Le tribun du peuple au peuple

First edition, actually printed in Nantes by Malassis despite the Paris imprint on the title-page, as revealed by a manuscript note by Mangourit himself cited by Barbier.

An anonymously published pamphlet, with a typographical vignette on the title-page.

Copy preserved in its original stitched state and therefore without wrappers, with a pencilled manuscript note on the title-page identifying the author.

Our copy is further enriched with a contemporary manuscript note describing the significance of the work: 

« [...] L'auteur reproche au clergé ses grands biens acquis par l'abus qu'il a fait de la crédulité de nos pères, et sur lesquels il refuse de contribuer aux charge de l'Etat [...] »

The text opens with the apostrophe:

« FRANÇAIS, je n'ai point de mission ; je n'écris point pour les factieux, les brouillons et les oisifs ; je parle en Citoyen pénétré d'amour pour sa Patrie »

and concludes, on page 42, with an altered line from Voltaire (Œdipe, Act III, Scene IV):

« Tremblez, malheureux Rois, votre règne est passé »

This vehement indictment of the parlements and the nobility belongs to the very first wave of pamphlets prompted, as early as June 1788, by the crisis unleashed by the May Edicts and the temporary suppression of the parlements. According to Vivian R. Gruder, the earliest pamphlets to appear in a series of essays presented in periodical form, whose titles proclaimed their popular character, were Le Tribun du peuple, au peuple and Les Gracches français, suite du Tribun au peuple, followed by Le Hérault de la nation, sous les auspices de la patrie, all written by M. A. B. de Mangourit and published between June 1788 and June 1789. This text therefore predates the great pamphlet campaign of the autumn and winter of 1788, which followed the announcement that the Estates-General would be convened and the decree of the Parlement of Paris of 25 September 1788 demanding that it meet according to the model of 1614.

Rhetorically, Mangourit differs markedly from the other patriotic polemicists of the same period. Gruder notes that whereas Volney mocked his opponents, Mangourit hurled anathemas at them, blackening their characters and accusing them of committing abominable acts. The clergy are portrayed as holding the people in contempt:

« C'est que vous nous considériez comme un vil bétail, comme une espece faite pour supporter votre despotisme déshonorant. »

The nobles are accused of their criminal abuse of power:

« Vous voulez qu'après nous avoir asservis, pillés, rançonnés, bâtonnés, suppliciés, nous soyons encore vos dupes. »

Mangourit deliberately chose words capable of awakening historical memories, even accusing the Parlement of seeking to make a political Saint Bartholomew's Day follow the religious Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre. This verbal violence, which anticipates the tone of the revolutionary newspapers of 1789, is paradoxically accompanied by a resolute defence of royal authority: the text identifies the judicial reforms introduced by the May Edicts with the interests of the people, presenting the king as the natural ally of the Third Estate against the privileged orders.

This rhetorical alliance between royalism and popular discourse was neither accidental nor the expression of an isolated conviction. Mangourit was not writing as an independent agitator. His writings were sponsored by the Keeper of the Seals, Lamoignon, and by the intendant of Brittany, both of whom, with the assistance of the minister Loménie de Brienne, ensured their safe transport from Rennes, where Mangourit lived, to Versailles and finally to Paris. The pamphlet thus formed part of an organised governmental propaganda campaign intended to turn against the parlements and the nobility the very popular arguments that they themselves had helped to disseminate. Gruder shows that this mechanism was common in the summer of 1788: themes that would become, in the autumn, the shared programme of the Third Estate—the doubling of its representation, voting by head, and the denunciation of fiscal privilege—first appeared in royalist pamphlets seeking to rally the people against the intermediary bodies.

Mangourit continued this pamphleteering campaign with Les Gracches français, in which he set himself up as the advocate of the Breton Third Estate against the nobility and magistrates of the province, earning condemnation by the Parlement of Rennes and the public burning of his work, and then with Le Hérault de la nation, published from December 1788 to July 1789. Gruder observes that over this period Mangourit's commitment lost its initial coherence: unable to shape public opinion, he came instead to reflect it, his royalism growing increasingly ambivalent as his allegiance shifted towards the cause of the Third Estate and the National Assembly. Le Tribun du peuple, au peuple thus constitutes the first documented milestone in a trajectory representative of a broader phenomenon identified by Gruder for the years 1787-1788: pamphlets conceived as instruments of royal propaganda, employing radical language and demands in order to discredit the parlements, were partly appropriated by the patriotic movement they had themselves helped to arm, without their authors always retaining control over them.

Source: Vivian R. Gruder, « Un message politique adressé au public : les pamphlets "populaires" à la veille de la Révolution », Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 39, no. 2, April-June 1992, pp. 161-197.