And Fifteen

[montagnarde1793]

XV.

9 Thermidor.—What Robespierre is reproached with.—The session of the Convention.—Le Bas’s sacrifice.—State of the Thermidorians’ spirit.—Arrest of Robespierre and his friends.—They are released and go to the Commune.—Robespierre’s hesitations.—His assassination.—Le Bas’s suicide.—His parents and friends imprisoned.

Louis Blanc asked himself with what Robespierre was reproached the 9th Thermidor: “Was he reproached for having personified a regime of blood, pushed to revolutionary excesses, filled the prisons, vaunted the reign of the guillotine? No: what was imputed to him, to the contrary, was having protected former nobles, making the fieriest revolutionary committees of Paris destitute, defending Camille Desmoulins, and trying to save Danton.”—Here Louis Blanc indicates the words of Billaud-Varennes reproduced in the Moniteur: “The first time that I denounced Danton to the Committee, Robespierre rose, like one furious, saying that he saw my intentions; that I had wanted to lose the best patriots. This made me see the widening abyss beneath our feet.”—And the historian adds: “It was Louchet, he was seen, who proposed the arrest, and, three weeks later, this same Louchet asked, as the only method for public safety, to have the Terror put on the order of the day.”
These statements disconcert and give a renewed cruelty to the drama which passed at the Convention.
Let us try to reconstitute the part which pertains to Le Bas:
Robespierre, attacked by Billaud-Varennes, Barère, Vadier, and Tallien, tries to speak; his voice is drowned out by the cries of his colleagues and the bell that the president Thuriot rings without interruption.
Le Bas demands, he too, the right to speak; he tries to make noise to obtain it.
He is recalled to order.
He insists.
“To the Abbaye with the seditious one!” say many voices from the Mountain.
“For the last time,” cries Robespierre, “will you let me speak, president of assassins?”
Thuriot continues to ring his bell and Robespierre returns to his place, worn out from fatigue and anger.
His arrest is requested. It is backed by all parties.
“I am as guilty as my brother,” says Robespierre the younger; “I share his virtues; I want to share his fate!”
(I lend this account to Mignet and Thiers; their antipathy for Robespierre will preserve me from the accusation of prejudice. I now cite the Moniteur, a still more partial organ, if it’s possible.)
“MOST VOICES: ‘Put the arrest to a vote!’
It is decreed unanimously[1].
All the members rise and make the room ring with cries of: Long live Liberty! Long live the Republic!
LOUCHET: ‘We have meant to vote for the arrest of the two Robespierres, Saint-Just, and Couthon.’
LE BAS: ‘I do not wish to share the shame of this decree; I ask to be arrested as well…’”
This cry from the heart, this admirable movement of abnegation has no effect on most historians; Thiers does not even relate it; he contents himself to note: “Le Bas requested to be added (to the decree of arrest); his request was accorded to him, as to Robespierre the younger…” Not a cry of pity! Not a word of emotion in relating the devotion of these two men and the spinelessness of the Assembly, who adds them to the decree without protest!
The conventionnel Baudot, though yet Robespierre’s enemy showed more heart in writing:
“The Convention put Robespierre the younger to death for no other cause than that of his fraternal devotion, his familial piety. In effect, no one thought to call the young Robespierre into question, but he wanted absolutely to share his brother’s fate. It was a laudable, legitimate despair, not a reason to pass the death sentence on him. It’s a barbarous act to make an innocent man perish because he loves his brother, was this brother guilty. Yet no one could be found to oppose this assassination attempt. Every voice which kept silent is guilty; let him show himself who spoke! Besides, in the same session, Le Bas was sent to his death for his attachment to Saint-Just[2]… Would it be believed that Robespierre the younger and Le Bas’s accusation excited a ferocious joy in the Marais and even in the Assembly?”
Hamel, speaking of Le Bas says, from his side:
“But here right away, in his turn, rises one of the youngest members of the assembly, Philippe Le Bas, Saint-Just’s gentle and heroic companion. In vain do some of his colleagues grip him by the coattails, wishing to keep him back in his seat; he resists all their efforts, and, in a ringing voice [he says]: “I do not wish to share the shame of this decree; I ask to be arrested as well!” All the world’s seductions and real joys attached this young man to existence. An adoring wife, a son of barely a few weeks, what more proper to slip the immoderate desire to live into a man’s heart? To sacrifice himself, was it not at the same time to sacrifice to poor little one to whom he was called to become guide and support? Le Bas did not hesitate one instant to sacrifice all his affections to what his conscious showed him as duty and even honor. There is no more convincing argument in Robespierre’s favor than this sublime sacrifice.”
Let us take up the Moniteur’s receipt again:
“ELIE LACOSTE: ‘I ask the arrest of Robespierre the younger, etc….’
The arrest of Robespierre the younger is decreed.
Lively applause.
FRERON: ‘Citizen colleagues, on this day the Patrie and liberty are going to escape from their ruin.’
ROBESPIERRE: ‘Yes, for the brigands triumph.’
FRERON: ‘They wanted to form a triumvirate which recalled the bloody proscriptions of Scylla; they wanted to raise themselves up upon the ruins of the Republic, and these [who wished this] are Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just.’
MANY VOICES[3]: ‘And Le Bas.’
FRERON: ‘Couthon is a tiger spoiled by the blood of the national representation. He dared, as a royal pastime, to speak in the society of the Jacobins of five or six heads of the Convention. (Yes, yes, come cries from all parties.) This was but the commencement, and he wanted to make of our cadavers so many steps to mount the throne.’
COUTHON: ‘I wanted to mount the throne; yes.’[4]
FRERON: ‘I also ask the decree of arrest against Saint-Just, Le Bas, and Couthon.’
ELIE LACOSTE: ‘I support his proposition. It is I who first said to the Committee of Public Safety that Couthon, Saint-Just, and Robespierre formed a triumvirate…’”
And after having added some words on Saint-Just, he ends by this conclusion, at least strange, in regard to Le Bas, of whom he has not yet spoken: “’I ask the decree of arrest against Couthon, Saint-Just, and Le Bas.’”
“This proposition,” says the Moniteur, “was decreed amidst the most lively applause[5].”
A certain number of determined people, in a hurry to be done with it, cry: “To the bar! To the bar!” Amongst them Clauzel, deputy of the Ariege, who later with transport will take part in the coup d’etat of Brumaire, and who, become member of the legislative body of the consulate will not cease to give much devotion and zeal to the new power, is distinguished.
The bailiffs hesitate; they do not dare to execute the president’s orders.
Robespierre and his friends have pity on their trouble; they go themselves to the bar and are delivered to the gendarmerie.
Le Bas is sent to the Conciergerie while his friends are transferred to the Luxembourg, to Saint-Lazare, or elsewhere.
But before imprisoning him, they wanted to be sure of his papers. The Committee of General Security had him driven to his home, where the following statement is drawn up:

