Desmoulins later shared a cordial antipathy with the prettiest member of the French Revolution, Louis Saint-Just. Saint-Just was fond of the very stiff, high collars than in fashion and was also very cold and austere, in a manner that did not endear him to Desmoulins. Desmoulins is said to have said of Saint-Just, "He carries his head like the Holy Sacrament."

"And I," Saint-Just, not to be outdone, is said to have replied, "will make him carry his head like Saint-Denis."

Ouch.

Literally.

Happy Bastille Day!

A very happy 14th of July to you all, commemorating the day when Parisians, spurred on by street orators like Camille Desmoulins, panicked about the economic crisis, the food shortage, the dismissal of the enormously popular finance minister, Necker, and the fact that the king had stationed foreign troops around the city. The king had done so to keep the Parisians from rioting at the loss of the only finance minister they had liked in the past five years, but this plan backfired catestrophically. The Parisians assumed that Necker's dismissal meant the triumph of the conservative faction and therefore the violent shut down of the National Constituent Assembly (the group that had broken off from the Estates-General and demanded a government with a constitution).

Several street orators jumped up onto tables to prolethyse the crowds, but the most famous of these is Camille Desmoulins, who jumped up onto a table whilst holding two pistols and shouted, "'Citizens, there is no time to lose; the dismissal of Necker is the knell of a Saint Bartholomew for patriots! This very night all the Swiss and German battalions will leave the Champ de Mars to massacre us all; one resource is left; to take arms!"

Unfortunately, the people didn't really have arms, so they raided where they could and, after about two days of continuous rioting, converged on the Bastille, where they heard there were arms and gunpowder. The Bastille was an old, costly fortress that was then housing a grand total of seven prisoners: four forgers, two lunatics, and one deviant aristocrat, the comte de Solages . The Marquis de Sade had been removed from the Bastille ten days earlier for harassing the people who walked too close to his window. Though the Bastille was not popular and was going to be shut down because it was too expensive to maintain, it was the place you were most likely to end up if you were arrested on a lettre de cachet, or rather, a letter signed by the king and a cabinet minister to enforce arbitrary legislation and effectively outlawing any possibility of an appeal.

After a shoot-out lasting several hours, in the Amateur Historian's personal favorite part of the proceedings, one man actually scaled the chains holding up the drawbridge of the Bastille and cut them down, allowing his fellow Parisians to seize the fortress and completely freak out the French aristocracy.

This culminated in the very famous dialogue between Louis XVI and the Duc de Rochefoucauld.

"Then it's a revolt?" asked Louis XVI.

"No, Sire," the duc replied. "It is a revolution."

Newspapers

Newspapers reached incredible levels of popularity during the latter half of the 18th century, with over a hundred newspapers being published in France during the first half of the French Revolution (i.e. before the Terror). Journalists were held in some esteem during the French Revolution. One of the greatest celebrities of the Revolution, Camille Desmoulins, was as famous for inspiring the people of Paris to direct their furious rioting towards tearing down the Bastille as for his newspapers, and it is impossible to seperate Marat from his L'Ami du Peuple or Herbert from his Pere Duchene. However, newspaper journalists were not quite so popular outside of France.

Sir Walter Scott told his son-in-law, "Your connection with any newspaper would be a disgrace and degredation. I would rather sell gin to poor people and poison them that way."

I believe Kierkegaard topped that when he wrote, "The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined by the word "journalist." If I were a father and had a daughter who was sedueced I should despair over her; I would hope for her salvation. But if I had a son who became a journalist and continued to be one for five years, I would give him up."