Hébertists Hébertistes | |
|---|---|
| Founder | Jacques Hébert |
| Founded | 1791; 234 years ago (1791) |
| Dissolved | 1794; 231 years ago (1794) |
| Headquarters | Paris |
| Newspaper | Le Père Duchesne |
| Ideology | Jacobinism State atheism Radicalism Populism[1][2] Anti-clericalism Revolutionary terrorism |
| Political position | Left-wing tofar-left |
| National affiliation | Cordeliers |
| Colours | |
TheHébertists (French:Hébertistes,[e.bɛʁ.tist]), orExaggerators (French:Exagérés), were a radical revolutionary political group associated with the populist journalistJacques Hébert, a member of theCordeliers club. They came to power during theReign of Terror and played a significant role in theFrench Revolution.
The Hébertists were ardent supporters of thedechristianization of France and of extreme measures in service of the Terror, including theLaw of Suspects enacted in 1793. They favoured the direct intervention of the state in economic matters in order to ensure the adequate supply of commodities, advocating the national requisition of wine and grain.[3]
The leaders went to theguillotine on 24 March 1794.
The rise in power of the Hébertists can be largely attributed to the popularity of Hébert's newspaper,Le Père Duchesne. This newspaper, which purported to present the frank opinions of Père Duchesne, a fictional working-class furnace-maker, had a large following amongst thesans-culottes. The government-funded distribution ofLe Père Duchesne to the French armies, a policy arranged by the Hébertist Minister of WarJean Baptiste Noël Bouchotte in 1793, widened support and sympathy for Hébertist ideas.
On 24 May 1793, the newly appointedCommission of Twelve ordered the arrest of Hébert, who had been usingLe Père Duchesne to incite violence against members of theGirondin faction. The tremendous public outcry and civil unrest which ensued rapidly resulted in Hébert's release. However, rioting continued, culminating in a series ofinsurrections. On 31 May 1793, a large crowd of sans-culotte agitators surrounded theNational Convention in an attempt to force its accession to their demands, namely the dissolution of the Commission of Twelve, the arrest of a list of Girondin deputies, a tax on the rich and the restriction of suffrage to sans-culottes.[4] The Commission was abolished, but on 2 June 1793 the crowds—now supported by National Guard forces headed by Hébertist and newly appointed Commandant-GeneralFrançois Hanriot—returned. Hanriot threatened to set fire to the Convention if the offending Girondin deputies were not expelled. Ultimately, the arrest of twenty-nine Girondins was decreed, marking the end of the Girondin faction's political power.[5]
Following the assassination ofJean-Paul Marat by a Girondin sympathizer in July 1793, Hébert positioned himself as Marat's natural successor in the affections of those who had shared the dead man's ultra-revolutionary beliefs.[6] The Hébertists' popularity grew. Their evident and increasingly destabilizing influence was disturbing to many less extreme revolutionary politicians, including leadingMontagnard figures such asGeorges Danton andMaximilien Robespierre—the latter of whom especially disapproved of the Hébertists'atheism.[6]
Over the course of October 1793, a number of accusations were leveled against prominent Hébertists byFabre d'Églantine, a friend and supporter of Danton. Fabre claimed to have discovered a foreign plot in whichStanislas-Marie Maillard andAnacharsis Cloots, among others, were implicated as agents. This succeeded in casting suspicion on the Hébertist faction. However, Fabre himself was rapidly revealed to have been acting in part as part of an elaborate attempt to conceal his own involvement in a scandal surrounding the liquidation of theFrench East India Company and his credibility was thereby diminished.
In December 1793, the journalistCamille Desmoulins—whose political opinions had long been aligned with those of Danton and Robespierre—began publishing a journal,Le Vieux Cordelier, aimed in part at the discrediting of the Hébertist faction. The journal's title alluded to the fact that theCordeliers Club, formerly a moderate revolutionary society dominated by the policies of Danton, had become overrun by sans-culotte Hébertists and their sympathizers. Desmoulins attacked Hébert for bringing theFrench Republic into disrepute through his writings, claiming that "when the tyrants of Europe wish[ed] to vilify the Republic, to make their slaves believe that France is covered with the darkness of barbarism, that Paris [...] is peopled with Vandals", they reprintedLe Père Duchesne.[7] He also mocked Hébert for having pretended to be a "man of the people" and a representative of the sans-culottes—when in fact he had profited handsomely from the contracts his follower Bouchotte had secured to distributeLe Père Duchesne to the armies.[8] In turn, Hébert accused Desmoulins of hypocrisy, pointing out that his current opposition to violence and extremism (in addition to attacking ultra-revolutionary excesses, Desmoulins had called for an end to the Terror) stood in sharp contrast to his support for such tactics in a 1789 pamphlet,Discours de la lanterne aux Parisiens, which had advocated the execution of those opposed torevolution. The vitriolic exchange continued throughout the winter of 1793–1794, ultimately contributing to the downfall of both Desmoulins and Hébert.
Following the February 1794 recall of Hébertist deputyJean-Baptiste Carrier from Nantes, where he had been engaged inmass executions to suppress theVendéen revolts, the Hébertists attempted to stage a popular revolt, hoping to mimic that which had led to the downfall of the Girondins. On 4 March 1794, Carrier and Hébert veiled the bust of Liberty at the Cordeliers Club, declaring according to ritual a state of insurrection. They had hoped to demand that the National Convention expel Robespierre and his Montagnard supporters.[9] However, the city of Paris did not rise and theParis Commune failed to provide military support for the coup.
The Hébertists were denounced byLouis Antoine de Saint-Just and Robespierre, and the leaders of the faction were arrested on 13 March 1794.[9] Some twenty of them, includingAnacharsis Cloots,Pierre-Ulric Dubuisson,Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel,Jean Conrad de Kock,Antoine-François Momoro,Charles-Philippe Ronsin,François-Nicolas Vincent and Hébert himself were tried before theRevolutionary Tribunal and convicted on 24 March 1794. They went to the guillotine that same evening.[10]Pierre Gaspard Chaumette followed a few days later, followed by Hébert's widowMarie Marguerite Françoise Hébert.
Other Hébertists, includingJoseph Le Bon,Jean-Baptiste Carrier,François Chabot andFrançois Hanriot, were to also fall victim to the guillotine on various dates in 1794 and 1795.
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... Bouloiseau, reviewing the political history of this period , explains that these two purges — the first directed against the populist, radical Hébertists to the Jacobin left, the second at the moderate Dantonists to their right ...
