Cordeliers

The Cordeliers Convent in 1793

The Cordeliers, also known as the Club of the Cordeliers and formally as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Société des Amis des droits de l’homme et du citoyen), was a populist club during the French Revolution.

History

The club was formed by the members of the district of the Cordeliers, when the National Constituent Assembly suppressed the 60 districts of Paris to replace them with 48 sections (21 May 1790).

The club held its meetings at first in the church of the Cordeliers Convent - Cordeliers was the name given in France to the Franciscan Observantists, - now the Dupuytren Museum of anatomy in connection with the school of medicine. From 1791, however, the Cordeliers met in a hall in the rue Dauphine in Paris, as well as in the Café Procope.

It sought as well to encourage revolutionary measures against the monarchy and the old régime, and it was especially responsible for popularising the motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité ("Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"), in May 1791, following a speech on the Army by the marquis de Guichardin ^[1]. Its influence was especially seen in the creation of the revolutionary army destined to assure provisions for Paris, and in the establishment of the worship of Reason.

The society took an active part in the movement against the monarchy of 20 June and 10 August 1792; but, after that date, the more moderate leaders of the club, Georges Danton, Fabre d'Églantine and Camille Desmoulins, seem to have ceased attending (forming a group that called itself the Indulgents, also known as Dantonists or counter-revolutionaries), and the Club came under the control of revolutionaries such as J. R. Hébert, F. N. Vincent, C. P. H. Ronsin and A. F. Momoro who were demanding the intensification of the Terror. These revolutionaries formed the Hébertists, formed out of the extreme left wing of the enragés.

The now Hébertist-controlled Cordeliers club was combated by those revolutionists who wished to end the Terror, especially by Danton, and by Camille Desmoulins in his journal Le Vieux Cordelier, published by Desmoulins in December 1793, to counter Le Père Duchesne. These moderate revolutionists benefited from the support of général Westermann, serving in the Vendéen army, but were not all necessarily motivated by regard for humanity - men like Fabre d'Églantine or François Chabot, compromised themselves, worried at the rigour of the politics of the terror and concerned for their own lives. The club disowned Danton and Desmoulins, and attacked Robespierre for his "moderation", but the new insurrection which it attempted failed, and its leaders were guillotined on 24 March 1794, from which date nothing is known of the club. Little is known of its composition.

Bibliography

The papers emanating from the Cordeliers are enumerated in Jean Maurice Tourneux, Bibliographie de l'histoire de Paris pendant la Révolution (1894), i. (on the trial of the Hébertists) Nos. 4204-4210, ii. Nos. 9795-9834 and 11,813. See also A. Bougeart Les Cordeliers, documents pour servir a l'histoire de la Révolution (Caen, 1891); G. Lenotre, Paris révolutionnaire (Paris, 1895); G. Tridon, Les Hébertistes, plainte contre une calomnie de l'histoire (Paris, 1864). The last-named author was condemned to four months' prison; his work was reprinted in 1871. The inventory of the pictures found in 1790 in the Cordeliers Convent was published by J. Guiffrey in Nouvelles archives de l’art français, viii., 2nd series, iii. (1880).

Notable Members

• Jacques Pierre Brissot
• Pierre Gaspard Chaumette
• Marie-Joseph Chénier
• Georges Jacques Danton
• Camille Desmoulins
• Fabre d'Églantine
• Jacques René Hébert
• Jean-Paul Marat
• Antoine-François Momoro
• Pierre-François-Joseph Robert
• Charles-Philippe Ronsin
• François-Nicolas Vincent

Sources

• André Castelot & Alain Decaux, Le Grand Dictionnaire d'Histoire de la France, Éditions Fayard, Paris, 1979 (French)

References