. 68, pp. 113–120; no. 81, pp. 133–140.

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lican idea, for – let there be no mistake about it – it is the Republic that is the goal of these tirades. In separating the cause of the king from the cause of the people, in openly proclaiming that the people are more than the king, Maréchal echoed the republican campaign so courageously begun by Robert and Lavicomterie. It must be said that over the course of just a few months the Revolution had made much progress. Principles that until then had been considered extreme spread like wildfire. There was now a republican vanguard that asserted itself, that raised its banner, whose theses had the good fortune to be discussed, and could count on the assistance of a great newspaper like the Révolutions de Paris.

6

The Campaign in Favour of Tyrannicides

It was at this time that Prudhomme’s paper began the campaign – which caused quite a stir – in favour of the creation of a battalion of tyrannicides. Already, at the time of Loustallot, in March 1793,33 the Révolutions de Paris had suggested the founding of a society comprised of ‘the most virtuous’ and ‘the most intrepid’ young men of the eighty-three departments, whose goal would be putting to death those princes and generals who might attempt to enslave revolutionary France. This suggestion expressed in the conditional passed unnoticed; it had the effect of a Platonic wish. In December 1790, the royalists, in a series of pamphlets distributed for free, openly called for the assassination of patriots. In response to the external provocations of these Porsennas and the internal provocations of ‘a mass of Catilines’, Maréchal transformed the forgotten suggestion into a firm proposal. Knowing his tyrannicidal tendencies, there is nothing surprising in this, and in truth, one wonders what could have impelled the royalist Marchant to think Fabre d’Eglantine write this article.34 Throughout its length Sylvain lays out the wisdom of his project.35 To be sure, it was a question of nipping in the bud the attacks on the country’s freedom and confronting all the enemies of the Revolution. But Sylvain saw much further: thanks to the Battalion of Tyrannicides his ambition was to render the greatest service to humankind. He wanted to abolish all armies, now made useless. Through several well-chosen individual attacks, which would 33 34 35

‘Mort de l’Empereur Joseph’ in Révolutions de Paris, no. 35, 6–13 March 1790. La Jacobinéide, pp. 30 and 44. It is to be noted that Marchant cites all Prudhomme’s principal collaborators, except Maréchal. Révolutions de Paris, no. 74, 4–11 December 1790, pp. 445–455.

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avoid the loss ‘of streams of blood on both sides’, he wanted to liberate all peoples and establish universal peace. This universal peace, in which Henri iv briefly believed, that the good Abbé Saint-Pierre preached all his life, whose project J.-J. Rousseau enthusiastically adopted; this beautiful dream of good people would become a sweet reality the moment there will exist a phalanx of tyrannicides, hardened against storms and death, patria jubente. Citizens! Let your gaze rest for a moment on this institution, worthy of a great people jealous of preserving the liberty it conquered. Become the model for an amazed Europe. Let us become their liberators by raising from among us a young swarm of tyrannicidal heroes who, following legal instructions and distributed along our borders, will attack all of humanity’s agitators, ready to descend on us. We were the first to shake off and smash the yoke of despotism. The honour of being the first to form an association of sublime mortals dedicated to the salvation of their brothers and ready to redeem with their lives the lives of several hundred thousand mobilised men, is reserved to us.36 It can be seen that Maréchal proposes giving a legal form to the institution he is advocating. He insists on this point several times, for he does not at all want the tyrannicides burning with enthusiasm to be confused with regicides in the style of the Old Man of the Mountain or of Jesuitical schools motivated by ambition and vengeance. Just as Scaevola obtained the sanction of the Roman senate, Maréchal’s tyrannicides would be officially recognised by the National Assembly. Recruited among battle-hardened patriots, their names would first be entered in a register deposited on the Champ de Mars atop the Altar to the Fatherland. Following a strict selection process, a hundred names would be retained representing ‘the quintessence of the Nation’. The patriots of ‘the holy troop’ or ‘the sacred legion’ would be proclaimed every night around the Altar to the Fatherland and armed by the hand of a father-conscript from the National Assembly, after which they would take a solemn vow to ‘exist only for the destruction of tyrants and their consorts; to attach themselves to their persons like remorse in the heart of a culprit; to attempt all means known or to be known; to imagine new expedients to arrive at freeing the fatherland from crowned monsters and their vile agents who might manifest the design to attack national liberty by approaching

36

Révolutions de Paris, no. 74, 4–11 December 1790, p. 447.

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the frontiers with hostile aims’. It would thus be the Revolution that officially performed the investiture of the tyrannicides through one of its most worthy representatives. In justifying his proposal Maréchal, as was his wont, did not fail to provide a large number of references. Nor did he fail to reckon on the clashes he would provoke or the interpretations given his article. He ends with this clause: Citizens, a muffled noise is spreading. It is whispered that there is a faction that carries the aristocratic delirium so far as to contemplate an attempt on the days of Louis xvi. Citizens, redouble your vigilance around his person. This monarch is one of the very small number of those who could reconcile Brutus with royalty. A king who allows national liberty to sit beside him on the throne deserves the nation’s attachment. The peoples’ repose depends on the existence of such a king.37 But the writer could later change his position: he had after all presented kings in general as enemies of the people and openly advocated their extermination. This article had vast repercussions.38 Prudhomme received many visits and much correspondence, but aside from a certain Citizen Boyer, who in an energetic letter declared he would carry out everything the newspaper would call for, Maréchal’s proposal found few partisans. And even this is saying too much. The ‘sublime institution of tyrannicides’, as Sylvain Maréchal admitted, ‘revolted more than one reader’. More generally it was condemned – and again it is Maréchal who is speaking – ‘with a truly culpable lightness, inconsistency, and bad faith’. A ‘herd of slaves who trembled for themselves and their masters’ did not fear sending ‘platitudes’ to the editors of the newspaper. Three weeks after the appearance of his article, Maréchal was forced to clarify his ideas, remove any ambiguities, and respond to objections.39 He returned to the distinction between tyrannicides and regicides. Contrary to what was said by some, he insisted that the institution, far from being impractical, was totally viable. He stressed the illogic of those who trembled at the announcement of the murder of a few ‘shameless brigands’ but who gloried in the hecatombs of two peoples. He outlined a response to the ‘terrible objection’ touching on the attitude of tyrannicides in the event of civil war. For Prudhomme this long clarification still did not seem sufficient to erase the bad 37 38 39

Révolutions de Paris, no. 74, 4–11 December 1790, p. 455. Révolutions de Paris, no. 77, 25 December 1790–1 January 1791, continuation on the tyrannicides, pp. 615–626. Révolutions de Paris, no. 77, 25 December 1790–1 January 1791, pp. 615–626.

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impression produced by the article. In a ‘nota bene’ the publisher explained himself and gave his own profession of faith. Speaking of the newspaper, Prudhomme wrote: ‘It has caused some discontent and that is perhaps the most beautiful praise it could receive’.40 Despite these explanations, the idea continued to offend other democrats. Fauchet exclaimed: ‘I am neither a tyrannicide nor a tyrannophage’. Nevertheless, several weeks later his newspaper applauded a motion aimed at ‘judging kings’41 at around the same time that Maréchal, transposing his republicanism onto more sold ground, proposed a decree at the National Assembly ‘calling for the abolition of the monarchy’.42 Villaumé claimed that Maréchal’s ‘truly revolutionary project’ had enough supporters to allow for the creation of ‘a select society’ of tyrannicides ‘that committed no attacks’.43 This is more than doubtful: such a society existed mainly in the fertile imagination of the vaudevilliste Marchant, who needed it to spice up the review of Jacobin troops in his heroic-comic-civic poem La Jacobinéide. In it we see the Battalion of Tyrannicides march behind the Cordeliers Club at the festival of the Federation: The battalion that comes next Is that of the tyrannicides. On their pale faces can be read Their designs and their crimes. They look to be without armour, But they hide, beneath their clothes, Heavy daggers at their belts With which they’d pierce their friends If they ever thought them Partisans of good King Louis. Their step is slow, their gaze suspicious, And blasphemy is on their lips.44 Later, between the fever of the insurrection of 10 August and the bloodbath of the September massacres, in response to the enemy’s Terror, which had put a price on peoples’ heads, and to impose silence on the fanatics who accused the

40 41 42 43 44

Révolutions de Paris, no. 77, 25 December 1790–1 January 1791, pp. 626–627. Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française, 4th edition, p. 106. Révolutions de Paris, no. 90, pp. 613–617. Villiaumé, Histoire de la Révolution française, 3 edition, 1851, p. 76. La Jacobinéide, chant iii, p. 36.

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deputies of intelligence with Austria,45 Jean de Bry actually had the idea of creating a corps of tyrannicides. At the Legislative Assembly on 26 August 1792 he proposed the formation of a company of 1,200 volunteers to attack the leaders and armies marching against the Revolution. The agitation was so great that this proposal was adopted. The Assembly even decided that the dagger and the pistol would be the weapons of the new Brutuses. It was going to discuss their wages when Vergniaud and others requested the postponement of the decree, as it could result in reprisals and a horrific war. After long debate its return to the commission was adopted and the project was buried.46 Perlet’s paper found that the Assembly had ‘honoured itself’ in the circumstances, the measure being ‘too lightly conceived’ and containing ‘as much immorality as weakness’. The Journal universel of Xavier Audoin, after having recognised ‘that a corps of 1,200 men organized in this way would have struck fear in the heart of tyrants’ condemned the pusillanimity of the Assembly. Merlin de Thionville, for his part, would later – in response to the reprisal proclamation of the Emperor and the King of Prussia – affirm the character, ‘so moral, so grand, so generous, and so human of the tyrannicide’. It was not only newspapers that supported the idea shared by Maréchal and Jean de Bry. The Cordeliers Club, in a petition presented to the Assembly on 27 August, the day after Jean de Bry’s speech, made a three part proposal aimed at bringing about the appearance of tyrannicides. The heart of it, the considerations that motivated the proposal, were visibly inspired by the principles developed by Maréchal. The petition was signed by Dulaure, who supported it in his paper, and it was sent by the Assembly for examination by the extraordinary commission.47 It thus had no more success than de Bry’s motion, which perhaps explains this mention in the Révolutions de Paris: ‘Let us congratulate the Cordeliers Club for its tyrannicides who have not yet killed anyone’.48 Proof that Maréchal and Prudhomme, unhappy with the poor results of their campaign, now saw things from a different angle is that the Révolutions de Paris did not devote a single line of commentary to Jean de Bry’s project. The newspaper limited itself, in an ‘examination of the main candidates who aspire to or have been voted onto the Convention’, to favourably singling out Jean de Bry, ‘whose ardour is very precious at this time’.49

45 46 47 48 49

Annales Révolutionnaires, 11th year, 1919 [Autobiographie de Jean de Bry], p. 76. Révolutions de Paris, vol. xiii, p. 410. La Révolution française, vol. lxxxii, April–June 1929, Caron, ‘Une petition tyrannicde’, pp. 133–143. Caron provides the complete text o the petition. Révolutions de Paris, vol. xiii, p. 523. Révolutions de Paris, no. 164, 25 August–1 September 1792, p. 390.

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Later, when he had become prefect of the Empire and was rewarded by the tyrant ‘with flat hair’, Jean de Bry would prostrate himself before Napoleon; and when, upon the return of the Bourbons he would toast Louis xviii and offer his services to the Comte d’Artois, he would avoid bragging about this motion. In 1816, a refugee in Mons, he would write his autobiography and apologize again for having maintained his ‘too famous motion for tyrannicide’, for which he ‘was reproached’. But his colleagues in exile and notably Baudot did not fail to mock him.50 During the period when Napoleon showed himself to be a new tyrant, how much more dignified was the attitude of Sylvain, the promoter of the tyrannicidal idea? We will have the occasion to demonstrate this.

7

The Article ‘On the Poor and the Rich’

Socialist tendencies began to appear at the beginning of that year, 1791. And yet the counter-revolution was more of a threat than ever. The patriots wondered and worried that the dearest of the Revolution’s conquests were again going to be put in question. Some, fearful, thought they could ward off the threat by developing the still embryonic power of the people. A much smaller group was bolder. Though they did not disdain political reforms, they considered the destruction of the privileges of wealth the sole measure capable of consolidating the foundations of the new order. Thirsty for social justice, they were, for the most part, supporters of the agrarian law. They asserted that the Revolution was not made only for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, that, contrary to what Rabaut St. Etienne announced in his almanac, it was not finished, and that it was finally time to emancipate the people. As one would imagine, Maréchal aligned himself with this group. In February 1791 he published, the one right after the other, a vigourous article entitled ‘Des pauvres et des riches’ [‘Of the Poor and the Rich’]51 and a bold pamphlet entitled Dame nature a la barre de l’Assemblee Nationale [Mother Nature at the Bar of the National Assembly]. The article and the pamphlet complement each other and deserve close examination. One could perhaps wonder what circumstances led Maréchal to evoke the social problem in all its amplitude, which until then he had only approached in a sentimental and moral form. In truth, it was a political incident of apparently 50 51

Kuscinski, Dictionnaire des Conventionnels, fasc. ii, article ‘Jean de Bry’. Révolutions de Paris, no. 82, pp. 169–175. The passages without references that follow are from this article.

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little importance that provided the pretext for his entering the lists. But it would be wrong to consider this minor act in and of itself; rather it must be connected to the monarchist campaign attempting to set the poor against the revolutionaries in power and inciting the [working-class] faubourg Antoine against the Assembly, a campaign that manifested itself in two forms of corruption: spiritual, by means of pamphlets, and material by means of allocations, a campaign that would have repercussions at the Assembly on 25 January 1791.52 Through shrewd largesse the Monarchical Club sought to win the Parisians over to the royal cause. It had seen to it that 12.000 livres reached Paris for distribution to the indigent. The forty-eight sections of Paris foiled the maneuver, refusing a gift that bordered on perfidy. Maréchal ironically advised the people to take the royalist gentlemen at their word, to exhaust their purses, and to empty their stores. Since the occasion was offered them, the poor should go even further: they should pose the question of the right to property. It had gone on for far too long that the rich ‘made use of goods that didn’t belong to them’. They had for too long metamorphosed their debts into charity. A people living on charity is ‘de facto slaves’. It is not only gold and bread the people need; it is the restitution of a portion of their rights. The indigent class was tired of a precarious existence. It wanted to make the revolution for its own benefit. It would not allow itself to be fooled by clever, wealthy men. It would not long tolerate being penned in like lowly cattle in charity workshops. What then would it do? Profiting from the advantage greater numbers have over the smaller, will they throw themselves on the rich? Will they seize castles and parks? Will they impose on those with too much the sharing of their possessions with those with too little? Will they impose the agrarian law on vast holdings, those steppes that take up a third of the country’s land? Will they demand ‘that a new land registry, composed of small, equal portions, finally realise the stolen constitution that declares all men equal?’ No. On the pretext of doing away with disorder they might create a still greater one. The inequality in wealth that sometimes angers the poor was only established over the long term, and it is only over the long term that it will be made to disappear. Informing the poor class of its strength before teaching them its proper use is something to be feared. It is still ignorant. In order to become landowners, to enter ‘the realm of nature’, they must become enlightened, must learn their rights and duties.

52

Tarlé, ‘La classe ouvrière et le parti contre-révolutionnaire’, Revolution francaise, 1909; Soreau, ‘La loi Le Chapelier’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 1937.

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And so, it is neither violently nor immediately that the poor class will put things back on their ancient footing. At the very most they will inspire a healthy terror in the rich. They will persevere in their labours and not yet resort to the general strike so grippingly outlined two years previously by the same Sylvian. Inequality in wealth will continue to exist. It will only be rendered less glaring by a closing of the gap that separates the enemy classes, ‘between the abuses of great opulence and the excess of profound poverty’. The problem is not insoluble. It is enough that the rich and the poor accept the mediation or, if you will, the arbitration of those who, possessing ‘neither too much nor too little’, occupy an intermediate position. Concentrating all the light of cultivated reason, these citizens do not stand out, nor do they receive much notice, yet they laid the groundwork for the Revolution. They were able ‘to rectify the lies of the court and the prejudices of the multitude’.53 Let them leave their isolation and form a phalanx of philanthropists every bit as fearsome as that of the tyrannicides! After coming together, they will separate into two factions: one will go to the poor and, though recognising their rights, will encourage them to be patient in the interest of the Revolution. The other will tell the rich that it is in their interest and that their future depends on forestalling the agrarian law. It will persuade them that ‘considerations of justice and humanity, of patriotism and honour’ demand that they act before the poor do. It will demand that every wealthy man elevate a father from the poor class to the rank of landowner by ceding him several parcels of land. ‘Opulent man’, the wise man will say, ‘detach a few arpents from your national acquisitions for those who conquered liberty for you. The number of the poor will gradually diminish, and that of the rich in proportion, and these two classes that were two extremes will give way to that sweet middle way, to that fraternal equality without which there is no real liberty or lasting peace’. In summary, Maréchal returned to the sharing out of land, though on a reduced scale and under rather problematic conditions, since this distribution was based solely on the good will of the wealthy. He puts off until later – ‘and perhaps soon’ – the complete social revolution. Like Barnave during that same period, he was worried about the threat of France’s envelopment by the counter-revolution. But the political needs of the moment did not lead him

53

Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. i, vol. 1, p. 142.

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to lose sight of the profound changes he was pursuing. At the same time that he attempted to develop practical solutions, breaking with any form of opportunism, and abandoning himself to ‘his deepest self and his imagination’,54 he published Dame nature a la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale.

8

Dame Nature à La Barre de l’Assemblée Nationale

This title is pure eighteenth century, but the idea of making Nature’s great voice heard was not new. Lucretius had already made Nature speak eloquently, as had Montaigne. Maréchal had given it voice in one of his anti-God poems. She said to man: Return, ungrateful child, who underestimates your mother; Return to nature and abjure your chimera.55 Now Nature speaks in the social realm. She demonstrates at the bar of the Assembly what man must do to achieve happiness, since for Sylvain, as for all his contemporaries, Nature is necessarily good and should be taken as a model. It is the final refuge for the tender and delicate, who are disgusted by human institutions. Sylvain is not in the least touched by the suffering inflicted by nature, the sight of which would later torment the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg in her prison.56 But what does Mother Nature have to say as she steps forward and abruptly disturbs parliamentary labours and maneuvers? In the first place, she does not believe that social problem can be solved by legislators. She tells the deputies: ‘All of you should return to your families. This is not your place … What do you think you can do?’57 She adds that the task is beyond their strength; that they will only ever build on sand; that new abuses will succeed the old; and that it is preferable in all cases to accept her laws. She granted instinct to all, and that is the sole yoke we must all accept. Why dream up others? The old society was useless, costly, and cumbersome. Doesn’t the new one have the same defects? Is it more solid? In truth, the edifice raised at such cost, with such praiseworthy intentions and perhaps with great talent, is only 54 55 56 57

Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. i, p. 143. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, frag. v, p. 18. Rosa Luxemburg, Lettres de la Prison, Librairie du Travail, Paris, 1933, pp. 3–31. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 1.

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impressive in the short term. It contains the same errors in construction as the old buildings.58 It is the social system that must be abandoned. Civil society is like arid land where everything withers away: it is pointless to plant grain in a field of chaff. ‘And do you not see that this revolution that troubles twenty-five million men resembles the changes in position of the incurably ill on their bed of suffering?’59 What has the Revolution done up till now? Without a doubt many odious and revolting distinctions have been suppressed, men have been proclaimed free and equal, but the course of events remains the same, in other forms and under other names.60 There is still a king, ‘an individual who the hazards of birth placed here rather than there’ and without whom the decrees of the Assembly lack the force of law.61 Why persist in maintaining this ‘fetish’, in devoting a cult to him,62 in granting him the suspensive veto?63 ‘Even if Louis xvi brought together within his person the marvelous attributes that your imagination thinks your divinities possess, you would still be foolish by greeting him as your monarch … A monarch is the bogey of liberty’.64 There is still the court, ‘which is to nature and liberty what a house of prostitution is to a self-respecting virgin’.65 There is still the clergy, which exists to sanctify ‘the chains of despotism’ and whose very existence ‘leads directly to slavery and poverty’. With one hammer blow ‘this horde’ should be crushed and through a single decree ‘reduce this insatiable body to inanition’.66 And what does the separation of powers mean? Nature asks: What does this bizarre distinction of executive, legislative, and constituted powers mean? Did I not grant all men these powers? How is it then that an assembly of men agrees to despoil itself of half its rights in order to assume just one of them? What a pity to see you shatter the precious unity that should characterise the labours of a great assembly of reasonable men and devise two authorities, two necessarily rival interests.67 Unquestionably the new legislators have far surpassed 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, pp. 2, 10. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 13. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 3. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 7. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 8. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 20. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 31. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 32. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, pp. 21–22. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 7.

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their predecessors, ‘who were nothing but dwarfs’. But even with that, they are nothing but children. Their decrees are ‘pitiful’: From their style alone one feels the pettiness of their vision, the aridity of their ideas.68 And as in the past, there is also ‘commerce and all the base passions that invigorate it’.69 Above all, and this is what the pamphleteer wanted to get at, ‘An unbreachable wall still stands between those who have too much and those who don’t have enough. When this harmful and distressing separation disappears thanks to your votes’, he says to the deputies, ‘then I will believe in the sublimity of your decrees, the efficacy of your labours’.70 Until then, liberty will be invoked without its being anything but a beautiful and sterile legal fiction. ‘Sad humans! You who, in your charity workshop, in your deadly hospitals, in the filth of your public markets, behind the walls of your flourishing and corrupt cities, sing hymns to liberty’.71 ‘You brag of the charms and advantages of liberty to men garroted by civic ties’.72 And Sylvain, the interpreter of nature, shows all men to be chained by need, at each other’s mercy. He shows that a hungry man is not and cannot be free, that he denies himself any enthusiastic impulses, ‘any contemplation of his own fate’, because need forbids it. In a striking turn of phrase, he writes: ‘The tatters of destitution as well as the livery of vice repel liberty’.73 And what are the subterfuges resorted to to hide these shames, to ward off the failings in legal codes and institutions, to cow the naïve? They resort to oaths, masses, sashes, ribbons, handbells, and drums, to a hundred grotesque and ridiculous methods.74 Everywhere we see ‘the silk liveries of civil subordination’ ‘the golden chains of social dependency’.75 Nowhere do we saw man truly free. As for equality, both before and after the Revolution Maréchal seeks it in vain. Instead of the only distinctions he finds acceptable, those of sex, age, and family, there are still the rich and the poor, masters and valets, citizens and soldiers, priests and parishioners, representatives and the represented.76 It is true

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 14. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 14. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 3. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 38. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 16. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 37. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 36. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 26. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, pp. 44–45.

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that never has the name ‘brother’ been so often spoken, but how can such a term be reconciled with the existence of different social classes?77 He finds inequality in property even more odious than inequality in rank. ‘It is the chain that binds all parts of civil society’. ‘I don’t like kings, but I like the rich even less’.78 The revolution has not been completed; it will not be as long as you remain within the circle of the same ideas, only the nuances of which will have changed … You will decree the abolition of the nobility, but will preserve the respective states of the poor and the rich, of masters and their valets. You prohibit coats of arms to the former and you free the latter from their livery, but these distinctions are nothing but simulacra, and you fail to touch reality.79 In order to make all these ‘social monstrosities’80 disappear, to destroy ‘these civil lairs of baseness and crime, of waste and poverty’,81 to allow ‘the hardworking labourer’, ‘the carter who never rests’, ‘the roofer, the soldier, etc …, in a word, the nine-tenths of the population chained down by an enslaving and monotonous task’, to elevate themselves intellectually and morally, what is the right thing to do?82 Are the poor going to hunt down the rich? No. Having reached this neuralgic point, the pamphleteer returns to his familiar theme and, with the exception of work stoppages, supports the theses of the journalist. First the rich must be persuaded that they are at the mercy of the poor. How? By withholding ‘the nourishing arms that allowed them to so freely vegetate’, by abandoning ‘these worthless beings’ to ‘their own forces’.83 ‘The rich, once persuaded that they are at the mercy of the more numerous poor and that they will never enjoy any peaceful pleasures’ will, from self-interest and a desire for repose, agree to ‘a new, more equal distribution’.84 This will be the moment for the representatives to intervene. ‘Putting back in common everything that had suffered a monstrously unequal distribution’, the representatives will proceed ‘in the name of nature’ ‘to a

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 17. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 33. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 34. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 35. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 38. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, pp. 39–41. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 27. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 33.

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redistribution proportionate to the number of members in each family, beginning with that of the Bourbons’.85 Maréchal thinks that, attentive to this true revolution, the other peoples of Europe will not delay in imitating the French people ‘after having laid hands on the thrones’ and all the ‘diplomatic rags’.86 At the end of this analysis of Maréchal’s social manifesto, ‘the most practical, the most precise, the strongest and most advanced publication that ever came from his quill on such a matter’, according to Doctor Robert,87 it is important to point out that the solution proposed by Nature differ only in details from the solution in the Révolutions de Paris. Mother Nature envisages the social transformation as immediate and on a European scale, nothing more, nothing less. We must again note that Marechal’s social viewpoint is purely and simply agrarian, and it is precisely for this reason that it could worry the ruling classes. The agrarian law and everything resembling it constituted the bogey of the right of the Constituent Assembly. Since 1789 it had become popular in several departments88 and certain regions, like the Valois.89 In Paris it had serious supporters at the Cordeliers Club, notably James de Rutledge. His newspaper Le Creuset advocated a platform of the expropriation of agrarian holdings ‘formerly owned by the clergy’. He wrote: ‘Never was there a better time for posing, with discernment and the assurance of a crown of immortal glory, the foundations of a truly salutary agrarian law on the rubble of tyrannical clerical feudalism’.90 Examining the question closely, he distinguished two kinds of agrarian law: one, defective and partial, divided the nurturing soil in equal portions and annulled the independence of each owner; the other, ‘effectively social’, limited itself to proscribing inequalities in property that were large enough to permit the exercising of disastrous domination.91 Rutledge attempted to pose the question at the Jacobin Club but he was hooted down as soon as he began to speak.92 The Mercure de France, which reported this incident, does not say at which meeting this occurred. Nevertheless, it is safe to say it was either 8 or 11 April.93

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, pp. 27–28. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, p. 29. Robinet, Dictionnaire de la révolution, vol. ii, p. 510, article on ‘Maréchal’. Révolutions de Paris, vol. viii, no. 96, p. 248. Dommanget, Les grèves des moissonneurs du Valois sous la révolution. Le Creuset, p. 147 and pp. 14–15. Le Creuset, p. 147 and pp. 14–15. Aulard, La Société des Jacobins, vol. ii, p. 303. Mercure de France, 23 April 1791, p. 147. Aulard, la societe des Jacobins, vol. ii, p. 303. Las

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For his part, Abbé Franchet propagated at the Cercle Social the right of all to the common lands, and in the name of a mysticism both Christian and Masonic requested of the holy sovereignty that it ‘draw its lines in such a way that everyone have something and no one have too much’.94 Socialists could also be found at the Cercle des Citoyens, among them the Abbé de Cournand, professor at the Collège de France. In April 1791, two months after Maréchal’s pamphlet, he published a work in which an ingenious system of land redistribution was laid out.95 As can be seen, the social question was posed almost simultaneously by Maréchal and a handful of bold intellectuals. New perspectives were opening for the proletariat. Under these conditions it is quite probable that Maréchal’s work found readers. In addition, Prudhomme gave him a large amount of publicity in his newspaper, and his elder brother, a bookseller in Lyon, also sold the book. The lowering of the price to six sous facilitated its distribution.96 The article in Révolutions de Paris did not go unnoticed, giving rise to a refutation by Laharpe. The latter, in the Mercure de France, contested the rights of the poor and called it ‘ridiculous foolishness’ to want the entire nation to be composed of landowners. He vehemently opposed the ‘scandalous proposal’, which would lead to nothing less than ‘the total overturning of society’.97 Maréchal, who could mark up to his credit the epithets of ‘furious enemy’, ‘madman’, ‘mortal enemy of every social order’ unleashed by Laharpe at the anonymous writer for the Révolutions de Paris, responded in that paper. He harshly singled out that ‘one-fortieth of the Académie Française’, a doubtful citizen but an active one, ‘thanks to the purse of the God Mercury, patron of the aristocracy’, and, taking shelter behind the authority of Moses, Minos, Lycurgus, and Rousseau, he praised ‘the community or the equal distribution of property’, the surest method of organizing societies.98

94 95 96 97 98

Vergnas’ biography Le chevalier Rutlige, is silent concerning the agrarianism of James de Rutledge – or Rutlige. Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution, 4th edition, p. 92. Léon Bernstein, Un plan socialiste sous la Révolution Française, Leiden, 1937. Révolutions de Paris, nos. 85 and following, ‘Avis et annonces’. Mercure de France, pp. 147–148, 150–151. Révolutions de Paris, no. 96, pp. 242–250.

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The Regulars at the Bibliothèque Mazarine

It was probably around this time that Sylvain Maréchal was re-hired at the Bibliothèque Mazarine. Maréchal’s material situation had certainly improved since the beginning of the Revolution, and he no longer lived in the hope of the 600 livres and room and board that the library assured its two employees.99 However late it came, this reparation was nevertheless dear to his heart, providing him with moral satisfaction. Driven from the library by the priests, Sylvain was proud to return there with his head held high and without having abdicated his ideas. He also saw in this the proof of the road traveled since 1789 by the movement toward justice and reason. And hadn’t there been a philosophical tradition at the Bibliothèque Mazarine since the skepticism of Gabriel Naudé? Maréchal felt himself perfectly at home there. And so, alluding to his atheist opinions, as well as those of his colleague Fréville, he proudly exclaimed a few years later: ‘One could say that the irreligious genius of Gabriel Naudé still hovers today below the vaults of this public library, of which he was the first conservator’.100 If we examine the oldest list of books loaned preserved at the Bibliothèque Mazarine,101 a register that dates precisely to this period, we have the names of those people with whom Sylvain was in contact and the titles of some of the books he read. In May 1791 Maréchal registered the loans of Pinel, a medical doctor, Le Tellier, a professor at the Collège Mazarin, and Fournier, bookseller on Rue Hautefeuille. The following month we find in the register the names of the famous Hellenist Dansse de Villoisone, to whom Maréchal had addressed several verses in his Bibliothèque des Amans, the Abbé de Saint-Leger, librarian of SainteGenevieve, who would play a dirty trick on Maréchal a short time later,102 Millin de Grandmaison, a future editor of the Chronique de Paris, Volney, future author of the Ruines, of Dudon, M. de Maisonrouge, Hérault, Dupuis, Gosselin, etc. The same month Nicolas Maréchal took out the Elemens of Tournefort and Sylvain the Histoire de France of Mézeray. In the last quarter of 1791 Maréchal took out more volumes of history: Science des Medailles, Royaume de France, and the Histoire des Papes by Duchesne. Amidst all the agitation, while participating

99 100 101 102

A. Franklin, Histoire de la Bibliothèque Mazarine et du palais de l’Institut, paris, 1901, p, 237. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 304. Archives de la bibliothèque Mazarine. See chapter ix.

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in revolutionary combat through newspapers and pamphlets, he never ceased cultivating his mind through meditation and study and increasing that varied fund of knowledge that he displayed in his works. In July 1791 the same men borrowed books, along with the lawyer Delaunay, Le Brun, Lévesque, Abbé Rochon of the Academy of Science, Hénoque, and Fréville. The names change little until the end of the year. Even so, we note several new borrowers in December, like Bain d’Albert, Fossey;103 Mme. d’Anville, Gandin, and Garat.104 In concluding it should be said that the 1792 section of the register reveals the names of a great number of important personages: Panckouke, Charles Pougens, Condorcet, the Commune’s prosecutor Chaumette, who borrowed Agrippa, Prudhomme, Chéron, ‘former Théatin at the charterhouse’ Sieyès Prony, Pastoret, Grégoire, the scholarly archeologist Mongès, and the deputy Villars. We thus see that through his post Sylvain had relationships with a large number of well-known citizens. One can imagine him discussing literature or history with some, and philosophy, politics, or economy with others. On the religious question he particularly appreciated Dupuis, whose Origine des Cultes [Origin of Religions] contained ‘all that is essential to know about God and religions, verbose daughters of an unknown father’.105 From a social point of view, Gosselin was close to Sylvain. In 1787 he had published a book in which he established that ‘opulence and poverty are the contrary of happiness’. ‘It [happiness] exists only in moderation. It is thus towards you, precious moderation, that all our hopes and desires must tend. If we succeed in placing you on earth we will have found the true secret of rendering people happy’.106 We can see from this that Gosselin had no difficulty getting along with the little librarian who supplied him with books.

10

Maréchal Defends the Freedom of the Press and Opposes Nascent Feminism

We have gotten slightly ahead of ourselves, so we now have to back up a little bit.

103 104

105 106

This is perhaps the deputy to the Legislative Assembly. Which of the two Garats? Dominique, deputy of the Third Estate at the Estates General and supporter of the suppression of monastic orders, or his brother Joseph, the wellknown publicist? The register does not say. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 123. A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme utopique, Paris, 1898, p. 141.

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Since the king’s flight and return, the growing boldness of democratic demands troubled the bourgeoisie. On 17 July it drowned them in the blood of the Champ de Mars, and as a result of this victory established a reign of terror, out of which grew the extreme anger of the patriots. Maréchal spoke out against the weakness of the people, the lying king, and the spineless Assembly. He saw salvation only in the absolute freedom of the press. ‘The free press is the crucible in which the Constitution must be purified, where good principles will be freed from the alloy that the mercenary hands of slavish deputies furtively slipped into it’.107 Nature, to which Maréchal constantly refers, gave man the gifts of thought and speech. Everyone thus has the right to make use of them. Why then restrict the right to write, which is nothing but their complement? If the print shop has its ills, it also offers the cure, so why worry about the abuses of the press? Even if it had done even more ill it is still the means through which that the people became free, and so they owe it eternal gratitude. Only bought off journalists and men in the King’s pocket could demand coercive laws against the press; patriots must defend with all their might the most sacred right of a free people. Perhaps the opposition of the small group of ‘honest, enlightened men’, like Pétion, Robespierre, Brissot, Lanthenas, and Loyseau will suffice to maintain the unlimited freedom of the press? Maréchal hopes so, but he would like to see the people firmly attach themselves to the trunk of national liberty.108 At the same time that he openly professed his liberal principles, Maréchal opposed nascent feminism, for a vigorous current in favour of the political equality of the sexes was already asserting itself. Meetings were being held, clubs were being formed, and pamphlets were being distributed. Condorcet brilliantly and insistently returned to the ideas he had supported in 1788. Prudhomme’s newspaper had until then avoided the issue, but many letters reminded him that for two years men alone counted and that it was time to grant women the rights of citizenship. Prudhomme was pressured to respond. It was Maréchal who took up his quill, and he would return to this same subject on several occasions. Above all, as a good disciple of Jean-Jacques, Maréchal was far from considering the two sexes as equal, positing an essential difference between the two. Women have a ‘frail organisation’, an ‘exquisite sensitivity that too often degenerates into weakness’. Because of this, Nature destined them for ‘peaceful and gentle occupations’ and placed them under the protection of men. And so they 107 108

‘Instruction sur la liberté absolue de la presse’. Révolutions de Paris, no. 10, 13–20 August 1791, pp. 267–80. Ibid.

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are condemned to ‘passing their entire lives under the paternal roof or in the marital home’. ‘For them, the universe is their household and their husband is all of humankind: the rest of the world is foreign to them’. Political revolutions don’t affect them. National liberty is dear to them only because of the joy it procures their husbands. They adopt the religion and principles of their family ‘without seeking to discuss them’. They limit their knowledge in this sphere to what their parents or husbands ‘deem it apropos to teach them’. Each sex, then, has its role laid out by nature. Women, ‘delicate plants’, should not leave the hothouse and expose themselves to the storms of the outside world. ‘When the father has gone out to defend or demands in the assembly of the commune the rights to property, security, equality, and liberty, the mother, concentrating on her domestic duties, should make order and cleanliness, ease and peace reign there’. Serving as society’s mother, easing a spouse’s cares, feeding and caring for children, these, says Maréchal, ‘are the sole occupations and a woman’s true obligations’. The Revolution nevertheless arranges work for her, but in keeping with her nature, temperament, and personality. She can console, comfort, and reward the courageous patriot upon his return home. She can appear in all the splendour of her virtues and charms at public festivals, which she enhances with her presence. Like the citizenesses at fraternal clubs, she can commit to refusing her hand to impudent aristocrats. Finally, she must teach the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the stammering child. But the Revolution might be in peril. Can women look on passively at this harrowing trial? After having declared that ‘it isn’t right for a home to be deserted for an instant’, Maréchal – frighteningly illogical – preached direct action to women. ‘Citizenesses, leave your homes as one, march on the common home, cast the serpent of remorse into the soul of the tepid … Armed with incendiary torches present yourselves at the doors of your tyrants’. The counter-revolution stifled, the citizenesses will return home to take up again the accustomed yoke of domestic duties. According to Maréchal, exceptional circumstances alone can legitimise the participation of women in public life. In general, if Maréchal is to be believed, the woman’s influence on liberty is a harmful one. The reign of courtesans, the corruption of wealthy bourgeois women, and domination by young women will cause the ruin of the nation. Women have never demonstrated the taste or the ardour for civic and political independence that have inspired men to such great deeds. The virile and imposing spectacle of a popular revolution is not suitable to their delicacy: they faint and collapse unconscious. There is another aspect of the question. In the name of justice women demand their sex be represented in the National Assembly. Maréchal does not

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understand this demand. ‘Citizenesses! Are we not your natural representatives, your legitimate chargés d’affaires? Can we have any interests apart from yours? Are you not another version of ourselves?’ Is there then nothing to be done to shut the mouths of ‘unprincipled women’ who become ‘demanding?’ Yes. The moment has come, not to go against nature’s wise plan, but to work in support of it. The fair sex must be granted all of its rights. In all haste women must be accorded the right to dispose of themselves and to break the chains of marriage when they become too heavy. The need for a divorce law is clear and Maréchal expatiated at length on the advantages of such a law. At bottom it appears that on this burning question the writer for the Révolutions de Paris is guided more than anything by fear. He is afraid of seeing women become the rivals of men, afraid of seeing them neglect their domestic duties.109 There were many who shared this fear and who generally saw things the same way as did Sylvain. On 25 October 1791 the female parishioners of Saint-Sulpice, having presented themselves at the bar of the National Assembly to protest against the celebration of a clandestine cult, the president told them that ‘nature having formed women for the consolation of man, he exhorted them to not involve themselves in public affairs’.110 Madame Roland wrote that it was for men to govern and make laws: women reserve to themselves the realm of hearts.111 Madame Robert herself maintained that ‘the domestic duties of women forbade them all administrative functions’.112

11

Opinions on Education. Anti-Clerical Polemic

Everything was connected: Maréchal’s anti-feminist opinions would command his theories on the education of the fair sex. They would have the occasion to be affirmed apropos of the famous report Talleyrand presented at the Constituent Assembly. The former bishop of Autun, though like Maréchal a supporter of the domestic education of women, proposed the establishment in each department of a house of education and instruction for young girls. Maréchal exclaimed: ‘Are these the new, grand, and profound visions that have been so applauded? A well-born and appropriately educated girl should leave the paternal home only

109 110 111 112

Revolutions de Paris, no. 83, pp. 226–235; no. 85, pp. 331–339; no. 124 pp. 355–357; no. 127, pp. 497–500; no. 143, pp. 20–24. Marc de Villiers, Histoire des clubs des femmes et des légions d’amazones, p. 41. Marc de Villiers, Histoire des clubs des femmes et des légions d’amazones, p. 9. Marc de Villiers, Histoire des clubs des femmes et des légions d’amazones, pp. 50–51.

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to enter that of a spouse. It is for mothers alone to raise their daughters and for husbands to complete the education of their wives: this is nature’s method’.113 Talleyrand’s plan called for the establishing of a primary school in each canton for boys seven and older. Maréchal spoke out against this idea. He considered every public school as ‘the scourge of domestic morals’. Only the secondary schools planned for each district and departmental schools found grace in his eyes, and even so he felt great reticence about them. He was naturally shocked to see elements of religion part of the education in primary schools.114 He was even more shocked because, from the religious point of view, the situation of the period was not brilliant. The refractory clergy was active everywhere and was preparing for civil war in the west. The entire Midi was in a state of agitation: incidents had occurred in Nîmes, Montauban, and most recently in Avignon. What Maréchal denounced more than anything115 was the lack of honesty of the deputies who dealt with the religious question at the tribune of the Legislative Assembly. There were nonetheless ‘de facto truths’ which would cast light on the situation if people dared proclaim them. For example, the blood that flowed must ‘fall on the head of Louis xvi’. The monarch was the main cause of the horrors committed by fanatics. The Constituent Assembly for its part had committed serious errors in decreeing the oath to the civil constitution for priests and in only paying juring priests. Maréchal rejected the harsh measures proposed by Fauchet and most orators, persecution causing nothing but harm. All priests should be allowed to pray, sing, catechise, and preach as long as these acts are performed in public. This is why Maréchal did not approve the proposal of the Bishop of Bourges at the sitting of 27 October. Does not tolerating mass in private homes with up to twenty participants leave the door open to the inquisition, since it would be necessary to send a public officer to count the participants? In a similar vein, does not suppressing the wages of priests without functions encourage dishonesty? Instead, what should be done is to cut off the support given delinquents who have been declared so by a tribunal. Under no circumstances should importance be given people ‘who deserve nothing but contempt’. This was Maréchal’s opinion. This was the point of view supported by Baert, deputy from the Pas-de-Calais at the sitting of 21 October.116 Two measures, though, seemed opportune to Sylvain Maréchal, and he did not see how they contradicted his policy of toleration: the banning of confes113 114 115 116

Révolutions de Paris, no. 114, pp. 465–476. Révolutions de Paris, no. 114, pp. 465–466. ‘Des pretres’. Révolutions de Paris, no. 120. Moniteur, reprint, vol. x, p. 189.

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sion, ‘a hidden weapon which refractory priests have so often and so shamefully abused’, and the associating of priests with Protestant pastors and citizensoldiers by having them reassume their civil attire upon conclusion of their functions, which led him to support the suppression of priestly attire outside ecclesiastical functions. Of course, all of this is nothing but a stopgap for the editor of the Révolutions de Paris. It would be best for the people to abandon their priests to their own devices and that they ‘directly address their God without the service of intermediaries’. Unfortunately, the people had not yet reached this point, and prejudices had to be taken into account. Having participated with his pen in the great debate at the Legislative Assembly, Maréchal could not let the logical end pass without commentary, that is, the draft law of 16 November 1791. This text substituted a new oath on the Constitution for the old one. It suppressed the salaries and pensions of those priests who did not submit to the new prescriptions; it kept an eye on them and, should the need arise, punished them with arrest. This was the opposite of what Maréchal had called for from the beginning of the debate. He had to return to the offensive in an effort to have his ideas prevail. In two closely argued articles117 he examined the situation and sifted through Francois de Neufchâteau’s critique of the measure. The establishing of a new oath seemed to him unwise. Hadn’t past experience been conclusive? ‘The oath is a poor cement for binding the stones of the political edifice to each other’. He also returned to the matter of placing pecuniary interest alongside the duties of the citizen. Doing so removed all the merit in obeying the law. It should not be said to priests: ‘Swear to be patriots or else no more pension’. On the other hand, he applauded article xvi, which organised civic propaganda as a counterweight to the propaganda of refractory priests. This was, indeed, an article heavy with consequences: it opened the way to the revolutionary cult. Maréchal thought that it would not be forgotten to devote some of ‘the good works’ foreseen for rustics to the subject of confession, ‘the most shameful yoke devised by human wickedness’.118 Whatever the case, on a whole the draft law seemed to him to be a mistake. In his opinion it was a wicked barrier between the refractory priests and the nation. If the people, going over the head of its pastors, and the legislators had stood by the freedom of religious opinions proclaimed by the Declaration of Rights, would things have reached this point? Maréchal, abandoning the terrain of immediate reforms, resolved the problem in a radical fashion, returning 117 118

Articles ‘Guerre des prêtres’ and ‘Examen du décret contre les réfractaires’. Révolutions de Paris, no. 124. Révolutions de Paris, no. 124, p. 334.

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quite naturally to his religion without priests. The Gospels say ‘Whenever three or four of the faithful are gathered in my name, I shall be among them’. Is this text not a condemnation of priests ex professo? Since the common people are attached to their religion, all that is needed is to meet ‘in small societies of good neighbors’ to read the Gospels together once a week, and ‘a healthy spirit’ will descend on them.119 Many parishes were without priests. As the early Church did, let them choose as pastors ‘the person most respectable in age and morals’ and they will uproot the priestly tree from their homes. It is thus time to look beyond the draft law of 16 November. A year ago the famous phrase of the Abbé Raynal could still inspire religious policy, and Maréchal had gladly rallied to it. Since that time the Revolution had progressed, and Sylvain thought that the following formula was more appropriate: ‘Religion should be in all hearts that feel the need, and the church nowhere’. Henceforth, no more priests: this must be the slogan of the patriots.120 What leaps out upon examining closely these various articles is the contradictions they contain. It can be clearly felt that Maréchal was ruled by a dual idea, one both idealistic and reforming. He wanted to improve the ‘part’ that the political conditions allowed to be obtained while not forgetting the final ‘whole’ of which it was it part. Careful not to incite fanaticism through coercive measures, he showed himself to be a partisan of the gentle method, and in doing so was at one with the most moderate members of the Assembly. On the other hand, making the most of the debate in progress, he showed that the difficulties the Revolution was running up against had their roots in the existence of a priestly caste, and he allowed a glimpse of the horizon before them. He made no attempt at reconciling the immediate measures he advocated and integral rationalist demands. As a result, theses that, in his mind, went quite well together were juxtaposed and apparently clashed.

12

Maréchal Harangues Louis xvi (Late 1791)

This anti-clerical polemic did not so absorb Sylvain that he forgot the disastrous role played by Louis xvi in this difficult conjuncture. On the occasion of the New Year, when the valets of the court, the ministers, and even the deputies competed in their adulation of the king in offering him New Year’s wishes,

119 120

‘Guerre des prêtres’. Révolutions de Paris, no. 124. Révolutions de Paris, no. 126, p. 432.

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Maréchal offered Louis xvi a new year’s gift both original and new, something ‘more useful than his civil list’: the unvarnished truth and salutary warnings. With a firm hand, and speaking to him in the familiar ‘tu’ form, he retraced all the misdeeds committed in the Tuileries Palace in 1791. Maréchal addresses the King as a man who is a ‘coward’, ‘perfidious’, ‘infamous’, and ‘imprudent’, asking, what have you done? You conspired against the laws you signed, you broke the most solemn vows, you have contemplated the most atrocious conspiracies with the émigrés, you shamefully fled, you corresponded with traitors outside our borders, you remained indifferent to the sound of the fusillade on the Champ de Mars and, finally, through an abusive use of the veto, you placed yourself between the nation and its representatives. These are great faults that demand reparation, and such behavior gives patriots the right to be demanding in the future. The writer concludes: ‘Hurry, you still have time, and change the palette of the historian of the century in which you are living. End like Nero began and give us in your person the proof that kings are not incorrigible’. A lengthy tirade against the crown, that ‘permanent dictatorship’, and against kings, ‘monsters, born enemies of the rights of man’, follow these considerations, at which point he issues warnings. The epoch of popular idolatry and national clemency having passed, 1792 will be the year of strict justice, that of ‘the final judgment of kings’. The people will punish all the crimes of the Capet family in the person of the king. What must Louis xvi do to avoid such reprisals? First, he must send away MarieAntoinette and repudiate all his family members who conspire. He then must make the civil list ‘enter commerce’, renounce the veto, suppress his military house, and loyally fulfill his duties to the nation. These are the conditions under which the patriots will agree to recognise him and pardon him the ‘nullity’ of his character, his ‘gangrened heart’, and ‘his too narrow mind’. Then what a great spectacle 1792 will offer. When the royal armies will begin to march the patriots will propose to the soldiers who are being led astray, death to despots and liberty for the people! A great fraternisation will occur. Betrayed by their own defenders, the kings will be led to Paris to the emplacement of the Bastille and lined up ‘around an altar dedicated to the independence of humankind’. There, their guilty heads will serve as ‘expiatory holocausts for the repose of the world’, and ‘the federative and solemn act that all of the nations of Europe should be made up of one family of good relatives’ will be written with their blood. This implacable diatribe, this enflamed harangue that opens the most elevated republican and internationalist perspectives to the peoples of the world and through which yet again Maréchal’s tyrannicidal spirit passes, ends with this invocation:

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O great year of 1792! Do not give way to another before setting the earth a great example! It is awaited and desired! The revolution cannot do without it, liberty requests it, wants it, demands it, and holy humanity clamours for it. Is the blood of despots so pure that we don’t dare spill it in order to spare nations the spilling of torrents?121 What makes this article particularly valuable is that at the end of 1791 republican ideas suffered a kind of eclipse. The republicans elected to the Legislative Assembly hid their banner, Condorcet provisionally renounced establishing the Republic, and Collot d’Herbois in his Almanach du père Gérard offered sacrifices to the old royalist prejudice,122 ‘one of the most difficult’, according to the Révolutions de Paris, ‘to uproot from the minds of the French’.123 If during this period Prudhomme’s newspaper can rightly be singled out as ‘the only one still displaying its republican tendencies’,124 it must be said that it owed this above all to Maréchal.

121 122 123 124

Révolutions de Paris no. 129, 14–31 December, article ‘A Louis xvi pour l’année 1792’. Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française, 4th edition, p. 175. Révolutions de Paris, no. 127, 10–17 December 1791, p. 489. A. Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française, 4th edition, p. 175.

Chapter 8 1

Maréchal in 1792

On a whole, Sylvain Maréchal’s dark forebodings, long considered the bitter fruits of a somber imagination,1 were only too justified. Louis xvi did not know how to benefit from the advice he was given. He continued to be indecisive, to tergiversate, to plot. The people then forced the Assembly to rule on the fate of the sovereign. To be sure, this was not yet the final judgment of kings, but even so, it was the indictment of the king of France, awaiting his execution. Great things were proposed during the year of 1792, and Sylvain could not but bring his stone to the common edifice. And so we will see him take positions on hoarding and the war, continue his rationalist activity, and, in keeping with his republican convictions, attack the felonious king without letup.

2

The Sugar Crisis

1792 began under the sign of the high cost of living. Bread, meat – ‘commodities of primary habit’ as Maréchal called them – and also what Maréchal called ‘commodities originally superfluous but which the luxury of the past rendered of primary necessity’, like sugar, experienced a rapid rise in price. Bread rose to more than four sous a pound, and sugar from thirty sous to three livres. This rise in prices provoked serious troubles in Paris, in the region of Toulouse, and in maritime Flanders,2 preludes to the great agitation of the following spring. The sharpness and suddenness of the Parisian troubles over sugar surprised the Commune, the Assembly, and the patriot press. The latter had to have its say, and the Révolutions de Paris dedicated a long article to ‘The people’s movement against the hoarders’.3 It was Maréchal who wrote this article, ‘an important social document’ according to Jaurès.4 Given that this unrest forcefully revealed the nascent conflict between the mercantile bourgeoisie and the people, it is of interest to follow Maréchal in his analysis of the situation. Barely a year before, Maréchal, making use of an insignificant pretext, had raised the question of property and laid out his program in the Révolutions de 1 2 3 4

Révolutions de Paris, no. 182, p. 50. Mathiez, La vie chère et le mouvement social sous la Terreur, Pris, 1927, Ch. i. Révolutions de Paris, no. 133, pp. 149–163. Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française, revised edition, vol. iii, p. 301.

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Paris. No popular movement with social tendencies existed at the time, and as a result the writer’s opinions had taken a purely speculative turn. Now, in the midst of a revolutionary movement, the question of primary goods abruptly set the rich and poor in opposition to each other. The situation had completely changed, and events now objectively posed the problem that Maréchal subjectively posed. How would the latter act? In the first instance, what, according to Maréchal, was the true cause of unrest? It was twofold, both economic and political. Was sugar lacking? No. Paris and its environs were overflowing with it. There were large amounts of it in several churches converted into warehouses, and a certain number of grocers were well stocked. The rise in price was thus due to hoarding. This hoarding was the work of ‘a dozen vindictive and rapacious individuals’, ‘infamous speculators’, men like d’Elbé, Dandré, Boscaris, Sinot, Charlemagne, Leleu, Laborde, Cabanès, the Duval brothers, and Gomart. These ‘vampires’, these ‘bloodsuckers of the people’, despite the abundance, hiked prices with ‘rare impudence’ in order to both ‘serve their own interests and those of the court’. Among them could be found several nobles involved in commerce. These men, directly involved in the sugar crisis, and in general all the ‘domestic enemies’, part of the ‘cowardly canaille’5– as they were called in the Tuileries palace – hoarded manufactured goods, primary materials, and commodities, using methods that the journalist described in detail. He added: ‘The chapter of primary goods will always provide pretexts for the enemies of the republic’.6 Didn’t they each have their role to play? The priests worked at fomenting fanaticism, the nobility on the emigration and the war, the court and the agitators discredited assignats, and the rich and the mighty hoarded consumption goods. This was an ‘atrocious maneuver’, a trap laid for the people aimed at driving them to disorder, to harm commerce, to spread disunity among the patriots, and to place the authorities in the regrettable situation of either being cursed for having the law respected, or violating it by discrediting themselves. This wasn’t all that was done in order to more easily provoke agitation: they unleashed among the people ‘obscure villains’, ‘suspect individuals’ to push them to violence. Does this mean that the people were not ‘in good faith’ and didn’t have justice on their side when they rose up against hoarders and obtained sugar loaves at twenty sous a pound through violence? Certainly, for one must not quibble:

5 Révolutions de Paris, no. 133, pp. 150–151. 6 Révolutions de Paris, no. 133, p. 160.

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Is it right that a working and indigent population of 600,000 souls deprives itself of a comestible because it pleases a dozen individuals to close their stores or multiply their profits a hundredfold? And since these owners unhesitatingly place themselves above the rules of honesty and the principles of humanity, is it possible to be so bold as to make it a crime for the people to place themselves for a moment above the impotent laws of civil society? When a wolf has slipped in through the fence where sheep are penned in, must the shepherd and the sheepdog respect in the person of the wolf the right everyone has to settle on a given spot of the earth not occupied before them? The dog begins by strangling the wolf … Does the shepherd then consider telling the dog: Why did you drive the wolf away or harm him?7 In an important note Maréchal is careful to inform us that he gladly adopts the definition of the former Count de Lauraguais:8 ‘Property is the legitimate possession of goods acquired legitimately … It can be concluded from this that, after the wealth that the word “theft” strikes with anathema, the wealth that should most incite public indignation is that which is hoarded’. Sylvain stresses that ‘the moral instinct of the people leads them to put in practice the principle that M. de Lauraguais discovered through thought’. And he completes his point: ‘If in accordance with this rule we were to judge those of our hoarders who spend their mornings engaged in speculations that bring them a half-million in profits, would we think their being hunted down was sufficient punishment?’9 If some violence was committed against National Guardsmen, Maréchal imputes it, not to the people, but to ‘a horde of adventurers paid by the civil list to applaud when the King and his wife pass and to provoke the citizen soldiers charged with maintaining order’. Maréchal sought to excuse the violence committed and, while affirming that property and speculation were the source of the disorders, he joined the Girondin press and Pétion’s municipal government in his denunciation of aristocratic maneuvers. It is quite clear that Maréchal could have taken advantage of the occasion to again invoke the social problem in its entirety. He did not do so, and his article attempted to incite, justify, and calm the people all at once. In this sense it reflected the confused situation of the moment.

7 Révolutions de Paris, no. 133, p. 155. 8 This eccentric had dealings with Babeuf. Cf. Dommanget, Pages choisis de Babeuf, pp. 11, 92, 129. 9 Révolutions de Paris, no. 133, p. 154.

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Jaurès claimed that ‘the tendentious interpretation of economic phenomena’ by the writer of the article – in this case Maréchal – is of no value, but it can be seen that Sylvain took seriously the aristocratic maneuvers whose reality seemed to be proven. This was not a ‘political maneuver’ on his part. He feared that pushing the exasperated people too far would lead them into the ‘ministerial’s’ trap and bring about the beginning of the counter-revolution. His prudence can be seen in the solutions he proposed for averting the crisis. First, the return to the laws of the ancien régime, forcing hoarders to accept only licit gains. Maréchal recalled the text of François i’s ordinance from November 1539 calling for the arrest of hoarders, the confiscation of goods and commodities, and their sale for the benefit of the state. As a ‘salutary measure’ he demanded the suppression of the prohibition of foreign commodities in French ports. It was this solution, proposed at the Assembly, that was shelved as a result of the Monneron report. These were expedients of limited scope, which did not escape Maréchal. And so, foreseeing the unrest that might again arise, he recommended to the municipal authorities that they exercise care and kindness in sustaining the people. As for the latter, he preached that they abandon partial movements that lead to nothing positive, and called for a general movement directed against the court. On 14 July 1789 the people defeated the court, which hoarded arms and soldiers; through a general uprising it will defeat the hoarders of commodities, at whose center was the court. Maréchal, despite his great anger against speculation, did not touch the absolute freedom of commerce. The first sentence of his article indicated this clearly: ‘A great crime is being committed at this moment in Paris and the principal cities of several departments, a national crime however, against which the law can and must not pronounce itself’. The protesting sections of the Gobelins and the faubourg Saint-Antoine showed themselves to be no bolder than Maréchal in offering remedies, and Maréchal’s old friend Réal issued this admission of powerlessness: ‘It is not possible to find a way to leave commerce free and still destroy hoarding’.10 During the Revolution’s severe crisis of subsistence goods, due to fear of internal complications prejudicial to the interests of the revolutionary movement, not one man among the patriots, not even a man like Maréchal, who was a supporter of a further dose of revolution, asserted he was favourable to taxation.

10

Mathiez, La vie chère et le mouvement social sous la Terreur, Paris, 1927, p. 46.

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The Fight for the Reform of the Calendar

His position is considerably clearer concerning the reform of the calendar. It is only right to mention that in the midst of his struggles and labours, Maréchal never lost sight of this objective. He republished his calendar and even had the joy of having imitators. The first re-publication of the Almanach des Honnêtes gens seems to have appeared in 1789. Another edition, without either place or date, in-18 and twenty-four pages, containing the decree of Parlement condemning it to the flames, seems to have been published in 1790. In that same year, Maréchal already found an imitator in the person of the anonymous author of Nostradamus moderne, ou Almanach national et patriotique [The Modern Nostradamus, or the National and Patriotic Almanac]. This last, after affirming its desire to reform the calendar in a philosophical direction, dedicated each month to a figure from our country, from Voltaire (January) to Sully (December). The names of the saints disappeared, making way for the names of deputies. With malicious intent, the name of a famous man was substituted for each figure of the zodiac.11 Maréchal, who was familiar with this small in-12 volume, recognised that ‘it was a warmed-over volume with commentaries from the Almanach des Hônnetes Gens’. He added with a note of regret: ‘This frame has served many paintings’.12 A fair statement. It suffices to browse through the anthologies or lists of almanacs of the period to assure oneself that the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens now served as a model, as Sylvain Maréchal said, ‘for vulgar parodies’, for ‘filthy pamphlets’. The very type of this genre is provided by the Almanach des Honnêtes femmes, about which Maréchal would insist that his ‘moral and philosophical production … was not made to serve as a model for such infamies’.13 It is understandable that pastiches like these annoyed Maréchal, even more so in that he was occasionally attributed their paternity. Even more, because of these fanciful almanacs, the reform of the calendar, which was so important to Maréchal, was discredited and relegated to a subaltern plane. This is perhaps the reason that so little progress was made by the idea of a new calendar in the first years of the Revolution. Maréchal entrusted the bookseller Gueffier with a new edition of his almanac for the year 1791. But this time Maréchal did not limit himself to a 11 12 13

Welchinger, Les Almanachs de la Révolution, pp. 11–13. Marechal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, pp. 120–121. Marechal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, p. 120. Marechal, Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, p. 115.

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simple reproduction. As a follow-up to the previous edition and to the Parlement decree condemning it, he provided the work promised in 1788, with an added lengthy notice on almanacs and dictionaries that had some relation to his work. The work appeared in-octavo with the title Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens pour servir de Correctif au Dictionnaire des Grands Hommes [Dictionary of Upright Men to Serve as a Corrective to the Dictionary of Great Men]. It is not possible for us to linger too long over this work, but it is worthy of note that in his introduction Maréchal does not breathe a word about the problem of the reform of the calendar that was raised by the republication of his almanac. Nor does he speak of it in his articles in the Révolutions de Paris during this period, though he was given complete liberty to express his ideas on this subject. We have to wait until 1792 to see Sylvain Maréchal take the bull by the horns. From that point on he would not pass up a single occasion for putting the Gregorian calendar in question. The origin of Maréchal’s intervention can be found in the discussion that arose on 2 January within the Legislative Assembly. What was it that happened? According to the Moniteur14 a complaint was made about the minutes of the sitting of 1 January, which bore the mention ‘year iv of Liberty’. A deputy had claimed that the third year of the revolutionary era ended on the following 14 July. The Assembly, called upon to settle the question, heard the explanations of the minister of public taxation, Dorisy. The latter recalled what had occurred at the Committee of Assignats and Coins, which had already had to decide whether stamping coins with the era of liberty would, in fact, change ‘the calendar adopted in all of Europe’. The committee had determined that in order to avoid the inconveniences of such a change, the year 1789, though having begun on 14 July, would count as a complete year. Inspired by this precedent, Dorisy proposed at the Legislative that for the minutes as well as for the dates on coins the computation of the dating accepted in Europe would be preserved, and that consequently the year iv of liberty would begin 1 January 1792. It was at this point that Ramond, the former private adviser to Cardinal de Rohan, intervened15 in support of Dorisy’s proposal. Ramond’s argument was that the choice of 14 July as the first date could not be justified, several memorable dates of the Revolution, ‘those that determined it’, like the formation of the National Assembly and the oath at the Jeu de Paume, having occurred 14 15

Moniteur, reprint, no. 4, 4 January 1792, p. 14. It is question here of Louis-François-Elisabeth Corbonnière, whose biography can be found in various dictionaries.

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prior to it. Despite Rouyer’s opposition, and after Reboul’s intervention against the danger of changing a calendar ‘that took more than two hundred years to be adopted by all of Europe’, Dorisy’s draft law was adopted. The Moniteur noted the applause that greeted Ramond’s words, and it was against the arguments of that ‘royalist and ministerial deputy’ that Maréchal rose up in the Révolutions de Paris.16 In the first instance, ‘the misleading and false voice’ of the defender of the émigrés and refractory priests could not mask his ‘pitiful sophism’, his ‘petty deception’. Maréchal demonstrated that the dates invoked by Ramond, recalling a period of confusion and humiliations, could not be retained. He spoke vehemently against the adopted decree and condemned the deputies for having committed a fraud and making the nation an accomplice in this by counting the first six months of the year among the first days of liberty. If, as was said from the tribune, 1 January is the epoch of the double representation of the Third Estate, this epoch is not comparable and should not be confused with the forever holy and glorious epoch of the annihilation of despotism crushed beneath the fallen Bastille. We are indebted to the Genevan shrewdness of a minister for the double representation of the Third Estate; we are indebted to ourselves alone for taking up arms and conquering liberty. The double representation of the Third did not prevent the royal sitting of 23 June, the assembling of foreign troops at the gates of Paris, and the preparations for a second Saint Bartholomew’s day massacre. 14 July earned us the solemn exercise of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which would have long remained nothing but a brilliant theory. The date of 14 July thus marks the day of the world’s regeneration, and that is when the new calendar should begin. Everything contributes to choosing that date as the beginning of ‘the universal era of all free nations’, the laws of nature combining with the laws of society: Nature constantly foiled the maneuvers of kings. It is essential to show that the wisest of peoples grew closer to it and proved its calculations by their own. It is during the month of July that it feels all its energy, all its fecundity, and that the sun is in all its grandeur … It was also in the month of July 1789 that the French people, like the sun on that date, reached its

16

Révolutions de Paris, no. 131, 7–14 January 1792, pp. 84–90.

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greatest height, its greatest force, and for the first time harvested the sweet fruits of the precious seeds of reason and independence that had for several years been planted in their spirits. Maréchal, who was adamant about clarifying his proposal, exclaimed: ‘Why should it not be said in all of Europe and above all in France: 14 July, first month of the third or fourth year of French liberty, just as was said the third or fourth year of the seizure of Troy or the foundation of Rome?’ He also considered that the Legislative Assembly lacked grandeur in failing to seize the occasion that was on offer to break with the Christian era and the Gregorian calendar, the work of ‘banal tyrants and ignorant popes’, which he called a ‘calendar of slaves’. Through his criticisms, and more particularly in abandoning 1 March as the first day of the year for 14 July, as well as in seeking the concordance of the astronomical system and that of the Revolution, Maréchal entered the path of the adaptation of the Almanach des Hônnetes Gens to the great events that had changed the face of the earth. Beyond his own calendar, he opened the breach through which the republican calendar would pass. But it is saying too little to call it an adaptation. Indeed, we have previously made it clear that since the beginning of the Revolution Sylvain, while distributing his 1788 almanac, never tackled the question of principle raised by it. His attitude had now completely changed. Not only did he now refrain from reprinting his former calendar, but he examined at length the need for a reform of the measurement of time, inspired by new facts and with the patriotic point of view as his starting point. This tactical change could not pass unnoticed. As we will see, it would assert itself forcefully as 1793 approached.

4

Struggle against the Clergy and the Church

A measure that seemed to Maréchal to be better inspired than the date fixed by the Legislative Assembly as the beginning of the era of liberty was the suppression of the priestly costume outside of church, as proposed by Torné, Bishop of Bourges and decreed on 6 April 1792. This time Maréchal obtained satisfaction: it had not been in vain that he broke lances for this reform the previous year. But it would be an enormous error to think that Maréchal considered this reform a measure of persecution against priests. Rather, in his eyes it constituted a measure of elementary justice. He was still attached to the principle of common law for ecclesiastics, nothing more. According to him, members of the clergy should be treated no differently from other citizens. He wrote:

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‘The three card monte player wears a grotesque hat and a blouse that make him stand out in the crowd squeezing around him. His buffoonery over, he folds up shop and reassumes his customary attire’. Analogously, why would the priest extend his role outside the church? Authorising him to put back on his professional garb, to play the ‘harlequin’ outside his functions, would mean reestablishing a corporation in the city. Legislators should not allow this. Maréchal envisioned this suppression of the ecclesiastic costume as the first step towards the complete suppression of priestly attire and ornaments. He even saw in it a step towards his ‘religion without priests’, so he was quite happy to cite as an example the village of Vandeuil in the Marne, which decided to do without a priest and chose a manual labourer to fulfill his religious functions. Even more, Maréchal thought that in order to apply the spirit of the decree all ‘religious masquerades’ must be banned outside of temples, ‘for such a procession is for religion what a cassock is for the priest’.17 He added: True religion must resemble the truth. The true religion, the only one worthy of this name, that is, morality, must be naked, without any mysterious veil, without artificial ornaments. The censer is an instrument of adulation; the cross recalls a hideous torture that our penal code has just proscribed; beeswax should be consecrated to a useful labour and not be burned at noon; silk and embroidery are fitting only for women. Return then to your dark tabernacles and never come back out. And at least spare freemen the scandal of your servile puerilities. Priests of a God who hides himself, don’t go out any more in broad daylight; remain in the muck and the shadows: we’ll leave you there, peaceful and solitary. In future this is not where we will seek out representatives of the nation or magistrates of the people.18 On 17 August 1792 the Paris Commune would transform Maréchal’s wish into reality with the banning of processions.19 As for the decree of 6 April 1792 on the suppression of priestly attire, Maréchal, still guided by the philosophical point of view, was able to judge the matter from this angle. Today, though, we know that the decree was nothing but a

17 18 19

Révolutions de Paris, no. 131, 7–14 January 1792, pp. 84–90, article ‘Quatorze juillet 1789, seule et véritable ère de la liberté française’. Révolutions de Paris, no. 144, 7–14 April 1792, pp. 67–73, article ‘Abolition de l’habit de caractere des pretres’. Tourneux, Procès-verbaux de la Commune, 1894, p. 35.