This day, 9 Thermidor, 2nd year of the republic one and indivisible.
We, Michel Crespin and Simon Langlois, members of the revolutionary committee of the Section des Piques, on the requisition of the citizen Demonceaux, secretary-agent of the Committee of General Security, carrying an order of said Committee in these terms:
“National Convention; Committee of General Security and of surveillance of the National Convention.—From 9 Thermidor, Year II of the French Republic.—The Committee of General Security moves that Le Bas, deputy to the Convention, be put under arrest and taken to the prison of La Force, where he will be placed in secret, and his papers put under seal, this all in virtue of today’s decree.—The present carrier charged with the execution and authorized to requisition civil and military authority.—The representatives of the people: Bayle, Elie Lacoste, Louis de Bas-Rhin, and Dubarran.”
Are transported with the aforementioned citizen Demonceaux rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg no. 148 to the domicile of the aforementioned citizen Le Bas, where being in the third floor overlooking the courtyard, where we found the aforementioned Le Bas, who having been driven from the Committee of General Security by the Convention, and after the order communicated to him by the aforementioned requirement of which he told us he had perfect knowledge, he opened all the buildings containing papers for us which we extracted and removed to a little cabinet on the third floor, the same floor as above, having seen on a little courtyard by a sole window with two shutters, and on which, such that the door closed with the key, rested in the hands of the citizen Demonceaux, he had affixed two seals on bands of white paper, on the two extremities on which is the imprint in soft red wax of the stamp of the Revolutionary Committee of the Section des Piques, the cachets being occupied elsewhere, left to the charge and keeping of the citizen Rousseau, staying in the rue des Capucines, who recognized them as being sound and whole and was charged with rendering them in the same state under the penalties carried by the law and who has the right.
And after the requisition made in the aforementioned apartment, there was found in evidence a fuse, a carbine, and a saber, which were taken by the aforementioned citizen Demonceaux, to be deposed to the Committee of General Security.
This all done in presence of all the below named persons who have signed the present document.
And have left the aforementioned citizen Le Bas in the hands of the aforementioned citizen Demonceaux, for the entire execution of the aforementioned order, such that he will be recognized.
Signed: Le Bas, Crespin, Demonceaux, Rousseau, and Langlois[6].
(National Archives F7 4770.)

