L'esprit de la révolution et de la constitution de la France (French Edition)
(...Il y eut sans cesse en France, pendant cette révoluti...)
...Il y eut sans cesse en France, pendant cette révolution, deux partis obstinés, celui du peuple, qui, voulant combler de puissance ses législateurs, aimait les fers quil se donnait lui-même ; celui du prince, qui, se voulant élever au-dessus de tous, sembarrassait moins de sa propre gloire que de sa fortune. Au milieu de ces intérêts, je me suis cherché moi-même ; membre du souverain, jai voulu savoir si jétais libre, et si la législation méritait mon obéissance ; dans ce dessein, jai cherché le principe et lharmonie de nos lois, et je ne dirai point, comme Montesquieu, que jai trouvé sans cesse de nouvelles raisons dobéir, mais que jen ai trouvé pour croire que je nobéirais quà ma vertu...
Fragments sur les institutions républicaines (French Edition)
( Les institutions ont pour objet de mettre dans le citoy...)
Les institutions ont pour objet de mettre dans le citoyen, et dans les enfants même, une résistance légale et facile à linjustice ; de forcer les magistrats et la jeunesse à la vertu ; de donner le courage et la frugalité aux hommes ; de les rendre justes et sensibles ; de les lier par des rapports généreux ; de mettre ces rapports en harmonie, en soumettant le moins possible aux lois de lautorité les rapports domestiques et la vie privée du peuple ; de mettre lunion dans les familles, lamitié parmi les citoyens ; de mettre lintérêt public à la place de tous les autres intérêts ; détouffer les passions criminelles ; de rendre la nature et linnocence la passion de tous les curs, et de former une patrie. Les institutions sont la garantie de la liberté publique ; elles moralisent le gouvernement et létat civil ; elles répriment les jalousies, qui produisent les factions ; elles établissent la distinction délicate de la vérité et de lhypocrisie, de linnocence et du crime ; elles assoient le règne de la justice. Sans institutions, la force dune république repose ou sur le mérite des fragiles mortels, ou sur des moyens précaires...
Organt: Poeme, En Vingt Chants (1789) (French Edition)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just was a military and political leader during the French Revolution.
Background
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just was born on August 25, 1767, at Decize in the former Nivernais province of central France. He was the eldest child of Louis Jean de Saint-Just de Richebourg (1716–1777), a retired French cavalry officer, knight of the Order of Saint Louis, and of the 20-years younger Marie-Anne Robinot (1736–1811), the daughter of a notary. He had two younger sisters, born in 1768 and 1769. The family later moved north and in 1776 settled in the village of Blérancourt in the former Picardy province, establishing themselves as a countryside noble family living out of the rents from their land. A year after the move, Louis Antoine's father died leaving his mother with the three children.
Education
In 1779 he was sent to the Oratorian school at Soissons. After a promising start, Saint-Just acquired a reputation as a troublemaker, augmented by infamous stories (almost certainly apocryphal) of how he led a students' rebellion and tried to burn down the school. Nonetheless, he earned his graduation in 1786.
