Chris Dite
Jacobin
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| To Versailles, an Incident in the French Revolution, (por volta de 1894), (por volta de 1902). Após uma pintura na coleção do Museu Sheffield. Mulheres francesas empunhando foices e batendo tambores marcham para o palácio de Versalhes. Milhares de mulheres participaram da marcha em 5 de outubro de 1789. [Cassell and Company Ltd, Londres, por volta de 1902.] Artista desconhecido. (The Print Collector / Getty Images) |
Em 1789, a sociedade francesa se levantou contra uma ordem feudal corrupta. O fervor republicano nas ruas e nas assembleias aboliu a monarquia, confiscou a propriedade da igreja e deu início a uma ambiciosa reestruturação da vida constitucional e cotidiana.
Em 1793, o Reinado do Terror — a prisão em massa e a execução de contrarrevolucionários reais e imaginários — estava a todo vapor. Com o líder do Clube Jacobino Maximilien Robespierre no comando, o Terror aparentemente visava transferir o zelo revolucionário das ruas indisciplinadas para a guilhotina ordeira. Temendo por suas cabeças, uma aliança temporária de elites nervosas aproveitou a oportunidade para derrubar e matar Robespierre e seus aliados. A chamada Reação Termidoriana havia começado.
Desde o momento de sua execução em 1794, os comentaristas têm remodelado implacavelmente o legado de Robespierre para se adequar a seus propósitos políticos, e ele continua sendo uma figura ambígua hoje. Ele é escalado alternadamente como um bicho-papão antitotalitário, um totem contra o privilégio aristocrático, um estudo de caso sobre por que não perseguir a corrupção da elite com muito vigor, ou um nivelador igualitário.
A irmã de Robespierre, Charlotte — que trabalhou em vários momentos como sua secretária, uma emissária jacobina para as regiões e uma espécie de agente revolucionária de guerra — assumiu a responsabilidade de garantir que a visão igualitária de Robespierre sobrevivesse até hoje. Ela sobreviveu às décadas após o Termidor, uniu forças com os primeiros comunistas e passou a moldar futuras revoluções na Europa.
À medida que a revolução ampliava suas ambições de destruir a aristocracia, Charlotte se tornou uma espécie de delegada jacobina não oficial em Arras. Ela organizou uma campanha contra Barbe-Thérèse Marchand, uma dona de jornal burguesa na cidade. Os Affiches d'Artois de Marchand apoiaram aristocratas e clérigos exilados; ela também financiou com sucesso a eleição de um candidato girondino conservador de Arras servindo na recém-formada Assembleia Legislativa. A campanha de Charlotte culminou em um grande comício em 1791 do lado de fora da casa de Marchand em defesa da revolução. Os Affiches d'Artois ridicularizaram a manifestação por incluir recepcionistas de teatro e lavadeiras. Menos de um ano depois, o delegado de Marchand em Paris foi atacado como um monarquista enrustido por uma multidão sansculotte, e a própria Marchand fugiu da França.
Animada pelo sucesso do projeto revolucionário, Charlotte mudou-se para Paris. Ela vivia intermitentemente com seus irmãos, ambos agora eleitos para a Convenção Nacional. Ela participou de reuniões e discussões com algumas das figuras mais proeminentes da revolução. Entre elas, Joseph Fouché, cujo namoro com Charlotte terminou quando os Robespierres o criticaram por cometer massacres sangrentos e indiscriminados em Lyon. Em 1793, ela foi enviada em uma missão com seu irmão Augustin para ajudar a suprimir uma revolta federalista em Nice. Fisicamente atacada por girondinos e sob extrema pressão, Charlotte teve uma briga feroz com Augustin. Ela finalmente retornou a Paris por conta própria.
Em 1794, os inimigos de Robespierre orquestraram seu golpe contra ele. Após uma luta feroz, Maximilien e Augustin foram executados. Charlotte foi espancada por soldados e presa. Sua companheira de cela, que Charlotte mais tarde percebeu ser provavelmente uma agente termidoriana, a convenceu a assinar um documento que ela nunca leu — presumivelmente uma denúncia de seus irmãos. Charlotte foi libertada da prisão e buscou refúgio com seus poucos apoiadores restantes.
