Lucie-Simplice-Camille-Benoît Desmoulins (French: [lysi sɛ̃plis kamij bənwa demulɛ̃]; 2 March 1760 – 5 April 1794) was a French journalist, politician and prominent figure of the French Revolution. He is best known for playing an instrumental role in the events that led to the Storming of the Bastille. Desmoulins was also noted for his radical criticism of the Reign of Terror as the editor of the journal Le Vieux Cordelier. He was a schoolmate and close friend of Maximilien Robespierre and a close friend and political ally of Georges Danton, who were leading figures in the French Revolution.
A lawyer by training, Desmoulins was enthralled by the Revolution from its outbreak. On 12 July 1789, shortly after Louis XVI dismissed his popular finance minister Jacques Necker, Desmoulins delivered an impassioned call to arms to a crowd before the Palais-Royal. His agitation sparked widespread unrest in Paris, which culminated in the Storming of the Bastille two days later. Through his newfound fame, Desmoulins quickly established himself as a prominent radical pamphleteer. He advocated explicitly in favour of republicanism and revolutionary violence, and mounted relentless attacks on not only the Ancien Régime, but also once-sympathetic revolutionary figures such as Jacques Pierre Brissot. His campaigns ultimately contributed to the fall of the Girondist faction and the beginning of the Reign of Terror.
During the Terror, Desmoulins and Danton distanced themselves from Robespierre's radical Montagnards. Through his new journal Le Vieux Cordelier, he criticized the excesses of the Revolutionary Government and made pleas for clemency, which enraged Robespierre and eventually led to his downfall. In April 1794, Desmoulins was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined alongside Danton and other accused Dantonists.
Desmoulins was born at Guise, in the province of Picardy, northern France. His father, Jean Benoît Nicolas Desmoulins, was a lieutenant-general of the bailliage of Guise. His mother was Marie-Madeleine Godart, from Wiège-Faty. Through the efforts of a friend, his father obtained a scholarship for the fourteen-year-old Camille to enter the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Desmoulins proved an exceptional student even among such notable contemporaries as Maximilien Robespierre and Louis-Marie Stanislas Fréron. He excelled in the study of Classical Literature and Politics, and gained a particular affinity for Cicero, Tacitus and Livy.
Desmoulins initially pursued a career in law, and succeeded in gaining acceptance as an advocate in the Parlement of Paris in 1785; however, his stammer and lack of connections to the Parisian legal community proved obstacles to success in this arena. Thus stymied, he turned towards writing as an alternative outlet for his talents; his interest in public affairs led him to a career as a political journalist.
In March 1789, Desmoulins senior was nominated as deputy to the Estates-General from the bailliage of Guise; however, due to illness, he failed to take his seat. Camille Desmoulins, himself limited to the role of spectator at the procession of the Estates-General on 5 May 1789, wrote a response to the event: Ode aux États Généraux. The Comte de Mirabeau, a powerful political figure within the Estates-General who positioned himself as a bridge between the aristocracy and the emerging reformist movement, briefly enlisted Desmoulins to write for his newspaper at this time, strengthening Desmoulins' reputation as a journalist.
Owing to his difficulties in establishing a career as a lawyer, Desmoulins' position in Paris was a precarious one and he often lived in poverty. However, he was greatly inspired and enthused by the current of political reform that surrounded the summoning of the Estates-General.
In letters to his father at the time, he rhapsodized over the procession of deputies entering the Palace of Versailles, and criticized the events surrounding the closing of the Salle des Menus Plaisirs to the deputies who had declared themselves the National Assembly—events which led to the famous swearing of the Tennis Court Oath.
The sudden dismissal of popular finance minister Jacques Necker by King Louis XVI on 11 July 1789 provided the spark that lit the fuse of Desmoulins' fame. On Sunday 12 July, spurred by the news of this politically unsettling dismissal, Desmoulins leapt onto a table outside the Café de Foy (one of many cafés in the garden of the Palais Royal frequented in large part by political dissidents) and delivered an impassioned call to arms. Shedding his customary stammer in the excitement, he urged the crowd to "take up arms and adopt cockades by which we may know each other", calling Necker's dismissal the tocsin of the St. Bartholomew of the patriots. The stationing of a large number of troops in Paris, many foreign, had led Desmoulins and other revolutionaries to believe that a massacre of dissidents in the city was indeed imminent. This was an idea that his audience also found plausible and threatening, and they were quick to join Desmoulins and take up arms in riots that rapidly spread throughout Paris.
The "cockades" worn by the crowd were initially green, a color associated with hope, and made at first from the leaves of the trees that lined the Palais Royal. However, the color green was also associated with the Comte d'Artois, the reactionary and conservative brother of the King, and the cockades, therefore, were quickly replaced by others in the traditional colors of Paris: red and blue. On 14 July, the people of Paris attacked the Hôtel des Invalides to seize arms, with Desmoulins among them arming himself with a musket with bayonet and two pistols, and embarked upon the Storming of the Bastille.
In June 1789, Desmoulins had written a radical pamphlet entitled La France Libre ("Free France"), which Parisian publishers at the time had refused to print. The rioting surrounding the storming of the Bastille, however, and especially Desmoulins' personal and publicized involvement in it, altered the situation considerably. On 18 July, Desmoulins's work was finally issued. The politics of the pamphlet ran considerably in advance of public opinion; in it, Desmoulins called explicitly for a republic, stating, "... popular and democratic government is the only constitution which suits France, and all those who are worthy of the name of men." La France Libre also examined and criticized in detail the role and rights of kings, of the nobility, and of the Roman Catholic clergy.
Desmoulins' renown as a radical pamphleteer was furthered by the publication, in September 1789, of his Discours de la lanterne aux Parisiens. Written from the perspective of the Place de Grève lamppost, it was aggressive in its celebration of political violence, and attributed exalted qualities of loyalty and patriotism to the citizens who made up the Parisian mob. This hard-edged fervor found an appreciative audience in Paris, and Desmoulins, as a result of the pamphlet, became known as the "Procureur-général de la lanterne" ("the Lanterne Prosecutor" or "Lanterne Attorney").
In September 1789, Desmoulins issued the first number of a weekly publication, Histoire des Révolutions de France et de Brabant, which would run until the end of July 1791. This publication combined political reportage, revolutionary polemics, satire, and cultural commentary; "The universe and all its follies," Desmoulins had announced, "shall be included in the jurisdiction of this hypercritical journal." The Révolutions de France et de Brabant proved extremely popular from its first to its last number. Desmoulins became notorious, and was able to leave behind the poverty that had marked his previous life in Paris.
The politics of the Révolutions de France et de Brabant were anti-royalist and pro-Revolutionary. The newspaper celebrated the Revolutionary zeal of "patriots" from the battlefields of Brabant to the Cordeliers district in Paris, home to the well-known and powerful revolutionary Club des Cordeliers, which Desmoulins joined in February 1790 and soon became a prominent member, and also criticized the excesses and inequities of, among a wide range of targets, the aristocratic regime. The savagery with which Desmoulins attacked those with whom he disagreed drew lawsuits, criticism, and reciprocal attacks. His previous friendships with powerful figures such as the Comte de Mirabeau and Baron Malouet, suffered. Both men, angered by what they perceived as libellous statements, declared that Desmoulins should be denounced and Malouet "went so far as to ask that Camille be certified insane." The Actes des Apôtres, the equally savage royalist newspaper that served as the Révolutions' opposite number, engaged in a continual war of insults with the Révolutions, and particularly with Desmoulins, whom it dubbed, in a satirical poem, "l'ânon des moulins" (the little jackass of the windmills).