Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron
Encyclopedia
,_french_revolutionary_(small).jpg)
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
politician, journalist, representative to the National Assembly, and a representative on mission
Représentant en mission
During the French Revolution, a représentant en mission was an extraordinary envoy of the Legislative Assembly...
during the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
.
Background
The son of Elie-Catherine Fréron, he was born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to a wealthy family. His father was a prominent journalist and popular opponent of the philosophe and encyclopedist, his most notable opponent being Voltaire (who openly considered Elie his enemy), and it is surmised that his father's history of conflict with the state over freedom of the press heavily influenced Louis Fréron's political views. He attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand
Lycée Louis-le-Grand
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand is a public secondary school located in Paris, widely regarded as one of the most rigorous in France. Formerly known as the Collège de Clermont, it was named in king Louis XIV of France's honor after he visited the school and offered his patronage.It offers both a...
, where his father held a faculty position, together with the likes of Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre is one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. He largely dominated the Committee of Public Safety and was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended with his...
and Camille Desmoulins
Camille Desmoulins
Lucie Simplice Camille Benoît Desmoulins was a journalist and politician who played an important role in the French Revolution. He was a childhood friend of Maximilien Robespierre and a close friend and political ally of Georges Danton, who were influential figures in the French Revolution.-Early...
. On the death of his father, he inherited L'Année littéraire, which was continued until 1795 and edited successively by the abbé Royou and Julien Louis Geoffroy
Julien Louis Geoffroy
Julien Louis Geoffroy was a French literary critic.He was born at Rennes, and educated there and at the Collège Louis le Grand in Paris. He took orders and for some time was a mere usher, eventually becoming professor of rhetoric at the Collège des Quatre-Nations. His tragedy, Caton, was accepted...
.
Early Revolutionary activities
Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat , born in the Principality of Neuchâtel, was a physician, political theorist, and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution...
and Camille Desmoulins
Camille Desmoulins
Lucie Simplice Camille Benoît Desmoulins was a journalist and politician who played an important role in the French Revolution. He was a childhood friend of Maximilien Robespierre and a close friend and political ally of Georges Danton, who were influential figures in the French Revolution.-Early...
, and in fact the three of them aided each other in editing their papers. His first real taste of rabble-rousing came in the form of collaboration with Desmoulins
Camille Desmoulins
Lucie Simplice Camille Benoît Desmoulins was a journalist and politician who played an important role in the French Revolution. He was a childhood friend of Maximilien Robespierre and a close friend and political ally of Georges Danton, who were influential figures in the French Revolution.-Early...
to incite the storming of the Bastille.
Soon after, he was elected as representative to the Bonne-Nouvelle district of the newly formed Paris Commune
Paris Commune (French Revolution)
The Paris Commune during the French Revolution was the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795. Established in the Hôtel de Ville just after the storming of the Bastille, the Commune became insurrectionary in the summer of 1792, essentially refusing to take orders from the central French...
, where it seems he was minimally active before returning to his role as a journalist. He acted as a collaborator for L’Ami des citoyens for a brief period before starting his own paper L'Orateur du Peuple, under the pseudonym Martel, which consisted of 8 pages and was distributed every other day, with Marcel Enfantin serving as editor. Aside from his writings in his paper, he openly collaborated with Marat
Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat , born in the Principality of Neuchâtel, was a physician, political theorist, and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution...
and agreed to fund and write half of Desmoulins
Camille Desmoulins
Lucie Simplice Camille Benoît Desmoulins was a journalist and politician who played an important role in the French Revolution. He was a childhood friend of Maximilien Robespierre and a close friend and political ally of Georges Danton, who were influential figures in the French Revolution.-Early...
paper.
In June 1790, Marcel Enfantin was arrested for "provable conspiracy against liberty" because the authorities believed him to be Martel. In response, Fréron wrote:
- Citizens, can you believe it? The Orateur du peuple is in chains! He had only taken up the pen in defense of your rights, he was a dynamic writer of the most ardent patriotism…he fought the ministerial hydra with a club, and the aristocracy with ridicule…Well, the Municipality has slandered [his] intentions…it has poisoned his innocent phrases…[but] the voice the Orateur du peuple will pierce the vaults of his prison…the articles of the Rights of Man were made to be used by this French citizen…so that he may publish his opinions.
Also, Fréron's relationship with Desmoulins brought him to the cause of the Cordeliers
Cordeliers
The Cordeliers, also known as the Club of the Cordeliers, Cordeliers Club, or Club des Cordeliers and formally as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , was a populist club during the French Revolution.-History:The club had its origins in the Cordeliers district, a...
and prompted his involvement with the attack on Tuileries palace
10th of August (French Revolution)
On 10 August 1792, during the French Revolution, revolutionary Fédéré militias — with the backing of a new municipal government of Paris that came to be known as the "insurrectionary" Paris Commune and ultimately supported by the National Guard — besieged the Tuileries palace. King Louis XVI and...
of 1792 (the insurrection of the Paris crowds against the House of Bourbon
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
, and their battle with the Swiss Guards).
