Police officers of Paris under Terror

At the dawn of the Terror, in 1793, the Commune of Paris named small about fifteen police officers to frame all the activities of the Parisian ones.

All resulting from different mediums, craftsmen, tradesmen, lawyers, poets, they were representative of these small people of Paris engaged in the levelling of the French company.

Without them, the Convention could not have held Paris. They were the mainstay of Terror.

Four of them were assembled to the attack of the Bastille on July 14th, 1789

Nicolas Andre Marie Coldness, young single person, had come from Tours little time before the Révolution. The July 13rd 1789, this clerk of twenty-four year old prosecutor helped to create a municipal militia with the head of which it melted soon on the Invalides to seize rifles there. It took an employment with the administration of the Fields, sector in full change since the confiscation of the goods of the clergy.

Michel-François-Marie Caillieux, thirty years, Parisian small shopkeeper, manufactured and sold ribbons and gauze. He belonged to the voters of the vote censitaire who formed the first Commune, with the noise of the gun of the Bastille, and played an active role. The Caillieux couple, which sold its ribbons with export, was with unemployment as of the closing of the borders.

François Dangé, forty-five years, born in the Loir-et-Cher, had been employed with the granting of Paris, left very unpopular municipal customs. Dangé took then a grocer. Not very gifted for the trade, it returned to the administration as soon as its relations had enabled him to take down a place of receiver at the office of correspondence of Dijon, carries Saint-Bernard.

Jean-François Godard, thirty-five years, had succeeded his father, tile-layer and building contractor. “Before March 1789, I was author of a patriotic work: the Veracious one, or important truths on the abuses the government . I was obliged to hide me a few days. ” In July 1791, it was made contracting from a first house, which came from the national fields, these same fields where Froidure worked. Its lure of gain was going to lose them all.

Craftsmen

Jean-Nicolas-Victor Gaining, Parisian twenty-three years, was used in the guards as Valognes, which it ends up deserting. Married, without child, it was made “painter as crews”: it painted wheels and doors of cars. It was a strapping fellow of five feet four inches, with the black hair cut in round. Its face, very marked small pox, was decorated of a brown beard. It had a little damaged left eye and carried glasses. Its a little strong lower lip overflowed on a chin runs. It was vêtu of a cloth striped gray-white frock coat, with red breeches Carmelite nun, a white waistcoat and a round hat. The Revolution was to hardly favor its branch of industry.

Jean-François Massé left the area of Dieppe to exert joinery with Versailles during fourteen years. The departure of the king for Tileries in October 1789 plunged the city in stagnation. Massed its graver closed and came in the capital to get busy among its fellow-members. At forty six years, he lived with his wife, their two infants, his mother seventy year old completed and his father, old man blind.

Jacques Twisted, forty-four years, had left Saint-Lo to be established embroiderer in Paris. It was registered with the Club of Cordeliers, that of Marat, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, but also of powerful orators today less known, then very established in the municipal administration, such Hébert, Chaumette and Pache, future mayor. Cordeliers reigned on the street, the sections, the Commune, they had a great influence until their brutal end.

Tradesmen

Claude Mennessier, thirty-eight years, lived with his wife street Montmartre, who became “Mount-Marat” under Terror. He sold pots and earthenware, and was enough at ease to be entitled to vote of Paris in 1792.

Charles-Florent-Jean Heussée, thirty-five years, was a small middle-class man who had good, at which one played of the music. He had served the prince de Condé, who had emigrated. In 1792, it came to take again the trade of his/her father and was made manufacturer of Chocolat.

Etienne Michel, thirty-two years, was of Cluny, in Saône-et-Loire. For ten years, it had manufactured and sold in the Beaubourg district of the make-ups for ladies and passementerie. The factory went well, it occupied six or seven workmen. The Revolution was a seism. Rich people restricted their purchases of luxury, number of them emigrated. The famous tailors followed their customers abroad, such Pink Bertin, modiste of the court. But the small tradesmen transfer themselves very quickly without articles nor customers.

Jean-Baptiste Marino, most famous of them, was born with Sceaux, of a gardener “of the kitchen garden” of the count of Have. In 1792, at thirty-seven years, it painted and sold since ten years of the porcelains in the galleries of the Palais Royal. Since 1789, Marino resolutely attended the clubs and the sans-culottes.

White collars

Claude Figuet had left Valence and his Drome native to settle in the Marais. At thirty-three years, it was Architecte without employment.