However, in the Convention’s coup d’Etat, the 91 members of the Commune present oppose energetic decisions (the national agent had received at five, by the interposition of the commissary of civil administrations, police and tribunals, notification of the decree of arrest, and his substitute had assisted in the session of the Assembly). The administrators of police are immediately charged with prescribing to the jailors of the different houses of arrest not to receive any detainees; the commissaries taken in the Commune are designated to go, accompanied by armed force, to deliver Robespierre and the other prisoners; and the following address is addressed to the 48 sections:
“Citizens, the patrie is more than ever in danger. Traitors dictate the laws in the Convention, which they oppress. They have proscribed Robespierre who had the consoling principle of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul declared; Saint-Just, that apostle of truth, who put an end to the treason of the Rhine and the North, who, along with Le Bas, made the Republic’s arms triumph; Couthon, that virtuous citizen who has naught but a living heart and head, but in whom these burn with ardor and patriotism; Robespierre the younger who presided over the victories of the Army of Italy.
Who are their enemies? One Amar, noble of 30,000 livres in rents, Dubarrau, viscount, and monsters of that species, Collot d’Herbois, that partisan of the infamous Danton, actor who, under the ancien regime, had stolen his troop’s case; that Bourdon de l’Oise who calumnied the Commune of Paris ceaselessly; that Barrere, who belonged to all factions in their turn, and who had the prices of the days of workers fixed to make them perish of hunger. There are the traitors that the Counsel denounces to you. People, rise up! Let us not lose the fruit of the 10th August and of the 31st May, and let us throw all these traitors into the grave.

LESCOT-FLEURIOT, mayor.
BLIN, secretary-clerk-adjoined.”

While the Committees of Public Safety and General Security counteracts the arrests taken by the Commune, the Society of the Jacobins, to the contrary, corresponds with it, declaring itself in permanence, and, at two-thirty in the morning, delegates ten of its members—Duplay among them—to unite with the Commune and “with it watch over the safety of public matters.”
However Robespierre and his friends had been removed to the prisons where they had been transferred by the Committee of General Security.
At the moment when Le Bas left the Conciergerie, a fiacre stopped at the prison gate, and two young women descended from it all in tears. The one was Elisabeth Duplay, the wife of the voluntarily proscribed, who still suffering, came to bring her husband diverse effects, a mattress, a blanket; the other, Henriette Le Bas, she who would have married Saint-Just. In seeing her husband free and as led in triumph by an ardent crowd, Mme Le Bas felt first an inexpressible sentiment of joy, ran to him, threw herself into his arms, and went with him to the entry of the Hotel-de-Ville. But dark presentiments tortured Philippe’s soul: his wife nourished: he wanted to spare her too strong emotions, and encouraged her strongly to return home, in addressing a thousand recommendations on the subject of their son to her.
Le Bas found, at the Hotel-de-Ville, Saint-Just and Robespierre: this last had ceded to his friends insistences, after having refused to go to the Commune.
The rest is known: Maximilien refusing to sanction the call to insurrection against the Convention with his signature; Couthon, tardily arrived, imploring him to address a proclamation to the armies, and Robespierre hesitating, temporizing; the emissaries of the Convention proclaiming, in the torchlight, the decree of outlawry and mobilizing the people against the Commune…
Le Bas, during this time, sends a letter to Labreteche, commandant of the Camp des Sablons. We know that the young conventionnel exercised upon what was called “the School of Mars” a considerable influence; he could have made a direct appeal to their intervention; he abstained from this.
Here is his letter:

