Jean-Lambert Tallien
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean-Lambert Tallien (1767 – November 16, 1820), was a French political figure of the revolutionary period.
Contents |
[edit] Life
[edit] Clerk and journalist
He was the son of the maître d'hôtel of the Marquis de Bercy, and was born in Paris. The marquis, noticing his ability, had him educated, and got him a place as a lawyer's clerk. Supportive of the Revolution, he gave up his desk to enter a printer's office, and by 1791 was overseer of the printing department of the Comte de Provence.
During his employment, he conceived the idea of the journal-affiche, and after the arrest of the king at Varennes in June 1791 he placarded a large printed sheet on all the walls of Paris twice a week, under the title of the Ami des Citoyens, journal fraternel.
This enterprise had its expenses paid by the Jacobin Club, and made Tallien well known to the revolutionary leaders; he became even more present in politics after organizing, together with Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, the great Fête de la Liberté on April 15, 1792, in honour of the released soldiers of Chateau-Vieux.
[edit] Insurrectional Commune
On July 8, 1792, he was the spokesman of a deputation of the section of the Place Royale which demanded from the Legislative Assembly the reinstatement of the Mayor, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, and the Procureur, Louis Pierre Manuel. Tallien was one of the most active popular leaders in the Storming of the Tuileries Palace on August 10; on that day he was appointed secretary to the insurrectional Commune of Paris.
He committed himself to his new mission, and habitually appeared at the bar of the Assembly on behalf of the Commune. He announced the September Massacres in terms of apology and praise, and he sent off the famous circular of September 3 to the French provinces, recommending them to take similar action. At the same time, he had several people imprisoned in order to save them from the violence of the mob, and protected several suspects himself.
[edit] Convention and missions
At the close of the month he resigned his post on being elected, in spite of his youth, a deputy to the National Convention by the département of Seine-et-Oise, and he began his legislative career by defending the conduct of the Commune during the massacres. He took his seat upon The Mountain, and showed himself one of the most vigorous Jacobins, particularly in his defence of Jean-Paul Marat, on February 26, 1793; he voted in favor of capital punishment for King Louis XVI, and was elected a member of the Committee of General Security on January 21, 1793.
After a short mission in the western provinces he returned to Paris, and took an active part in the coups d'état of May 31 and June 2, which resulted in the overthrow of the Girondists. For the next few months he kept a low profile, but on September 23, 1793, he was sent with Claude-Alexandre Ysabeau on his mission to Bordeaux. This was the month in which the Reign of Terror was organized under the superintendence of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security.
Tallien was of the most notorious envoys sent over to establish the Terror in the provinces, and soon established a revolutionary grip on Bordeaux. It was then that Tallien met Thérésa Cabarrus, the divorced wife of the Marquis de Fontenay, and daughter of the Spanish banker François Cabarrus, one of the most notorious women of her time. Tallien not only spared her life but fell in love with her. Suspected of "Moderation" because of this incident, especially when he was recalled to Paris, Tallien attempted to increase his revolutionary zeal. Thérésa was a moderating influence, and from the lives she saved by her entreaties she received the name of Notre-Dame de Thermidor ("Our Lady of Thermidor") after the onset of the Thermidorian Reaction (July 27, 1794). Tallien was even elected president of the Convention on March 24, 1794.
[edit] Thermidor
Maximilien Robespierre's own political ideas implied his readiness to strike at many of his colleagues in the committees, and Tallien was one of the men condemned. Robespierre's rivals were determined to strike first, and, on Thermidor, Tallien was urged on by the danger to Thérèse to open the attack. The movement was successful: Robespierre and his friends were guillotined, and Tallien, as the leading Thermidorian, was elected to the Committee of Public Safety. He was instrumental in suppressing the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Jacobin Club; he attacked Jean-Baptiste Carrier and Joseph Lebon, who had been representatives of Robespierre to Nantes and Arras respectively, and he fought with energy against the insurgents of Prairial (May 20, 1795). In all these months he was supported by Thérèse, whom he married on December 26, 1794, and who became the leader of the social life of Paris.
His last major political achievement was in July 1795, when he was present with Lazare Hoche at the destruction of the army of the Royalist émigrés at Quiberon, and ordered the executions which followed.
[edit] Council of Five Hundred and Egypt campaign
After the beginning of the French Directory, Tallien's political importance came to an end, for, although he sat in the Council of Five Hundred, the moderates viewed him as an enforcer of the Terror, and the extreme party as a renegade. Madame Tallien also rejected him, and became the mistress of the rich banker Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard.
Napoleon Bonaparte, however, who is said to have been introduced by him to Paul Barras, took him to on his military expedition to Egypt of June 1798, and after the capture of Cairo, he edited the official journal there, the Décade Égyptienne. General Jacques François Menou sent him back to France, and on his passage he was captured by a British cruiser and taken to London, where he had a good reception among the Whigs and was received by Charles James Fox.
[edit] Later years
On returning to France in 1802 he obtained a divorce from Thérésa (who in 1805 married François-Joseph-Philippe de Riquet), and was left for some time without employment. In the end, through the interventions of Joseph Fouché and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, he was appointed consul at Alicante, and remained there until he lost the sight of one eye from yellow fever.
Back in Paris, he lived on half-pay until the fall of the Empire and the Bourbon Restoration (1815), when he received the favour of not being exiled like the other regicides (those who had voted for the king's execution). His latter days were spent in poverty - he had to sell his books to get bread.
He died of lepra on November 16, 1820.
[edit] Works
- Discours sur les causes qui ont produit la Révolution française (Paris, 1791, 8 vols.)
- Mémoire sur l'administration de l'Égypte a l'arrivée des Français
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. In turn, it gives the following references:
- "Tallien et l'Expedition d'Égypte", in La Révolution Française: Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, p. 269.
- Arsène Houssaye, Nôtre Dame de Thermidor (Paris, 1866)