Prosper Soulès had twenty-nine years and had been, like Froidure, clerk of prosecutor. It was a small catch of five feet, châtain, with the white face, with the gray eyes, equipped with a dismantled face. It came from the area of épernay. The Bastille hardly conquered, it was named by temporary Town hall “ordering fortress”. When it arrived on the spot, it was caused in duel by an officer of the French guards not very eager to share its capacity. Once installed after a fashion, Soulès noted that it did not have the means of stopping plundering: “I found broken very, of papers, the books, the paperboards in all the discharged courses, and guns. ” He saw on the lathes a crowd of occupied people, with Dangé, to demolish the walls of his new kingdom. An unknown named Danton arrived at the head of a troop. Soulès was baited to want to go up what had been thrown to bottom. Danton scandalized and trailed the unhappy one with the Town hall. “On the course, Danton, of its stentorian voice, proclaimed that it had just stopped the governor of the Bastille! And here that again crowd thunders, ready to make me a bad party! ” (Letter of Soulès). Soulès saved its life this day, but its Bastille was destroyed.

Jean Baudrais had left Tours under the reign of Louis XV, at the twenty years age, to test itself with the literature in the capital. He was especially made there know, of 1783 to 1790, like the editor of the Petite Library of the theaters , collection in which he published his own parts between Tartuffe and Polyeucte. Old of forty-three years in 1792, he lived, according to his own expression, in “a quiet mediocrity which satisfied it completely” Alas, the emigration of his subscribers ruined his Petite Library . In October 1790, it was registered with the club of the Jacobins, of which it followed the debates. Baudrais fulfills the basic missions very quickly organizes that the municipality of its district entrusted to him.

Their actions

In September 1792, Marino and Dangé took part in the massacre of the prisoners of Prison of the Force, whose most famous, the Princesse of Lamballe, had the head crushed against a terminal of the pavement. Number of them were operations managers in province. Baudrais, from guard to the prison of the Temple, accepted the will of Louis XVI of the hands of its author. Throughout 1793, they were occupied with various tasks related to the law and order, until their official nomination by the Commune in August. Their task in particular consisted in relaying the orders of arrest and searching of the Comité of general security.

They had their buildings on the quay of the goldsmiths, in the residence of the new mayors of Paris, which one thus called the Town hall (not to be confused with the Town hall, already on its current site). The cellars and attics of the building were full with suspects which could spend several days under terrible conditions there, without beds, without water, while waiting for that they elsewhere are sent.

With the autumn 1793, one charged them stopping and with imprisoning all that the city contained of noble, from bankers, priests, senior officials of old mode and abroad. Marino, on mission with Lyon, organized the mass executions. With the blocked prisons and the problem of the provisioning of vivres of the capital, they were soon completely exceeded by the situation.

In March, they had to stop those which they had adulated: Hébert, Chaumette, Danton, Desmoulins, which was guillotines.

Consequently, Robespierre worried about the police capacity of the Commune. Under pretext that one of them, Godard, had benefitted from its situation to grow rich, it made them stop the ones after the other in March and in April. By an ultimate cruelty, one imprisoned each one of them in the prison of which it had particularly tormented the occupants. They were replaced by men named by the Comité of public Hello, and the Pache mayor, was also thrown to him to the dungeon.

To get rid of four more active, one includes them in famous the lawsuit of the red shirts, where fifty four people, of which that the majority of them had never been seen, were condemned to died for plot. Coldness, Marino, Dangé and Soulès perished in the middle of people whom they themselves had stopped.

When the coup d'etat came of Thermidor, their substitutes were carried out because of their bonds with Robespierre. The only one to have escaped in the imprisonment, Michel, gave itself a small stab; one transported it to the hospital, which enabled him to escape the guillotine.

Their survival after the Revolution

Those which had survived were driven out police force and were prosecuted by their victims, which showed them to have plundered the goods of those that they came to stop. Several of them turned over food in province to be made forget. The others knew a sad fate.

Twisted, compromised in the conspiracy of Babeuf in May 1796, spent one year in prison. It was off-set with Cayenne in 1801, where it died of the fevers at the end of six years. Michel, also off-set to him, escaped and was pardoned under the Empire. Figuet had to hide until its death, in 1805, at the forty six years age. Condemned to be shot, in September 1796, following the business of the camp of Grenelle, Gaining jumped of the cart in spite of its hand tieds in the back and flees while running; it was cut down by a gendarme. It had twenty-nine years. Mennessier had to hide until in 1810. He benefitted from it to comfort the widow of his Cailleux colleague.

Baudrais was off-set with Cayenne. It was appointed there clerk of the court, notary, and one charged it with holding the registers of the civil statue. In 1804, it refused to lend oath to the Empereur and had to be exiled with the the United States, where there remained “work of his hands” during thirteen years. It could return to France only in 1817, old man, used, tired. Hardly it had unloaded that the heirs to Malesherbes, the lawyer of Louis XVI, claimed the fees of their ancestor to him, 125 gold louis that Baudrais had seized with the Temple in the secretary of the king the day of his execution. He died in Paris, of the Choléra, at eighty-three years.

The confrontation between this municipal police and the deputies explain why the mayor of Paris east, since then, the only one of France not to have any policing powers.

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