A dreadful plot has just exploded. I am among a number of faithful representatives that the conspirators have had arrested. My suspicions about the destination of the camp are realized: it is for you to oppose what one does not abuse him to the point of cutting his own throat in marching under the standards of traitors. The people observe you; they are determined to save themselves: think to be faithful to them.

There is Le Bas’s last writing; some instants afterwards, the gendarme Merda[7] traitorously approached Robespierre and shattered his jaw with a shot; Le Bas, believing fatally wounded he who personified, for him, liberty and the Republic, pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head: he thus escaped the insults of the “rabid dogs of the guillotine.”
His body was lifted at seven in the morning and immediately taken to the cemetery of Saint-Paul, section de l’Arsenal[8].
Less happy than he, his friends were subject to the worst outrages and the worst sufferings—physical and moral—before falling under the blade of the guillotine.
I will not retrace the tragedy which played out in the Place de la Revolution; it is too well-known. May it suffice for me to evoke the memory of those women, luxuriously dressed and with bare throats, who garnished the window on all the route of the tumbrels, rue Saint-Denis, rue de la Ferronnerie, and rue Saint-Honoré, shouting: “To the guillotine!” It is the first sign of the joyous reign of girls: Barras and Therezia Cabarrus, Tallien’s wife, led the dance.

* * *

With Robespierre, with Saint-Just, with Le Bas, ends the great but terrible period of the Revolution; the second begins, made from baseness and intrigue, from cupidity and hypocrisy.
In none of their fictions, do poets and imaginative historians describe an époque—at once sublime and bloody—more formidable than the five years which have just passed: “Neither the century of Caesar and Octavian in Rome,” Lamartine has said, “nor the century of Charlemagne in Gaul and Germany, nor the century of Pericles in Athens, nor the century of Leo X in Italy, nor the century of Louis XIV in France, nor the century of Cromwell in England.”
An in an élan superb in its lyricism, Lamartine adds: “…The light shines at all points on the horizon of the times. The shadows reply. The prejudiced recoil. Consciences are freed. Tyrannies tremble. Peoples rise up. Thrones are toppled. Intimidated Europe tries to strike, and, stricken herself, retreats to watch this great spectacle from afar. This fight to the death for the cause of human reason is a thousand times more glorious than the armed victories which succeed it. It conquered the world with inalienable truths in place of conquering a nation by precariously gains of territory. It enlarged the domain of man in place of enlarging the limits of a people. It martyred it for glory and virtue for ambition. We are proud to be of a race of men to whom Providence has permitted to conceive such thoughts, and to be children of a century which has printed the impulse to such movements on the human spirit. France is glorified in her intelligence, in her role, in her soul, in her blood! The heads of these men fall one by one; some justly, others unjustly; but they all fall in the work. We accuse and absolve. We cry and curse. Individuals are innocent or guilty, touching or odious, victims or executioners. The action is great and planed above its instruments like the always pure cause on the horrors of the battlefield. After five years, the Revolution is no longer anything but a vast cemetery. On the grave of each of its victims, a word is written which characterizes him: one the one philosophy, on the other, eloquence; on this one genius, on that one courage; here crime, there virtue. But on all is written: Died for the future and Worker for humanity.”