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measure aimed at the refractory clergy, which is what we learn from the interesting letter by Le Coz, Bishop of the Ille-et-Villaine, to Roland.20 During the first quarter of 1792 coercive measures against the clergy would follow one after the other. In order to correctly establish the genesis of these measures and better grasp the sense and impact of Maréchal’s interventions, one must place oneself in an atmosphere made feverish by war and already marked by sans-culottism. The Jacobins were seized with a kind of rage at all those blocking the road of the Revolution. In cities and even in the smallest villages, in committees and at the tribune of the Assembly, question of refractory priests was central. These men who alarmed people’s consciences and issued incendiary slogans gave rise to the greatest embarrassment in the legislature. Maréchal was enraged by this: What? There are no more nobles of the robe, no more financiers, no more gentilshommes, but there are still priests! And these priests still find dupes to keep them alive and to defend them, magistrates and administrators of the people to ensure their impunity, and a king to protect them with his purple, sheltered from the sword of justice and the rods of ridicule!21 In late 1791 these clerical intrigues led two philosophical tendencies that had already asserted themselves within the patriot party to confront each other. On one hand the prudent and the opportunist were inspired by the relativity of things: they intended to carry out the fight against the Church in function of objective reality, relying on the civil constitution of the clergy. On the other hand, the intransigents, gathered around the Feuille Villageoise, who constantly gained ground in the higher levels of the revolutionary vanguard, were guided by the philosophical idea.22 Maréchal leaned now to one side, now to the other. With some of his verbal violence, with some of the measures he proposed, he was with the intransigents. By his tolerance, by his moderation on the road of repression, he was rather on the side of the opportunists. And so he could say, ‘What idea will we give posterity of our revolution when it learns that we smashed the scepter of despotism in three hours, yet it took us several years to shake off the yoke of the clergy’.23 Nevertheless, a bit further on he opposed the deportation of priests! Let us examine this point more closely. On 17 April the Assembly discussed an address from the Itinerant Society of Friends of Both Sexes of the Constitu20 21 22 23

Annales Révolutionnaires, vol. vii, pp. 417–420. Révolutions de Paris, no. 146, 21–28 April 1792, pp. 151–159, article, ‘Déportation des prêtres’. Mathiez, Les origines des cultes révolutionnaires, p. 107 ff. Révolutions de Paris, no. 146, 21–28 April 1792, pp. 151–159, article, ‘Déportation des prêtres’.

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tion of the Department of the Vendée, demanding the deportation to Italy of the fanatical and non-juring priests of the department. Strongly supported by Philippe Goupilleau, this address was sent to the committee for review. Like so many others, it would doubtless have slept there if the priests, redoubling their boldness and activity, hadn’t provoked measures in forty-two departments and alarmed Roland, the minister of the interior. The latter laid out the situation to the Assembly on 23 April. It was then that, after Vergniaud’s intervention, the Committee of Twelve was charged with presenting its opinions within four days. Maréchal spoke out against the proposed measure: ‘It is unbelievable that the legislative body, going further than the ill-considered zeal of a few administrators, gave any importance to the motion to resort to deportation to rid ourselves once and for all of priests so that we no longer hear of them’. The editor the Révolutions de Paris did not understand how ‘serious legislators’ could have taken seriously Merlin’s joke aiming at transferring of all refractory priests onto ships. To be sure, banishment was nothing but a palliative. It gave the criminal the ability to commit new crimes elsewhere. Spain, Portugal, and Rome could barely support their ‘pious wastrels’ and might very well banish ‘the vermin’ that gnawed away at them and pay France back in its own coin, leaving things right where they were. In addition, relegating the evil priests to ports would cause useless ‘shipping expenses’. This was not the way to go. Since France suffered from ‘a parasitic and deformed excrescence’, it should profit from this ‘manure’ and prevent it from becoming a center of contagion. Priests being held in custody, a few ‘natural and quite simple measures’ would prevent them from doing harm. What will these measures be? To carry enlightenment into the countryside and not leave the ‘foolish pamphlets of the noble and priestly aristocracy’ unanswered. To create a ‘people’s gazette’ which, through its simple and clear composition, through reflections within the reach of all, would turn credulous villagers from their ‘propensity for fanaticism’. And finally, to substitute for the influence of priests the influence of official authorities through continuous contact of the latter with the people. ‘It is essential to enthrall the people’. How? By an intelligent and entertaining reading of decrees from the pulpit on holidays and Sundays. Not in a ‘clumsy and gloomy manner’ that is too dry to produce results, but by seasoning the reading with fresh news, with interesting excerpts from the proposed gazette that would pique curiosity and gradually disgust the people with the ‘insipid, endless succession’ of priests. The enlightened patriots of the cities, if they make themselves missionaries, can do much in this regard.24 24

Révolutions de Paris, no. 146, 21–28 April 1792, pp. 151–159, article, ‘Déportation des prêtres’.

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It should not be forgotten that when these lines appeared it was 28 April 1792. In late February the central Jacobin club invited affiliated clubs to organize patriotic missions throughout France, and Lanthenas brought out his book on popular societies.25 Slowly but surely the idea was taking hold that the Revolution needed a powerful propaganda apparatus. The atmosphere was thus favourable for the proselytising measures advocated by Maréchal. At the Jacobins on 10 May 1792 we indeed see a deputation from the faubourg Saint-Antoine demand the establishing of patriotic conferences in churches after divine services, and on 22 May Roland exhorted the patriotic societies to redouble their zeal in educating the people.26 There were already many ‘patriotic readers’ by this time.27 The Gazette Villageoise existed, and if Maréchal proposed the creation of a Gazette du Peuple it was because he intended to criticise – and not without some annoyance – the workmanship of the organ common to the philosophes and the red priests. But all of these measures, already partially applied, but whose results might still be some time in arriving, were not enough for Sylvain. He demanded the immediate secularisation of civil registries. ‘Every day of delay spreads confusion in more than a hundred families’. It was not a matter of just realising this reform on 1 January 1793, as Muraire’s draft law proposed; the day after the law is sanctioned, Maréchal says, seals must be placed on all the sacristies and offices in churches, as well as on the ‘registers they contain with the express injunction to renounce from that moment on all civil functions of this nature’. It was alleged that this measure would clash with the sentiments and habits of the masses. Maréchal did not agree: ‘The people are willing to accept this new arrangement which, incidentally, does not ban people from voluntarily going to churches to ratify with the God of the priests an act certified before free men’. He added, ‘that three years of revolution’ and ‘the conduct of both sacred and profane revolutionaries’ prepared mores for these laws. It must be stressed that Maréchal did not see the secularisation of the state as a measure aimed only at saving civil registries from anarchy and a means of shielding a certain number of the faithful from contact with – and the seductions of – refractory priests. He saw this reform as a preparation for what we today call laïcité. ‘It will succeed in rendering priests completely foreign to the things of this world, which they should never have touched. It will isolate them at the foot of their altars and will draw a circle around them they should not

25 26 27

Mathiez, Les origines des cultes révolutionnaires, pp. 103 and 105. Mathiez, Les origines des cultes révolutionnaires, p. 106. Mathiez, La Révolution et l’Eglise, p. 49.

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cross with impunity’.28 In summary, Maréchal continued to repudiate the formula of Abbé Raynal. Under the pressure of facts, he even seemed to be headed towards the idea of a separation of Church and State, a separation from the Catholic Church and not from religion, from patriotic religion, philosophical religion, the cult of the law, a patriarchal and even atheist cult. Though Maréchal was able to rise to the concept of ‘man without God’, to the idea of a ‘society of men without God’, he was nevertheless unable to conceive of a society, a state without religion.

5

Sylvain’s Marriage (April 1792)

Along with political and philosophical reasons, Sylvain had a personal reason for calling for a new mode of civil registry. In fact, it is more than coincidental that at the very moment he insistently called for the secularisation of civil registries that Maréchal found himself before the harsh necessity of passing in front of a priest to wed. He married Marie-Anne-Nicolas Després on 28 April 1792, and the religious ceremony took place at the church of Saint Nicolas des Champs.29 The previous day, before counselor Dehérain, notary in Paris,30 a marriage contract was signed, according to the terms of which the future wife had ‘a dowry of an annuity of five hundred livres and a principal of two thousand livres’, and in the case where there are no children the donation of all fixed and movable property as the ‘usufruct of the owners’ belonging to the community.31 Abbé Mulot, translator of Daphnis et Cloé, former president of the assembly of the Paris Commune, and deputy to the Legislative Assembly, had been charged by his friend Sylvain with providing the fiancés with the two confession tickets required for conferring the sacrament of marriage. In a post-script in the margin of his request Maréchal – who could not let pass an occasion for mockery – had written: ‘Friend Sylvain will pass by tomorrow to receive an absolution for two from the translator of Longus’.32 Finally, after having hoped for this union for so long, Sylvain had reached his goal! 28 29 30 31 32

‘Déportation des prêtres’, Révolutions de Paris, no. 146, 21–28 April 1792, pp. 151–159. Archives de la Seine, Reconstitution of the civil registry no. 318.972. About this swindling notaire, who duped James Rutlige before the Revolution, Cf. Las Vergnas, Le Chevalier Rutlige, pp. 38–39, pp. 58–61. Archives de la Seine, Registres des déclarations et successions, Bureau de Sceaux 744, folio 36. Recueil de pièces de Sylvain Maréchal, (manuscript note), author’s library.

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The ceremony must have been simple, as appropriate for a couple who were not exactly young. It should be remembered that Sylvain was in his forty-second year and Mlle. Després had just celebrated her twenty-eighth birthday. Sylvain was horrified by marriage as it was then practiced. He was displeased by all the ‘crude ambiguities’, all the ‘wordplay’ that reached the ears of the newlyweds and forced the innocent wife to sacrifice her modesty before her virginity.33 Despite his efforts in support of civil marriage, he felt the greatest repugnance for all that legitimised marriage. He missed those primitive conjugal unions in which two lovers, in order to believe and call themselves united, simply offered each other their hands in the presence of the two families and a few friends. ‘So there was no need for priests or public officers to receive the promises of so sacred a commitment. And yet, there were more happy couples then than since that time!’34 This critique of official marriage as of Christian marriage, this demanding of the rights of love, responded to the wishes of a portion of eighteenth-century society. Delisle, Abbé Prevost, the Chevalier de Gastines, Leguat and so many other writers of the time had often said this.35 But now that it was his turn to take ‘the torch of hymen’ in his hands, Maréchal had to bow to current usage and adjust himself to existing institutions whether he wanted to or not. He could no longer think of marriage ‘before nature’.36 It was time for the young poet to say to his lover: We’ll take Nature as our guide, As offering a simple flower; For altar a bed of greenery, And for song, cries of happiness.37 In that year of 1792 Sylvain, who continued to abandon the Muses for harsh revolutionary combat, was forced to abandon his sweetest chimeras and renounce his plans for domestic and rustic life, nourished for twenty years.

33 34 35 36 37

Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. iv, p. 25. Maréchal, Antiquités d’Herculanum, vol. x, p. 35. Chinard, L’Amérique et le rêve exotique dans la littérature française au xviie et au xviiie siècles, 1913, pp. 227–228, 289, 417. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme utopique, pp. 40–41. See chapter iv. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 167.

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The War. New Anti-Clerical Stances

The situation was grave and the home he founded was immediately assailed on all sides by the revolutionary flood. War had just been declared with the consent of the king, the court, and the patriots. Alone – or almost so – Robespierre, perspicacious and stubborn, stood up against the danger. On this important question, whose solution would change the course of the Revolution, Prudhomme’s newspaper supported the Incorruptible’s campaign. He reproduced in its entirety the famous speech given by Robespierre at the Jacobin Club on 2 January 1792, and in a series of articles and allusions spoke out in support of peace. Maréchal considered the war an extreme decision suggested by the king, ‘despairing of an imminent counter-revolution’, in which he was correct. Seeing matters clearly, he realised that this ‘insidious measure’ could quite well ‘wrap in funeral crepe’ its very promoters.38 The events of 20 June, which shook the crown, and the insurrection of 10 August, which brought it down, in effect grew out of the war. Sylvain of course greeted these popular successes with joy. Speaking a short while later of 10 August he would wittily say: ‘It was the day when French liberty received the sacrament of confirmation’.39 It was also the day that gave the anticlerical movement greater impetus and scope. The decree of 26 August 1792 would implement the deportation of priests, and the law of 20 September 1792 would secularise civil registries. Sylvain would thus receive satisfaction on one point while running aground on another. It must be said that the municipal government of Paris, encouraged by the Legislative Assembly and the tone of the press, had already stripped the Fête-Dieu of its official character by a decree of 1 June. On that occasion, Maréchal had supported Manuel, the initiator of the measure. He had carefully noted the clergy’s resistance and had exclaimed, taking his wishes for reality: ‘Of all the spectacles of Paris, that of the priests has lost the most through the Revolution. They will soon be forced to close up shop and rent out their halls to other actors better viewed by the public, which has become more demanding. They can barely meet their expenses, and in truth the performances don’t bring in the cost of candles’.40 Six months later, despite the insurrection of 10 August, Maréchal had to admit that he had slightly exaggerated the progress of the public spirit. Ignor-

38 39 40

Révolutions de Paris, vol. x, no. 129, p. 565, art. ‘A Louis xvi pour l’année 1792’. Maréchal, Etrennes de la République française, p. 102. ‘Processions’, Révolutions de Paris, vol. xii, no. 181, p. 495.

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ing a new decree of the Parisian municipality, the priests had not ‘closed up shop’, not even on Christmas Eve, and the midnight mass had been celebrated more or less all over the capital. Sylvain, in relating these facts, expressly recognised that once again the priests had abused popular credulity and that ‘public tranquility, decency, and the law’ had been ‘compromised’. He remained within common law when he suggested a sanction, demanding the application of the law prohibiting nighttime assemblies and consequently the instituting of legal proceedings against the seditious priests. Let us listen to the reasons he invoked to justify these harsh measures: There is no harm in making marionettes dance or playing three card monte in the middle of the day in a public square: children and their maids must be amused. But gathering at night in a darkened garret to sing hymns and to burn wax and incense in honour of the bastard child of an adulterous wife is scandalous, is an attack on morals, suspect in a time of revolution, and merits all the attention and severity of the police.41

7

The Beginnings of the National Convention. Strong Criticisms. Anti-Girondin Attitude

How did Prudhomme’s newspaper, more or less inspired by Maréchal, conduct itself in the face of the great events that marked autumn 1792? Issue no. 170 of the Révolutions de Paris, which appeared 13 October 1792 and was almost entirely written by Maréchal, clarifies this matter. On 13 October, barely three weeks had passed since the convening of the Convention, and Maréchal was already opening fire on it! He demanded new legislators, ‘the best examples of disinterest and moderation’, and called for the reduction of their pay: ‘A people’s representative who needs more than one pistole for his daily needs is suspect for this reason alone’.42 Maréchal also spoke out against the slowness of the Convention in proceeding to the judging of the King. He condemned ‘a faction inclined to indulgence towards a criminal’ and openly advocated the death of Louis xvi. Manuel, as prosecutor of the Commune, was also guilty of having mortified Louis xvi through ‘wretched [and inappropriate] proposals’, for every unfortunate is sacred. In addition, he was short-sighted, for sarcasm can make a prisoner who ‘deserved all the severity of the law’ appear

41 42

‘Messe de minuit à Paris’, Révolutions de Paris, vol. xv, no. 181, p. 45. ‘Des mœurs républicaines’, Révolutions de Paris, vol. xiv, no. 170, p. 102.

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sympathetic. ‘There is more glory and it is a greater service to be rendered the Republic to provoke the death sentence for Louis xvi and hasten the moment when all the potentates of Europe are given a lesson they’ll long remember. There’s nothing like the blood of a guilty king to cement the liberty of a great people’.43 Having reprimanded Manuel, Sylvain, who also wrote ‘News from the Armies’ elsewhere in the paper, attacked Generals Custine, Dumouriez, and Arthur Dillon. He scented ‘imposture and treason’, was astounded by Dumouriez’s arrival in Paris, as well as Dillon’s relations with the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and asked republicans for more vigilance and less adulation. Dumouriez, he said, ‘can only be a doubtful and equivocal patriot’. In any case, the Convention is guilty of having applauded him. Maréchal’s indignation, underlined by his exclamations of ‘O shame! O pain!’, make his position clear.44 It will stand out all the more strongly in the following article, concerning the military household of the Convention. On 25 September, following speeches by Kersaint, Buzot, and Lasource, the Convention had voted a proposal creating a private guard for the assembly. This proposal, as Lasource specified, was aimed at reducing the capital ‘to an eightythird of influence’, and nothing more. At bottom it was aimed at the Commune. It can be said that this proposal deepened the abyss that already separated the Girondins and the Montagnards. How did Maréchal react? Along with Hébert and Marat, he denounced the Girondin maneuver, went to war against the ‘faction’, and defended Paris, which ‘sacrificed itself for the revolution’. At the same time, in response to accusations that were beginning to be heard, he spoke in support of the municipality of 10 August. Perhaps it ‘didn’t stick to legal forms’, but it demonstrated energy. As for the September massacres, which the majority in the Convention used to attack and blacken the capital, Maréchal pleaded extenuating circumstances: At bottom, those who were sacrificed had provoked popular fury, and we should transport ourselves to the moment they were killed. The court’s perfidy, the success of the Prussian armies, which they had obviously favoured, the resolution taken at that moment by all citizens to die buried beneath the ruins of the fatherland, and the indignation felt in all hearts, all of this demanded courage and the no doubt horrible need to purge the

43 44

‘Le malheureux est sacré’, Révolutions de Paris, vol. xiv, no. 170. ‘Nouvelles des armées’, Révolutions de Paris, no. 179.

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fatherland of a mob of assassins, brigands, and fanatical traitors.45 Three weeks earlier the Girondin’s great orator Vergniaud had supported these same theses.46 Maréchal then denounced the proposed guard of the Convention as a despotic threat, ‘a monstrous abuse’ that would place freedom constantly under the influence of a corruptible ‘rabble of soldiers’. He demonstrated the true character of this measure by quoting Buzot’s imprudent words, and signaled the partisan advantage the Girondins would draw from it by loudly proclaiming, ‘Citizens! The Parisians are seditious!’ The provinces were all too ready to adopt the ‘calumnies’ and ‘impostures’ of those who, ‘under the veil of a false patriotism’ and through methods analogous to those of ‘aristocrats’, were attempting to incite the departments against the capital. Carrying his criticism further, Maréchal wondered if all this was nothing but a ‘pretext’, an occasion to leave Paris. Perhaps the watchful eye of the sansculottes bothers men like Buzot, Guadet, Lanjuinais, etc., ‘newly-minted legislators’, ‘miserable kinglets’, ‘ambitious little men’, whose decrees are ‘the work of intrigue, consternation, and corruption’.47 More precise and more frank, Hébert would formally accuse Brissot of wanting to transfer the assembly to Bordeaux.48 It is clear that in early October 1792 Maréchal was opposed to the Girondins. But with each passing day the situation grew more tense between the Convention and the Paris Commune. Brissot would be expelled from the Jacobins; Pétion replaced by Danton as president of the club; the war of the placards would grow more heated; Marat would ceaselessly attack ‘the clique of Brissotins’; Momoro and Pieyre would be called before the Convention to explain themselves. What would Maréchal do? He would persist in his attitude of general opposition to the ‘maladroit legislators’. We will briefly discuss his main grievances against the Convention, and particularly the Girondin faction. First, the Convention had done nothing of any importance since the sitting of 21 September. Then, the king was yet to be judged. The slanderous remarks about Paris were capable of breaking ‘the bond of fraternity’ that should unite in one sole fasces all parts of the republic. Finally, the morals of Paris’ enemies were something less than pure.

45 46 47 48

‘De la maison militaire de la Convention nationale’, Révolutions de Paris, no. 170, p. 118. Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française, 4th edition, p. 400. ‘De la maison militaire de la Convention nationale’, Révolutions de Paris, no. 170. Le Père Duchesne, no. 179. See d’Estrée, Le Père Duchesne, p. 126.

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Maréchal was correct on more than one point. It being impossible to quote the article in its entirety, we will excerpt and analyze a few salient passages. ‘Louis, deep in the Temple, still has many friends in Paris and around France’, Maréchal wrote. He then explains that if the Convention demonstrates little hurry and energy in judging the King it is because it seems to be ‘dominated by a party that favours a de-crowned criminal’.49 Maréchal even hazards a conjecture that bears some relation to the kidnapping of the King from the Temple. One must wonder if he didn’t know of the negotiations that had occurred to have the royal family escape through ‘a bold movement’.50 Maréchal felt that the Convention was guided by fear of assuming its responsibilities, and he wrote: ‘You can pile up delay after delay, but sooner or later the great day of the final judgment of Louis xvi must arrive, and the sans culottes are speaking up loudly enough for you to hear that this must be done’.51 Hébert said nothing different in his picturesque language: ‘Now that there’s no retreating and it’s time to make the drunkard Capet take his final step, all the capons are bleeding from their noses’.52 The trial of the king finally began the 6 and 7 November with reports by Valazé and Mailhe. It would proceed slowly, due to the ‘palace chicanery’ denounced by Maréchal and the quibbles of the members of the Convention, who dragged things out as long as possible and retreated in fright before the abyss dug before them. Maréchal, like the other sans-culotte writers, could barely put up with this slowness that was corrupting public opinion. He called on the assembly to ‘strike the tyrant’ as quickly as possible. At the same time, as the year ended with the factional struggle becoming increasingly acute, he endlessly lamented and complained, visibly attempting to stand outside an environment ravaged by divisions. Though hostile to the Girondins he was unsparing in his criticism of their adversaries. He reproached Robespierre, Danton, and Marat for not having defended Paris from the moment the matter of the military household for the Convention was raised. He reproached Marat for the denunciations he tossed

49 50 51 52

‘Suite des observations sur la maison militaire de la Convention’, Révolutions de Paris, no. 172, pp. 149–158. Mathiez, Danton et la paix, p. 69. ‘Suite des observations sur la maison militaire de la Convention’, Révolutions de Paris, no. 171. D’Estrée, Le père Duchesne, p. 152.

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about willy-nilly. He subtly accused Robespierre of ambition. He occasionally attacked Danton.53 Through all this, Maréchal demonstrated that if he opposed the Girondins he was not completely with the Mountain. Nor was he duped by the clever one-upmanship that freshly minted patriots engaged in to capture public opinion. For him, being a Cordelier or Jacobin was not sufficient reference. He seldom visited the clubs, and when he went to them it was to listen. He would leave them filled with hesitation and little disposed to allow himself to be ‘blinded by the reputations of coteries’. It was in this spirit of free criticism, of ‘invincible hatred for intrigue’,54 of reasoned distrust, that he ended the year 1792.

8

The Problem of Public Education

We can see that more than anyone he deplored the persistent weakness of the public spirit, how far behind popular morals and education were in relation to the most inoffensive decisions of the Parisian municipality and the national assembly. The great problem of education haunted his worried mind. The Republic was proclaimed: the name of a king no longer sullied the front of public establishments. The pike and the liberty bonnet had been substituted for the lily and the crown, but for all that, had the Republic become part of daily life? No. Maréchal insisted on this fact. From his article of June 1792 on Condorcet’s report to his warnings of December 1792, not to mention his long dissertation of October on ‘republican morals’,55 a remarkable continuity in ideas can be noted. Let us listen to him. Laws alone do not make a republic. One can be a de jure republican and not a republican de facto. The republican edifice must be cemented with education and instruction in order to resist the conjugated assaults of the aristocracy and the clergy and to become inhabitable by ‘honest citizens’. Many disorders would have been avoided since the beginning of ‘the most reasonable and the most holy of revolutions’ if public opinion, ‘led astray and inconstant’, had been cultivated and educated. Many future errors will be avoided if more thought is given the education of future generations. In order to form youth there is no need of the apparatus laid out by Talleyrand and Condorcet. There is no need of many teachers. All that need be

53 54 55

Révolutions de Paris, nos. 170 and 171, articles by Maréchal. ‘Aux électeurs de Paris sur le choix des juges’, Révolutions de Paris, no. 174. See these three articles in Révolutions de Paris, nos. 155, 170, 182.

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done is to address fathers and mothers; the Republic needs only to appeal to their good will. Most will be inspired by republican mores and give their children an appropriate education. ‘There is no need of genius to teach reason; all that is needed is zeal and simple morals’.56 Domestic education is the best. We will limit ourselves to creating in each canton a censor of studies who will examine the children once a month or week, sing songs of praise of zealous parents, and pronounce sanctions against parents guilty of negligence. When we will have to deal with parents who are ignorant or unable to take care of their children, schools will complement domestic education with the least possible inconvenience. Schools will be fee-paying except for the poor; teachers will no longer be salaried by the nation. In order to facilitate domestic education and instruction, a small number of good primary books, ‘concise and solid treatises’, will be composed. A commission will be charged with the writing of these books and the examination of those that will be in competition. Maréchal attached the greatest importance to this question of elementary treatises. Just as he criticised Talleyrand, he criticised Condorcet for not sufficiently insisting on this capital point. He pressed the assembly to go down the road he advocated and demanded the immediate opening of a competition.

9

Le Devoir des Enfans

Wanting to preach by example, Maréchal insisted on entering the lists, though no one at the Convention felt obliged to greet his proposal favourably. Between two articles in the Révolutions de Paris and atheist verses for a new edition of his Fragmens sur Dieu, he took the time to compose short couplets and exhortations in prose for the use of the young. It was something truly original and the sign of an uncommon concern for education to see the editor of an important revolutionary newspaper, despite pressing concerns, compose ‘an elementary book’, a short manual capable of showing children how they should behave towards their parents and those charged with their education. Esnauts and Rapilly, booksellers on Rue Saint-Jacques, undertook its publication and found an engraver who created a lovely little colour print for each month of the year. Facing each was a commentary by Maréchal. Thus, for the beginning

56

Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 18.

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of the year there was a short, unpretentious work with the title ‘Le Devoir des Enfans’ [Children’s Duties]. It began with a new year’s couplet from a son to a father to the tune of Rousseau’s ‘Je l’ai planté’: Dear papa! With a prosperous gaze Please grant my ardent wishes. A father’s benediction Is his childrens’ treasure. When we compare these lines to article xi of the Reglement d’un culte sans prêtres one wonders if Maréchal, still haunted by the idea of a domestic religion, did not want to create a kind of ritual for the use of children. But in his eyes it was not enough to reach the little ones. ‘In order to [immediately] serve public education’ was it not necessary to reach adults? And in these first days of 1793, what books were better suited than almanacs, works popular in their essence, to educate citizens? Maréchal took advantage of the new year to launch two in slightly different styles, which allowed him to again tackle and pose the question of the reform of the calendar.

10

L’Almanach des Républicains and the Etrennes de la République Française

The Almanach des Republicains pour servir a l’instruction publique [Almanac of Republicans to Serve for the Education of the Public] came off the presses of the Cercle Social. As in the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, each day presented a famous person, and sometimes an event. Most of the names in the calendar of 1788 are maintained, but some of those that served as lightning rods, like Louis le Grand, Charlemagne, and Benedict xiv disappeared. They were replaced by names dear to republicans, like Loustallot and Beaurepaire, the Gracchi and the curé Meslier. The author stressed those facts whose evocation would increase the revolutionary spirit. On 15 March we still find the mention ‘Brutus kills Caesar’, and on 1 June ‘Brutus drives out Tarquin’. One finds additions like ‘Thrasybulus drives out the Tyrants’ on 8 May and ‘Trebonius conspires against Caesar’ on 10 November. But on the great dates of the Revolution, Maréchal shows little interest in appealing to Roman history: he recalls the victories and what he considers the defeats of the French nation. On 15 January ‘France with its 83 departments’ is commemorated. On the 25th of the same month it is ‘the abolition of infamies attached to prison sentences’; on 3 April ‘the consecration of the French Pantheon’; on 1 May ‘the instituting of juries’;

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on 4 August ‘the abolition of feudalism’; on 2 and 3 September ‘the forsaking of the law, mourning in Paris’. It should be noted that Sylvain Maréchal criticises the September massacres, which he had considered a ‘horrific necessity’ just a few months earlier. In doing so he politically joined Bonneville, with whom he would soon collaborate on his Bulletin des Amis de la Liberté [Bulletin of the Friends of Liberty]. The twelve months of the years are consecrated in the following fashion: The Law, in January; The People in February; Fathers in March; Spouses in April; Lovers in May; Mothers in June; Free Men in July; Republicans in August; The Equals in September; Reason in October; Good Neighbors in November; and Friends in December. What is odd is that Maréchal, who had condemned legislators for commemorating the beginning of the year in January, also submits to the custom, abandoning the thesis he so vehemently supported in the Révolutions de Paris. In general, a holiday is anticipated for the end of each month, in conformity with the central idea of the month. The months of May, June, July, August, and September are exceptions. A feast of the Innocent Maiden was established on 8 June, originally Saint Médard’s day, and was set aside for publicly crowning with roses of ‘the most virtuous maiden’ in each canton.57 There is a solemn festival on 21 September to mark the abolition of the monarchy and the first day of the Republic. The most important festival of the year, called the ‘Festival of the Revolution’, is celebrated on 14 July. The invention of the printing press is celebrated either on 1 or 2 January, in accordance with a mechanism he designed. It cannot be too strongly stressed that Sylvain Maréchal anticipated the Festival of Reason, establishing it on 31 October, justifying it in these terms: ‘Reason, which is the eldest and should suffice for man; reason, which leads to independence and prevents servitude deserves to be solemnized’.58 It should be observed as well that Maréchal, while striving to make his previous calendar more flexible and adapting it to key revolutionary dates, while also aiming, as the title stated, at ‘public instruction’, did not completely ignore domestic concerns. If he replaced his father on 21 October with Diagoras, ‘who believed only in the truth’;59 if he silently suppressed his own festival on 15 August, it was not by pure chance that he spoke of his wife Zoé on 6 July and that he dedicated April, the month of his marriage, to Spouses. It is to be noted also that ten-day weeks, décades, disappear and the names of the days of the week, which no longer figured on the Almanach des Hôn57 58 59

Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 67. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 113. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 111.

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netes Gens, reappear. In short, on this point as on others, it can be said that Maréchal regressed. But this was only opportunism on his part: by taking reality into account more than he had in the past, he aimed at conveying his desire for calendar reform without forgetting the practical side of his almanac. The goal is the same, but the methods differ. An attractive feature of the work is the brief and witty notices that the writer composed for the personages he substituted for the saints. For example, Voltaire, whose feast is on 20 February, appears with these lines: ‘He mocked kings, pinched priests, tormented nobles, emancipated the people, and inculcated reason in them. These services deserve gratitude’.60 Jesus Christ is presented as a victim of ‘aristocrats’ and ‘the priestly caste’, who sentenced him to the gibbet for having attempted ‘a holy uprising among the sans-culottes of Jerusalem’. Sylvain added: ‘Let us forgive Jesus Christ the charlatanry of his life in memory of his death, which was quite noble’.61 Ninon de Lenclos, listed in the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens on 17 October, figures here on 23 July. She is the subject of this mention: ‘Citizens! We demand grace for this woman. She was a republican in love and a man in business. Citizenesses, we don’t propose her to you as a model, but there are prudes of our acquaintance, there are Lucretiuses of our day who certainly have not nearly as much real virtue as Ninon l’Enclos’.62 In the middle of these notices Maréchal’s eye and heart seek a way to return to nature. It is so pleasant to read idylls ‘in the shade of the willow on the banks of a stream’. Touching homage is rendered Theocritus in July and Virgil in September. The almanac was offered to the National Convention. It took note of it at the sitting of 4 January 1793, and it was decided the author would be sent a copy of the minutes.63 The Bulletin des Amis de la Vérité provided a sympathetic summary of it in its 3 January 1793 issue. It recalled that ‘well before the Revolution Sylvain Maréchal had driven from the calendar saints canonised in Rome and places real saints there, men celebrated for their virtue. Because of this, he is worthy of the homage of new generations’. It noted that this time Maréchal ‘created a new application of this idea, and each day of the year presents either names dear to republicans or the commemoration of events having to do with

60

61 62 63

Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 28. He would add in De la Vertu, p. 153, ‘… but Voltaire did nothing for virtue’. This restriction provides the key to the small lace Voltaire occupied in Maréchal’s oeuvre. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 40. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, pp. 81–82. Procès-verbal de la Convention.

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liberty’. This was virtually all there was as far as reviews. Even the Chronique du Mois, after having announced Maréchal’s new work while it was being printed, never spoke of it once it was put on sale. Maréchal’s pamphlet was thus rather coldly received by the Parisian press. The same occurred with the Etrennes de la République française, ou calendrier des Républicains, by Sylvain Maréchal, which was often confused with the Almanach des Républicains, the titles so closely resembling each other. The Etrennes were published by Gueffier, the publisher of the Dictionnaire des Hônnetes Gens. They form a tiny in-16, carefully printed with ingenious couplets, romances, miscellanea, and even a revolutionary catechism, all of it bearing the mark of wit and patriotism. On 20 January 1791 the Journal de la Cour et de la Ville exercised its eloquence at the expense of the Revolution regarding the change of street names in Paris. It proposed substituting Rue Judas with the name of Rue Grégoire, after the Abbé Grégoire; Rue de la Harengerie [Herring market] with Rue de l’Assemblé Nationale; Rue des Martyrs with Rue Louis xvi, etc.64 In his almanac, Maréchal replied on the aristocrats’ chosen ground. Place Louis xv became Place de la Dubarry; the Champ de Mars the Champ Faux-Serments [False Oaths]; Rue des Echaudés [those burned with boiling water,] Rue des Royalistes; Rue Saint-Denis-sans-tête (Headless Saint-Denis), Rue Louis xvi. As for Rue des Prêcheurs, the street of his birth, Sylvain decorated it with the name Rue des Tyrannicides. In his revolutionary catechism the most serious questions are the subject of pleasantries. The Revolution is defined as ‘the illness of a twisted neck from which many will never recover’. If he spares neither aristocrats, priests, nor Mirabeau, ‘that blacksmith who beat two different anvils with each hand’, the author also does not hesitate to tell the people some harsh truths and taunt the Convention by reproducing his past attacks against the Constituent Assembly, leaving it to the reader to transpose them. As for Paris, ‘it is a city that pulled the chestnuts out of the fire, but which received nothing but peelings for its troubles’. From the specific point of view of calendar reform, the Etrennes deserves no mention, the calendar included being the same as that of the Almanach des Républicains. And so the Bulletin des Amis de la Liberté included one notice on both works. It does not seem that any other journal mentioned them.

64

Journal de la Cour et de la Ville, no. 20, pp. 158–159.

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Maréchal, Precursor and Artisan of the Republican Calendar

Should we deduce from this conspiracy of silence that Maréchal’s two almanacs had no influence? Doing so would be an enormous error. Rather than formal success, in a matter such as this one we should take into account the evolution of public opinion, the progress made by public awareness and the idea of calendar reform. And this progress was undeniable. The proof is that precisely when Maréchal launched his new calendar Citizen Saint-Vallié in Dunkirk brought out an Almanach Républicain in which figured the names of saints devoted to the republic. But Saint-Vallié can be considered to have joined Maréchal only in the elimination of the saints of the Church, for he distances himself as soon as it is a question of what to put in their place. While Maréchal substituted for those of saints the names of celebrated men and only a few departed revolutionaries whose glory was uncontestable, the scatterbrained Saint-Vallié placed living revolutionaries on his calendar, which, it hardly needs be said, risked causing him great misfortune. Even more, Saint-Vallié maintained the framework of the Gregorian calendar.65 This framework, though, was under serious attack. Michelet demonstrated in some admirable pages that the establishment of the republican calendar was a logical outcome of the situation at the time. In general, people wanted to leave the ancien régime behind. They wanted to do so, not only in the political and economic spheres, but even in space, in gravity, and in time. From which the need to complement the uniformity in weights and measures with the uniformity of the calendar, and even to apply, as much as possible, the decimal system to the division of time. The labours of the Committee of Public Instruction and the reports provided the Convention leave no doubt on this subject. But if we more closely examine the period when the revolutionary calendar legally took form, it can be seen that it was part and parcel of the great de-Christianization movement. The truth is that people wanted to leave the ancien régime behind in the religious realm as well. The revolutionaries did not all want this in the same way or to the same degree, but all wanted it. It was not by chance that the new calendar was born in the atmosphere of August–October 1793. The needs of national defense, financial demands, the aspirations for public education, the attempts at establishing a pagan cult, the fight against priests, and the activities of Chaumette and the Paris Commune and various representatives on mission came together like so many burning

65

Welschinger, Les Almanachs de la Révolution, p. 67.

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flames in the anti-Christian inferno. In a sense, the decree establishing the revolutionary calendar did nothing but coordinate and solder together all these efforts. This is what has not been sufficiently noted until now. Even though it is not possible to deny the great international influence, the great human significance of the reform – which Michelet and Jaurès did not fail to do – we must not underestimate its importance in the internal political struggle of the moment. On the battlefield of the calendar, Christianity and philosophy, the church and the Revolution again confronted each other. At the Committee of Public Instruction on 6 November 1792 Manuel and Gorsas had insisted on the need to reform almanacs,66 and on 20 December the Convention had invited the Committee of Public Instruction to present a draft decree on the ‘harmonising of the Republican era with the vulgar era’. The opinion of the committee was of greater scope, since on 21 December it decided it would address ‘the changes to be made in the calendar and in the manner of fixing or naming the different periods of time’.67 This meant taking inspiration from Sylvain’s bold precedent of 1788. The idea of a new era was launched again at the Convention on 31 December 1792, Manuel having protested against the fact that the Almanach National was dated the second Republican year, ‘as if the Republic dated from the day of the circumcision’. According to Manuel ‘the free French calendar’ can only begin on 21 September. But again, the Assembly decided that the year would begin on 1 January.68 It most likely retreated before the complications that could be foreseen from Manuel’s innovation if it didn’t wait for the report of the Committee of Public Instruction before deciding. And yet, the need for a new era had enthusiastic supporters. One must cite among them Francois de Neufchâteau, president of the department of the Vosges, who had requested of the Committee of Public Instruction the opening of a competition and the distribution of a prize for the establishing of a ‘civil calendar’.69 The supporters of civic and moral ceremonies similar to the festivals imagined by Maréchal in his calendars were even more numerous. One realises this when consulting the imposing series of reports and projects on public education provided by members of the Convention. Lakanal, in his draft decree presented at the Convention on 26 June 1793, anticipated among the national 66 67 68 69

James Guillaume, Procès-verbaux du Comite d’Instruction Publique, vol. i, p. 236. James Guillaume, Procès-verbaux du Comite d’Instruction Publique, vol. i, p. 236. James Guillaume, Procès-verbaux du Comite d’Instruction Publique, vol. 1, pp. 236–237. James Guillaume, Procès-verbaux du Comite d’Instruction Publique, vol. i, p. 237.

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festivals a Festival of Marriage celebrated in the cantons, a Festival of Equality, and a Festival in Memory of Ancestors in the districts and the departments, along with a Festival of the Abolition of Privileges (4 August), and the Festival of the Destruction of the Orders (17 June). The capital was also to see a festival of the Revolution on 14 July, but the festival of the Abolition of the Monarchy and the Establishment of the Republic, which Maréchal placed on 21 September, was moved to 10 August.70 The fact that in Lakanal’s revised text the Festivals of Ancestors and the Printing Press were suppressed in no way disproves their being carried over from the Maréchalian calendars. In his plan presented to the Convention on 2 July 1793, Lequinio took up Maréchal’s Festival of Spouses under the name festival of Marriage, which he fixed for the spring equinox. It is that epoch of ‘universal resurrection’, that the ‘Citizen of the Globe’ uses as the starting point of the calendar, which more or less returns us to the starting date of the Almanach des Hônnetes Gens. Lequinio, while eliminating most of Lakenal’s too numerous festivals, kept several drawn from Maréchal’s almanacs.71 In the meanwhile, the commissioners of the Committee of Public Instruction, Prieur and Romme, in concert with members of the Academy of Sciences, pursued their work with the aim of establishing the new calendar. Romme, charged with the report, presented it to the Committee on 17 and 18 September, announced it at the Convention the 18th, and presented it to that Assembly on the 20th. The vulgar era was abolished. The republican year would begin the day of the autumn equinox. The twelve months were equal and divided in tenths. The five supplementary days were called Epagomènes. But the question of the names of the months remained open. The committee had rejected every name: the names of the signs of the zodiac, the names of men who had served liberty, as wells as names drawn from natural phenomena and country labour. The Convention, absorbed by its many tasks, did not address this question with sufficient alacrity for the sans-culottes. The proof of this can be found in the debate that occurred at the Paris Commune on 5 October, old style. According to the version in the Moniteur, the prosecutor of the Commune, Chaumette, demanded ‘that no festivals any longer be celebrated other than those in honour of liberty and which recall the memorable phases of the revolution by erasing the least trace of fanaticism’. With this goal in mind he called for the adoption and observance of the ‘republican calendar made by Citizen Maréchal’. The general council adopted this resolution.72 70 71 72

James Guillaume, Procès-verbaux du Comite d’Instruction Publique, vol. i, pp. 514–515. James Guillaume, Procès-verbaux du Comite d’Instruction Publique, vol. i, p. 556. Moniteur, no. 280, 16 of the first month of year ii.

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According to the Journal de la Montagne, Chaumette proposed that the administration of public works be charged with framing Sylvain Maréchal’s calendar and sending it to the sections so it could be followed and observed. Chaumette said: ‘We will replace Monsieur Saint-Antoine and his pig with festivals of Solon, Lycurgus, and Brutus’. The municipal assembly set the number of calendars necessary for ‘replacing superstition’s festivals with those of liberty’ at two thousand.73 Whatever the exact modalities of its application, one fact remains, and it is an important one: in its haste to renounce the Gregorian calendar, and in the absence of an official calendar, which was slow in seeing the light of day, the Paris Commune adopted Sylvian Maréchal’s calendar. However, the very day that the Commune took this decision the Convention decreed the establishing of the republican calendar, which forced the municipal assembly to reverse its decision a few days later.74 In fact, on 5 October, when the discussion of the months – the only one that took place that was of any importance – came before the Convention, Romme found himself confronting seven proposals. Four had moral and revolutionary denominations as their basis, as Maréchal had done in his Almanach des Républicains, and Romme came out in support of this. But the Convention, after having spoken in favour of moral names, finally rejected them in favour of ordinal names, until Fabre d’Eglantine had the names adopted that we have come to know, and which he had devised in 1777.75 In his Almanach des Républicains Maréchal had respected the names of the days, after having suppressed them, replacing them with simple numbers, in his Almanach des Honnêtes Gens. The names of the days were changed in Romme’s proposal. In addition, Maréchal’s hybrid system, consisting in maintaining unequal months while blocking out five supplementary days at the end of the year, disappeared to make way for a decimal system. Finally, taking into account Duhem’s observations and Fabre d’Eglantine’s report, the Convention later replaced the names of saints by the names of products and the tools of agriculture and rural economy. Needless to say, Maréchal greeted the establishing of the republican calendar with joy. But this joy was not unalloyed. With the Révolutions de Paris, to which he regularly contributed, having suspended publication between 3 August and 28 October, he was obviously unable 73 74 75

Journal de la Montagne, no. 127, 7 October 1793, p. 913. Journal de la Montagne, no. 132, 12 October 1793, pp. 949–950. In the Histoire naturelle et son étude dans le cours des saisons, a poem to the Count de Buffon. In-8 of 14 pages.

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to dedicate to the calendar question the articles that current events would have dictated. Nevertheless, in his brief notice on ‘the noble revolutionary activities’ of the period that figured in its first issue upon its reappearance,76 he demonstrated the need to purge the interior of homes of ‘the foolish emblems of credulity and servitude’, and affirmed that the establishing of the new calendar was in keeping with this. According to him, this calendar was ‘founded as much on political reason as on astronomy’. In the following issue Maréchal presented observations on the onomastics of the new calendar.77 He was not happy with these names. He wrote: The old almanac was a piece of marquetry composed of Greek, Latin, Arabic, and French words. One would have thought that the new makers would avoid the inconveniences of such a motley appearance. Apparently, they didn’t have sufficient confidence in the people’s reason, which they thought to be mired in routine, judging them still to be slaves to their former usages. In order for the names to be better understood and used they decided not to speak French. Consequently, they set about to commit torture by composing a barbaric nomenclature but ended up with rhymes, hoping in this way to treat memory gingerly and erase former impressions. Inspired by these reflections, Maréchal asked that they speak ‘naturally and in good French’: the Month of the Grape Harvest, the Month of Mist and so on, instead of Brumaire and Vendémiaire. The names he chose were all the more appropriate, since the committee maintained the names of the seasons ‘quite naturally and in good French’. But, according to him, another element should be taken into consideration in rejecting the nomenclature of months drawn from natural things. Messidor is not the month of harvests for the whole Republic, nor is October that of the wine crop, etc. Thus it would be better ‘to stick with numeral denomination or, better still, to compose one that is entirely political; to call, for example, the month of January that of the People’s Justice because of Capet’s punishment; July the Month of the Bastille; September the Month of the Republic and so on’. He added that ‘it is impossible to make the rising generation too familiar with the great events of our revolution’. In this Maréchal remained faithful to his Almanach des Républicains.

76 77

Révolutions de Paris, no. 212, p. 89. Révolutions de Paris, no. 213, 7–14 Brumaire, year ii, pp. 137–139.

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The writer was happy that the names of the days of the décade were numerals. But he considered ‘that they smell of the barbarism of the century in which Monday, Tuesday, etc. were thought up’, and ‘they don’t have the merit of the former ones in their sweetness and ease of pronunciation’. For Maréchal the object of the festivals of the five supplementary days proceeded from a happier choice. Nevertheless, he would have placed Virtue and not the Virtues at the head and allowed Labour precedence over Genius. He accepted the Festival of the People or the Sans-culottide every four years, the bissextilaire day, noting only that it could have been called the Festival of the Revolution. These were the remarks and reflections inspired in Maréchal by the names on the new calendar. He refrained from making them in his Tableau historique des événemens révolutionnaires [Historical Tableau of Revolutionary Events], which appeared in early year iii and which was little more than a propaganda pamphlet aimed at ‘patriots of the countryside’. He contented himself with applauding both the disappearance of ‘the festivals of falsehood and superstition’, and the elimination of ‘the names of the mass of idle or maleficent personages’ proposed by the clergy for eighteen centuries. In future, he would maliciously say to rural workers, ‘You can lay down your tools without blushing. The Festivals of Virtue or Fraternity are worth every bit as much as the day a woman both virgin and mother conceived without the participation of her complacent husband’.78 It should be noted that in his assessment of the revolutionary calendar Maréchal makes no mention of the substitution of names touching on rural economy for the names of saints. Should we conclude from this that he had reservations about this modality? In the absence of texts on the subject we can only ask the question. But given Maréchal’s previously held position, it is not too bold to assert that he would probably have preferred the substitution of celebrated men for saints. There were many who asserted they were partisans of this path. In year iii H. Blanc and X. Bouchard, teachers in Franciade (Saint-Denis),79 and in year vii Citizen Boinvilliers, professor at the École Centrale of the Oise,80 put on parade in their calendars great men from all countries and all centuries, following in the footsteps of Rousseau, Jacquin, and Etienne Dupin in the Almanachs

78 79 80

Maréchal, Tableau historique des évènemens révolutionnaires, p. 2. Welschinger, Les Almanachs de la Révolution, pp. 67–68. Boinvilliers, Almanach de Département de l’Oise et Calendrier des Muses de l’Ecole Centrale de ce meme département pour l’an vii. An analysis of this work can be found in la Déchrisitianisaton a Beauvais et dans l’Oise, second part, 1922, pp. 85–86.

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du Républicain,81 and the Angevin patriots who wrote the Calendrier du peuple franc [Calendar of the Free People].82 As for Citizen Beyerle, of whom we previously spoke, careful to render justice to ‘the fairer half of humankind’, his calendar was made up entirely of women ‘who have become famous, not only by their virtues, but also by the qualities that make men so vain of their superiority’.83 The work bore the title Almanach des femmes célèbres … pour l’an vi de la Republique Francaise [Almanac of Celebrated Women, for year vi of the Revolution]. In the nineteenth century Sylvain Maréchal’s outline was taken up by Positivism and many free thinkers. It would be an endless task to try to draw up even a summary list of the nomenclature of calendars of this genre that have appeared between the Revolution and today. All these efforts prove that the supporters of calendar reform lean towards the adoption of days dedicated to great men rather than to labours, as was laid out by the members of the Convention. Whatever the path adopted, the name of Sylvain Maréchal is and will remain forever attached to the efforts of free thought movements and governments to substitute for the calendar of churches of all kinds one more in conformity with the needs and aspirations of a secular society.

12

Maréchal and Nicolas de Bonneville. Collaboration on the Bulletin des Amis de la Vérité

Let us back up a moment, for the need to exhaust the question of the calendar caused us to violate chronological order. We saw that Sylvain Maréchal’s two almanacs were well received by Nicolas de Bonneville’s newspaper, which was virtually alone in even noting them. This friendly disposition is explained by the relationship between Maréchal and Nicolas de Bonneville. It is difficult to be certain where and when these two men became acquainted. It was in any case not in the Parisian Masonic lodges before the Revolution, Nicolas de Bonneville – despite his mysticism and Masonic studies – seeming to have only belonged to a lodge in London.84 Perhaps it was at the founding of the Cercle Social in September 1790. What is certain, as is attested by issue 81 82 83 84

Welschinger, Les Almanachs de la Révolution, p. 65. Welschinger, Les Almanachs de la Révolution, p. 65, p. 231. Beyerlé, Almanach des femmes célèbres, p. xix. Le Harivel, Nicolas de Bonneville, Strasbourg, 1928, p. 4.

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number 22 of the Bouche de fer,85 is that in February 1791 The Conféderation des amis de la Vérité, and Bonneville in particular, already held the ‘generous’ Sylvain in high esteem. The latter for his part must have looked favourably on an organisation that proposed ‘to unite men by shared principles’; to ‘have them find and adopt the best social regime’; to renounce idols and to hold to truth and reason.86 As for Nicolas de Bonneville, a mystical spirit and complex soul who had praised the agrarian law in one of his books and who proclaimed that God and truth were one, must have found himself in agreement with Maréchal on many philosophical and social points Unfortunately, it is impossible to know anything about their relations in 1792. In early 1793 Bonneville launched the Bulletin des Amis de la Vérité and because of this found himself the object of many attacks by the Mountain. As a good comrade, Sylvain then placed his pen at the service of Nicolas and even dedicated this quatrain to him: Honour to Nicolas! May the civic oak, In shading his brow, make him the terror of kings! Of sacred liberty he was the precursor, And the people’s tribune before the Republic.87 Bonneville’s daily newspaper, announced by the Chronique du Mois, was to appear as soon as the National Convention opened. Its editor in chief had neglected nothing in making it a newspaper capable of contributing to ‘public instruction’, the term he and Maréchal employed. Bonneville had established ‘a fraternal and republican correspondence’ in England and in almost all our neighbours. Aside from the participation of Maréchal, he had assured himself the collaboration of men like J. Lavallée, Creuzé-Latouche, Publicola Chaussard, Th. Mandar, E. Maltière, Belair, F.-N. Parent, and, it is said, Mercier, Condorcet, Gensonné, Thomas Paine, and Kersaint. Bonneville’s ambition, while keeping his readers up to date on the labours of the National Convention and other peoples’ attitude towards France, was to discuss the principles that were on the order of the day and to work for the establishment of ‘a new social order’.88 The principle merit of the beau-

85 86 87 88

Bouche de fer, no. 22, 22 February 1791, p. 346. Bouche de fer, no. 11, October 1790, p. 162. Maréchal, Etrennes de la République française, p. 126. Reproduced in the Bulletin des Amis de la Vérité, no. 4, 3 January 1793. Tourneux, Bibliographie de l’histoire de Paris pendant la Révolution, vol. ii, p. 1652. Le Harivel, Nicolas de Bonneville, pp. 70–71.

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tifully designed newspaper was its great variety. This is what the ever serious Moniteur recognised, saying ‘Next to a political article we find one that is the most cutting satire, and alongside that, one of the most serious philosophy or of sweet philanthropy’.89 A perfectly accurate description of the paper. But it must be said that if the Bulletin des Amis de la Liberté deserved such compliments, it was largely owing to Maréchal’s collaboration, to the articles of a philosophical bent that he contributed. Despite his Girondin attachments and his social extremism, Nicolas de Bonneville aspired, above all factions, to justice and unity in ‘a conditional government fitting the circumstances’. He strived for a certain political eclecticism, congratulating the future Robespierrist Payan for his worthy combat in the Journal des Départements de la Drôme et de l’Ardèche; inserting the hymn to hospitality of Doin, Chaumette’s friend; and reprinting the articles from the Sentinelle in which Louvet laid out Roland’s doctrine. Bonneville made his political line clear by writing in his final issue on 30 April 1793 – for the paper lasted just three months – ‘No more Mountain, no more Plain or rocks, but a Convention one and indivisible, like the Republic’. One sees that the editor of the Bulletin des Amis de la Vérité could and should have gotten along with the editor of the Révolutions de Paris. They shared the same unitary opinions and both strived to remain afloat on the sea of intrigues. But while Maréchal, while remaining outside any narrow spirit of coterie, was against the Girondins and for the Mountain, though not without reservations, Bonneville was for the Girondins and against the Mountain, though with reservations. Maréchal’s participation on Bonneville’s newspaper stretched from 24 January 1793 to 1 April 1793. Aside from ‘Variétés’, pieces of verse, articles, correspondence signed S.M., Sylvain or Sylvain Maréchal, and perhaps ‘a patriotic traveler’, two series of productions must be mentioned: ‘L’évangile du Jour’ [The Gospel of the Day] and the ‘Pensées diverses’ [Various thoughts]. Under the pseudonym Ar-Lamech, which recalls the unhappy period when he brought out his Livre échappé au déluge, Maréchal rose to philosophical and social ideas that were occasionally disguised intrusions into politics. It was manifestly in order to enjoy greater freedom that Ar-Lamech made use of revised fables from the Leçons du fils ainé à un roi. Several of these pieces very closely resembled the tales of 1788. The ‘gods of the earth’, the wealthy, the great, and those who rule take it on the chin, and the tone has become so serious, with a hint of bitterness, the studied style is so concise, so simple, and so natural, that it recalls La Bruyère. And it is no slight honour for Maréchal

89

Moniteur, reprint, 3 March 1793, no. 62.

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that apropos the Evangile du Jour one can almost evoke the name of that prestigious writer, who Maréchal considered ‘a clever philosopher’.90 What is more, there are many passages in Les Caractères that Maréchal highlighted because they were in agreement with his way of seeing things, notably when La Bruyère opposes nature and high society, and the country and the city; when he stresses that the great are kneaded from the same clay as the common people; when he denies women the right to and the possibility of writing; and when he declares himself ready ‘to throw himself, to take refuge in Moderation’, etc. It is certainly possible that, captivated by the admirable form with which La Bruyère garbed the ideas that announced the eighteenth century, Maréchal imitated the great writer’s style. In any case, the short sentences artistically polished and chiseled that are found throughout L’Evangile du Jour are not written in Maréchal’s usual style. Among the chapters of L’Evangile du Jour, beyond a doubt one of the most cutting is the adventure of Lady Virtue at the home of Fortune: During that time Virtue traveled. Night surprised her and obliged her to enter the first house. The host said to her: I have but one bed and it is occupied by a lady. Can we not both sleep there? – I think not, for that lady seems to love her ease and is quite plump. – Let us try. Fortune, after much pleading, was willing to allow Virtue to sleep with her. But, she added, it would only be for one night and would have no implications.91 In the Pensées diverses, published openly under his name, Sylvain manhandled the men of the Revolution. For him they are for the most part ‘perfidious agitators whose only code and morality is the right of the strongest or the most cunning’.92 When passing a politician the sage has the tacit right to say: ‘I am worth more than that man’.93 A reading of Warburton’s book on the unity of religion, morality, and politics reminded him of the fable of a lamb placed between a wolf and a fox.94 In conclusion, Maréchal indicated the rule of conduct for a wise man: ‘In the great theater of civil society there is no role for the sage; he prefers to be the spectator than the hero’.95

90 91 92 93 94 95

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des Hônnetes Gens, p. 120. Bulletin des Amis de la vérité, no. 56, 24 February 1793, pp. 3–4. Bulletin des Amis de la vérité, no. 104, 13 April, year ii, ‘Pensées diverses’. Bulletin des Amis de la vérité, no. 104, 13 April, year ii, ‘Pensées diverses’. Bulletin des Amis de la vérité, no. 106, 15 April 1793, ‘Pensées diverses’, no. 2. This allusion to Warburton’s book provided Pensée cxxxii of Pensées libres sur les prêtres. Bulletin des Amis de la vérité, no. 106, 15 April 1793.

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Bitter and skeptical are these reflections. They are only too readily explained by the evil contingencies of the day. The fire was not only at the gates of the Republic, but it blazed within. Still divided by personal quarrels and party struggles, the Convention neglected the safety of the Revolution. On the night of 11 to 12 April one could even see deputies ready to come to blows: one drew his sword and the other pulled out his pistol.96 Such distressing scenes were hardly made to reassure patriots, who had expected great things of the national representatives. And they even more revolted Sylvain, who demanded ‘more than ever, unity’, and ‘above all, morality’.97

96 97

Révolutions de Paris, no. 196, 6–13 April 1793, p. 95 note. Révolutions de Paris, no. 182, 29 December 1792–5 January 1793, p. 55.

Chapter 9 1

The Aim of the Correctif à la Révolution

In a book that circulated at that time Sylvain provided the true reasons for his skepticism. The Correctif à la Révolution [Corrective to the Revolution] was the title of the book, ‘worthy of being better known’, according to Maréchal himself. Indeed, it is of great importance, not only in the study of Sylvain, but as a contribution to the history of ‘communitarian socialism’, which had a significant number of supporters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The subject treated by Maréchal is the following: ‘Examining if a family would be better governed and happier under the eyes of one father than thousands of families under the scepter of one man or a group of several’.1 Backed up by quotations, and through sixty-three not always clear propositions, Maréchal wants to prove that the family is the sole natural and acceptable society. Rousseau had already maintained this in his Social Contract and Émile, but in these and other writings he had tempered this idea. Maréchal grabs hold of it and expands it beyond measure. He arrives at the destruction of civil society, at the negation of every political form, at the critique of the idea of a fatherland, of popular sovereignty, and, to put it simply, he reaches a kind of haughty individualism within a patriarchal framework. In truth, Maréchal realised that his strange Correctif à la Révolution would offend many revolutionaries. This would be even more the case in that, beyond his fundamental criticisms, he did not shy away from direct statements, as witnessed by these blows delivered the governments issued from the Revolution: Alas! Most of the governments of the earth are nothing but magna latrocinia [large bands of brigands]. We have just settled accounts with a band of thieves; we should be afraid that another company of brigands isn’t waiting for us, hidden in the woods.2 For too long circumstances had obliged him to coat his books with a democratic, republican, and patriotic varnish. Behind the straw of words he employed, he was now going to show the grain of things. He would lay his real thoughts bare. Let us listen to him:

1 Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 200. 2 Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 96.

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At the simple presentation of a proposed division of humanity into families it will likely be said of the writer: ‘This man’s brain is surely sick. It is not possible to busy oneself for so long and so seriously with such a chimera without having a poorly organised mind. This dreamer is a madman of the kind Horace spoke, whose mania was that of believing that at the theaters of Athens he was witnessing the most beautiful dramas of the world. Each man his madness; readers, respect mine. It is perhaps not given to everyone to be a madman of my kind. Above all, please don’t cure me. The happiness of my existence hinges on the hope of making you better and happier. If my opinions are not completely impracticable I can’t hide from myself the fact that I won’t live long enough to see them realised. But after freedom, the imagination is the most beautiful present that was made us. It removes me from amidst my corrupt and corrupting contemporaries; it transports me among other brothers whose society compensates me for the time I must now spend on earth. Feel free to laugh at my dreams. But it is possible that they contain something real. The wise man has his moments of madness, the madman his moments of wisdom … Treat me the way madmen are still treated today in the ancient lands of the Orient. Believe me to be inspired, not by an invisible being in whose name we can say whatever we want with the certainty we will not be contradicted, but rather animated by the interest I bear for the species of which I am a part’.3 Foreseeing the practical objections that will be made to his system, ‘the dream of an exalted imagination’, he writes: ‘Even if it were demonstrated that my speculation is not in the least possible I would still pursue my task. I won’t think I’ve wasted the oil of my lamp … if I at least inspire in readers … the taste for private life … This idea … could ferment and hasten the moment of a happy revolution in the morals of a few honest families’.4 From these two quotes we can see that Maréchal had no illusions concerning the possibility of the success of his chimera. But in order to repress, to sublimate his bitter and sorrowful misanthropy, he felt the need to construct a social order that would give him inner peace. His Correctif was born of this.

3 Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 236, p. 268. 4 Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 238.

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Critique of Civil Society

According to him, three despotisms weigh on the heads of men in society: the despotism of one man, the despotism of several, and the despotism of all. Liberty cannot be found in any of these three modes. ‘It flees the great assemblies of men’,5 the ‘vast empires whose inhabitants, strangers to each other, shove and collide with each other and are held back only by a strict legal code’.6 Here again we find, though taken to an extreme, one of the familiar ideas of eighteenth-century philosophes: the superiority of small groups to large ones, of the country over the city. ‘As long as we persist in bringing great masses of men together’, Maréchal adds, ‘we should expect great abuses and excesses’.7 For the author of the Correctif à la Révolution civil society is comparable to a spring under constant pressure that never ceases to react. If it is held too tightly it wounds, if it is left too much play it is released and causes a thousand accidents.8 Whatever Montesquieu might have said, man is not born in society and is not made for it. Most men ‘only remain in it like prisoners in a cell’.9 They are incorporated into it by force in their childhood and are held there by laws. What is more, by what right do men allow themselves to make and impose laws on their fellows? Maréchal, who in this joins the modern anarchist critique, wrote: ‘Even a father should dictate laws to his children only until the moment they become fathers in their turn’.10 According to Sylvain, a citizen who has reached the age of reason should have the right to assemble the people and publicly declare himself for or against the civil and religious laws of the country in which he was born. Fully aware of what he is doing and after having been informed of the mutual rights tying the subject to the state, he should have ‘the freedom to [either] renounce his fatherland’, or to acknowledge it.11 Maréchal had no doubt but that only a few ‘brother-prophets’ of his kind, dispersed among the ‘vast community of the blind, will make use of this right’.12 We can well say that the nation is the mother of its citizens, but this mother is only too often a wicked stepmother. She has too many children 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 1, p. 2. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 3. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 94. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 56. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 111. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 158. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 108. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 25.

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to know them and love them all, to love them equally and without preference. In the final analysis the fatherland is nothing but an ideal being, an abstract idea, a political phantom that makes little impression on the senses. The rights of a natural mother are totally different.13 Completing this passage, he adds an attack on the love of the fatherland: I would almost say that few vices, few crimes have done more harm to humanity than the love of the fatherland, which we have erected into a heroic virtue. Love of the fatherland is for humanity what the exclusive love of oneself is for each individual, and we all know the evils of which egoism is the source. The love of the fatherland is not something in nature. It is not at all natural that a mother rejoice in the loss of her son, dead in a dispute over an inch of land. Manlius’ severity is an atrocious heroism. The patriotic virtues are so little virtues that one must be beside oneself to be capable of them. They don’t support the cold bloodedness of reason. Heroes almost always have a fever, while the pulse of the sage is regular. Private virtues are the only real virtues: they belong entirely to us. No one can demand anything of them. Recalling men to domestic life is thus recalling them to the state of perfection.14

3

The Man of Nature

But it is alleged that returning to domestic life, to the patriarchal community would, in fact, constitute stepping back into primitive times, to savagery. Maréchal responds: The savage is not yet man. The city-dweller is no longer man. The father, living with his children in his home in a domain no larger than what he needs to feed himself and his kin, this is man par excellence. The savage is unformed man; the city-dweller is deformed man. The simple, rustic man, he who holds to the middle way between the brutish cannibal and the polished Parisian, this is the man of nature.15

13 14 15

Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 296. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, pp. 20–21. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 8.

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Had Maréchal always stuck to this formula one could maintain that his ‘man of nature’, though schematically to that of Rousseau, was nevertheless more concrete. He to an extent resembled the simple and peaceful villager of the era, on condition the latter had been capable of freeing himself of all bonds and prejudices. But Maréchal was not able to settle on this formula. The outlines of his psychological hypothesis varied with the period and the book. In any case, the natural man he constructed was an individual who found in his family everything he needed to be happy and good. His three goals were that of being a good son, a good husband, and a good father. According to Maréchal, it is nature that laid out this ‘triangle’.16 He wanted nothing to do with ‘artificial relations designated with the bizarre titles of representative and represented, voter and elected, prince and people, master and valet, rich and poor, etc’.17 Consequently, the sole regime he found suitable was ‘the middle way between the savage state and the civil state’.18 This ‘natural regime’ is obviously the family. But let us be clear: Maréchal conceived the family as not just any family placed in any environment. It is a family with pastoral morals living an agricultural life; an extended family, a family group, a composite or undivided family such as exists in certain lands; An autonomous, self-sufficient family with shared property, production, living quarters, and consumption. The merit of the Correctif à la Révolution is that of being specific about this concept, which was already formulated in these terms in Dame Nature: ‘The man in an isolated family, owner of a field large enough to feed a hundred individuals of the same blood’.19 In truth, the Costumes civils de tous les peoples [Civil Customs of all Peoples] had given Maréchal the occasion to examine the countries where ‘the middle term’ to which he felt men should return persisted. Like the Abbé Raynal, in his Histoire des deux Indes, we see him insisting on the organization of the Acadians into ‘separate little villages’,20 praising the ‘paternal monarchy’ of Scottish highlanders,21 and asserting that ‘in order to live happily and rightly he needs no other society than his family’.22 But it is obvious that in a work of this kind he could only touch on this subject. ‘We propose’, he wrote, ‘to one day expand upon this important truth’.23 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Maréchal, Dame Nature …, p. 46. Maréchal, Dame Nature …, p. 45. Maréchal, Dame Nature …, p. 45. Maréchal, Dame Nature …, p. 40. Maréchal, Costumes civils de tous les peuples, vol. 1, p. 1. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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239

Communitarian Socialism

With the Correctif à la Révolution all the light is cast on Maréchal’s social construct. Indeed, desirous of showing it was not a matter of ‘a Platonic dream’, Sylvain cited the community of Quitard-Pinon in the Auvergne and the Fleuriot in the section of the Vosges that borders on the Franche-Comté as having realised his vison. Maréchal even advised readers to consult books that had appeared on these two rural communities for more information.24 Given the extent of his documentation, one senses that he admired and took small societies of this kind as models. We would stray too far afield if we were to examine in detail the structure and functioning of the famous community of Pinon, near Thiers. It suffices to note that it gathered several families of the same blood under the same roof and in common labour. By means of male suffrage in production and female suffrage in consumption, management was democratic. This association was fully self-sufficient. Did it need to construct a building, cover a roof, or manufacture agricultural instruments or barrels for the grape harvest? It called for no outside assistance. The community purchased little more than iron and salt.25 It was autarchic, and this is what made it agreeable to Maréchal, for the author of the Correctif à la Révolution opposed contact between patriarchal communities. Each domain constituted, so to speak, an islet that communicated with none of its neighbours.26 Each extended self-sufficient family lived in its own home, caring little for what went on next door. As among the Pinons, it prohibited any conjugal unions with outsiders. If it acted otherwise would it not descend into ‘the madness of large associations?’ It would lose its morals and its freedom. Naturally, such a society is concerned only with the indispensable: its members care not a whit for the superfluities common in corrupting cities. They are not interested in cultivating the fine arts, sublime talents, and the other brilliant products of civilization.27 The great factories that were precursors of the industrial concentration of the following century, the development of tools, and the steady succession of mechanical inventions leaves them indifferent. It even appears that Maréchal, likely inspired by Rousseau and influenced by the central idea of Epicurean ethics, wanted to reinforce collective autarchy with

24 25 26 27

Maréchal, Correctif a la Révolution, p. 286. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au xviiie siècle, pp. 338, 340, 341. Francis Escard, ‘Les Communautés de familles en France’, Revue Générale Internationale, vol. i. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. iii, p. 359. Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, pp. 141, 163.