Os quarenta anos seguintes veriam uma gama de regimes no poder. Mas, quer a França estivesse sob a liderança do Diretório, Napoleão Bonaparte ou a Restauração Bourbon, um tema permanecia constante: Robespierre era uma palavra suja.
Maximilien was denounced by all and sundry. He became a symbol for all the excesses of the revolution, regardless of his involvement with them. Some of the accusations were true enough — it is undeniable he advocated for the Terror — but others were pure imagination.
More sophisticated character assassinations, such as those by Madame de Staël, accused Robespierre of demagogically rendering himself a conduit for the crazed passions of the mob. But it was far more normal for Robespierre to simply be depicted as an intrinsically cruel, bloodthirsty, and ambitious monster.
There were also allegations of decadence, immorality, and corruption. The Girondin Comtesse de Genlis, whose brother had been executed during the Terror, accused Robespierre of impropriety when interrogating women. Rumors circulated that he had kept King Louis XVI’s daughter imprisoned in Temple Tower with the intention of marrying her. Robespierre’s supposed “royal ambition” was not an entirely new theme. When Charlotte had gone on her mission to Nice, she had been accused by Federalists of riding her horse around the city like a princess.
Charlotte had been there when her brother castigated people like Joseph Fouché and Jean-Paul Marat for their counterproductive, pointless violence. And she had lived with him when a stream of smiling, gift-bearing Girondin assassins — including the teenage Cécile Renault — knocked at their door over a period of months trying to murder him. These same people and factions now sat in power. They performatively wrung their hands at the very thought of violence and blamed Robespierre for many of their own crimes.
Charlotte was in no position to protest this emerging “black legend.” Despite accusations that the Robespierres had royal designs, revolutionary activity hurt the family finances badly. Charlotte, the only survivor, remained destitute and more or less in hiding. Napoleon Bonaparte’s Consulate, and later the Bourbon Restoration, effectively bought her silence by offering her a modest (and gradually diminishing) pension.
In 1830, a widely circulating fake memoir supposedly written by Maximilien Robespierre alleged that her brother had been planning to have Charlotte guillotined. This final humiliation, from a regime headed by the brother of the king she had helped depose, forced her hand.
While Charlotte vociferously defended her brother’s personal integrity in her memoir, she is not particularly hagiographic about his political legacy, and asks readers to use their own judgement on the question. Laponneraye’s admiration for Robespierre was similarly circumspect. In his History of the French Revolution (1838), he declares that "those who make half-revolutions dig themselves a grave":
The crises that would beset France over the next ten years would culminate in the Europe-wide Revolutions of 1848. A young Karl Marx was in Paris at the time. There was a gulf between his conception of social revolution and the Babouvists'. Yet on the eve of revolution, Marx addressed the Society of the Rights of Man — of which Laponneraye was an affiliate — and skillfully declared, "I want to march in the shadow of the Great Robespierre."
In her final years Charlotte made a conscious choice to attach her brother’s legacy to the growing specter haunting Europe. Her former suitor-turned-enemy Joseph Fouché veered increasingly right over the period in an effort to save his own skin; he spent his twilight years prosecuting the White Terror as the king’s police minister. By contrast, Charlotte's is a fine example that, even amid the rising tides of reaction, one can still choose to side with the people.
Colaborador
Chris Dite é professor e membro do sindicato.
Em 1793, o Reinado do Terror — a prisão em massa e a execução de contrarrevolucionários reais e imaginários — estava a todo vapor. Com o líder do Clube Jacobino Maximilien Robespierre no comando, o Terror aparentemente visava transferir o zelo revolucionário das ruas indisciplinadas para a guilhotina ordeira. Temendo por suas cabeças, uma aliança temporária de elites nervosas aproveitou a oportunidade para derrubar e matar Robespierre e seus aliados. A chamada Reação Termidoriana havia começado.
