Desmoulins, Camille

(1760-1794)

   political figure, writer

   Born in Guise, Camille Desmoulins was a fellow student with maximilien Robespierre at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He was admitted to the bar in 1785 and joined the revolution of 1789, taking part in the Parisian uprisings of July 12-14 of that year. He published violent pamphlets against the ancien régime (La France libre; Le Discours de "la Lanterne" aux Parisiens) and founded the journal Les Révolutions de France et de Brabant (1789-91). A member of the cordeliers club, where he allied himself with georges jacques danton, a Montagnard deputy to the Convention, he expressed his hostility to jacques brissot and the Girondins in a pamphlet, Brissot démasqué, then in his Fragment de l'histoire secrete de la Révolution (1793). After the elimination of the Girondin leaders, Desmoulins tried to fight against establishing the terror and gain acceptance with the moderates with his newspaper Le Vieux Cordelier (1793-94). He was then arrested, condemned to death, and guillotined with Danton and the Indulgents (April 1794). His wife, Lucile Desmoulins (1771-94), met the same fate for sending Robespierre a letter protesting her husband's arrest.