Lucile Desmoulins

Anne-Lucile-Philippe Desmoulins born Laridon Duplessis born in 1770 probably with Paris where it is guillotinée the April 13rd 1794 eight days after her husband, Camille Desmoulins, is a personality of the French revolution.

Youths

Girl of Claude-Etienne Laridon Duplessis, first clerk of the System check of finances and Anne-Francoise-Marie Boisdeveix, Lucile undoubtedly knew a youth similar to that of good of other young girls resulting from a relatively easy middle-class medium. Walked between the family residence street of Cop in Paris and the property of Borough-the-Queen, one enjoys to imagine - with the reading of its newspaper - mischievous and rêveuse the Lucile young person. Its fragmentary writings show us an young woman merry, sensitive, who holds a newspaper to fight her trouble and which sometimes in vain tries to write tales under the benevolent eye of a mother of which it very near is felt.

Camille Desmoulins

Its destiny starts to take shape at the beginning of the Années 1780 when Camille Desmoulins, young lawyer of a score of years, has suddenly met Mrs Duplessis with the Jardin of Luxembourg. It is here, undoubtedly, which Lucile still child does his knowledge. Camille, lawyer without customers and confronted with financial troubles, are in search of a protection in order to live of its writings. Becoming familiar of Duplessis, he regularly attends Lucile which it wishes to marry in March 1787. Initially gotten rid of by the father, because of his precarious situation and of a dubious future, it is haloed Camille of its popular actions during the first steps of the Revolution which manages to obtain the approval of Mr. Duplessis and the hand of Lucile in December 1790.

The Desmoulins couple

Lucile and Camille marry the December 29th 1790 with the church Saint-Sulpice with Paris. Maximilien de Robespierre will be one of the witnesses of the marriage. The couple settles with 2 rue du Théâtre-Français (today 22 rue de l'Odéon) and Lucile gives rise to a son Horace Camille Desmoulins, the July 6th 1792. It remains some pages of the newspaper of Lucile concerning these years a priori happy which were completed with the imprisonment of Camille in March 1794. In addition to its testimony of the long night from August 9th to 10th 1792 (Journée of August 10th, 1792) which it will live with the variation in tiredness, the stress and the fear, its readers accompany it in his routine, its anecdotes and its frequentations, of Pierre-François-Joseph Robert, lawyer member of the Club of Cordeliers to Antoinette Gabrielle Danton while passing by Guillaume Marie-Anne Brune and her wife. One learns his mockeries with respect to the baron from Poype which it calls “poa poa”, of Jacques Alexis Thuriot which is a “rotten pig” but also that Georges Danton could not be prevented from laughing in contact with Lucile. This carefree and eternally merry aspect of its person contributed to make of the young woman an attaching character.

The plot of the prisons

In spring 1794, whereas Camille and the dantonists are locked up with the Luxembourg, called Amans, held same prison, with the support of Laflotte, old diplomatic agent of Convention with Florence, reveals a conspiracy which would aim at making escape the prisoners. Robespierre and Saint-Just takes note of it the April 4th. Lucile is taken with part and is shown to take part financially in the operation. The following day, at the time when Camille is guillotine in company of his/her friends Danton and Fabre d' Églantine, the death warrant is requested from the opposition to the plotters. Arthur Dillon, Marie Hébert, widow of Jacques-Rene Hébert guillotine the previous on March 24th, which is those accompany thus Lucile with the Conciergerie. They are then shown to have conspired against the safety of the people. Lucile denies but is condemned to died with eighteen others marked (on twenty-six). The April 13rd 1794, on the road which leads it caretaker's lodge to death, testimonys do not seem to contradict the image only Lucile - then only twenty-four years old - renvoit through its writings and those of its contemporaries who estimated it. It would have remained until the last moment faithful to itself, filled up of astonishing and radiant unconcern.

Sources

Jules Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins: study on the dantonists , Paris, Plon and Co, 1875
Jean-Paul Bertaud, Camille and Lucile Desmoulins: a couple in the storm , Paris, Presses of the Rebirth, 1986
Newspaper 1788-1793 of Lucile Desmoulins, text established and presented by Philippe Lejeune, Paris, Editions of Ashes, 1995

External bonds

Jules Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, Lucile Desmoulins: study on the dantonists of (1875) (Gallica)

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