Desde o momento de sua execução em 1794, os comentaristas têm remodelado implacavelmente o legado de Robespierre para se adequar a seus propósitos políticos, e ele continua sendo uma figura ambígua hoje. Ele é escalado alternadamente como um bicho-papão antitotalitário, um totem contra o privilégio aristocrático, um estudo de caso sobre por que não perseguir a corrupção da elite com muito vigor, ou um nivelador igualitário.
A irmã de Robespierre, Charlotte — que trabalhou em vários momentos como sua secretária, uma emissária jacobina para as regiões e uma espécie de agente revolucionária de guerra — assumiu a responsabilidade de garantir que a visão igualitária de Robespierre sobrevivesse até hoje. Ela sobreviveu às décadas após o Termidor, uniu forças com os primeiros comunistas e passou a moldar futuras revoluções na Europa.
Fraternité
Os filhos de Robespierre — Maximilien, Charlotte e Augustin — tinham idades próximas. Como jovens adultos da região de Arras, eles não tinham dinheiro nem redes sociais que garantissem o sucesso e viviam de forma bastante modesta. Maximilien alcançou sucesso como advogado graças aos seus talentos e a alguns benfeitores generosos, embora sua reputação de coração mole um tanto irritante o tenha marcado como um estranho nos círculos de elite de Arras. Eleito para os Estados Gerais em 1789, Robespierre partiu para Paris e mergulhou no debate revolucionário, na política, na intriga e no Clube Jacobino.
À medida que a revolução ampliava suas ambições de destruir a aristocracia, Charlotte se tornou uma espécie de delegada jacobina não oficial em Arras. Ela organizou uma campanha contra Barbe-Thérèse Marchand, uma dona de jornal burguesa na cidade. Os Affiches d'Artois de Marchand apoiaram aristocratas e clérigos exilados; ela também financiou com sucesso a eleição de um candidato girondino conservador de Arras servindo na recém-formada Assembleia Legislativa. A campanha de Charlotte culminou em um grande comício em 1791 do lado de fora da casa de Marchand em defesa da revolução. Os Affiches d'Artois ridicularizaram a manifestação por incluir recepcionistas de teatro e lavadeiras. Menos de um ano depois, o delegado de Marchand em Paris foi atacado como um monarquista enrustido por uma multidão sansculotte, e a própria Marchand fugiu da França.
Animada pelo sucesso do projeto revolucionário, Charlotte mudou-se para Paris. Ela vivia intermitentemente com seus irmãos, ambos agora eleitos para a Convenção Nacional. Ela participou de reuniões e discussões com algumas das figuras mais proeminentes da revolução. Entre elas, Joseph Fouché, cujo namoro com Charlotte terminou quando os Robespierres o criticaram por cometer massacres sangrentos e indiscriminados em Lyon. Em 1793, ela foi enviada em uma missão com seu irmão Augustin para ajudar a suprimir uma revolta federalista em Nice. Fisicamente atacada por girondinos e sob extrema pressão, Charlotte teve uma briga feroz com Augustin. Ela finalmente retornou a Paris por conta própria.
Em 1794, os inimigos de Robespierre orquestraram seu golpe contra ele. Após uma luta feroz, Maximilien e Augustin foram executados. Charlotte foi espancada por soldados e presa. Sua companheira de cela, que Charlotte mais tarde percebeu ser provavelmente uma agente termidoriana, a convenceu a assinar um documento que ela nunca leu — presumivelmente uma denúncia de seus irmãos. Charlotte foi libertada da prisão e buscou refúgio com seus poucos apoiadores restantes.
A Lenda Negra
Os quarenta anos seguintes veriam uma gama de regimes no poder. Mas, quer a França estivesse sob a liderança do Diretório, Napoleão Bonaparte ou a Restauração Bourbon, um tema permanecia constante: Robespierre era uma palavra suja.
Maximilien was denounced by all and sundry. He became a symbol for all the excesses of the revolution, regardless of his involvement with them. Some of the accusations were true enough — it is undeniable he advocated for the Terror — but others were pure imagination.