Career
At the outbreak of the Revolution, intoxicated with republican ideas, he threw himself with enthusiasm into politics, was elected an officer in the National Guard of the Aisne, and by fraud-he being yet under age-admitted as a member of the electoral assembly of his district. Early in 1789 he had published twenty cantos of licentious verse, in the fashion of the time, under the title of Organt au Vatican. Henceforward, however, he assumed a stoical demeanour, which, united to a policy tyrannical and pitilessly thorough, became the characteristic of his life. He entered into correspondence with Robespierre, who, flattered by his worship, admitted him to his friendship. Thus supported, Saint-Just became deputy of the department of Aisne to the National Convention, where he made his first speech on the condemnation of Louis XVI. -gloomy, fanatical, remorseless in tone-on the 13th of November 1792. In the Convention, in the Jacobin Club, and among the populace his relations with Robespierre became known, and he was dubbed the " St John of the Messiah of the People. " His appointment as a member of the Committee of Public Safety placed him at the centre of the political fever-heat. In the name of this committee he was charged with the drawing up of reports to the Convention upon the absorbing themes of the overthrow of the party of the Gironde (report of the 8th of July 1793), of the Herbertists, and finally, of that denunciation of Danton which consigned him and his followers to the guillotine. What were then called reports were rather appeals to the passions; in Saint-Just's hands they furnished the occasion for a display of fanatical daring, of gloomy eloquence, and of undoubted genius; and-with the shadow of Robespierre behind him-they served their turn. Camille Desmoulins, in jest and mockery, said of Saint-Just-the youth with the beautiful countenance and the long fair locks-" He carries his head like a Holy Sacrament. " " And I, " savagely replied Saint-Just, " will make him carry his like a Saint Denis. " The threat was not vain: Desmoulins accompanied Danton to the scaffold. The same ferocious inflexibility animated Saint-Just with reference to the external policy of France. He proposed that the National Convention should itself, through its committees, direct all military movements and all branches of the government. This was agreed to, and Saint-Just was despatched to Strassburg, in company with another deputy, to superintend the military operations. It was suspected that the enemy without was being aided by treason within. Saint-Just's remedy was direct and terrible: he followed his experience in Paris, " organized the Terror, " and soon the heads of all suspects sent to Paris were falling under the guillotine. But there were no executions at Strassburg, and Saint-Just repressed the excesses of J. G. Schneider (q. v. ), who as public prosecutor to the revolutionary tribunal of the Lower Rhine had ruthlessly applied the Terror in Alsace. Schneider was sent to Paris and guillotined. The conspiracy was defeated, and the armies of the Rhine and Moselle having been inspirited by success-Saint-Just himself taking a fearless part in the actual fighting-and having effected a junction, the frontier was delivered and Germany invaded* On his return Saint-Just was made president of the Convention. Later, with the army of the North, he placed before the generals the dilemma of victory over the enemies of France or trial by the dreaded revolutionary tribunal; and before the eyes of the army itself he organized a force specially charged with the slaughter of those who should seek refuge by flight. Success again crowned his efforts, and Belgium was gained for France (May, 1794). Meanwhile affairs in Paris looked gloomier than ever, and Robespierre recalled Saint-Just to the capital. Saint- Just proposed a dictatorship as the only remedy for the convulsions of society. At last, at the famous sitting of the 9th Thermidor, he ventured to present as the report of the committees of General Security and Public Safety a document expressing his own views, a sight of which, however, had been refused to the other members of committee on the previous evening. Then the storm broke. He was vehemently interrupted, and the sitting ended with an order for Robespierre's arrest (see Robespierre). On the following day, the 28th of July 1794, twenty-two men, nearly all young, were guillotined. Saint-Just maintained his proud self-possession to the last.
Achievements
The youngest of the deputies elected to the National Convention in 1792, Saint-Just rose quickly in their ranks and became a major leader of the government of the French First Republic. He spearheaded the movement to execute King Louis XVI and later drafted the radical French Constitution of 1793.
(...Il y eut sans cesse en France, pendant cette révoluti...)
Religion
Saint- Just proposed a dictatorship as the only remedy for the convulsions of society.
Views
Quotations:
"You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work. "
"When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete. "
"Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws everything is sterile and dead. "
"Every political edict which is not based upon nature is wrong. "
"I am not of any faction, I will fight them all. "
Personality
Ambitious and active-minded, Saint-Just worked urgently and tirelessly towards his goals: "For Revolutionists there is no rest but in the tomb. " He was repeatedly described by contemporaries as arrogant, believing himself to be a skilled leader and orator as well as having proper revolutionary character. This self-assurance manifested itself in a superiority complex, and he always “made it clear… that he considered himself to be in charge and that his will was law. ” Camille Desmoulins once wrote of Saint-Just, "He carries his head like a sacred host. "
Connections
Well-connected and popular, he showed a special affection toward a young woman of Blérancourt, Thérèse Gellé. She was the daughter of another wealthy notary, a powerful and autocratic figure in the town; he was still an undistinguished adolescent. He is said to have proposed marriage to her; she is said to have desired it. Though no hard evidence exists regarding their relationship, official records show that on 25 July 1786, Thérèse was married to Emmanuel Thorin, the scion of a prominent local family. Saint-Just was out of town and unaware of the event, and tradition portrays him as brokenhearted. Whatever his true state, it is known that a few weeks after the marriage he abruptly left home for Paris – without an announcement, but not without gathering up a pair of pistols and a good quantity of his mother's silver. His venture turned short when his mother had him seized by police and sent to a reformatory (maison de correction) where he stayed from September 1786 to March 1787.