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a kind of individual autarchy. Just as the community wants to have nothing to do with neighbouring communities, the individuals who make it up tend to do without one another. They don’t concentrate on a single job, they don’t limit themselves to a single profession, they exercise ‘all the crafts contained within man’. Maréchal considers vocations, the so-called aptitude for this or that occupation, contrary to man’s perfectibility and freedom.28 Here again he swims against the tide of economic development, which in his time already led to a pronounced division of labour in the countryside, due to the development of home industry. This lack of understanding of economic development should not surprise us. Maréchal looked askance at everything that had anything at all to do with industry. He was truly a man of the century of the Physiocrats, philosophers of nature, and pastoral poets. In addition, in a country like France, where the peasant class formed three-quarters of the population, the writers who pleaded the cause of the poor against the rich were naturally impelled to envision the remaking of society from a rural angle. To be sure, restoring ancient methods of production and advocating a patriarchal regime signified constructing in abstracto, turning his back on the future. But was it not sweet to outline an egalitarian and fraternal social order that recalled the blessed times of the Golden Age? Today we can explain the transports of enthusiasm caused by communities like the Pinons, Fleuriot, and Jault, which offered living examples of communism. Maréchal was not alone in taking them as a model: among his contemporaries Retif de la Bretonne, Faiguet, Legrand d’Aussy and even Voltaire in his Dictionnaire philosophique were their warm supporters.29 One is even within one’s rights in supposing that more than one member of the Convention had been lulled in childhood by philosophical dreams and deep down caressed Maréchal’s chimera. Nevertheless, it is easy to see that the assembly, obeying the highest laws of life, could not linger over such childishness. A patriarchal community could well survive as an exception, but it was condemned and could not but join other outdated modes of production and association in the mass grave of history. In its decree of 19 October 1792 the Convention had invited ‘all the friends of liberty and equality’ to present to it ‘those plans, opinions, and methods’ appropriate to giving ‘the French republic a good constitution’.30 Books like the Correctif à la Révolution were little apt to assist in this weighty task,

28 29 30

Maréchal, Correctif à la Révolution, p. 188. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au xviiie siècle, p. 209ff., pp. 338–340. Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française, 4th edition, p. 281.

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and the minutes of the assembly are silent about this book. In the press the Chronique du mois and the Bulletin des Amis de la Vérité were more or less alone in speaking of Sylvain’s utopian work. Given this, it is unlikely it had any great success.

5

Maréchal Attacked by Tallien and David

And yet, it could not go unnoticed. More than one patriot must have been shocked by the points Maréchal made against the Revolution in his bold tirades. Those who knew that Maréchal was its author might have thought there had been a change in orientation on the part of the Shepherd Sylvain. Even more so in that the Correctif was only spoken of in two Girondin papers and coincided with the publication of Maréchal’s skeptical ideas in the Bulletin des Amis de la Vérité and the appearance of a new and ambiguous Alamanch des Honnêtes Gens. In the eyes of certain Montagnards the favour Maréchal enjoyed from Girondin newspapers was instructive. They were unaware that Sylvain, far from any clan spirit and despite writing for Bonneville’s newspaper, did not approve their political line. They did not know that one of his parables, judged too severe and marred by hesitations regarding the People’s Tribune, had even been rejected by the latter.31 And the attribution to Sylvain of the Almanach des Hônnetes Gens, which had just appeared, was an error. The only thing in common between the royalist almanac for 1793 and the almanac that had cost Maréchal his freedom was the title. In any case, we now know that the author of that strange Almanach des Honnêtes Gens was Galard de Montjoye, but because of its title it was possible to make a mistake. This is precisely what happened and what forced the Révolutions de Paris to declare that Sylvain was in no way the author of that work.32 The political attitude of Prudhomme’s paper – which some knew and others suspected that Maréchal wrote for – also lends credence to the belief in a change of orientation on the part of Sylvain. During the first quarter of 1793 the Révolutions de Paris had not been sparing in its attacks on the Jacobins, the Mountain, and the Paris deputation. It had spoken out against the Committee of General Safety, which had been in the hands of the Mountain since 21 January; it had showered the most wounding epithets on Tallien, Bazire, and

31 32

Bulletin des Amis de la vérité, no. 53, 21 February 1793, p. 2, ‘Avis aux corrrespondants’. Révolutions de Paris, no. 188, 9–16 February 1793, p. 344.

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Chabot, to such a point that Camille Desmoulins had called it ‘Brissotin’ and ‘a weather vane [turning] with every wind that blows from the right and the Thames’.33 Article no. 186, on the activities of the Committee of Twelve, which was particularly violent, had placed Prudhomme and his fourteen presses in danger. Tallien, the secretary of the Committee of Twelve, attributing the article to Maréchal, had taken advantage of it to attack the latter in L’Ami des Citoyens.34 Prudhomme’s newspaper had responded to young Tallien, ‘inquisitor and slanderer at 18 livres a day’. While assuring his readers that Maréchal was not the author of the article in question, he had opposed the long service record of the writer to the more recent one of Tallien, requesting that the latter not attack those better than he.35 This polemic, in which one of the parties doubted Maréchal’s revolutionary sentiments, would find its echo in the Convention. On 20 April 1793 David publicly insulted Maréchal. Since March and September 1792, when he had been particularly singled out in Prudhomme’s paper,36 he had been waiting for the occasion to satisfy his rancour, and he did not pass up the opportunity. Having learned of David’s attacks, Maréchal responded in the Révolutions de Paris: To David, former painter of the King, today representative of the people. I thought there were no slanderers on the Mountain. Yesterday, Saturday 20 April at 9:00p.m., you publicly insulted me in the Convention, calling me an aristocrat. You were ill informed. Do you know what an aristocrat is? It is, for example, an artist (even if he painted the Horatii, Brutus, and Socrates, etc.) who formerly placed his talent at the service of a king. Unlike you, I was never part of an academy protected by a king; unlike me, you were never honoured with the hatred of kings, ministers, parlements, and priests. I was a patriot before you. More than you, I am republican, for I am so with full consciousness. You owe me reparation: I demand it and expect it. Sylvain Maréchal, at the Bibliothèque Mazarine.37 The terseness and the severity of this note, whose title alone was a Parthian shot, shows that David’s insult had touched him to the core.

33 34 35 36 37

Révolutions de Paris, no. 188, p. 339. L’Ami des Citoyens, no. 65. This issue does not exist in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Révolutions de Paris, no. 188, p. 344. Révolutions de Paris, no. 141, 17–24 march 1792, p. 549; and no. 167, 15–22 September 1792, pp. 515–516. Révolutions de Paris, no. 198, 20–27 April 1793, p. 226.

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At that time, when the struggle between Girondins and Jacobins was intensifying at the assembly to such a point that the tribune, as Danton said, became ‘nearly a gladiatorial arena’, the position of a man like Maréchal, between two saddles, was a delicate one. Because of his critiques, because of his relations with Bonneville, ‘Fauchet’s go-between’,38 he became suspect to the Mountain. Because of his sympathetic attitude toward the capital, because of his relations with Chaumette, he became suspect to the Girondins, for it should be stressed here that at the same time that he collaborated on Bonneville’s paper, Sylvain was on good terms with Chaumette.

6

Relations with Chaumette

The origin of the relations between Maréchal and Chaumette merit close examination. It is our belief that they are connected to Chaumette’s collaboration on the Révolutions de Paris, for Maréchal, being in constant contact with Prudhomme, must have encountered Chaumette as soon as the latter entered Prudhomme’s service. In the autobiographical notes Chaumette wrote in December 1790 he says: ‘I’m called to Prudhomme’s home to participate in the writing of his newspaper Les Révolutions de Paris’.39 In addition, in a poster addressed to his fellow citizens, likely in 1792, Chaumette said: ‘In 1790, shortly after Loustalot’s [sic] death, Prudhomme took me in and hired me’.40 For his part, Prudhomme wrote in May 1793: ‘It was only one year after Loustalot’s [sic] death, in 1791, that Chaumette came to see me. I gave him work, but it wasn’t at the Révolutions de Paris: there are only three or four short articles by him there’.41 The following lines by Prudhomme corroborate this assertion; ‘On the recommendation of a few good citizens of his [Chaumette’s] department, we rendered him a service in 1791; for six months we employed him to handle geographic matters’.42 There’s quite a gap from December 1790, ‘shortly after Loustalot’s [sic] death’, until September 1791, ‘one year after his Loustalot’s [sic] death’. In the current state of documentation who can decide between Chaumette and Prudhomme? Under these conditions, it is not possible to establish precisely when Maréchal

38 39 40 41 42

Marat at the Convention, 18 May 1793, Moniteur universel (reprint), no. 140, 20 May 1793. Braesch, Papiers de Chaumette, p. 131. Révolutions de Paris, no. 202, p. 377. Ibid. Historie générale des crimes de la Révolution, p. 137.

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and Chaumette began their relations. But there is no doubt that in early 1793 the two men were already closely tied, which is attested to by the following letter: Citizen Prosecutor of the Commune: You are the eye of the Commune, always open to the first citizen who requests your ministry. Please inform the National Convention of my tribute for the needs of the Fatherland. It needs arms. My own, too little experienced in the profession of war, have served it in other ways for more than twenty years. Victim of the triple aristocracy, religious, ministerial, and parliamentary, I have the right to count myself among the courageous precursors of the revolution. The hatred of kings and priests, innate in me, took the place of talent in order to deliver these two kinds of monsters to the vengeance of the public. But today writings are no longer enough. The iron of the soldier must complete what the pen of the thinker began. Chained here by my natural and civic duties, and even more by my lack of strength, I count on contributing as much as is within my power to my country’s defense. And so, while my iron pen will continue to scold and contain our domestic enemies, I allocate the emoluments of the post I hold in a national library to pay a soldier of liberty. It is a debt owed by every remaining patriot to administer his little patrimony (if he has one) with strict economy so that he can do without the product of his public functions. Citizen Prosecutor of the Commune, while waiting to also be able to provide my contingent to the subscription opened at your demand for the equipping of a ship of the line, Le Parisien, receive my offering. And see to it that it be made known to our Lycurgeses. It will be made only more worthy of them by passing through the hands of a magistrate of the people. Sylvain Maréchal43 On 3 March Chaumette informed the Commune of Maréchal’s noble gesture and the general council decreed that this act of civisme would be inscribed in the minutes with an honourable mention.44 On 10 March 1793 Chaumette transmitted the letter to the president of the Convention, praising the donor whose pen, ‘known to men persecuted under the ancien régime, will continue

43 44

Archives nationales, C. 249. Only the signature is in Maréchal’s hand. Moniteur universel (reprint), no. 66, 7 March 1793, p. 302.

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to enlighten the people by unmasking its enemies’. He added that he all the more willingly made himself Maréchal’s organ at the Convention ‘because propagating such examples means rendering a service to the common weal’.45 Another event, which occurred a month after this one, confirmed the good relations between Chaumette and Maréchal. On 12 April, Chaumette having called the attention of the general council of the Commune to the proposed festival in honour of the transfer of the archives of the city of Liège, Citizen Dorat-Cubières intervened, requesting that in imitation of the Greeks patriotic songs like those of Tyrtaeus be heard during the ceremony. Chaumette responded that his wish would be granted, and that Maréchal would compose a hymn for which Gossec would write the music.46 In fact, at the end of the Festival of Hospitality, which took place two days later, Sylvain’s song was sung and the crowd repeated his refrain. The tune was that of the ‘Marseillaise’. To give an idea of it, let us cite the final stanza: Brave Liègois, fear not: The reign of independence, First founded in our France, Must spread to all climes. Yes, to your dear fatherland We will one day lead you back; You will have the chance to sing, Victors over aristocracy: Vive la Liberté, the days of kings are over; We finally have neither priests nor tyrants.47

7

Maréchal at the Cloître Saint-Marcel

Anyone who limits himself to studying Sylvain’s role in the great revolutionary drama would know him but imperfectly. In order to have a true idea of the thinker, to see him as he was, one must enter his home, far from the agitation of the streets, the fever of the clubs, and the tempests of liberty. This is what we will do.

45 46 47

Archives Nationales, C. 249. Courrier Français, no. 103, 13 April 1793, p. 348. Révolutions de Paris, no. 197, 13–20 April, p. 164. The Revolutions de Paris does not say that Maréchal wrote the hymn, but the Bulletin des Amis de la vérité, no. 106, 15 April 1793, says so expressly (p. 4) as does the Abréviateur, no. 105, 15 April 1793, p. 419.

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At the time of his marriage Sylvain would first set up his household at 9, rue des Anglaises, in the Finistère section. But it was not long before he left that street to settle with his household deities, his father, his wife, his sister-in-law, and his father-in-law in Cloître Saint-Marcel, in a house formerly called ‘the seminary’, which he acquired 29 April 1793 for the sum of 23,000 livres.48 It was a national property, part of the Saint-Marcel chapter that had been attributed to the city of Paris by the law of 18 June 1790, and rented to a certain Citizen Boyer. It included a spacious, two-story building giving onto a courtyard and a small square, a vegetable garden planted with bushes and fruit trees, at the back of which was a small construction that served as a sacristy. All of this was attached to national property, the Clamart cemetery and ‘to the orient, to Citizen Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’.49 The tranquility of the spot was propitious for the writer’s work, and so every morning Sylvain went into his office, leaving it only to go to the Bibliothèque Mazarine.50 He often stopped at the Jardin des Plantes to see his brother, who exercised his talents as a painter there.51 Maréchal, who had instituted a Festival of Good Neighbours in his Almanach des Républicains,52 and who had demanded in the Révolutions de Paris that this festival replace the feast of the Epiphany,53 sought the esteem of his neighbours, when necessary talking like them in order not to make them blush for their lack of education: ‘If I were rich’, he often said, ‘I would fear allowing these good people to guess it. They would perhaps love me less because they’d think me hard-hearted’.54 And yet, a singular adventure occurred despite his desire to live on good terms with his neighbours. One of the latter, in fact, the one who lived closest to him, one of those individuals always ready to take advantage of the goodness of others, one day provoked him about a small plot of land he wanted for himself that belonged to Maréchal. His shouts and insults failed to exhaust Sylvain’s patience. Furious, the aggressor sent for the guard who, misled by the racket, took the insulted party as well as his sister-in-law, attracted by the noise, to the

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Archives de la Seine, sommier des Biens nationaux, 12th municipal section of the Finistère, p. 38. Archives de la Seine. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 19. Ibid. Nicolas Maréchal was a zoological painter. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 123. Révolutions de Paris no. 182, 29 December 1792–5 January 1793, article ‘Sur la fête des Rois’. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 20.

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commissariat. It was morning and Mlle. Desprès was en déshabillé and wearing her nightcap, Maréchal bare-headed and in slippers. Guardsmen surrounded them, and the children of the quarter, always curious to see anything out of the ordinary, followed in their wooden shoes, shouting and making an infernal racket. This comical scene, in which he was the main actor, gave the Shepherd Sylvain a case of the giggles. Of course, the inspector set things to rights, but the wicked neighbor did not stop there: he sued the peaceful Sylvain.55 ‘Sylvain, who preferred to suffer in silence rather than resort to justice’56 by this time found the joke stale. Fortunately, he would soon find a more amenable neighbor, Citizen Lhuiller, future officer at the government accounting office, who made an exchange with him.57 Sylvain’s modesty and goodness were only equaled by his tolerance. Does he not insist in his verses on that cardinal virtue, a pledge of civil and religious peace? Don’t waste time in frivolous questions, The wisest is not always the most learned. Let these words be written on the threshold of schools: Believe little, doubt much, and, at least, be tolerant.58 His wife and sister-in-law were attached to religion, and he was the first to tell them to go to mass. It is said that he would come home from the country to take his father to services. While they were going on Sylvain would go for a walk and pick up his father when they ended. To satisfy his wife’s desires he kept in his study a Christ and various religious objects. It is even said that for a time he lodged nuns at his home, from whom he never asked a sou in rent, inviting them to warm themselves at his fire during the winter.59 People go so far as to say that in those troubled times he contributed to saving the lives of several ecclesiastics,60 but it is difficult to prove this assertion. Mme. Gacon-Dufour says that he was seen bringing a poor devout woman to his house to lodge her, feed her, and take care of her during an illness, and he allowed her to fulfill all

55 56 57 58 59 60

Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 35–37. Maréchal, Livre de tous les âges, pp. 175–176. Lefeuvre, Les anciennes maisons de Paris, vol. iv, p. 78. The two Maréchal and Lhuiller houses were brought together in other hands in 1821. Maréchal, Lucrèce français, p. 182. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 4; Lalande, first supplement, p. 10. Dezobry and Bachelet, Dictionnaire général de Biographie et d’Histoire, vol. ii, p. 1810, article by Nisard on S. Maréchal.

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her religious obligations in his home.61 He fed her until her death, and paid for her burial in a churchyard.62 Not very talkative, it was only in private that he spoke profusely. There, despite his stammer, he spoke with remarkable ease, but he became flustered when he was asked to express his opinions, so great was his fear of shocking his interlocutors. One day a believer thought he had, if not won him over to Catholicism, at least to have shaken his convictions, because Maréchal had listened to him without batting an eye, seeming to have recognised the value of the reasons invoked.63 Tolerance can be pushed no further. Now that we know the house, the relaxed ways, and the tolerance of Sylvain Maréchal, it is only right to mention those whose company he sought. Mme. Gacon-Dufour and Bulidon were surely his oldest acquaintances. We can consider them friends of the household. Outside these friends and the regulars at the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Maréchal naturally had dealings with a great number of revolutionary personalities. We can mention as examples the member of the Convention Thibaudeau; the future people’s tribune, Babeuf; the former secretary of Naples’ ambassador to Paris, Louis Antoine Pio, who was proclaimed a French citizen by the Paris Commune in 1790, was an apologist for Robespierre in the Révolutions de Paris in June 1791, denouncer of Lebrun and Proli in the Ami du Peuple and the Révolutions de Paris; Daube; and Professor Ballin, ‘the orator of the Neuf-Soeurs’, a subsistence agent and later member of the Museum section. He also saw the two Merciers: Louis Sebastien and the erudite bibliographer, the Abbé SaintLeger, though if he often went on walks with the author of the Tableau de Paris he doesn’t seem to have maintained consistently cordial relations with the latter. Finally, Maréchal continued to frequent Lucile Desmoulins. Sylvain congratulated the young woman for having left Paris to retire to Bourg-la-Rene, and sent her the books she requested, notably Don Quixote. ‘Madame’, he wrote, ‘I congratulate you with all my heart for your taste and your occupations. You have made the right choice: nature is worth more than society and I exist only in the hope of one day realising on a small scale what you are executing on a grand one’.64

61 62 63 64

Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 35, chapter i supplement. Jerome de Lalande, p. 10. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 35 and 53. Lettre à Lucile Desmoulins, 1 page. Dossiers Bord.

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Manifestation of Revolutionary Vandalism

In the meanwhile, the ever-demanding Revolution wrested the man and the poet from his home and nature. After the hours of repose and study and family life in the faubourg Saint-Marcel, it was newspapers, pamphlets, and private discussions that took up the librarian’s free time. Articles of an extreme violence drove away peaceful domestic virtues and his unshakeable desire to return to nature. We are unable to follow the events of this tragedy day by day: the history of a man is not the history of an epoch. It would in any case be difficult to untangle to what point Maréchal followed or preceded the pro-Mountain evolution observed in the Révolutions de Paris. Even so, in early July 1793 Marechal’s furious attack against the chateau of Versailles65 shows that Prudhomme’s collaborator no longer condemned violent measures. It was a time when the revolt in the Vendée, the foreign invasion, the Midi in flames, Marat’s assassination, and general famine angered patriots. The wildest proposals were made in the clubs and resounded in the Convention. Whatever the cost, it was necessary to win, to punish the scoudrels who placed themselves above the law: all that was held over of the ancien régime must disappear. These were the ideas that emerged among the simmering sans-culottes. Sylvain did not escape the laws of his environment. He did not understand why ‘proud castles’, those ‘remains of magnificence, luxury and earthly vanity, were allowed to survive’. In their wrath, shouldn’t the people have destroyed the dungeon of Vincennes, the chateaux of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Tuileries palace, ‘sullied by the recent intrigues of an infamous court and witness to the most cowardly and criminal treason ever dreamed of by a king?’ How can this be? Great numbers of families have no property and are exposed to inclement weather, yet we leave immense palaces standing! The sans-culottes must, without delay, take the pick and the axe to these lairs of tyranny, most especially the chateau of Versailles, ‘the splendid residence of a rascal so long served by fools crawling at his feet’. The materials taken from it would serve to build cottages for the plebe. Only one restriction: masterpieces of art will be preserved, but only those that in no way recall the splendour and crimes of kings. As for the rest, the guilty marbles and criminal paintings serving as monuments to despotism and superstition, they should be destroyed with no pity.

65

Révolutions de Paris, no. 209, pp. 665–667.

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Doubtless there will be an outcry about vandalism; it will be said that it would be better to transform the artistic remains of the monarchy and feudalism into museums; at the very least the sale of precious objects to wealthy art lovers will be proposed.66 Maréchal would have none of this. ‘A people strongly penetrated with the hatred of kings, passionately in love with liberty does not calculate. Like Hercules in the palace of King Augeas, the people in its just indignation will smash with a blow of its club all that might remind it that it was once enslaved and that it for too long accepted a master basely praised by prostituted talents’. It would be wrong to consider Maréchal’s statements against chateaux exceptional. Less than a year earlier Marat demanded the demolition of ‘vast manors’, any palace contiguous to a cottage an announcement of ‘masters and slaves’.67 What is more, twice, in June and August 1790 Prudhomme’s newspaper had violently spoken out against royal palaces, in particular ‘the execrable chateau of Versailles’, ‘a workshop of despotism, whose destruction … should have been one of the articles of the charter of the Revolution’.68 More recently, in February, Prudhomme had inserted the letter of a certain Drouet, a religious minister in La Forestière, in which he said: ‘Down with all the chateaux, beginning with Versailles. In it we’ll find already constructed inexhaustible iron mines. These luxurious houses, alongside the simple manor of a republican, shock and insult equality’.69 The idea thus corresponded to a current present in the country, and many were the patriots who demanded the total application of an already ancient decree calling for the demolition of chateaux. Not only utilitarian or egalitarian considerations impelled the sans-culottes to support this measure. What neither Drouet nor Maréchal said was that the needs of the revolutionary struggle weighed greatly in the balance. In many places the chateau was still a center of conspiracy and counter-revolutionary activity. This explains the interventions of Barère and Baudot at the Convention, and the decrees of the representatives on mission, which anticipated the Convention’s decree of 13 Pluviôse, year ii. On 3 Pluviôse year ii (22 January 1794) the Committee of Public Safety approved the decree of Brival, representative on mission in Vienne, mandating the demolition of former chateaux: ‘The

66 67 68 69

This was the solution the Convention settled on. L’Ami du Peuple, no. 636, 21 April 1792. Révolutions de Paris, no. 48, pp. 58 passim. Révolutions de Paris, no. 187, 2–9 Febraury 1793, p. 235.

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soil of liberty cannot be too rid of these monstrous edifices that weigh on it and remind the people of its antique and disastrous oppression’.70 Maréchal in his article used the same argument.

9

Relations with Doin. Dieu et les Prêtres. Chaumette’s Philosophy in 1793

But it was not only the chateaux that recall the ancient regime. As he walks down the streets of Paris, doesn’t the republican have his eyes wounded at the sight of all ‘those degrading attributes of monarchy’ sculpted or painted on almost all public buildings and private homes? The Convention, the Commune and the popular societies had thus to see to banishing all those images, signs, and emblems that made the servitude of their ancestors concrete. Maréchal thought that this reform should have been accomplished the day after the Convention decreed the establishment of the Republic.71 He had demanded it in 1793, but Bonneville’s paper had made it clear that it was perhaps too soon for this.72 The time had come to set to it without delay. Maréchal reckoned that after the signs of the crown, Christian images would be erased and people would finally think to ‘destroy religious superstition’.73 He counted on Chaumette at the Commune to complete this salutary labour; this is why he dedicated his atheist poetry to him. We are on the eve of the great de-Christianisation movement. The first symptoms, and one might say the beginning of the molecular process can already be seen. The moment was never more favourable to successfully unmask the imposture. The reign of lies has finally expired; The veil is finally torn from the sanctuary! Finally, the fatal day has arrived for priests When man, examining the faith of his ancestors, And not fearing the crowd questioning the heavens, Dares cite his gods at the feet of Reason.74

70 71 72 73 74

Aulard, Recueil des Actes du Comité de Salut Public, vol. x, p. 380. Révolutions de Paris, no. 211,20 July–3 August 1793, p. 60. Bulletin des Amis de la vérité, no. 53, 21 February 1793, p. 52, ‘Avis aux correspondants’. Maréchal, Tableau historique des évènemens révolutionnaires, p. 13. Maréchal, Dieu et les prêtres, p. 92. Fragment cxix.

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Sylvain, who slowly and patiently added about seventy pieces to his poetic fragments of 1781, took them to Paris and the print shop of the Commune. The discussion took place on 19 September in the presence of Doin75 who walked up Rue de l’Observatoire with Maréchal. Doin, former professor of elocution at the Collège de Nevers and a close friend of Chaumette, was now secretary at the bench of the Paris Commune. After reading a few pages of the collection and the dedication to Chaumette, Patris was convinced to print it. He delivered the manuscript almost immediately to his printers, and two days later Doin could announce the news to a mutual friend, then on leave in Nevers. At the same time Doin wrote to Chaumette: ‘Those of your friends who I see and to whom I give news of you embrace you … Maréchal in particular tells me remember him to you’.76 Dieu et les Prêtres [God and the Priests] was the title of Maréchal’s new collection. It would soon be honored with a subscription of 3,000 copies on behalf of the provisional executive council (24 Brumaire, year ii, 14 November 1793).77 Here is the dedication to Chaumette wh0, as we know, substituted that of Anaxagoras the atheist for his first names Pierre Gaspard. On Anaxagoras’ tomb A dual altar was decreed. One to good sense, the other to truth. One day on your coffin (but there’s no hurry about this), These words will be written: Like his patron, enemy of imposture His only divinities were Reason, Independence, and Nature. This dedication is important. It settles the controversial problem of Chaumette’s philosophical tendency in 1793. Aulard said of Chaumette: ‘Nowhere that I know of did he profess atheism … The dialectic of the municipal orator borrowed its weapons from the philosophy of the Savoyard Vicar’.78 F. Braesch believes that ‘Chaumette was too drunk on overflowing sentimentality’ too seri-

75 76 77 78

See on Doin: Rapports des agents du ministre de l’Intérieur dans les départements, 1793, year ii. Published by P. Caron, vol. i, p. xxii and pp. 334–338. Archives Nationales, T 604–605. This letter by Doin is reproduced in its entirety by Mathiez in Contributions à l’histoire religieuse de la Révolution française, pp. 161–162. Aulard, Recueil des Actes du Comité de Salut Public, vol. vii, p. 413. Aulard, Le culte de la raison et le culte de l’Etre Suprême, second edition, p. 82.

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ously share Maréchal’s ‘cold, metaphysical concepts’.79 A deist? Chaumette was certainly one. The speech he gave at age twenty-six in summary of the annual labours of the Lodge he belonged to leaves no doubt on this subject.80 But in 1793, after Maréchal’s dedication, we don’t believe he can be classed among the deists. ‘Such a dedication is very compromising’, Mathiez judiciously notes. ‘Maréchal must have known his friend and he would not have exposed himself to displeasing him by placing under his patronage a philosophy he did not believe’.81 And Doin? Would he not have protested? But not only did he make no objection to Maréchal’s dedication but, in the letter in which he announces it to Chaumette, he does not hide that it should find its place at the head of ‘a poem against God’. This is obviously yet another proof that in 1793 Chaumette was no longer concerned with the Great Architect, whatever he might have been called.

79 80 81

Braesch, Papiers de Chaumette, introduction, p. 90. Mathiez, Contributions …, pp. 146–159. Mathiez, Contributions …, p. 161.

Chapter 10 1

The Revolution and the Theater

A true and profound revolution, that is, a revolution that overturns a mode of property and sees power pass from one class to another, marks everything with its seal. We can summarise each of the phases of the revolutionary drama of 1789–1794 with a theatrical piece. Charles ix, M.J. Chenier’s drama, marks the beginnings of the Revolution. L’Ami des lois [The Friend of the Laws] by Laya, is the final and futile effort of the moderate party. L’Interieur des comités révolutionnaires [Inside the Revolutionary Committees] by Ducancel symbolizes Thermidorian reaction. Le Jugement dernier de rois [The Final Judgment of Kings] by Maréchal characterises the Terror. Without question, it is the piece that best reflects the republican aspirations of the sans-culottes, thus its smashing success. The authorities and the popular societies quickly understood all the advantages they could draw from the theater to feed and develop the public spirit. They favoured its performance and, because of this, Le Jugement Dernier des rois took on a kind of official character, and its general impact is unescapable.

2

Sylvain’s Debut in the Theatrical Genre

By what chance did Sylvain become a dramatic author? Whence this sudden theatrical vocation? The response can be found in the events of the day. They made Sylvain a dramatist, just as they made him a journalist. It was Maréchal’s nature to fight on all terrains, through almanacs, newspapers, poetry, history, and the theater. His sole aim was winning the popular over to his ideal. There is thus nothing surprising in our seeing him approach the theatrical genre in 1793. There is one thing that is certain: Maréchal had tried his hand at this before composing Le Jugement dernier des Rois, and it will not surprise us that a few anonymous pieces dating from prior to autumn 1793 were written by him. Doin’s letter to Chaumette, already mentioned, states that on 19 September 1793 Sylvain had just completed a play bearing the title Brutus Sans-Culotte. ‘You will like it’, Doin said to Chaumette. ‘He [Maréchal] intends it for the [Théâtre des] Italiens’.1 What precisely was this piece? It is impossible to cast any light on

1 Archives Nationales T 604–605.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_012

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this matter. What is certain is that it was not performed at the Théâtre des Italiens or on any other stage, unless it was under another title. It thus seems that Maréchal’s first – or one of his first – theatrical attempts was not a success. But Sylvain was not a man to be put off so easily. His first steps in journalism had passed unnoticed2 yet he still became one of the most important pens of the Revolution. Perhaps he drew from his recent memories the firm resolution to follow the new road he had laid, out come what may. Whatever the case, we see Le Dernier jugement des rois performed just one month after the eclipse of Brutus Sans-culotte. Let us briefly note the circumstances that favoured Maréchal. The Théâtre de la République (Theatre Français), on Rue de Richelieu, had mounted two plays during September 1793 that had been failures.3 Wanting to avenge itself for the affronts it had just received with a great feat, it wanted to mount a work that met the public’s taste, in a word, capable of inciting republican opinions. Maréchal, having composed such a piece, submitted it to the artists on the Rue Richelieu but, since it went a bit far, the latter raised some objections. One of the actors, Grandménil, was afraid he’d be hung in the event the monarchy returned. ‘Would you like to be hung for not having accepted the piece?’ asked one of the three members of the Convention who accompanied Maréchal. The argument was irresistible. The piece was unanimously accepted.4

3

First Performance of the Le Jugement Dernier des Rois – Canvas of the Piece

The first performance took place on 17 October (26 Vendémiaire, year ii), the day after Marie-Antoinette’s execution, and had all the import of a political event. The biting title attracted many spectators, and the theater was full, including the orchestra seat.5 The public’s emotion and transports were such that, according to a newspaper of the time, the ‘parterre and the entire hall seemed to be composed of a legion of tyrannicides ready to throw itself on the leonine species known under the name of kings’.6

2 See chapter vi. 3 Bathilde ou le Duo, performed on 16 September and Hulla de Samarcand ou le divorce tartare, performed 30 September. Etienne and Martainville, Histoire du Théâtre français, vol. iii, p. 212. 4 Hallays-Dabot, Histoire de la Censure, 1862, p. 184; Challamel and Tenint, Les Français sous la Révolution, p. 271. 5 Journal des Spectacles, no. 112, 22 October 1793, p. 886. 6 La Feuille du Salut public. Article reproduced by the Journal des Spectacles, no. 122.

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The stage showed the interior of an island half destroyed by a volcano, upon which an elderly man had been imprisoned for twenty years, victim of a tyrant’s hatred. In the depths, or upstage, a mountain spurted flames from time to time throughout the action. Downstage, on one side, a few trees shaded a cabin sheltered by a large, white rock on which was written in coal: It’s better to have a volcano As neighbor Than a king. A stream cascaded down and ran alongside the cottage. On the other side was a view of the sea. The play begins with the groans of the poor, banished old man. The sun rises. A launch approaches. The old man thinks he is going to be pardoned and, since he wants no clemency from a despot, he hides behind a rock. Between twelve and fifteen sans-culottes belonging to almost all the nations of Europe dock on the island. They are seeking an appropriate spot for the deportation of ‘all the crowned brigands’. The presence of the volcano satisfies them: ‘Nature’s hand will hasten to ratify and sanction the judgment rendered against kings by the sans-culottes’. The old man intervenes and tells his tale. He is told he has been ‘well avenged’, since he is going to see all the dethroned sovereigns of Europe disembark, except for the King of France, who was guillotined. It is explained to him that France set things in motion and that as a result of ‘a general and simultaneous insurrection’, the people defeated the kings. A European convention assembled in Paris, having unanimously decided on the deportation of the ‘long-privileged rogues’. In order to carry out the sentence, the sans-culottes, sought a fitting place for the debarkation of ‘their wicked goods’. On the advice of the old man it is determined that the island will all the better serve as an asylum for the dethroned kings in that ‘the volcano’s crater is expanding and seems to threaten an imminent eruption’. The good savages, friends of the old man, then enter. They are presented to the sans-culottes; they fraternise and embrace. The kings disembark. They come on stage one by one, scepter in hand, royal cloaks on their shoulders, a gold crown on their heads, attached by a long iron chain whose end is held by a sans-culotte. Marching past, we see the Emperor, ‘a monster’; the King of Prussia, ‘a maleficent and sneaky animal, the dupe of charlatans, executioner of good people and free men’; the King of Poland; the Empress of Russia, nicknamed ‘Madame Spread-‘em’, or ‘The Slut, or The Semiramis of the North’; the King of Spain; the King of England, who acts like a

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madman; and the Pope, who finally admits to being ‘a sleight of hand artist’. The sans-culottes comment on each of them. Finally, a Frenchman speaks. After having painted a somber portrait of the crimes committed by the ‘twenty ferocious animals’ present, he ends by calling on nature to complete the work of the sans-culottes. ‘Breathe your breath of fire on these rejects of society and make the kings return to the eternal oblivion from which they should never have departed’. With this, the sans-culottes pretend to go away, leaving the kings alone. Reduced to starvation, the later quarrel amongst themselves. The Pope, himself incapable of executing ‘the miracle of the multiplication of bread’, seeks a diversion and accuses Catherine ii of being a schismatic, at which point the Empress and the Holy Father come to blows. The latter throws his tiara at Catherine and knocks off her crown. The King of Poland intercedes and is insulted for his troubles. The King of Spain, who had grabbed a piece of bread, is attacked by all his confreres. A general melee ensues. The sans-culottes, who had only wanted to enjoy the embarrassment of the sovereigns, return to the island to roll a barrel of crackers into the midst of the famished. The quarrel starts up again, but the volcano erupts; it tosses stones and burning coals onto the stage. The explosion occurs and the fire besieges the kings: they fall, consumed in the entrails of the gaping earth. This is the framework of this play in which a grimacing Dugazon played the role of the Pope and Michot that of the Empress of Russia. Grandménil played the King of Poland and Movel the old man. Desrozières, who had just played with so much soul the well-written role of the honest man in Le Méchant, played with the same fire that of the sans-culotte.7 The appearance of the ‘good savages’ and the embrace they give the sans-culottes at the end of scene ii was particularly appreciated. Laughter broke out during scene iv, when the Empress and the Pope fought, one with her scepter, the other with his cross. Finally, the denouement was greeted with thunderous applause. The author of Le Dernier jugement des rois was demanded by the public and it was announced that it was Sylvain Maréchal.8

4

The Great Impact of the Play

It can be said without exaggeration that the play’s impact was enormous. It became fashionable and was a sustained success in Paris. However, it couldn’t 7 La Feuille de Salut Public, article reproduced in the Journal des Spectacles, no. 112. 8 See the various newspapers of the period.

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be performed on 31 October, Dugazon having been arrested in the morning by order of the revolutionary committee of his section.9 On 29 Frimaire it still figured on the program of the Théâtre de la République. At its sitting on 14 November 1793 (24 Brumaire, year ii), the Committee of Public Safety, considering that such a work could not but favour the republican spirit and the hatred of kings, decreed that it would subscribe for 3,000 copies.10 For its part the ministry of war subscribed for 6,000 copies of the play, to be sent to the armies as propaganda. As a result of this, Maréchal received the sum of 4,000 francs.11 Five days later, on 29 Brumaire (19 November), the Committee of Public Safety issued the following decree: ‘Given the petition of the owners of the Théâtre de la République, who state that it is impossible for them to present performances of the patriotic and republican piece entitled Le Jugement dernier des rois if they don’t receive twenty pounds of saltpeter and twenty pounds of gunpowder, the elements indispensable for this piece, the Committee, taking into consideration the advantages that might result from it for the propagation of republican principles, decreed that the gunpowder and saltpeter administration will deliver twenty pounds of saltpeter and twenty pounds of gunpowder to the owners of the Théâtre de la République, who will for pay them at their value’.12 At the Jacobin Club two months later, on 1 Pluviôse, year ii (20 January 1794), Louis Sentex demanded that in commemoration of the execution of Louis xvi, all the theaters of Paris stage Le Dernier jugement des rois. This proposal, though supported by Momoro,13 was not acted on. In practice it was unrealisable. Thanks to the patronage of the Committee of Public Safety, of the ministry of war, and the publicity of the newspapers, the success of Le Dernier jugement des rois overflowed the walls of the capital. There was even a patriot in Vienne (Isère), Citizen Labbe, ‘printer of the district’, who produced a second edition. In Rouen, Le Dernier jugement des rois was performed along with four other timely pieces on 10 Frimaire as a complement to the Festival of Reason. Thanks to the patriotism of the directors of the two theaters, the public was assured free entry to the shows.14 By an act passed on 25 October 1793 Maréchal ceded

9 10 11 12 13 14

L’Abréviateur universel, no. 307, 3 November 1793, p. 1227. Recueil des Actes du Comité de Salut Public, vol. viii, p. 413. Mathiez, ‘La presse subventionnée en l’an ii’, Annales Revolutionnaires, 10th year, no. 1, 1918, p. 113. Recueil des Actes du Comité de Salut public, vol. viii, p. 555. Aulard, La société des Jacobins, vol. v, p. 616. Bouteiller, Histoire des Théâtres de Rouen, Rouen, 1860, vol. i, p. 315. Inn his work on La Ter-

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to Citizen Ribier, director of the second theater of Rouen, the right to perform the popular piece in his establishment.15 In Lille, everything leads us to believe that Le Jugement dernier des rois knew the honours of performance at the Théatre des Jeunes Républicains. Indeed, the play figures in a request to the peoples’ representatives with the Army of the North listing the works that the young artists propose to interpret with the consent of the mayor and the municipal officers of Lille.16 Maréchal’s work was performed in Grenoble,17 in Le Mans,18 and in Metz.19 In short, we can affirm that Maréchal’s play was performed in most of our major cities. Locales of lesser importance also knew and applauded Le Jugement dernier des rois, which is proved by an examination of a department like the Oise. In Beauvais, at the Théâtre Laurent, a traveling troupe interpreted Maréchal’s ‘prophecy’ after having submitted it to the general council of the commune. At the invitation of an artist, a deputation from the Popular Society, comprised of the national agent of the district Girard and the former professor Caron Guillotte, attended the first performance. On 30 Pluviôse, year ii, the Popular Society decided, in the interests of the play, that its duodi performance would be delayed until tridi ‘in order that all citizens might, on attending this spectacle, be ever more penetrated with implacable hatred of all the tyrants of the universe’.20 It is likely that Maréchal’s play was also performed in Compiègne. On 3 Messidor a notice was read at the Popular Society of that city of the plays the dramatic artists were to interpret over the course of the décade. Figuring on the program for the 5 Messidor were La Veuve du Républicain and Le Dernier Jugement des rois. But though the minutes of one of the following sittings indicates that 5 Messidor was marked by a spectacle, it does not say whether the two plays announced were performed or not.21

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

reur a Rouen, Clérembray does not say that the Jugement dernier des rois was performed at the Festival of Reason. Catalogue Charavay. Lefebvre, Histoire du théâtre à Lille, Lille, 1901, p. 107. Rousset, Le Théâtre à Grenoble, Grenoble, 1890, p. 12. Deschamps la Rivière, Le Théâtre au Mans au xviiie siècle, p. 114. Barbé, ‘Le théâtre à Metz pendant la Révolution’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 4th year, no. 22, July–August 1927, p. 386. Archives communales de Beauvais, I 45 and D 5. Charvet, Recherches sur les anciens théâtres de Beauvais, pp. 56–59. Archives départementales de l’Oise, L 4. Registre des procès-verbaux de la Société Populaire de Compiègne, folio 101 and following.

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In Boulogne-sur-Mer, during the celebrations of the taking of Toulon (10 Nivôse, year ii), the crowd witnessed a kind of rehearsal for scene v of Le Jugement dernier. All the tyrants of Europe figured in the cortege. ‘Between two rows of fusiliers there appeared the horde of kings, princes, and generals, among whom could be distinguished the famous Slut of the North, impersonated with all her ornaments by a tall, mustachioed man who copied fairly well the modesty and decency that accompanies that august princess wherever she goes … A King of Marmots, represented by one of his former subjects, Mr. Pitt, and his kind master in ceremonial attire, the sad George Dandin, riding on donkeys; His Papal Holiness was represented by a magpie, which perfectly depicted the voracious gluttony of the animal called the Pope; and His Serene Highness the Prince of Cobourg, on a triumphal cart hitched to four dogs. His Highness was represented by a chained bear attired in all the distinctive insignias of the orders of this great man. Some piglets represented to a tee the barnyards of Germany, and the stadthouder was worthily represented by a barrel topped by a pike’. At the Place de la Fédération the kings and queens were trampled upon before the Liberty tree.22 On the same day, 10 Nivôse, on the main square of Saint-Etienne, by order of the representative Javogues, ‘all the anti-popular riffraff’, the Kings of England, Spain, the Piedmont, Prussia, and Bohemia, as well as the Holy Father the Pope, ‘sentenced by the French popular tribunal’, were handed over in effigy to the public executioner,23 an operation that the Jacobins of Cherbourg wanted to render effective and legal.24 It is undeniable that these extraordinary masquerades had more than one thing in common with Maréchal’s play. They are the final proof that Le Jugement dernier des rois was admirably adapted to the mentality of the sansculottes.

5

The Source of the Idea for the Play

Maréchal drew the general idea of Le Jugement dernier des rois from his own works. Tale 28 of the Leçons du fils ainé d’un roi speaks of a visionary who, having fallen asleep, has a strange dream. All the peoples of the earth decide one day to relegate all their sovereigns to a deserted island, who are then forced to 22 23 24

Archives communales de Boulogne-sur-Mer: D. Registre des deliberations du Conseil General de la Commune, de Brumaire an ii au 25 dec. 1794, folio 31. Kucinski, Dictionnaire des Conventionnels, 1880, p. 344, article ‘Javogues’. Sarot, Les Sociétés Populaires et en particulier celles de Coutances, 1880, p. 93.

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work in order to eat. A cordon of small launches guards the island, with orders not to allow any of the colonists to leave it. The uneasy kings begin by ridding themselves of their useless ornaments and, having neither valets nor courtiers, have to pitch in and get to work. They are unable to live in peace for very long, and humanity, a peaceful spectator to it all, has the satisfaction of ‘seeing itself freed of its tyrants by their own hands’.25 In 1791, in Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assembleé Nationale, the dream is transformed into a solid proposal. Maréchal demands that all kings, including Louis xvi, who he expressly names, be transported to the uninhabited but inhabitable island he calls the ‘Island of Dethroned Kings’. There then occurs the same denouement as previously. All the tyrants perish and Sylvain adds: ‘It is only from this moment that the peoples of the earth can date their era of independence’.26 Already, in his play l’Ile des Esclaves [The Island of Slaves], the gallant and tender Marivaux had assembled masters, lords, and beautiful ladies on a desert isle, as well as proletarians who, in order to live, had to organize society on new foundations and reestablish the laws of nature.27 As in one of the wittier fables of La Fontaine,28 in this colony the humble shepherd was more necessary than the gentleman. The nullity and injustice of social inequality leap out at the spectator. Sylvain, who certainly knew of this play, which he perhaps saw performed, did nothing but take over its fundamental idea and push it to its conclusion. At bottom, the dreams of 1788 and 1791, like Le Dernier jugement des rois, are little more than an imitation and modification of Marivaux’s work. Nevertheless, in the sans-culotte play there was a certain amount of additional stage play: the arrival of the old man at the beginning, of the savages in the middle, and the volcano at the end. What was the source of these modifications? What could have given Sylvain Marechal the idea for them? It is impossible to give an entirely satisfying answer to these questions. But it is clear that the Epitre à un émigrant [Epistle to an Emigrant] of the litterateur Andrieux, which appeared in early 1790,29 and the play by Citizen Gamas, Les Émigrés aux terres australes [The Emigrés in Austral Lands],30 performed in November 1792, might have

25 26 27 28 29 30

Maréchal, Apologues modernes à l’usage du dauphin, pp. 30–31. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée nationale, pp. 30–31. Chinard, L’Amérique et le rêve exotique dans la littérature française au xviiie siècle, p. 231. La Fontaine, Fables, book x, fable xvi, Le Marchand, le gentilhomme, le pâtre et le fils du roi. Géruzez, Histoire de la littérature française pendant la Révolution, p. 188. E. and J. Goncourt, Histoire de la Société française pendant la Révolution, 1904, p. 296.

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induced Sylvain to introduce a sans-culotte hermit and the savages onto an island of dethroned kings. As for the destruction of the kings by the play of natural forces, an idea in conformity with Maréchal’s republican and naturalist opinions, they were not new. We see the Montagne section of the commune of Tours send the Committee of Public Instruction – which forwarded it to the Cabinet des Estampes on 7 Floréal, year ii – an ancient engraving with this caption; ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’. This engraving showed a volcanic mountain destroying the attributes of fanaticism and tyranny.31 Maréchal himself, in his Voyages de Pythagore, noted the singular practice of the Asones, an ancient people who lived near Vesuvius: ‘The Ausones, who had already adopted the sun as god and king, thought they saw in the illuminated volcano the wrath of that power that had previously only made itself known to them through its benefactions. To appease it they sentenced every ambitious enemy of elementary equality to serve as an expiatory victim. They threw him into the burning crater, and since that time they repeat this terrible punishment with each explosion, as long as there can be found mortal bold enough to call themselves giants among their equals’.32

6

Opinion of the Press of the Time

Let us now make a tour of the press of the time, in this way learning patriotic journalists’ opinion of the play. Prudhomme’s paper33 found that the Théâtre de la République had never better fulfilled its role than when it mounted Le Jugement dernier des rois. ‘Warm patriots lately complained that all that is represented at the opera is crowned heads. This same reproach cannot be made of the artists of the former Théâtre des Variétés. Almost all the monarchs of Europe appear on stage there, it is true, but as it were, muzzled, like bears that mountaineers from the Savoy once made dance on street corners to amuse the multitude’. A succinct account follows, and the article ends with a wish: ‘All this play lacks is the power to be staged before all the sans-culottes of Europe. Theatrical fiction would then not delay in becoming an historical fact’. This analysis is supplemented by a note from Maréchal to his fellow citizens, in which the author of Le Dernier jugement des rois apologises for the ‘overly busy’ parts in the play. He recalls how, in the past, when the theater was eminently aristocratic, when the actors formed a 31 32 33

Procès-verbaux du Comité d’Instruction publique, vol. iv, p. 284. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, pp. 38–39. Révolutions de Paris, no. 212, 3 August–28 Octobre 1793, pp. 108–109.

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class apart that the rich lords loved and scorned at the same time, ‘they shamelessly derided, denigrated, and ridiculed’ the sovereign people. He thought it was time to pay back the kings and their valets, and ended with these words: ‘Long enough and for too long these messieurs had the last laugh. I thought it was the moment to deliver them to the people and in doing so parody one of the happy verses of the comedy Le Méchant: Kings are on earth for our petty pleasures’.34 The Nouvelles politiques nationales et étrangères paid homage to the talented artists of the Théâtre de la République and found that Le Jugement dernier des rois was ‘a republican act as joyful as it was energetic and true’.35 The Abréviateur universel gave a detailed and enthusiastic account of it: ‘This play was a great success with the public, and kings can judge from this how public opinion in France stands against their kind’. According to this paper, Le Jugement Denier des rois is ‘a live-action caricature, with all the wit and salt of the Provinciales and all the acrimonious picturesqueness of the satire Menipée or the Catholicon of Espagne’. The ridiculous and the comedy profusely scattered throughout the play are such that one ‘never grows tired of seeing it in movement’. ‘The large public that goes to see this play proves by its applause just how much the theatrical effect is to its taste’.36 In its 11 October 1793 issue the Journal des Spectacles weighed in on the play of the day. It would speak of it again on 22 October, though limiting itself to reproducing the accounts of some of its confreres.37 The writer for the Petites Affiches was surprised not to find ‘the King of Marmots’ in the middle of ‘the crowned clique’. He pointed out a few longueurs, but nevertheless though that it was impossible to see ‘a more joyous, and at the same time more moral pleasantry’.38 According to the Feuille de salut public, never before did a comedy inspire more lively transports, because never before had a subject been treated that was so completely in accord with the desires of the spectators.39 The Journal de Paris, which was very sober in its appreciation, limited itself to saying that the

34 35 36 37 38 39

Ibid. ‘The author of the Jugement derneir des rois to his citizens’. This notice was reproduced at the head of two editions of the play. Nouvelles politiques nationales et étrangères, no. 294, 21 October 1793, p. 1175. L’Abreviateur universel, no. 304, décadi, 10 brumaire, 31 October 1793. Journal des Spectacles, nos. 103 and 112. Petites Affiches, 28th day of the first month. Analysis reproduced in the Journal des Spectacles, no. 112, pp. 886–889. Journal des Spectacles, no. 112, pp. 888–889.

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play contained ‘very gay’ details that explained its success.40 What is beyond a doubt is that the strangest account was in the newspaper the Anti-fédéraliste, the semi-official paper of Citizens Julien fils, Payan, and Pascal Thomas Fourcade. It was written in the form of a letter addressed by a counter-revolutionary to an émigré. The aristocrat complains bitterly of having been forced to applaud for a half an hour at the sight of the kings of Europe in chains. He was indignant at the ‘villainy’ of ‘a people gone astray’, who loudly applauded so monstrous a play, and spoke out against Maréchal, ‘who we will hang when Louis xvii reigns’. He added: ‘You would do well to present your homages to the Count d’Artois and to have him commit to informing all the courts of Europe of this new evil. These men respect nothing but a so-called statue of liberty and villains like themselves, who they call public functionaries’.41

7

Sylvain Maréchal’s Imitators

The overwhelming success of the play led several writers to imitate Maréchal. Henriquez, a friend of Nicolas de Bonneville and citizen of the Panthéon Français section, dedicated two of his décadaire epistles to the visions of ‘Camille Emmanuel’ and ‘Père Labranche’. At bottom these are nothing but imitations of Le Jugement dernier des rois. In one, the earth opens up and a monstrous beast, who is none other than the aristocracy, vomits up priests and kings. A lightning bolt soon pulverizes the great beast and its children. Père Labranche’s dream has an identical denouement: at the moment they vow to slaughter humankind, the kings of Europe, the Pope, and even the Negus of Abyssinia fall, struck by lightning.42 Citizen Desbarreaux composed a new prophecy with the emphatic title Les Potentats foudroyés par la Montagne et la Raison ou La Déportation des rois de l’Europe [The Potentates Struck down by the Montain and Reason, or The Deportation of the Kings of Europe]. This one act revolutionary play was performed in Toulouse at the Théâtre de la Liberté et de l’Egalité shortly after Le Dernier jugement des Rois.43 It was written, says Welschinger, ‘with a rag picker’s crook’. In 40 41 42 43

Journal de Paris, no. 293. L’Anti-fédéraliste ou le Correspondant des sociétés populaires et des armées, no. 26, First month of year ii, pp. 202–203. Epitres et évangiles du Republican pour toutes les décades de l’année. Year ii, pp. 44–45, 78– 79. On 7 Nivôse, year ii, at the Jacobin Club of Toulouse, Desbarreaux announced his patriotic play and invited patriots to attend it. Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et de l’Etre Suprême, second edition, p. 171.

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his preface, Desbarreaux declared he would be ‘all too happy if he manages to cover priests with the ridicule they deserve and to impress on the spirits of the people the horror kings should inspire’.44 The monarchs of Europe say the crudest things and figure in the smuttiest of scenes. Catherine says to the Pope; ‘Did you swallow your gudgeon, Holy Father?’ The Pope responds: ‘You have a gullet down which the fattest things pass with ease’. Catherine and the King of Prussia quarrel on stage.45 Citizen Cizos-Duplessis also paraphrased Maréchal’s play and was even more outrageous than Desbarreaux. On 23 Germinal, year ii (12 April 1794) he had performed at the Théatre de la Cité a dramatic allegory in five acts, Les Peuples et les Rois ou le Tribunal de la raison [Peoples and Kings, or the Tribunal of Reason], a play which, according to Welschinger, is ‘absolutely demented’, where the most varied characters engage in disputes. A king, a cardinal, and a duke finally perish in the flames, while all the revolutionary gods appear in the theater: ‘Conjugal Love, Modesty, Labour, Civism, etc, and the busts of the saints of sans-culotterie are placed in the middle of them: Rousseau, Marat, Le Peletier, and Brutus’.46 It was then Lebrun-Tossa’s turn to scoff at kings, in his comedy La Folie de Georges ou l’Ouverture du Parlement d’Angleterre [The Madness of George or the Opening of the English Parliament]. This play was performed at the Théâtre de la Cité on 4 Pluviôse, year ii (23 January 1794). George having gone mad because of the taking of Toulon, he insults his parliament. The English rebel and proclaim the republic. Pitt and the Prince of Wales are massacred by the people. The King is taken to the madhouse and Grey exclaims: ‘Let us go out and meet the French. Now we are worthy of them … We have imitated them: they were our enemies when tyrants governed us. May a holy friendship forever unite us with them, and may our example hasten the happy moment when all the peoples of the world will form one family!’47 Sylvain Maréchal says nothing different. We should also consider the play entitled Le naufrage des rois dans l’ile de la Raison [The Shipwreck of Kings on the Island of Reason],48 as having originated in Le Jugement dernier des rois, which would be performed at the Théâtre du Panthéon on the Estrapade, during Ventôse and Germinal of the year ii, as well as the one-act allegorical opera by Destival and Valcour Le Gateau

44 45 46 47 48

Welschinger, Le Théâtre de la Révolution, 1881, p. 204. Moland, Théâtre de la Révolution, Introduction, p. xxiii. Welschinger, Le Théâtre de la Révolution, 1881, pp. 204–205. Welschinger, Le Théâtre de la Révolution, 1881, pp. 205–206; and E. and J. Goncourt, Histoire de la société française pendant la Révolution, 1904, pp. 298–299. Moniteur, no. 158, 7 Ventôse year ii and following issues.

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des rois [The Kings’ Cake],49 performed at the Théâtre Patriotique a short while later, on 5 January 1796. In another order of ideas, Le Jugement dernier des prêtres [The Final Judgment of Priests], which was to be performed at the Théâtre de la Rue Feydeau, also seems to have been inspired by Maréchal’s play. This work was announced in the Journal des spectacles for the 7 to the 25 Frimaire, but it was abruptly replaced by Paulin et Virginie, so that it died before having received a public baptism.50 We should add that Pixérécourt, in his drama La Tete de Mort [The Death’s Head] followed Maréchal’s example by putting the explosion of a volcano on stage.51

8

The Censors of the 19th and 20th Centuries

In order to fully understand the emotions aroused by Maréchal’s play it is necessary to refer to the environment of simmering sans-culottism whose aspirations it expressed. In 1794 the literary value of a work was of little importance to the public: if it responded to the general sentiment it was good and was a success. What was it that Maréchal wanted? To make the theatre a tribune. Sylvain was not a dramatic poet, he was a philosopher, a thinker, a journalist, and a patriot who, while delivering kings to public ridicule, found a way to propagate his preferred ideas. He did not live apart from his contemporaries, but rather in a close communion of ideas with them. His originality was in finding an act, in creating types which, on the one hand incarnated the multitude’s bold demands and secret desires, and on the other hand, their ferocious hatred. It would be an obvious error to consider Maréchal’s play in itself and strictly from a dramatic point of view. And yet that is what has been done until now. The result has been a fatal contradiction between the appraisals of the revolutionaries and the judgment of their descendants. It would not be fair, after having allowed the former to speak, not to listen to the latter. A few years after 1793, in year viii, when calm had returned, the play was no longer viewed from the same angle. The author of the Tribunal d’Apollon was severe in his opinion of Maréchal’s work: it is an ‘indecent farce’, ‘a masterpiece of banality, insolence, and bad taste’.52 Of course, the passions that supported 49 50 51 52

Welschinger, Le Théâtre de la Révolution, 1881, p. 206. Journal des Spectacles, 7–25 Frimaire, year ii. Annales Révolutionnaires, second series, vol. viii, no. 3, p. 449. Le Tribunal d’Apollon ou Jugement en dernier ressort de tous les auteurs vivants, an viii,

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the play had subsided, and with them the charm that gave it life. Unless it is marked with the seal of genius, a timely work is rarely admired by posterity. In his pseudo-Souvenirs Georges Duval also spoke out against ‘the rhapsody’ of the Shepherd Sylvain. He wondered why the ‘platitudes’ booed at the Theatre de l’Estrapade in Le Pape aux enfers [The Pope in Hell] were wildly applauded at the Théâtre de la République, and explained it this way: ‘The residents of Rue de Loursine and Rue Mouffetard risked nothing in whistling down the revolutionary and blandly impious work that bored them, while those of the Palais-Egalité would not have been certain of sleeping in their own beds if they had dared whistle at the Pope in the person of Santerre’s aide-de-camp’.53 According to Theodore Muret, far from being a prophecy, Maréchal’s work was rather a dream ‘of a fanatical insanity, just like its author’. It was ‘a monstrous folly’.54 The historians of the French theater, Henry Lumière, Etienne, and Martainville are no more tender towards Maréchal’s play. Lumière said: ‘This unhealthy work by a fanatic is one of the saddest specimens of the degradation of the dramatic art of the period’. He continued, ‘It is perhaps the most repugnant manifestation on stage of revolutionary outrageousness, of the sans-culottism of the era of the Terror’.55 Etienne and Martainville spoke in more or less the same terms: ‘Of all the works performed during the Terror this play is, if not the most atrocious, is at least that most likely to make known to what extent dramatic art had been degraded’. We will attempt to convince ourselves that this play was performed by order of the government, for otherwise what could we think of actors who would not fear likening their theater to those bloody arenas where the mob was provided the spectacle of ferocious beasts devouring human victims? As for the author of this execrable work, what idea would we have of his heart if we thought it guided his pen? It is unquestionably beautiful to love liberty; the hatred of kings can exalt a vigourous soul, but painting in lively colours men surrendering others to the horrors of starvation, pushing them into the devouring entrails of a volcano! We don’t fear saying that to conceive such an idea one must be capable of executing it.

53

54 55

p. 63, Art. ‘Sylvain Maréchal’. Duval, Souvenirs de la terreur, vol. iv, p. 313. In a note on the same page Duval states that at the time of the performances of Jugement dernier des rois Marechal ‘had just published the Dictionnaire des athées in complicity with the astronomer Lalande’. Nothing could be more false. Muret, L’Histoire par le théâtre, 1789–1851, 1865, vol. i., pp. 85–87. Lumière, Le théâtre français pendant la Révolution, pp. 212–220.

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What is more, the only grace they accord Sylvain is that of regarding him as a man tormented by delirium.56 Jauffret for his part believed that Maréchal had in his brain ‘a slot for reason and another for madness’. He finds it difficult to imagine that ‘as monstrous a work’ as Le Jugement dernier des rois ‘came from the pen of a serious writer’.57 Henri Baudrillart, in his study on Le Luxe Public et la Révolution,58 recalls several plays from the revolutionary repertoire. Some seem to him to be deadly boring, like the sentimental moralism of Collot d’Herbois, others ‘clearly mad’, like Le Jugement dernier des rois. He qualifies the deportation of the kings, the Tsarina, and the Pope to the island of the sans-Culottes as a ‘disordered burlesque’. The local historians who speak of the performances of Le Jugement dernier are no kinder to the play. One calls it ‘an ignoble farce’,59 another ‘a grotesque piece of ineptitude’.60 Closer to us, in discussing the banning of Cinderella at the children’s theaters of Leningrad, the Gaulois established a parallel between the French and Russian Revolutions from the point of view of their repercussions on the stage. This led him to evoke Le Jugement dernier des rois, ‘a play, or rather a display of outrageous intolerance’. After having asserted that ‘art and good taste have nothing to do with this elucubration’, the author of the article, Louis Schneider, almost apologises for speaking of it, stating that he simply wanted ‘to show the degree of political hysteria the author reached’. And then, putting forth a hypothesis already proposed, he added of Maréchal’s play: ‘Does it not seem to be the work of a totally disordered brain?’61 When reading these severe critiques, the latest of which dates from 1923, one realises that the tyrannicidal passions and the republican enthusiasm incited in 1794 by Le Jugement dernier des rois found their counterpart in the tenacious hatred that time has not yet calmed.62

56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Etienne and Martainville, Histoire du Théâtre français, vol. iii, p. 117 ff. Jauffret, Le Théâtre révolutionnaire (1788–1799), pp. 259 and 261. Baudrillart, ‘Le luxe public et la Révolution’, Revue des Deux-Mondes, 1872, vol. xcix. Charvet, Recherches sur les anciens théâtres de Beauvais, pp. 56–59. Rousset, Le Théâtre à Grenoble, p. 12. Le Gaulois, 12 August 1923. On the other hand, in avant-garde circles attempts have been made to revive the Jugement dernier des rois. A simplified version, adapted – or rather, disfigured – in the most inept fashion by Jacques Chabannes was twice mounted by a group if amateurs in Paris in 1936 (see L’Humanité, 29 March 1936 and the following days). A selection was performed on the radio at Radio-Paris on 15 June 1939.

Chapter 11 1

Maréchal and the Cult of Reason

The Cult of Reason was born at around the time when Le Jugement dernier des rois knew its greatest success. Alphonse Aulard includes Maréchal among ‘the leaders of the movement’,1 and Dr. Robinet ranks him among those who ‘instituted’ the new cult.2 He calls him, along with Lalande, one of ‘the doctors’, the ‘fathers’ of the church of the day, but a doctor who, it must be said, was ‘prudent’ and ‘hidden’, but whose influence was, according to him, undeniable.3 These two authors are wrong, though appearances are on their side. Nothing allows us to number Maréchal among the founders of the Cult of Reason. At the very most we could infer from his opera La Fête de la Raison [The Festival of Reason] that he greeted the new cult favourably. But if, as is probable, we see in the writing of this play the desire to assure himself a new success on the stage, everything changes. For in all honesty, an inspection of Prudhomme’s newspaper would instead show Maréchal figuring among the enemies of the Cult of Reason. Let us explain ourselves. In the beginning, when the foundations of the new cult were laid, Maréchal alluded to it in an unreservedly sympathetic fashion at the end of his article on the sans-culottes. He even called it ‘sublime’.4 But nothing allows us to affirm that the account of the Festival of Reason in the same issue is from his quill.5 In any event, this account has no probative value, for it contains as many reservations as favourable considerations about the cult. Reservations about the title ‘Temple of Reason’ given the metropolitan church of Paris; reservations about the misguided choice of goddesses; reservations concerning the masquerades accompanying the burial of ‘the rich spoils of superstition’; and, finally, reservations about the guarantees required so that ‘hands friendly to money’ don’t seize treasures useful for the issuing of currency.6 Even more, that such an article appeared in a paper for which Maréchal was the main writer is significant.

1 2 3 4 5 6

Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de l’Etre Suprême, second edition, p. 81. Robinet, Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Révolution, vol. 1, p. 517. Notes by Dr. Robinet. Révolutions de Paris, no. 215, pp. 23–30 Brumaire, pp. 204–205. It has been attributed to Momoro. See Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison …, p. 52. Révolutions de Paris, no. 215, pp. 23–30, pp. 210–218.

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There is more. A short while later we see Maréchal formally pronouncing himself against the Cult of Reason. And after all, nothing could be more logical. In continuing to adopt an attitude as prudent as it was bold vis-a-vis the Church and the clergy, Maréchal remained faithful to himself. Does this mean that he did not view sympathetically the many and confused attempts at liberation from religion? No. He took joy in the thought that some peasants conducted services themselves in place of priests. It was not exactly his ‘religion without priests’, but it was a step in that direction. He thought that, after a certain amount of time, the peasants, tired of this, would cease to chant in a Latin they didn’t understand, and priests would be quickly forgotten.7 As long as the impulse came from those concerned, it offered a possibility of success, and he applauded it. This is why, at the birth of the cult, he rendered homage to ‘the vigorous decisions taken by the sans-culottes in the final hours of the general assemblies of the sections’.8 But a short while later he changed his mind. Let us listen to him:9 Aside from its violent character, the new cult is an ‘unexpected blow’, ‘untimely’, an impetus ‘given at the wrong moment’. In all, ‘a still delicate string’ was touched too soon, and ‘it was gone about somewhat clumsily’. From which the little success of this ‘religious revolution’ which ‘is far from being universal’. What is more, the violence and spontaneity, the provincial origins of this movement seemed suspicious to Maréchal. He saw in it a possible trap laid by the enemy ‘who, not having been able to kill the Republic through modernatisme is now trying to do so through the exaggeration of principles or their false application’. He would have liked to believe that if the constituted authorities fell into so flagrant a trap in good faith, such would not be the case for the Convention. He admitted to not being alone in worrying about the motives and means employed by the protagonists of the new cult. He even suspected the new Tartuffes in black bonnets to have pushed the wheel as least as much as the Tartuffes in red bonnets. Later, returning to and clarifying this thesis, Maréchal will accuse the Hébertistes ‘and many others’ of having fomented this religious revolution ‘to cause a political insurrection from which they alone will benefit’.10 In fact, it cannot be denied that the atheist Maréchal adopted the same deist platform as Robespierre. Both envisaged the Cult of Reason, not from a philosophical point of view, but from a concrete, political point of view. It is inescapable that not only was Maréchal in agreement with Robespierre in 7 8 9 10

Révolutions de Paris, no. 224, 18–25 Pluviôse, pp. 505–506 [Réponse a Prudhomme]. Révolutions de Paris, p. 204. Révolutions de Paris, no. 224, 18–25 Pluviôse, pp. pp. 478–480 [Réponse a Prudhomme]. Maréchal, Tableau historique des évènemens révolutionnaires, p. 109.

