Cécile Renault and the “attack” on Robespierre on 4 Prairial year II, popular royalism and fears of conspiracy in revolutionary Paris
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Invariably evoked in the biographies of the Incorruptible, the attempted assassination of Robespierre by Cécile Renault on 4 prairial year II has, however, scarcely captured the attention of historians. It must be said that homicidal intent was never firmly established, and that the young woman's motives were quickly submerged in the thesis of the “foreign conspiracy”, defended by the Montagnards at the Convention and taken over by the Revolutionary Tribunal. A careful examination of the trial documents, cross-referenced with other sources such as the reports of the agents of the Minister of the Interior, reveals the existence of a royalist opinion in Paris in the spring of 1794, an opinion incarnated among others by Cécile Renault, who slept with a banner of the fleur de lys hanging above her bed. Loyalty to Louis XVII, the child king imprisoned in the Temple? A willingness to brave Revolutionary surveillance and to proclaim her exasperation with a republican regime deemed tyrannical? The contours of this attachment to the Bourbons are difficult to determine, but they suggest a latent royalism among a part of the Parisian population.
Réseaux sociaux