More sophisticated character assassinations, such as those by Madame de Staël, accused Robespierre of demagogically rendering himself a conduit for the crazed passions of the mob. But it was far more normal for Robespierre to simply be depicted as an intrinsically cruel, bloodthirsty, and ambitious monster.
There were also allegations of decadence, immorality, and corruption. The Girondin Comtesse de Genlis, whose brother had been executed during the Terror, accused Robespierre of impropriety when interrogating women. Rumors circulated that he had kept King Louis XVI’s daughter imprisoned in Temple Tower with the intention of marrying her. Robespierre’s supposed “royal ambition” was not an entirely new theme. When Charlotte had gone on her mission to Nice, she had been accused by Federalists of riding her horse around the city like a princess.
Charlotte had been there when her brother castigated people like Joseph Fouché and Jean-Paul Marat for their counterproductive, pointless violence. And she had lived with him when a stream of smiling, gift-bearing Girondin assassins — including the teenage Cécile Renault — knocked at their door over a period of months trying to murder him. These same people and factions now sat in power. They performatively wrung their hands at the very thought of violence and blamed Robespierre for many of their own crimes.
Charlotte was in no position to protest this emerging “black legend.” Despite accusations that the Robespierres had royal designs, revolutionary activity hurt the family finances badly. Charlotte, the only survivor, remained destitute and more or less in hiding. Napoleon Bonaparte’s Consulate, and later the Bourbon Restoration, effectively bought her silence by offering her a modest (and gradually diminishing) pension.
In 1830, a widely circulating fake memoir supposedly written by Maximilien Robespierre alleged that her brother had been planning to have Charlotte guillotined. This final humiliation, from a regime headed by the brother of the king she had helped depose, forced her hand.
"Acreditava-se que eles deviam sua virtude mais à educação do que à natureza"
Following the initial Thermidorian Reaction in 1794, the journalist François-Noël Babeuf emerged as leader of the far left of the revolutionary movement. In the context of the Directory’s clumsy attempt to remove price controls on food, Babeuf’s espousal of economic egalitarianism and the abolition of private property grew in popularity. The Directory moved against Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals when regiments of police and soldiers began to join, and executed him in 1797. But Babeuf’s followers, including coconspirator Philippe Buonarroti, continued to develop and propagate his ideas.
By the late Bourbon Restoration, these ideas had well and truly morphed into a proto-communist tendency. In 1828 Buonarroti published History of Babeuf’s Conspiracy for Equality. That same year, a young schoolteacher named Albert Laponneraye moved to Paris and was swept up in this school of thought. He was a critical admirer of Robespierre and wrote an article in 1830 condemning the Robespierre memoir forgery.
Charlotte had also written publicly in protest against the forgery and spied her chance. The two connected and engaged in a yearslong fruitful and comradely dialogue on Robespierre and contemporary politics. Charlotte provided Laponneraye with many letters and documents she had hidden from the authorities. In between his own writing and stints in prison for revolutionary activity, Laponneraye published Maximilien’s Oeuvres Choisies as well as Charlotte’s own Memoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères.
Laponneraye clearly respected the intellect and skills of the women around him. His sister, Zoé, was also a writer who later worked with him as a publisher at La Voix du Peuple. It is clear from moments in Zoé’s novella Samarite — a quasi-gothic bildungsroman about a suicidal youth who morphs into a satanic bourgeois — that questioning women’s oppression was a standard feature in the social circles of their readership. Nevertheless, this openness to women’s political participation didn’t totally eradicate backwards ideas about “natural roles.” Laponneraye compared Charlotte favorably to the Girondin Madame Roland, for example, on the basis that la soeur Robespierre did not fancy herself a stateswoman.
Such humility is not overly evident in Charlotte’s own writing however. In her public letter condemning the fake memoir, she analogizes her situation to that of Cornelia, mother of the Ancient Roman Gracchi brothers. In Plutarch’s telling, Cornelia is a cunning participant in the brothers’ rise to power and a behind-the-scenes legislator. French revolutionaries in the 1790s had nicknamed Babeuf “Gracchus” after the brothers; the neo-Babouvists saw the Gracchi brothers as early socialists. Charlotte’s allusion suggests she both saw herself as a kind of stateswoman and was happy to openly associate her name with the emergent communist wing of the revolutionary spirit.