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regard to the content, but in justifying his fears he employs the same expressions as the Incorruptible. To be convinced of this it suffices to read the speech Robespierre gave at the Jacobin Club on 22 Frimaire, year ii (12 December 1793). In addition, Maréchal applauded the decree of 18 Frimaire11 proclaiming freedom of religion, writing that if people acted in an impolitic fashion at the beginning of the movement, ‘they have since acted with much wisdom’. Along with Robespierre he thought that the weapon of persecution will not kill the Church. The best choice is that of ‘the most perfect indifference’. ‘We must no longer speak of priests for fear of giving them an importance they have not yet renounced’. They should be so completely ignored that ‘their existence is no longer noticed’. Maréchal added: ‘It was decided to allow religious things to float on their own; they won’t stay above water for long. Already the majority of priests made the dive, and they are dying their beautiful death. And they’re not happy about it: they’d have liked to cause more of a stir as they sunk down’. There is no doubt but that honest and impatient patriots were surprised by this prudent tactic. Maréchal responded to them by saying that ‘the people’s reason has grown’ over the course of the Revolution, but the departments are not yet at the level of Paris. He insinuated that if the movement in the Nièvre ‘had some success’ it was ‘owed to money’. And at the risk of being called a disguised aristocrat or a madman by Cloots, he poses this indiscrete question: ‘Are the fruits of the tree of truth ripe and easily digestible by all?’ Nevertheless, superstition and fanaticism had to be done away with. What was to be done? Maréchal felt that if municipal officers correctly fulfilled their duties it would be easy for them to see to it that ‘Monsieur the Curé and Monsieur the Vicar’ are totally forgotten. All they need do is give an unaffected speech full of solid information every décade and organise a joyful festival every décadi or once a month. To top it all off, all that would be needed would be a few elementary treatises, some lovely patriotic songs, a little music, theater, pantomime, dance, circus, and military exercises: in short, spectacles. For ‘the people need spectacles’, far more than they do civic preaching too similar ‘to Sunday sermons’. To obtain them it will be necessary to rely on ‘the competition of talents and the emulation of artists’, for genius has no trouble being in step with republican liberty. In this way municipal officers, relying on the citizens, could brighten ‘the leisure of the working class’ and cause a void to form around priests. But in Sylvain’s eyes these artifices on their own would be powerless in freeing the country from sacerdotal char-

11

Articles cited from Revolutions de Paris and Tableau historique des évènemens révolutionnaires, pp. 53, 59. 60.

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latanism. It was victory on the external front; it was peace, repose, security, and the rule of constitutional laws that would complete the work of intellectual emancipation. Then and then alone what is called the Cult of Reason ‘will become universal and will silence all the others without interfering with them’.

2

The De-Priestizations

Something that must be noted which casts a light on Maréchal’s position towards the new cult is the little credit he grants abjurations. To be sure, he did not publicly demonstrate his sentiments at a moment when, as Jaurès showed, it was important for the triumph of reason that the priests ‘reveal to fanatics the emptiness of the tabernacle’.12 This too would have been ‘untimely’, to use his expression, and no one would have understood his opposition, however slight, to the trampling of religion and the overturning of the altars by ministers of the cult. But many earlier and later texts leave no doubt as to his skepticism concerning the real value of de-priestizations. For Maréchal a priest was worse than a circus performer, for if the latter fools the people, at least he amuses them. Because of his ‘ignoble and culpable profession’, the priest always wears ‘a mask’. This is what makes him more fearsome than his gods.13 ‘The refractory priests boast of their unstained character, but that’s nothing to brag about. And yet they’re right in this, that the stain this character imprints on the heart and mind can never be erased’.14 It follows from this that we will ‘never’ succeed in correcting a priest.15 From which these two maxims in the vein of the sayings of Publius-Syrus: We’ll never make a citizen of a priest. Once a priest, a man is good for that alone.16 He should thus be banned from any public function, even after he has gone to the tribune of the Convention to declare he is a charlatan. ‘Every priest is suspect’; this is the grand principle.17 ‘He cannot be too closely watched, and we must distrust the priest-chameleon. This is the most fearsome species’.18

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française, vol. ii, p. 1708. Maréchal, Le Lucrèce français, pp. 116, 129, 137, etc … Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, pp. 182–183. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres p. 182. Maréchal, Le Lucrèce français, pp. 201, 205. Maréchal, Tableau historique des évènemens révolutionnaires, p. 42. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres

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We now understand why the Révolutions de Paris, passing in review the principal candidates for the Convention, joined the Feuille Villageoise in recommending ‘the total outlawing of the churchly race’. It made only one exception, in favour of the priest of Saint-Laurent, Charles-Alexandre de Moy, the author of the philosophical pamphlet Accord de la religion et des cultes dans une nation libre [The Harmony of Religion and Cults in a Free Nation].19 And if, despite his social aspirations, which were so close to the line of the newspaper, Jacques Roux did not find grace in its eyes, it was simply because he was a priest. This repulsion corresponded so closely to a current in an era warped by a cultural atmosphere of hatred of priests that Jacques Rous was not wrong when, looking back on his past as an agitator, he recognised that it was ‘a fatal destiny’ to be attached to the priesthood.20 If one were to object to Maréchal that there have been philosopher priests he could not respond in the negative, since he made every effort to draw up the most complete catalog of them possible, but he refused to include them among ‘the true atheists who are worthy of being so’.21 For example, while admiring the Curé Meslier, and, when required claiming to be a follower, he complained of his conduct, ‘unworthy of a wise man’, in waiting to be in his coffin to ‘proclaim his true feelings’.22 As for Abbé Raynal, also cited as an example, Maréchal declared that he has his place in the chapter of ‘usurped reputations’, given that the great sections against superstation and despotism, which made the fortune of his book on the commerce in the two Indies, are by Diderot. He added: ‘There exists a notarised statement that legalises Diderot’s ownership of the philosophical and moral portions of Abbé Raynal’s famous compilation’.23

3

The Goddesses

Something else that should be said is that in his critical construction of the new cult Maréchal raised no altar to reason. He did not represent it in the form of a statue or an image or with the smiling traits of a woman. He made no effort to materialise it, leaving it to govern ideas and sentiments in the abstract. And yet, well before the neo-rationalists, he had envisioned reason as ‘a woman still

19 20 21 22 23

Révolutions de Paris, no. 164, 25 August–1 September 1792, p. 387. Dommanget, Jacques Roux, le curé rouge, pp. 25, 74. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 37. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 383. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres.

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young, neither serious nor flighty, who would love to smile, and whose pleasant and instructive company would be both pleasing and interesting; whose jovial character would, without weakness of its own, lend itself to the weakness of those who would frequent her’.24 These lines date from 1779, but even before then Maréchal made Hymenia the true goddess of reason. Of majestic height and an easy step, with bright and fresh colouring, sparkling eyes tempered by an ‘amiable languor’, and ‘modest without being sad, reserved without being a prude’,25 everything about her – rather than about the goddess in Notre Dame – commanded ‘respect and honour’. And when, accompanied by cherubs, Hymenia left the circular, Greek-style temple, which we will meet up with again at the Parisian Festival of Reason, a choir sang a hymn in her honour, just as Gossec’s music glorifying ‘the Jehovah of the French’26 would later rise in the former cathedral converted to a church. However, we should view this as a purely literary image on Maréchal’s part, since twenty-two years later the actual personification of Reason seems to have shocked him, as it did other true disciples of the Encyclopedia. This is all the more strange in that this goddess figured in his opera La Fête de la Raison. But then again, we should consider this work more as a concession to theatrical art than an acceptance of the Cult of Reason.

4

La Fête de la Raison or La Rosière Républicaine

Its composition likely dates to the first days of the new cult. It appears that Maréchal imagined the model ceremony of Reason in a small village, and that he was struck by the resemblance between this ceremony and the festival of the crowning of the innocent maiden – the Rosière – established in Salency by Saint Médard. Since he considered the Festival of the Innocent Maiden ‘worthy of a republic in need of morality’,27 he thought it good to include it as an adjunct and corrective to an ordinary Festival of Reason. This was the source of the backdrop of his play. For the rest, Maréchal limited himself to transposing to the stage the modalities of a village Festival of Reason. Nothing was lacking: a civic

24 25 26 27

Maréchal, Le livre de tous les âges, p. 106. Maréchal, Le Temple de l’Hymen, p. 41. Allusion to Provost’s symbolic medallion. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, 8 June – St. Médard.

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cortege made up of municipal officers, young women and elderly men; abjurations and philosophical speeches by the pastor, who sans-culotte-ises himself; a bonfire of crosses, missals, and other instruments of fanaticism; an invocation of Reason; and, naturally, to enhance all this and give the festival an air of freshness and grace, a well-bred and beautiful maiden represents Reason. It all ends with a ball, during the course of which a zealous citizen, in a pas de trois, converts two nuns and makes them dance the Carmagnole, all of this set in the inevitable village square and church, the latter transformed for the occasion into a Temple of Reason. There are several scenes that should be noted in this portrait of the Revolution adorned with poetry, music, and dance, a ‘truly original creation’, according to a newspaper of the time.28 At the very beginning, when Lysis, the mayor’s son, makes the most touching case for the selection of Alison, his adored shepherd lass, as Republican Maiden or Goddess of Reason, a current of warm sympathy is established in favour of the two young people. Alison is selected. Lysis is filled with joy and his heart’s intoxication is seen in scene iv. But why was Alison chosen? This is a point worthy of examination, for it would be good to know the qualities which, according to Maréchal, are required of a Goddess of Reason. We know that in Paris the choice of symbolic divinities was not always a happy one. In the provinces, on the other hand, it was in the best families, and generally among the purest young girls, that the goddesses of the new cult were sought.29 Sylvain conferred on the village elder the right to select the goddess Reason. Modest Alison is preferred over all the young citizenesses. Why? Since she lost her mother three years ago Alison has taken her place in her family. She is her father’s pillar, And makes reign in her home Order, peace, ancient morals And patriotic virtues. For Maréchal it is the most virtuous who must receive the homage of an enlightened people, and the divinity of the day realises a synthesis of Reason and Virtue. We must surely see in this an indirect critique of the goddesses like Maillard and Candeille, who dishonoured the Cult of Reason.

28 29

Abréviateur universel, 21 Fructidor (7 September 1794). Dommanget, Le Déchristianisation à Beauvais et dans l’Oise, vol. 1, pp. 102–108.

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Another scene deserves to be singled out. It answers the arguments of the moderate, timid, and prudent patriots who thought the ancient religion was still necessary. A discussion occurs between a municipal officer, partisan of the status quo, and the mayor, a follower of the new cult, played by the celebrated singer Cheron, with his marvelously powerful, sonorous bass voice: the municipal officer The people perhaps still need charlatans. the mayor Be gone! Prejudice has no more supporters. the municpal officer They’ll chatter so softly they might as well be silent. the mayor They’ll chatter so softly they might as well be silent. Despite these responses, the municipal officer is not yet at ease on the question of popular prejudices. the municpal officer Tell me, what will we put in place of priests? the mayor Good magistrates, who aren’t liars. the municpal officer And in place of the gods so feared by our ancestors? the mayor Wise laws and good morals. Now satisfied, the municipal officer swears along with the mayor and Lysis to see that the laws of truth and liberty triumph. In the final scene, the curé, played by the famous baritone Lays, a former seminarian himself, arrives in the middle of the festival to have himself depriested. He tears up his breviary and his ‘foul priestly garb’ and renounces imposture, even declaring that he wants to go to Rome to sans-culotte-ise the Pope. Even so, this supplementary guarantee, which to our knowledge no defrocked priest of the time gave, wasn’t enough in the eyes of the librettist. The mayor stops several villagers who were already putting a red bonnet on the priest’s head and says to them: A priest is always a priest. We would love to believe That his mouth’s avowal is dictated by his heart.

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And then, addressing the curé: It is up to you to put the lie to history. Dedicate the future to deserving honour, And by civic conduct, To being the adoptive child of our republic. With which the general choir of the entire hamlet shouts, burning the priestly symbols and ornaments: Good morals and good laws! No more priests, no more lords. This mise en scène confirms what we said above, all the more in that by the date originally fixed for the first performance (6 Nivôse, year ii) the wave of de-priestizations had passed. Maréchal could now allow himself to express reservations concerning this political operation without doing harm to the liberation of consciences. It was only natural that a play like La Fête de la Raison was to Chaumette’s taste. Around 12 Frimaire he wrote to the administrators of the Opera: I saw Citizen Maréchal’s play. It seems to me to be fit and proper for maintaining the public spirit and above all for ridiculing fanaticism. You must feel as strongly as I how pressing it is not to allow any repose to the fools confused by the fall of their old idols. I would be extremely grateful if you would quickly mount this short work, and the republic would be even more grateful. Chaumette added as a post-script: ‘I don’t understand a thing about the music of Citizen Lefèvre. It is too learned for me; in order to make it easier for me all I would want would be the solo air for violin, excerpted from the rest of the score, which gives me a headache’.30 The administrators of the Opera shared Chaumette’s opinion. Grétry had written music for a pastoral comedy on La Rosière de Salency. Asked to adorn Maréchal’s play with lighter music than that of Citizen Lefevre, ‘with the best grace in the world’, he loaned the charm of his music to the words of the athe-

30

Archives de l’Opéra. Carton 47, liasse year ii. In this letter the title of the piece is not mentioned, but the date of the response indicates that it is la Fete de la Raison.

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ist poet. If it is true that in fact the great composer largely re-used the music he wrote for Les Deux couvents ou Le Despotism Monacal [The Two Convents, or the Monastic Dynasty], an unfortunate work by Rouget de Lisle, it is not surprising that La Fête de la Raison was quickly mounted.31 The first performance was announced for 12 Nivôse, year ii. But when the moment arrived for the scheduled performance the play was suspended by order of the Committee of Public Safety. The same thing occurred the next day with Sainte-Omelette, a ‘Capuchinesque play’.32 Inspired by Robespierre’s opinions, the Committee intended to moderate the religious revolution. This ban, approved by the Journal des Spectacles, was later lifted. But the play, announced for 31 August (14 Fructidor, year ii) was dogged by misfortune. The explosion of the Grenelle powder works having occurred that day, the first performance was postponed until 16 Fructidor, year ii (2 September 1794). La Fête de la Raison, under its new title of La Rosière Républicaine, was then put on the program of the Opera. ‘L’Hymne à la Raison’ [Hymn to Reason] became ‘L’Hymne à la Victoire’ [Hymn to Victory], and in the priest’s couplets it was no longer question of ‘the Temple of Reason’, but of ‘the Temple of Virtue’. The play was performed again 4 Vendémiaire, year iii.33 The Abréviateur universel,34 the Petites affiches,35 the Journal des spectacles,36 and the Journal des théâtres,37 published detailed reviews of it. The latter paper even stated that it enjoyed a total success. As for the choir of old women in scene v, it inspired a poem that the doyen of tragic poets, Ximénés, dedicated to Maréchal.38

5

Denis le Tyran. Diogène et Alexandre

Since we are discussing Maréchal’s theatrical compositions, the moment has arrived to say a few words about another of his plays, entitled Denis le Tyran [Denis the Tyrant]. It was staged at the Théâtre des Arts (Opéra) on 6 Fructidor, 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Bruyr, Grétry, p. 47. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, ed. of year viii, p. 173. Garros, Rouget de Lisle at la Marseillaise, pp. 26–27. Journal des Spectacles, no. 185, 14 Nivôse, year ii. Journal des Theatres, no. 41, p. 331. Pierre, Les hymnes et les chants de la Revolution, no. 2.226. Oeuvres de Grétry, Leipzig, second installment, p.v. preface by Edouard Fétis. Abréviateur universel, 21 Fructidor [7 September 1794]. Petites affiches, 19 Fructidor, p. 9.146. Journal des spectacles, no. 185, 14 Nivôse year ii. Journal des théâtres, no. 52, 17 Vendémiaire year ii. Ibid.

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ten days before the repeat performance of La Fête de la raison. Grétry had composed the music for this as well. A bitter letter from the illustrious musician tells us that the committee of the Opera had to be persuaded to mount this play. It required the threat to pull Denis le Tyran from the repertory for Grétry to obtain the demanded acceleration in the process.39 It is known that Denis, tyrant of Syracuse, reduced to the final extremity, was forced to set himself up as a school master in Corinth. This was the historical fact that Maréchal took as the basis of his play. Denis, made drunk by the shoemaker Chrysostom, falls asleep, and his children carry out all the pranks natural to their age. Among other things, they sit on his back as if he were a horse. Denis finally awakens and allows them to see the diadem he’d hidden under his clothing. Chrysostom, told of this, notifies a good sans-culotte, Timoleon, magistrate of Corinth, who orders that the ‘ignoble and mercenary tyrant’ be beaten with branches and then banished. May he vegetate, prey to need. Away with him, far from us, this profane witness. The school is razed, and in its place a statue of liberty is constructed. The Journal des Théatres reviewed the play on 7 Fructidor, year ii without saying if it was well received,40 but Maréchal claims that, since it was ‘quite gay’, it was a success at its first performances,41 which is contested by Grétry’s biographer.42 In any case, the Journal des Théatres of 8 Fructidor inserted an attack on the play, finding in particularly poor taste the game of leapfrog on stage. It added: ‘Writers must be less fertile and their works be worthy of the great people before whom they are performed’.43 This article seems clearly to be a stone cast into Maréchal’s garden. Did it have an effect on the artists? This is possible, for the performances of Denis le Tyran soon came to an end. Maréchal wrote on 22 Fructidor to ‘Citizen Minister of the Interior’ in order to obtain from him a letter of recommendation to the artists of the Opéra to encourage them to ‘bring back Denis le tyran maître d’ecole a Corinthe and also for them to consider Diogène, opera in three acts, music by Grétry’. He added, in indirect response to the criticism of the Journal des Théatres, ‘These two patriotic plays, lacking in any Jacobinism, are

39 40 41 42 43

‘Une lette inédite de Grétry’, Annales Révolutionnaires, 7th year, 1914, no. 1, pp. 142–143. Journal des théâtres, no. 8, p. 61. Archives Nationales, F 17/1297. Le Breton, Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages d’André-Ernest Grétry, p. 24. Journal des théâtres, no. 8, p. 61.

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perfectly in keeping with the order of the day’. The letter ended with these words: ‘Sylvain Maréchal, who has not yet asked anything of the government and has been granted special privileges, and who, despite the injustices done him, was never unfaithful to the fatherland and to letters, addresses himself with confidence to citizen minister and asks of him nothing but a note to electrify a theater honoured with the name of “République” ’.44 The fate of Maréchal’s request to the minister regarding Denis le Tyran is unknown, but we know that the Committee of Public Instruction more or less aligned itself with the Journal des Théatres, since it felt obliged to suppress several passages of Diogène et Alexandre submitted by the author.45 In this play, as in Denis le Tyran, there were doubtless passages of verse with ambiguous meanings, or rather heavy with critical sense and latent opposition, like this one: ‘When we are submissive we cease to exist’.46 There was no question of submitting even the amputated play for review. Payan the elder, commissioner of Public Instruction, charged with returning the manuscript to Maréchal, showed no hurry in carrying out this charge, and Maréchal several times had to insist the manuscript be returned to him.47 Since we are unable to locate the latter, it is not possible to provide the play’s theme, but we are led to believe that Sylvain drew the idea from the quatrain of his former confrere on the Etrennes du Parnasse François de Neufchateau, who, opposing Diogenes to Alexander, had the Cynic say: Who is more to be pitied, you or me? How many masters do you have that I defy? Alexander is the salve of a thousand passions; Of these thousand tyrants Diogenes is the king.48

6

The Cult of the Supreme Being

Having gotten somewhat ahead of events, we must back up to examine Maréchal’s attitude toward the Cult of the Supreme Being. This attitude, which was passed over in silence by some and disconcerted others, seems bizarre and strange to many, but does not surprise us at all. In order to be surprised one

44 45 46 47 48

Archives Nationales, F 17/1297. Procès-verbaux du Comité d’Instruction publique, vol. iv, p. 210. Bruyr, Grétry, p. 74. Undated letter from Maréchal to Payan, Archives Nationales, f 7/1.1012. Etrennes du Parnasse. Choix de poésies, 1784, p. 72.

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has to view Maréchal as a founder of the Cult of Reason and ignore that this revolutionary viewed the religious question as a revolutionary, that is, he considered it more from a political angle than a philosophical one. One must also believe in a Cult of Reason oriented towards atheism and a Cult of the Supreme Being inspired by mystical tendencies. When one subscribes to none of these propositions Sylvain Maréchal’s adherence to the Cult of the Supreme Being appears quite natural. There is no need to attribute it to ‘a salutary fear of the Incorruptible’,49 as Dr. Robinet imagined, following Grégoire.50 This explanation collapses on its own, since it is proved that Maréchal, addressing villagers, had willingly accepted a kind of ‘sans-culotte god’ since early 1793. In his Etrennes de la République Française, he indeed invoked the god of free men: God of free men! You who held out your arm to protect the insurrection of the Hebrews against the aristocrats of the Nile, assist us as well. Our cause is yours. The incense that is offered you by slaves should not be pleasing to your eyes. Converted to you, lead our deputies by the hand. Punish the wicked priests who we cannot overcome. Awaken remorse in the hearts of the enemies of the Revolution. Make the last guilty men return to the bosom of the fatherland and render us worthy to serve as models to the nations that contemplate us. So be it. Amen.51 In late Fructidor, year iii, a month after the fall of Robespierre, Maréchal again made the case for the Cult of the Supreme Being, which he found ‘sublime’. He painted a moving portrait of the festival of 29 Prairial and remarked that at this ceremony ‘the God of Free Men’, who must not be confused with that of priests, smiled through the sun’s disk. He adds that for the first time he was being rendered a cult worthy of him: ‘O how beautiful is the religion whose ministers are fathers, hard working wives, honest, graceful girls, and boys impatient to become, men’.52 Dr. Robinet explanation for Maréchal’s adherence to the new cult is thus of no value. In truth, Maréchal had approved the decree of 18 Frimaire, and it was logical that he would applaud its complement of 18 Floréal, whose goal was both that of calming those who held repressed beliefs and opposing a complete system of national festivals to Catholicism. 49 50 51 52

Robinet, Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Révolution et de l’Empire, vol, ii, p. 511. Grégoire, Histoire des sectes, Paris, 1828, vol. i, p. 109. Maréchal, Etrennes de la République, pp. 94–95. Maréchal, Tableau historique des évènements révolutionnaires, p. 134.

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To be sure, the existence of the Supreme Being was recognized and officially proclaimed, and a festival had been dedicated to it, which shocked the private opinions of the atheist Maréchal. But the good people of the countryside still clung to their divinity. Wisdom and the interests of the Revolution demanded that they not be frightened: this is what Maréchal thought. In order to more easily raise them to his level, he believed the best thing to do was to descend to their level: The people are children who you must make your friend: To raise them, you must go down to them, Praise their gewgaws, embrace their chimeras, And coat bitter truths with honey.53 Since the villagers who constituted the very foundation of the Republic still believed in the Supreme Being, Maréchal sacrificed his atheism for them on the altar of the Revolution. To be closer to the truth, we should say he ‘seemed’ to sacrifice his atheism, for it is clear that he invoked ‘the God of Free Men’ without attaching any more importance to that revolutionary entity than he had to ‘the Providence of Nature’. But was there only a Cult of the Supreme Being in the decree of 18 Floreal, reduced, incidentally, to ‘the practice of man’s duties?’ Certainly not. Every one of the articles composing this decree bore the mark of the highest moral inspiration. One could say that never before had a legislative text demonstrated such a concern for morals. This was because it was essential to ensure ‘the stability and happiness of the Republic’ within, and to respond without to the crowned hypocrites who depicted the French people as immoral and corrupt. Robespierre, in his famous report, stressed this essential point. But what was it that Maréchal never ceased demanding and advocating for? Above all, republican morals. His warm reception the decree of 18 Floréal, which calmed his fears and satisfied his moral vision, is then easily explained. But this decree, ‘this beautiful decree’, as he wrote,54 pleased Maréchal for another reason. Among the forty ceremonies foreseen by articles six and seven could be found about a dozen festivals he had called for in his Almanach de Républicains.55 How could he not have been flattered by borrowings such as these? What a joy for him to salute the beloved children of his imagination

53 54 55

Maréchal, Dieu et les prêtres, fragment xii, p. 15. Maréchal, Tableau historique des évènements révolutionnaires, p. 149. As can be seen, we are far from Dr. Robinet’s assertion that Robespierre ‘simply contented

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become national festivals by the grace of the legislators! As for the festivals whose initiative could not be attributed to him, he applauded their choice. He even took it upon himself to show the villagers in simple and touching terms the importance of each of them.56 He even composed hymns for the thirty-six décadaire ceremonies enumerated in article seven. He was led to glorify ‘the Supreme Being and Nature’ in these terms: Kind God, to punish men You briefly allowed kings. You made us what we are, We owe you our wise laws. Against the despotic horde Lead our brave defenders, Spread your gifts and favours Over our holy Republic. Masterpiece of the Supreme Being, Eternal miracle of his hands, Nature! We take you for him, But he alone commands destiny. Above all, the worker is his labours, The cause comes before the effects, Without digging deeper, Let us love he who made us. Let imposture declaim. Adore at the same altar The Supreme Being and Nature, This is the duty of every mortal. The incense of gratitude Should burn for them day and night. Let us dedicate all our love to them For the benefits of existence.57

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himself with loosely copying for the ceremonies of his cult Sylvain Maréchal’s Almanach républicain’. (Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Révolution et de l’Empire, vol. i, p. 758.) Maréchal, Tableau historique des évènements révolutionnaires, pp. 146–149. Maréchal, Hymnes pour les trente-six fêtes décadaires.

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And these verses are not the only ones the atheist Maréchal dedicated to the Supreme Being at that time. He composed a ‘prayer of a republican lover to the Supreme Being’.58 For the famous festival of 20 Prairial in a pot-pourri of texts he parodied a certain number of his Fragmens sur Dieu.59 Finally, in an anthology of republican hymns that appeared around the same time we find some of his couplets in this genre: Supreme author of all things, Providence of the universe, O! you, first of causes Whose hands broke our chains. From our republican souls Receive the solemn tribute, And on the debris of our chains, Allow us to raise an altar in your name.60 It would appear that the same opportunistic concerns, the same political reasons that impelled Maréchal to rally to the Cult of the Supreme Being, led him to rally in year iv [that of the Conspiracy of Equals – tr.] to the religious program of the Equals. This at least is what stands out in Buonarotti’s explanations, for the latter signals no opposition within the Insurrectionary Committee of the Babouviste conspiracy to the deist form to be given the new religion.61 As Albert Mathiez noted, this religion was nothing but ‘a second edition of the Cult of the Supreme Being’,62 and Buonarotti admits that the original idea harkened back to the decree of 18 Floréal.63 It required the definitive triumph of reaction a few years later to lead Maréchal to return to the rationalist combat in the purely philosophical domain. It was only then that he would vigourously raise again the banner of atheism without worrying about the concerns of the moment.

58 59 60 61 62 63

Maréchal, Hymnes pour les trente-six fêtes décadaires. Maréchal, Lucrèce français, year iv, pp. 217–220. Recueil d’hymnes républicains et de chansons guerrières, hymne ii. Buonarroti, Conspiration pour l’Egalité, 1828, p. 254. Mathiez, La Théophilanthropie et le Culte décadaire, p. 45. Buonarroti, Conspiration pour l’Egalité, 1828, p. 167, note.

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285

The Thermidorian Reaction: Retractions and Denials

Robespierre’s fall marked the decline of the Revolution. The former prisoners, the supporters of the aristocracy, the suppliers who’d grown rich and the purchasers of national properties in a hurry to guarantee their situation, the shameless proconsuls, skeptics and pleasure-seekers who trembled before the Incorruptible, the muscadins who’d hidden themselves behind the masks of terrorists to escape arrest, the former Girondins filled with bitterness and rancour, those who starved the people, intriguers, and libertines who didn’t forgive the republic for having disturbed their calculus of fortune or pleasure, all of them returned to center stage. Under the pressure of this monstrous coalition the Convention, whose awesome splendour had made the world tremble, descended into the most villainous cowardice. Only a few months were required to trample on the principles it had solemnly proclaimed, to barbarically sacrifice the men who had executed the harsh measures it had prescribed. The White Terror succeeded the Red Terror. In this atmosphere of fear and corruption, the Revolution was viewed by the public as nothing but a bloodbath. The sparkling blade of the guillotine and the multitude of vices that the revolutionary torrent had willy-nilly mingled with civic virtues was constantly evoked. The harsh necessities that accompany every renewal, the violent and terrible efforts without which there is no victory against a conspiring world, were considered criminal by a forgetful generation. It examined the Revolution in its most revolting and horrific details, it personified it in several cruel and flawed men, it attributed the origin of those glorious days to the lowest instincts of the human beast.64 ‘Slander came from all sides’, Billaud-Varenne said,65 and not just from royalists and federalists, from whom this would be natural, but from the very people who had applauded extremist measures. It was impossible to count the discouraged, disoriented, disgusted, and misled patriots who sang songs of renunciation and recanted their former beliefs. The ex-Maratist Andre Dumont pursued the ‘drinkers of blood’ with the same eagerness with which he hunted down ‘the black animals’. Babeuf, a man of the greatest sincerity, invented countless neologisms to depict the horrors of the revolutionary government and to bury Maximilien Robespierre in anathemas. The Shepherd Sylvain forgot that he had at times howled with the wolves. Between the two men who fought 64

65

In an unpublished letter Jaurès asked Gabriel Deville to provide him with ‘some details concerning Sylvain Maréchal in 1795 and 1794’. [Collection of the author]. This paragraph answers Jaurès’s question. Bégis, Mémoires, inédits et correspondance …, Paris, 1893, p. 234.

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within him, the philosopher and the politician, it was the former who won out. His old fund of sentimental anarchism and social pessimism, repressed and sublimated since 1789 by daily activity, had a resurgence and guided his pen as he delivered the most acerbic criticisms against the men and things of the Revolution. People have attempted to explain this attitude by saying ‘he needed to make a living’, the Révolutions de Paris no longer being around to supplement the modest salary attached to the library. But we should not forget that Sylvain had been sheltered from need since his marriage. His change of position, which in any case was not as marked as one might think, is only too well explained by his singular character and the terrible atmosphere. Nevertheless, whatever the circumstances, they do not excuse the fantastic accusations and odious allegations freely lavished on his former friends. Nothing can erase this stain on Maréchal’s life. It was particularly in the Crimes de la Révolution [The Crimes of the Revolution], many passages of which he wrote, that Maréchal made himself into the implacable censor of the great drama in which he was one of the actors. If we place side by side these passages with those excerpted from the Tableau Historique des événemens révolutionnaires [Historical Tableau of Revolutionary Events] we obtain the elements needed to summarise his opinions. In the first instance, for whose benefit was the Revolution made? Maréchal answers with no hesitation and in several places that it was for the benefit of the Third Estate. The class of wealthy businessmen, long jealous of the prerogatives of the nobility, only cooperated in its fall in order to take its place. The class of planters, ‘who were supposed to possess the most virtue’, only applauded the destruction of feudal rights and chateaux in the hope of enriching itself. The result was clear: the businessmen had become aristocrats ‘a thousand times more dangerous than the nobles’, and the planters have set themselves up in the chateaux, ‘purchased for next to nothing’. Both can be likened ‘to the speculators on the steps of the Palais-Royal’.66 Was it worthwhile to unleash an entire people, to cause so much blood to be spilled to obtain a simple displacement of wealth with no benefit for the masses? For they must have known that popular fury was extreme: ‘The Egyptians, who passed for wise men, imagined a hieroglyph to depict a people in revolt: it showed a snake biting its tail and quenching its thirst on its own blood’.67 66 67

Crimes de la Révolution, vol. iii, p. 319; and Recueil d’ouvrages et de fragments d’ouvrages de Sylvain Maréchal. Crimes de la Révolution, Introduction, p. 14.

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To be sure, the Revolution was not solely responsible for the blood spilled since 1789. One must also take cupidity and ignorance into account. One thing is certain: without the ‘demagogic tyrants’ who willfully incited the people, popular enthusiasm would have subsided after the first outbursts. It was these ‘tyrants’ who did the most harm. Most members of the Constituent Assembly came to Paris with praiseworthy intentions. But soon, made soft by the morals of the capital, corrupted by the favours of the court and the gold of the House of Orleans, they quickly lost sight of the goal pursued. They became a docile herd in the hands of the ‘ambitious and vindictive’, the ‘ferocious and bloodthirsty’ Mirabeau, ‘at one and the same time an astute courtier and an unbridled demagogue’, the ‘feared idol in Versailles and king of the markets of Paris’. All it required was ‘the occasionally eloquent barking of this bloodthirsty mastiff’ to lead that ‘gathering of chosen deputies’ to leave the road of reason.68 To be sure, the members of the Legislative Assembly were not worth much more than the members of the Constituent, but the palm for ‘wickedness’ must be handed to the members of the Convention. ‘The thirty tyrants of Athens were nothing but apprentices in infamy compared to the 750 members of the Convention of France, and there’s nothing surprising about this when we recall how a portion of these deputies were called to their magistracies’.69 None of the factions of the Convention was up to the challenge of the moment. The healthiest portion, according to Maréchal, the Girondins, included several talented men, but cowardice, intrigues, and moderantisme corrupted them. The Mountain was less cowardly but more bloodthirsty.70 By persecuting the nobles and priests they made them attractive and did them a favour. A poor method! It was not individuals who had to be killed, it was prejudices, ‘which could only be done through wisely organised public education’. It had to be proved that republican government is the best of all that it is indulgent and peaceful,71 but it was the contrary that was done. ‘The decemvirs resembled a company of butchers, owners of a herd of 25,000,000 heads’.72 Let us now take several representative figures and see how Maréchal judged them. Brissot is depicted as ‘an Englishman in his principles’, believing nothing was greater than the British government and all but ‘saw another Cromwell in Lafayette, Dumouriez, Custine and several others’.73 A short while later Maré-

68 69 70 71 72 73

Crimes de la Révolution, vol. iii, p. 314; and Recueil d’ouvrages … Crimes de la Révolution, Introduction, p. 17. Crimes de la Révolution, vol. v, pp. 117–121. Crimes de la Révolution, vol. v, p. 522. Crimes de la Révolution, vol. v, p. 112. Maréchal, Tableau historique des évènemens révolutionnaires, pp. 25–26.

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chal was willing to admit that his former comrade ‘was not an intriguer by taste’. He loved to play a role, he had a certain intelligence and thought he had even more. It was he who made denunciations fashionable. Not that he was wrong to call for the surveillance of the King’s ministers and the committees of the royal offices. But wanting to be involved in everything before he had sufficient strength and experience to weigh in the balance of public affairs and guide the course of a great revolution, Brissot became a disorganising force in politics and caused much harm. He committed two capital crimes that caused torrents of human blood to flow. We are not speaking of his supposed federalism, the rallying call of one faction for the destruction of another. The precocious freedom granted blacks and the no less precocious declaration of war, these two decisions based on Brissot’s reports, are two great crimes of opinion which had a cruel influence on the two worlds. Philanthropic principles were doubtless in the hearts of many other citizens besides Condorcet and Grégoire, but it required mature heads to carry out this noble speculation of making men of Negroes.74 Danton is handled every bit as roughly. This tribune had ‘no other energy besides the force of his lungs and some natural intelligence. He was lacking in acquired knowledge, being too epicurean and lazy to acquire it’. Maréchal accurately added: ‘Studying behind a desk did not suit him. He only thought through quips and never wrote’.75 Robespierre was buried beneath coarse insults and slanders. Maréchal, like all the Thermidorians, made him the scapegoat for the Terror. ‘The guillotine steaming with corpses was the altar’ where this ‘Nero’, this ‘infernal being’, ‘dedicated a cult to the common father of humans’. He wanted to reestablish the monarchy (but who can possibly believe this?). He organised ‘a certain counterrevolution’. In the most horrible of silences he cooked up ‘the most infamous of conspiracies’. And so his execution plunged the leagued powers into mourning at the same time that it reassured all patriots and good people.76

74

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Crimes de la Révolution, pp. 39–40. In year viii, in the Dictionnaire des athées, Sylvain would judge Brissot with indulgence. He would write: ‘He was a philosopher in theory as in practice and worthy of another century’. Crimes de la Révolution, vol. v, p. 123. Crimes de la Révolution vol. v, p. 154. And also Recueil d’ouvrages … Tableau historique des événemens révolutionnaires, p. 166ff.

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Momoro was nothing but a scoudrel and Cloots a spy who garbed himself in the cloak of philosophy ‘in order to better degrade and mislead the nation’.77 It was probably because they were former friends that Chaumette and Camille were not granted the least grace. Chaumette was a villain, a false brother, ‘the most dangerous of his whole gang’, ‘who made unworthy use of the favours of a people misled by his verbose eloquence. He preached a revolution he didn’t believe in and saw the Republic as nothing but a milk cow’. He and Hébert were not real atheists; they lacked the stuff for it. They were nothing but revolutionary Tartuffes who in public lamented the misfortunes of the time while eating like princes in private.78 As can be seen, we are far from the dedication of a book to the prosecutor of the Commune. If Maréchal is to be believed, Desmoulins’s punishment did not cost him a tear, for Camille had a light head that was turned by every wind. He supported La Fayette and ‘treated liberty like a courtesan’. His indecent conduct at the Revolutionary Tribunal sealed his condemnation.79 By drawing nothing but shadows on the revolutionary portrait Maréchal deformed historical reality. Dominated by his sensibility, carried away by a vigorous reaction against excesses, he did not seem to have realised that he falsified history. Leclerc (of the Vosges) would later write: ‘I request that this tale published by Prudhomme be sent along with its author to the Eskimos, the Patagons, and the orangutans to teach them his new way of writing history’.80 Maréchal attempted to justify his working method by the desire to cure the people of any blind confidence. He said that by recounting so many horrors he wanted to deposit in the popular soul an indelible impression that would shelter it from any deception.81 But how could he not feel that in showing only the livid stains of the Revolution he rendered it horrible and served the interests of triumphant reaction? ‘The republicans’, he wrote, moan when they see public opinion take a backward step every day. And what was the cause of this? The crimes they allowed to be committed and the impunity still enjoyed today by the people’s magistrates, who paid the

77 78 79 80 81

Maréchal, Recueil d’ouvrages … Tableau historique des évènemens révolutionnaires, p. 106 ff. Recueil d’ouvrages …, pp. 133–142; Maréchal, Tableau historique …, pp. 115–116. Crimes de la Révolution, vol. iii, p. 322. Tableau historique des évènemens révolutionnaires … p. 114. L’Ami des Lois, no. 469, 4 Frimaire [24 November 1796]. Crimes de la Révolution, Introduction, p. 19.

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executioners and invented punishments that caused a Revolution to be execrated that could have been kept so beautiful and so pure.82 If public opinion was retreating, it was also because men like Maréchal and Babeuf weakened and joined their voices to those of the supporters and instruments of the aristocracy. But they could not long hold this position. Workingclass poverty and agitation, the violence of repression, the luxury, insolence, and depravity of the bourgeois class would soon provoke in them a salutary return to their social ideas, which had remained unshakeable despite the disappointments they’d experienced. Sylvain was perhaps sincere when he wrote: ‘All parties must be convinced of the need to maintain an established government. The one we have is doubtless far from perfect; it is only with time that it will improve. Woe then on whoever still wants to make a revolution!’83 This would not prevent him a short time later from joining the nucleus of neo-Jacobins around Babeuf and working in a revolutionary way at removing ‘the established government’.

82 83

Crimes de la Révolution, vol. v, pp. 195–196; and Recueil d’ouvrages … Crimes de la Révolution, vol. v, p. 525; and Recueil d’ouvrages …

part 3 After the Revolution

∵

Chapter 12 1

Otto Karmin’s Assertions

It was Buonarotti who was the first to cite Sylvain Maréchal as a Babouvist in 1828.1 Coming from a man who played so important a role in the Conspiracy of Equals such an assertion seems uncontestable. Even so, Otto Karmin contests it,2 and to back up his assertions he argues substantially as follows: 1. No contemporary author cites Maréchal as a Babouvist, and particularly as a member of the Secret Directory of Public Safety which, as we know, was the soul of the conspiracy; 2. Dr. Robinet seems not to grant Buonarotti’s thesis any value, since he makes no mention of it in his biography of Maréchal; 3. Nowhere in Maréchal’s entire oeuvre, in not a single work signed with his full name, his initials, or a pseudonym, ‘do we encounter any specifically communist ideas’. Sensing the fragility of such a thesis, Otto Karmin thought to hedge somewhat: ‘Everything changes if we accept that Maréchal was the author of Dame Nature’. Nevertheless, after having analysed that pamphlet, even after having attributed it to Maréchal, O. Karmin, caring little for logic, still does not decide in favour of the idea. He does not subscribe to Buonarroti’s assertion, contenting himself with evading any conclusion with these vague words: ‘Guess if you can, choose if you dare’. It is true that Dr. Robinet does not speak of the role Maréchal played in Babeuf’s conspiracy, but he asserts that Maréchal was the author of Dame Nature, ‘a social manifesto that aimed at nothing less than establishing a republic that would soon become the instrument of an eminently socialist transformation’.3 If we follow Otto Karmin’s reasoning, since Dr. Robinet accepts that Maréchal was the author of Dame Nature, he thus admits that Maréchal participated in Babeuf’s conspiracy. The argument drawn from Dr. Robinet’s silence is thus invalid. As for the communist opinions that, according to Karmin, cannot be found in Maréchal’s works, we will not linger over this assertion, which this book puts the lie to. 1 Buonarroti, Conspiration pour l’Egalité dite de Babeuf, Brussels, 1828. 2 ‘Sylvain Maréchal et le Manifeste des Egaux,’ Revue historique de la Révolution française, vol. 1, pp. 507–513. 3 Robinet, Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Révolution et l’Empire, vol. ii, p. 510.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_014

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But how is it that no contemporary writer cited Maréchal as a Babouvist and member of the Secret Directory of Public Safety? This is what we must examine. In doing so we will also resolve a problem that has never been addressed by any of the historians of the Conspiracy of the Equals: why was Maréchal not among the defendants in the Vendôme trial?

2

Why Maréchal Was Not Accused at Vendôme

The Vendôme trial was essentially based on the papers seized in the flat occupied by Babeuf at the time of his arrest and the interrogation and depositions of the traitor Grisel. There are two pieces in which the name Maréchal appears, preceded by the first name Sylvain or Silvain: a) The list of subscribers to Babeuf’s newspaper, the Tribun du peuple,4 b) The twenty-fourth piece of the sixth bundle, which is in all likelihood in Babeuf’s hand, and in which the latter requests that it be noted alongside the names of the citizens he designates ‘what departments they are from’.5 The pieces on which Maréchal’s name figure without any indication of a first name are the following: a) The first piece of the sixth bundle marked as follows: ‘Maréchal: Pistols, daggers, Manifesto to Maréchal’.6 b) The first piece of the seventh bundle, which is in Buonarroti’s hand and bears the title: ‘List of democrats to be appointed to the National Convention’. Maréchal is designated as potential representative of the department of Landes.7 c) The third piece of the seventh bundle, which is in the hand of Pillé, Babeuf’s secretary. It contains a list of names, many of which figure on the preceding list. Maréchal is cited without any mention.8 d) The tenth piece of the twenty-second bundle containing a list of citizens of the Homme-Armé section, sympathizers or suspects. We read there this mention: ‘Maréchal, three sons, Rue de la Corderie, no. 2, third floor’.9

4 5 6 7 8 9

Archives Nationales, F 7/4.278. Copies des pièces saisies dans le local que Babeuf occupait …, vol. i, p. 68. Copies des pièces saisies dans le local que Babeuf occupait …, vol. i, p. 50. Copies des pièces saisies dans le local que Babeuf occupait …, vol. i, p. 70. Copies des pièces saisies dans le local que Babeuf occupait …, vol. i, p. 74. Suite de la copie des pièces …, vol. ii, p. 199.

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Given the place occupied by Maréchal in the conspiracy it might seem odd that so few pieces concern him. But Buonarroti informs us that when a portion of the conspiracy’s papers were seized all the memoranda and works that dealt with ‘the definitive legislation for equality’ – a branch in which Maréchal was in all likelihood of great assistance – were ‘in the hands of a member of the committee in a place the police were unable to discover’.10 This important fact, along with the practice of the members of the Secret Directory to not sign anything11 explains the lack of pieces that could serve as evidence against Maréchal. Possessing the six pieces indicated above, what could the investigating prosecutor hold against Sylvain Maréchal? In the first instance, it was unquestionable that the tenth piece of the twenty-second bundle had nothing to do with him. And then, none of the other pieces were in his hand. Finally, the ‘Manifesto of the Equals’, which constituted four pieces of the seventh bundle,12 was not in his handwriting and its author was unknown. Nevertheless, if we examine pieces b and c above, and set aside the ninth piece of the seventh bundle (in which Maréchal no longer figures on the list of those to be appointed to the National Convention),13 it could be inferred that a certain Maréchal who was perhaps – though not necessarily – Sylvain, enjoyed the confidence of the leaders of the plot. This presumption led Carnot, in the name of the Executive Directory, on 24 Floréal, year iv, three days after Babeuf’s arrest, to issue a warrant against Maréchal,14 not specifying either a first name or an address. Given its lack of precision, such a warrant was null and void, like the warrants delivered against the former priest Dolivier and so many other citizens15 whose names had been vaguely determined during the preliminary investigation. Even if Sylvain Maréchal had been arrested, what motives could have been invoked to accuse him of conspiracy? No positive proof of complicity had been discovered against him. He found himself included among that ‘mass of individuals’ about whom the president of the High Court spoke16 who could only be blamed for having their names listed without their knowledge. In fact, aside from the Duplays, father and son, who so to speak paid for their relationship with Robespierre, all those who appear in the papers of the conspiracy 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Buonarroti, Histoire de la conspiration pour l’Egalité, 1850 edition, p. 226. Buonarroti, Histoire de la conspiration pour l’Egalité, 1850 edition, p. 83. Copies des pièces saisies dans le local que Babeuf occupait …, vol. i, pp. 159–163 and Archives Nationales, F 7/4.277.1. Ibid. Archives Nationales, F 7/4.276. Ibid. Discours des accusateurs nationaux, vol. iv, p. 47 (second pagination).

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as potentially fulfilling a political or administrative function, but about whom there was nothing that spoke of relations with the conspirators, were left off the indictment. Given the lack of proof in the seized pieces, it would have been necessary for Babeuf, or one of the accused, or Grisel to denounce him in order for Maréchal to be indicted. Babeuf was twice called on to name his co-conspirators, but he rejected this provocation with horror.17 There remains Grisel. He was present on the afternoon of 11 Floréal, year iv, at the session of the Secret Directory in Darthé’s home. According to Buonarroti, the following men attended that meeting: Babeuf, Buonarroti, Debon, Darthé, Maréchal, Didier, and five soldiers, among them Germain.18 Grisel would thus have seen Maréchal there, but he likely did not learn his name, and consequently, according to his deposition, it was impossible for him to denounce Maréchal. Grisel, in speaking of this meeting, said: ‘I observed that the citizens who were there at that moment were Germain, Darthé, Didier, Buonarroti – who had taken me there – and Babeuf. I think there was one other man there, but I don’t know his name; I didn’t recognise him among those present’.19 And at Ricord’s request he repeated: ‘Among those I found at Babeuf’s were 1) Babeuf, 2) Buonarroti, who had brought me, 3) Darthé, 4) Germain, and another individual whose name I didn’t know, whose name wasn’t told me, and who didn’t positively seem to be a member’.20 These assertions were confirmed by Grisel in these terms at the sitting of 23 Ventôse: ‘There was Citizen Didier, Citizen Germain, Citizen Babeuf, Citizen Buonarroti who had brought me, since I was joining it, and another individual whose name I didn’t know, who never spoke during the meeting, who seemed to be a passive being, and who I never saw again and whose name I never knew’.21 As we see, the individuals presented as having participated at the meeting of 11 Floréal, year iv were all named by Grisel except for two, Debon and Maréchal. The three other soldiers, Fyon, Massart, and Rossignol were, in fact, mentioned by Grisel a short time later in his deposition.22 The individual Grisel does not name is thus either Debon or Maréchal. We are inclined to think that it was Maréchal. Indeed, Debon, depicted by Buonarroti as being hotheaded, ‘always

17 18 19 20 21 22

Buonarroti, Histoire de la conspiration pour l’Egalité, 1850 edition, p. 226. Buonarroti, Histoire de la conspiration pour l’Egalité, 1850 edition, p. 109. Débats du procès-instruit par la Haute-Cour de Justice, séante a Vendôme, vol. ii, p. 77. Ibid. Débats du procès-instruit par la Haute-Cour de Justice, séante a Vendôme, vol. ii, p. 86. Débats du procès-instruit par la Haute-Cour de Justice, séante a Vendôme, vol. ii, p. 87.

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took active part in the labours of the Secret Directory’.23 If he had been present he would not have failed to intervene in the debate, his name would in all likelihood have been mentioned, and Grisel could have revealed it. Unlike Debon, Maréchal, not in the least loquacious and a stammerer, would rarely intervene in the discussions. Everything leads us to believe that Grisel’s description is that of Maréchal. Do we need to add that Grisel, after 11 Floréal, participated in two important meetings of the plotters: on the evening of 19 Floréal at the home of Drouet, and the evening of 20 Floréal at Massart’s. But neither Debon nor Maréchal having participated in these two meetings,24 on this occasion Grisel again was not able to exercise his talents as an informer at their expense. Another hypothesis comes to mind. Could Maréchal have benefited from intervention from high places? There were, in fact, many individuals occupying or haunting the avenues of power who Maréchal knew. Elicited or not, their assistance was essential. Unfortunately, no written traces of anything like this remain. We can only make suppositions. The first that presents itself concerns Maréchal’s brother-in-law, J.-B. DenisDesprès. He was named secretary general of the general council of the ministry of the interior in early 1803,25 which leads one to believe he had held an administrative function for a few years. If Desprès occupied a post in the state apparatus in year iv, either at the ministry of the interior or the ministry of police, he could obviously have used his influence in favour of his brother-in-law. But this supposition cannot be sustained, for the personnel records of these two ministries in the year iv do not allow us to affirm that he participated in them.26 More likely would have been an intervention by representative René-PierreFrancois Morand – a friend of Maréchal’s and at the time deputy of the DeuxSèvres on the Council of Ancients – with the minister of Police Cochon de Lapparent.27 It was under Cochon’s ministry, which he occupied since 14 Germinal, year iv, that the Babouvist conspirators were arrested. It is possible that an effective demarche was taken in this direction, Cochon having also been deputy from Deux-Sèvres.

23 24 25 26 27

Buonarroti, Histoire de la conspiration pour l’Egalité, 1850 edition, p. 113. Buonarroti, Histoire de la conspiration pour l’Egalité, 1850 edition, pp. 120 and 124. See chapter xv. Archives Nationales, F 7/3.006, F 1bI 3 1 and 11–14. Robinet, Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Révolution et l’Empire, vol. ii, p. 579. Marehcal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 295. In the Dictionnaire Maréchal listed Morand with the note: ‘An atheist with his friends’.

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In any case, not having been denounced by Grisel, benefiting from the solidarity of his comrades as well as the weakness of the evidence against him – which does not exclude some form of intervention – all of this explains how Maréchal, like Debon, escaped the High Court of Vendôme. This also explains the silence of contemporaries about Maréchal’s Babouvisme. As for G. Pariset’s assertion that Maréchal was ‘perhaps a false brother, since the police failed to pursue him’,28 it is obvious that this can also rank among one of the hypotheses. But we should observe that this gratuitous assertion, which is also applicable to Debon and others, not only does not square with Maréchal’s character and conduct, but unlike the preceding explanations, it is based on absolutely nothing.

3

Maréchal and Babeuf

It would be interesting to know when Sylvain Maréchal met Babeuf. It is not known and the work of Albert Thomas29 and Gabriel Deville,30 following that of Victor Advielle31 and Buonarroti, leaves this point in obscurity. In February 1793 Babeuf, deprived of his public post and prosecuted for the charge of the forgeries committed in Montdidier, took refuge in Paris. He found hospitality and work with Fournier the American, but this precarious position could not last. Babeuf suffered at being a charge on his benefactor. He enlisted in the Batavian Legion and, as a result, for a month had food and a place to sleep. During this time, his wife and children, in Roye, were without resources, battling off merciless creditors, living in the direst poverty. Everyone was against him, and his beautiful hopes of a political role in the Batavian Legion faded at the very moment when, in order to avoid the costs of legal actions against them, his wife was forced to abandon some of the family furniture.32 It was when he was in this frightening situation, his back against the wall, that Babeuf, not knowing what to do, appealed to Sylvain Maréchal for assistance. He wrote him on 26 March 1793: ‘The man who addresses you is a citizen,

28 29 30 31 32

Pariset, Babouvisme et maçonnerie, Publications de la Faculté des lettres de l’Université de Strabourg, 1924, fasciscule 21, p. 270. Thomas, ‘La pensée socialiste de Babeuf avant la Conspiration des Egaux’, Revue socialiste, vol. xl and xli. Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française, vol. v. Advielle, Histoire de G. Babeuf et du babouvisme, 1884. Dommanget, Les Classiques de la Revolution: Pages choisies de Babeuf, ch. iv. Advielle, Histoire de G. Babeuf et du babouvisme, 1884, vol. i, pp. 98–99.

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a patriot crushed under the weight of misfortune. He saw in your writings all the compassion you inspire for the sufferings of others, so he knows in advance that you will be touched by his sad position’.33 This opening section allows us to infer that on this date Babeuf did not know Maréchal personally but, having read his writings, he had seen in their author a comrade in ideology and egalitarian aspirations. This is proved by the fact that later in the letter, after having laid out his revolutionary bona fides, his campaigns at the Correspondant Picard, and his battle against indirect taxes, feudalism and the constitution, Babeuf addresses the social question. He then says that he was suspended from his post at the Directory of Montdidier and concludes by laying before the ‘generous Sylvain’ the destitution that awaits him when he is freed. Though fearing to abuse the patience of his ‘brother’, he requests that he intervene to obtain for him a post as a printer with Prudhomme.34 Sylvain was not insensitive to the distress of a man who, like him, lamented ‘the lot of the unfortunate class’. Nevertheless, he did not find a solution to Babeuf’s problem with Prudhomme. Thanks to Chaumette and Garin, Maréchal was able to find a job for Babeuf with the administration of staple goods at the Paris Commune, from which he moved on to the staple goods administration of the Republic. But the affair of the forgery having followed its course and the tribunal of Amiens having sentenced Babeuf to twenty years in irons, he was arrested on 14 November (24 Brumaire, year ii).35 Five days later, on 29 Brumaire, Babeuf wrote to Chaumette to explain his new situation and to make him see that he was being attacked for ‘his patriotism’. ‘You are aware’, he added, ‘that I know the prophet Silvain, but I have not yet spoken to him of my adventure’.36 On 17 Frimaire, year ii (7 December 1793), Citizeness Babeuf did all she could to obtain her husband’s freedom. She went to the police, and when they offered to release her spouse as long as a certain number of patriots would answer for him, she obtained the backing of Daube and Thibaudeau. Then, upon Menessier’s suggestion, she went to see Sylvain Maréchal. That very day Babeuf was released on parole on the triple guarantee of Daube, Thibaudeau, and Maréchal.37

33 34 35 36 37

Advielle, Histoire de G. Babeuf et du babouvisme, 1884, vol. i, p. 105. Advielle, Histoire de G. Babeuf et du babouvisme, 1884, vol. i, pp. 107–109. Revue socialiste, vol. xli, p. 59. Advielle, Histoire de G. Babeuf et du babouvisme, 1884, pp. 100–101. Archives départementales de la Somme, F. 129. Dommanget, Pages choisies de Babeuf, pp. 159–160.

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All of these facts prove beyond a doubt that Babeuf and Maréchal had increasingly close relations. A letter from Babeuf to Prudhomme dated 29 Nivôse, year ii (18 January 1794) confirms this: I am sending to patriot Prudhomme, who has taken such an interest in me, a few pieces that I invite him to read. They will abundantly prove that the person in whom he takes such an interest is worthy of it and that he did much to incite the persecution he is suffering. I ask my co-republican Prudhomme to pass these pieces on to our brother Sylvain, who will perhaps find the occasion to make them better known.38 This letter not only establishes the continuity of the relations between Babeuf and Maréchal, it shows that in year ii the latter was considered a confidant of Prudhomme as the editor-in-chief of the Révolutions de Paris. Babeuf was incarcerated yet again on 11 Pluviôse, year ii (30 January 1794) at the Abbaye and then Sainte-Pélagie. Maréchal, who had also known the heavy boredom of prison, did not forget his unfortunate companion. He sent him his Dieu et les prêtres and a recent edition of his atheist poetry, consoling reading matter that would make incarceration more bearable. Maréchal went further: he asked Babeuf to honestly formulate his opinion of the work put on sale by Patris. The prisoner responded on décadi, 10 Ventôse (28 February 1794): I have already devoured your work (I leave a blank for the best adjective for it; it must be created, since I know of none in the language). I don’t do this out of flattery; I never knew how to distribute it and I know you are incapable of receiving it. You have the confidence to ask my honest and precise opinion of this work, and you will have it. But give me the time to reread it, to savour it and weigh it as a whole and in all its parts with the complete attention it demands. In the meanwhile, allow me to relieve myself by promising that I will read it and that I’ll have my son read it. Many things in it will not seem new to him, since he was raised in this doctrine. And too trusting of his father, his friend (who he knows never lies to him), to doubt things he explains to his intelligence, I have no fear that the prejudices that remain in society have a hold on his soul and will prevail against my lessons. And so, I will not use your book to comfort him, as evidence in support of a conviction to be given to my disciple. But I welcome his ecstasy in advance, I take joy in his transports at the sight 38

Archives départementales de la Somme, F. 129 (copy of the letter).

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of a new catechism that, in place of lies, will show and force the men he loves and whose errors he looks on with pity to see the truth … I revel in his admiration for the charms of a poetry that lay out for him, in a ravishing manner palpable even to his childish intellect, the sole principles he knows, but which were presented to him without flowers and in a less clear, less regular, less felt manner. I want to give myself the pleasure of three or four days’ work on your poem and, at the end of this detailed labour, you’ll be called on to read my prosaic work, where I’ll use the license you grant me to judge what it would have been more fitting for me simply to admire. Don’t call me like an adulator. The feelings you inspire in me with your books bring with them, despite myself, expressions that would resemble panegyrics if I weren’t careful to ensure that they not transmit my soul’s real thoughts. In any event, you will perhaps find me too bold when I will give myself over to considerations on the portions of your work that best apply to ideas for consolidating man’s happiness. I have a presentiment of the ideas concerning supreme felicity and the reestablishment and preservation of true natural right, reconciled with social advantages, to which I will be led by these considerations. When I imagine your overall picture, I seem to catch a glimpse of the truth you have grasped far better than anyone I know, though you have not yet completely attained it.39 We do not know if the ‘prosaic work’ announced by Babeuf ever saw the light of day. But what is interesting to note in this case is Babeuf’s dithyrambic praise of Maréchal’s poetico-philosophocal work and social tendencies. The letter speaks of something else. Babeuf warns Sylvain that the previous evening he had had a dispute with his jailer. He speculated about its consequences and again requests his friend’s protection: ‘I don’t know if I will need your support in order not to be victim of the vengeance these subaltern bourgeois mete out’. Babeuf also thought that as a result of the decree of 8 Ventôse his affair, instead of falling under the jurisdiction of the Committee of Public Safety, would pass into the hands of the Committee of General Security. ‘We must change our original plan’, he says to Sylvian. He added: ‘In keeping with these observations I leave the rest to you. I think that in concert with the minister you might without delay submit my printed memoir to this same Committee of Security’.40 39 40

Archives départementales de la Somme, F. 129 (copy of the letter). Dommanget, pages choisies de Babeuf, pp. 159–160. ‘True’ is underlined in the original. Ibid.

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It is clear that Babeuf mainly counted on Sylvain Maréchal to get him out of prison. The confidence of the future People’s Tribune was not misplaced. Maréchal approached Gohier, the minister of justice, a step he took pride in saying ‘succeeded’, ‘by not rushing things’. In a letter to Citizeness Gohier dated 21 Ventôse, year ii, Babeuf paid homage to his protector in these terms: ‘I am unhappy, but in my unhappiness there remains to me a great consolation, since the wise and the just take an interest in me. Sylvain Maréchal is among them: what has this generous citizen not done to determine your husband’s solicitude in my favour?’41 Alas! Despite the joining of so many efforts, Babeuf’s liberation would come only five months later, thanks to the judges of Laon. Whatever the case, when we study closely the contents of these various letters, when we illuminate them in the light of other documents, when we see the similarities in Maréchal’s and Babeuf’s social concerns, how can one be surprised that these two men found themselves side by side on the same battlefield two years later?

4

Maréchal and the Pantheonists. He Defends Babeuf

Babeuf’s conspiracy was born in early Brumaire, year iv. The People’s Tribune and his fellow prisoners left prison, benefiting from an amnesty. In the face of popular inertia and a reaction more arrogant than ever, they took up the struggle anew and, assisted by moderate patriotic elements, founded several clubs, among them the Club of the Pantheon which, for a time, had 2,000 members. The Directory, frightened, outlawed Babeuf and his newspaper, closed down the democratic clubs, and forced the Equals to go into hiding. It was then that Maréchal, outraged by the violence of the authorities, dedicated to Babeuf, hunted down by the police, L’opinion d’un Homme sur l’étrange procès intenté au Tribun du peuple et a quelques autres ecrivains democrats [The Opinion of a Man on the Strange Trial of the People’s Tribune and a Few Other Democratic Writers]. This was immediately and accommodatingly inserted by Babeuf in his newspaper42 and then published as a pamphlet. Basing himself on history, Sylvain Maréchal demonstrated that the goal pursued by Babeuf was 41 42

Henry Rollin Collection (copy of the letter). Tribun du peuple, no. 38, Ventose, year iv. Later, before the High Court of Vendome, Babeuf would seek to avoid responsibility for this insertion. Advielle, Histoire de Babeuf et du babouvisme, 1884, vol. ii, p. 277.

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not new; that the Iberians of Asia as well as several other nations had already realised it. Then, commenting on the old adage that the sun shines on everyone, he established that this goal was in conformity with justice and reason. ‘The Revolution will not be over until all men share the fruits of the earth, just as they share the rays of the sun’.43 And he summed up the doctrine of equality by laying out these three principles, the last of which comes directly from Rousseau: ‘Taking from he who has too much to give to he who has nothing. Society’s goal is common happiness. The fruits belong to all, the earth to no one!’44 But this was not all. In the same article Maréchal examined everything that could already have been done had citizens like Babeuf been found on 15 July among the smoking ruins of the Bastille: ‘We would not have had the Constitutions of 1791, 1793, 1705; no Convention; no two councils; no Directory and other inventions of this kind’. Instead, the reign of equality would have begun. But this was not the case, and Babeuf was arrested because he had to take this task up as a kind of foundation. Maréchal implored him to continue his mission without worrying about bought-off journalists and unscrupulous men in government. He even made this unflattering comparison between the monarchy and the Republic: ‘They perfectly resemble each other in that we are no more free, nor any more respected, nor any more virtuous, nor any more content under the one than the other. Only the names have changed, and it was not worth the trouble to make so much noise, to spill so much blood, to ravage so much land’. The article deserves to be quoted in its entirety, and it is surprising that no importance has been attached to it until now. It foretells the Manifesto of the Equals. Babeuf was right to give it ‘large space in the newspaper of the plebeians’ and to say, ‘The important and luminous truths it contains prove that it is by a true Equal’. He added: ‘It is not because of what it contains in defense of our person that it flatters us, it is because of its great defense of the eternal rights of humanity’. Nevertheless, on reflection, this plea was destined more to harm Babeuf than to contribute to his defense. Maréchal sensed this, since he said, speaking of the five Directors and addressing Babeuf: ‘If they are the stronger, then accept the law that decrees the lamb shall be devoured by the wolf. But think that the eternal principles of justice and equality will not perish with you. Your family and friends will avenge your memory’.45 This was a foreboding of the implacable logic of events.

43 44 45

This is a comparison often made by Maréchal. See the Manifeste des Egaux, chapter iv of the Evangile du Jour and the Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 261, p. 332. This slogan also appears in the Manifest des Egaux. Tribun du people, no. 40, 5 Ventôse, year iv.

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He Joins the Conspiracy of Equals

But while waiting for history to make amends, an urgent task imposed itself. The Equals could no longer be satisfied with enlightening their fellow citizens; as Buonarroti demonstrated, they had to help the people recover their rights.46 In other words, they had not only to engage in propaganda, but in combat against the authorities. With this as the goal, the most important among them met in succession at the homes of Félix Lepeletier, Reys and Clérex. There we see them develop their undertaking and decide on the establishing of a clandestine insurrectionary organization.47 This organization was formed sometime around early Germinal, year iv. Babeuf, Félix Lepeletier, and Maréchal, who, according to Buonarroti, had until then met only to ‘settle on the subjects and tone of their political writings’,48 along with Antonelle established a Secret Directory of Public Safety.49 One is surprised to see a man as peaceful as Maréchal – despite the violence of his writings – launch himself into such an adventure, into so bold an undertaking. He needed to see the cynicism of the counter-revolution and that the goals were truly the realisation of his dearest wishes for him to be pushed to the edge. Until now the idea of destroying the institutions that he considered contrary to social order had remained a theoretical speculation. He thought about disseminating it and had indeed disseminated it, but hadn’t yet thought of putting it into practice. Even more, he had even asserted on several occasions that equality was incompatible with the existence of civil society. What a change, for now Maréchal was deep into insurrectionary activity. The Secret Directory of Public Safety was to assemble in a compact group all the friends of liberty, with the immediate goal of overthrowing the Directorial government, and communism as the ultimate objective. On 10 Germinal, year iv, aside from Babeuf, this organization was composed of Félix Lepeletier, Antonelle, and Sylvain Maréchal. It met almost every evening in Clerex’s apartment near the wheat market, an apartment that served as Babeuf’s refuge.50

46 47 48 49 50

Buonarroti, Histoire de la Conspiration pour l’égalité, 1850, p. 68. Dommanget, La structure et les méthodes de la conjuration des Egaux, p. 5. Ibid. Ibid. Buonarroti, Histoire de la Conspiration pour l’égalité, 1850, p. 68. Buonarroti, Histoire de la Conspiration pour l’égalité, 1850, p. 68, Dommanget, La structure et les méthodes de la conjuration des Egaux, p. 5.

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Maréchal Writes the Manifesto of the Equals

It was during one of these first meetings that Maréchal proposed that his colleagues accept the Manifesto of the Equals,51 a summary of the doctrine of the conspirators. Here is the text: People of France! For fifteen centuries you lived as slaves and, consequently, unhappy. For the last six years you barely breathe, waiting for independence, freedom and equality. equality! The nature’s primary wish, man’s primary need, the principal bond of all legitimate association! People of France! You were not more blessed than the other nations that vegetate on this unfortunate globe! Everywhere and at all times the poor human race, delivered over to more or less clever cannibals, served as an plaything for all ambitions, as prey for all tyrannies. Everywhere and at all times men were lulled with beautiful words; at no time and in no place was the thing itself ever obtained along with the word. From time immemorial they hypocritically repeat to us: all men are equal; and from time immemorial the most degrading and monstrous inequality insolently weighs upon the human race. As long as there have been civil societies the most beautiful of humanity’s privileges has been recognized without contradiction, but was only once put in practice: equality was nothing but a beautiful and sterile legal fiction. And now that it is called for with an even stronger voice the answer us: be quiet, you wretches! Real equality is nothing but a chimera; be satisfied with conditional equality; you’re all equal before the law. What more do you want, filthy rabble? Legislators, rulers, rich landowners, it is now your turn to listen. Are we not all equal? This principle remains uncontested, because unless touched by insanity, one can’t seriously say it is night when it is day. Well then! We aspire to live and die equal, the way we were born: we want real equality or death; this is what we need. And we’ll have this real equality, at whatever the cost. Woe on those who stand between it and us! Woe on those who resist a wish so firmly expressed.

