Les Actes des Apôtres
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Format | Octavo-sized newspaper |
---|---|
Editor | Jean-Gabriel Peltier |
Founded | 2 November 1789 |
Political alignment | French Royalism |
Language | French |
Ceased publication | October 1791 |
Headquarters | Paris |
The Acts of the Apostles (French: Les Actes des Apôtres) was a French newspaper established on November 2, 1789 in Paris by Jean-Gabriel Peltier. This periodical pamphlet, which holds a notable place in the history of the French counter-revolutionary press, was dedicated to the defense of the monarchy and especially to the satire of the men and institutions of the Revolution: it is regarded as one of the most important royalist newspapers of this period.[1][2]
Contents
History
Without having the usual regularity of a newspaper, the Acts of the Apostles was published at the rate of about three issues per week.[3] It was not sold by subscription at first, but it became, thanks to the sales they were able to make, the object of so much counterfeiting that lists of subscribers had to be opened. Hence the question in the epigraph, taken from Virgil's Bucolics:
- Quid domini facient, audent cum talia fures? (What are masters like to do, if their knaves are so bold?)[4]
- Answer: a subscription.
The title of Acts of the Apostles has been the subject of contradictory explanations: either the writers meant by "apostles" the men of the Revolution whose acts they ridiculed, or they ironically referred to themselves by this name as "apostles of liberty and royal democracy".[5]
The editors were less concerned with propaganda than with polemical warfare: "Drinkers, swindlers, back-alley runners and gamblers, they had a nice collection of vices; Champcenetz alone brought them all together". Their favorite targets were Mirabeau and the Duke of Orleans, the Jacobins called "Jacobites".[6]
These editors, for the most part paid by the civil list — except for Suleau, whose disinterestedness seems to have been proven —, of the monarchy and the Church, were greatly inspired by the manner of Voltaire, the author whom they quoted most willingly. They even borrowed a certain number of their epigraphs from the most risky works, the Tales, the Pucelle, etc.[7]
The Acts of the Apostles used the weapon of the political press, whose development was remarkable in this period, by employing the methods of parody and burlesque.[8] They admitted all the forms of the joke, the epigram, the banter, the song, the pun and sometimes the Gallicisms.[7] This publication laughed at everything, even the most sinister things. They sought to smother the incipient Terror under ridicule. Thus, they persiflated, in verse and prose, the innovation of the guillotine, finding that "M. Guillotin cuts to the chase a little bit", and even lending him... an ulterior motive of aristocracy: that of ennobling the crime.[7]
Expanding on the name of the guillotine, they said they considered it "gifted and flowing", but they also proposed to name the machine after one of the presidents of the Assembly, Coupé or Tuault. The honor of renaming it seemed to them to suit Mirabeau well: the guillotine thus became the "Mirabelle".[7] The prose then gave way to verse:
- Guillotin,
- Médecin,
- Politique,
- Imagine un beau matin
- Que pendre est inhumain
- Et peu patriotique.
- Aussitôt
- II lui faut
- Un supplice.
- Qui sans corde ni poteau
- Supprime de bourreau
- L’office.
- C’est en vain que l’on publie
- Que c’est pure jalousie
- D’un suppôt
- Du tripot
- D’Hippocrate,
- Qui d’occire impunément,
- Même exclusivement,
- Se flatte.[9]
The names of the contributors to the Acts of the Apostles are not all known. However, some of the editors have been identified: Jean-Gabriel Peltier, Rivarol, Champcenetz, the Viscount of Ségur, Mirabeau-Tonneau, Suleau, Montlosier, Lauraguais, Bergasse, etc.[10] To oppose the revolutionists, the editors of this sheet held council at the Marquise of Chambonas. Then, they usually made their newspaper at the restaurant Beauvilliers, or at Mafs, in the Palais-Royal. At these so-called evangelical dinners, the "apostles" listened attentively to the initiated, who were the only ones admitted, and who began to talk among themselves, transcribing the conversation in progress on a corner of the table. Thus was written down, mysteriously, the number of the newspaper which was then left on the card of the restaurant owner, from whom it was immediately passed on to a bookseller, named Gathey, whose store adjoined the establishment of Beauvilliers.[11]
This publication stopped in October 1791. It ceased to appear, it is said, on the formal wish of the king, not without inspiring a whole series of small newspapers such as Marchant's Sabats jacobites or the Rocambole des journaux.[7] For Alphonse de Lamartine: "The Acts of the Apostles, a kind of Menippean satire of the time, were the daily parody of the Revolution, a parody more suitable to irritate its anger and to push it beyond than to make it blush of its misguidance".[12]
The collection of the Acts of the Apostles includes 311 numbers, gathered in ten or eleven volumes in-8°, of which each is called version; and contains 30 numbers, an introduction and an engraved plate. The eleventh and last version, volume remained incomplete and contains only 11 numbers, and the Petits paquets, forming a sort of supplement to the collection. There was a counterfeit edition in twenty volumes in-12. Morceaux choisis (Selected Pieces) of the Acts of the Apostles were published abroad with explanatory notes (London, 1790, in-12).
