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Louis Pierre Manuel

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Manuel by Pierre-Michel Alix

Louis Pierre Manuel (1751 – 14 November 1793) was a republican French writer, municipal administrator of the police, and public prosecutor during the French Revolution.

Life

Revolutionary

Bouillon Vérité Journée du 20 juin 1792
place Dauphine
Place Dauphine 2
place Dauphine 11 is on the left

He was born at Montargis, Loiret, and entered the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, becoming tutor to the son of a Paris banker. In 1783 his clandestine pamphlet, Essais historiques, critiques, littéraires, et philosophiques, resulted in his being imprisoned in the Bastille.[1]

Manuel, a man of letters passionately embraced the revolutionary ideas, and after the storming of the Bastille became a member of the provisional municipality of Paris, administrating the Garde Nationale and gendarme. Early December 1791 he was elected as procureur public of the commune, charged with both the investigation and prosecution of crime and representing the King. In a discussion about the right of veto (to suspend a law for a period or until the fulfilment of a condition) he told the Jacobins as a patriot he did not like the King, but he should have the right to leave or to abdicate. As Manuel was not from Paris he lost popularity.[2] On 24 February Manuel was installed as procureur of the commune, gave a speech warning against anarchy.[3] He proposed to sell the portraits of bishops inside the building.[4]

Manuel was associated with the Demonstration of 20 June 1792, which he visited as a private person.[5] Afterwards he was dismissed by the city council, but reappointed on 13 July by the Assembly. He was friendly with Pétion de Villeneuve, the mayor. During the 10 August storming of the Tuileries Palace, he was up all night and played a part in the formation of the insurrectionary Paris Commune which assured the success of the latter attack (begun by the taking of the Hôtel de Ville).[6]

He lived at Place Dauphine and was present at the nearby Abbaye Prison on the first day of the September Massacres. The door was closed, but the killing was resumed after an intense discussion with Manuel, on people's justice and failing judges.[7] Manuel belonged to a deputation sent by the general council (conseil général) of the commune to ask for compassion.[8] They were insulted and escaped with their lives.[9] Robespierre and Manuel visited the Temple prison to check on the security of the royal family.[10] Late in the evening, Madame de Stael was conveyed home, escorted by the Manuel. He saved the life of governess Madame Tourzel, because of her mother.[11] It is not clear if he saved the life of Beaumarchais who was released only three days before a massacre took place in the prison where he had been detained.

On 7 September 1792 he was elected one of the deputies from Paris to the National Convention, where he promoted the proclamation of the First French Republic. On 3 November, he declared in the gallery of the Jacobin Club that "the massacres of September had been the Saint Bartholomew's Day of the people, who had shown themselves to be as wicked as a king, and that the whole of Paris was guilty for having suffered these assassinations.[12]

He suppressed the decoration of the Cross of Saint Louis, which he called "a stain on a man's coat", requested that the first president of France (supposedly Pétion de Villeneuve) to be housed in the palace of the Tuileries,[13] and demanded the sale of the Palace of Versailles.

Independent politics and execution

Early 1792 he was prosecuted for publishing an edition of the Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau indecent Letters to Sophie de Ruffey, written in jail between 1777-1780, but was acquitted.[1]

Manuel changed his opinions on King Louis XVI through his connection with Pétion and the Brissotins; he became reconciled to the House of Bourbon, and refused to vote in favor of the execution of the former sovereign. Never before the Convention was like a court.[14] Consequently, he had to tender his resignation as deputy.[1] He retired to Montargis, where his house was attacked by the crowd on 14 March 1793.[15] He was arrested, put in prison but guillotined in Paris.

According to the bibliographer Antoine-Alexandre Barbier, in his Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes, Volume 1, the pamphlet La Bastille dévoilée (1789) is not written by Manuel, as often cited, but by a Charpentier.[citation needed]

Works

  • Manuel, Louis-Pierre (1783). Essais historiques, critiques, littéraires et philosophiques. p. 167.
  • Manuel, Louis Pierre (1786). Coup-d'œil philosophique sur le règne de saint-Louis. p. 164.;
  • Manuel, Louis-Pierre (1789). L'année françoise. p. 154.;
  • Manuel, Louis-Pierre (1789). L'année françoise.;
  • Charpentier; Louis-Pierre Manuel (1789). La Bastille dévoilée: livr. Notes historiques sur la Bastille. Desenne.;
  • La Police de Parie dévoilée. chez J. B. Garnery ; Strasbourg chez Treuttel. 1791.
  • Lettres sur la Révolution (1792).

References

  1. ^ a b c Chisholm 1911.
  2. ^ La Feuille du jour, 17 décembre 1791, 30 janvier 1792, 4 février 1792, 11 mars 1792
  3. ^ Municipalité de Paris. Installation du Conseil général de la commune, 24 février 1792
  4. ^ Gazette universelle, 29 février 1792
  5. ^ Le Républicain français, 20 octobre 1793
  6. ^ Jesse Goldhammer (2005). The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence in Modern French Thought. Cornell University Press. p. 34. ISBN 0-8014-4150-1.
  7. ^ F. Bluche, p. 56-60
  8. ^ L. Blanc (1855) Histoire de la Révolution Française, vol VII, p. 163
  9. ^ Oscar Browning, ed., The Despatches of Earl Gower (Cambridge University Press, 1885), 213–16, 219–21, 223–28.
  10. ^ Jonathan Israel & Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre 2014, p. 272.
  11. ^ Le Républicain français, 20 octobre 1793
  12. ^ https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/sycomore/fiche/(num_dept)/15181
  13. ^ https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/sycomore/fiche/(num_dept)/15181
  14. ^ https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/sycomore/fiche/(num_dept)/15181
  15. ^ Thermomètre du jour, 21 mars 1793
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