51

Buonarroti, Histoire de la Conspiration pour l’égalité, 1850, pp. 69–70.

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The French Revolution is nothing but the precursor of another revolution, one that will be greater, more solemn, and which will be the last. The people marched over the bodies of kings and priests who were in league against it: it will do the same to the new tyrants, the new political Tartuffes seated in the place of the old. What do we need besides equality of rights? We need not only that equality of rights written into the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; we want it in our midst, beneath the roofs of our houses. We consent to everything for it, to make a clean slate so that we hold to it alone. Let all the arts perish, if need be, as long as real equality remains! Legislators and politicians, you have no more genius than you do good faith; gutless and rich landowners, in vain do you attempt to neutralize our holy enterprise by saying: They do nothing but reproduce that agrarian law asked for more than once in the past. Slanderers, be silent: and in the silence of your confusion listen to our demands, dictated by nature and based on justice. The agrarian law, or the partitioning of land, was the spontaneous demand of some unprincipled soldiers, of some towns moved more by their instinct than by reason. We lean towards something more sublime and more just: the common good or the community of property! No more individual property in land: the land belongs to no one. We demand, we want, the common enjoyment of the fruits of the land: the fruits belong to all. We declare that we can no longer put up with the fact that the vast majority work and sweat for the smallest of minorities. Long enough, and for too long, less than a million individuals have disposed of that which belongs to 20 million of their kind, their equals. Let it at last end, this great scandal that our descendants will never believe existed! Disappear at last, revolting distinctions between rich and poor, great and small, masters and servants, rulers and ruled. Let there no longer be any difference between people than that of age and sex. Since all have the same faculties and the same needs, let there then be for them but one education, but one nourishment. They are satisfied with one sun and one air for all: why then would the same portion and the same quality of food not suffice for each of them? Already the enemies of the most natural order of things we can imagine raise a clamour against us. They say to us: You are disorganizers and seditious; you want nothing but massacres and loot.

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people of france: We won’t waste our time responding to them. We tell you: the holy enterprise that we are organising has no other goal than that of putting an end to civil dissension and public poverty. Never before has more vast a plan been conceived of or carried out. Here and there a few men of genius, a few wise men, have spoken in a low and trembling voice. None have had the courage to tell the whole truth. The moment for great measures has arrived. Evil has reached its height: it covers the face of the earth. Under the name of politics, chaos has reigned for too many centuries. Let everything be set in order and take its proper place once again. Let the supporters of justice and happiness organize in the voice of equality. The moment has come to found the republic of equals, the great home open to all men. The day of general restitution has arrived. Families moaning in suffering, come sit at the common table set by nature for all its children. people of france: The purest of all glories was thus reserved for you! Yes, it is you who should be the first to offer the world this touching spectacle. Ancient habits, antique fears, would again like to pose an obstacle to the establishment of the Republic of Equals. The organisation of real equality, the only one that responds to all needs, without causing any victims, without costing any sacrifice, will not at first please everyone. The selfish, the ambitious, will tremble with rage. Those who possess unjustly will cry out about injustice. The loss of the enjoyments of the few, of solitary pleasures, of personal ease will cause lively regret to those heedless of the pain of others. The lovers of absolute power, the henchmen of arbitrary authority, will with difficulty bow their superb heads before the level of real equality. Their shortsightedness will penetrate with difficulty the imminent future of common happiness; but what can a few thousand malcontents do against a mass of happy men, surprised to have sought so long a happiness that they had right at hand. The day after this real revolution, they’ll say with astonishment: What? Common happiness was so easy to obtain? All we had to do was want it? Why, oh why did we not desire it sooner? Did they really have to make us speak of it so many times? Yes, without a doubt, one man on earth richer, more powerful than his fellows, than his equals, and the balance is thrown off: crime and misfortune walk the earth. people of france; By what sign will you now recognize the excellence of a constitution? … That which rests in its entirety on real equality is the only one that can suit you and fulfill all your wishes.

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The aristocratic charters of 1791 and 1795 tightened your chains instead of breaking them. That of 1793 was a great step on the road to true equality, and we had never before approached it so closely. But it did not yet touch the goal, nor reach common happiness, which it nevertheless solemnly consecrated as its great principle. people of france, Open your eyes and your hearts to the fullness of happiness: recognize and proclaim with us the republic of equals.

7

Analysis of His Proclamation

Cabet asserts without providing a speck of proof that Darthé was the author of the Manifesto of the Equals,52 but Buonarroti, a precious witness, clearly states: ‘Sylvain Maréchal wrote an address to the people under the name Manifesto of the Equals’.53 For his part Edouard Fleury is willing to recognise that the manifesto was by Maréchal, but ever imaginative, he says that it was ‘dictated’ by Babeuf to Maréchal, who wrote it under the ‘inspiration’ of the People’s Tribune.54 Not going so far, Peter Kropotkin sees Maréchal as ‘a simple literary echo of Babeuf’.55 In fact, on 9 Frimaire, year iv, Babeuf had announced in his newspaper this ‘extraordinary manifesto’ aimed ‘at the oppressed mass of the French people’. He had even given ‘a brief summary’ of it and a ‘first draft’ under the title ‘Manifesto of the Plebeians’ in order to ‘give a foretaste of it’.56 While taking account of this fact, and without in any way diminishing Babeuf’s leading role, it would nonetheless be absurd, given Maréchal’s revolutionary and communist antecedents, to take him for same vague associate. To be sure – and there is no doubt about this – Maréchal wrote the Manifesto of the Equals on the mandate of his comrades. In a large measure, he took into account the intervening discussions, the decisions taken, and the objectives assigned. In this sense, the Manifesto is of shared inspiration and had a collective parenthood, which Babeuf stressed in specifying that ‘several shall stand on the true plebeian mountain, instead of the one legislator of the Hebrews’ to draw up ‘the Decalogue of holy human-

52 53 54 55 56

Cabet, Histoire populaire de Révolution française, Paris, 1840, vol. iv, p. 311. Buonarroti, Histoire de la Conspiration pour l’égalité, 1850, pp. 69–70. Fleury, Babeuf et le socialsime en 1796, second edition, p. 110. Kropotkin, La Grande Révolution, Paris, 1909, p. 743. Tribun du peuple, no. 35. The text of the analysis of the Manifeste des Plebéiens can be found in my Pages choisies de Babeuf, ch. iv.

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ity, of sans-culottism, of imprescriptible equity’.57 In spite of this, it cannot be denied that Maréchal marked the Manifesto with the seal of his strong personality, and there is no need to be a great scholar to recognize in it his style and his ideas. Almost verbatim, certain phrases of his Apologues modernes, of Dame Nature a la barre de l’assemblée nationale or the Evangile du jour are found in this proclamation. Even the tirade against the arts had appeared previously. In the Révolutions de Paris of 13 October 1792 Sylvain had already expressed himself on the subject of republican morals: If the arts were to be buried with the royalty we would not regret this as long as nature offered for our admiration such numerous and too little known marvels. In any case, may the arts perish, yes perish, if they must be purchased at the price of liberty. For if it is true that they are the children of wealth it should be renounced when wealth, that earthworm of republican virtues, is renounced. May all the arts perish rather than liberty, equality, and the republic!58 We also note about midway through the Manifesto the passage where Maréchal demands that since all men are equal everyone should be given the same amount of food of the same quality. This desideratum had already been formulated several times. In 1788, recounting the festivities of a prince, he delivered a lesson to the plebeians who were in ecstasies over it, asking why their master ate more bread and of a better quality than theirs.59 More recently, in his Opinion d’un homme he imagined the triumph of the Revolution. ‘From the next day forward the sun belonged to all and to no one. Fruits alone passed in equal quantities into the hands of every father’. The anarchist expression ‘Disappear at last, revolting distinctions between governors and governed’ was also a repetition, since Maréchal had already spoken out against ‘the artificial relations designated under the bizarre titles of representatives and represented’.60 In this regard, the anarchist significance of the text cannot too be strongly noted. Samuel Bernstein correctly stated that the Manifesto broke with the authoritarian tradition of the Jacobins and that the Conspiracy was a foretaste of the great conflict that continues between democratic or libertarian com-

57 58 59 60

Ibid. Révolutions de Paris, no. 170, 6–13 October 1792, pp. 97–106. Maréchal, Apologues modernes à l’usage du dauphin, pp. 25–27. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée nationale, p. 45.

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munism and authoritarian communism.61 This is what makes it the boldest and most prophetic of all the manifestos which, from Jacques Roux’s Manifesto of the Enragés (23 June 1793) to the Manifesto of Recovery [manifesto written by those socialists opposed to entry into bourgeois governments (14 July 1899) – tr.] line the road of French socialism from the Revolution to the end of the nineteenth century. In denouncing ‘the chaos [that], under the name politics … has reigned for too many centuries’, as well as in rising up ‘against all tyrannies’, Maréchal attacks authority as much as he does exploitation. He shows men duped by ‘beautiful words’, by ‘hypocrisy’, and lays bare ‘all ambitions’, the thirst ‘for arbitrary authority’ and ‘absolute power’, of politicians, of legislators, and governors, the ‘new tyrants’ seated in the place of the former ones. In the year of grace 1796, three-quarters of a century before the Commune, more than a century before the October Revolution, it was something remarkable to raise a solemn warning about a new despotism, about a new degradation of man under cover of the establishing of ‘common happiness’. Which means that Maréchal pursued not only the revolutionary transformation of the regime of property, of production and distribution, but the liberation of the human person from all influences, from all domination. This, for him, was the ultimate end of communism. The only thing that Maréchal expressed in new terms was the prediction that the Revolution was nothing but the stepping stone towards ‘independence, happiness, and equality’, ‘the forerunner of another revolution’ greater and more holy, above all, more ‘real’: the final one. But here again it would not be difficult to find the lineaments in Sylvain Maréchal’s previous works. It is not by chance, in any case, that the immediate objective was expressed in the war cry ‘Real equality or death!’ The complement and the reply to the revolutionary motto of the sans-culottes, ‘Liberty or death!’ The Manifesto lays out the immense perspectives of that ‘great enterprise’, that has as its object ‘equality in fact’, ‘real equality’, ‘common happiness’, ‘the common good and the community of goods’. These are the various terms Maréchal used to designate communism, a word that would only be forged years later. It should be noted in passing that the term ‘community’, borrowed from Mably, Morelly, and more recently from Antonelle, appears for the first time under the pen of Maréchal, who until then had used, along with the above expressions, the phrases ‘common administration’, ‘reign of equality’, ‘pure democracy’, ‘perfect equality’, or simply like Babeuf, ‘Equality’ to define the ideal.

61

Bernstein, ‘Babeuf et le babouvisme’, Science and Society, Vol. ii, no. 2, 1938, p. 172.

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He defined this ideal both as ‘something more sublime and more just’ than the agrarian law, as ‘the most natural order of things’, as that which assures ‘happiness’. Pursuing its realisation constituted ‘the vastest design’ that had ever been conceived. This grandiose plan will ensure the people of France, who will execute it, ‘the purest of all glories’, a remarkable expression if we think of the enthusiasm of the time provoked by the Italian campaign. Before even the Correctif à la gloire de Bonaparte [Corrective to the Glory of Binaparte], this is already a stone tossed into the garden of ‘the little corporal’, the proclamation that social conquests are greater than military glory. Some clarification is needed here to better demonstrate the scope of the goal pursued. Indeed, the Manifesto is addressed to the French people, but it is not narrowly national, or rather, to use an expression Marx would employ in the Communist Manifesto, it is national in form and international in content. To be sure, it does not express the idea of an international communist activity and organisation, but communism is clearly envisioned as a universal ideal; the Republic of Equals is preached on a world-wide scale. Nature and the natural right to which the author refers in order to construct ‘the great home open to all men’, knows no frontiers, and Sylvain Maréchal reminds us that there is only one sun, and the same air for the same humankind, for the same ‘poor human race’ delivered hand and foot to ‘more or less clever cannibals’. The Manifesto poses equality, not only as ‘nature’s primary wish’, but as ‘man’s primary need’: of man in general and not the French in particular. For him, it is ‘the principal bond of any legitimate association’. Equality is thus demanded for all ‘our kind’, and it is stressed that they are denied it everywhere. In addition, it is specified that there are no other differences between men than those imposed by nature, not including racial differences in this, perhaps out of forgetfulness, perhaps not. The proof that the Manifesto’s scope was universal is that several times Maréchal invokes ‘this unfortunate globe’: in space the civil societies that proclaim legal equality and reject it in reality; in time the attempts at the agrarian law tried elsewhere than in France by ‘various peoples’. He denounces the evil ‘that covers the face of the earth’. There is even a passage that could not be clearer: ‘Yes, there is no doubt; one man on earth wealthier and more powerful than his fellows, than his equals, and the balance is thrown off; crime and misfortune walk the earth’. Another thing worthy of note is that France is designated as the country to initiate social transformation on the planet because it made the Revolution, proclaimed the Rights of Man, and conceived the Constitution of 1793. For the first time in a socialist manifesto the theory was formulated that France, because of its extraordinary political and social élan and its example of revolu-

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tionary dynamism and construction, was qualified to serve as guide, inspiration, and effective discoverer of the future. It has been granted this social mission, this generous role in the evolution of the universe, one that will later enter the republican and Blanquist traditions. Anyone who has read his articles in the Révolutions de Paris and many other passages of his works can find nothing surprising in Maréchal’s expressing these theories. The historian of communism Alfred Sudre saw in the Manifesto of the Equals ‘a mad declamation’,62 and later Victor Advielle, the historian of Babouvism, saw in it ‘a metaphysical conception made up of trivial and pretentious phrases without any serious political impact, to which no great importance should be given’. Nevertheless, he added: ‘There emanates from among the divagations that fill it such a love of humanity that the good dreamed of, one that was glimpsed and desired by the socialists, that one is led to excuse the roughness of its form, the violence of its expressions, and even the methods advocated’.63 It can be seen that Victor Advielle, despite his reticence, pays homage to the inspiration and eloquence that animate the Manifesto of the Equals, and this is because its general tone is gripping. This is how it was necessary to speak in order ‘to open the eyes and the hearts’ of the people of France to the plenitude of happiness, to impel it to proclaim, along with the Babouvists, the Republic of Equals. And it must be recognised that if Babeuf in his Manifesto of the Plebeians was more specific than Maréchal in the economic doctrine of the plot, he was not as successful in branding the hearts of those who he appealed to with names so clear and so new, names which were to have long lives: the expropriated, the proletarians. Benoît Malon was right to call the Manifesto of the Equals ‘eloquent’.64 It was written so simply and so firmly, one feels so much contained emotion and such a breath of revolt running through it from one end to the other, that it does indeed attain to eloquence. As for its content, Manifesto is an expression of the principles about which the conspirators were in agreement. Comparisons to the Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf and to Buonarroti’s economic decrees provides the proof of this. To be sure, the obligation for everyone to work is not as clearly formulated in the Manifesto as in the Analysis, and the latter unreservedly supports the Constitution of 1793, which the Manifesto only considers ‘a great step on the road to true equality’. But on a whole, it can be said that the twelve principles of the Analysis can be found in the Manifesto which, as we shall see, gave 62 63 64

Sudre, Histoire du Communisme, third edition, 1850, p. 301. Advielle, Histoire de G. Babeuf et du Babouvisme, vol. i, pp. 201–202. Malon, ‘Les collectivistes français’, Revue Socialiste, January–June 1887, p. 236.

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rise to criticism from the majority of the leadership Committee. In this regard, Samuel Bernstein is wrong in considering it ‘the pure expression’ of Babouvist ideology.65 It is certainly the Analysis, unhesitatingly accepted by all the conspirators, that deserves this epithet. But it must nevertheless be noted that in his account of the conspiracy Buonarroti reproduced both the Manifesto and the Insurrectionary Act.66 The ‘ramblings’ Victor Advielle sees the Manifesto full of thus had ‘political scope’, a ‘serious’ one. Maréchal clearly pointed out and loudly proclaimed that the suppression of poverty and social disorder are a question of force. He proudly proposed the principle of a new revolution and indicated its goal: the establishment of communism. He made the people its instrument and its beneficiary. It was something new and important, this dual meeting of the revolutionary principle and the communist idea in the mass working class movement. However, it seems that Maréchal believed it was possible to avoid civil war. In one passage, he is willing to admit that the new organisation will not please everyone, that it will clash with old habits and ancient prejudices, particularly among ‘short-sighted’ men who have difficulty seeing the future. Nor does he forget positions lost and interests offended. But he nevertheless believes that the operation will take place without pain and ‘without causing any victims’. However, in another passage, he states the contrary: sensing serious resistance from those in power, he declares that it must be smashed by marching over their bodies, ‘whatever the cost’. This hesitation should be borne in mind, unless we view it as a feint aimed at not frightening timorous citizens, as the sections relating to massacres and pillage and the one optimistically insisting on the ease of the undertaking would lead us to believe. The Manifesto of the Equals also insists on the vanity of political democracy, and supporting his case with examples, Maréchal lays bare the nullity of constitutions. On the other hand, he presents the idea of one type of education for all, without insisting on it, and rejects the agrarian law, which he clearly distinguishes from holding property in common. All of this was in conformity with the views of the Babouvist leaders, and all of it would pass into the shared stock of socialism. The egalitarian distribution of the community’s products – that idea common to the Manifesto and the Analysis – so closely corresponded to the ideas of Babeuf and Buonarroti that in the fragment of an economic decree, the latter foresaw, under the chapter of distribution of property, ‘a common ration’,

65 66

Bernstein, ‘Babeuf et le babouvisme’, Science and Society, Vol. ii, no. 2, 1938, p. 172. Buonarroti, Histoire de la Conspiration pour l’égalité, 1850, pp. 70–77, pp. 98–104.

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equivalent to ‘a sufficient quantity of nourishment … whose assembly constitutes a moderate and frugal ease’.67 It is obvious that Babeuf, Buonarroti, and Maréchal, haunted by the problem of staple goods that existed at the moment they plotted, wanted above all to ensure bread for all. As a result, in conformity with the revolutionary experience, they saw the solution to the problem in the extension and equalisation of the rationing measures of the year ii. As Benoît Malon pointed out, they did not realise ‘that a new form of production, already seen in England, would enormously increase human resources’.68 Nevertheless, in their defense it must be said – as Engels did concerning the German rebels of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries69 – that the principle of ascetic equality in whose name they fought, was tactically necessary to set the lower strata of society in movement, to give them revolutionary energy. The Manifesto of the Equals, in specifying ‘communal enjoyment’ as a form of community, which was the equivalent of making the commune the beehive of society, was again in perfect agreement with the Manifesto of the Plebeians and the fragments of Buonarroti’s economic decree. In fact, an entire section of the Manifesto of the Plebeians condemned family-based collectivism, which ‘makes every household into a small republic’, conspiring against the great one and consecrating inequality. In his decrees Buonarroti clearly indicates that the Babouvists envisaged labour, distribution, and exchange based on the commune, all commerce being prohibited and the national community reserving to itself the monopoly of foreign commerce.70 It is true that in the Manifesto Maréchal did not touch on the problem of exchange, which might have alienated from the movement many merchants who had rallied to it. But one cannot help but note that he abandoned on the altar of the Conspiracy the extended family that was so dear to his heart. In the same way, in the Manifesto we see him breaking with his theory of the middle class. In this case, he is striving to stress and exacerbate the conflict between the two great rival classes. He sharply contrasts the rich: the great, the masters, the legislators, the lovers of absolute power, the new political Tartuffes – less than a million ‘more or less clever cannibals’, and the more than twenty million poor: the little men, the valets, and the governed, the ‘vast majority’ who ‘work and sweat’ for the good pleasure of the smallest of minorities. Even more, Maréchal is not satisfied with casting light on the class struggle from a static point of view, viewed from the present. He attempts to see this 67 68 69 70

Robiquet, Buonarroti et le secte des Egaux, pp. 263ff. Malon, ‘Les collectivistes français’, Revue Socialiste, January–June 1887. Engels, The Peasant Wars in Germany. Robiquet, Buonarroti et le secte des Egaux, pp. 263ff.

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struggle in its dynamism, casting a retrospective gaze, connecting everything that is occurring before his eyes with the movement of history. On several occasions he asserts that this struggle has gone on since time immemorial, forever, as long as ‘there have been civil societies’. He even specifics in the first section, which until now we have not paid any attention to, that ‘for fifteen centuries’ the French people lived as slaves, except for the six years of the French Revolution. What does this mean if not that Maréchal dates the slavery of the French people to the time when the Franks, ‘the free people’, never having fallen ‘under the yoke’, were defeated by the Romans after setting up camp in the Gauls?71 But if Maréchal affirms the reality of the class struggle on the historic plane, he does not say which classes confronted each other in the past. He limits himself to evoking the precursors of equality, ‘wise men’, the ‘men of genius’ who from time to time, with a low, trembling voice indicated the goal to be obtained, placing a veil over it as a precautionary measure. For Maréchal the division of society into classes is a ‘great scandal’ he emphatically and vigourously denounced, specifying that he accepted no other differences than those of age and sex. He proclaimed that the abolition of classes must be one of the immediate objectives of the new revolution. He even insisted on this, implying the deliberate negation of any transitory period between the age-old state of inequality and the communist regime. This is a serious point of divergence with the doctrine of the Equals, one that came out of the deliberations of the Secret Directory. This is not surprising once one notes the profound pessimism felt by the author of the Manifesto towards those who lulled the people with beautiful words, the political Tartuffes he continually and vehemently attacked. The ‘vagueness’ of the Manifesto of the Equals has occasionally been spoken of. The above considerations indicate that such an assertion cannot be maintained. All things considered, we find in this central work in the long series of socialist manifestoes both the fundamental principles of the plotters of 1796 and those of the revolutionary communists who would follow them. In its grand lines it says – with the tone, the vocabulary and the argumentation of the era – what Marx and Lenin would say a half-century and a century later. And if it appears vague on some rare points, the explanation for this should be sought in the weakness of objective conditions, Maréchal’s work being nothing but the theoretical expression of an incompletely formed class. It is only appropriate to point out that two passages of the Manifesto of the Equals did not receive the agreement of the Secret Directory, the expres-

71

Maréchal, Histoire Universelle en style lapidaire, pp. ciii–ciii.

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sion ‘May the arts perish …’ and the expression ‘Disappear at last, revolting distinctions of rulers and ruled’.72 Why? Buonarroti did not explain this. Nevertheless, we can conjecture that the Secret Directory found the first expression imprudent, even in the conditional form in which it was phrased, and that it rejected any vision of a society without a state as dangerous, and perhaps mad. Whatever the case, if Buonarroti is to be believed, it was because of these two passages that the Secret Directory refused to give the Manifesto of the Equals any publicity.73 However, in a circular on 14 Floréal Babeuf announced it to the agents of the Conspiracy in the arrondissements, recommending they ‘distribute it only at the right moment’.74 If this circular has any meaning, and if Buonarroti is correct, this means the plotters thought it proper to use the Manifesto but in all likelihood only after having removed words judged subversive. These were the words that allowed the public prosecutor to add to his indictment the tirades he thought would have the greatest effect, even though the Secret Directory had not approved them. Thanks to the Manifesto of the Equals he was able to go on at length about ‘the extravagant chimera of community of property’, ‘the horrific upheaval’ that would be caused by the suppression of the right to private property, and ‘the destruction of humankind’ that would result from it. Speaking of those sitting on the defendant’s bench in the High Court, he added: ‘These monsters were preparing to lead us over ruins, corpses, and graves to the total annihilation of social order’.75 The defendants, too, sensed all the importance of the Manifesto of the Equals and sought to attenuate its impact. Babeuf, in his defense speech, deplored the fuss around a ‘dream that was detached from any other object, undated and by an unknown hand’. He added: ‘It is too bizarre to have seen the national accuser make an effort to chain it to the so-called conspiracy. It is a chapter from Mably or Diderot; it is nothing but a piece that was sent to me to be inserted in my newspaper’.76 Perhaps it was, indeed, a chapter from Diderot but, as Lichtenberger judiciously remarks, ‘The difference was that a chapter of moral philosophy had become a program for social revolution’.77 Before the jury Buonarroti called the Manifesto the ‘incomprehensible product of an untamed mind’. He too asserted that it was nothing but a piece

72 73 74 75 76 77

Buonarroti, Histoire de la Conspiration pour l’égalité, 1850, p. 74. Ibid. Procès de Babeuf, Discours des accusateurs nationaux, vol. iv, p. 74. Débats du procès instruit par la Haute-Cour de Justice, hearing of 6 Ventose year v, pp. 117– 119. Advielle, Histoire de G. Babeuf et du Babouvisme, vol. ii, p. 277. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme et la Révolution française, p. 221.

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addressed to Babeuf for his newspaper, and stressed that it bore none of the distinctive signs of the most direct evidence against the Conspiracy. He demonstrated that the ‘ridiculous’ phrase, ‘disappear at last, revolting distinctions between rulers and ruled’, of which so much was being made, was in contradiction with the insurrectionary act that established a government. He added: ‘If anything deserves to be placed in the ranks of the most pitiful follies, it is this insane pretention, which can be realised neither in a country of sages nor in one of brigands’.78

8

The ‘Nouvelle Chanson à l’Usage des Faubourgs’

Aside from the Manifesto of the Equals, Maréchal had also written for Babouvist propaganda purposes the often reproduced ‘Chanson nouvelle à l’usage des faubourgs’, [New Song to be Used in the Faubourgs], sung to the tune of ‘C’est ce qui me désole’ [That’s What Saddens Me]. It attacked ‘the shameless rich’ of the Directory, the pretender to the throne Louis xviii, the chouans of Luxembourg and the Vendée, the two ‘talentless’ Councils, and even the soldiers, heretofore praised to the skies. This new anti-militarist note is a totally new one and, along with its antiparliamentary sentiments and call for fraternisation, is what is most original about this song, which openly calls for revolt. Maréchal’s song was posted in the popular quarters. According to a police report a gathering formed around one of these posters in the faubourg SaintAntoine. The song was reproduced with a variant of the first verse in the Eclaireur de peuple,79 one of the Conspiracy’s newspapers. We read in that paper: ‘It must have been occasion for rage and astonishment for the street sweeper Merlin to have seen this song pasted up in profusion on the walls of the faubourgs … It has become very fashionable today. It is sung everywhere, and people are right to do so, for it contains the best revolutionary morality’.80 The Eclaireur du peuple did not exaggerate its success. The minister of police admitted on Germinal, year iv that the song was distributed all over town and that consequently any investigation or legal action would be pointless because too late. It also circulated in the provinces. Propaganda versions were sent to

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Discours des accusateurs nationaux … défense des accusés, vol. iv, p. 255. On the poster the first couplet began as follows: ‘Dying of hunger, dying of cold/People despoiled off all rights’. In the Eclaireur du Peuple it began ‘Dying of hunger, ruined, naked/Degraded, injured, what do you do?’ In Aulard, Paris sous le Directoire, vol. iii, pp. 71–73. Eclaireur du Peuple, no. 5, pp. 45–46.

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merchants, like Bichon, a perfumer in Poitiers, who hastened to take the copy he received to the municipal authorities.81 Maréchal ended his song with these words: I fully expect that prison Will be the price of my song; This is what saddens me. The people will know it by heart And will perhaps bless the author; This is what consoles me It must be said that, happily for him, Maréchal, at least as concerns the first part of the verse, was not a good prophet. As for Babeuf and Darthé, we know their fate, despite the eloquent and skillful interventions of Maréchal’s old friend Réal, whose choice as defense attorney at the trial in Vendôme is perhaps not only explained by the fame he acquired during the Carrier affair. We know as well that Buonarroti, Germain, and five other of the accused were sentenced to deportation. Maréchal, who had so thoroughly earned the confidence of these rugged jousters that he was charged with writing the Manifesto that condensed their vision, was lucky enough to come out of this drama safe and sound, ‘the final spasm of the revolutionary crisis before the calm of the Consulate and the First Empire’.82

81 82

Annales Révolutionnaires, vol. viii, p. 723. Archives Nationales, F 7/7.134. Jaurès, Histoire Socialiste de la Révolution française, 1922 edition, vol. i, p. 20.

Chapter 13 1

Maréchal and Theophilanthropy

The question of Maréchal’s attitude towards Theophilanthropy, the civic religion imagined by the patriots of the Directory, is one of great interest. In his remarkable study on Theophilanthropie et le Culte décadaire [Theophilanthropy and the Décadaire Religion] Albert Mathiez solidly established that two distinct periods can be distinguished in the Theophilanthropic movement. Before the coup d’état of Fructidor year v, philosophes looked sympathetically on the new religion. For them it was a rallying place for resisting the redoubtable forces of the throne and the altar. This does not mean that they approved all its doctrines, but they saw in it the only weapon capable of beating back renascent Catholicism. As we will see, their position was purely tactical. After Fructidor, the danger had passed. Deists and philosophes then attacked the new religion. They openly said what they’d long been silently thinking. Along with the other Jacobins, did Sylvain rally to Theophilanthropy during the first period? We don’t know. No writing or action allows us to answer this question.

2

The Pensées Libres sur les Prêtres

After Fructidor there is no doubt as to Maréchal’s attitude: he clearly took sides against the new religion.1 Far from considering Theophilanthropy a step along the road to the pure and simple worship of nature, he instead believed it capable of evolving towards the barbaric religion of the priests. ‘The Theophilanthropists are not quite yet priests’, he said, ‘but that will soon come’. And further: ‘There is doubtless no harm in singing a hymn to God and preaching morality, but this is how the priests of all faiths got their start’. Sylvain did not deny that the new religion had its moment of usefulness in winning over from the priests a certain number of people who had, until then, been dominated by them, but he felt that that moment had already passed. Nevertheless, if one had to choose between the lesser of two evils, if forced to 1 Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, pp. 213–216 under the title Pensées libres sur les Theophilanthropes (xv pensées). The rest of the work is made up of excerpts of anti-Christian articles Maréchal had published in Revolutions de Paris and several passages of the Catéchisme du curé Meslier.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_015

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choose between Catholicism and Theophilanthropy, Maréchal would line up behind the latter. The Theophilanthropists claimed that they were consolidating the Republic, which this was not the opinion of the intransigent Sylvain. He thought that the Republic required nothing but laws and morals. ‘There is no need to put on a white robe, to speak from the pulpit, or to prepare an altar to inspire the love of laws and a taste for morality. Though desiring to reach the heights, it means not going very far and benefiting from “half-truths”. It seems to me that we have reached a point when we can, when we must proclaim truth in its entirety’. In addition, he finds nothing original in the new religion – which like all others is ‘suspect’ in his eyes – not even its Manual, a simple abridgement of the best books of morality available to all. Under these conditions, why bother with it? ‘The attraction of novelty draws customers. When one wants to found a new faith, it is necessary to have a stock of new items to put on display. When one invites people to dinner the guests have to find a few more dishes than at home’.

3

Lucrèce Français

If we closely examine the Lucrèce Français [The French Lucretius], which also came out in year vi, one feels certain that Maréchal, again in verse form, wanted to put people on their guard against Theophilanthropy. It is not by chance that most of the fragments added to Dieu et les prêtres, which are the source of the originality of this new Lucretian work, reproduce virtually point for point, and sometimes in identical terms, the antiTheophilanthropic statements we have just pointed out. Alongside the usual attacks against priests, alongside the invective addressed at the wealthy in the style of the Manifesto of the Equals, there are many passages whose contemporary political significance is not in doubt. One such is the passage that answers the argument of an error ‘needed by the people’ that was employed by the Theophilanthropists: Why always mislead? Error is good for nothing. Do we arrive at good on the road to evil? End this base ploy. Given where we are, It is time to elevate the people to the rank of men.2 2 Maréchal, Lucrèce français, fragment cxxvi, p. 164.

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The poet remarks how, in order to fool the masses, there are those know how to cleverly change and bend God ‘according to the circumstances’. Virtue, for its part, has never benefited from such flexibility. Religion has given rise to countless sects, All equally suspect in the eyes of the wise. It always wears a shifting blindfold, Friends, prefer to it the flame of Reason!3 The golden rule is to break with all religious apparatuses: Good laws without gods, festivals without altars, Morals without religion, that’s what we need on earth.4 In his Pensées libres Maréchal, who ‘no more wanted Theophilanthropic priests than Catholic ones’, had denounced a failing of the Theophilanthropists ‘that compromises them greatly vis-à-vis honest citizens: that of allowing priests to introduce among them and to exercise the ministry of the word’. In the Lucrèce français he does not fail to return indirectly to this point: Nothing is more immoral or base than an augur. This abject, shameful role leaves a stain That is carried unto death. A priest is always a priest; he cannot mend his ways. Two-faced once, two-faced forever. How long, oh how long France, my fatherland Will you put up with God and priests?5

4

The Religion of Godless Men

Maréchal was not shy of contradicting himself as long as he was attacking churches of all kinds. Before repudiating all religions in the Lucrèce français, had he not published a pamphlet entitled Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans dieu [The Faith and Laws of a Society of Godless Men]?

3 Maréchal, Lucrèce français, fragment cxxvii, p. 165. 4 Maréchal, Lucrèce français, fragment cxxvi, p. 164. 5 Maréchal, Lucrèce français, fragment cxxx, p. 169.

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It appears to have been written to thwart both the Theophilanthropists and Christians.6 It was a project that had a certain analogy with the Culte sans prêtres,7 which appeared in 1790, but instead of limiting itself to the family the author examines the rules that are fitting for a society composed exclusively of Godless Men. Maréchal does not designate with these words simply any kind of atheist, like villains who deny God in the hope of impunity, but rather upright men who believe themselves every bit as obliged to be virtuous, if not more, for having rejected the idea of God.8 Along with villainous atheists, Maréchal rejects from his society priests and their fathers, nobles, domestics, the literati of the courts, the pensioners of princes, and both kings in place as well as those who abdicate.9 The repudiation of the compromising term ‘atheist’ and the adoption of that of ‘Godless Man’, pure of any stain, is not lacking in cleverness in a time when the disorders of the Revolution were imputed to atheism, become synonymous with anarchy. It was pure philosophical opportunism. It should not be forgotten that all or almost all of the Terrorists were considered atheists. This was an era when, except in the highest spheres of bourgeois society, Catholicism was coming back into fashion. The religious policies of the Directory from the time of the Babouvist plot until the elections of the year v, a policy made up of anticlerical bluff and the restoration of the refractory religion, had had its effect. In parallel to the reopening of the former churches for the celebration of ‘the ancient faith’, schools of literature spread the deist or Christian ideologies. Joseph de Maistre asserted that ‘all imaginable institutions rest on a religious idea or else are only fleeting’.10 A great number of Catholic and Theophilanthropic scribblers maintained that there is no society without belief in God. In response to both of these camps, Sylvain Maréchal intended to demonstrate through a positive and detailed composition that a society of godless men was as viable as any other. The project was a new one, but the idea behind it had haunted the spirit of the philosophes, and Maréchal was fully aware of this. La Mothe Le Vayer, in his Dialogue des Religions, cited various peoples who, without recognising any 6 7 8 9

10

A. Mathiez analyses it at length in his La théophilanthropie et le culte décadaire, pp. 284– 286. Maréchal, Culte sans prêtres, 1790, pp. 97–98. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. lxxiii Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. lxxiii and lxxiv. In Toland’s Panthéisticon domestics were formally and kings implicitly excluded from the Socratic society. De Maistre, Considérations sur la France, 1796, vol. v, p. 56.

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superior being, lived or had lived ‘naturally’.11 Bayle had maintained with all his dialectical power the possibility of a republic of atheists. He had said: ‘A society of atheists would practice civil and moral actions; they would renounce the sensuality of the body and would do harm to no one’. And also: ‘It is not true that the pagans have the same concern as atheists for preserving the repose of the republic’.12 Voltaire had written: ‘Those who maintained that a society of atheists could survive were right … Atheists can lead a very wise and happy life’.13 Lamettrie for his part found the question of whether or not ‘a society of philosophical atheists could be sustained’ unreasonable. Not only do I think that a society of atheists could sustain itself quite well, but I think it could sustain itself with greater ease than a society of believers, ever ready to sound the alarm against the merit and virtue of men who are often the kindest and wisest … Examining this as a disinterested physician, as a king, I would lower my guard before the former, whose patriotic hearts would be of use to me in reinforcing that of the latter, whose prejudices are their first kings!14 Helvetius, who thought legal influence far more effective than divine influence, also wrote: ‘Those peoples without an idea of God can live in society more or less happily in accordance with the more or less great fitness of their legislator’.15 D’Holbach shared this opinion. He boldly stated that a society of atheists freed of all religion, governed by good laws, formed by a good education, invited to virtue by rewards, diverted from crime by fair punishments, liberated from all illusions, lies, and chimeras, would be infinitely more honest and virtuous than those religious societies where everything inspires you to intoxicate your spirit and corrupt your heart. Though theoretically true, such a society, D’Holbach thought, could never be achieved, given ancestral influence, common ignorance, and the reflection, study, and knowledge atheism presuppose.16

11 12 13 14 15 16

Oratius Tubero [La Mothe Le Vayer], Conq dialogues faits a l’imitation des Anciens, 1671, vol. i, pp. 186–187. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, ed. of year viii, p. 34. Maréchal, Dieu et les prêtres, p. 24. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, ed. of year viii, p. 506. Lamettrie, Oeuvres philosophiques, 4th edition, Berlin, 1775, p. 29. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, ed. of year viii, p. 182. D’Holbach, Système de la Nature, 1793 edition, vol. ii, pp. 315–317.

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For his part, Maréchal thought it possible and provided the foundation for it. It was composed of small groups of males with nine members aged at least fifty and representing nine associated families. These atheist families, jealous of their independence, do not mix with the neighbouring Christian families, from whom they accept nothing, either collectively or individually, not even a meal. They live apart from the government and form a kind of state within the state. The children are raised and married without going outside the association. The godless men profess a religion: that of Virtue. In truth, this faith consists of very little: rendering public homage to good acts. To this effect, a large book is maintained in which are transcribed ‘the honourable traits of mankind’, and every year account is rendered in a building specially destined for the godless men. Apart from this great ceremony, the godless men assemble every five or ten days, in their own temple in winter, and under ‘a vault of foliage in summer’. The goal of these assemblies is examining and confronting in order to later propagate, the arguments against the divine existence. It is a matter of ‘convincing Man that he can, that he must, do without God, the pretext for all crimes and calamities’. The result of the discussions forms a report, which is published by the society.17 It also publishes an elementary Morality, ‘freed of the impure and sacrilegious alloy of a God’; a yearbook; a calendar every day of which bears the name of a virtuous atheist and offers a brief account of his life; and a Biography of Godless Men, accompanied by a repertoire of solemn authorities who favoured atheism.18 A library composed exclusively of books against God and a domestic theater for the performance of atheist plays were also at the disposal of the members of the society. And finally, in order to encourage and stimulate a propaganda whose need was pressing, every year a crown was awarded to the author of the best work written against ‘the prejudice of belief in God’.19 Curiously, we see the society requesting the assistance of a scientist to repeat some of the many experiments that ‘demonstrate nature’s omnipotence without any recourse to an agent outside of it’. This article is all the more surprising given Maréchal’s distrust for scientists. Sylvain in all likelihood sensed the force science loaned atheism.

17 18

19

Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. iii, xii, xv. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xliv, xlv, xlvi, xlvii. The Annuaire des H.S.D. seems to have some analogies with the Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, and the Biographie or Dictionnaire des Athées which would appear two years later. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. li, lii, xlvii.

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If we now pass from the principles that constitute the basis of society and the ends it proposes to attain and the obligations incumbent upon each of its members, we see that one cannot have a fortune greater than three times one’s needs and one must not engage in degrading charity.20 In addition, the godless men have no weapons, spill no blood, take no vows, and renounce any magistracy.21 They disavow those among them whose children ‘bear scandal’,22 and speak to men of the people only from behind a white veil upon which is written, in letters of gold: ‘Of all errors the greatest is a God’.23 However, in the future they will – though this is not certain – ‘appear in public with less mystery’.24 Whatever the case, this public ceremony will never last more than an hour, ‘an hour of strong truths being the limit of human intellect’.25 Being ‘jealous of their independence’, the godless men refuse the protection of rulers; in any case men who ‘are self-sufficient’ have no need of it.26 Finally, the godless men must show no interest in political questions. ‘Too elevated to descend to such miserable things, the regeneration of morals is their entire occupation’.27 It is useful to remark that this last clause, as well as article lxi, which demands of every godless man that he be ‘a father, or have been one, or serves as one for an orphan’ would not have allowed Maréchal to be admitted to the society. But what must be brought out is that almost all the obligations, except the latter, were precisely those that Pythagoras demanded of his initiates in Crotone. And Maréchal did not fail to send us down this road: it suffices to compare this pamphlet to Chapter cciii of the Voyages de Pythagore [The Travels of Pythagoras], which he would soon publish.28 The internal regime of the society of godless men has more than one analogy with Pythagorean life. If we now examine the religious practices of the godless men – since these atheists in the Maréchalian mode do not renounce faith –29 we soon see that this section of the pamphlet is nothing but a repetition of the 1790 religion

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, lxxvi, lxxx. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xx, lxxix, lxxi, lxxv. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. lix, lx. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xxv. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xxxii. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xxii. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. lxxxii, lxxxiii. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xc. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, pp. 348–355. Doubtless without knowing Maréchal’s project, Balzac wrote less than a half century later: ‘A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion’. In B. Guyon, Un inédit de Balzac. Le Catéchisme social, p. 137.

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without priests.30 Indeed, the godless men have a baptism, a first communion, a marriage blessing, and a philosophical extreme unction. Newborns are blessed by septuagenarians and, in this solemn moment, the father is called upon to make the following commitment: ‘I promise and commit to raise my son in the principles of Reason and the practice of Virtue’.31 In keeping with this promise the father takes his children older than nine years old to the assemblies. These children are consecrated to Virtue by the septuagenarians, who have them write and repeat this formula: I believe in Virtue; my heart feels it; my heart loves it. It alone is sacred; it alone has my faith: Except for Virtue all else is a problem For me.32 The union of newlyweds is celebrated by the same priestly elders, but second marriages have no right to the benediction.33 Called to the bed of a sick or dying person, the godless men ‘gladly administer the consolations of philosophy’.34 Upon returning from the funeral the replacement of the deceased by an elder designated in advance is provided for. A festival takes place: ‘Seated at a frugal table, called the Banquet of the Nine or the Saturdays of Philosophy, served by their families and crowned with flowers, the nine godless guests discuss among themselves in the manner of the sages of Greece, of Socrates and Epicurus …’35 Maréchal clearly sought his pagan inspiration among the ancients,36 but he is again imitating Toland, who he inscribed in his Almanach des Honnêtes Gens, specifying there that he included him for the Panthéisticon.37 He perhaps also wanted to renovate by purifying the Masonic practice of agapes, which he had in the past criticised to a certain extent. In trying circumstances38 the nine sages take inspiration from the morality of Phaedo and Gorgias. Since they had made the choice to live as strangers in a hostile society, in case of persecution they retreat to the ‘field of com30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

See chapter vii. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art., xxxv. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xxxvi. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xxxvii. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xxxiii. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. liv. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. i, ch. xxii. Maréchal, Almanach es Hônnetes Gens, 21 March; Dictionnaire des Honnêtes Gens, p. 103. Maréchal, Culte et loix d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu, art. xcix and cii.

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mon sepulchers’ and philosophically await all decisions. Imprisoned, they limit themselves to meditating more profoundly. Led to the place of execution, they repeat their hymns to virtue. Sentenced to ostracism, they depart with their families to found on some deserted island ‘a virtuous colony far from priests and tyrants’.

5

The Republic of Godless Men

This final resolution squares with one of Maréchal’s most personal sentiments. As he approached fifty, Sylvain bore within himself an entire world of longcaressed ideas, chimeras, and utopias that had become his very substance and life. The reestablishing of a golden age on a desert isle, the founding of an isolated colony without political organization and without God, constituted his favorite dreams. From 1781, and again in this year of 1797, Sylvain implored navigators to find him, somewhere in ‘this vast universe’, a place where liberty finally reigned: Forever blessed the skillful sailor Who, in his long travels would discover an isle, Arid, uninhabitable, and under a leaden sky, But where man can live without a master or a hindrance! For you I could brave perfidious elements; In those frozen climes, in torrid zones Deserting without a regret the land of my birth, I want to go in search of you, O, Happy land!39 It is there that the godless men could in all safety live in accordance with their principles. It is there that they could finally savour the delights of a happiness they knew existed. And the reign of eternal justice would be established in this, liberty’s last asylum! I already see fertility flourishing there, Innocent joy and tranquility.

39

Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu; Maréchal, Lucrèce français, frag xxxviii. The same idea can be found in the Livre échappé au deluge, psalm xxix, pp. 85–86: ‘Lord! Tell me if there is still a corner of the earth where one can live in accordance with Nature. Show me a desert isle, an arid rock where man can, in al security, adore eternal Justice’.

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Happiness, harmony’s child, forever Establishes its home on this colony.40 Freer even than Thomas More’s Utopians, the inhabitants of this blessed isle know no other authority than paternal rule. The father is both ‘pontiff and king of his children’. The father of the family, in his domain, Leads them to virtue down a flower-strewn path. The assembled elders, with no law codes or symbols of rule, Judge differences, guide labours, Have their insights enter wise books, And above all, place obstacles to abuse.41 In this way, the association of godless men is transformed and expanded while a victim of odious ostracism. After having declared war on ‘the most ancient and fatal of all prejudices’,42 it soon does away with the other ‘prejudices of all colours’,43 some political and others social, and, by a social exteriorization – and consequently without overturning ancient and monstrous institutions – arrives at establishing, far from decrepit humanity, a new social environment, ‘the Republic of Godless Men’.44 Two years later, still haunted by his utopia, Maréchal will propose to the rulers that they complete the exhausted Revolution by applying his system: ‘The great and noble experiment of a Republic of Godless men is still to be carried out’, he will say.45

6

Reviews in the Press

Sylvain Maréchal’s book which, by his own confession, ‘caused no sensation despite its boldness and singularity’,46 was nevertheless commented on in several newspapers.

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Ibid. Lucrèce Français, frag. xxxviii. See chapter vii for the striking analogies between this social construction and the religion without priests. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 393. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edit. of year viii, p. iv. Maréchal, Lucrèce français, frag. cxxxiii, p. 171. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, p. 257. Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 257.

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The Fanal, edited by Joseph Despaze, had a lengthy review of it in its issue of 19 Brumaire, year vi. It condemned its content while praising its form. The editor wrote: ‘One finds in it the most striking contrasts, by which I mean, profound opinions and mad wishes; pure sentiments and a horrific doctrine’. The annihilation of morality and the abandonment of all duties, this, according to him, would be the consequences of Maréchal’s project if it achieved any success. ‘Ah!’ he said, in closing, ‘pious errors have caused humankind much harm, and I will never be their apostle. But if I had to choose between a people of believers and a society of atheists, I wouldn’t hesitate’.47 The Ami des Lois, in its edition of 25 Brumaire, found the pamphlet to be original, but it recalled the crimes of Chaumette, Ronsin, and Hébert in order to condemn the ‘appalling doctrine’ that is atheism.48 Finally, to attract attention to his project, on 25 Brumaire Sylvain wrote an anonymous article in the Correspondance sur les affaires du temps. He demonstrated that the faith he advocated rose from among the ruins of the ancient religions and the foreshadowing of the new ones. To obtain publicity he even thought to have the work attributed to Lalande.49 This attribution having produced its natural effect, the Fanal spoke of it again in issue no. 61, lamenting that Lalande should have been considered its author. ‘Is it possible that so disastrous a doctrine [atheism] had so respectable an authority speaking in support of it?’50 A certain Lebrun of Grenoble took Maréchal’s ideas as his own in a pamphlet entitled the Anti-pretre [Anti-Priest]. According to Lebrun, Theophilanthropy was nothing but a step along the road to the ‘cult of virtue’ the sole and real religion worthy of the heart of man.51

7

The Theophilanthropic Festival of 3 Pluviôse, Year vii

More laconic and less frank than his disciple, Sylvain did not speak of Theophilanthropy in his work, but it is clear that his project constituted a challenge 47 48 49 50 51

Le Fanal, Gazette historique, politique et littéraire, no. 56. Mathiez, Le Théophilanthropie et le culte décadaire, p. 286. Correspondance sur les affaires du temps ou Lettres sur divers sujets de Politique, d’Histoire, de Littérature, d’Arts et de Sciences, vol. ii, Brumaire, year vi, letter xxxiii. Le Fanal, Gazette historique, politique et littéraire, no. 611, 24 Brumaire year vi [14 November 1797]. Mathiez, Le Théophilanthropie et le culte décadaire, p. 286. Two years later Maréchal would place Lebrun in his Dictionnaire des athées, p. 238 and quote two excerpts from the Antiprêtre ou Coup d’œil sur les rapports de la religion avec la philosophie et la morale.

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to the new faith. Several of the laws he spoke of were nothing but disguised attacks on the Theophilanthropists. Such, for example, was the clause that forbade placing oneself under the protection of the rulers. Despite this, and despite the repeated assertions contained in the Pensées libres sur les prêtres, Sylvain, according to Grégoire, publicly adhered to Theophilanthropy on 3 Pluviôse, year vii.52 On that date a great festival was celebrated in the Temple of Victory (St-Sulpice) in honour of the second anniversary of the founding of the sect. Five fathers, ‘without decorations or costumes’, each bore a banner. On the first could be read ‘Religion’; on the second ‘Morality’; and on the three others ‘Jews’, ‘Catholics’, and ‘Protestants’. The bearer of the ‘Religion’ banner spoke and insisted that the men together offer ‘to the Eternal a homage of gratitude, and to Nature a tribute of admiration’. To reconcile the philosophes with the sect, he added that he intended to speak not only of those who profess a religion backed by dogmas, but also of those who, exposing to the public gaze no visible sign of religion, ‘are satisfied with providing society the simple practice of virtues as a security’. The five fathers then embraced and all the banners were gathered into a fasces tied with a tricolour ribbon.53 Neither the two reports of this festival nor the letter from Haüy to Citizen Jacquemont commenting on it54 name the five fathers who carried the banners, but Grégoire says that it was Maréchal who bore the banner for Morality.55 This assertion is all the more bizarre in that it does not square either with the anti-Theophilanthropic ideas Sylvain had supported until then, or with his unequivocal statements of year vii on the same subject. Grégoire could very well have erred on the name, just as he did on the date, since he erroneously places the festival in question in year vi. We believe it was indeed a matter of five fathers, though Maréchal died without progeny. In the two reports, it is, in fact, question only of ‘fathers of families’, while the broader

52

53 54 55

A. Aulard wrote in the Revue de Paris, 1 May 1897, p. 127, in an article on ‘La séparation de l’Eglise et de l’Etat, 1794–1802:’ ‘Within Theophilanthropy they were so liberal as to admit the atheist Sylvain Maréchal’. Archives Nationales F 19/311. Ibid. Grégoire, Histoire des sectes, 1810, vol. ii, p. 117. Mathiez in his Theophilanthropie et le culte decadaire, p. 541, and Aulard in his article ‘La séparation de l’Eglise et de l’Etat’, adopt Grégoire’s assertion. The author of Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique pendant le xviiie siecle, second edtion, 1816, vol. iii, p. 294, had said, wthout proving his assertion, that ‘One found [in Theophilanthropy] flawed men who had dragged themselves through the mud of the Revolution. Sylvain Maréchal, who proclaimed himself an atheist, figured within it, alongside men famous for their patriotism and revolutionary zeal’. This is perhaps nothing but a repetition of Grégoire’s thesis.

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expression ‘head of household’ is only used once. It should also be added that he designated the name of the bearer of the banner of Religion. What we have here is a point upon which it is not possible to cast all the light one would hope for. However, insofar as we can go by Maréchal’s later opinions, it should be noted that there are two facts that seem to favour Grégoire’s thesis. On the one hand, Maréchal is silent about Theophilanthropy in his Dictionnaire des Athées, and he will also speak of it with little kindness in De la vertu. He would write: ‘New religious sectarians, the Theophilanthropists briefly alarmed the others, but without cause. Their rites were innocent. They preached only God and virtue; they spoke of God without fanaticism and of virtue without eloquence or dignity’.56

8

Maréchal’s Attacks on the Directory

At the same time that he attempted to hold back the ‘re-Christianisation’ movement, ‘the Godless Man’ did not turn his back on that ‘wretched thing’ that is politics. He realised that in fighting the Directorial government he was rendering a service to the popular cause. He attacked it at the top. Too many intriguers misled the Directors and their ministers; too many useless and costly posts were created solely to avoid rejecting a few amiable jobseekers. Those who entered government offices were no better than those who left. Favouritism ruled while the modest and enlightened patriot languished, having as sole reward for his sacrifices ‘the sterile testimony of his conscience’. All of this was distressing and, according to Maréchal, was an expression of the decrepitude that had struck the government issued from Fructidor from the moment of its birth, whose moderate conduct, in any case, augured nothing good. What was to be expected of a government that worked for itself as much as it did for all?57 It can be seen that from Brumaire year vi Maréchal clearly sensed the threat. His criticisms of this period were aimed at the Directory and not General Bonaparte. The following month he went after the victor of Italy, in a sharp tone and with brutal honesty. His pamphlet, which took the form of an open letter, was proudly titled Correctif à la gloire de Bonaparte [Corrective to Bonaparte’s Glory].

56 57

Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 145. Correspondance sur les affaires du temps. Maréchal’s letters are signed H.S.D.

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The Correctif à la Gloire de Bonaparte (Frimaire, Year vi)

In order to accurately measure the impact of Maréchal’s criticisms, his work must be placed within the framework and atmosphere of year vi, when all around was admiration for the young hero. The astounding Italian Campaign revealed Bonaparte to the world, elevating him ‘above a mass of names’. Within a few days he was named General-in-Chief of the Army of the English Coasts and head of the delegation to Rastadt. At the same time, he was placed on the list of candidates for the Institut National. The president of the Directory, La Revellière, glorified this ‘young hero who stakes a claim to war, politics, statistics, and philosophy’. He was acclaimed by patriots, journalists praised him, and Theophilanthropists sang hymns of praise in their temples. Public opinion surrendered to him with a blind confidence. A grave danger was that the army gave itself heart and soul to a leader who gave it the right to pillage, who developed its desire for loot. A fellow general dedicated no less than 374 in-octavo pages to the recounting of the campaign of ‘the invincible general’, and the Moniteur gave a page and a half of its large format pages to an analysis of this work. The infatuation was for all intents and purposes general. This was the moment Maréchal chose, in a merciless critique, to publicly sift through the acts and deeds of the popular idol! One must admit this took courage. In an effort to make the boldness that led him to attack ‘the demi-god, the marvel of the century’ stand out more starkly, Sylvain presented himself as ‘an obscure man’, ‘a simple spectator’ of the world’s stage where Bonaparte performed with such success. But this was but the artifice of a writer skilled in seeking and manipulating antitheses: only the ignorant could be fooled. The signature P.S.M.l’H.S.D. (Pierre-Sylvain Maréchal l’Homme sans Dieu – the Godless Man) in no way indicated ‘an obscure man’, and the tenor of the letter revealed the personality of a well-informed individual. This letter contains three very different elements: a critical section in which the author, ‘the scalpel of reason in hand’, as he wrote, ‘anatomises’ Bonaparte’s actions; a positive section, containing a plan for European regeneration worthy of tempting the hero of the day; and finally, a series of warnings and predictions. We will examine these sections one by one. ‘To be sure, you are not an ordinary man’. This is how Maréchal began, addressing Bonaparte in the familiar ‘tu’ form, like a simple Jacobin. Indeed, though he is not sparing in his criticism, Maréchal does not for an instant contest a valour admitted by all. ‘You are owed praise’, he writes. And he awards it: ‘You know how to fight and to win; you know how to write and negotiate’.

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‘A clever Proteus, you assume all tones with equal success’. Finally, Maréchal alludes to Bonaparte’s ‘providential genius’, admitting with rare honesty; ‘Your successes surpassed our expectations’. There were many others who insisted on this subject. Maréchal prefers to concentrate on the flipside of the coin. He immediately begins to weigh the exploits of the hero of Italy: ‘All of Europe admires and fears you; the peoples raise their hands towards you and kings are at your knees. Perhaps never has a man had your power to do good. There has never been an occasion so favourable, so powerful to hope for great things. Have you taken advantage of this, Bonaparte? What are the results of your exploits?’ From this point on the questions flood from the writer’s pen. Why did Bonaparte not take Turin, which, on the rubble of the Sardinian monarchy, could have become ‘the capital of Italian liberty’. Why did he not push on to Rome to reduce to dust ‘that ancient theocracy, the worst of all despotisms?’ Why, given his lightning march, did he not free Naples and Tuscany? Why did his army, at the gates of Venice, not enter that capital and dictate conditions for peace? Did he consider the Italian people simple fodder for smuggling, for exchange, as mere cattle? Was he not aware of his strength? Was he incapable of completing his task or, what is more serious, was he treating with the enemy? Here Maréchal, pushing his logic to its conclusion, did not fear accusing Bonaparte of treason: ‘He betrays (the expression is not too strong). He betrays the interests of the great nation whose confidence he has as well as the rights of the peoples of Italy’. The letter ends with this clear allusion: ‘Never remind us that you are Paoli’s compatriot’. What Maréchal most particularly denounces was Bonaparte’s policy of complacency and adulation towards Austria and the Papacy. Since the hazard of arms had smiled upon him, Bonaparte would have done better to go to Rastadt and fight Austria and Prussia in order to obtain ‘the restoration of Polish territory to its unhappy inhabitants’. As for the toast to the Emperor, ‘in the face of a republican army impatient to seek new laurels’, it was revolting. It is unacceptable for a republican general ‘to drink the health of His Majesty the Emperor before drinking to the French Republic’. His caresses for usurping monarchs, his way of expressing himself like a courtier when he deals with them or with prelates, also offends ‘the republicans of France’. As could be expected, the Godless Man is particularly angered by the declarations and treaties favourable to the Church for which Bonaparte was responsible. The General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy wrote in black and white in his address to the Cisalpine people: ‘Respect religion’, and he said in his address to the Ligurian Republic: ‘It is not enough to do nothing against religion; it is

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necessary to cause no disquiet in the most timorous consciences or provide any weapons to the ill-intentioned’. These words of surrender before a Church that was constantly gaining ground could not be to Maréchal’s taste. They were a cause of concern for him. They gave him an idea of just how far Bonaparte must have been going in his private correspondence, from which his allusion to the ‘lovely letters written to prelates’. The ‘war on statues’, the removal of the Madonna of Loreto and its transfer to Paris to decorate La Revellière’s salon could not pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. It was war on individuals, war on the Sovereign Pontiff that had to be made, instead of saving religion ‘for a few million Roman écus’ with the Treaty of Tolentino. At the same time that he piled up grievances against Bonaparte’s policies, Maréchal analysed the character of the victor. He wrote: ‘The caste spirit in which he was raised from the cradle comes through in every line of his treaties, just as he preserves its mores in the splendour that accompanies him everywhere’. This love of display was an alarming symptom. Maréchal returned to it, invoking the revived ‘odious protocols’ of Cromwell and Louis xvi with which Bonaparte loved to surround himself, the royal pomp deployed at Montebello, the feasts of Satrap related in the newspapers. Pride was the dominant trait of Bonaparte’s character. This was Maréchal’s conclusion, and it was this conclusion that he wanted to share with the reader. And it was in drawing all these conclusions that he pronounced truly prophetic words. Bonaparte was nothing but a military agent of the Directory playing at diplomat and legislator. He believed himself to be a power on his own. Arrogant, he treated peoples like valets. He no longer deigned to speak in the name of the nation, and a ‘crescendo of despotism and pride’ could be seen in him. Maréchal says to him: ‘We are happy to render justice and give thanks to he who led us to peace via the road of victory. But know that we will think we purchased victory and peace too dearly if we have to suffer the yoke of your pride’. And he added: ‘Until today good people saw in your person only the most adroit of our modern ambitious men’. Where this immoderate pride, this love of domination and splendor can lead a man raised to the heights by public opinion and the army is what Sylvain indicates with uncommon perspicacity: ‘Bonaparte, your glory is a dictatorship! … What monument have you raised or do you propose to raise with the immense materials your happy genius set into motion? I see only a pedestal with your name on it’. You only briefly raised [the Italian people] to liberty in order to use them as a stepping stone. Bonaparte was the eagle (General, you love to call yourself this. and you put us on notice in doing so) … Though you might be the God of combat it

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doesn’t become you Bonaparte to give yourself the air of a sovereign with entire nations. For if you style yourself this way in Italy I don’t see what would prevent you from doing so one day in addressing the French Directory. I see nothing to reassure me that in some future Germinal, during one of our primary assemblies, you won’t repeat from deep in your apartments in the Luxembourg Palace: ‘People of France! On your behalf I will form a legislative body and an Executive Directory’. I do not see what could prevent a general who drinks to the health of His Majesty the Emperor before drinking to the French Republic from saying in the national palace: ‘I will give you a King in my fashion or tremble. Your disobedience shall be punished’. There is no disputing that he was farsighted. But this was not yet enough for Maréchal. He then wondered what would become of the future tyrant: ‘Bonaparte! Remember that you are a man. This is what was repeated to Roman generals returning in triumph while showing them a golden whip, emblem of the vicissitudes of fortune’. And he later clarified his ideas: ‘In fifty years you will be either very great or very little’. It was not necessary to wait that long for this point to be settled. Less than twenty years later, defeated, worn down, Napoleon became the plaything and laughing-stock of Europe. Albert Mathiez, who closely examined the anti-Bonapartist pamphlet of the Godless Man, remarked that ‘there is more sadness and regret in Maréchal’s criticisms than there is bitterness’.58 Nothing could be truer, and the proof is that the writer lays out what Bonaparte could have done if he had showed himself to be ‘a truly great man’, casting aside ‘miserable self-interest’ and ‘petty vanity’. ‘100,000 French republicans, Bonaparte at their head, could do better than conquer the world; they could give it its independence’. Maréchal then developed a vast plan of ‘armed propaganda’, a grandiose plan far beyond what Henri iv dreamed of, ‘that king who made despotism loved’. A well-chosen image allowed him to realise it: ‘Young Alexander was offered a statue on Mount Athos holding a city in his hand. Bonaparte! Why not offer in your person the model for a more sublime tableau? One foot in Rome, another in Vienna, press the British government against the seas with your left hand, and with your right raise up enslaved and dismembered Poland’. Italy would then rise from its lethargy, fanaticism would lose its gravitational center, Poland would again become independent, Pitt would be punished, the Batavians would recover their trading posts, the patriots of all nations would 58

Mathiez, ‘Une brochure antibonapartiste en l’an vi, Les prédictions de Silvain Maréchal’, La Révolution française, 1903, vol. 44.

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rise up against their oppressors, and the Congress of Rastadt, transferred to Paris, would there found ‘a universal and federative republic’ with France as its capital and main rampart. Brute force would expire after having served the cause of peace and the unity of peoples. Is there any need to add that Maréchal had no illusions about the reception his project would receive, however ‘worthy of occupying a great soul?’ He says that Bonaparte ‘will not dare think and act this way’ for fear of compromising ‘his order’, content with his ‘portion of glory’, concerned with being ‘the hero of the day’, when he could ‘stake a claim to being the man of all centuries’.

10

Historical Impact of the Pamphlet

Such is, faithfully analysed, the Correctif à la gloire de Bonaparte. It is a work that does honour to Maréchal’s courage, clear-sightedness, and internationalist ideas. It is an original work whose style is truly that of Maréchal, fond of handling invective and stirring up memories of antiquity. But Maréchal did not speak in his own name, and the historical impact of it is only the greater for it. He presented his work as ‘the naive expression of the tacit opinion of all true republicans’. He posed his questions ‘in the name of all friends of humanity’. He made it known that his plans for regeneration were shared by good patriots, as were his criticisms and denunciations. He remarked on the worries of the rulers. In short, he gave his letter a marked collective character and above all wanted it to reflect the discontent, the apprehensions, and – perhaps the word is perhaps too strong – the emerging opposition. To what extent was Maréchal correct? This is a question that is far from being resolved. Even so, it is possible to find in contemporary events a few clues that seem to support Maréchal. There is no doubt that Bonaparte undermined the Directors. He acted far too much as he pleased, not afraid to openly or secretly violate the instructions he received. The praise directed solely at him gave rise to resentment in the souls of those who governed. In all probability, since the dispute marked by the resignation of the General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy, closer relations had been established between Bonaparte and the Directory, but this proves that the rulers found themselves forced to contribute to his growing ambitions. They handled with great care a power that was heavy with the unknown. A short while later, when they decided for the expedition to Egypt, they apparently were only obeying strategic concerns. All those who knew men and who approached Bonaparte felt that the latter was destined for greatness. But it was only to family members or friends that

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they communicated their forebodings. Among them was the ordinance officer of the Army of Italy, de Sucy de Clisson, connected to Bonaparte since 1788. Speaking of Bonaparte he wrote to one of his friends on 17 Thermidor, year v (4 August 1797): ‘I don’t see any other stopping point for him but the throne or the gallows. This being so, you shouldn’t think he has reached the end of his career’.59 Maréchal obviously was unaware of this prediction which – as has been noted – would be realised far beyond its alternative form, but he had read with perplexity in the serious Moniteur that ‘the glorious and already so full’ career of Bonaparte ‘was only in its beginnings’.60 Maréchal was also correct concerning Bonaparte’s policies in Italy, his grievances an echo of what was whispered here and there. On the right the Clichiens, and notably Dumolard, had been hostile to Bonaparte’s Italian policies. On the left the Jacobins approved neither ‘Bonaparte’s gentle consideration for superstitions’ nor his ‘beneficence towards those priests who were not troublemakers’, and even less his ‘indulgence towards the most dangerous’. The Moniteur was not shy, saying it was regrettable that twenty-four leagues from Rome Bonaparte ‘had not overturned the throne of hypocrisy, as he had announced to his soldiers on 1 Prairial, year iv’. It is true that the anonymous author of this article, in exculpation of Bonaparte, added; ‘But is this an error? And is it his?’61 The fact remained that he had vigourously criticised Bonaparte’s religious policy. The Moniteur also attacked ‘the too-famous preliminaries at Leoben’, deploring that so much blood had ‘been spilled in vain’ and that ‘the fruit of so much labour’ escaped the Republic.62 What is more, an entire current seemed to have been formed against the prematurely signed peace with Austria. Otherwise it would be impossible to understand why the minister of foreign affairs, during the reception for Bethier and Monge (10 Brumaire, year vi) felt the need to refute the argument of the ‘republicans’ who wanted to carry on the fight, who desired ‘even more grandeur for the Republic and fewer advantages for the rival power’.63 It is also clear, as Maréchal asserts, that the Jacobins, sensing the return of personal power, were alarmed at the boldness of ‘the flat-haired Corsican’. But they only expressed this alarm under their breath. They were not made public,

59 60 61 62 63

‘Bonaparte’, Grand Dictionnaire universel du xixe siècle, Larousse. Moniteur (reprint), no. 49, 19 Brumaire year vi. Moniteur (reprint), no. 24, 24 Vendémiaire year vi Ibid. Moniteur (reprint), no. 42, 12 Brumaire year vi.