Notes
- ↑ Guilhaumou, Jacques (2003). "La Guerre des Mots: On Dit, Nouvelles et Dialogues dans la Presse Révolutionnaire (1791-1793)." In: Michel Biard, Annie Crépin & Bernard Gainot, eds., La Plume et le Sabre. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, pp. 101–10.
- ↑ Martin, Jean-Clément (2012). Nouvelle Histoire de la Révolution Française. Paris: Place des Éditeurs.
- ↑ Pascal Dupuy, (2011). "Annie Duprat (dir.), Révolutions et Mythes Identitaires. Mots, Violence, Mémoire," Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, No. 366, pp. 171–73.
- ↑ Virgil (1978). Eclogues. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, p. 17.
- ↑ Hatin (1861), pp. 11–13.
- ↑ Hatin (1861), pp. 55–57.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Vapereau, Gustave (1876). "Actes des Apôtres." In: Dictionnaire Universel des Littératures. Paris: Hachette, p. 24.
- ↑ Rétat, Pierre (2003). "Le Début du Combat Politique dans les Journaux de 1789." In: Michel Biard, Annie Crépin & Bernard Gainot, eds., La Plume et le Sabre. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, pp. 39–48.
- ↑ Guillotin, Physician, Politics, Imagine one fine morning That hanging is inhuman And unpatriotic. Immediately He needs A torture. That without rope or post Removes from the executioner The office. It is in vain that one publishes That it is pure jealousy Of a servant Of the tripot Of Hippocrates, That to kill with impunity, Even exclusively, Flatters himself.
- ↑ Hatin (1861), p. 7.
- ↑ Duprat, Annie (2000). "Un Réseau de Libraires Royalistes à Paris sous la Terreur," Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, Vol. III, No. 321, pp. 45–68.
- ↑ Lamartine, Alphonse de (1853). Histoire des Constituants, vol. 3. Paris: Victor Lecou/Pagnerre, p. 218.
References
- Baecque, Antoine de (1996). "Les Ridicules de l'Homme Nouveau. Un Groupe de Satiristes sous la Révolution," Mots, No. 48, pp. 15–32.
- Gallois, Léonard (1845). Histoire des Journaux et des Journalistes de la Révolution Française. Paris: Bureau de la Société de l'Industrie Fraternelle.
- Gough, Hugh (1988). The Newspaper Press in the French Revolution. Chicago, Ill.: The Dorsey Press.
- Hatin, Eugène (1861). Histoire Politique et Littéraire de la Presse en France, Vol. 7. Paris: Poulet-Malassis et De Broise.
- Maspero-Clerc, Hélène (1973). Un Journaliste Contre-révolutionnaire: Jean-Gabriel Peltier (1760-1825). Paris: Société d'Études Robespierriste.
- Osen, James L. (1995). Royalist Political Thought during the French Revolution. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
- Pellet, Marcellin (1873). Un Journal Royaliste en 1789: Les Actes des Apôtres, 1789-1791. Paris: Armand le Chevalier.
- Popkin, Jeremy D. (1990). Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789–1799. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
- Retat, Pierre (1988). "L'Année 1789 Vue par les Journaux: Problèmes et Propositions," Dix-huitième Siècle, No. 20, pp. 83–98.
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