In September, Fréron was elected to the National Convention
National Convention
During the French Revolution, the National Convention or Convention, in France, comprised the constitutional and legislative assembly which sat from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795 . It held executive power in France during the first years of the French First Republic...
for the département of Seine
Seine (département)
Seine was a département of France encompassing Paris and its immediate suburbs. Its préfecture was Paris and its official number was 75. The Seine département was abolished in 1968 and its territory divided among four new départements....
, and voted in favor of Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
's execution. Fréron served as a Representative on Mission to Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
, Marseilles, and Toulon
Toulon
Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....
between 1793 and 1794 together with Paul Barras
Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras
Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras was a French politician of the French Revolution, and the main executive leader of the Directory regime of 1795–1799.-Early life:...
.
Siege of Toulon
He was charged with establishing the Convention's authority in the south during the Toulon rebellionSiege of Toulon
The Siege of Toulon was an early Republican victory over a Royalist rebellion in the Southern French city of Toulon. It is also often known as the Fall of Toulon.-Context:...
. Fréron remained infamous as an enforcer of the Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
but came into contact with Napoleon Bonaparte, still just a young artillery officer, who had been stationed there. Augustin Robespierre
Augustin Robespierre
Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre was the younger brother of French Revolutionary leader, Maximilien Robespierre....
and Antoine Christophe Saliceti
Antoine Christophe Saliceti
Antoine Christophe Saliceti was a French politician and diplomat of the Revolution and First Empire.-Early career:...
, two of the most powerful men in the Directory, responded favourably to Napoleons request (bypassing his commander, Jean François Carteaux
Jean François Carteaux
Jean Baptiste François Carteaux was a French painter who became a General in the French Revolutionary Army...
) to seize the peninsula fort from the British and install artillery on a promontory overlooking the bay in order to fire on the British fleet at anchor. An infantry attack led by Bonaparte was repelled, due chiefly to Carteaux lowering the men allocated to Napoleon for the attack. Fréron, despite quarrelling with Bonaparte and threatening him with execution, eventually gave him his backing against Carteaux. He subsequently attempted to curtail Napoleons career by insuring he would not command another larger attack on the British fort that was being planned, posting him to command the reserves instead. However, as this new attack faltered, Napoleon led the reserves forward without orders and seized the British fort.
Napoleon had previously introduced Fréron to his sister Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte was the first sovereign Duchess of Guastalla, an imperial French Princess and the Princess consort of Sulmona and Rossano. She was the sixth child of Letizia Ramolino and Carlo Buonaparte, Corsica's representative to the court of King Louis XVI of France. Her elder brother,...
with whom he had a relationship until Pauline was married off to General Charles Leclerc
Charles Leclerc
Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc was a French Army general and husband to Pauline Bonaparte, sister to Napoleon Bonaparte.-To 1801:...
in 1797.
Reaction and the Directory
Nonetheless, both he and Barras joined the Thermidorian ReactionThermidorian Reaction
The Thermidorian Reaction was a revolt in the French Revolution against the excesses of the Reign of Terror. It was triggered by a vote of the Committee of Public Safety to execute Maximilien Robespierre, Antoine Louis Léon de Saint-Just de Richebourg and several other leading members of the Terror...
in its clash with Robespierre; L'Orateur du Peuple became the mouthpiece of anti-Jacobins
Jacobin Club
The Jacobin Club was the most famous and influential political club in the development of the French Revolution, so-named because of the Dominican convent where they met, located in the Rue St. Jacques , Paris. The club originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles from a group of Breton...
, and Fréron incited the Muscadins to attack the sans-culottes
Sans-culottes
In the French Revolution, the sans-culottes were the radical militants of the lower classes, typically urban laborers. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, they made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars...
with clubs
Club (weapon)
A club is among the simplest of all weapons. A club is essentially a short staff, or stick, usually made of wood, and wielded as a weapon since prehistoric times....
. He brought about the accusation of Antoine Fouquier-Tinville
Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville
Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville was a French lawyer during the Revolution and Reign of Terror periods.-Early career:...
, and of Jean-Baptiste Carrier
Jean-Baptiste Carrier
Jean-Baptiste Carrier was a French Revolutionary, known for his cruelty to his enemies, especially to clergy.-Biography:...
, and the arrest of the last Montagnards
The Mountain
The Mountain refers in the context of the history of the French Revolution to a political group, whose members, called Montagnards, sat on the highest benches in the Assembly...
. Being sent by the Directory
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
on a mission of peace to Marseilles he published in 1796 Mémoire historique sur la réaction royale et sur les malheurs du midi ("Historical Dissertation on the Royalist Reaction and the Misfortunes of the South").
He was elected to the Council of the Five Hundred, but not allowed to take his seat. Failing as suitor for the hand of Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte was the first sovereign Duchess of Guastalla, an imperial French Princess and the Princess consort of Sulmona and Rossano. She was the sixth child of Letizia Ramolino and Carlo Buonaparte, Corsica's representative to the court of King Louis XVI of France. Her elder brother,...
, in 1801 he was sent by Napoleon, now first consul, to Saint Domingue and died there from yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
in 1802.
General Charles Leclerc
Charles Leclerc
Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc was a French Army general and husband to Pauline Bonaparte, sister to Napoleon Bonaparte.-To 1801:...
, who had married Pauline Bonaparte, also received a command in Saint Domingue in 1801 (during the last stage of the Haitian Revolution
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
), and died the same year.