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and when they occasionally were, Bonaparte was only implicitly challenged. For example, the Journal des hommes libres revealed the plan for the revision of the Constitution of the year ii that favoured the concentration of power while avoiding mentioning Bonaparte’s name. And yet, from the names mentioned, one senses that it was perfectly aware of what was being plotted. Thibaudeau, who was also aware of the maneuvers of Barras and Bonaparte, denounced neither of the one nor the other. It was only later, in his Mémoires, that he expressed his opinion.64 In criticising Bonaparte’s ostentation Maréchal must also have been expressing a commonly held idea. The proof of this can be found in the Moniteur’s insistence on noting, upon Bonaparte’s return to Paris, that the general went out in a simple carriage without an entourage, that he strolled in his modest garden, that he lived in a simple house with no luxury, that he responded modestly, etc …65 Maréchal was not alone in having the greatest hopes for the Italian campaign. His former comrade in struggle from the Conspiracy of the Equals, Philippe Buonarroti, had attempted to win the Directory over to his opinions in Germinal and Ventôse, year iv.66 He had even brought out a pamphlet, La Paix perpetuelle avec les rois [Perpetual Peace with Kings] in which we find the outline of a plan close to that of Maréchal. Buonarroti demanded that the Directory emancipate the Italians and deliver a mortal blow to the houses of Austria and England, ‘leaders of the tyrannical league’, and that they destroy the spirit of fanaticism in Europe by dissolving the papacy. According to Buonarroti, this plan was ‘the surest guarantee of a lasting peace’.67 It can be seen that Maréchal did little more than take this up anew, adjusting it to the current conjuncture by expanding on it and demanding that Bonaparte execute it. It is moreover not impossible that Buonarroti had, like Maréchal, previously thought of making Bonaparte the artisan of European regeneration. ‘Bonaparte’, he wrote, ‘could, through the firmness of his character and the influence of his military exploits, be the restorer of French liberty … He holds the happiness of Europe in his hands’.68 We also know that Buonarroti was not opposed

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65 66 67 68

Mathiez, ‘St. Simon, Lauraguais, Barras, etc, et la Réforme de la Constitution de l’an iii après le coup d’état du 18 Fructidor an vi’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, vol. vi, 1929, pp. 5–23. Moniteur (reprint), no. 80, 20 Frimaire year vi. Guyot, Le Directoire, Alcan, 1911, p. 165. Martinet, Revue Internationale, no. 10, pp. 254–255. Débats du proces Babeuf, vol. iv, pp. 289–291. Neither S. Bernstein nor Pia Onnis nor A. Galante Garrone, in their recent studies of Buonarroti, speak of this work. Buonarroti, Histoire de la conspiration pour l’égalité dite de Babeuf, 1850 edition, p. 65 note.

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to the idea of investing a battle-hardened man with extraordinary authority in the hope of reaching a determined objective.69 Did the Correctif à la gloire de Bonaparte achieve its aim? Was the little corporal aware of this bold letter addressed directly to him? Nothing allows us to answer in the affirmative. As for public opinion, which had an interest in reflecting on and weighing the words of the ‘Godless Man’, in moderating an enthusiasm whose danger was all too real, it was certainly not able to learn from the pamphlet. Maréchal implies70 that his Correctif was seized before it was put on sale. It seems all but certain that this was the case, for not a single newspaper of the time mentions the work and not a word about it appears in police reports. Silence reigns. Even today we would be unaware of the tenor of this bold work if one of the rare remaining copies had not somehow reached the library of Napoleon iii in Compiègne, from which it was later transferred to the National Library. At the very most we can detect its existence thanks to a mention by Maréchal in another of his works, which appeared in year vi. In it he gives a false list of ‘the principal modern works placed on the Index of Rome by the Pope and the Inquisitors’. Among fifteen books, some of which are by him, he gives pride of place to this pamphlet, without, however, revealing that he was its author. In order to attract attention to it he adds a note: ‘Among other reproaches hazarded against this hero [Bonaparte], is that of not having deigned to concern himself for single moment with the conquest of Rome’.71 And precisely in the work in which Maréchal wrote these lines, which appeared shortly after the Correctif, ‘what just occurred in Rome’ is obligingly related, the French troops having entered it in reprisal for the assassination of General Duphot. It was not by chance that Maréchal composed this tale. In an insidious form, he was able to compare the conduct of ‘the brave Berthier’ seizing Rome and arresting the cardinals – conduct both energetic and truly military – with that of ‘Ambassador Bonaparte’, who did nothing but negotiate with the Holy See. There is, to be sure, something else in this work, and we can understand that the Godless Man was transported with admiration in seeing the republican troops trample the capital of Christianity. We can also understand why he demanded that this occasion be taken advantage of to definitively close ‘the Papal list’ and to turn over to ‘patriotic French men of letters’ – like himself – the archives of the Vatican for the preparation of ‘the great criminal trial’ of the Catholic 69 70 71

Buonarroti, Histoire de la conspiration pour l’égalité dite de Babeuf, 1850 edition. Dommanget, La Structure …, p. 25. Maréchal, Relation exacte et véritable de tout ce qui vient de se passer à Rome, p. 8. Maréchal, Relation exacte et véritable de tout ce qui vient de se passer à Rome, p. 9.

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religion before the world’s eyes. But what is key is Maréchal’s persistent desire, after the seizing of the Correctif, to do harm to Bonaparte. If now, as a complement to this chapter, one were to note that the courageous pamphlet of Representative Dubreuil72 denouncing the approach of Napoleonic despotism dates from Frimaire, year vii – exactly two years after the printing of Maréchal’s forbidden work, and just a few days after the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire – one gets a better idea of the extreme importance and profundity of the Godless Man’s prophetic vision.

72

Dubreuil to Bonaparte, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lb 43/31.

Chapter 14 1

Voyages de Pythagore (Year vii)

It can be said that the year vi was one of Maréchal’s most fertile years. It began with the Pensées libres sur les prêtres, continued with the Culte des hommes sans Dieu, a considerably expanded republication of the poetic fragments against God, the Correctif à la gloire de Bonaparte and the Relation exacte et veritable de tout ce qui vient de se passer a Rome [The Accurate and True Relation of Everything that Just Occurred in Rome]. And this was not all. Sylvain delivered to the printer Boïste a long book on the Voyages de Pythagore, which would be placed on sale simultaneously in Paris, Basel, Breslau, Metz, Strasbourg, and Vienna. This important work, published by Deterville, one of the most important booksellers of the Odéon quarter, came out in the winter of the year vii (beginning of 1799). According to Weiss, Maréchal first sold the manuscript to the bookseller Fauche of Hamburg, the publisher of Barruel’s memoirs, and then took it back to ‘put some final touches on it’. The purchaser was said to have been surprised to see it then published in Paris.1 One cannot be sufficiently vigilant in verifying testimony in so delicate a matter. This is why we can only be extremely circumspect about the veracity of this act, given that we have found nothing relating to it. We will thus limit ourselves to recounting it while avoiding any discussion or judgment of it. In the absence of any details, it is enough that Weiss, a declared enemy of Maréchal, is the only one to give it any credence for us to have reservations about it. The style of the Voyages de Pythagore was inspired by the classic work of Abbé Barthèlemy. Ever since the appearance of the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis, whose success exceeded the author’s hopes, the atmosphere was propitious for works of this kind. The latest to appear, published in the year vi and owed written by a certain E.-F. Lantier, bore the title Voyages d’Antenor en Grèce et en Asie avec des Notions sur l’Egypte (The Travels of Antenor in Greece and Asia with Ideas About Egypt). It had caused something of a stir due to its ‘more than licentious colour’, which had earned it the nickname of the Anacharsis des Boudoirs. Impelled by the desire to make antiquity known, the sober Abbé Barthèlemy cleverly imagined a voyage around the world in the century of Pericles and

1 Michaud, ‘Maréchal’, Biographie universelle …, vol. xxvii, p. 9.

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Philip. Lantier, his licentious imitator, also created from whole cloth the libertine wit Phanor, and a new Aspasia named Lasthénie. Maréchal proceeded differently. Instead of imagining a character he thought to use a famous man as his hero, in this case Pythagoras, and to follow him to the places he actually visited. Since Pythagoras lived two centuries before the era in which Barthèlemy situated his journey, Maréchal was able to have him visit other places and make the acquaintance of characters other than those described in the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis. However, it must be noted that if the sage of Samos traveled widely – as the history of antiquity attests – he did not travel everywhere Maréchal indicated, nor in the order in the book. There is thus an element of fiction in Sylvain’s work. What an extraordinary man Pythagoras was! Artist and poet, orator and philosopher, magistrate and legislator, the philosophers themselves placed him between god and men in the scale of beings. An indefatigable traveler, he journeyed the world to drink the sciences at their source and observe for himself the advantages and disadvantages of popular and monarchical governments. It is easy to conceive that a man such as he, returned to the milieu he made illustrious, would provide material rich in lessons. Maréchal begins by recounting his hero’s youth, his initial customs and tastes, and his education. He is naturally led to describe the Isle of Samos, the cradle of philosophy. He then takes him to Syros, to see Pherecydes; to Priene to see Bias; to Milet to see Thales, Anaximander, and Phocylides. From there the young man, eager for knowledge, goes to Halicarnassus, Cyprus, and Tyre. He then embarks for Egypt where, after having participated in the festival of the Sun and examined the pyramids, he goes up the Nile and reaches Ethiopia. Upon returning to Memphis he witnesses the invasion of the country by Cambyses. After having crossed Lebanon and descended the Euphrates he reaches Babylon. He climbs the tower of Belos in Parsagadae and learns from the Brahmins the doctrine of the Ganges. He then returns to Crete and crosses the Cyclades to reach the territory of Sparta. He attends the Olympic games with Pittacus, and without halting goes to Athens, seeing Thebes and Delph. Sicily, Italy and Gaul are then visited, and Pythagoras finally settles in Crotone, where he founds his famous school. The book ends with a summary of the Pythagorean philosophy to which, Maréchal says, ‘one day the entire earth, despite priests, tyrants, and the peoples who allow themselves to be misled and oppressed by them’, will render homage.2 There then follows a bibliog-

2 Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 362.

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raphy of works attributed to Pythagoras and an alphabetic listing of the best known Pythagoreans. The sixth and final volume is entirely dedicated to the laws of Pythagoras. Maréchal was able to reconstitute them by passing in review Greek and Latin proverbs, by consulting the biographies of ancient philosophers, the writings of the students of the Pythagorean school, and also by seeking the fundamental truths wrapped in the symbolic language of the master. In order to appreciate so formidable a work at its true value, one that embraces the study of topography, political and religious systems, customs, the sciences, letters, the arts, and the life of the ancient world, one would need to have, not only space that we lack, but also the ability to join to extensive and profound knowledge of Maréchal similar knowledge of antiquity. We do not pretend to the latter, which explains the summary nature of the present analysis. Maréchal asserted that he observed the rules of criticism as much in the writing of the laws as in the relating of Pythagoras’ travels.3 Nevertheless, one readily sees when browsing through the book that this assertion is far from having been realised. The author often gives himself away. One feels he is egging on his hero, that he takes advantage of every occasion and even incites them in order to lay out his opinions. This is a serious defect in a scholarly work, giving ground for suspicions. It raises doubts about firmly established information that was the result of laborious research. It does great harm to the unquestionable merits and immense knowledge of the author. Had Maréchal had the strength to control the anger that carried along his pen, had he remained on the grounds of history, we would today still refer to his book, which would be considered authoritative. But there is always a bright side: what the work loses in objective value it gains in the subjective. The biographer profits from this. To be sure, Maréchal ‘did not say all that was to be said’. Like Pythagoras’ teacher, he ‘left much to the imagination’.4 But he says enough to provide us with the heart of his ideas. And so the Voyages de Pythagore deserves close examination.

3 Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 4. 4 Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 280.

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The Sybil of Samos, Prometheus in the Caucasus, Hermodamas the Wise Man

With the assistance of a few examples, let us first show how Maréchal went about transposing his political concerns into antiquity. Pythagoras witnesses the oracle of the Sybil of Samos. In a state of delirium, hair blowing in the wind, the Sybil announces new times, while the vapours of the perfumes rise at her feet. With an extraordinarily eloquent voice she says: Men of the earth, rise! The days of justice have come! I can already see their dawning. Let Mars lay down his arms. Let Belone rest. Let the exhausted executioners put aside their axes! Let blood cease to flow! What do I see? From within the sea silently rises a mortal friend of the gods. He walks, the cordon of truth around his hips. The darkness lifts before his steps. At his voice the chains fall from the unfortunate who groan unheard. The mask is torn from the hideous brow of the hypocrite. Peoples unite, throw themselves into each other’s arms, amazed at having so long forgotten that they are brothers, ashamed that they had to be reminded of this. One man alone will bring about this marvel, the most important in the world. One man alone will change the face of the universe and will bring back to the suffering world Astraea’s happy century, which was not soiled even by the murder of animals. The genius of evil, until today the insolent victor, must finally cede the palm to the genius of good. Everything will undergo a metamorphosis … The reign of the good is being made ready … I see it … It is coming … Profane ones, be gone … I have spoken. Leave me!5 This grandiose vision of general disarmament and human regeneration realised by a great man takes on its full significance when placed alongside the Correctif à la gloire de Bonaparte, where the same goal is proposed. If there were any need of it, this would be prove that as much importance must be granted the positive as the critical section of the Godless Man’s bold pamphlet. Pythagoras attends the Olympic Games and hears Thespis, predecessor of Aeschylus, declaim his one man play Prometheus in the Caucasus. The myth of Prometheus, arranged in his fashion, was invoked several times by Maréchal in support of his humanitarian aspirations. Notably, in his Apologues we see Prometheus, in a rage, curse the men he’d made and who are

5 Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. i, pp. 38–39.

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nothing but ‘slaves and masters’. ‘Accursed spawn!’ Prometheus cried. ‘I created you all equal. With the breath of life I also animated you with the spirit of freedom. And yet, you have let this flame be extinguished. Go! I reject you as my children. I abandon you to your evil destiny and repent my works’. With this, the great artist goes to Mount Caucasus where, under the effect of his remorse, slowly consumes himself.6 In Brumaire, year ii, when Louis David, recalling the symbol of Hercules, had the Convention vote a decree calling for the raising of a colossal statue of the French people, Maréchal had found the idea ‘happy and grand’. Inspired by Homer, who called the kings of his time ‘eaters of the people’, he had demanded that the words ‘The people, eater of kings’ be inscribed on the brow of the gigantic figure of the French sans-culotte. One of his suggestions was the representation of the ‘people risen, bearing the liberty they conquered and a bludgeon to defend its conquest’.7 We find this suggestion in Prométhée au Caucase.8 The model molded in clay by the fabulous artist is, indeed, standing with those attributes in his hands. And it is to this great human figure, to this ‘sacred image’ of Liberty that Prometheus addresses himself in elevated language. If there is nowhere on the globe a single truly free man Prometheus wants there to exist at least one: the statue kneaded with his own hands. Setting himself to making a masterpiece, he strives to banish any artifice from his countenance, to have his features breathe natural independence, to render the arms that bear the bludgeon more sinewy. Proud of his statue, he exclaims: If the most absolute of princes were to encounter him along his way, may he be forced to lower his eyes before the majesty, the omnipotence of the people become self-aware. What is a king compared to the people? An atom compared to nature. Let every man who has preserved the instinct of what he should be unhappy with himself upon seeing this statue for which he should have served as the original and of which he is not even a copy! The arc of his brows should be more strongly pronounced. From his eyelids should be cast a fiery gaze that inspires terror in the breast of the wicked. May the burning pupils of his eyes be a double volcano from which dart the avenging lightning bolts. I want his half-open lips to say and make heard: Justice for the oppressed! Let the oppressor perish!

6 Apologues, lesson i, pp. 5–6. 7 Révolutions de Paris, no. 217. 8 Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. iv, pp. 124–133.

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And then, contemplating the work to which he gave the best of himself, Prometheus allows himself to be pulled along by his roaming imagination. He complains of these ‘inhabitants of the earth’ who ‘bend their trembling knees and lower a humble brow beneath the haughty feet of a handful of fortunate brigands’. Everywhere there are slaves. For his part, he is attached by iron bonds to the mountain. There then follows an invocation to liberty in the style of all of Maréchal’s prayers: ‘O Liberty! I am your student, your apostle, your martyr. Avenge me, or rather avenge humankind. You guided my genius; complete, crown my work! Why will you not form a new generation of men? May this indifferent figure become the avenger of humanity!’ Hercules appears and, by smashing Prometheus’ chains and pointing to the Scythians’ neighbours, determined to free themselves and serve as an example to the world, allows the realisation of the grandiose libertarian dream of the brilliant artist to commence. In the end, in this tragedy, as in the story of the Sybil, it is his own dream that Maréchal puts on display. From the beginning of the first volume we realise that Maréchal wants less to acquaint us with the ideas of the ancients than with his own. Over the course of the voyage Pythagoras, guided by his first teacher, the wise Hermodamas, visits a philosopher who enjoys the charms of solitude on an island near Samos. ‘The choice of that island for passing his life’, says Maréchal, ‘was the consequence of a system he much cherished’. Pythagoras and his first teacher, desiring to learn this system, ask that it be communicated to them by the philosopher, who answers: The first men … and this is where I would like to lead all my kind, lived happy and good, healthy in body and soul, only as long as they were circumscribed within the narrow limits of their domains, as long as they remained en famille and sent small colonies to live on the other, neighbouring isles, once the population had become too large on theirs. This was the true Golden Age, which degenerated as the earth grew, and ended when men were numerous enough on the same plot to form tribes. The Bronze Age dates from the period when humanity became a people … when they were able to come down from the mountains and spread over the plains, build towns there and then cities. Happy the families who had the wisdom to remain within the cradle of humanity! Happy at least was the father who, penetrated with the inevitable drawbacks attached to political associations, returned to nature with his children, climbed back up the mountains where his ancestors had

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found innocence and enjoyed happiness, or hid himself in some island disdained by the arrogant inhabitants of big cities. And there, living with himself and among his relatives, again saw pure days glow, and enlightened his kind, at least by his example, about what they must do.9 Hermodamas ventures to observe to the respectable guest: It is late to take so wise a decision. Civil society has taken over the most beautiful sites, the most fertile countryside, leaving only sandy deserts intact. It would be necessary to traverse many countries to find one that is independent and inhabitable. The best places on earth are taken, and you were fortunate to find this isle vacant. May you never be troubled there! To which the philosopher replies: ‘If I were to be driven from it I would not yet despair. Nature, like truth comes to those who seek it with good intentions. Did it not make Aegea rise from within the sea, thirteen islands at once? Rhodes and Delos, originally floating, did not reassure those who planned to settle on them. They finally found teachers. For a long time Delos was a flower floating on the waves, tossed by the zephyrs’.10 And so, in this brief episode Maréchal found a way to slip in praise of the Golden Age and the family; belief in nature’s providence; to show the superiority of small, isolated societies over large ones; of the country over the city; and finally of pointing out the drawbacks involved in political associations.

3

Political and Social Significance of the Work

The first of these drawback in his eyes is the loss of freedom. As long as there are governors and governed he thinks there can be no freedom. Politics is ‘a wretched and mortal science that is the shame and misfortune of humanity’.11 One cannot call oneself free when one obeys laws, when one submits to legislators who nine times out of ten are dominated by ‘the basest passions, the pettiest interests, the coarsest prejudices’.12 Nor can there be any freedom as long as there are rich and poor. When the labour and life of one being is at the mercy of another there is a bitter irony in speaking of freedom. Maréchal for9 10 11 12

Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 280. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. i, pp. 55–59. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 319. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 290.

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mulated Pythagoras’ law number 65: ‘Do not call yourself free as long as your nourishment is not dependent on yourself alone’.13 The form of government has no other importance than ‘that attached to it by miserable ambitious men and the degraded cattle who follow them’.14 Nevertheless, there is something ‘sublime’ about the ‘Republic of Equals’. It alone can lead men towards ‘the temple of happiness’ by laying low their ‘mightiest enemy’, the demon of property.15 For one must take into full account this profound truth: ‘All political ills flow from social and partial property’.16 To be sure, every mortal is an owner, but of himself alone, that is, ‘of his person, of his individuality, of his genius and virtues’. Like the sun ‘the earth and all it contains belongs to everyone’.17 If only, exclaims Pythagoras, alias Maréchal, one could convince people of the justice and efficacy of these two natural laws that are but one: Own everything in common and possess nothing of your own and the labour of universal regeneration would be completed … No more greed! No more ambition! No more war! No more abuses! No more excess! With nature greatly assisted by mortals and mortals in perfect accord with nature, it is then that on this globe all will truly be what it is right that it be.18 Unfortunately, of all regimes, that of equality is the most difficult, ‘not to establish but to sustain’.19 Not difficult to establish? One feels one is dreaming on reading these words. Did Maréchal not see the complexity of the problem? Had he forgotten the recent failure of the Babouvist attempt? It would seem he would have been better inspired had he written that the Republic of Equals was no less difficult to establish than to sustain. Here we touch on an important point. In general, when and how does Maréchal envision the establishment of the regime of Equality in the Voyages de Pythagore? Does he still maintain the thesis found in the Manifesto of the Equals of a total and immediate revolution? Or does he anticipate the triumph of communism from education and time, as in 1791?20 It is to the latter solution that he returns. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 25. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 310. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 329. Ibid. Ibid. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, pp; 329–330. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 262. See chapter vii.

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Political revolutions – and this was the word applied to revolutions touching on property, the term ‘social revolution’ dating from the period after year vii – are ‘the games of ill-bred children’21 for the former Babouvist Sylvian. Undertaken before the conditions having ripened, they brought about frightful aftereffects, causing mankind to regress and making them unhappier still. ‘Every political revolution resembles the letter “Y.” It’s a road that splits into two routes, one of which ends in despotism, the other in anarchy’.22 It is understandable that the people are impatient. They are ‘too unhappy, the rich too harsh, magistrates too unconcerned’.23 But they must come to grips with the fact that their success depends less on a bitter struggle of each against all with its corollary of the confiscation of the property of the wealthy, than of peaceful evolution and education. Addressing the residents of Croton, Pythagoras, alias Maréchal, says: ‘Reasonably, you can only want a reform for the rising generation … Time will do the rest … For the moment limit yourselves to a reform in the education of your children’.24 Education thus seems to Maréchal to be the key to the social problem. This is why, given the circumstances of the period, he does not think it possible to apply his theory on a large scale and willingly limits its application to a family of reasonable men. Only those ‘enlightened and peaceful men who hold middling ranks in society’25 can form ‘a spontaneous association of men living in common like the birds of the heavens and the inhabitants of the seas’. They will prove by their example ‘that voluntary disappropriation alone is capable of producing wise and happy men’.26 In short, it is the equivalent on the social plane of ‘the society of godless men’, from the philosophical point of view. And we know that according to Maréchal these two forms of associations are intimately connected.27 As for the people, ‘natural and de facto equality’ will be no more within its grasp after than before this experiment.28 Maréchal reiterates this assertion in so many and varied forms that we must stop here a moment. We cannot fully understand Maréchal’s hesitations, agonies of indecision, reticence, and opposing attitudes in the social realm if we do not sufficiently take into 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 310. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 263. Ibid. Ibid. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 333. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 331. See previous chapter. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. v, p. 332.

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account his propensity to look down on ‘the riffraff of citizens’, the indigent class whose ignorance and stupidity seem to him incurable. This ‘aristocratic’ penchant, which can be explained by the social position occupied by Maréchal, between the indigent and opulent classes, as well as by his tripartite conception of man (brutish man, intermediary man, civilized man), is particularly clear during periods of triumphant reaction where all hope of progress appears vain. This is the reason that it manifests itself throughout the Voyages de Pythagore. The favoured maxim: ‘Protect yourself from the 3Ps: Priests, Princes, and Prostitutes’,29 is adjusted to fit the rancours of the moment. It then receives a significant transformation and becomes: ‘Protect yourself from the 3 Ps: the People, the Prince, and the Priest’.30

4

The Animalistic People

Maréchal’s mistrust and scorn for the people are made clear in a philosophical riddle that remained in manuscript state31 and which it is appropriate to note here. The answer to this riddle is, ‘The people’. In many ways this piece looks like an amplification of the famous tirade of the monk Campanella, where the fiery Calabrian communist, full of bitterness towards and pity for the people who were incapable of understanding him, represented them as a ‘fickle and backward beast unaware of its strength; which accepts blows and burdens, and allows itself to be led by a child it could overthrow with a shove’. Sylvain Maréchal too depicts the people as a beast. This animal, he says, ‘has many necks, legs, ears, eyes, mouths and heads’, but its faculties of seeing, hearing, and thinking were not increased with the number of these organs: ‘Thus it is true it has many heads, but almost all of them are empty and brainless. It has many paws, but its step is no more certain or firm … Its ears are very long, but they are the enemies of harmony and misunderstand what they hear. Its eyes can see into infinity, but there are few that aren’t crossed’. Nevertheless, by some bizarre happenstance difficult to explain, the least firework, the smallest rag excites the curiosity of this animal and leads it to scurry from one end of the earth to the other. On this point as on others it has the habits of childhood. Even so, it is quite touchy, and if in its morals it resembles a child it has the strength of a mature person. 29 30 31

Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, p. 177. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 279. Author’s collection.

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This robust animal would ravage the universe. Nevertheless, with a bit of skill one manages to saddle it, bridle it, mount it, and make it go where one wants. It is even said that the more it is weighed down the happier it is, the less it grumbles … It is patient, good even when it is not made to act out of character … As long as one caresses or flatters it it easily forgets the insults it has received. At times it holds a grudge and is vindictive: we’ve seen it lick the hands of its enemies and tears its benefactors apart with its teeth. Maréchal then goes from the general to the specific. He outlines with broad strokes the varieties of the species ‘people’ in time and space and recognises the progress it has realised over the course of a century. After long sleep in the mud and darkness, this animal seems to have regained its strength and vigour. It walks with a freer and prouder step; it is shaking off the yoke it formerly bore so peacefully. A few of its heads rise above the others and watch over its safety, over the maintenance of its rights. Its guides have noticed this and are loosening the reins. In the mountains there are even some of these animals who live without a master and are little disposed to accept one. There are other lands where they are making an effort to free themselves of them completely. Since these animals are born imitators, the example might spread and their leaders grow alarmed. Some observers have also just discovered in these animals the faculty to think, which had not been suspected in them until now. Some of them have even gone further: they have proposed laws to stand in for their guides and to put a brake on their tyrants. The city of beavers and the republic of bees have led them to reflect on their precarious estate and they have blushed at the parallel. They miss their former freedom but they have not yet smashed all their bonds: the marks of servitude are still imprinted on their bodies. In any case, they would experience difficulty in establishing this unanimous concert, one of the greatest of undertakings, and habit will long impede their progress. But at least their former masters will have learned to fear them and will see themselves forced to treat them with care. It will only be by making the people happy that they will find grace in their eyes. They will no longer use them like a degraded mount, good only to transport them to the palace of ambition. It won’t be as easy as in the past to weaken them by spreading division among their members. This animal, more enlightened as to its duties, will show itself more jealous of its rights; it will adopt a

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guide only to lead it and not to be obeyed. It will become more sparing of its blood, which flowed wastefully and served as a beverage for its despots. Maréchal could not rest upon these optimistic considerations: ‘Alas’, he added. ‘This happy revolution can only occur when the people are able to guess the solution to this riddle’. But will they ever be able to? The Voyages de Pythagore provide a somber response to this question. Is it not the fate of the people to remain ‘cattle’ lacking a strong enough head ‘to graze in the sun?’32 Is it not too much to ask sustained attention of them? Is it capable of becoming aware of its own strength and become truly free? Maréchal does not believe so. He several times denies ‘the perfectibility of men as long as they are people’,33 and he predicts slavery for them as long as they haven’t broken with that state.34 According to him, Pythagoras has laid out this rule of conduct for legislators: ‘Make use of your studies and glory, not to metamorphose men into the people, but rather the people into men’.35 If it was Pythagoras who said this or not, this advice too closely corresponds to Maréchal’s way of seeing not to be credited to him. At bottom, Maréchal takes up the old distinction established by the legislator of Crotone and seized by Rousseau between the enlightened and wise man and the people-man,36 ‘docile bipeds set in their ways’.37 With this difference that, depending on the discussion, Maréchal takes at various times and even simultaneously as the type of wise and enlightened man the Family Man, the Middle Class Man, or the Man of Nature. This belief in the imperfectability of the people on one hand and the persistent desire for social transformation on the other in practice leads the author of the Voyages de Pythagore into the usual impasse of community or patriarchal autarchy.

5

Three Dangerous Animals; the Noble, the Speculator, the Priest

Since we’re discussing natural history, it is not out of place to point out other essays published in the same period by the new Buffon. We are speaking

32 33 34 35 36 37

Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 48. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 290. Maréchal, Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée Nationale, pp. 10, 37. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 13. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. vi, p. 13. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 398.

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of a triple natural history of the noble, the speculator and the priest,38 which is not lacking in causticness. Maréchal, who had a facile pen and was far from lacking in wit, seemed to be particularly gifted in this genre. He classified the noble in the family of the peacock ‘for certain of his habits’ and because, like the peacock, this biped ‘quite often’ wears feathers on his head. He formerly belonged to the human species but he grew apart from it and ‘over the course of time he has so degenerated that all that of human in him is his shape’. These animals travel in groups, placing one of them at their head, who they bow before a hundred times a day. The female ‘with a delicate complexion, is insolent and affected, demanding and capricious’. In addition, she is ‘extremely lascivious and enjoys the embraces of robust villagers’, which provides the occasion for the latter to take his revenge for the droit de cuissage levied by lubricious nobles on the bed of newlyweds. Having swept up the best lands, the noble animal aspires to live eternally without doing a thing ‘and at the expense of all those who bear the weight of the day’, but the people have become angry. It is particularly since this has occurred that the noble ‘has grown disgusted with’ poor humankind. Alongside the noble it is fitting to place the speculator, another ‘vermin’, a voracious and pitiless beast who can be classified among the bloodsuckers. He is, in fact, a domestic animal possessing suckers and hooked fingers. He eats human flesh, but his stomach is capable of digesting gold and silver. ‘By a singular peculiarity there was a time when the speculator lived only on paper, but he was no thinner for all that’. He was already known to the ancients, but in year vi of the Republic he usually resides in Paris where he commits ravages with a heretofore unknown impudence and scandalousness. Some operate in commerce, whose normal functioning they derail, and others in finance, having ‘found the secret of absorbing collateral and capital through interest’. There are those who run rampant in the army ‘in the provisioning section’ where they carry out their best ‘coups’. Maréchal here executes an oblique attack against what was called ‘the universal rage for business’ under the Directory. Maréchal specifies that the measures taken by those who govern have demonstrated their ineffectiveness. He proposes ‘muzzling’ the speculator, ‘visit[ing] without warning the burrows he digs at the expense of all that surrounds him’, of organising ‘well-coordinated hunts’, for the beast is ‘clever and has a good sense of smell’. It would be best to employ a ‘determined defiance’ against him. Like the ancient Egyptians, we should once and for all deport these dangerous animals

38

Maréchal, Relation exacte et véritable de tout ce qui vient de se passer à Rome, pp. 11–32.

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to some distant land so that ‘they will devour each other’. Here, by a tortuous path we have returned to the Final Judgment of Kings transposed into the ‘final judgment of speculators and capitalists’. As can be guessed, he gave his verve free rein when he described the priestly animal. It is even probable that the author originally tried his hand at sketching the portrait of this ‘maleficent’ beast. He defines the priest: ‘A domestic animal whose origins are in the silt of civil society. In Europe his wears his hair short and cut in a circular fashion as his main distinguishing mark. He stands out from other animals by a tonsure at the top of his skull made with a razor. He has long ears that he carefully hides’. How does the priest move about? ‘By walking on his two feet, like a man. He is often seen bending at the knee. His hamstring is flexible’. What about his eyes? ‘Daylight bothers him and causes him to blink his eyes, which are slightly crossed and sly. He prefers the flames of candles and lamps to the sun’s rays. On his own he will eat all the honey of the hive’. Maréchal thinks that the priestlyanimal has something of the cat and the parakeet: ‘He has the selfishness of the former and the lascivious morals of the latter’. What is more, he is vicious, irascible, vindictive and lazy, from which his likeness to the ‘wasps of a hive’. But there is something else: ‘The priest is very tender, but he is not a trustworthy animal. Like monkeys, the priest covets the female of the male. Those husbands imprudent enough to leave their wives at home with the priestly animal see many wicked things upon their return. They have little choice but to resort to the stick’. On the same page that this piquant passage can be found, the author maliciously notes: ‘The people pay careful attention to the sleight of hand tricks executed by the priestly animal every morning in repeating certain monotonous and disagreeable cries’. In conclusion, Maréchal again warns against the ‘chameleon priest’. ‘This species’, he writes, ‘is the most fearsome. His tongue is perfidious, and this is his favoured weapon, serving to perform miracles. If it were to be cut off he would no longer be feared. Perhaps it would suffice to place a gag over his mouth’. Maréchal here kills two birds with one stone: he strikes both the rulers and the Theophilanthropists.

6

Reception of the Voyages De Pythagore

Citizen Morand, a former physician in Niort, former commissioner of executive power in the Deux-Sèvres (1795), become deputy on the Council of Ancients, presented the Voyages de Pythagore to that assembly on 17 Ventôse year vii (7 March 1799). He praised the author, ‘a man of letters as praiseworthy for

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his modesty and the gentleness of his morals as for the great number of interesting works he gave the public’, but prudently abstained from naming him. He then laid out the merits of the book, a veritable ‘literary monument’ that contrasts with the futile, scandalous, partisan, and fanatic productions of the period, concluding by requesting that his homage be mentioned in the minutes and that the book be deposited in the library of the legislative body.39 These two proposals were adopted, and it was also decided that Morand’s speech would receive the honours of publication.40 This legislative intervention was aimed at calling public attention to the Voyages de Pythagore, but the Décade41 and the Nouvelliste littéraire42 were the only two newspapers review it. And it must be added that the Décade limited itself to reproducing the prospectus put out by the author. The Nouvelliste littéraire, less niggardly, provided a lengthy analysis of the work, justly noting that the author did not only have in mind the period 600 years before the Christian era. The Voyageur, Louis Prudhomme’s newspaper, which appeared between 1 Messidor year vii and 11 Vendémiaire year viii, published many excerpts from the book and the Mercure de France mentioned it in its issue of 1 Thermidor year ix, adding that it was ‘universally forgotten’.43 It would appear that the Mercure de France exaggerated. Otherwise, how explain that Maréchal had prepared a second edition and a seventh volume of the work,44 as Lalande assures us?

7

The Histoire Universelle en Style Lapidaire

Shortly after the Voyages de Pythagore Deterville also published anonymously another of Maréchal’s works, the Histoire universelle en style lapidaire (Universal History in Lapidary Style) which the author, more modest in his introduction than in his title, considered an essay.

39 40 41 42 43

44

Discours de Morand … Bibliothèque Nationale, Lc 45/1.504. Procès-verbal des séances du Conseil des Anciens, Ventôse year vii, p. 374. La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique, no. 5, 20 Brumaire [10 November 1796], p. 268. Le Nouvelliste littéraire, 30 Prairial year vi, pp. 2–3. Mercure de France littéraire et politique, vol. v, p. 187. In the same issue, a writer having attributed to Maréchal a work titled Fêtes et Courtisanes de la Grèce the following response appeared in the next issue, dated 16 Thermidor: ‘Bibliothèque des Quatre nations, 4 Thermidor year ix. I certify having had no part in the writing of the work entitled Des Fêtes et Courtisanes de la Grèce. Sylv. Maréchal. Author of the Voyages de Pythagore’. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, first supplement, p. 9.

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In reaction to the prolixity of historians, who transform the world’s annals into chaos, in Sylvain’s mind it was a question of returning history to point of departure through the reestablishing of the lapidary style. For Maréchal, brevity and clarity are the two main duties of the historian, who can only accomplish this task by reducing the splendours of peoples to a series of inscriptions. He considers that an event recounted in its smallest detail can only be remembered with difficulty, while a fact recounted in but a few well-chosen words is easily etched in the memory. The lapidary style, as understood by Maréchal, ‘stands at the midpoint between poetry and prose’. It demands a certain art, for every line must contain a definite sense, every word must offer an idea or depict a sentiment, and the entire inscription must contribute to the author’s intention. This style is also appropriate for morality, according to Maréchal, citing as an example the stakes covered with maxims owed to the initiative of Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens. It is also appropriate for politics – though Maréchal does not state this in his introduction – and this is proved by the fashion he concluded many of his articles in the Révolutions de Paris. But according to Maréchal this style has become indispensable to history, sagging beneath a jumble of facts and famous individuals. Hence his essay. Maréchal’s history, forming 187 pages of inscriptions, runs from man’s beginnings to the invention of the printing press. It is scattered with brief reflections that, it should come as no surprise, are all in keeping with the author’s convictions. Some must be interpreted as disguised attacks on the victor of the day, and this is doubtless what explains the author’s insistence on noting that his history was written in 1786.45 But given the subject matter, Maréchal in most cases restricted himself to criticisms of a general order: the humanity’s unhappiness dates from the moment one man ceased seeing his equal in his like, and bent the knee before someone other than his father.46 Or:

45 46

Maréchal, Histoire universelle en style lapidaire, pp. 16–17. Maréchal, Histoire universelle en style lapidaire, p. iv

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religion, in concert with politics, torments the humanity it should educate or at least console.47 We can see that Maréchal intended to conform to the famous precept of the ancients. What is more, the prologue and the epilogue meet in spirit. The former says: children of man! approach and read. good or bad, may the example of your fathers serve as lessons! the past teaches the future.48 And the latter: children of man! your fathers were wicked out of ignorance, unhappy through their faults; pity them but do not imitate them.49 In our time Paul Valéry showed himself to be more prudent, more nuanced than Maréchal. Nevertheless, he admitted – something generally recognized – that in politics history clarifies many things, dissipates many uncertainties, and allows for the avoiding of many errors. We do not know how the public received the eccentric writings of this nonconformist historian. Mme. Gacon-Dufour recounted that she saw a man

47 48 49

Maréchal, Histoire universelle en style lapidaire, p. clxxx Maréchal, Histoire universelle en style lapidaire, p. i. Maréchal, Histoire universelle en style lapidaire, p. clxxxvii

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‘go into raptures’ over the beauty of this history, ‘but be so shameless as to repent of it’ upon learning that Maréchal was its author.50

8

The Religious Situation after Prairial Year vii. The Republican Portico

We have reached Ventôse year vii. Exactly a year before Maréchal’s Voyages de Pythagore had been praised from the podium of the Ancients. Now, imprecations rise against him as a result of the publication of the Dictionnaire des athées [Dictionary of Atheists]. Some saw in the persistent effort of philosophical propaganda, in the ‘horrible sang-froid’ of Maréchal – to borrow their expression – an effect of the malady that was undermining him. ‘His organs were already weakened by long suffering’,51 they said. In truth, this is an explanation that can be taken into consideration, on condition it be given that portion of credit it deserves, which is little. If we were to project ourselves into the era we would understand why Maréchal decided to complete a work that represented a mass of research carried out over a period of thirty years. After the crisis of Prairial year vii, the enemies on the right of the Directory had challenged not only its foreign policy, its administrative and economic incompetence, and the corruption of its high functionaries, but also something new: its religious policy. In the name of the Commission of Twelve they had obtained promises of appeasement from François de Neufchâteau in the form of the softening of laws against priests and the reestablishment of the freedom of religion. These promises, greeted with joy by constitutional Catholics, had resulted concretely in a reinforcement of resistance to the décadaire cult, a violent attack on Theophilanthropy, the freeing of non-juring, deported, and arrested priests, and troubling rumours of the ‘reestablishment of the Catholic religion’. In reaction to this there was soon an anti-clerical turn. Everything came out into the open at the Council of Five Hundred from Messidor year vii and can be followed in the correspondence of Quinette and Fouché, the two new ministers of the Interior and the Police, in the ‘persecutory’ decrees of several departments, and the reconstituting of popular societies, both in Paris and the major cites of the provinces.52

50 51 52

Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 23. Michaud, ‘Maréchal’, Biographie universelle, vol. 27, p. 7. Mathiez, La Théophilanthropie et le culte décadaire, chapters viii and ix.

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It was particularly affirmed in Vendémiaire year viii with the creation of the Republican Portico. This was the name given a philosophical and literary society that appears to have planned to assemble in one group the best-known enemies of the Church who were doubtful of the rationalist capacities of Theophilanthropy. Its program, addressed to its sympathizers in a prospectus, drew a line of demarcation between philosophy and atheism, much to the displeasure of Pio, Maréchal’s friend. But if we go to the heart of the matter, taking into account the Portico’s need to establish a broad platform for recruitment; if one notes that its president opened its doors wide to atheists; if one admits along with Maréchal that ‘the healthy portion’ of its members was composed of ‘godless men’, one is led to believe that Sylvain looked on this philosophical formation with great sympathy. Perhaps we must even count him among the 137 philosophical and literary personalities who joined it the first says of its existence. The inauguration of the society occurred on 6 Vendémiaire year viii (28 September 1799). On that occasion its president, the republican vaudevillian Piis, committed to combating religious prejudice. Later, either in the Temple of Concord (Saint-Philippe du Roule) or in the former storeroom of the Opéra, men like Dorat-Cubières, Parny, Plancher-Valcour, and even Dubroca were seen speaking under the auspices of the new group. According to Maréchal, ‘the truth’ finally triumphed in the very places that ‘for too long [had known] falsehood’.53 Rather than by invoking the state of Maréchal’s health, we can explain the appearance of the Dictionnaire des athées by taking all these facts and the ongoing philosophical renewal into account. It should be said that the coup d’état of the 18 Brumaire did not bring the activity of the Republican Portico to an end, since this group continued to meet in Fructidor, year viii, seven months later. What is more, we know that at whatever cost, Bonaparte wanted to avoid his name becoming synonymous with reaction. This is why the pseudo-persecution of 20 Brumaire, which touched Jacobins like Clèmence and Marchand54 – the former companions of Maréchal in the Conspiracy of Equals – was closely followed by a series of measures against opposition on the right and ‘superstition’. If after Brumaire the appearance of the Dictionnaire des athées provoked a scandal, it was not because the publication of such a work was inopportune, but for reasons we will shortly reveal. 53

54

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 346, pp. 361–362. L’Indespensable, 15 Vendemiaire year viii. Mathiez, La Théophilanthropie et le Culte décadaire, pp. 627–628. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, i, pp. 58, 82, 284, 489, 616. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, vol. i, p. 18.

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The Idea of the Dictionnaire des Athées

For some time the Godless Man had noted the various opinions expressed about atheists and atheism. In 1781, at the head of his verses against God, he had reproduced several significant phrases from J.-J. Rousseau, St. Justin, Jurieu, and Hobbes relating to the subject. In 1793, at the beginning of Dieu et les prêtres, under the title ‘Serious authors in favour of atheism’ he had done the same thing. Finally, in 1797 laws 46 and 47 of the Society of Godless Men expressly indicated that the latter were to work at the annotated biographies of Godless Men and the preparation of an immense anthology of ‘serious authors in favour of Godless Men’. Maréchal could only contemplate writing the biography of virtuous atheists, for the task was enormous. On the other hand, by classifying his notes it was relatively easy for him to compile an imposing anthology of quotes in favour of the atheist thesis, and this was the solution he settled on. However, through a strange abuse of language, he persisted in giving this anthology a title that fit the work he wasn’t writing. The result is an incredible paradox where, to the great scandal of believers, we see in a dictionary of atheists the names of Nicole, Bossuet, and even Jesus Christ! Many people believed that Maréchal had lost his way. He was literally called mad. Only recently Albert Lantoine called Maréchal ‘crazy’ because of this strange way of operating.55 In his defense, it must be said that Maréchal was not the first person to act in this fashion. The Jesuits Francois Garasse and Jean Hardouin had both published books that were similar to the Dictionnaire des athées. In his book on the Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce tems ou pretendus tels (The Strange Doctrines of the Best Minds of Our Time, or Those Considered Such) Garasse classified a great number of his contemporaries among the impious and atheists. The work caused a clamour and the celebrated preacher Ogier claimed that it was more made to harden atheists and libertines than convert them.56 This book had come out in 1623. One hundred and ten years later Hardouin who, according to Huet, strived to ruin his reputation without succeeding in doing so, followed in Garasse’s footsteps. In a long treatise bearing the title Athei detecti he classified Jansenius, L. Thomassin, André Martin, Quesnel, Ant. Legrand, Fr. Silvain Régis, Descartes, Malebranche, the great Arnauld, Nicole, and Pascal among the atheists. Hardouin explained his methodology in these terms: ‘I care not for those who mock me saying that I see atheism everywhere.

55 56

Lantoine, Un précurseur de la Franc-Maçonnerie: John Toland, p. 175. Ladvocat, Dictionnaire historique, 1760, vol. i, p. 571.

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If that is so, at least it is to combat it with the assistance of the Lord God. Is this not better than seeing atheism where it is and to teach it without knowing it in Paris itself, triumphing over all the defenses of the Superiors?’57 Did Maréchal get the idea for his dictionary from the books of Hardouin and Garasse? Perhaps. Whatever the case, he did not deny a certain sympathy for these two Jesuits. Their error, in his eyes, was not calumny: those they call atheists are so, consciously or unconsciously. But the two writers had transformed an opinion into a crime. It was this intolerance that was culpable.58 The work of Fr. Garasse had been refuted in a scholarly fashion, and that of Fr. Hardouin had been the butt of laughter. Upon the publication of the Dictionnaire des athées believers were seized with such a rage that the government halted the circulation of the book and later prohibited newspapers from reviewing it.

10

Examination of the Work

Let us briefly examine this atheist anthology, beginning by closely reading the preliminary discourse or response to the question, ‘What is an atheist?’ one of Maréchal’s best writings. Without beating about the bush, from the first pages the author asserts that ‘The atheist is the man of Nature’.59 And what else? He is a man who frees himself of ‘prejudices of all colours’ and who, going back through time, finds himself in the Golden Age, in ‘that fortunate time when the divine existence was not suspected’.60 He is thus an adversary of ‘political institutions’, but while lamenting their ‘vicious foundations’, while scorning the rulers who so poorly organise them, the atheist ‘resigns himself to the decrees of necessity’, submits to ‘the public order in which he finds himself’, and fulfills his duties as citizen. We never meet him on the ‘everyday road that leads to useful or brilliant posts’. Living among ‘corrupt and corrupting men’, he goes his way without assuming their tortuous and crawling step, avoiding their venom, bearing up under their cries.61 Suffice it to say, Maréchal traces a portrait of an atheist that is in his image. To hear him the only ‘true atheist’ is one who answers to this portrait, and like a pontiff, he casts from the atheist church all those who do not satisfy the

57 58 59 60 61

Hardouin, Joannis harduini E. societare Jesu. Opera varia, Amsterdam, 1733, p. 273. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. 153–164. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. iv–v. Ibid. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. vi–vi.

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conditions that his social convictions, his moral concerns, and his personal prejudices believed had to be imposed. The sybarite calling himself an Epicurean when he is nothing but a debauchee cannot be an atheist; nor can the politician who, so as to better command, invokes the divine chimera he mocks a parte; nor the half-scholar who sees in atheism a way of standing out from the crowd; nor the iconoclast who preaches the Cult of Reason, nor the timorous philosopher who, not fearing God though fearing men, is embarrassed by his opinion.62 In the same way, writing against Bonaparte and the ideologues of the Institut: The true atheist cannot be found among those hypocritical and bloodthirsty heroes who, to open a road to conquest, announce themselves to the nations they propose to tame as the protectors of the cult they profess, and then when they are with those close to them laugh at human credulity.63 Nor is the true atheist seated upon the chairs of those learned societies whose individuals lie endlessly to their consciences and consent to hide their ideas and delay the solemn march of philosophy out of concern for miserable personal interests, or for pitiful political considerations.64 A close examination of this list of the excommunicated forces several reflections on the reader. In the first case, it is clear that at the time Maréchal took up his pen he saw marching before him the different categories of atheists he had known over the course of his existence. The pre-Revolutionary aristocratic atheists who were enthroned at the homes of lovely ladies, ‘proud in their writings and obsequious in antechambers’, as Robespierre said in his speech of 18 Floréal,65 and whose species had not entirely disappeared, displeased him greatly. Maréchal joined Robespierre in condemning them and it is entirely logical to see these two disciples of Rousseau in agreement on this point. The plebeian atheists of the time of the sans-culotterie, and along with them the sans-culotte priests who, despite their repudiation, were marked ‘with the indelible character of priestly imposter’,66 also displeased him. Here again we find a posteriori a confirmation of the position adopted by Maréchal at the time of Dechristianisation. Finally, in expressing reservations about those athe-

62 63 64 65 66

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. vi–x. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. vi–vii Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. vi–viii. Dommanget, ‘Robespierre et les cultes’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, Year i, 1924, p. 207. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. vii.

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ists who do not have the stuff to deserve the title of ‘Godless Man’ but who he insisted on putting in his dictionary, Maréchal put his readers on guard against any confusion that might harm the sect he claimed to represent. Is it so difficult to be atheist? No. The good father who fulfills his duties without concerning himself with a God and who only answers to his conscience is an atheist. The weakest of theologians is capable of embarrassing him: he does not reason, he only feels. ‘Is there a God in heaven or isn’t there? It matters little to him. That question has no more interest to him than this one: Are there animals on the moon?’ Surrounded by his wife, his children, his parents, and his friends, he sees no need for a God.67 Maréchal also ranked among the true atheists the modest and peaceful philosopher who is not interested in making a splash and doesn’t display his principles ostentatiously, ‘atheism being the most natural, the simplest thing in the world’.68 Finally, in summary, he returned to a formula from the Lucrèce français: ‘The wise man alone has the right to be an atheist’.69 Sylvain could have written this section of the ‘Preliminary Discourse’, so in conformity with the Maréchalian gospel – ‘Without Virtue, without the Family, without Wisdom there is no atheism’ – twenty years earlier: it attests to the consistency of his ideas. But there is another section that addressed current events. Either because the author had made an incursion into the political realm, or because he anticipated the criticisms that would be addressed to him, he delivered a pro domo defense speech. There is no doubt that Bonaparte is targeted in a certain number of passages, for example, when Maréchal explains that the habit of bending beneath the yoke of a celestial despot prepares individuals for receiving the tether ‘of the first ambitious man’ who presents himself to them.70 Similarly, the allusion is clear when the author reduces the brilliant, pompous epithets of ‘God of fortune’, ‘genius of victory’, to their proper value; when he invokes the ‘unstable men who contemplate coups d’état, the profound minds who want to carry out revolutions in the realm of ideas or apply their sublime theories to statistics’.71 Maréchal ends his offensive by protesting against the reconstruction of churches; against the threat of ‘a new priestly vandalism’; against the false policy that consists in granting ‘public asylums to priestly imposture at the same time as to philosophy’, against the so-called regeneration pursued by the

67 68 69 70 71

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. xi–xii. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. lxx. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. lxxii. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. xlii–xliii Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. xliii–xliv.

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ideologues while the ‘most absurd and decrepit of all prejudices’ remains.72 Finally, one cannot help but think that Maréchal, carried away by his indignation against rulers, surrendered to excesses of the pen, since several lines come down to us in the form of dots.73 In different sections of the introduction, in which Maréchal explains the tenor of his book, he informs us that people wanted to dissuade him from publishing this ‘innocent nomenclature’; that they even predicted for him the ‘many risks he was running’, but he stood firm.74 He specifies that he had assembled ‘not only the sentiments of known atheists’, but ‘testimony in favour of atheism’ issued by princes of theism. He repeats that all the cited names are not those of atheists, specifying that the number of atheists is not that great.75 Despite the 1,057 articles of the dictionary, Maréchal does not hide the lacunae. He willingly recognises that with more time and work the quotations would have been more numerous and better chosen. He modestly calls his work a simple draft.76 The delicate point, the thorny question, was that of whether contemporaries would find their place in the dictionary.77 Obeying the desire to bring together as many authorities as possible in favour of his thesis, Sylvain did not hesitate to settle the question in the affirmative. He quoted the principal members of the Institut, some of his old friends from the Musée de Paris, as well as Bonaparte, who the English called ‘the general of atheists’.

11

A Series of Criticisms

Which is what brought about protests and complaints. After Grètry, Lablée, who Maréchal had inscribed in his book, spoke out against the liberal trait of his former friend.78 But Sylvain, scrupulously conforming to what he had foreseen and written in his ‘Preliminary Discourse’,79 let the storm pass. Not all atheists showed themselves to be satisfied with the dictionary. One can safely assume that most saw atheism from a less narrow angle than that of the author of the dictionary, and many were shocked by the excommunications pronounced by 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. xli, xlviii, ix. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. xxxviii, xxxix. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. lxiv ff. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, passim. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. lxiii Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. xliv–xlv. Lablée, Mémoires d’un homme de lettres, Paris, 1834, p. 56. Bruyr, Gretry, p. 84. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. lxii.

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Maréchal. Some did not make their criticisms public, but there were some who deplored the errors in proportion of the work, and they were not wrong to do so. Indeed, materialists and swaggerers of impiety, like d’Holbach, were not commented on at all, the articles about Diderot and Lamettrie were insufficient, while the names of unknowns were insolently displayed. One has the impression that the length of the articles did not depend on their importance, but were simply the result of the notes assembled by Maréchal on the subject. Lalande wrote a sympathetic review of the book in the Bien-Informé. He regretted that many worthy men were omitted, like Eusèbe Salverte. He found the article on Mirabaud far too weak and the passage on Newton inconclusive. ‘Voltaire’s niece assured me he was an atheist’, he concluded, ‘and I am witness that he didn’t deny it’.80 This assertion attracted a reply to Lalande in the same paper.81 The Journal des Débats et loix du Pouvoir législatif, after having attacked Lalande’s ‘sermon’, asserted that the Dictionnaire ‘would have great difficulty in proving’ that the most celebrated men were atheists. Singling out the passage where the famous astronomer spoke of Newton’s medullary substance, the same newspaper concluded in a mocking tone, proposing to ‘all people of good sense the question of whether Citizen Lalande is not suffering from brain transports and if his medullary substance is not ill’.82 On 28 Ventôse the Gazette de France also focused on Lalande’s article,83 and the following 4 Germinal the Journal des Débats returned to the attack, this time turning the floor over to Louis-Sebastien Mercier, now a colleague of Lalande’s at the Institut. Mercier said: This dictionary of atheists is a frightful scandal cast among us, one possible only in our century; a book the author sought to render voluminous, in which so many names chosen at random are so boldly and unjustly entered. Mine can be found there, though all my writings of the past thirty years show that I am far, very far from thinking like the atheists, who horrify me. A world without God! The harmonic immensity of the universe without a goal! Human intelligence without love! No, the atheist strives to appear to be one. He seeks accomplices; the spirit of truth torments him;

80 81 82 83

Le Bien Informé, 27 Ventôse year viii, p. 3. Aulard, Etudes et leçons sur la Révolution française, Paris, 1904, no. 3, pp. 310–311. Le Bien Informé, 27 Ventôse year viii, p. 3. Bibliothèque Nationale, Lc 2/148. Bibliothèque Nationale, Lc 2/1.

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his doctrine kills him; he was not able to completely extinguish the ray of light that is within him. In a note the newspaper announced that Mercier’s opinion was shared ‘by almost everyone’. It applauded his heated language, pardoned him for wanting to dethrone Newton, which, even so, was better than wanting to dethrone God, as Lalande did. The note concluded with an allusion to the ‘gentle and amusing folly’, preferable to the ‘sad folly’ of Lalande. The Journal des Hommes libres reproduced Jerome Lalande’s article without commentary in its issue of 30 Ventôse, and published a sympathetic critique of the Dictionnaire in its 22 Germinal issue. It would speak of it again on 1 Floréal, accusing Maréchal of inserting ‘the most foolish and ridiculous’ declamations against his doctrine in order to get himself some publicity. In fact, the Journal des défenseurs having called Sylvain ‘frail’, ‘short’, a ‘pygmy’; the Dictionnaire des grands hommes du jour par une société de très petits individus84 having done no more than mention the Dictionnaire des athées for fear of ‘degrading itself’; and the collection Petites vérités au grand jour, having announced that Maréchal had written ‘a big book that, if it could be thrown with sufficient force, would crush the Eternal Father and all his court’, the publisher Grabit was overflowing with clients.85 Charles Pougens, in his Bibliothèque Française86 wrote a lengthy review of the Dictionnaire. ‘Far from being the enemy of Sylvain M......l’ he wrote, ‘I regret and am distressed that having done better and being capable of doing better, he adopted so desiccating an opinion and undertook a book so bizarre in order to please certain men, freethinkers out of weakness and hypocritical braggarts out of incredulity’. For his part, Cousin Jacques, author of the Dictionnaire Néologique spoke out against an ‘impertinent’ work written, printed, and published solely ‘to make money at the expense of fools and the truth’. He found the principles within it ridiculous, its applications false, the citations erroneous. As for Maréchal, he could only have ‘a faulty intelligence’, a ‘heart spoiled by the practice of impious and extravagant systems’, a ‘poorly organised mind’ worthy of being sent, not before tribunals, but to the madhouse.87 84 85 86 87

Dictionnaire des grands hommes du jour par une société de très petits individus, Paris, Floréal year viii. Journal des hommes libres, no. 143, 1 Floréal year viii. Petites vérités au grand jour, year viii, pp. 125–128. Bibliothèque Française, 1 Floréal year viii [1800], pp. 39–72. Léonard Aléa, Antidote de l’athéisme ou Examen critique de Dictionnaire des athées anciens et modernes. Vendémiaire year ix, pp. 1–4. [sic]

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Léonard Aléa, in his Antidote de l’athéisme88 was not satisfied with approving and reproducing these harsh words; he proposed to refute the main articles of the dictionary and to foil the supposed projects of the atheists. However, he did not adopt the conclusions of Cousin Jacques. While recognising Maréchal’s guilt, he simply asked God to incite sincere repentance in the soul of the unbeliever. The prefect of police praised Leonard Aléa’s book in his report dated 18 October 1800.89 The poet Millevoye, in his Etrennes au sots [Offerings to Fools], a book aimed at ‘literary elves’, after having mocked ‘low rent rhymesters’ and ‘petty authors’, attacked Maréchal: … he who we once saw, to the sound of bagpipes, Lull the readers of the Almanac of the Muses, Today, abjuring his former blandness, Makes a dictionary and denies the creator. Oh, how beautiful a thing is a dictionary! It is vain to gloss such a book. It doesn’t demand great efforts of the mind, It can be diffuse, careless, poorly written, But as soon as one makes one, one is unique And one has wit … in alphabetical order.90 Establishing a parallel between the Dictionnaire des amans and the Dictionnaire des athées, Millevoye found that Sylvain had a fierce vocation for dictionaries. He blandly added: ‘Sylvain Maréchal plays at being wicked, but at bottom he is a good man’.91 After Mercier, another member of the Insitut, De Lisle de Sales, whose book De la paix de l’Europe [On Peace in Europe] had been banned by the German court at a time when that same court tolerated the Dictionnaire des athées, entered the lists as well. After having shared in the universal indignation ‘for more than a fortnight’, he examined the work calmly and suspected that the Dictionnaire was nothing but ‘one long joke’, ‘one of those bits of banter’ in the manner of Lucian, where one says precisely the opposite of that which one wants to convince others. But sensing the fragility of this strange thesis,

88 89 90 91

Léonard Aléa, Antidote de l’athéisme ou Examen critique de Dictionnaire des athées anciens et modernes. Vendémiaire year ix. Aulard, Paris sous le Consulat, vol. i, p. 736. Etrennes aux sots, Paris, 1802, p. 15. Etrennes aux sots, Paris, 1802, p. 20.

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De Lisle de Sales soon abandoned it and closely criticised – as Léonard Aléa had done – the Dictionnaire’s main articles.92

12

Sylvain’s Retirement to Montrouge

We have shown Sylvain in his house in Cloître Saint-Marcel, sharing his existence between relentless work and the practice of domestic virtues. This house pleased him but didn’t give him complete satisfaction. Let us recall what he wrote to Lucile Desmoulins, retired to Bourg-Egalité (Bourg-la-Reine): ‘I live only in the hope of one day realising on a small scale what you are executing on a grand one’.93 After a few years living in the faubourg Saint-Marceau, Maréchal sought a house more in keeping with his wishes. ‘Cities’, he said to Mme. Gacon-Dufour, who asked him the reason for his search, ‘have walls, barriers, and arsenals. I want to go to the country to enjoy, instead and for a longer time, the sight of the sun’.94 It is obviously the countryside that would have answered the intimate sentiments of the Shepherd Sylvain. He would have liked to settle far from heavily trafficked roads, deep in a solitary and pleasant valley, in a humble, modest, and comfortable asylum ‘sheltered from the heat and storms of summer and the harsh freezes of the winter’.95 But if nature attracted him, his occupations, his habits, his family, his friends, even his memories and ‘pallid politics’ tied him to Paris. He settled on a kind of compromise between his predilection for the country and the necessities of existence: he moved to Montrouge, close to the capital. The commune of Montrouge then occupied, along with its current emplacement, a territory that in 1860 formed more than three-quarters of the fourteenth arrondissement. This territory was made up of a plain of about two square kilometers, interspersed with a small woods, quarries, windmills, and was criss-crossed by two wide roads, the Orleans route and the Maine road, as well as several dirt roads.96 The guide for travelers and the curious so meticulously compiled at the time by Hyacinthe Langlois says that the plain is fertile in wheat, that the quarries are

92 93 94 95 96

De Lisle de Sales, Mémoires en faveur de Dieu, year x [1802]. See chapter ix. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 32. On the choice of a residence, le Livre de tous les âges, p. 17. Bournon, Département de la Seine. Etat des communes à la fin du xixe siècle, Montrouge. 1905, pp. 16–17 and passim.

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of rubble stone and that ‘one sees many country homes there’.97 One of them, in a peaceful corner, was deemed worthy by Sylvain to serve as his hermitage. It was there, under that solitary roof, far from oppressors and profiteers, from hypocrites and charlatans, that we must henceforth imagine him. It was there, under the sign Moderation, one of his favourite goddesses, that he attempted to realise happiness as he understood it, as a wise man would understand it. Listen to his seductive invocation of Moderation: Companion of peace, guardian of virtues, O Moderation! To you who are no longer esteemed, I address my wishes: of my solitary roof Deign to be the tutelary genius and star. Keep from me corrupting luxury And ornate pleasures that fatigue the heart, Importuning desires, the ardent thirst for gold. Bring beneficent friendship, And love, that gentle tyrant of the soul and senses. And frank laughter and innocent games. Bring as well sister after their brothers And the daughters of Pindus in shepherdess’s garb. What happiness if one day you were to gather The muses, friendship, the graces, and love.98 It seems, as we will see below, that the poet did not invoke sweet Moderation in vain, and even though there are always hidden spots in the human soul where the light of history cannot penetrate, one can nevertheless conjecture that Maréchal found in his hermitage, if not happiness – who can boast of having attained it? – at least the maximum of happiness compatible with the state of his health, his family position, his material situation, and the non-conformism of his ideas. During the summer, before dawn, he strolled bareheaded in his garden, for he loved flowers, ‘along with women, one of Nature’s most beautiful productions’, as he said to Mme. Gacon-Dufour. He enjoyed the song of the morning bird who greets the sun in his fashion, for, like the bird, he wanted to tell the morning star of his feelings of admiration.99

97 98 99

Langlois, Itinéraire du royaume de France, 1816, p. lviii. Le Lucrèce français, an vi, frag. xxxi, p. 64. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 19, 26.

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During his stroll he thought, he pondered, and then returned to his study to give himself over to his labour of composition and research, using cards or large rolls of paper, like the ancients. It was then, in the calm, in the silence, that his tireless labours began. Maréchal would sometimes work fifteen hours a day!100 Study was his supreme joy, and his heart blossomed amongst his papers, his notes, his books. This man, of such a simple nature and tastes, who would have yawned at the table of a Lucullus, lived there in a kind of opulence, for his library was rich. A noble opulence, since it was justified by labour. And yet, if we are to believe him, Sylvain, as a good disciple of Rousseau, disdained dusty libraries, ‘which attest only to delirium and the shame of the human spirit’. He said: ‘The library of the wise man, if he has one, is not voluminous. What can he learn from books? The man of virtue no more furnishes his head than the interior of his house with useless and superfluous objects’.101 These lines, which would have been paradoxical from the pen of any other writer, are frighteningly illogical when we recall they are those of a ‘library rat’. In truth, if we were to take Sylvain at his word, what would he have become? What needs, what pleasures would he not have been deprived of? Was he not one of those who makes daily use of books and loves them passionately? Was not one of his greatest pleasures strolling along the quais and ‘bouquiner’, according to the expression he used102 and which has since made its way in the world? A question of some interest is precisely that of knowing what books Sylvain lived with and assisted him in his work. There is no doubt but that everyone’s tendencies are sustained, cultivated, and developed by their reading. In a sense, our books justify our opinions and often our nature. We choose them because they flatter our taste and answer our needs. Though Maréchal left us no complete catalogue of his library, we can nonetheless have an idea of it. Theology held a large place in it. Fénelon’s Traité de l’Existence de Dieu [Treatise on the Existence of God], filled with marginal notes, stood alongside the Traité des trois imposteurs [Treatise of the Three Imposters] and the Talmud and Lalande’s Psautier [Psalter]. Forty books on jurisprudence stood in a row on his shelves: Linguet, Beccaria, Brissot, Pastoret, and even a strange manuscript collection, Le Recueil des plaidoyers de Gerbier [Anthology of Gerbier’s Defense Speeches]. The philosophy of the time was worthily represented. Helvétius, Condorcet, Deslandes, d’Holbach, d’Argens, and Terrasson were not shocked to find them100 101 102

Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 26. Maréchal, De la Vertu, pp. 268–269. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 45.

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selves assembled on the same shelf. As for morality, one of Maréchal’s main concerns, it could not be decently reduced to the bare bones. Montaigne’s Essais and Charron’s Livre de Sagesse [Book of Wisdom], which he particularly admired, the moral works of the patriarchs and the prophets, the different translations of Epictetus’Manual, the major work of the maître d’hotel of philosophy on the Morale Universelle, Fréville’s Ephémerides de l’Humanité, were conscientiously piled up. The distance is not great from morality to education, but here the library was less well furnished, with only a few works, aside from the reports and speeches of Mirabeau, Talleyrand, Condorcet, Chaptal, and Valazé. Strangely, the natural and exact sciences, those arts so abhorred by the literary Maréchal, occupied an important place in his library, totaling in all about fifty volumes. Let us now speak of literary works, plays, novels and tales, histories, and biographies. In this domain the library was rich, the books were squeezed together and offered their titles to Sylvain in all languages.103 He went from one to the other, seeking inspiration or clarifications, making comparisons and remarks. One can see him in this retreat, like Montaigne in his ‘library’ surrounded with ‘learned virgins’, leafing through this or that book and lamenting the information he was still lacking. As a result, he was constantly purchasing new books to clarify points that had remained obscure. He rarely walked along the quais without bringing some home.104 He borrowed from the Bibliotheque Mazarine, which he occasionally visited. Let it not be forgotten that Maréchal remained officially employed by that library. For a time, he almost became its assistant librarian. Indeed, on a petition from Sylvain, the Committee of Public Instruction had decreed on 1 Brumaire year iv (23 October 1795) that Citizen Maréchal would have the position to which ‘his lengthy service to that library and his literary works’ gave him the right.105 But as a result of a request of the librarian, the Committee, at its sitting of 3 Brumaire year iv (25 October 1795), reversed the decision and confirmed the nomination of Coquille as assistant director.106 The books, however numerous they were, were unable to satisfy Maréchal’s desire for information. He also read newspapers, especially foreign ones.107

103 104 105 106 107

Catalogue des livres de feu M. P.-Sylvain Marehcal, Dont le vente se fera le lundi 24 Prairial an xi …, Bibliotheque de la ville de Paris, 601/148, Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 26 and 45. Procès-verbaux du Comité d’Instruction publique, vol. vi, p. 827. Procès-verbaux du Comité d’Instruction publique, vol. vi, p. 854. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 27.

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But liver obstructions resulting from his too assiduous labours108 did not allow Sylvain to always dedicate himself to study. He also had to deal with importuning visitors,109 the ransom of knowledge. Finally, and above all, alongside muses and ‘scholarly virgins’, love and friendship demanded their rights at the hearth of the peaceful thinker. In the autumn of his life, one must hear Maréchal forging the happiness in a better world with his Zoé to appreciate the seduction that this woman exercised over him: Hope, of which my soul was so long enamoured, How much it cost me to renounce you! Too sweet illusion … Cruel truth! But let us forbid ourselves an indiscreet murmur And make right nature’s wrongs. If everything dies with us, if it is possible one day That I lose both my life and my love, If it must be that one day my hand, frozen and failing, Can no longer caress the breast of my lover, (This day is yet far off, if I go by my desires) Dry up, my Zoé, the cup of pleasures! Let us burn the wings of Time with the flame of love. Love each other! Take joy! Hasten to be happy. Let us not consume ourselves in pointless wishes. But in the art of joy we shall provide models. May we never part. Hold me in your arms. In my burning gaze, drunk on your lures, Recognise your power: share in my intoxication. Provoke me, render me caress for caress. May my mouth, attached to your heaving breast, Enflame with the same fire the lover and his beloved. What matter the future and its fears? Let the sickle of death rise and fall on this moment And strike us. Drained of desire, in our embraces Death shall be A peaceful sleep that follows pleasure.110

108 109 110

Lalande, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 11. Michaud, Biographie universelle, vol. xxvii, p. 7. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 7. Maréchal, Le Lucrèce français, year vi, pp. 214–215.

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The poet’s philosophy mingles with his love here. Towards the end of the piece one can even distinguish a kind of response to the fears of the future life inspired in the pious Zoé. Religion constantly stood as a barrier between Sylvain and Zoé. Zoé attended services, numbering among the parishioners of Abbé Lamarre, the priest of Montrouge. Maréchal’s tolerance accommodated itself quite well to this circumstance. Nevertheless, though he never allowed it to be suspected, it is likely that the Godless Man suffered from this disagreement with his companion. After having many times asserted that a wife should have the same opinions as her husband, it was doubtless not without some regret that Maréchal had to resign himself to this important difference with his spouse. His sister-in-law, also a believer, was his secretary.111 These were the only two individuals with whom he was in daily contact. They assured the ministry of the interior in the home of the sage; they saw to it that everything was perfectly clean,112 as Maréchal demanded. They prepared his meals in accordance with the wishes of the Pythgorean: vegetables, dairy dishes, and fruit, for Sylvain, who occasionally liked to have a meal in the countryside, needed no more than that113 His brother Nicolas, who he loved, his brother-in-law Jean-Baptiste Després, and his cousin Jean-François Julliet, an innkeeper in Paris formed, along with his sister-in-law, Mlle. Després, the circle of relatives with whom he remained in contact. It was above all among his friends that Maréchal was happy. It was a joy for him to see them gathered around his table. In the course of these feasts, his simple air, which inspired confidence, his affability, his instructive conversation brightened by original quips and lively repartee, always produced, despite his stammer, appreciable charm.114 He loved those games called children’s games, which consisted in giving forfeits which are then redeemed by a tale, a quatrain, a song, or even a kiss. He arranged matters in such a way that he would be chosen first, so that in recounting a tale his style would be imitated, so the recreation could be used to the benefit of morals.115 Men of science like the astronomer Jerôme Lalande and the mathematician Francois Peyrard were not at all out of place in the retreat of the sentimental

111 112 113 114 115

Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 68–69. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 26. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 26–27. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 5, 13, 45. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 53. The author reproduces on pages 53–64 Candor et Sophie, a tale with which Maréchal ‘paid off a bet’.

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and moralising littérateur. They visited Maréchal often, for the three communed – if we can express ourselves in this way – in the same atheism. Bulidon, Maréchal’s oldest friend, was also a convinced atheist.116 He had the rare privilege of accompanying Sylvain on his rustic strolls, which was a supreme mark of friendship, Maréchal preferring to be alone to admire the beauties of nature.117 The Italian Pio, become a ‘master of languages’, also frequented the philosopher’s hermitage. A firm atheist,118 he was also close to Maréchal in the social realm, since he opposed the opulence of morals to that of wealth and declared that ‘it is difficult, if not impossible, to be a good citizen when one possesses a fortune above the average’.119 Though an enemy of literary women, Maréchal counted two among his friends, Mme. Gacon-Dufour and Mme. Périer,120 who by their talents spread a charm in his home he did not underestimate. When the men who loved him were spoken of Sylvain responded: ‘Tell me also that there are female friends who love me: I don’t know why, but I prefer this word to mistress, and even to “lover”’.121 Mme. Gacon-Dufour, more than Mme. Périer, was particularly close to Maréchal. She gave herself permission to seek him out in his study at the risk of annoying him so as to force him to suspend his absorbing labours.122 It goes without saying that all of Maréchal’s friends were not, like him, inclined to goodness and kindness and animated by the greatest tolerance. He exhorted them to indulgence by sometimes repeating these verses from the Lucrèce Français: O my friends, be less severe among ourselves, Contemplate our miseries with an indulgent eye, Bear up before ignorance and pardon error, Don’t accuse the heart of the faults of the mind, Divided by dogma, united in morals, Peaceful travelers, our course is the same. 116 117 118 119

120 121 122

Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 57. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 21. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, pp. 346–347 passim. Journal de la Montagne, no. 106, 16 September 1793, p. 743. Pio died at age 87 in 1824, in the house of the bookseller Fayolle. It should be noted that he was at Marat’s home a few hours before the assassination (cf. Cabanes, Le Marat inconnu, second edition, p. 396.) Lalande, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, second supplement to the Dictionnaire des athées, p. 72. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 12. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 38.

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We must all pay the same tribute, There are a thousand paths, but only one goal. Aid each other along the way, brighten the journey, And spread flowers along the painful path. Delicate tablemates, let us chose our dishes, Condemn not tastes, avoid excess.123 It is understandable that a man capable of raising himself to the serene peaks of tolerance and goodness wanted, like ‘divine’ Plato, one of his teachers, and Brutus, one of his models, to write a treatise on virtue. It was in this peaceful retreat of Montrouge, surrounded by his relatives and friends, among his books, that Sylvain Maréchal, like a sage moulded in the ancient style, would end his days.

123

Maréchal, Le Lucrèce français, year vi, frag, xxx, p. 63.

Chapter 15 1

The Draft Law Prohibiting Teaching Women to Read (1801)

The scandal caused by the Dictionnaire des athées had barely calmed when Maréchal provoked a new one with the publication of the Projet de loi portant defense d’aprendre à lire aux femmes [Draft Law Prohibiting Teaching Women to Read]. Already the subject of attacks from priests, he this time attracted the hatred of female literati and forged against himself the most unforgiving of coalitions. Nevertheless, he counted on defeating them thanks to ‘kindly people’ and ‘clear thinkers’, as well as ‘good mothers’, ‘excellent housewives’, ‘sensitive wives’, and ‘innocent maidens’, ‘finally avenged for the contemptible abandonment to which they were relegated’.1 It is only possible to explain and judge Sylvain’s new work if we fail to take the contemporary atmosphere into account. A woman of the period, Mme. De Salm-Dysk – the same woman who, upon the death of her friend Lalande, pronounced a eulogy that made P.L. Courrier wish he had died2 – pointed out that in all periods men had sought to keep the weaker sex from study and the cultivation of the fine arts, but that at the end of the eighteenth century ‘this opinion has become more than ever a kind of vogue’. She added: ‘Wherever one goes, whichever way one turns, one’s ears are worn out by discussions of this subject’.3 Nothing could be more true. In that same 1797 there appeared the Almanch des femmes célèbres [Almanac of Famous Women] by Beyerlé, rehabilitating the fair sex,4 and the Triomphe de la saine philosophie [The Triumph of Healthy Philosophy], important because it contained a protest by Citizeness Booser against the transformation of women into ‘dolls’.5 Again in 1797 we witness a polemic opposing the poet Lebrun and the abovementioned Princess de Salm. Lebrun composed an ‘Ode Aux Belles qui veulent devenir poètes’ [Ode to Women Who Want to Become Poets], in which he says: Reassure the confused Graces, Do not betray your allures.

1 2 3 4

Maréchal, Projet de loi portant défense d’apprendre à lire aux femmes, 1801, p. iii. Courrier, Lettres et pamphlets, p. 200. Pipelet, Epitre aux femmes, Paris, 1797. Beyerlé, Almanach des femmes célèbres par leurs vertus, leur science et leur courage … Pour l’an Vi de la République, Paris. 5 De Villiers, Histoire des clubs de femmes et de légions d’amazones, Paris, 1910, p. 282.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_017

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Do you want to resemble the Muses? Then inspire and do not write!6 To which Mme. De Salm replied in an ‘Epitre aux femmes’ [Epistle to Women], read at the Lycée Républicain: If nature made two different sexes, It changed their form and not their elements. ............................................... Say this: man, puffed up with sacrilegious pride Blushes at being equaled by she who he protects. ...................................................... It is time that peace is offered us: Study, the arts, and careers are open.7 The poet Charlemagne, having taken the side of women, the controversy continued, causing a stir and finding echoes as far away as the École Centrale of the department of the Oise.8 It picked up again and grew in scope in 1801, Legouve having brought out his ‘Mérite des femmes’ [The Merit of Women], an epistle rather than a poem. Legouve strived to ‘celebrate the more beautiful half of humanity.’: A poet wanted to forbid her verses. Without doubt she must not, with a masculine desire, Make the trumpet or the lyre speak. But she was able to prove that beneath her light touch The shepherd’s flute effortlessly sighs … Let her then without fear Exercise an art that could turn to the profit of love.9 This discussion of female literati necessarily raised the question of the education of women, particularly at a moment when the definitive organisation of studies was being addressed. In year vii Thérémin, pleading the cause of the fair sex, demanded the organisation of the education of women through the

6 7 8 9

Almanach des muses, 1798. De Salm, Epitre aux femmes, pp. 5,6,8,9,10. Journal du département de l’Oise, 9 Vendémiaire year vi, no. 14. Legouve, La Mérite des femmes, p. 20.

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creation of a great number of republican Saint-Cyrs.10 But Chaptal, in his report on public education, maintained the most profound of silences on the subject of women. This mutism was noticed. The enemies of the education of women drew arguments from it,11 and Maréchal, being less obliged to be circumspect than Chaptal, decided to speak up. His ideas can be briefly summed up as follows: the woman at home, whatever her capacities or her philosophical, civic, or literary aptitudes; fathers and mothers first, and husbands second are the only ones qualified to provide women the suitable rudiments of intellectual culture; as a general rule, the best thing for women is to renounce science: ‘Let them be satisfied with being the idol of the first sex, the tutelary divinity of good households, and the providence of their nascent family’;12 and it is to the extent that a woman remains in a state of ignorance that she is closer to Nature and remains virtuous. For Maréchal, being closer to nature, to the blessed time of the Golden Age, is what matters most both for women and men, but more for women than for men. During primitive times did women not limit their knowledge to caring for their households?13 Did Artemis, whose conjugal piety immortalised her ‘in the sole manner appropriate to women’, require education?14 Did she require science? Eve knows what it cost. It is a charming ignorance More fitting to beauty.15 If we open any of Maréchal’s books, if we leaf through the collection of his articles, this council to the fair returns like a leitmotiv: Preserve without regret your sweet ignorance, Guardian of virtues and mother of pleasures. Dedicate your leisure to innocent games.16

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

De Villiers, Histoire des clubs de femmes, p. 283. Among others, Maréchal. See his Projet de loi portant defense … pp. vi–vii. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, 1779 edition, p. 145. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, 1779 edition, p. 181 [Des devoirs maternels]. Maréchal, Histoire universelle en style lapidaire, p. xxxvi. Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, Ode ix [A une femme bel esprit], p. 65. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, frag. xviii, p. 34.

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The novelty and originality of Maréchal’s proposal is not that of announcing in the imperative tone of the legislator so simplistic a conception of the education of women: Retif de la Bretonne had done so in one of his utopias,17 going so far as to prohibit the fair sex from ‘writing and reading’ for at least twenty-five years. Maréchal’s originality was in wrapping his paradox with ‘considerations’ so strange, fantastic, amusing, and unexpected, and supported by an apparatus of references so imposing that one can’t help but wonder if the author was not engaging in persiflage, in being witty at the expense of female writers. In this case, though a determined enemy of the rights and the public education of the fair sex, ‘the indiscreet and bold legislator’18 who forbids women from reading cannot be taken seriously. After the preceding considerations, it is of some use to dwell on Maréchal’s strange draft law. We will limit ourselves to giving a few samples of his reasoning: Considering … 8: That nature, in providing women with a prodigious aptitude for speaking appears to have wanted to spare them the task of learning to read and write.19 13: Those women who boast of knowing how to read and write well are not those who know how best to love.20 47: That the art of pleasing and the science of homemaking are not learned in books. Ovid’s Art of Love taught women nothing.21 As for the eighty articles of the text of the law they are all in the following vein: ‘v. Reason demands that the sexes differ in talents as in attire. It is every bit as revolting and scandalous to see a man sew as to see a woman write; to see a man braid hair as to see a woman turn phrases’.22 This is the writer’s manner. If we add that Maréchal quotes as authorities in favour of his thesis Saint Paul, Pliny, Henry iv, and Mohammed, and in keeping with his usual practice, makes use of his own works, we will have given a more or less complete idea of the book’s style.

17 18 19 20 21 22

Retif de la Bretonne, Andrographe, vol. i, p. 27. Maréchal, Projet d’une loi portant défense …, 1801, p. ii. Maréchal, Projet d’une loi portant défense …, 1801, p. 4. Maréchal, Projet d’une loi portant défense …, 1801, p. 6. Maréchal, Projet d’une loi portant défense …, 1801, p. 19. Maréchal, Projet d’une loi portant défense …, 1801, pp. 50–51.

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Responses of Mmes. Gacon-Dufour and Clément. Repercussions of the Work

Such a project, stinging ‘the most delicate fiber of women’s hearts’, could not but have many enemies. We have already said that Maréchal expected this. In a post script he asked those women who take his legislative work ‘to heart’ to send him their protests. But he informed them that he would not respond to insults.23 One doubts that many women made use of the new legislator’s permission; those who wanted to respond did so publicly. Mme. Gacon-Dufour, who in 1787 had written an Mémoire pour le sexe féminin contre le sexe masculin [Treatise in Support of the Female Sex Against the Male Sex] wondered if it was not envy that drove Maréchal to launch such a pamphlet. ‘Envy can be tolerated in the small-minded’, she exclaimed, ‘but the daring thinker of his century has no need to follow this vice to make his genius shine: the nightingale isn’t jealous of the chirping of the warbler’. She then analysed the main passages of the work and concluded by citing some supposed decrees rendered by a certain number of heads of household, the last of which reads as follows: ‘Given that the author of such a bill can only have been inspired by madness, he will be sent to the Committee for Health, where he will be treated at the expense of his supporters until he has regained his reason’.24 Mme. Gacon-Dufour treated her friend severely. Mme. Clément, who was also indignant, courageously defended the fair sex, speaking out ‘against the ridiculous innovations of the male sex’. She concluded in almost the same way as Mme. Gacon-Dufour, calling for Maréchal to immediately retract his opinion ‘so lacking in philanthropy’, under penalty of being accused of madness by both sexes.25 Mme. Clément’s response was briefly analysed by the Journal de Paris of 29 Pluviôse year ix (18 February 1801), which found it admirably written.26 The same newspaper also included a review of Maréchal’s proposed bill in its issue 23 24

25 26

Maréchal, Projet d’une loi portant défense …, 1801, p. vii. Gacon-Dufour, Contre le projet de loi de S*** M*** portant défense d’apprendre à lire aux femmes. Par une femme qui ne se pique pas d’être Femme de lettres, Paris, chez Ouvrier, year ix, 1801. In 1805 Mme. Gacon-Dufour would publish a kind of novel under the title De la necessité de l’instruction pour les femmes (On the Need for the Education of Women). In this work she demonstrates that only a good education can allow girls to escape the traps laid for them. Clément, Les femmes vengées de la sottise d’un philosophe du jour ou Réponse au Projet de loi de S*** M***, Paris, n.d. Journal de Paris, no. 149, p. 902.

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the following 26 Germinal. It found that it was a ‘detailed compilation whose fate, like that of the Dictionnaire des athées, is to offend good sense, to produce a bit of evil tumult, and to die without having lived’.27 Among men, a friend of Sylvain’s, the former member of the National Convention Peyrard, warmly pleaded the feminine cause. Under the pseudonym of Roetig he published a volume proving the superiority of women over men.28 But there was a certain woman named Bernier who shared Sylvain Maréchal’s point of view, if not completely, at least partially. In year xii she brought out a book in which she said that ‘woman’s lot is to ensure the domestic happiness of the man, and it is necessary from childhood to let them know how inferior they are to men’.29 Another fact demonstrating the extent to which the question so brutally defined by Sylvain Maréchal fascinated the public opinion of the time was a competition on the type of education appropriate for women organized by the Society of Sciences and Arts of the department of the Lot, sitting in Montauban.30

3

Pour et contre la Bible

Despite the uproar caused by its appearance, the proposed law prohibiting the teaching of women to read was only an hors d’oeuvre in the eyes of Sylvain, preoccupied as he was with considerably more serious matters. The ‘unmistakable religious reaction’ that characterised the early nineteenth century, whether it took on a political or a literary form, did not escape Maréchal’s attention.31 18 June 1800 (29 Prairial year viii), the First Consul, emboldened by his success at Marengo, attended the Te Deum sung at the metropolitan church of Milan, braving the gossip of ‘the atheists of Paris’.32 This gesture, which had symbolic value, preceded the beginning of semi-official and then official talks with Pope Pius vii for the establishing of the Concordat. Lengthy negotiations followed, hidden from the public by a captive press. But in political milieux and

27 28 29 30 31 32

Journal de Paris, no. 206, p. 1242. Roetig [Peyrard], De la supériorité de la femme au-dessus de l’homme et le Traite de l’incertitude des sciences, Paris, 1803. De Villiers, Histoire des clubs de femmes …, p. 281. Discours qui a remporté le prix à la Société des Sciences et Arts du Département du Lot le 30 Prairial, an xi, Paris, 1804. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, pp. viii, ix, xv, xix, etc … In his famous dispatch of 18 June 1800 to the other Consuls Bonaparte spells this out.

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cultivated spheres people were aware of what was happening. A dual opposition appeared: one, sly and sneaky, skilled in ruse and intrigue, had as its chief the former Bishop of Autun, Talleyrand; the other, more direct and in the revolutionary tradition, had at its head the majority of the Institut and the last of the Jacobins. It is hardly necessary to say that Maréchal lined up with the latter opposition. It was in all likelihood with the aim of strengthening it that he resolved to write a new anti-Christian work. He was putting the final touches to it when Chateaubriand’s Atala appeared. Within the framework of an exotic novel, a young man ‘wasted his talent’33 in making attractive the mass, the scapular, priests, Jesuits, the Gospels and Catholicism. The enormous success of this ‘short novel’34 determined Maréchal to have his manuscript published without delay. The Godless Man thought that after having taken poison many would want the antidote. The manuscript was sold for 600 francs on 6 Germinal year ix (27 March 1800) to a publisher35 brave enough to expose himself to Consular thunder, and Pour et contre la Bible [For and Against the Bible] soon appeared. The title is of little importance: it is the book’s intent that must be examined. Maréchal examined the holy scriptures point by point, and it is our opinion that more than one specialist would gain from taking its reflections into account. He admires Genesis, sublime and simple, though too often spoiled by petty and crude details. He finds Exodus strange, the Book of Numbers uninteresting, Deuteronomy filled with falsehoods, Isaiah uneven and inconsistent, but superb overall. One is grateful to the enemy of the Church for having examined the Old and New Testaments in detail, for having aimed at impartiality by supplementing his considerations with facts gleaned from his great learning. But this is not the great interest of the work. It resides in the ‘Epistle to the Ministers of all Religions’ and in the ‘Summary of a Reading of the Bible’ which frame the technical section of the book. In these two presentations it is no longer the scholar and writer who speaks and gives his anger free rein: it is the Godless Man. Let us listen to him: A book conceived and dictated by God himself should be Reason written. Perfection alone could justify its celestial origin. It should be written, not in Hebrew or Greek or Arabic, but in an idiom familiar to all peoples,

33 34 35

Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, pp. viii–ix. Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 264. Autographed piece signed 6 Germinal year ix.

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and in this way a universal language would be found. It should rule over all the best books and take the place of all human institutions, civil and religious.36 Instead of this, what is the Bible? A book that, as the fathers and doctors of the Church confess, should not be put in all hands, a book incomprehensible and dangerous to most men.37 ‘The most absurd, the most useless, the most immoral, the most maleficent of all books’.38 When he contemplates the idea that a book like this one is the foundation of a Christian religion that still imposes itself on the sheep-like mass, Maréchal trembles with rage: Book of blood and mud! During the two or three thousand years since you fell from the heavens, how many evils have you spread over the earth! Inexhaustible source of errors and lies, or vices and crimes! Because of you, how much has the human race degraded itself! Impure emanation of the most ancient and fatal of prejudices! Monstrous product of a dark spirit furrowed with a few rays of light, when will you cease to insult taste, reason, and morals?39 As for Jesus Christ, he ‘perhaps never existed’ but ‘was probably imagined by obscure charlatans tormented with the need to torment others in order to make themselves important’.40 If we refer to the Gospels we see he is nothing but an ungrateful child, a harsh relative, a dangerous citizen, a vile egotist, a clumsy street performer, an ambitious hypocrite, a shameless imposter. During his infernal mission did he not deny his mother, upset families, debauch children from their paternal homes, refuse sepulchers to the dead, and preach intolerance and superstition?41 Maréchal prefers Socrates to him. ‘Christ’, he said in conclusion, ‘may your name perish! Or rather may it be condemned to be scorned by the wise and execrated by peoples finally disabused’.42 And it is the religion glorifying ‘this Man-God or this God-Man or rather this monster’,43 and the cult based on a ‘horrifying book, every line of which caused 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, pp. 391–392. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 385. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 396. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 393. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 398. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 327. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 398. It should be noted that Sylvain dod not always judge Jesus so harshly. See chapter viii in the Almanach des Républicains, p. 224. Ibid.

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rivers of blood and bile to flow’,44 that so-called statesmen work at restoring! One can see why the ‘friends of Reason’ are alarmed.45 Maréchal wrote: Suspecting the leading magistrates of the empire of a need for priests in order to govern and to put them on their guard against materialists and unbelievers means provoking their degradation. This pusillanimity was related to an old policy whose emptiness and insufficiency we today feel. Like the supreme ruler of worlds, a government strong enough to be just remains impassive and indifferent to all religious opinions. He knows neither priests nor atheists; he sees only men born free and gifted with reason.46 One senses the allusion. It is every bit as clear in twenty other passages. Maréchal replies one by one to the protagonists of the Catholic restoration while carefully avoiding to pronounce the name of Bonaparte. What is the good of paying priests and praising them? History shows that in exchange for the benefits lavished on priests humanity has only ever known holy wars, Crusades, Inquisitions, fasts, etc.47 Instead of ‘restoring the old idol that briefly served as a rallying point for our forebears’ we should allow it to fall unassisted under its own weight.48 It costs Maréchal to recall and publish these ‘harsh truths’,49 as it does to ‘mark the first year of the nineteenth century of the common era with a solemn protest’,50 but he cannot elude this task when he sees the ‘herd of docile and bipeds stuck in their ways’, the ‘little women of the day’, ‘the litterateurs in bad faith or with evil minds’, fall at the feet of altars and support the priestly imposture,51 thus facilitating governmental schemes. The result is not in doubt, but what difference does that make? Reason will never lose its rights. Its flame, maintained by a small number of pure hands, will never be extinguished. It will still suffer ‘more or less prolonged eclipses’, but it will be reignited ever brighter.52 There will always be men like Sylvain Maréchal who will wail, ‘hold44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 396. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. xix. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. xxviii. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. xviii. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. xxix. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. xix. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 396. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, pp. 398–399. Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. xix.

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ing themselves apart from humankind, to which they regretfully belong and on whose behalf which they will never cease to express their desires and dedicate their waking hours, even if they will forever be paid with ingratitude and perhaps persecution!’53 It is with this tirade of a bitter and sorrowful misanthropy that the work ends. The Citoyen français of 19 Messidor year ix (8 July 1801) gave it a sympathetic review. It found Maréchal filled with his subject, praised his ‘purity of intention’, his energy, his uncommon honesty, his holy indignation, and considered that the book had arrived at the right moment for fixing the true value of things.54 This was the only review we were able to find in the press of the period.

4

La Femme-Abbé

The people in general have little taste for lengthy reasoning, so Maréchal, sensing the difficulty a severe and sober work like Pour et contre la Bible would have in reaching popular strata, decided to write La femme-abbé [The Woman Priest], a work of combat in the form of a novel. It is the story of a young girl who falls in love with a priest. She becomes a seminarian in order to be with her lover but, having revealed the secret that suffocates her, she is driven from the seminary. Timon, a solitary philosopher, welcomes her to his cave, where she soon dies. The entire interest of the novel resides in the philanthropic sentiments of Timon, who is nothing but Sylvain’s spokesman. Timon desires and wills a transformation of the social system. Hostile to political legislation and religious myths, he demands that men smash their irons and return to their original organisation. Filled with hatred for legislators ‘who put their false reasoning in the place of reason’,55 he accepts only the law of nature, the only one that is never wrong. He finds that everything that occurs on earth, ‘sullied by so many crimes’,56 is marked with folly and wickedness. ‘Women are either misled or misleading; men oppressed or oppressors. The most beautiful cities offer nothing but snares to honest people and are nothing but sites of wickedness for the rest. The more populous they are the more crimes and unhappiness there are in them’.57 Occasionally, abandoning himself to dark meditations, Timon spends entire nights writing his bitter

53 54 55 56 57

Maréchal, Pour et contre la Bible, p. 399. Le Citoyen français, no. 600, p. 4. Maréchal, La femme-abbé, p. 221. Maréchal, La femme-abbé, p. 226. Maréchal, La femme-abbé, pp. 227–228.

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observations, while at other times he engraves on the walls of his cave misanthropic stanzas, like this sad quatrain: With your kings, your republics, Poor humans, are you happy? No. Return to the peaceful law of nature. It alone is right.58 We find here in the same form and in the same terms the bold statements made by Lady Nature in 1790 at the bar of the National Assembly. Le Mois, a historical and literary newspaper, severely criticised the work. According to the paper only the style was praiseworthy. As for the novel itself, there was nothing more common than its nature, nothing less new than its outline.59 In the course of his plea in favour of God, De l’Isle de Sales, speaking in passing of Maréchal’s ‘famous novel’, ironically stated that it has been ‘translated into every language’ and ‘decorates every library’.60 Let us add that Mme. Gacon-Dufour wrote a pastiche of La Femme-Abbé entitled La Femme grenadier, a French and historical anecdote. The final quarter of 1801 was marked by general peace. This event, anticipated for ten years, gave rise to emotions that benefited the First Consul. The fixing of the date for the celebration of peace on 18 Brumaire year x (9 November 1801) also contributed to forcing public opinion in the direction of the desired rapprochement. Either from confusion, calculation, or obligation,61 Maréchal composed a round on that occasion in which, alongside bad verses of clearly pacifist inspiration, without mentioning his name sang of the ‘God’, the ‘hero’ with a ‘blazing mind’ who forged the peace. But this occasional piece was of no consequence. Placed alongside the Histoire de Russie [History of Russia] composed during the same period, it takes on the appearance of a lightning rod.

5

Histoire de Russie Réduite aux Seuls Faits Importants (1802)

This work is made up of three sections: a kind of introduction summing up the ideas already known to the writer on the composing of history; the history 58 59 60 61

Maréchal, La femme-abbé, p. 206. Le Mois, year viii, pp. 206–208. De l’Isle de Sales, mémoire en faveur de Dieu, p. 265. The centre of this festival was set up in front of the Bibliothèque Mazarine. See De Lanzac de Laborie, Paris sous Napoléon, Counsulat provisoire et àtemps, p. 243.

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of Russia properly speaking, broken down by reign, from Obrin until Catherine ii; and finally ‘the good and final advice of Catherine ii to Paul I found among the papers of the Empress of Russia after her death’. Maréchal abandons the lapidary style, but he nevertheless aims at the simplifying of history. Even without his introduction the very title of the work indicates this. What is more, the choice of Russia, the most far-flung empire of the Old World, has no other goal than that of ‘showing the need and the possibility of expressing many things in few words’.62 Along with concision, Maréchal considers honesty, love of truth and its complement, the most total neutrality, as well as an agreeable, serious, and expansive style to be the main qualities of the historian. But there is many a slip between the cup and the lip, and Sylvain has no difficulty in recognising this. It’s not that he realised the weakness of his documentation, which rests largely on Voltaire and a few vague fragments of Mikhail Lamonosov, but rather he recognises that he can be criticised as much for only putting sovereigns on stage as for his insistence on laying out their misdeeds and applying the most stinging epithets to them. He justifies himself on the first point by remarking that it is not his fault if ‘the tightly weaved tissue of crimes and misfortunes’ that compose the annals of Russia were composed by and for its sovereigns.63 As for the second, he considers that he is obeying a duty, for ‘it is in the public interest that the great men and princes for whom the laws are nothing but nets of tow have at least some bridle that stops them’.64 As for the final complaint, he responds by hiding behind the celebrated saw, ‘The truth is always brutal’. In fact, it leaps right out at the readers that the author was unable to resist propagating his ideas, and his foreword seems to be a prudent method of hiding his game. Proceeding to a close examination of the book, we become convinced that history in general and, more particularly, the history of Russia, is nothing but a pretext for Maréchal. Above all, his plan was to deliver his usual attacks against priests, the great, statesmen, and even the fine arts insofar as this ‘varnish made to mask shameful nudity’ consolidates ‘arbitrary and absolute power’.65 Even more, he aimed at increasing the number of allusions to what was occurring before his eyes. It is the First Consul he wants to attack through Boris Godunov, Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great, the rigours of the time not allowing him to be openly combated. And he does not hide that the pens of writers, which were for too long ‘an instrument of lies and adula62 63 64 65

Maréchal, Histoire de Russie, p. ii Maréchal, Histoire de Russie, p. 281. Maréchal, Histoire de Russie, pp. 119–120. Maréchal, Histoire de Russie, p. 119.

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tion’, must become ‘the hammer of truth in order to crush at their first steps, the more or less prosperous imitators of the oppressors of the world’.66 Among the ‘more or less prosperous imitators of the oppressors’ we must count Napoleon Bonaparte, who had just been pushed along the road of Consulship for life by his colleagues of the executive power (20 Floreal year x; 10 may 1802). Maréchal’s work was put into circulation on 20 Prairial year 10 (9 June 1802). On that date the Concordat, signed 15 July 1801 and ratified 10 September 1801, had already been in effect almost two months. A ceremony celebrated with great pomp at Notre Dame had demonstrated the importance of the event. The following passage about Basil iv – alias Bonaparte – takes on its full meaning once we take these facts into account: He was generous with two things: the blood of the people in order to deserve the title of conqueror of the earth, and the treasury of the state towards the clergy in order to obtain his salvation in heaven … As for priests, he never refused them anything. Statesmen have always thought they needed them. Religious ministers and statesmen have always joined hands to consummate the servitude of nations. Basil exhausted the resources of his in order to construct churches and decorate them, to endow those who serve in them, and to allow them to impress the wretched multitude by the opulence of their train.67 The entire volume is written in this spirit. And since it is the last book brought out by Sylvain, whose days were numbered, it was only right to bring out the continuity in his vision, despite appearances to the contrary.

6

De la Vertu

This continuity is all the clearer in a realm where ‘lightning rods’ were perfectly superfluous, that of the love of virtue. If one were to reread ‘How sweet it is to be virtuous’ in the Bergeries, that work of his youth, and then leaf through the posthumous treatise De la Vertu [On Virtue], which was, in a way, Maréchal’s moral will, one is struck by the thinker’s remarkable moral unity.

66 67

Maréchal, Histoire de Russie, p. 193. Maréchal, Histoire de Russie, pp. 70–71.

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It is unquestionable that Maréchal always sincerely loved virtue. This love dominated him, and one could maintain that it pushed him towards atheism, communism, and, at the end of his life, a kind of Stoicism not lacking in grandeur. All of his works are imbued with it. But in De la vertu erudition, political experience, and the literary form of the period, combined with this ardent cult, result in a rather bizarre work. This collection, lacking in method and divisions, in a compact bloc of nearly two hundred pages of sentences, apologias, and apostrophes on a subject that is not exactly captivating a priori, repels the reader. After having read a few pages one feels the urge to close the book. But upon examining it more closely, one ends up continuing to read, for alongside empty and emphatic phrases emerge luminous and proud ideas, gripping images, elevated and serious maxims, witty and sophisticated commentaries, and striking formulas. All of this proves yet again that Sylvain had the stuff of a great writer. Maréchal hoped that his meditations would, throughout the book, reveal ‘an honest man’,68 and his ambition was that it would to have it said that ‘the author found a few leaves of the Treatise on Virtue that Brutus wrote’.69 It is true that the title recalls Brutus’ lost work, but the tenor of many of the ideas puts one in mind of Epictetus as well as of Pascal, who Maréchal considered ‘a man of genius born too early’.70 This encounter of the Jansenist and the atheist is not the only odd thing in the book. Pascal had said that he ‘was gripped with fear’ and felt lost when gazing on ‘the silent universe’,71 and we know his celebrated phrase: ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me’. In the face of a world greatly expanded by Herschel’s discoveries, Maréchal was assailed by a similar thought. ‘The richest, the most powerful of men is poor when he thinks that this globe is nothing but an atom in the immensity of things’. But unlike Pascal, Maréchal was not humiliated or tormented by this. ‘Even if the universe was infinitely greater, the man of virtue’ – and we know that for him this is synonymous with atheist – ‘bears within himself an expansive soul and elevated sentiments capable of embracing the entire system of nature’.72 What should be remembered is that after humbling himself before the immense spectacle of nature, Pascal no longer yielded before the immense spectacle of human misery because, he said, we have an instinct that elevates

68 69 70 71 72

Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 271. Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 74. Maréchal, Almanach des Républicains, p. 70. Pascal, Pensées, published by E. Havet, vol. i, art. xi, no. 8. Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 87.

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us, and for him this instinct is religion. Maréchal, logically, thought that this instinct can only be virtue, for virtue is superior to religion in that it demands, not the sacrifice of our reason, but of our passions.73 And it must be admitted that the proud and elevated doctrine of the atheist morally surpasses the conclusions of the Christian. As for Maréchal’s end, which was worthy of a sage, it in no way belies the elevation of his sentiments.

7

Sylvain’s Illness. His Thoughts on Death

In order to appreciate Sylvain’s great moral value, we must accompany him throughout the course of his long and cruel illness. For suffering, far from tarnishing, only strengthened his patience and goodness. The great care his condition demanded was lavished on him by his wife and his sister-in-law, and he constantly expressed his profound gratitude. Seeing him still as amiable as ever, no one would have believed he was so close to his end. His friends kept him company to cheer him up and distract him. The tone and ease with which he spoke to them might have led them to think that he was in good health. Sometimes his wife, his sister-in-aw, and Mme. Gacon-Dufour breakfasted with him at his bedside. He once asked them if there was hope for his cure. Mme. Gacon-Dufour having answered in the affirmative, claiming that the smiling faces around him made this clear, he answered: ‘That is not a reason. I know all of the resources of friendship. You know how to compose yourself so that I not suspect my condition. Nevertheless, I know that you don’t believe I fear death; the wise man contemplates it without being moved’.74 These final words, at the edge of the grave, take us back to the verses he devoted to death at the time of his youth. The young poet, in the face of ‘unavoidable fate’ then fixed the positive position of the wise man. To be sure, he said, every man is laid low by death’s fearsome scythe: But if, docile to reason, He rejected the poison Of black-eyed envy, of contemptible pride, And if he preserved the perfume of virtues,

73 74

Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 195. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 40–41.

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His precious remains, imbued with their odour Shall be, with extreme care, Faithfully surrendered to posterity … The just man outlives himself.75 We find this same thought, phrased more concisely and more energetically, in this quatrain from 1778: Death is not an evil. The sage defies it and Submits to his destiny without being defeated by it. His virtue will follow him if there is another life, If everything dies with man, he has already lived.76 Does this mean that Maréchal did not admit the regret one feels at ending an existence to which, like it or not, nature attaches us, though we occasionally feel more suffering than pleasure? No, but he thought that the wise man must look death in the face, without fear. He must find a final consolation, not in the idea of God, but in the fact that ‘he lived well’, that is, that he enjoyed amusements in accordance with reason and took his joy in that of others.77 According to Maréchal, the fright we feel at corpses had its source in religion. In childhood we are so often told of Hell, and it is so easy to be condemned to it, that we believe we are already experiencing a sample of it in the changes we see in a corpse. And yet, nothing is more foolish, for if it is natural to fear a man upright and proud who can do us harm, the fear of an unmoving and cold body, one totally powerless, is childish.78 What is more, Maréchal had too much faith in his atheism to fear a supreme judge after death who, if he existed, could not condemn the virtuous atheist.79 In particular, what did Maréchal have to fear? Without believing in the future, he could claim the honours of immortality. His life represented a never-ending combat against all the forces of oppression and falsehood. His works formed an impressive whole. His good-humoured ways were recognised even by his enemies. And so it was without fear, and even with a point of pride, that he awaited posterity’s judgment:

75 76 77 78 79

Handwritten note by Maréchal. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, p. 57. Maréchal, Le Livre de tous les âges, pp. 57–58. Maréchal, Pensées libres sur les prêtres, p. 81. Maréchal, frag. x, p. 25.

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One day, a new Socrates, avenged by my descendants, One day, I will have all virtuous hearts on my side. In speaking my name, in his sad hut, The innocent oppressed man will forget his misery. The father will transmit my writings to his children. Long after my death, useful to my country, People will come shed tears over my grave. What future could hold more charms for me?80

8

Death of Nicolas Maréchal

One of the greatest sorrows felt by Sylvain during his illness was that of not seeing his brother. Aware that his brother was ill, he supposed Nicolas was in danger and told his wife Zoé to find out the state of his health. Mme. Maréchal gladly saw to this. And yet, the day of Nicolas’ death she hid the truth, fearing it would cause too violent an emotion in Sylvain. Instead, she continued to inform her husband about an illness that was now only imaginary. It was by subterfuges of this kind, by continuous and attentive care, that she prolonged Maréchal’s life by one or two months.81 Nicolas died 30 Frimaire year xi (21 December 1802) ‘at the Maison Nationale des Plantes’.82 This was a loss for the arts, as that of his brother was for literature. A student of Brenet, who was briefly one of the best painters of the Academy, Nicolas had originally studied the figure and painted historical works, but his taste for the natural sciences having led him to specialise in this branch, he was named zoological painter at the Museum of Natural History. It was then that he drew the figures of a work that would have great impact, the ‘Ménagerie du Muséum’.83 He left behind a widow, Catherine-Josephine-Sophie Durey,84 and a daughter, Anne, who married Pierre-Joseph Robin.85 Sylvain’s sister-in-law was the author of a three act play, Adélaïde, ou l’heureux stratagème [Adelaide, or the Lucky Stratagem], whose dedication to her daughter contains praise of Sylvain.86 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Maréchal, frag. ix, p. 40. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 67. Archives de la Seine, Reconstitution des actes de l’Etat civil, no. 3.115.334. Deleuze, Notice sur Nicolas Maréchal. Archives de la Seine, Reconstitution des actes de l’Etat civil, no. 3.115.334. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 67, and Archives notariales de St-Germainen-Laye. Handwritten notice by Dr. Robinet.

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393

Sylvain’s Death

Maréchal was not long in following his brother to the grave. His final days, as recounted in detail by Mme. Gacon-Dufour,87 were those of a sage. On 15 January 1803, at 4:00p.m., he was still conversing familiarly. He briefly dozed off. Upon awakening he asked if he hadn’t been snoring. Having been told he hadn’t, ‘He said with a laugh, “Too bad, for I wrote some verses, and they would have been called sonorous ones”’. He then told some little stories, remaining as joyful as ever. On 18 January, at 8:00 a.m., he completely lost his sight while preserving the rest of his faculties. ‘I hear you’, he said to his wife, his sister-in-law and Mme. Gacon-Dufour, who were taking care of him, ‘but I no longer see you; night has arrived for me’. Mme. Gacon-Dufour tried to convince him there was a fog thick enough to hide the light. He reached out his hand to her and smiled as shook his head, making it clear he wasn’t fooled. During the morning he wrote blank verse that Mme. Després wrote down at his dictation, along with a few others: Live well and die upright, facing the sun, .......................................... Meditate on the sun’s rays every day. He pronounced with a firm voice: Dedicate several nights to the memory of the dead. His wife’s memory embraced in one thought all the days and nights she had passed in sorrow: she was crushed. Nevertheless, gathering her strength in a supreme effort, she drew closer to the sick man, pressing him to her breast. ‘Come closer, my Zoé’, Maréchal tenderly said. ‘Your friendship keeps me warm’. Around 11:30 Maréchal was already presenting the signs of imminent death. Mme. Gacon-Dufour, having taken Maréchal’s hands in hers and having placed one over his weakening heart, he revived, finding the strength to say in a weak voice, ‘It beats no more’. According to Mme. Gacon-Dufour he died at noon; according to his death certificate it was 1:00. The certificate reads: On the twenty-eight day of the month of Nivôse, the eleventh year of the French Republic, the death certificate of Pierre Sylvain Maréchal, who

87

Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, pp. 68–72.

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died on said date at one o’clock in the evening, aged fifty-two years, residing in Montrouge, profession ‘man of letters’, son of Pierre Maréchal and Brigide Meunier, his father and mother deceased, married to Marie Anne Nicolas Després. Upon the declaration made to me by Jean-Baptiste-Denis Després,88 aged forty-nine years, General Secretary of the General Council of the Ministry of the Interior, residing in Paris, rue Saint Dominique, tenth arrondissement, and Jean François Julliet,89 aged forty years, innkeeper in Paris, rue Saint-Denis, Bon Conseil Division, the former the deceased’s brother-in-law and the latter his cousin. Aforesaid witnesses signing with Us [followed by signatures].90 Maréchal has been counted among the writers and theatrical personalities who died of influenza in one week of 1803. It is possible that the flu delivered the coup de grace to Sylvain, weakened by a lengthy illness, but there being no proof of this we consider that in this case Dr. Cabanès91 delivered himself of a hasty generalization. Prudence is even necessary on the subject of the ‘materialised apparition’ of S. Maréchal that occurred the night after his death. We owe this story to a mutual friend of Mme. Maréchal and Mme. Dufour, ‘who often heard them tell it’. Maréchal is supposed to have said in a weak voice before dying: ‘There are fifteen …’ And then, making an effort, he is supposed to have murmured before expiring: ‘Fifteen’. That evening, Mme. Dufour, having just laid down and the lamp still burning, is said to have found herself in the presence of her friend, who was standing in the middle of the bedroom, dressed as he was in life, and shouting: ‘Dear Madame, I have come to tell you what I was unable to complete yesterday. There are fifteen hundred gold francs hidden in a secret drawer in my desk. See to it that this sum does not fall into hands other than those of my wife’. After Mme. Dufour’s reply and a few other words from Sylvain, the latter vanished. Mme. Maréchal, pale and agitated, is supposed to have had the same vision, and the fifteen hundred francs are said to have been found exactly where they were said to be.

88 89

90 91

The Almanach National of 1803 does not list Després as secretary general of the ministry of the Interior. This cousin if marehcal, widower of Anne-Louise Vernier, dies in Paris on 1 May 1832. He was the son on Jean Julliet and Francoise Aubry. Archives de la Seine, Reconstitution de l’Etat Civil. Archives communales de Montrouge. Etat Civil, An xi, no. 10. Cabanès, Mœurs intimes du passè, vol. iv, p. 467.

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This story was published in 1865, two or three decades after the deaths of the two visionaries, by an adversary of spiritualism, who was furthermore a ‘mystical Babeuf’ who saw in it a phenomenon of ‘involuntary reminiscence’ and ‘collective hallucination’.92 This explanation is rejected by Gabriel Delanne, for whom of thousands of similar cases affirm ‘the magnificent reality of survival’.93 The strangest thing about this strange story is that Mme. Gacon-Dufour did not breathe word of it in her detailed account of Maréchal’s death. But we can perhaps find an explanation, at least a partial one, for the ‘apparition’ in these lines of her notice: ‘For inspiration I often entered [Maréchal’s] office and invoked his genius in order to depict him. I saw him, I heard him, I spoke to him. The painful silence of Zoé, his other half, caused my tears to flow. My illusion ended, and I exclaimed: “Sweet chimera, why did you not last longer?”’94 In his final moments Maréchal had the satisfaction of being surrounded by his wife, his sister-in-law, and his friends, as he had wished in 1781: Happy is he who, goaded on towards death, Among his friends, in a sweet abandon, Feels flowing beneath his hand the tears of his brothers, Is deaf to vain appeals, to pious chimeras, Which feed the hearts of the crestfallen Christian, And dies pronouncing the word Virtue.95 But what bitter mockery: Sylvain, the Godless Man, was buried with Christian rites! The religious ceremony took place 19 January 1803, as attested by this note in the parish register written by Abbé Lamarre, the curate of Montrouge: ‘The year one thousand eight hundred three, the nineteenth January, was buried by me, curate of Montrouge, the librarian of Mazarin, aged fifty-two years, deceased yesterday, the spouse of Zoé Després’.96 People have attempted to find in this proof of a conversion by Maréchal in extremis.97 This opinion cannot be seriously sustained. One must not con92 93 94 95 96 97

Eliphas Lévi [Abbé Constant], La Science des Esprits, p. 207. Delanne, Les apparitions matérialisée des vivants et des morts, vol. ii, p. 50 {Reproduction and sicussion of E. Lévi’s tale]. Maréchal, De la vertu, p. 66. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, p. 90. Archives e l’église de Montrouge: ‘1803 Notes sur le Baptêmes, Maria, et sepultures pour la paroisse de Montrouge près Paris, folio 1’. ‘At the time a decade ag when I frequented the Positivist circle on rue Monsieur-le-Prince

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fuse a Christian burial and a Christian end: a formally Christian end at the moment when the individual is no longer in possession of his means cannot be considered a conversion. ‘Nothing should be concluded from the final moments of life’, Maréchal wrote.98 Renan wrote: ‘I disavow in advance all that illness or senility might lead me to say or write at the end of my life’. What is more, neither Mme. Gacon-Dufour nor Lalanne, who recount the death of their mutual friend, allude to a Christian end for Maréchal. His church burial is easily explicable for anyone familiar with Sylvain’s tolerance. In a bizarre coincidence, did we not see the mortal remains of the atheist Félix Le Dantec buried in the same church in Montrouge through which passed the body of Sylvain Maréchal? Though an atheist for reasons of an order different from those of Sylvain, Le Dantec had said: ‘My atheism is so absolute that it won’t prevent me from accepting a priest if that would make my family happy’. We believe it was the same scruples of affection that led Sylvain to not organise his death in keeping with his atheism. By making his wishes clear he would have feared offending his dear Zoé’s sensibilities, her faith. From love for her, in an ultimate act of tolerance, he remained silent.

10

Epitaphs of Maréchal by Maréchal

Maréchal’s grave disappeared during the establishment of the new cemetery of Montrouge. It would have been interesting to compare the likely prosaic inscription that figured on it to the epitaphs that Maréchal had accommodatingly composed on several occasions, for Maréchal always demonstrated a weakness for this genre of funereal literature. Given that it is impossible for us to carry out this comparison, let us limit ourselves to a few of the epitaphs that serve as mileposts in the life of Maréchal. In 1777 the Shepherd Sylvain, inspired by ardent Sappho, tender Tibullus, and voluptuous Anacreon, rhymed odes aimed at lovers and mistresses. But he occasionally escaped the woods of Gnide and contemplated the future. He even wondered how his life would be written, and that is when he composed the pithiest and sweetest of epitaphs. You, whose love will occupy me For the rest of my days,

98

I clearly recall that a fellow-believer spoke to me of a conversion in extremis of Maréchal’. [Undated letter by Charles Léger]. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, edition of year viii, p. 211.

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As you sigh, oh my friend, Write on my tombstone: He loved.99 In 1781 Maréchal, after having attacked kings and the great, rose up against God. He saw how this name sanctified crimes, how the innocent were struck on his altars. Angered, he rejected the faith of his fathers and dedicated himself to truth. The incense he burned to love he now reserved for philosophy. His epitaph changes: Friends! When time with its agile foot Trips my body’s fragile edifice, May my powdery debris be gathered by you all! By you, on my tomb, let these verses be inscribed: Here rests a peaceful atheist: He marched ever forward without looking at the heavens. May his grave be respected: The friend of Virtue was the enemy of the Gods.100 In 1793 and 1797, closer to the fatal moment, Sylvain maintained his proudly atheist epitaph. But in another poem his aspiration toward moderation again haunted him. He took joy in thinking he was born in a cottage, like a shepherd, and it was under a thatched roof he asks to sleep forever. As for his name, it is his desire that it should remain unspoken: Yes, in the same fields where I received life, I want to end it, without jealousy or envy. Cabin where fate placed my crib,

99 100

Maréchal, Bibliothèque des Amans, p. 158. Maréchal, Fragmens d’un poème moral sur Dieu, pp. 90–91. In his pamphlet on Maréchal, Collin de Plancy parodied this epitaph as follows; ‘Here lies a stupid atheist/he walked, his eyes cast down, not daring to look at the heavens./ His soul, taken by Satan,/ Most stink as much in hell as here./ For the virtue he boasted of/This invisible ghost escapes all eyes;/ On a horrified earth,/His memory is shameful and his name odious’. The Acanthologie ou Dictionnaire épigrammatique, which appeared in 1817, also devoted the following epitaph to Marehcal, on page 185: ‘Here lies he who always doubted,/ For him, God was put in question/ he doubted even his own being/ But he grew nored with doubt/Tired of that deep night/yesterday evening, he departed/ To see in the other world/What should be believed in this one’. According to P. Capelles’ Niuvelle Encyclopédie poétique, Paris, 1819, vol. xvi, p. 282, its author was Evariste Parny. The 1831 edition of the Oeuvres of Parny does not include this work.

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Your thatch will shade my modest tomb: No marble should illustrate my dust. The grass should only allow the stone to be guessed at, But if the traveler’s curious eye should one day Discover my tomb, friends, these are my wishes: Tell him only, leaving my name a mystery ‘He died where chance had him born’.101 What we should see in this is obviously a poet’s idea and nothing more. But what is strangest is that Maréchal, who had a claim the honours of an obituary, indeed ended his days ‘modestly’. His death passed more or less unnoticed. A few newspapers announced it, and that was all. To our knowledge, the Publiciste of 3 Pluviôse year xi (23 January 1803) was the only one to comment on this news at all. It found in Maréchal’s works ‘much more facility than talent’, and claimed that the Dictionnaire des athées deserved nothing but scorn. It qualified as ‘unexampled impudence’ and ‘extravagance more ridiculous than scandalous’ Sylvain’s claim to count among atheists writers like Pascal, Locke, and Newton, whose religious sentiments were never contested and who thundered against atheism, ‘a useless, absurd, and dangerous doctrine’.102

11

The Final Years of Zoé Després

What became of Zoé Després? This is a question that is naturally raised and to which we must respond. On 22 Pluviôse year xi, Sylvain’s widow made a declaration of inheritance at the Bureau of Bourg-Egalité in which she recalled the clauses of her marriage contract. She affirmed that the furniture in the house in Montrouge represented, according to the inventory, a value of 759 francs. 75 and estimated at 150 francs the revenue remaining to her for half the home as common property.103 In 1806 Zoe Després was still living in the Montrouge hermitage where she continued to receive Mme. Gacon-Dufour who, thanks to this, was able to write the greater part of her biographical notice on Maréchal in the latter’s office.104 101 102 103 104

Maréchal, Le Lucrèce français, frag. cxxiii, p. 161 and Dieu et les pretres, frag. cxxiii, p. 98. Bibliothèque Nationale, Le 2/751. The Nouvel Almanach des Muses pour 1804, Paris, barba, pp. 232–235, would devote a notice to Maréchal. Archives de la Seine. O 14/222. Registre des decalrations de succession [Sceaux], Bureau de Bourg-Egalité, folio 36. Gacon-Dufour, Notice sur Sylvain Maréchal, p. 66.

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On 20 April 1806, the second Sunday after Easter, the new priest of Montrouge, Charles Marc Lavallée, having organised with great pomp the solemn baptism of three adults and the nuptial benediction of their parents, widow Maréchal was chosen as one of the godmothers, and we see her in the procession leading to the baptistery behind the choirboys and ‘the raised cross’.105 Should we see in the choice of Zoe Després an artful maneuver on the part of the priest? This is extremely likely. In any case it is quite odd that widow Maréchal only figures once in the parish register, and it was precisely on the day when that function took on the character of an act of opposition to the secular work pursued and realised by the Revolution in the realm of civil registry. And it was not by chance that Belle et Bonne, the adoptive daughter of Voltaire and widow of the Marquis de Villette, was used in the same way during the collective baptism of the children of Plessis-Villette, born under the Terror.106 It is unknown when widow Maréchal left Montrouge to live in SaintGermain-en-Laye with her sister. She lived at 19, Rue Lorraine in a house that belonged to her in common with a certain Mme. Henry. At the end of her days we can see her as an old woman taking snuff, playing cards and lotto, wrapped up in her devotions, her pious books – the Imitation of Christ, The Fortnight of Easter and others – standing side-by side with the remains of the anti-clerical, communist, atheist, and pastoral works of her late husband. Sylvain’s portrait, along with that of other family members, decorated her apartments, in which could be found no less than three crucifixes, one of bronze, another of ivory, and the third of plaster in a glass cage. A font of copper completed this impressive apparatus of piety.107 Zoé Després survived her brother, who died in the Christian faith in 1832,108 her friend Mme. Gacon-Dufour who died senile around 1835,109 and her sis105 106 107 108

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Archives de l’église de Montrouge. Stern, Belle et Bonne, p. 174. Archives notariales de St-Germain-en-Laye. Inventaire après le daces de Mme Vve Maréchal, no. 1964, dressé par Maitre Auguste Leroux, notaire. Jean-Baptiste-Denis Després, after having been candidate for the Corps Legislatif in 1808 became councilor at the Université de Paris, then mayor of St-Sulpice (Oise) and chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur and Correspondent of the Société Royale d’Agriculture. He married Mme. De Chérisey and lived in the chateau of Crécy-St.-Sulpice (Oise), a ‘simple and noble manor’, ‘situated like a kind of seashell in the middle of leafy and verdant nature.’ Amiable by nature, lacking in pretention, open and honest, a gracious and charming raconteur, Sylvain Maréchal’s brother-in-law was held in high esteem by all those who dealt with hi, He was buried in the church of St-Sulpice. Michaud, Biographie universelle, vol. lxii, pp. 411–413. Mémorial de l’Oise, no. 306, p. 197. Dumont, Notice historique et statistique sur la commune d’Abbécourt, 1865. Tremblay, ‘Notice biographique sur M. Desprez’, Mémoire de la Société Académique d l’Oise, vol. ii, 1852, pp. 261–264. ‘Précis statistique sur le canton de Noailles’, Annuaire de l’Oise, 1842, pp. 104–105. Michaud, Biographie universelle, supplement 1838, vol. lxviii, pp. 10–11.

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ter, who died on 4 December 1843. In her final years her domestic Alexandrine Letombe was her sole companion.110 Zoé Després died on 19 October 1844.111 Mlle. Robin, her great-niece, was her only remaining relative on the Maréchal side.

110 111

Archives notariales de St-Germain-en-Laye. Inventaire après le daces de Mme Vve Maréchal. ‘Death certificate of nineteenth October eighteen forty-four at noon. The eighteenth of the month, at five o’clock in the evening died in her domicile in St.-Germain, rue de Lorraine, no. 19, Dlle. Marie-Anne-Nicolas Després, rentier, Widow of Mr. Pierre Maréchal, born in Dijon, Department of the Cotes-d’Or, aged eighty-four years, daughter of the late Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas Després and Dlle Claudine-Juliette his wife, noted by us AntoineMarine Perrahce, provisional deputy mayor of this city, fulfilling the finctions of officer of the civil register by delegation of the mayor upon the declaration of Messrs. Paul-Adolphe Santrefler, rugmaker, rue des Louviers, no. 54, aged thirty years, and Jean-Jacques-Alexis Dauvert, tailor, same street, no. 52, aged thirty nine years. Who signed after having read the present act’. Archives communales de St-Germain-en-Laye, Etat Civil.

Chapter 16 1

Lalande Carries on Maréchal’s Atheist Work (1803–1805)

To judge by the lack of fuss caused by his death, Sylvain Maréchal seemed condemned to oblivion. Nevertheless, one year after his death Delisle de Sales, a member of the Institut, could write: Not that long ago a modern patriarch of atheism died, in his final moments a little worried about being forced to appear before God, whom he thought he’d dethroned. Hardly had his ashes cooled than one of the most important astronomers of Europe pronounced his eulogy as if he were a force. He congratulated him on his literary paradoxes; he praised him for his religious blasphemies, and concluded his pamphlet by proposing himself as the visible leader of the heterodox church founded by that anti-Pope.1 Indeed Lalande, with all the authority of his eminent person, had proclaimed in November 1803 that despite the lack of consideration he had enjoyed in life, Maréchal was praiseworthy for ‘his knowledge, his character, his philosophy, and his courage’.2 ‘The loss of Sylvain Maréchal is a loss for philosophy’,3 he wrote, and it was with the goal of publicly attesting to his admiration for his deceased friend that he published a notice on Maréchal ‘with supplements for the Dictionnaire des athées’. The first of these supplements appeared in late 1803 and the second in 1805. Lalande proudly described himself in them as ‘the elder and head of the Socratic sect’.4 He passed in review the objections commonly made to atheism, replied to them, quoted a mass of observations in support of his thesis, and finally made important additions and corrections to Sylvian Maréchal’s ‘catalog’. He wrote: I am criticised for speaking too frequently of atheism. I accept that I do so out of pride: I feel that in doing so I raise myself above the vulgar. I

1 Lalande, Examen pacifique des paradoxes d’un célèbre astronome en faveur des athées, 1804, pp. 2–3. 2 Lalande, Premier supplément, p. 12. 3 Lalande, Premier supplément, p. 1. 4 Lalande, Premier supplément, p. 2.

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am more content with myself, I feel greater self-esteem in seeing myself so convinced, so firm, so sure of a truth so contested, so misunderstood. I am flattered and often applaud myself for having found the truth through the force and persistence of fifty years of profound reflection and for no longer having the least doubt on a subject about which almost all men live in error or doubt. I am prouder of my progress in atheism than in astronomy, because there are few people who have obtained the evidence which I believe I have obtained, while at the same time adding to it an incorruptible morality that renders me incapable of ever weakening, inaccessible to fear, and above humanity’s shameful weaknesses.5 Words like these could not go unanswered. Indignant protests issued from the clan of ‘the enemies of Reason’. Delisles de Sales, who had combatted the Dictionnaire des athées in 1802, spoke out against Lalande’s apology for Sylvain Maréchal. Was a worthy successor of Haley and Newton not lowering himself in concerning himself with ‘an almost unknown litterateur?’ With ‘a man condemned to oblivion’, with ‘a disorganised mind’, with ‘a clandestine immortal?’ What a strange idea to turn such a man into a demi-god, one who would be completely dead had he not given his Voyages de Pythagore an oriental varnish?6 ‘You were his friend’, he said to Lalande, ‘and this word justifies all weaknesses’.7 In the Annales littéraires et morales the Abbé of Boulogne, a celebrated preacher, heaped abuse on Lalande, going so far as to complain of his ugliness and shortness, distinctive signs, it appears, of atheists.8 Dubois, in the Annales de la Religion, reviewed the first of Lalande’s supplements in equally harsh terms. He found it to be nothing but a satire, a schoolboy’s trick, unforgivable coming from an old man like Lalande. What is more, it was not possible for atheism to exist: ‘Humanity would have to be totally annihilated’. As for atheists, this name cannot be given the ‘wretches’ who do not even understand themselves. Maréchal was nothing but a ‘miserable fanatic’ whose insignificant existence proves the contempt that was felt for him. Using all means at hand, the author of the article went so far as to use an argument drawn from a twenty-year old song and whose chorus – aimed at Lalande – said, ‘Change that head, that head of a monkey’.9 5 6 7 8 9

Lalande, Dictionnaire des athées, Premier supplément, p. 14. Lalande, Examen des paradoxes d’un célèbre astronome en faveur des athées, 1804, pp. 6–7. Lalande, Examen des paradoxes d’un célèbre astronome en faveur des athées, 1804, p. 7. Second supplément, p. 73. Annales de la Religion ou Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire des xviiie et xxixe siècles par une société d’Amis de la Religion et de la Patrie, vol. xviii, year xiii, 1803.

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From Pressburg the Emperor struck at the scientist. Lalande was guilty not only of having written two supplements to a scandalous book, but of having sent Maréchal a note that made Napoleon pass for an atheist. The Emperor ordered the minister of the interior to call on the bureau of the Institut to reprimand the astronomer. Lalande was enjoined to ‘never again publish and never to obscure in his old age what he accomplished when he had his full strength to obtain the esteem of scholars’. Jérôme Lalande accepted the Institut’s injunction with great calm and dignity.10 The Gazette de France, which had already taken a stand against Lalande at the time of the Dictionnaire itself, on 3 Frimaire year xiv (24 November 1805) inserted a letter from ‘His Excellency M. Francois de Neufchâteau, president of the conservative Senate’, protesting indignantly against his being inscribed in a catalog of atheists and rejecting ‘with horror’ any ‘certificate of atheism’. Francois de Neufchâteau considered the mark of esteem shown him by Lalande to be ‘a cruel insult’. ‘He would have caused me less pain had he assigned me a place in the madhouse’. This harsh response was accommodatingly reproduced by the former member of the Convention Mennesson, author of many pamphlets and ‘informal guides to religion’ in a work against Lalande entitled L’Athéisme denoncé par lui-même [Atheism Denounced by Itself ]. Mennesson accepted that the ‘bread of the strong’ with which Lalande nourished himself was not made for vulgar sprits. He asserted that the people, being ‘animals of routine’ would continue to adore God despite the Dictionnaire, which ‘would not make anyone a fortune’, having arrived too late, after the ‘atheism’s vogue’ had passed. The book concluded with an indictment and judgment that was backed by quotes from Bayle, Voltaire, and Diderot. Nerveless, the author mercifully renounced applying the sentence: in his eyes Lalande deserved pity for having ‘wanted to cause a stir’.11

2

Lalande’s Atheism

What should we think of Lalande’s atheism? Like his colleague at the Institut Dominique Cassini, should we consider it an inconsequential satire or an eccentricity growing from the desire to be noticed? ‘Let us all become atheists’, Cassini said, ‘and Lalande would soon become a believer’.12 ‘Out of eccentri10 11 12

Jérôme Lalande, Bourg, 1909, p. 204. Amiable, Le franc-maçon Jérôme Lalande, Paris, 1889. Mennesson, L’Athéisme dénoncé par lui-même ou les athées cités au Tribunal de l’opinion par M. Jérôme Delalande, Auteur du Dictionnaire des Athées, Epernay, 1806. Delacour, ‘Le dernier des Cassini’, Mémoires de la Société Académique de l’Oise, vol. ii, 1852, p. 88.

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city … he walks in the footsteps of Sylvain Maréchal. He predicted the scandal and the grumbling it would produce, and this was all he wanted’.13 Appearances tend to lead one to believe that Cassini was right. Lalande’s conduct was, indeed, eccentric. In 1769 he wrote that ‘atheism is madness’. Become one of the pontiffs of Freemasonry, he adopted an attitude that was more or less deist. Under the Revolution, on 20 Pluviôse, year ii, he gave a speech at the Festival of Reason celebrated at the former Sainte-Geneviève church.14 And yet, at the same time he had his niece baptised, holding her over the baptismal fount with the Princess of Gotha. He was fond of the Jesuits, his former teachers, and did not put up with anyone speaking ill of them, defending them against all comers. He had connections with many ecclesiastics, whom he liked and admired, occasionally went to mass, and even attended the sermon. He often went to see his priest, to whom he often gave alms. It is even claimed he contributed to the costs of maintaining the religion when Pius vi was taken to Valence. In any case, at a public lesson at the Collège de France he spoke forcefully and indignantly of the treatment inflicted on the ‘respectable leader of the Church’.15 Writing to Cassini in 1802 to ask him to put his nephew on the list presented to the Académie he began with these words: ‘Citizen Lalande to his brother in God and astronomy’, and concluded by saying, ‘Give me, my dear confrere, my extreme unction and passport for eternity’. If we add that Cassini told Lalande to his face that he was not an atheist, then one would have no choice but to take the pious statement of the ‘elder of atheism’ for a wicked joke. But it is nonetheless troubling that Cassini did not seem to realise this. ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ Cassini said in his response. Extreme unction! Eternity! The dear confrere seems to take me for a priest who is a habitué of the parish. Whatever the case, I make note of the request. But what will the great Sylvain Maréchal say? He will erase you from his dictionary. I fear he will drive you from the honourable class of Godless Men and relegate you to the sect of Beasts of God. But console yourself, dear Lalande. Alongside Arnauld, Bernouilli, Boerhave, Bossuet, Newton, Pascal, Racine, Fénelon, etc., you won’t be in such bad company. With this, I pray God, my dear and venerable colleague, that he bless you and keep you under his holy and worthy protection.16

13 14 15 16

Devic, Histoire de la vie et travaux de J.-D. Cassini, Clermont, 1851, p. 407. Marchand, Buche and Denizet, Conférences faites sous les auspices e la Société d’Emulation de l’Ain, Bourg, 1909. Amiable, Le franc-maçon Jérôme Lalande, Paris, 1889. Mémoires de la Société Académique de l’Oise, vol. ii, 1852, p. 88. Devic, Histoire de Cassini iv, pp. 399–401.

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Whatever should be thought of these lines, whether or not Cassini was the dupe or not of a new ‘satire’ of Lalande’s, one cannot but agree that the philosophical conduct of the illustrious astronomer was not distinguished by firmness. It is nevertheless difficult to seriously contest Lalande’s atheism, at least in his old age. It is an atheism similar to that of Maréchal’s, in that it is so tolerant that it at times appears to capitulate to religious dogma. But it differs not only by its more scientific tinge, but by its personal, individualistic, esoteric character. From his contact with the leading lights of philosophy of the Court of Frederick the Great Lalande had been led to maintain the idea that God and religion were ideas useful ‘for the people’. He wrote in his supplements to the Dictionnaire des athées: ‘Religion is useful at present’.17 ‘I love religion because it places the means to contribute to humanity’s happiness in the hands of its ministers’.18 In any case, he had only a few copies of his supplements printed. Monge one day said to Bonaparte concerning Lalande: ‘He is a Christian atheist’. Upon hearing which Lalande replied: ‘My atheism is the result of my contemplation of the universe; my Christianity is the fruit of my experience of men’.19 This response is essential. It provides the key to Lalande’s philosophical inconsistencies and contradictions.

3

The Dictionnaire des Athées over the Course of the Nineteenth Century

In 1807, the year marked by Lalande’s death, there was continued interest in Maréchal. The Histoire de Russie was republished by Arthus Bertrand, and Mme. Gacon-Dufour published Maréchal’s manuscript on virtue. This woman of letters also brought out a new edition of the Livre de tous les âges, and weaved a wreath for her friend. There was again talk of the Dictionnaire des athées, but only briefly, for Mme. Gacon-Dufour, wanting to avoid polemics, didn’t allow herself ‘any reflections on that work’.20 Believers did not lay down their arms, though. In 1816, thirteen years after the appearance of the Dictionnaire des athées, a pious and right-thinking work furiously attacked Maréchal’s ‘vile’ book with its crude tone and its details that

17 18 19 20

Second supplément, p. 74. Lalande, Dictionnaire des athées, premier supplément, p. 36. Lalande, Dictionnaire des athées, premier supplément, p. 37. Maréchal, De la Vertu, p. 25.

