CACHET WITH THE INITIALS OF CAMILLE DESMOULINS - Lot 154

CACHET WITH THE INITIALS OF CAMILLE DESMOULINS Silver oval wax seal with the numeral "CD" decorated with foliage. Turned ebony handle. On the top, an old label written in pen "Cachet de Camille Desmoulins Conventionnel". B.E. Height: 7.4 cm. Provenance: Former André BERNHEIM collection Exhibition : Musée Carnavalet, July 1939, 150th anniversary of the French Revolution. Biography: Camille Desmoulins (Guise 1760-Paris 1794). A pupil of Robespierre at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, he was admitted to the Paris bar in 1785. As early as 1788, he announced the approach of the Revolution in a pamphlet entitled Philosophie du peuple français (Philosophy of the French people). In June 1789, he wrote a violent indictment of the Ancien Régime, entitled La France libre. On July 12, 1789, he called the crowd gathered in the garden of the Palais-Royal to arms, displaying a green cockade, the color of hope, and announcing that the Court was preparing a "St. Bartholomew's Day of patriots". His speeches at the Club des Cordeliers and, above all, his publications, in which he gave free rein to his verve and republican ideas, had a real impact on revolutionary opinion. After the fall of the Tuileries, he became Danton's secretary and was elected deputy for Paris to the Convention. He continued his press campaigns, first against the Girondins, whom he attacked in 1793, then against the Hebertists, in Le Vieux Cordelier (December 1793). This newspaper earned him Robespierre's distrust when he supported the policy of Danton and the indulgents, and called for the formation of a clemency committee. The condemnation of the Terror regime by one of the most influential revolutionaries of 1789 had a huge impact. Camille Desmoulins was also affected by the disgrace of the Dantonists. Arrested on March 31, 1794, sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal, he was executed on April 5.