When Charlotte died in 1834, Laponneraye was in prison for writing his seditious Lettres aux Prolétaires. A friend attended and read the eulogy he had written for her.
By the late Bourbon Restoration, these ideas had well and truly morphed into a proto-communist tendency. In 1828 Buonarroti published History of Babeuf’s Conspiracy for Equality. That same year, a young schoolteacher named Albert Laponneraye moved to Paris and was swept up in this school of thought. He was a critical admirer of Robespierre and wrote an article in 1830 condemning the Robespierre memoir forgery.
Charlotte had also written publicly in protest against the forgery and spied her chance. The two connected and engaged in a yearslong fruitful and comradely dialogue on Robespierre and contemporary politics. Charlotte provided Laponneraye with many letters and documents she had hidden from the authorities. In between his own writing and stints in prison for revolutionary activity, Laponneraye published Maximilien’s Oeuvres Choisies as well as Charlotte’s own Memoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères.
Laponneraye clearly respected the intellect and skills of the women around him. His sister, Zoé, was also a writer who later worked with him as a publisher at La Voix du Peuple. It is clear from moments in Zoé’s novella Samarite — a quasi-gothic bildungsroman about a suicidal youth who morphs into a satanic bourgeois — that questioning women’s oppression was a standard feature in the social circles of their readership. Nevertheless, this openness to women’s political participation didn’t totally eradicate backwards ideas about “natural roles.” Laponneraye compared Charlotte favorably to the Girondin Madame Roland, for example, on the basis that la soeur Robespierre did not fancy herself a stateswoman.
Such humility is not overly evident in Charlotte’s own writing however. In her public letter condemning the fake memoir, she analogizes her situation to that of Cornelia, mother of the Ancient Roman Gracchi brothers. In Plutarch’s telling, Cornelia is a cunning participant in the brothers’ rise to power and a behind-the-scenes legislator. French revolutionaries in the 1790s had nicknamed Babeuf “Gracchus” after the brothers; the neo-Babouvists saw the Gracchi brothers as early socialists. Charlotte’s allusion suggests she both saw herself as a kind of stateswoman and was happy to openly associate her name with the emergent communist wing of the revolutionary spirit.
When Charlotte died in 1834, Laponneraye was in prison for writing his seditious Lettres aux Prolétaires. A friend attended and read the eulogy he had written for her.
Um espectro na sombra
While Charlotte vociferously defended her brother’s personal integrity in her memoir, she is not particularly hagiographic about his political legacy, and asks readers to use their own judgement on the question. Laponneraye’s admiration for Robespierre was similarly circumspect. In his History of the French Revolution (1838), he declares that "those who make half-revolutions dig themselves a grave":
The Montagnards dug theirs by not breaking the industrial helotism of the worker. ... How did these prodigious men, who fought with such indomitable energy and audacity against a united Europe, and against the relentless plots of the aristocracy, recoil in horror before a reorganization of work and a reshuffle of property? This was their greatest fault. ... It is from this serious fault that all the misfortunes that have weighed down on France for half a century have flowed. Perhaps we have the right to show ourselves severe before the Montagnards, for in politics faults are crimes.
The crises that would beset France over the next ten years would culminate in the Europe-wide Revolutions of 1848. A young Karl Marx was in Paris at the time. There was a gulf between his conception of social revolution and the Babouvists'. Yet on the eve of revolution, Marx addressed the Society of the Rights of Man — of which Laponneraye was an affiliate — and skillfully declared, "I want to march in the shadow of the Great Robespierre."
In her final years Charlotte made a conscious choice to attach her brother’s legacy to the growing specter haunting Europe. Her former suitor-turned-enemy Joseph Fouché veered increasingly right over the period in an effort to save his own skin; he spent his twilight years prosecuting the White Terror as the king’s police minister. By contrast, Charlotte's is a fine example that, even amid the rising tides of reaction, one can still choose to side with the people.
Colaborador
Chris Dite é professor e membro do sindicato.
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