Louis Rene Quentin de Richebourg de Champcenetz

Louis Rene Quentin de Richebourg de Champcenetz , known as the knight of Champcenetz , born in 1759 with Paris and guillotine the July 23rd 1794, is a Publiciste French.

Wire of the governor of Louvre, itself was used as officer for the French guards, but all while occupying much more its pleasures that of its military duties. Man with the mode, maker of songs, witty remarks, of small towards, Champcenetz was quoted in the world for his spirit and his elegance. He was made a reputation by satirical songs of an excessive lightness of principles which recovered at Champcenetz, as its followers of the young jet set of then, the elegance of the forms and surface varnish of the spirit. Its songs carry the mark of its extremely free manners, as this verse shows it:

Old parents, in vain you preach:

You are tedious apostles:

You us fites for your sins,

And you live too much for ours.

Its satirical boldness were worth prison to him and the epigrams which it did not spare with others attracted some him in reprisals. Rulhière said:

To be haï, but without being made fear,

To be punished, but without being made feel sorry for,

Is a stupid fort calculation: Champcenetz mistook:

By seeking hatred, it finds the contempt.

When the Révolution burst, Champcenetz declared among the adversaries most declared new institutions which it tackled with the weapon of the ridiculous one, turning against it all the fruitfulness of its corrosive liveliness that the increasing gravity of the events could not intimidate. With Rivarol, Suleau, Rivard, Peltier, Bergasse, Mirabeau-Barrel, he was the active collaborator of the Acts of the Apostles , lampoon political, in worms and in prose accompanied by caricatures, appeared of November 1789 - year zero of freedom , proclaims the title - with 1792 which took for target the National Assembly and Lafayette.

In addition to its articles, Champcenetz published various writings of circumstance, of which: Parody of the Dream of Athalie (1787, in-8); Flycatchers in the Palais Royal (1788, in-8) where it makes its portrait under the name of the Gobe-Mouches without-concern ; Small treaty of the love of the women for stupid the (1788, in-8); Reply to the letters (of Mrs. de Staël) on the character and works of J. - J. Rousseau , trifle which twenty booksellers refused to make print (Geneva, 1789, in-8°. It also made, with Rivarol, the Small Almanac of the great men (1790, in-12) and wrote in the Small Newspaper of the court and the city.

After the day of the August 10th, Champcenetz could leave Paris and take refuge in a close city. Thanks to Journiac de Saint-Méard, saved massacres of the Abbey and which had known to be made some influential protections, it obtained a certificate of good citizenship and had imprudence to return to Paris. In Saint-Méard who went to see it and reproach him his imprudence, Champcenetz retorted to him: “Here are the only friends who remain me”, by showing his books, “I cannot be solved to give up them”. Soon stopped, it was locked up with the Carmes and was translated as conspiring in front of the revolutionary Tribunal which condemned it to death. Always faithful to its carefree woman gaîté, Champcenetz required of the public prosecutor Fouquier-Tinville if it were there as with the section and “if there were substitutes”. It supported the same character until the last moment.

Sources

Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer, New general Biography , T. 9, Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1854, p. 187-188
Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 1190

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