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were both ‘revolting and insipid’.21 It is curious that in the eyes of believers the sole excuse for Maréchal’s book was that its content was at one with the doctrine of a party that ‘attempted to stifle the salutary belief in a God who avenged vice and protected virtue’.22 In the middle of the nineteenth century the famous Encyclopédie théologique published by Abbé Migne repeated these assertions23 and later, in 1903, the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique stigmatised Maréchal’s anthology, which it found surpassed d’Holbach’s Système de la nature in ‘cynical impiety’.24 The violence and the persistence of attacks against a book serve to advertise it. This is a long-known – and long-used – phenomenon in the world of publishing, so we should not be surprised that a publisher in Brussels who was ‘far from adopting Maréchal’s principles’25 brought out a second edition of the Dictionnaire des athées in 1833. This reprint, unlike the original edition and the supplements, caused no scandal, nor did the other smaller, more recent editions.

4

Collin de Plancy (1847) and Damiron (1857) Make Known the Atheist Maréchal

Until now, we have remarked among both the friends and the admirers of Maréchal the desire more to rehabilitate the writer and private man than an interest in spreading his atheist principles. In truth, things could not be otherwise, given the philosophical and political regression that reigned a quarter century after the Revolution. It is quite possible that more than one member of the secret societies of the Restoration distributed among his friends some of Maréchal’s anti-clerical works, but it was only in 1841 that one of the many sects of the communist and republican movement dared to openly and publicly stake a claim to Maréchal and take his atheist concepts as its own. In Germany at that time Feuerbach, who exerted a great influence over the young Karl Marx, published his Essence of Christianity, in which, with all the force of the Hegelian dialectic,

21 22 23 24 25

Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique pendant le xviiie siècle, second edition, vol. iv, p. 603. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique pendant le xviiie siècle, second edition, vol. iii, p. 373. Migne, Encyclopédie théologique, vol. xi, p. 260. Dictionnaire de la théologie catholique, vol. i, p. 2,205. Maréchal, Dictionnaire des athées, second edition, Avis de l’éditeur, p. 7.

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he developed the idea dear to Maréchal that it is not God who created man, but rather man who created God in his image. From this point on, Maréchal’s memory would be a living one, and on several occasions the enemies of the Church would invoke the man and his ideas. But what is strange is that it was originally those Lalande called ‘obscurantists’ who made Maréchal known to the public. In 1847 Collin de Plancy, a former friend of Danton who, after having been a propagandist against religion had converted to Catholicism, presented to the Catholic public a disfigured, ridiculed, ignoble Maréchal aimed at inspiring disgust with atheism.26 In 1857, at the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences Damiron, retracing the history of philosophy in the eighteenth century, dedicated a paper to Maréchal and Lalande. Had it only been mentioned in the collection of minutes of the learned group we would not bother to mention it. But republished in 1858, it circulated in the quarter of the schools and was placed on the list of prizes offered in Imperial high schools. Circumstances favoured it, for philosophical and scientific studies and works on the origins of Christianity were on the order of the day. Though Damiron had composed his work objectively, he showed ‘no regret at having opposed a doctrine which, renewed in our days, with more or less seriousness and talent, is worth no more today than it was yesterday, and has not changed in nature’.27 It should be understood from this that Damiron was not unhappy that his work opportunely served to combat the philosophical schools that had arisen in the eighteenth century and that were arising anew in the nineteenth against ‘pure and simple spiritualism’.28 However, in wanting to analyse fairly and comment on the works of the rationalist philosophers of the eighteenth century Damiron piqued the curiosity of a certain number of his readers. As a result, despite himself the celebrated professor contributed his modest part in making Maréchal known to a new generation. This was not an insignificant result for, ‘aside from a few privileged individuals’ who were ‘rare exceptions and barely gave any sign of life’, those elements hostile to the Church were ‘little aware of the philosophical ideas of the eighteenth century’. In anticlerical circles the names of Diderot, d’Holbach, and Helvétius were mentioned with profound scorn.29 Deism reigned.30

26 27 28 29 30

See Introduction. Damiron, Mémoires pour server a l’histoire de la philosophie au xviiie siècle, vol. i, pp. xiii– xiv. Damiron, Mémoires pour server a l’histoire de la philosophie au xviiie siècle, vol. i, p. xiv. Buchner, Force et matière, translator’s preface to the sixth French edition, pp. xxxvi– xxxvii Weill, Histoire du Parti républicain en France de 1814 a 1870, chapters xiii and xiv.

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The Chain of Maréchalian Atheism from the Second Empire to Our Time

Within a few years everything had changed. Materialism had triumphed and the philosophers of the eighteenth century became fashionable. And since at the same time the authorities un-muzzled the irreligious press, there was a kind of atheist avalanche. Janet,31 Dupanloup,32 and Albert Regnard attest to this.33 It was the era when Blanqui, perhaps unknowingly, took up the phrase of the Venerable Bede that Maréchal had used as epigraph in his Pour et contre la Bible, proclaiming ‘There is one book too many in the modern world: the Bible’.34 For his part, Miron published a work on Jesus35 that very much recalls a book on the same subject by Maréchal. Following the Gospels step by step, Miron contested Jesus’ perfection of character, insisted on his farcical adventures, and, like Maréchal, concluded by opposing Socrates to the God of Christians. In this atmosphere of materialist renewal the young Sully-Prudhomme, an employee at the Creusot factory, admired the ‘great wind of independence’ that traverses Lucretius’ oeuvre, whose translation into French he undertook around 1859.36 Ten years later a professor at the University, Constant Martha, though condemning Epicureanism and all those who in the eighteenth century ‘compromised Lucretius’s glory’ by giving him the ‘air of frivolous irreligion’, attracted public attention to the great Latin poet in a series of studies.37 At almost the same time Andre Lefèvre, faithfully imitating Lucretius, inserted in the Libre-Pensée a poem titled ‘De natura rerum’,38 like that of the great Latin poet, and the similarities in both the imitation and the end pursued led the new Lucretius, like his predecessors, to often walk, perhaps unwittingly, in Maréchal’s footsteps. The future Communard Gustave Lefrançais, one of the most popular orators in the clubs, represented the living tradition of Maréchalian atheism. He confessed that at first atheism for him was only ‘a kind of family heritage’, his father 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Janet, Le Matérialisme contemporain. Dupanloup, L’athéisme et le péril social. Buchner, Force et matière, translator’s preface to the sixth French edition. Candide, no. 5, 17 May 1865. Miron, Jésus réduit à sa juste valeur, Geneva, 1864. Philippot, ‘Sully-Prudhomme, traducteur de Lucrèce’, Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, no. 4, October, December 1931. These studies resulted in Le poème de Lucrèce, the first edition in 1869. L’Athéisme et le péril social, 7th edition, pp. 84–85. Force et matière 6th edition, translator’s preface, p. xxxviii.

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having so to speak ‘imbibed its principles’ from childhood from his great-uncle Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande.39 Monselet and Charavay also took an interest in Maréchal. Finally, young Gambetta was infatuated with the Godless Man. In his room during his student days Sylvain’s works stood cheek by jowl with those of Proudhon.40 Proof they left profound marks on his spirit can be found in his famous cry: ‘Clericalism! That is the enemy’ later popularised by the tribune of the republican party. In 1880, we witness a renewal of the anti-clerical movement. Jules Ferry in power, Blanqui in Ni Dieu ni Maître, Léo Taxil in his many works, and others still, each in their own way led a stubborn struggle against the ‘black clique’ and spiritualism, while the poet Jean Richepin prepared his ‘Bible of atheism’. He would only deliver the work in its entirety to the public in 1884 under the promising title Les Blasphèmes.41 This work is similar to Maréchal’s Lucrèce français in many ways, which was pointed out by Maurice Spronck.42 But it differs in that Richepin was not satisfied with ‘hunting down’ the idea of God, but took the torch and the axe to the forest of ‘the other adventitious ideas’ that surround that monstrous divinity. With an ‘appalling and serene nihilism’ the author of the Blasphèmes ‘cudgels’ Reason, overturns Ideas, ‘those unspeakable strumpets’, dethrones the Ideal, that ‘hollow prey’, and ridicules the new trinity of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, and condemns Nature.43 Maréchal, in substituting these consoling beliefs for the idea of God was, at bottom, nothing but ‘an inconsistent materialist’ in Richepin’s eyes: But I, I don’t know these cowardly failings. Following my road to the end, These cults, these respects, these loves, these beliefs That remain standing in our hearts, I will extinguish their light, the final candelabra Of the old, abandoned temples. Hurrah! Going in for the kill of the last idols, Sound the bugles of our ancestors!44

39 40 41 42 43 44

Lefrancais, Souvenirs d’un révolutionnaire, Brussels, [n.d. 1902], p. 3. Deluns-Montaud, ‘La philosophe de Gambetta’, Revue politique tr parlementaire, 10 February 1897. Richepin, Les Blasphèmes, Paris, Maurice Dreyfous, 1884. La Révolution française, vol. vii, July–December 1884. Richepin, Les Blasphèmes, Paris, Maurice Dreyfous, 1884, passim. Richepin, Les Blasphèmes, Paris, Maurice Dreyfous, 1884, ix.

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In his ‘Preliminary Discourse’ to the Dictionnaire des athées Maréchal, to the great scandal of his contemporaries, had painted the portrait of the atheist according to his heart, of the ‘true atheist’.45 How far we had progressed since that time! Maréchal’s atheist looks almost like a believer compared to the atheist of the poet of the Blasphèmes. ‘I think I’ve said all there is to say on the true atheist’, Richepin proudly proclaimed,46 and it must be confessed that the atheism of the modern blasphemer leaves Maréchal’s Godless Man far behind. But whoever says atheist does not say nihilist, so as a result there were few among the free thinkers who followed Richepin ‘to the bottom of the dizzying staircase’ leading to total materialism, even more in that this strange staircase, as it wound through the Academy arrived beneath the vaults of the traditional Church. This is why militant freethinkers sought inspiration in Maréchal rather than Richepin. This is why Albert Regnard, preparing in 1885 a Calendar of the Modern and Revolutionary Era declared that he had benefited from the work of his predecessors, notably Sylvain Maréchal.47 And when his calendar appeared, he placed the Godless Man on it on 28 Brumaire, or the month of Reason, after having recalled in his introduction Maréchal’s attempt at a calendar in 1788.48 Partial reprints of the Dictionnaire des athées appeared twice at a distance of twenty years (1903 and 1924). More recently still, [in 1924], the best pages of the Lucrèce français were published. Finally, rendering Maréchal the homage he had rendered ‘upright men’ in 1788 and 1793, the authors of the countless socialist and secular almanacs and calendars published over a period of half a century rarely failed to give a place among the famous men they substituted for the saints to the precursor of the republican calendar. Let us add a writer, philosopher, critic, sociologist, and socialist who participated in the Commune, Georges Renard,49 who published a poem entitled La Nature et l’Humanité, whose ideas were related to those of Lucretius and André Lefevre, but also bore no little relation to the Lucrèce français of Maréchal.

45 46 47 48 49

See chapter xiv. Richepin, Les Blasphèmes, Paris, Maurice Dreyfous, 1884, p. 7. Etudes de politique scientifique. L’Etat, pp. 170 and 173. Regnard, Le Calendrier de l’ère révolutionnaire et sociale, 1893, p. 10. Renard, La Nature et l’Humanité, Paris, Les Presses Universitaires.

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411

The Maréchal’s Social Influence under the Restoration and the July Monarchy

It remains for us to demonstrate Maréchal’s influence on the social movement of the nineteenth century and the present. This influence was great, since it is at least partially mixed with the influence exercised by Babouvism. This is why some have gone so far as to classify Maréchal, along with Babeuf, as one of the ‘founders of socialism’.50 It is impossible for us to even consider following the evolution of Babouvism and revolutionary socialism across the socialist doctrines and deeds of the nineteenth century; to do so would take us far from our subject. But at the very least we can note the appearances of the Maréchalian spirit and bring to light the influence exercised by Maréchal’s social ideas on this or that faction or personality of the socialist movement. It was Buonarroti who first popularised Maréchal’s name in republican and socialist circles with the publication of his History of the Conspiracy for Equality. The first two editions of that work appeared in Brussels and London in 1828; it was only in 1830 that a third edition was published in Paris. It was thus only quite late that Buonarroti’s book began to have an impact. It was then that the ‘Manifesto of the Equals’, quoted at length, contributed to a large extent to wresting republicans and reformers from the influence of SaintSimonianism. Maréchal’s name, closely tied to that of Babeuf, came up often in the interminable discussions of the secret societies of the time, as well as in articles dedicated to the precursors by vanguard newspapers. We notably see the future Montagnard representative and propagandist of rural socialism P. Joigneaux signal in Laponneraye’s newspaper51 the ‘shining hopes’ contained in the ‘Manifesto of the Equals’. The year 1841, which saw a veritable flourishing of Babouvism, at the same time marked the founding of a group claiming to be inspired by Maréchal. Through its boldness and brutal honesty, this group placed itself at the vanguard of the neo-Babouvist sects, with which it did not disdain to collaborate in the Revolutionary Communist Society. The peasant J.-J. May and the journalist Gabriel Charavay were the leaders of this fraction, whose organ was L’Humanitaire. According to L’Atelier, it was ‘the most consequent and advanced organ of [communist] doctrine’.52 L’Humanitaire wanted to provide ‘the plan for a social organization where all domination of man by man would 50 51 52

Chaboseau, Histoire des Partis Socialistes en France, I. De Babeuf à la Commune, p. 4. Joigneaux, ‘Les Gracques et Babeuf’, L’Intelligence, second year, September 1838. L’Atelier, July 1841.

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be completely abolished’. It called itself ‘the organ of social science’. This term is worthy of note: it provides the proof that the idea of basing socialism on science was not particular to the Saint-Simonians and the Fourierists; that it was in the air and that Marx was, when all is said and done, only its heir. The first issue of L’Humanitaire dates from July 1841. It contained a biography of Sylvain Maréchal, written, in all probability, by G. Charavay. In it Maréchal is considered ‘one of the most fertile literary men’ of the eighteenth century, standing out ‘among the Diderots and d’Holbachs’. ‘Never did a man of letters have more courage and daring. However harsh the truth, however violent it was towards certain prejudices, he told it loudly and fully’. ‘Despite his powerful enemies, more than Boileau, Racine, and so many other fine intellects whose writings were more harmful than useful, his memory deserved to be preserved’. Naturally, in order for Maréchal to be the idol of the communists it was essential he be presented as ‘the most assiduous, the most active, the hardest working’ of the conspirators for Equality, and G. Charavay does not fail to do so. He also insisted on justifying the famous tirade against the arts in the Manifesto. ‘Those’, he said, who think they find in this phrase the proscription of the arts are greatly in error. Alluding to the opinion of the philosophers like Mably and Rousseau who considered the arts and equality incompatible, Maréchal exclaimed with a pure enthusiasm: If we are reduced to the sad necessity of choosing between equality and the arts, if we have to we will agree to it: keep your arts, leave us equality. Maréchal thus presents the thing in the form of a doubt by saying ‘if we have to we agree to it’, which also means ‘if we don’t have to we don’t agree to it’. The fanatical enemies of the arts whose ideas he momentarily considers true, have fallen into the gravest of errors; first in making equality an express condition for their exclusion; second, in confusing the useful arts with the fine arts; and third, in failing to differentiate in the latter the abuse of the thing with the thing itself. The useful arts must be practiced for the sole reason that they are useful, and the fine arts, which are only agreeable, must be tolerated as a relaxation without giving them a special function. This simple excerpt demonstrates that L’Humanitaire was delivering a defense plea. The Shepherd Sylvain’s predilection for the pastoral life of primitive men, for patriarchal government, his hatred of the state and laws were brought to the attention of the neo-Babouvists for the first time. Charavay saw a great advant-

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age in this. Not that he was disposed to adopt the patriarchal system. There are in this system, he says, ‘things that are useful and others not, like all theories formulated up to our day’. But Charavay believed that ‘the anti-political and anarchistic ideas’ of Maréchal, ‘which no socialist has yet occupied himself with, deserve to be closely examined’. He added: It is regrettable that no one has sought to apply these ideas to the egalitarian community, as this phrase from the ‘Manifesto of the Equals’: ‘Disappear revolting distinctions of rulers and ruled’, rejected by the Secret Committee, would lead us to believe was the original intention. He could have left us opinions that would have cast a new light on this matter. But at least he indicated, he posed a problem that is worthy of occupying the Institut de France. Its solution would be somewhat more interesting than that of the squaring of the circle and so many other problems of this kind. The question should be posed: Is man perfectible? Does this perfectibility have any limits other than perfection? Being perfect, can man live in society without any kind of laws or any form of government?53 As we can see, Charavay led his readers from socialism to anarchism. Just as through his libertarian formulations Maréchal had attempted to liberate the first French communist movement from the authoritarian tradition of Jacobinism; just as he had introduced, at the dawning of class conflict, the conflict between socialism and anarchism, the first seeds of anarchist theory were conveyed though him to communist circles of the July Monarchy. In truth, aside from Charavay, it does not appear that these neo-disciples of Maréchal were very orthodox. To be sure they adopted the materialist point of view in philosophy and the immediate program of Babovism in social economy. They outlawed luxury and pursued the abolition of capitals and guiding centers. They demanded the suppression of legal marriage. But they demanded ‘the abolition of the family’ and adopted the arts, ‘not as leisure but as function’.54 Among them there was even a certain lady named Doria whose concern was ‘the emancipation of women politically, religiously, and civilly’.55 These were ideas in total opposition to those of Maréchal. Despite the convictions of its editors and the enthusiasm of its subscribers, L’Humanitaire was short lived. What is more, from its first issue there was dis53 54 55

L’Humanitaire, no. 1. Sencier, Le Babouvisme après Babeuf, pp. 188–189. De la Hodde, Histoire des Sociétés Secrètes, pp. 269–270. Sencier, Le Babouvisme après Babeuf, p. 194.

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agreement within the editorial committee. Issue number two appeared, but the third could not be printed.56 As a result of the troubles of September 1841, almost all the founders of L’Humanitaire appeared before the Correctional Tribunal as defendants, charged as members of an illegal association and accused of the storing of arms and provocation of crimes and misdemeanours through speeches and exhortation. After three sessions Gabriel Charavay was sentenced to two years in prison, Jean Charavay, Rousseau, Sens, and Emile each to one year in prison, Page, a jeweler, to six months, and each of them was additionally fined 300 francs. The other defendants were sentenced to lighter penalties.57 Several members of this group, notably Gabriel Charavay, Fomberteaux, and Page would later be counted among Blanqui’s friends,58 as would Victor Bouton, who was particularly close to J.-J. May.59 It is worthy of note is that Fraternité, Lahautière’s newspaper, attacked the materialism of the collaborators of L’Humanitaire while at the same time reproducing Sylvain’s moral quatrains in several issues.60 So beyond the polemics Maréchal inspired many newspapers of the socialist vanguard.

7

Communitarian Socialism from 1841 to Our Time

That same year 1841 revealed to the public the existence of a form of socialism unquestionably related to Maréchal’s ideas, what can be called communitarian socialism,61 or the socialism of Dupin. This form of socialism took as its model the agricultural communities of ancient France, more particularly the community of Jault in the Nivernais. This socialism was obligingly presented in the columns of the serious Moniteur and drew its notoriety from the strong personality of its propagator, Dupin the elder, a lawyer. Not that Dupin had the personality of an apostle: not at all. But from the skillful and detailed account he gave of an excursion to the community of Jault, which still existed at the time, he refuted ‘in the most decisive manner, that is through fact – nothing stronger or more brutal – all the usual objections of immorality, disorder, and its impossibility that the enemies of socialism leveled against the new ideas’.62 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Sencier, Le Babouvisme après Babeuf, pp. 192–193. Sencier, Le Babouvisme après Babeuf, pp. 192–194. Dommanget, Blanqui, p. 24. Profils révolutionaires, pp. 7–8, pp. 156ff. La Fraternité, 1841. This was written before the term was tarnished by Hitler. We stand by it. Considerant, Le Socialisme devant le Vieux monde ou Le vivant devant les morts, 4th printing, p. 86.

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There is no doubt that Dupin seemed to miss the past and proceeded only by means of insinuation. Nevertheless, through his skillful contrasting of the poverty of the Gariots, who had descended into a regime of parceled out private property, and the wealth, the health, and the joy of the Jaults, faithful to communism, as well as from his approval of the decree of the Court of Bourges refusing to break up the land of the Jaults, he showed himself to be a supporter of an agrarian and optional socialism.63 No doubt about this was possible. He seemed to be telling his readers what Maréchal had said in 1793 of the communities of the Pinons and the Fleuriots: ‘Since all of this has been realised there is nothing more realisable. What has occurred several times can occur an infinite number of times’.64 Victor Considerant, in his analysis of various socialist systems, found that the communism of Dupin was ‘the most treacherous of all’65 and that ‘Buchez, Cabet, and the others did nothing in favour of undivided and anonymous collective property that approaches the strength of M. Dupin’s defence plea’.66 But the objective weakness, the negative content of this socialism did not escape Karl Marx. In the section of the Communist Manifesto that deals with ‘petit-bourgeois socialism’ we believe that this is the form of agrarian socialism examined by Marx.67 Victor Considerant states that communitarian socialism ‘has not caused much of a stir’,68 in which he is absolutely correct. And yet, in the middle of the nineteenth century it found an educated and firm defender in the person of Eugène Bonnemère, the author of the Histoire des paysans [History of the Peasantry].69 Later, the communities of the Jaults and the Pinons were to be sympathetically invoked by many anarchists and socialists. One of the latter, Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law, invented the term ‘consanguine collectivism’70 to characterise this mode of economic grouping. More importantly, the daily of the French Communist Party published under the signature of a descendant of

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

See the partial reproduction of Dupin’s letter in the same work, pp. 80–86. Maréchal, Correctif a la Révolution, p. 286. Considerant, Le Socialisme devant le Vieux monde ou Le vivant devant les morts, 4th printing, p. 79. Considerant, Le Socialisme devant le Vieux monde ou Le vivant devant les morts, 4th printing, p. 86. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto. Considerant, Le Socialisme devant le Vieux monde ou Le vivant devant les morts, 4th printing, p. 79. Bonnemère, Histoire des Paysans, second edition, 1874, vol. ii, chap. xii. Lafargue, La Propriété, Origine et évolution. Thèse communiste, Parsi, Delagrave, 1895, pp. 357–358.

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the community of Jault a series of articles71 meant to ‘refute the skepticism of the disabused’ and to oppose ‘the historical truth to the reproaches of utopianism’.72

8

Maréchal and Anarchism

Twenty-six years ago, the anarchist scholar Max Nettlau, in an article on ‘The Anarchist Idea: Its Past, Its Future’, spoke of Maréchal to his comrades as ‘the creator of pastoral anarchism, the aesthetic bond between Watteau’s shepherds and the French Revolution’.73 But in truth it is an underestimation of Maréchal to make him just the ‘creator of pastoral anarchism’. The proof is that Max Nettlau, in a later, more detailed study of Maréchal, classified him among the creators of anarchism, period. It is not by chance that L’Humanitaire, the first French anarchist periodical, placed itself under Maréchal’s patronage from its first issue. Later Kropotkin, the leader of anarchy, though knowing Maréchal only superficially, could not help noting that the author of the Manifesto of the Equals expressed a ‘vague aspiration towards what we today call communist anarchism’.74 Finally, as a result of his later research, the historian and bibliographer of anarchism Nettlau reached this conclusion: ‘The first person to proclaim or praise anarchist ideas openly and with joy was Sylvian Maréchal’.75 Nettlau remarks that Maréchal’s anarchist principles ‘do not seem to have found an echo’ in the public of the time, which was, even so, eager for new ideas. ‘Maréchal’, he says, ‘remained an isolated figure. The waves of authority were rising too high’.76 This is correct, but the libertarian Maréchal had not wasted his time spreading the anarchist seed in enslaved furrows. A great number of his themes: the hatred of politics and laws, anti-parliamentarism, indifference or hostility towards governmental forms, free unions, the autonomy of groups, the belief in the possibility of the realisation of the ideal glimpsed in isolated colonies, and even the practice of tyrannicide under the name of individual attacks, formed or still form the ideological basis of anarchism. The example of Nettlau himself shows

71 72 73 74 75 76

L’Humanité, no. 6,725 and following issues, August 1922. L’Humanité, 24 August 1922. L’Idée anarchiste, no. 1, 13 March 1924. Kropotkin, La Grande Révolution, 1909, p. 629. Nettlau, Der Vorfrühung der Anarchie, Berlin, 1925, p. 43. Nettlau, Der Vorfrühung der Anarchie, Berlin, 1925, p. 49.

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that even today the anarchists considered authoritative – if we can use the expression – directly adhere to the ideas and name of Maréchal.

9

A Syndicalist Deviation: the Idea of the General Strike

But it was especially among the revolutionary syndicalists that Maréchal found many disciples. Not that he understood better than any other socialist of his time the true meaning of the movement of wages and the immense importance of professional organization on condition that it rise above corporate narrowness. Under the Constituent Assembly there was virtually only the democrat Robert who could be counted among the defenders of the workers’ right to organization and coalition.77 It is through his concept of the revolutionary general strike that Maréchal is connected to contemporary syndicalist militants. Just as Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose without knowing it, the partisans of the revolutionary general strike are not aware that their preferred means of action numbers among its precursors a ‘petit-bourgeois’ of the eighteenth century. They are even less aware because their theoreticians, faithful to the notion of syndicalism as sufficient in and of itself and convinced of its creative value, claim for the working class the sole paternity of the general strike. What does Emile Pouget say? ‘The idea of the general strike has no ideological blazon. It emanates from the people and can make no claim to a “noble” origin. Neither sociologists nor philosophers have deigned elucubrate on its account, to analyse its formulas, to gauge its theories’. And Hubert Lagardelle considers the general strike ‘an idea spontaneously issued from proletarian consciousness’.78 These assertions, though they contain an element of truth, nonetheless demand the most express reservations. It is possible, though the proof would be difficult to provide, that the nascent working class felt on its own that in stopping work in a general fashion it would strike the bourgeoisie at its heart. It is also possible that the great strike in Lyon in 1786 largely contributed to giving Maréchal the idea of the revolutionary general strike. The fact remains, though, that the latter deigned to ‘elucubrate’ on this means of action; more, that he traced an outline of it that was remarkable for his time and that he prophesied its realisation.

77 78

Dommanget, Le Mouvement ouvrier et socialiste sous la Constituante, n.d. [1922], pp. 20–21. I have already pointed out and contested these assertions above in note 19 to the Introduction.

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Over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century the general strike would find protagonists who would also ‘elucubrate on its account’, analyse its content, and calculate its results. The English innkeeper Benbow (1832),79 the Parisian student Marc Dufraisse (1833),80 the French Jacobin Delescluze (1848),81 and the democrat E. de Girardin (1851–1852)82 were among the most active. In the International itself, when the general strike was first recommended to the workers as a means of liberation that was within their grasp,83 it is not in the least certain that it was done so by an authentic worker. The heart of the general strike is the very simple idea that capital and the government can do nothing without labour; that the workers are the holders of the true power. They demonstrate this by all of them ceasing to work at the same time. They could just as well demonstrate it by casting parasites, and all those who live ‘only on loans’, from society. Reduced to their own strength, the latter would not be long in perishing. Their impotence would be as clear as day. Maréchal expressed this idea, closely tied to that of the revolutionary general strike and which in a way is its complement, on several occasions. To be sure, we can reproach him for having garbed it in a covering too political and, even more, anti-monarchical. But Maréchal was, after all, of his time, and dealt with the issues that were most urgent. It was left to Saint-Simon to take up, expand, and clarify Maréchal’s idea; to more luminously show the sovereign force of labour in his celebrated parable (1819) on the disappearance on the one hand of the elite of producers, and on the other the privileged minority. Victor Considerant’s hypothesis of 185084 is also not lacking in connections with Maréchal’s ideas. Democracy was ridding the European continent of emperors, kings, princes, dukes, grand officers, and aristocrats: 1500 to 2000 royal, feudal, and aristocratic families. Shed of all these powerful individuals, the peoples of Europe were getting on and living better than before. Peace had been definitively established in Europe, which is what Considerant desired more than all. This idea of obtaining peaceful international order through the elimination of the warmongers had already been formulated by Maréchal.85 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Dolléans, Le Chartisme (1830–1848), vol. i, pp. 122–147. [William Benbow was in fact a preacher – Tr.] See his pamphlet Association des Travailleurs. La Révolution démocratique et sociale (newspaper of 1848). Weill, Histoire du mouvement social en France (1852–1901), second edition, p. 34. Article by Gossez in the review 1848, no. 185, p. 42. Buisson, La Greve Générale, pp. 6–7. Testut, L’Internationale, p. 62. Considerant, la dernière guerre et la Paix définitive en Europe, Paris, 1850, pp. 5–6. Considerant, la dernière guerre et la Paix définitive en Europe, Paris, 1850, p. 56. Dommanget, Victor Considerant, pp. 147–148.

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Closer to us, in 1918 the internationalist deputy P. Brizon, imagining the war over and the people enlightened, had a dream that was related to the idea shared by Maréchal, Saint-Simon and Considerant. Every power wounded by the war would judge its culprits – rulers and capitalists – and would free itself of them by sending them to ‘a distant island’.86 Humanity would then find itself purged of warmongers and exploiters of the proletariat. Far from damaging society, society would gain in security and justice.

10

Traits Common to Russian Socialism and Maréchalian Socialism

On the question of the subordination of the arts to popular interests or, if you will, of their eclipse as long as real equality has not been obtained, it was above all in Russia that Maréchal found heirs. The most famous were Tolstoy and Pisarev. Following Pierre Leroux, they condemned the aesthetic as a diversion from the imperative labour of social liberation. But while Tolstoy also condemned science for the same reason, Pisarev showed himself to be a supporter of the positive and natural sciences. The latter stressed that one must ‘always attract society’s attention to the economic and social questions and systematically combat and condemn everything that diverts intellectual forces and cultivated individuals from their mission. If among the objects that distracts them we find art in general or certain elements of art, it must be accepted that art too is to be combated and condemned’.87 The liberty, equality, and welfare of the masses first; the arts afterwards; Pisarev’s viewpoint is the same as that of Maréchal. It should also be noted that through its political, agricultural, and cultural situation the Russia of Pisarev’s time, like Russia prior to the revolution of 1917, had more than one trait in common with the France of the eighteenth century. With its elite imbued with revolutionary and communist ideology and its ‘socialist flowering’ that B. Malon already signaled in 1892,88 it was subjectively close to social Maréchalism. We should thus not be surprised at finding many supporters there of agrarian communism and communitarian socialism in one form or another. In the same way, the revolutionary legion imagined by Nechaev and the practice of regicide that was, for a time, dear to the Russian terrorists are not lacking in connections with Sylvain Maréchal’s tyrannicidal

86 87 88

‘La Bataille de l’Empereur’, La Vague, year i, no. 15, 11 April 1918. Alexinsky, La Russie et l’Europe, Paris, 1917, p. 317. Malon, Lundis socialistes, i. Précis historique, théorique et pratique de Socialisme, p. 117.

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views. It is superfluous to go into detail on this. The works dedicated to the Russian revolutionary movement are at the disposal of all; they speak clearly. Bolshevism itself, whose historic roots are so profound, has a direct affiliation with Babouvism via Blanqui and Marx.89

11

Maréchal and Marx

But it must be said that the founders of modern socialism, Marx and Engels, stand apart from Maréchal, not only because their concrete and scientific method is completely different from his, but because they reject any patriarchal regime and mercilessly criticise ‘the idiocy of rural life’. It also seems that Karl Marx did not accept the existence of that ‘Golden Age’ that too often led the utopians of the eighteenth century to locate socialism behind them rather than in front of them, as Saint-Simon expressed it. In his letters on India Marx calls the life on the idyllic commune contemptible, stagnant, and vegetative. He considered it a passive form of existence, placing strict limits on reason by submitting it to traditional rules, depriving it if any grandeur and energy. Finally, he declared that the primitive commune was sullied by caste differences, which is why he felt that England, despite its crimes was, thanks to the embryonic penetration of capital into Hindustan, ‘the unconscious instrument of history’, in the direction of the social revolution.90 This is the totally opposite to Maréchal’s ideas. In the same way, Marx and Engels, living in an era allowing for the infinite reproduction of objects of enjoyment, thanks to the hitherto unknown development of the means of production, abandoned the principle of Spartan equality and rejected plebeian asceticism. Again, in this they differ from Maréchal, who advocated the egalitarian distribution of food in a state of ‘moderation’, just as they diverge from Proudhon who, despite the evolution that had occurred, spoke in favour of ‘honest moderation’. There would be more than one parallel to establish between Proudhon’s ideal of politico-economic organisation and Maréchal’s opinions. Indeed, like Maréchal, Proudhon thought far more about the peasant and the artisan than the worker in large-scale industry. He was a partisan of small-scale economic organisation. And the just distribution of wealth, ‘the increasingly narrowed level of fortunes’, was more important in his eyes than the development and the boldness of large enter-

89 90

Dommanget, Babeuf, p. 94ff., Dommanget, Blanqui, p. 90. Correspodance Internationale, no. 139, 20 November 1928, p. 1,576.

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prises. Proudhon also intended to base public liberties on domestic morals and, like Maréchal after 9 Thermidor and 18 Brumaire, his period of despair after 2 December 1851 was expressed in disaffection with the people.91 All of this, as well as many other remarks we could make, show that one would seek in vain in Sylvain’s oeuvre for the economic bases of the future Marxism (the theory of value, industrial concentration, etc.). But on the other hand, one finds there, and in quite a strong form, the idea of class, which would form one of the pivots of Marxist theory. Maréchal undoubtedly glimpsed the principles that would lead Marx to his social classification. He belonged to that line of eighteenth century thinkers in whom was reflected, in an ideal form, the social conflict of antagonistic classes; to that category of fighters who, as a result of their participation in social action, had more or less arrived at formulating the concept of class. Maréchal essentially distinguished two ‘totally distinct’ ‘castes’ or ‘classes’: the rich and the poor, the masters and the servants, ‘those who have too much and those who have almost nothing’, ‘those who are served and those who serve’. On one side the ‘indigent class’ or the ‘numerous class’ is haunted by ‘need and scorn, more harrowing even than need’. Its existence is ‘precarious and insignificant’. The ‘chain of need’ attaches it to the ‘wheel of labour from sunrise to sunset’. On the other side is the ‘opulent class’, or the ‘less numerous class of residents, i.e., of masters’, whose fortunes are based on the profits drawn from the indigent class. It lives on loans and is noted for its ‘opulence, egoism, harshness, and impudence’. Property and material fortune, as well as the sentiments given rise to by their possession or lack of possession, are, from the moral point of view, the criteria for the separation of the two great classes according to Maréchal. As a result, he sees the solution of the social problem in the abolition of inequality in property, ‘the chain that binds all parts of civil society’. Once this chain is broken the indigent class, become ‘owners’ and having regained its natural rights, ‘the high, cast iron wall that separates rich and poor’ will be brought down. If we consider that Marx, following von Stein, saw the difference in the two essential classes, not in their degree of wealth but in their economic role, in the position occupied in the realm of production; if we note that as a good Hegelian Marx essentially saw classes as something dynamic, we can better measure the distance that separates Marx and Maréchal in this regard. This divergence can be historically explained, not because Maréchal could not have known the 91

Proudhon, ‘Du principe fédératif’, in Œuvres complètes de Proudhon, Paris, Flammarion, p. 240. Proudhon et notre temps, Paris, 1920, p. 243 as well as throughout the book. Dolléans, Proudhon, pp. 13–14, pp. 23–24, etc.

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Hegelian dialectic, but because materially, in Maréchal’s time, industry was not sufficiently active and agriculture was not sufficiently concentrated to allow a clear distinction on a wide scale between the poor and the proletarians. Despite this, it must be recognised that among the general characteristics he attributed to the numerous class, Maréchal – like Babeuf in the year iii – occasionally introduced the notion of wage labour, which brings his concept close to the Marxist one. It should be noted in passing that the notion of class of a contemporary like Jacques Roux, concerned above all with the problem of staple goods, is even further removed from Marxist concepts than is Maréchal’s. During the terrible crisis of 1793 the leader of the Enragés saw classes through the prism of consumption. He distinguished on one side the ‘big merchants’, the ‘vampires’, the starvers, the monopolists, the speculators, the bankers, and the arms merchants, and on the other all those who were the victims of the ‘brigandage of traders’,92 all the consumers, of which the workers constituted just a portion. But Jacques Roux, who shared in the population’s suffering during the crisis, analysed the separation between the two classes he spoke of, while Maréchal, who most often stuck to vague generalities, instead masked the antagonisms between the two rival classes. This explains why he did not grasp the meaning of the working-class conflicts at the time of the Constituent Assembly and several times preached an ‘amicable arrangement’ between the two opposing classes. He left the arranging of this to a third class. Marx later distinguished an array of subclasses outside the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and even within the two groups. Maréchal, who was more modest and often gave the social complexus short shrift, interposed only one class between the indigent class, or ‘degraded people’, and the opulent class. The characteristics of that middle class were a certain amount of ease and a ‘sweet moderation’ sheltering them from all that is revolting in both the ‘proudly opulent’ and the ‘degraded people’. He added to this education, which constitutes the seat of reason. This is as precise as Maréchal ever was in laying out the boundaries between the classes. He was tireless in his praise of the intermediary class, and he clearly counted himself among them. He believed that through its morals it alone was capable of regenerating the people and prolonging the life of the social system.93

92 93

‘Manifeste des Enrages’, Annales Revolutionnaires, vol. vii, 1914, pp. 546–560. Dommanget, Jacques Roux, le curé rouge, pp. 54ff. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. i, pp. 66 and 142. ‘Des pauvres et des riches’, Révolutions de Paris, no. 82. Décret de l’Assemblée Nationale Portant Règlement d’un Culte sans prêtres.

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What is remarkable is that in February 1791 when, for the first time, Maréchal assigned the middle class a temporizing role, we see a Feuillant like Duport place all of his confidence in ‘the intermediary class’, in ‘the middle class, which is ordinarily the most precious one in all societies’. Duport had requested on 8 January 1791 that the King unite with this class and that he seek to obtain its confidence, in his eyes the only tactic likely to prevent civil dissension and check revolutionary dynamism.94 Maréchal, by making the middle class a buffer class, an arbitrator class, in most of his writings, was thus following the same road as Duport. Taking as his point of departure point the fact of the class struggle, he arrived at compromise and lapsed into class collaboration. Why did Maréchal reach this conclusion, which he had rejected at the time of the Conspiracy of Equals? He took the trouble to explain this. He feared that after having become conscious of its strength ‘the numerous and unfortunate class’ would not make ‘good use’ of it; he feared the ‘incalculable results of a sudden struggle between a skilled despotism and an ignorance suddenly become powerful’. He also feared ‘reactive movements, the necessary effect of the collision of unfettered passions’.95 In 1848 the middle class would play precisely the role of buffer class envisioned by Maréchal, would play it with that ‘spirit of ruse and usurpation’ that was signaled by Sobrier’s newspaper, up until the moment when, having saved its interests from the shipwreck, it joined big capital to ‘clip the nails’ and ‘file down the teeth’ of the proletariat.96 Today, having learned from historical experience, big capital seeks to maintain the middle classes in its bosom, going as far as organising them on the international level.97 These facts prove, not only that the tactic envisioned by Maréchal was harmful and dangerous for the working class, but that on this point there is serious opposition between Marx and Maréchal. This opposition disappears if we take only the ‘Manifesto of the Equals’ into account, which is so clear and firm on class questions. In a general way, this manifesto – and we refrain from analysing it here – offers most of the lineaments of the revolutionary aspects of Marxism. This is what allowed Charles Andler, in commenting on Marx, to define the ‘Manifesto of the Equals’ as ‘the prototype for all socialist manifestoes and for the Communist Manifesto itself’.98 As a result Alexander Zévaès, editing the Grandes Manifestes du Socialisme francais au xixeme siècle (The Great Mani-

94 95 96 97 98

Michon, Essai sur l’Histoire du Parti feuillant, Adrien Duport, p. 170. Maréchal, Voyages de Pythagore, vol. i, p. 65. La Commune de Paris, no. 58, 4 May 1848 and no. 83, 4 June 1848. Le Musée Social, August 1924, no. 8. Andler, Le Manifeste Communiste de K. Marx et Engels, second edition, p. 65.

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festoes of French Socialism of the Nineteenth Century) saw to it that the ‘Manifesto of the Equals’ figured among the six texts he assembled and annotated, though Maréchal’s writing dates from the eighteenth century. But Zévaès pointed out that in fact the ‘Manifesto of the Equals’ is as much of the nineteenth as of the eighteenth century, because it ‘inaugurates a new era’ and because ‘it was only in the nineteenth century that it was popularised and its influence affirmed and extended’.99 Paul Louis for his part affirmed that the Manifesto of the Equals was ‘one of the first titles of nascent socialism’100 and Jacques Sadoul saw in it ‘the embryo of Bolshevism beneath an outdated rhetorical cloak’.101 It is difficult not to subscribe to these assertions. From the foregoing it can be said that of the two aspects of Maréchal’s social doctrine, it is above all the revolutionary aspect that posterity has retained.

99 100 101

Société Nouvelle d’Imprimerie et d’Éditions, Paris, 1934, p. 10. Louis, Histoire du Socialisme en France depuis la Révolution jusqu’à nos jours, Paris, 1925, p. 6. J. Sadoul, ‘L’Esprit de révolution’, Bulletin Communiste, no. 4.

Conclusion 1

The Atheist

Above all, it is the blasphemer and atheist that we see in Maréchal; it is the Godless Man that posterity sees in him, and this is only right. Perhaps no man fought the Church and belief in God in all its various forms with more consistency and vigour than did Sylvian Maréchal. Issued from a pious family, originally pious himself, Sylvain, after having sounded ‘the depths of religious prejudice’, from the time he was twenty he abandoned the religion of his fathers. From that moment until his death – for more than a quarter century – his life was a constant combat against God and priests. He imagined countless methods for spreading his new convictions, using one after the other or simultaneously the stylus of satire, the brush of poetry, the pencil of history, the pen of the journalist, and the arm of ridicule, making use of travel tales, the fiction of novels and drama, and of religious practices themselves. Maréchal’s philosophical convictions, derived from his sensitivity, observation, reasoning, and study, and based, not on scientific knowledge, but on a sense of morality, dignity, and justice, present themselves to us with all the signs of religious emotion. Maréchal had a burning faith; his atheism aroused passion in him and the desire to proselytise, along with the need for myths and symbols that necessarily accompany every manifestation of religious inspiration. He rejected all divine ideas, but he praised virtue, nature, reason, moderation, and family, which he made into deities. He dethroned the apostles and saints from the Christian pantheon, but did so in order to substitute for them humanity’s benefactors, the revolutionary martyrs and saints. He himself was an apostle. He rejected the Christian calendar and produced many anti-Christian calendars and almanacs. He composed atheist and pantheist catechisms, gospels, and psalms. He ridiculed the Catholic religion, yet in all seriousness constructed a pastoral cult, a ‘religion without priests’ and even a ‘religion of godless men’. ‘An atheist religion is perfectly conceivable’, wrote P.-L. Couchoud in the conclusion of his scholarly study, and in truth nothing is lacking in Maréchal’s religious constructs: ceremonies, an altar, a pontiff, choir boys, sacred books, commandments, invocations, sacramental formulas, reliquaries, communion, sacraments, etc. One could compose an anthology of nothing but Maréchal’s prayers, prayers to Love, to Matrimony, to the God of Free Men, to Nature, the Sun, Truth, etc. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004543959_019

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Everything in Maréchal breathes a piety that, despite being anti-clerical, pagan, and atheist, in no way differs from Christian piety. In this sense we can say that Maréchal was a religious atheist. It would perhaps be more correct to say, borrowing an expression already in use, that this ‘New Lucretius’ was nothing but an ‘atheist Rousseau’. In a significant passage Sylvain calls man what we today term a ‘religious animal’. He affirmed that religions existed before priests, that they will ‘probably’ exist after them. He sees religion to be an obstacle before the timid wicked man, as something needed by tender imaginations, as a joy for gentle souls, a limit to passions still young, and a consolation and refuge for the unfortunate. He does not believe we can do without it. What does this mean if not that Maréchal, like the other philosophes of the eighteenth century, was not an adversary of religion in general, but of the political and social content of the religions of his time. No more than did Rousseau, Voltaire, d’Holbach and the other revolutionaries, he conceived a state without religion, without cults, without philosophical, political, and moral dogmas. His mentality allows us to understand this religious policy, or more exactly this religious aspect of the Revolution that led so many historians astray. All of the Revolution’s civic cults, religious practices and manifestations existed more or less in germ in Sylvain ten, fifteen, or twenty years before entering the public domain. There is only one point on which Maréchal separates himself from the most dechristianising of patriots, and that is in fanaticism and persecution. He remained tolerant out of principle and for tactical reasons. This point of divergence largely explains Maréchal’s reserved attitude toward the Cult of Reason, which he logically should have supported.

2

The Socialist. The Libertarian

In Maréchal, the political man and the social reformer were intimately tied to the atheist. Out of methodological necessity and a concern for order we might be led – as we are now – to separate these different elements of his personality. Everyone should see that such a separation is artificial. Maréchal, of petit-bourgeois origin, occupied an intermediary rank in society. Along with the bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century he aspired to the rule of reason which was, when all is said and done, nothing but the idealized reign of the bourgeoisie. As he did with superstition, he had to and did combat injustice, privilege, and oppression. And when, as a result of the antagonism between feudalism and the bourgeoise, he called himself a partisan of

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the republic and the physical destruction of tyrants, he did nothing more than position himself on the left wing of the latter class. But along with the antagonism between feudalism and the bourgeoisie, there was the antagonism between the rich and the poor, of the rulers and the ruled. Sylvain Maréchal, endowed with a fiery soul, with blood that boiled when encountering a tyrant or an augur, with a love for truth that was all but fanatical, could no more bear the former antagonism than the latter. This led him to become both the herald and spokesman of the bourgeois revolution and the precursor and champion of the plebeian revolution. His republic of Godless Men consequently was, and could only be, a Republic of Equals, a communist or even anarchist society. As Maréchal explained, all men dissatisfied with the present willingly retreat into the past or want to anticipate the future. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that Sylvain Maréchal’s ideal society, his utopia, should be a projection, a transposition into the future of the communist forms of the past, just as his atheism was more often than not nothing but the transposition of the dogmas and practices of Catholicism. Maréchal’s socialism – like the socialism of the eighteenth century – was largely based on the state of nature, primitive equality, and the Golden Age; on Pythagoras, Plato, Telemachus, the noble savages, and the agricultural communists of ancient France. What is more, except as concerns the maintaining of women in the state of political subjugation, it does not seem to be anything but a more radical and more consequent continuation of the themes formulated by the philosophy of the time. Born in France at a time and in a country where the peasant mass was preponderant, where the struggle of the industrial wage earner against the bourgeois industrial was a limited phenomenon, Maréchal quite naturally gave his socialism an almost exclusively agrarian content. Given Maréchal’s moral concerns he could not but base his socialism on sentiments of equity and compassion. Like his religious ideas, his political and social ideas had a markedly sentimental character. They too have no scientific basis. All things considered, this parallelism can even be found in his expressions and the methods employed to spread his ideas. Just as Maréchal made use of every literary genre to propagate anarchism, he spread communism through pastorals, poetry, psalms, tales, almanacs, commentaries, articles, and manifestoes. Necessity is the mother of invention, and it is understandable that in order to escape repression Maréchal felt the need to hide his subversive ideas beneath the frivolous grace of pastorals or the heavy armour of historical and geographic considerations. These literary methods served as a passport for the ideas to be spread, the ‘fear of faggots’ being, as D’Alembert said, ‘quite refreshing’.

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Since Maréchal persisted in acting this way in more liberal times, one is forced to admit that his particular turn of mind, his disposition, and his literary capacity played a role in leading him to take this original and perilous road. And we must insist on the word perilous, for given the weakness of objective conditions and the boldness of his ideas, even when hiding behind anonymity and engaging in subterfuges Maréchal had to confront peril and suffer persecution. It is truly a miracle that after his imprisonment at Saint-Lazare he escaped the Terror of 1794, the trial at Vendôme, and Bonapartist repression.

3

The Writer

And yet, with his literary talent and his vast erudition Sylvain could have laid claim to a less compromising glory. In his youth this ‘consummately well-read man’ already bathed in the rivers of ancient Parnassus and wrote graceful, delicate, and light Anacreontic poetry that did not pass unnoticed. As his talent grew, he wrote even more beautiful verses, though his reputation did not gain from them. His writings, in ‘the style of a hothead’, as his friend Lablée described them, harmed his purely literary output. In 1790, the same Lablée predicted that if Maréchal were to make a selection of his verses and publish only the best of them he would be assured of a rank among the greatest erotic poets. But aside from the fact that Maréchal, absorbed by literary combat, did not have the time to satisfy Lablée’s wish, it is certain that his reputation would not have gained for having done so. Just a few days before his death Maréchal was going to carry out this project at the invitation of a Parisian bookseller. But there is no reason to think that at that moment, any more than before, his old verses, or even the fragment of his elegy to his wife, which recalls Colardeau, would have had any success. People viewed him as nothing but a maniacal atheist, the Godless Man, and this title, which he so proudly bore, caused the talent of the Shepherd Sylvain to be forgotten. Similarly, the philosophical poet, the imitator of Lucretius, was not without talent. Alongside dull pieces – a ‘shadow of poetry’, as Damiron said – there are vigorous, impassioned, emotional and tender verses in the Lucrèce français that are quite lovely. But since these poems, in digging the grave of the divinity and wresting the earth from the yoke of imposture, offended belief and harmed the interests of the powerful, they were found to be lacking in taste and mediocre, and were doomed to oblivion. In the same way, Maréchal’s scholarly works deserved to be better appreciated. Despite too frequent incursions into the philosophical and social do-

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mains, the Voyages de Pythagore, the Antiquités d’Herculanum, and the Costumes civils de tous les peoples can still be usefully consulted. If little was made of them during Maréchal’s lifetime, and if these works are forgotten today, it is because people did not forgive – people do not forgive – the scholar for the ideas of the thinker. Though through his style he did not attain the eternal fascination that is the virtue of great names, Maréchal is unjustly disdained as a writer. Let us attempt to delve into what was characteristic of him. Nature is the great word that constantly appears under his pen. He presents himself as its minstrel and interpreter, and he chose his first name to symbolically honour the woods and the fields. It must be admitted that Sylvain does not penetrate, feel, or express either the charm of the forests or the mysteries of the woods. His talent as a landscape artist was very weak. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who owes much to Rousseau in this domain, coincidentally owned a garden in the faubourg Saint-Marceau behind Maréchal’s garden. Bernardin speaks to us tenderly of his strawberry and thyme bushes, of his primroses, of his ‘rust-coloured ivy’. He evokes the freezes and hail that do so much harm to vegetation. We find nothing so picturesque, nothing so concrete in Maréchal, and one would seek in vain any allusion to his garden in his works. Nature in Maréchal is abstract, conventional, and philosophic. Maréchal did not distinguish himself as a painter of nature, but he had far more success in the gardens of Cythera, plucking Anacreon’s lyre. For him, love was for many years more an obsession than it was a source of happiness. Maréchal, like his idol Rousseau, had imagination and sensitivity. Thanks to them, he was able to adorn his artificial sighs and erotic artifices with inflections borrowed from the language of sincerity and the heat of passion. We owe it to truth to say that these two demanding mistresses occasionally so dominated Maréchal’s faculties of analysis and reflection that they stifled his reason. We now arrive at what imprinted Maréchal’s signature on his oeuvre, for it was his great imagination and lively sensibility that assured his qualities as an orator. It is paradoxical that this man who, like Camille Desmoulins, stammered, had an oratorical style. Even when he wrote scholarly works and when, intoxicated by rhetoric, he descended into verbosity, it was rare that a few images from the Golden Age, that emotion, indignation, and the ‘holy choler of truth’ did not impress a natural rhythm on his discourse, a sonorousness that led the reader along. When, filled with the importance of his mission and possessed by his faith, he directly addressed invective at the masters of heaven and earth and multiplied exclamation points, Maréchal achieved heights of eloquence. He knew how to find phrases, verses, and powerful expressions that went straight to the heart. Their merit is recognizable by their

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being spontaneously registered and sharply engraved in the mind. They are what Saint-Beuve called the ‘friends of memory’, which are destined to be remembered. Another trait of Maréchal the writer was his difficulty in closely connecting and solidly knitting together the different sections of a work, in turning them into a solid whole. As a result, he was only able to produce fragments of a poem against God, the scattered columns of an edifice that remained incomplete. He limited himself to dealing with childhood in a poetic work, in ‘The Four Phases of Man’s Life’. His Correctif à la Révolution, his posthumous De la vertu, his Pensées libres sur les prêtres are nothing but collections of propositions, quotes, and reflections lacking any connection between them. His collections of separate tales, fables, and psalms; his regulations and his more or less fantastic draft laws with their distinct articles; his taste for dictionaries; and, conversely, the ease with which he treated problems individually in newspapers and pamphlets, abundantly attest to this difficulty. Here again Maréchal resembles his master Rousseau, who in his Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts admitted to this flaw. On the positive side we must give him credit for an imposing work that he was able to complete: the remarkable edifice, the august temple raised to the memory of Pythagoras. Maréchal meditated on, composed, and revised this book for many years. Nevertheless, if on a whole it is well constructed, its frequent digressions still demonstrate that the author, after having cast his thoughts here and there, found it difficult to connect them to the threads of the cloth. In examining Maréchal as a writer his ability to endlessly create new ideas must not be forgotten. He never stopped writing.

4

The Man

Finally, it is worth noting that the private man, with his good-natured ways, his simple tastes, and his pronounced aversion for crudeness and intolerance, influenced the writer and the thinker. It is because of this that the moralist appears in all of Sylvain’s writings. The nature he evokes has not only a philosophical and social content, but a moral one. Behind the baggage of words we never find ‘vulgar and base merchandise’ in his books. Even when he glorified moderation his goal was to lead to the heights. Moderation, as he understood it, was nothing but the vita ubratilis of proud minds, the scholarly retreat of grinds, the fallback position of innovators that was his in his mansard in the Mazarine and in his studies in Cloître Saint-Marcel and Montrouge. It was there, rising towards the serene azure, above the fog floating over society, that he construc-

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ted his avenging utopias. Viewed subjectively, this consistent contemplative body of work that sought truth and justice, was just as much an oeuvre that, viewed objectively, was one based on class. It allowed Maréchal, against all expectations, at a time as lacking in the bucolic as the sans-culotterie, to live out his idyll in his modest home built close to the revolutionary volcano – a home which the volcano spared. We have reproached Maréchal for having insufficiently respected the laws and memories of friendship during the Thermidorian reaction. This is a stain on his life that cannot be passed over in silence as we bring this volume to an end. But the fact remains that Sylvain Maréchal, at a time of great literary profiteers, cannot be condemned for having received any resources thanks to the munificence of a prince, a minister, or a bourgeois; for any base acts and intrigues at a time when he could have assumed his rank among the rulers; for having abdicated at a time when so many others trampled on their recent past in order to follow the man of Brumaire. Maréchal presents himself to us as a sage in the ancient mould. And this was perhaps not the least of his particularities in a period when men spoke so readily of virtue and philosophy, but when so few took either of them seriously.

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Dictionnaire des athées anciens et modernes. Par Sylvain M….I. A Paris Chez Grabit, libraire, rue du Coq-Honoré, Nº 133. An viii. lxxvi + 524 p. in-8. Projet d’une loi portant défense d’apprendre à lire aux femmes. Par S** M***. A Paris, Chez Massé, Editeur rue Helvétius nº 580, an ix-1801. vii + 106 p. in-8. Pour et contre la Bible, Par Sylvain M***. A Jérusalem, l’an de l’ère chrétienne m. dccci. xxxv + 404 p. in-8. La femme abbé, ouvrage de Sylvain Maréchal. A Paris, Chez Ledoux, Libraire, rue Hautefeuille, Nº 31. 9. 1801. 2 + 255 p. in-16. Ronde chantée dans la Bibliothèque Mazarine, Le soir du 18 Brumaire An x. Sur l’air de la Ronde des Visitandines. De l’Imprimerie de Langlois, rue de Thionville, nº 1840. 4 p. in-8. Mythologie raisonnée à l’usage de la jeunesse, par S… M… A Paris, Chez L. Pelletier, Libraire, rue Saint-André des Arcs nº 82. 1802 (An xi). 158 p. in-8. Histoire de la Russie, réduite aux seuls faits importans. A Londres, Et se trouve à Paris, Chez P. Buisson, Imprimeur-Libraire, rue Hautefeuille, nº 20; Mongie l’aîné, Lib., Galerie de bois, nº 224, Palais du Tribunat. A Rouen, chez Frère l’aîné, Libraire sur le Port. An x (1802). viii + 390 p. in-8. De la vertu; par Sylvain Maréchal, auteur du Dictionnaire des athées. Précédé d’une notice sur cet écrivain; et suivi du Livre de tous les âges, par le même auteur. Avec portrait. A Paris, Chez Léopold Collin, libraire, rue Gît-le-cœur, nº 4. 1807. 382 p. in-8.

Index abolition 139, 177, 185, 206, 219–20, 225, 315, 413, 421 absolute power 104, 140, 307, 310, 314 absolutist rule 139 Abyssinia 264 Advielle, Victor 298–99, 302, 312, 316 Aeschylus 344 Aesculapius 17 agrarian law 179–81, 186, 230, 306, 311, 313 Anacreon 41–42, 46–47, 76 anarchism 2, 5, 413, 416, 427 Anaxagoras 252 Anaximander 342 antiquity 14, 35, 37, 39, 41, 58–60, 65, 69, 110, 341, 343–44 aristocracy 150, 154, 170, 173, 187, 208, 217, 245, 264, 285, 290 Aristophanes 27, 38 Athens 60, 155, 235, 287, 342, 356 Aulard, Alphonse 139–40, 186–87, 197, 251– 52, 258, 264, 269, 330, 359, 365, 367 Aurelius, Marcus 126 Austria 178, 333, 337–38 Babeuf, François-Noël (Gracchus), xiii, xv, xvii 8, 10, 200, 290, 293–94, 298–304, 308, 312–14, 316–18, 338–39, 411, 413–14 Babouvisme 298–99, 302, 312, 316, 413–14 Bastille 93, 150, 196, 227, 303 Bayle, Pierre 323, 403 bishops 4, 37, 95, 133, 154, 168, 170, 193, 205, 207 Blanqui, Auguste xv–xvi, 88, 408–9, 414, 420 Bonaparte, Napoleon 2, 7, 311, 331–41, 344, 359, 362–64, 384, 388, 405, 436 bourgeoisie 67, 139, 179, 190, 417, 422, 426– 27 bread 55, 166, 180, 198, 257, 309, 314 Brissot, Jacques Pierre 8, 41, 61, 92, 95, 150, 190, 215, 287–88, 370 Brumaire year 329, 331, 337, 345, 371, 386 Brutus 226, 242, 265, 375, 389 Buonarroti, Philippe 284, 293, 295, 297–98, 304–5, 308, 312–14, 316, 318, 338–39, 411

Caesar 219 Campanella, Thomas 60, 350 Catholicism 96, 158, 167, 248, 281, 320, 322, 382, 407, 427 censor 65, 94, 106, 130, 132, 218, 266 Christians 101, 103, 107, 112, 126, 187, 322, 390, 396, 408 civil society 147, 165, 183, 185, 232, 234, 236, 304–5, 311, 347, 354 Claverger, Jean 51 clergy 10, 33, 93, 152, 154–56, 162, 164, 169– 71, 205, 207, 217 Cloots, Anarcharsis 70, 164, 166, 271, 289 commerce 61, 97, 159, 184, 199, 201, 273, 314, 353 Committee of General Security 301 Committee of Public Instruction 223–25, 262, 280, 371 Committee of Public Safety 250, 258, 278, 301 Commune, Paris xvi, 109, 206, 210, 215, 223, 225–26, 248, 252, 299 communism xiii, xv, 143, 145, 149, 240, 304, 310–11, 313, 348, 415 Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de 33 Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat 164, 189–90, 197, 217, 230, 288, 370–71 Considerant, Victor 414–15, 418–19 conspiracy xiii, 3, 7, 223, 284, 288, 293–95, 304, 309, 314, 316–17 Constituent Assembly 186, 192–93, 222, 287, 417, 422 constitution 172, 190, 194, 207, 299, 303, 307, 311–13, 338 Cordeliers Club 177–78, 186 counter-revolution 179, 181, 191, 201, 212, 304 Cult of Reason 269–70, 272, 274–75, 281, 362, 426 Daline, Victor xiv Danton, Georges 158–59, 215–16, 243, 288, 407 Dantonistes 115–16, 160 David, Louis 65, 103, 241–42, 345, 433 Defoe, Daniel 134

439

index Democritus 39 Desmoulins, Camille 115–17, 158–61, 242, 429 Desmoulins, Lucile 115–17, 160, 248, 368 dictatorship xvi, 334 Diogenes 39, 60, 153, 155–56, 280 divinity 59, 62, 76, 82–83, 86–87, 89–90, 96–97, 101, 104, 111, 275, 282 Egypt 336, 341–42 Empedocles 81 enthusiasm 47, 175, 240, 311, 339, 412–13 Epicurus 37, 126, 326 Euclid 83 Euripides 38 fanaticism 106, 225, 262, 271, 275, 331, 335, 338, 426 fatherland 154, 168, 175, 214–15, 234, 236–37, 244, 280–81, 321 Ferry, Jules 409 festivals 96, 121, 124–25, 129, 167, 220, 224– 26, 228, 245–46, 274–76, 281–84, 326, 330 feudalism 250, 299, 426–27 Fleury, Edouard 308 Fourier, Charles 149 Fourierists 412 fraternisation 196, 317 freedom 119, 132, 158, 171, 189, 194, 231, 235– 36, 239–41, 345, 347 Freemasonry 67–70, 93, 124 freethinking 75, 366 French Revolution xiv, xvii, xix, 9, 137, 306, 315, 416 Gessner, Salomon 17–19, 70, 98 Girondins 214–17, 231, 241, 243, 287 Greece 69, 111, 155, 326, 341 Grünberg, Carl 162 Hardouin, Jean 146, 360–61 Hébert, Jacques 214–16, 289, 329 Hébertistes 270 Helvétius, Claude Adrien 36, 126, 370, 407 Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry 34–35, 63, 81, 83, 92, 323, 365, 370, 407, 412, 426 Hugo, Victor 78–79

Hume, David 37 hymns 97, 100, 231, 245, 274, 278, 319, 327 idylls 16, 38, 95, 221, 431 Jacobin Club 152, 186, 212, 258, 264, 271 Jacobins 186, 207, 209, 215, 217, 241, 243, 258, 260, 309, 337 Jaurès, Jean xiv, 145, 198, 201, 224, 272, 298, 318 Jesuits 41, 59, 61, 361, 382, 404 Kropotkin, Peter 308, 416 Lafargue, Paul 8, 88, 415 Lenin, V.I. 315 Lion, Henri 34 Lucretius 81–82, 90–91, 93, 97, 182, 410, 428 Luzec, Joseph 99, 101–2, 433 Lycurgus 113, 187, 226 Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de 57–58, 104, 139, 310, 316, 412 magistrates 120–21, 134–35, 140, 206–7, 244, 279, 342, 349, 384 Malon, Benoît 162, 312, 314, 419 manifesto xiii, 2, 7, 294, 303, 305, 308–18, 320, 412, 416, 423 Marat, Jean-Paul 4, 158–59, 214–16, 243, 250, 265 Marx, Karl xiii, 88, 315, 412, 415, 420–23 Masonry 67, 70, 124, 187, 229 materialism 34, 80, 128, 408, 414 mathematics 144 Mathiez, Albert xv, 161, 164–68, 171, 198, 201, 207, 209, 253, 329–30, 335, 338, 358– 59 middle class 314, 352, 422–23 Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti 61, 154, 222, 371 Montagnards xv, 214, 241, 411 Montagne, Michel de 226, 262, 264, 374 Montaigne 14, 56, 71, 182, 371 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat 20, 139, 236 More, Thomas 328 Muret, Theodore 267

440 Naigeon, Jacques-Andrém 4, 34, 164, 166 National Assembly 1, 104, 151–52, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179, 191–92, 203, 217 nature 30–32, 34, 52, 79–84, 96, 100, 104, 115–18, 139–40, 182–84, 190–92, 237– 38, 305–7, 311, 345–48, 368–70, 377–79, 385–86, 409–10, 429–30 Naville, Pierre xviii, 34 Nettlau, Max 416 Paine, Thomas 230 Philipon, Manon 72 Philostratus 39 Physiocrats 57, 61, 240 police 13, 93, 130, 143, 153, 156, 295, 297–99, 302, 358, 367 Positivism 229, 395 Pouget, Emile 417 poverty 108, 113, 181, 183, 185, 189, 313, 415 Prudhomme, Louis 159, 164, 171–72, 176– 78, 187, 189–90, 242–43, 250, 270, 289, 299–300 Prussia 178, 256, 260, 333 Pythagoras 2, 60, 69, 100, 325, 342–44, 346, 349, 352, 427, 430 Quakers 134 Racine, Jean 404, 412 Regnard, Albert 408, 410 religion 28–30, 62–63, 78–79, 90, 96–97, 100–101, 103, 129, 134–35, 154–57, 164– 70, 189, 195, 272–73, 321–25, 328–31, 390–91, 402, 404–5, 425–26 Riboud, Thomas 119, 121–24, 126 Robespierre, Maximilien xiv–xv, 4, 190, 212, 270–71, 278, 281–82, 285, 288, 295, 362 Rome 171, 205, 208, 221, 276, 333, 335, 339, 341, 353, 435–36 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 6, 30, 32–33, 36, 49–50, 52, 56–58, 103–4, 238–39, 360, 362, 412, 414, 426, 429 Roux, Jacques 35, 273, 422 Russia 256–57, 387, 419

index Sadoul, Jacques 424 saints 19, 119–21, 123, 126, 163, 166, 202, 221, 223, 228, 425 Saint-Simon, Henri 131, 418–20 sans-culottes 221, 225, 250, 254, 256–57, 261–62, 268–70, 310 skepticism 1, 188, 234, 272, 416 socialism 2, 6, 57, 89, 131, 313, 412–15, 420, 427 Socrates 35–36, 87, 90, 126, 242, 326, 383, 408 speculators 286, 352–54, 422 Stalinists xix syndicalism 417 Tasso, Torquato 59 terror 1, 83, 190, 230, 267, 288, 345, 399, 428 Theocritus 17, 38, 46, 76, 99, 221 theologians 83, 102, 121, 363 Theophilanthropy 167, 319–20, 329–30, 358–59 tribune 152, 193, 204, 207, 243, 266, 272, 288, 409 people’s 230, 248, 302, 308 Tuileries Palace 196, 199 tyrannicides 61, 142, 174–78, 181, 222, 255, 416 tyrants 83, 140–43, 175, 178–79, 256, 259, 261, 265, 278–79, 287, 351, 356, 427 vampires 199, 422 Volney, Constantin François de 74, 188 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 32–33, 83, 95, 110, 120, 126, 128, 139, 221, 399, 403 wage earners 57 war 87, 94, 96, 104, 198–99, 207, 212, 214–15, 328, 332, 334, 419 civil 176, 193, 313 Wasse, Guillaume 25, 27 women 55, 58, 60, 68, 71, 136, 143, 190–92, 229, 232, 369, 376–81, 385 anonymous 115 workers xix, 10, 57, 70, 74, 79, 84, 144–45, 417–18, 420, 422