Companies of Jéhu

Companies of Jéhu formed by royalists.

The companies of Jéhu or Jesus constitute in the area of Lyon in 1795 and pursue the Jacobins compromised in the Terreur. One estimates at several hundreds their victims. May 4th, 1795, 99 “terrorists” are massacred in the prisons of the city by furious” but duly framed invaders “. The following days, violence is standardized, and the murders continue, with less width, in the form of drubbings mortals, stickings in residence or on the public highway, of drownings. Journalists daily encourage with the murder of the “terrorists”, qualified “drinkers of blood”, and a “general list” of 90 pages printed in Lausanne, indicating the victims, circulates openly.

This phase of " white Terror " , perhaps inspired by the royalist emigrants, hard from January in June 1795 and cease after the new sending representatives on mission by the Convention, the replacement of the municipal authorities accessory to these actions, the disarmament of the national guard, the return of the army (which does not intervene) to the Brotteaux and the arrest of the emigrants and the companions of Jéhu, submitted in front of the criminal court of Isere.

Here the origin of name " companions of Jéhu" , explained by Gosselin Lenotre:

" Somebody obviously shoed on the Old Testament compared them with the companions of Jéhu , whose history mingles with that with Jézabel immortalized by Racine. Jéhu, tenth king d' Israël, molesté by the aforementioned Jézabel, made it throw by the window and gave the order to exterminate all his/her children, all those also of its subjects which had adored Baal of which it had founded the worship in its kingdom. The assimilation with the Lyons thermidoriens was clever, but too erudite; the repeated word was badly included/understood: Jéhu, forgotten well, did not recall anything to vulgar which heard Jesus ; the name of Society of Jesus who, like noticed it Louis Blanc, “is not explained”, was thus adopted by corruption in the language populaire." (G. Lenotre, quoted by Andre Castelot in Presence of the history , 1969, p. 205.)

Literary works concerning the Companions of Jéhu

Alexandre Dumas told the history of these counter-revolutionaries in his novel the Companions of Jéhu whose hero was Charles of Holy-Hermine.

Random links: