DESMOULINS, LUCIE SIMPLICE CAMILLE BE NOIST (1760-1 i94), French journalist and politician, was born at Guise, in Picardy, on March 2, 1760. He was educated at the college of Louis-le-Grand. In this school, in which Robespierre was also a bursar and a distinguished student, Camille Desmoulins laid the solid foundation of his learning. He was admitted an advocate of the parlement of Paris in 1785. His professional suc cess was not great; his manner was violent, his appearance un attractive, and his speech impaired by a painful stammer.
In March 1789 Desmoulins began his political career. Having been nominated deputy from the bailliage of Guise, he appeared at Laon as one of the commissioners for the election of deputies to the States-General summoned by royal edict of Jan. 24. Ca mille heralded its meeting by his Ode to the States-General. The sudden dismissal of Necker by Louis XVI. brought Desmoulins to fame. On July 12, 1789, Camille, leaping upon a table outside one of the cafes in the garden of the Palais Royal, announced to the crowd the dismissal of their favourite. He inflamed the pas sions of the people by his burning words and his call "To arms!" "This dismissal," he said, "is the tocsin of the St. Bartholomew of the patriots." This scene was the beginning of the actual events of the Revolution. Following Desmoulins the crowd surged through Paris, procuring arms by force; and on the 13th it was partly organized as the Parisian militia which was afterwards to be the National Guard. On the 14th the Bastille was taken.
His La France libre (1789) brought him the friendship of Mira beau, and the studied abuse of numerous royalist pamphleteers. After the publication of his Discours de la lanterne aux Parisiens, Desmoulins was dubbed "Procureur-general de la lanterne." Desmoulins was powerfully swayed by the influence of more vigorous minds ; and for some time before the death of Mirabeau, in April 1791, he had begun to be led by Danton, with whom he remained associated during the rest of his life. In July 1791 Ca mille appeared before the municipality of Paris as head of a depu tation of petitioners for the deposition of the king. In that month, however, such a request was dangerous ; there was excitement in the city over the presentation of the petition, and the private attacks to which Desmoulins had often been subject were now fol lowed by a warrant for the arrest of himself and Danton. Danton left Paris for a while; Desmoulins, however, remained there, ap pearing occasionally at the Jacobin club. Upon the failure of this attempt of his opponents, Desmoulins published a pamphlet, Jean Pierre Brissot demasque, followed in 1793 by a Fragment de l'histoire secrete de la Revolution, in which the party of the Gironde, and specially Brissot, were most mercilessly attacked. Desmoulins took an active part on Aug. Io and became secretary to Danton, when the latter became minister of justice. On Sept. 8 he was elected one of the deputies for Paris to the National Con vention, where he was of the party of the "mountain," and voted for the abolition of royalty and the death of the king. The His toire des Brissotins was inspired by Robespierre. The success of the brochure, so terrible as to send the leaders of the Gironde to the guillotine, alarmed Danton and the author. In 1789 he had issued a weekly journal, Les Revolutions de France et de Brabant. In Dec. 1793, appeared the first number of the Vieux Cordelier, which was at first directed against the Hebertists and approved of by Robespierre, but which soon formulated Danton's idea of a committee of clemency. Then Robespierre turned against Desmoulins and took advantage of the popular indignation roused against the Hebertists to send them to death. The time had come, however, when Saint Just and he were to turn their attention not only to les enrages, but to les indulgents—the power ful faction of the Dantonists. On Jan. 7, 1794, Robespierre in ad dressing the Jacobin club counselled not the expulsion of Desmou lins, but the burning of certain numbers of the Vieux Cordelier. By the end of March Danton, Desmoulins and the best of the moderates were arrested. On the 31 st the warrant of arrest was signed and executed, and on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of April the trial took place before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Camille on being asked his age, replied, "I am thirty-three, the age of the sans culotte Jesus, a critical age for every patriot." He was, in fact, thirty-four. The accused were prevented from defending them selves ; a decree of the convention denied them the right of speech. Sentence of death was passed in absence of the accused, and their execution was appointed for the same day. Despite the indiffer ence to death he had pretended to in his writings, Desmoulins showed little courage at his death, in sharp contrast to the brave and dignified death of his wife a week later.
On Dec. 29, 1790, Camille had married Lucile Duplessis, and their only child, Horace Camille, was born on July 6, 1792. The boy was afterwards pensioned by the French government, and died in Haiti in 1825.