Théophile Leclerc

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jean Théophile Victor Leclerc (born December 22, 1771 in La Cotte near Montbrison , † after August 1794) was a French revolutionary and known as one of the Enragés .

Life

Leclerc came from a middle-class family with five children. Since his father had a decent income, Leclerc learned to read and write. When the revolution broke out, the family lived in Clermont-Ferrand , where Leclerc volunteered for the National Guard despite his young age. In March 1790 he traveled to Martinique to work in the trade like his two older brothers.

The revolution also reached Martinique and caused unrest and conflicts, in which Leclerc participated on the side of the supporters of the revolution. However, his side was defeated in the clashes and he was captured and shipped back to France in 1791.

Arrived in Lorient, he joined the local Jacobin Club and the National Guard. In 1792, Leclerc made a name for himself by defending soldiers who had been convicted by War Minister Louis Marie de Narbonne-Lara for their revolutionary work in Martinique . Leclerc appeared as their advocate with the Jacobins in Paris and before the National Legislative Assembly , where he obtained their acquittal; among the Jacobins he condemned "moderatism".

At that time Leclerc was not yet an opponent of the monarchy ; rather he hoped that Louis XVI. the hated Marie-Antoinette and would be open to democratic reforms. Leclerc was part of various armies and also took on an intelligence mission in Strasbourg , which failed until he came to Lyon in December 1792 . After a short illness he was sent back to Paris to represent the Lyon Jacobins.

When he arrived in Paris in May 1793, the conflict between the Montagnards and moderate, economically liberal Girondins in the National Convention was coming to a head. Like Jean-François Varlet , Leclerc called for a popular uprising to expel the leading Girondins from parliament.

At the end of May, Leclerc was elected to the insurgent committee in the Archbishop's Palace that initiated the May 31 uprising. During the survey, which lasted several days, Leclerc had the task of examining the mail of suspects and the Girondin convent members.

The outcome of the uprising did not satisfy Leclerc and the other Enragés; They had hoped for further political and social measures beyond the exclusion of the Girondins, above all a tougher crackdown - i.e. more executions - against rich hoarders and speculators, whom they viewed as counter-revolutionaries and the cause of the supply problems in Paris. The Enragés saw themselves as advocates of the less affluent sans-culottes .

Because of their criticism of the policies of the Convention, the Enragés were attacked by leading revolutionaries such as Maximilien de Robespierre and Jean Paul Marat . Nevertheless, after Marat's murder , Jacques Roux and Leclerc continued his newspapers, with Leclerc taking over L'Ami du Peuple. This led to disputes with Jacques-René Hébert , who also styled himself as the heir to Marat. Leclerc's newspaper was successful enough to rival Hébert's hugely popular Pere Duchesne. The Jacobins and the Hébertists staged performances by Marat's partner Simone Evrard in order to denounce the Enragés as paid troublemakers.

Leclerc advocated the implementation of the 1793 Constitution , more direct democracy, and the setting of food prices in his newspaper . In the last edition of his newspaper, he criticized the terror that was perceived as repressive . Since the other Enragés had been arrested in September, Leclerc also feared arrest and therefore stopped his journalistic and political activities. In November he married Pauline Léon, who had been active in the Republican Revolutionary Society and who had supported the Enragés. Leclerc volunteered for the army. After the couple was arrested in April 1794 in connection with the elimination of the Hébertists, he returned to La Fère after his release in early August 1794 and was no longer politically active.

literature

  • Morris Slavin: Théophile Leclerc: An anti-Jacobin Terrorist, in: The Historian (born 1973), pp. 398-414.
  • Robert B. Rose: The Enragés: Socialists of the French Revolution ?, Canberra 1965.
  • Bernd Jeschonnek: Revolution in France 1789–1799. A lexicon. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-05-000801-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Jeschonnek, p. 62
  2. ^ Slavin, p. 399.
  3. ↑ Slavin, p. 400f.
  4. ^ Slavin, p. 401.
  5. ↑ Slavin, pp. 405f.
  6. ^ Slavin, p. 406.
  7. ^ Morris Slavin: The Making of an Insurrection. Parisian Sections and the Gironde, Cambridge 1986, p. 100.
  8. ^ Daniel Guerin : Class struggle in France. Bourgeois et bras nus 1793–1795, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, pp. 111f.
  9. ^ Walter Markov : Robespierristen and Jacquesroutins, in: Walter Markov (ed.): Maximilien Robespierre. Contributions to his 200th birthday, Berlin 1958, pp. 159–217, p. 192.
  10. ^ Markov: The Freedoms of the Priest Roux, Berlin 1967, p. 286; Slavin, p. 410.
  11. ↑ Slavin, pp. 411f.
  12. ^ Slavin, p. 413.
personal data
SURNAME Leclerc, Theophile
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leclerc, Jean Théophile Victor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French revolutionary, one of the Enragés
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH La Cotte near Montbrison
DATE OF DEATH after August 1794