Popular Culture
The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo (London, 1798)
Here Pierre Joseph Laborie provides the perspective of the planter. He gives a detailed description of the organization of enslaved labor in the production of coffee.
The Slaves from Africa
The African born enslaved people brought with them to Haiti their African rituals and customs, but the white planters also tried to get them to accept French manners and mores.
The Maroons
In this passage, Moreau de Saint–Méry explains that runaways in Haiti, known as Maroons, are and have always been a persistent problem and details the tremendous efforts put into retrieving the runaways. Despite this effort, some Maroons survived and thereby regained their freedom.
That Seductive Mulatto Woman
Moreau de Saint–Méry painted a particularly negative portrait of mulatto women in Haiti. He paints Creole women as unduly promiscuous and a threat to morals and decency.
Robespierre (3 December 1792)
Maximillien Robespierre, a leading Jacobin deputy in the Convention, had originally opposed the trial, believing that to try the King was to imply the possibility of his innocence.
Marat (3 December 1792)
As a journalist, Marat had for the first few years of the Revolution supported the monarchy as an institution.
Saint–Just (13 November 1792)
The first debate over the fate of Louis XVI concerned whether the Convention could try the King at all, and if so, for what crimes. The Constitution of 1791 had promised Louis "inviolability," meaning immunity from prosecution.
Description of the Royal Menagerie (1789)
A common theme in libels was to compare the royal family to animals. This pamphlet parodies the Queen and her entourage as animals in a zoo, emphasizing how the courtly way of life at Versailles seemed bizarre to the rest of the French people.
The Attack on the Tuileries (10 August 1792)
In early August, the Legislative Assembly was deadlocked, unable to decide what to do about the King, the constitution, the ongoing war, and above all the political uprisings in Paris.
Parisian Petitions to Dethrone the King (3 August 1792)
Just after the Festival of 14 July, leaders of some of the more radical Parisian sections drafted, on behalf of the French nation, a petition calling on the Legislative Assembly to take emergency measures to ensure "the salvation of the people" by dethroning the King.