Jacques-René
Hébert
pseudonym Père (“Father”) Duchesne
born
November 15, 1757, Alençon, France
died March 24, 1794, Paris
political journalist during the French
Revolution who became the chief
spokesman for the Parisian sansculottes
(extreme radical revolutionaries). He
and his followers, who were called
Hébertists, pressured the Jacobin regime
of 1793–94 into instituting the most
radical measures of the Revolutionary
period.
Born
into a bourgeois family, Hébert settled
in Paris in 1780. For the next 10 years
he lived in poverty. He greeted the
outbreak of the Revolution (1789) with
enthusiasm; and in 1790 he launched his
career as a journalist by writing a
series of ribald, sacrilegious political
satires, adopting the pen name le père
Duchesne (a popular comic figure). His
newspaper Le Père Duchesne first
appeared in November 1790 and soon
became one of the most successful
newspapers of the French Revolution.
Although Hébert at first focused his
editorial wrath on the aristocracy and
clergy, he launched a virulent campaign
against King Louis XVI in the spring of
1792.
Hébert
became an influential member of the
Cordeliers Club, and as a representative
to the Revolutionary Commune he helped
plan the popular insurrection that
overthrew the monarchy on August 10,
1792. In the ensuing autumn the
Hébertists had Notre-Dame Cathedral
turned into a Temple of Reason and had
some 2,000 other churches converted to
the worship of Reason. In December
Hébert was elected assistant
procurator-general of the Commune, which
had become the governing body of Paris.
By that time Hébert had also joined the
Jacobin Club. The Jacobin deputies waged
a fierce campaign against the moderate
Girondin faction in the National
Convention, which convened in September
1792. In this struggle Hébert made his
newspaper a mouthpiece of the
sansculottes: he demanded the death
sentence for the king, the elimination
of the Girondins, and the establishment
of a Revolutionary government. Hébert
was a leader of the sansculotte crowds
that forced the Convention to expel the
leading Girondist deputies on June 2,
1793.
Hébert’s supporters organized the
massive demonstrations of Parisian
workers (September 4–5) that forced the
Convention to inaugurate a
state-controlled economy and institute
the Reign of Terror. He strongly
supported the anti-Christian campaign of
the autumn of 1793, which sought to
destroy Roman Catholic institutions in
France.
When
the Committee of Public Safety, the
Convention’s executive body, had
consolidated its power by early 1794,
however, it came to regard Hébert and
his extreme left-wing followers as
dangerous. The Jacobins’ right wing,
under Georges Danton, attacked the
extremism of the Hébertists, and the
Committee’s chief spokesman, Maximilien
Robespierre, joined battle with both
factions. While a food shortage was
stimulating popular discontent, Hébert
on March 4, 1794, persuaded the
Cordeliers Club to call for a popular
uprising. The sansculottes did not
respond, however, and on March 14 the
Committee of Public Safety had Hébert
arrested. He and 17 of his followers
were guillotined 10 days later. His
execution cost the government the
support of the sansculottes and
contributed to the collapse of the
Jacobin dictatorship in July 1794.
