On 12 July 1789, shortly after Louis XVI dismissed his popular finance minister Jacques Necker, Desmoulins delivered an impassioned call to arms to a crowd before the Palais-Royal.

Through his new journal Le Vieux Cordelier, he criticized the excesses of the Revolutionary Government and made pleas for clemency, which enraged Robespierre and eventually led to his downfall.

[3] Desmoulins initially pursued a career in law, and succeeded in gaining acceptance as an advocate in the Parlement of Paris in 1785; however, his stammer[2] and lack of connections to the Parisian legal community proved obstacles to success in this arena.

Camille Desmoulins, himself limited to the role of spectator at the procession of the Estates-General on 5 May 1789, wrote a response to the event: Ode aux Etats Generaux.

The sudden resignation of popular finance minister Jacques Necker by King Louis XVI on 11 July 1789 provided the spark that lit the fuse of Desmoulins' fame.

Shedding his customary stammer in the excitement, he urged the crowd to "take up arms and adopt cockades by which we may know each other",[4] calling Necker's dismissal the tocsin of the St. Bartholomew of the patriots.

The stationing of a large number of troops in Paris, many foreign, had led Desmoulins and other revolutionaries to believe that a massacre of dissidents in the city was indeed imminent.

The "cockades" worn by the crowd were initially green, a color associated with hope, and made at first from the leaves of the trees that lined the Palais Royal.

The politics of the pamphlet ran considerably in advance of public opinion;[2] in it, Desmoulins called explicitly for a republic, stating, "... popular and democratic government is the only constitution which suits France, and all those who are worthy of the name of men.

This publication combined political reportage, revolutionary polemics, satire, and cultural commentary; "The universe and all its follies," Desmoulins had announced, "shall be included in the jurisdiction of this hypercritical journal.

The flight of the king had caused civil unrest, and the petition, presented a day before the anniversary of the Fête de la Fédération, contributed to this agitation.

"[14] The perceived counter-revolutionary tone in these calls for clemency led to Desmoulins' expulsion from the Club des Cordeliers and denunciation at the Jacobins, as well as, ultimately, to his arrest and execution.

Immediately afterwards, as the Legislative Assembly (France) crumbled and various factions contended for control of the country, he was appointed Secretary-General to Georges Danton, who had assumed the role of Justice Minister.

In opposition to Conventionnels who argued for the "natural superiority" of the male sex, Desmoulins condemned the puissance maritale, according to which women were legal nonentities under the guardianship of their husbands, calling it "the creation of despotic governments.

Initially directed, with Robespierre's approval, against the excesses of the ultra-radical Hébertist faction, the journal rapidly expanded and intensified its criticisms of the Committee of Public Safety and the Revolutionary Tribunal.

On 20 December, Robespierre had proposed the formation of a commission "to examine all detentions promptly and to free the innocent," an idea shot down by Billaud-Varenne,[17] and Desmoulins "seized on this and called for something more dramatic: a committee of clemency" to put an end to the Terror.

Remember the lessons of history of philosophy: that love is stronger, more enduring than fear; that admiration and religion were born of generosity; that acts of clemency are the ladder of myth, as was said by Tertullien, by which members of the Committee of Public Safety have risen to the skies; men never climb thither on stairs of blood.

"[18] Desmoulins made strong use of pragmatic arguments, arguing that the excessive use of terror would cause the people to detest the Revolution and lead to a counter-revolutionary backlash.

[22] In his seventh and final number, authored in March 1794, unpublished during his lifetime, he again implicitly sided with Hébert, stating that he preferred the incessant denunciations of the Hébertists over the icy silence and bourgeois politeness of the Jacobins:I would prefer that we denounce wrongly and indiscriminately, I would even say calumniate, like Père Duchesne, but with that vigour that characterises strong spirits and a republican temper, than to see, today, this bourgeois politeness, this puerile and honest civility, these pusillanimous considerations of the monarchy, this circumspection … for the strongest, for men of credibility or position, ministers or generals, representatives of the people or influential members of the Jacobins, while we melt with heavy stiffness into patriotism in disfavor and disgrace.

[...] Better would be the intemperance of the language of democracy, the pessimism of these eternal detractors of the present, whose bile pours out on everything around them, than this cold poison of fear, which freezes thought to the bottom of the soul, and prevents it from springing up at the Tribune or in writings.

Better would be the misanthropy of Timon, who can find nothing beautiful in Athens, than this general terror, like mountains of ice, which, from one end of France to the other, covers the sea of opinion and obstructs its ebb and flow.

Otherwise, I no longer see in the Republic anything but the flat calm of despotism and the smooth surface of the stagnant waters of a swamp; I see in it only an equality of fear, the leveling of courage, and the most generous spirits as base as the most vulgar.

Desmoulins' response,"Brûler n'est pas répondre" ("Burning is not answering"), echoed the cry of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the influential philosopher whose work was central to Robespierre's own vision of the Republic.

[26] Meanwhile, the participation of Danton's personal secretary, Fabre d'Églantine, in a financial scam with the East India Company became exposed and he was arrested for corruption and forgery.

After the condemnation and execution of the Hébertists in March 1794, the energies of the Montagnards (especially of Saint-Just) turned to the elimination of the indulgent faction headed by Danton and voiced by Desmoulins.

They were accused of corruption, royalist tendencies, and counter-revolutionary conspiracy, charges were brought before the Committee of Public Safety, and arrest warrants including for Desmoulins were finally issued on 31 March.

[5] This fact, together with confusing and often incidental denunciations (for instance, a report that Danton, while engaged in political work in Brussels, had appropriated a carriage filled with several hundred thousand livres of table linen)[29] and threats made by prosecutor Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville (Desmoulins' cousin) towards members of the jury, helped to ensure a guilty verdict.

In a letter to his wife from the Luxembourg Prison, Desmoulins wrote, [I]t is marvellous that I have walked for five years along the precipices of the Revolution without falling over them, and that I am still living; and I rest my head calmly upon the pillow of my writings...

[31] Of the group of fifteen who were guillotined together on 5 April 1794, including Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles, Philippe Fabre d'Églantine and Pierre Philippeaux, Desmoulins died third, and Danton last.

"[35] Horace Camille Desmoulins was raised by Adèle and Annette Duplessis (the sister and mother of Lucile, respectively), who successfully petitioned the Comité de législation [fr] in February 1795 for the suspension of the sale of his father's belongings.