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Francois Chabot and His Plot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

N. Hampson
N. Hampson
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

EARLY on the morning of 14 November 1793 the Montagnard deputy, Chabot, woke up Robespierre and denounced a plot to destroy the Convention by corrupting some of its members and slandering those who could not be bought. He produced as evidence 100,000 livres in assignats which he said had been given to him to buy the signature of Fabre d'Eglantine to a fraudulent decree concerning the liquidation of the East India Company.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 26 , December 1976 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1976

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References

1 Mathiez, A., Un procès de corruption sous la Terreur: l'affaire de la Compagnie des Indes (Paris, 1920), p. 143Google Scholar.

2 La Révolution Française (Paris, 1924), iii, p. 104Google Scholar.

3 de Lestapis, A., La ‘conspiration de Batz’ (Paris, 1969), pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

4 Lenotre, G., Le baron de Batz (Paris, 1896)Google Scholar, de Bonald, , François Chabot (Paris, 1908)Google Scholar, and de Batz, , Les conspirations et la fin de Jean, baron de Batz (Paris, 1911)Google Scholar.

5 Mathiez, A., La conspiration de l'étranger (Paris, 1918), pp. 57–58Google Scholar.

6 E.g. a letter from Whitehall to the banker, Perregaux, purporting to give instructions for the payment of British agents who posed as extremists in the Jacobin Club. Archives Nationales, AF II 49, printed in Mathiez, , La conspiration de l'étranger, pp. 131–32Google Scholar. This letter seems to have been part of a regular correspondence.

7 Archives Nationale, AF II 49.

8 Pièces trouvées dans les papiers de Robespierre et complices (Paris, an III), pp. 59–71.

9 The fullest version is in François Chabot à ses concitoyens, Archives Nationales, F7 4637, fos. 50–51.

10 This is presumably true, since Chabot maíntained, in the Testament written before an unsuccessful attempt at suicide (Archives Nationales, W 342) that he had entrusted his memoir to Robespierre.

11 Pièes trouvées, p. 33.

12 There is no obvious reason why Robespierre should have wanted this information suppressed, but Fouquier-Tinville was equally concerned to leave this particular stone unturned (de Lestapis, , op. cit. p. 246, n. 28Google Scholar).

13 François Chabot à ses concitoyens. He repeated this in a letter to Robespierre, (Pièces trouvées, p. 54)Google Scholar.

14 Archives Nationales, W 342, printed in Pièces trouvées, pp. 3–16.

15 Archives Nationales, W 342. See Mathiez, , Procès de corruption, pp. 94–106Google Scholar for the two versions of Basire's declaration, from one of which the references to Danton's links with Delaunay have been removed. It is this version that is printed in Pièces trouvées, pp. 16–24.

16 Sixteen of these letters, including twelve to Robespierre, are printed in Pièces trouvées. Most of the remainder are to be found in Archives Nationales, F7 4434, F7 4637 and W 342. Mathiez, in Procès de corruption, reprints 29 of them, including one in his personal collection.

17 Letters of 28 November (Archives Nationales, F7 4434) and 21 December (Pièces trouvées, pp. 46–52).

18 Letter of 16 December (Pièces trouvées, pp. 33–37).

19 Letter of 17 February (Pièces trouvées, pp. 55–57).

20 Archives Nationales, F7 4637; François Chabot à ses concitoyens, fos. 42, 45, 49.

21 Archives Nationales, W 342.

22 François Chabot à ses concitoyens, fol. 42; Archives Nationales W 342.

23 Archives Nationales, F7 4434 and W 342; see Mathiez, , Procès de corruption, pp. 27–75 for the fullest accountGoogle Scholar.

24 Mathiez, , Procès de corruption, pp. 30, 379–80Google Scholar.

25 See the biographies by Lenotre and the Baron de Batz and the writings of de Lestapis: La ‘conspiration de Batz’, ‘Batz et la liquidation de la créance Guichen’, ‘Autour de l'attentat d'Admiral’ and ‘Admiral et l'attentat manque’ in Annales historiques de la Révolution française, xxiv (1952), xxix (1957) and xxxi (1959)Google Scholar.

26 Batz, , La conjuration de Batz, ou la journée des soixante (Paris, an III)Google Scholar, quoted in Lenotre, , op. cit., pp. 304–05Google Scholar.

27 Lenotre, , op. cit., pp. 304–07Google Scholar.

28 Archives Nationales, W 173.

29 La ‘conspiration de Batz’, pp. 174–76.

30 Le Vieux Cordelier (ed. Calvet, H., Paris, 1936), pp. 155, 160Google Scholar. Desmoulins presumably got the story from Danton, who had been given a copy of Chabot's denunciation. Archives Nationales, W 173.

31 J. R. Hébert, auteur du Père Duchesne, à Camille Desmoulins et compagnie (Paris, an II), p. 8. (Bibliothèque Nationale Lb41 3615).

32 de Lestapis, A., ‘Un grand corrupteur, le duc du Châtelet’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, xxv (1953), pp. 316–28, xxvii (1955), pp. 5–26Google Scholar.

33 Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of J. B. Fortesque ii (London, 1894), p. 456Google Scholar.

34 Id., p. 510.

35 Pièces trouveés, pp. 59–71; printed in Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre (ed. Bouloiseau, M. et Soboul, A.) x (Paris, 1967), pp. 397–407Google Scholar. For the reasons why the editors are probably mistaken in ascribing this draft to the spring of 1794, see Hampson, N., The life and opinions of Maximilien Robespierre (London, 1974), p. 237Google Scholar.

36 Oeuvres, x, p. 182.

37 Id., p. 228.

38 Le Vieux Cordelier, p. 293.

39 Bibliothèque Nationale Lb41 1351, p. 8, n. I.

40 Pièces trouvées, p. 70.

41 De Lestapis, , La ‘conspiration de Batz’, pp. 20–24Google Scholar.

42 Archives Nationales AF II 49, printed in Mathiez, , Procès de corruption, pp. 145–66Google Scholar.

43 Pièces trouvées, p. 56. These assertions were presumably true, since Robespierre could easily check them by consulting Jagot.

44 Mathiez, , Procès de corruption, p. 313Google Scholar.

45 De Bonald and Lenotre both claim that the identity of Batz and Benoît was concealed by mis-spelling: le baron de Beauce and Benoîite, and that Saint-Just's report on the faction of Fabre was so badly printed that Batz's name was illegible. This seems rather far-fetched.

46 La ‘conpiration de Batz’, p. 260.

47 Topino-Lebrun, who witnessed the trial, commented on Fouquier's reluctance to follow up the evidence linking Hébert and Chaumette with the men who tried to save the queen. Notes de Topino-Lebrun sur le procès de Danton (Paris, 1875), p. 28Google Scholar.

48 La ‘conspiration de Batz’, pp. 174–76, 228–30.

49 Id., pp. 241–43.

50 On this issue, see Hampson, N., op. cit., pp. 252–59Google Scholar.

51 Notes de Topino-Lebrun, p. 16.

52 Archives Nationales, W 342.

53 Lenotre, , op. cit., pp. 104–5, 166–68Google Scholar; Archives Nationales, F7 4758.

54 Archives Nationales, W 389.

55 Id.

56 Speech of 14 June 1794.

57 This is presumably not the denunciation, dated prairial (20 May–18 June) summarized in the Charavay catalogue of 1862 (Bibliothèque Nationale Δ 40153).

58 A note in Robespierre's private diary, written shortly before 6 December 1793 and printed in Mathiez, A., Etuáes sur Robespierre (Paris, 1958), p. 232Google Scholar.