* * *

The evening of 9 Thermidor, Duplay, his wife, and his young son are incarcerated in Sainte-Pelagie, where Mme Duplay, imprisoned with women of ill-repute, dies, two days later, a death whose cause will without doubt remain a mystery forever, but which has not less than all the appearances of a murder[9]. Some days later, Le Bas’s widow, and his older sister, are arrested in their turn and taken from prison to prison until 18 Frimaire Year III[10] His two other sisters, who find themselves still in Belgium, are not spared. His parents, further away, who have never seen Robespierre, are enveloped in the proscription. Simon, Duplay’s nephew, is also thrown in prison. “There is something remarkable in the imprisonment of this family,” Baudot said, “that one of Duplay’s daughters, married far from her father’s house to a husband strongly opposed to the Revolution, was found after much searching and imprisoned for having borne the name of Duplay.”
As to Le Bas’s elderly father, these events struck at his reason; he was imprisoned for now less than three months in the citadel of Doullens; the document which ordered this measure, more idiotic than unjust, is signed: “A. Dumont, Louis (of the Lower Rhine), Goupilleau (of Fontenai), Amar, Legendre, Barbeau-Dubarran, Voulland, and Vadier.” By an excess of zeal, Dumont, who had written this piece by his hand, addressed it to the national agent of the district of Doullens with this note: “You will find, adjoined here, an arrest whose execution cannot suffer any delay, which is to tell you that immediately received, immediately must it be executed, and that the result should succeed in this with no loss of time. I count on your zeal.—Safety and fraternity.”
All the papers belonging to Le Bas and Duplay were confiscated; many were important; almost all were kept by Courtois or destroyed by him; those that I’ve reproduced are the only ones that were restituted to the family of the conventionnel[11].

[1] It’s obviously erroneously that the Moniteur uses “unanimously.” [Note: from here on, I will only produce footnotes with information apart from page-citations.]
[2] It must be read “for Robespierre and for his own convictions.”
[3] It is unfortunate that the Moniteur did not conserve the names of these valiant ones.
[4] The Moniteur does not register the melancholy irony of this “yes” pronounced by a cripple.
[5] To get an idea of the mentality of the editors of the Moniteur during the period which followed 9 Thermidor, it is necessary to read and meditate on the following piece, appearing some days later (18 Thermidor).
LITERATURE—POETRY
To the National Convention, the recognizing Patrie.
(Ode on the revolution of 9 Thermidor, offered to the Convention by C.-J. Trouvé, one of the editors of the MONITEUR).

O virtues and courage,
Holy asylum, Eternal Temple,
Which will reverberate from age to age
From their solemn memory;
You, who of our brave cohorts
To the centuries transmit your exploits,
O Pantheon! open your doors,
Let your vault open to the accents of my voice!

Hear the voice of the Patrie;
Yes, it is I who comes this day,
To the most sublime energy
To pay the most just return;
It is I; it is my recognition
Which comes to honor our children:
O day of happiness for France!
Day of immortality for her representatives!

On the column of glory
I engrave their dearest names;
The enemy reading of their victory
Will recognize my true friends;
And by their unanimous agreement,
Admiring the august pride,
They will see the audacity of crime
Pales in a sole breath before Liberty

Respond parricidal dictator
What are your sincere projects!
You said, in your avid heart:
Soon they will be my subjects
Terror will make my crown,
My scepter, Death’s scythe,
Cadavers will make my throne,
And the blood, in my soul, will snuff out remorse

But the volcano of the Mountain
Boils and brews beneath your feet:
In vain its menace accompanies you,
It is the arrest of your trespasses
Go, traitor, with your vile accomplices
Go expiate all your wrongs
Is it cruel enough torture
To avenge all the evils that the monsters have done me?

They flattered themselves, these villains,
That the mask of virtue
Would conceal their appalling features;
Their features and their hearts are bared:
How hideous they are! What assembly
Of baseness and atrocity!
Virtue alone has courage;
But crime, for sister, has but cowardice

Too long has crime been painted,
Let us take up sweeter colors, etc.

Following are three lines of a sentimental order in which the representatives receive salutary warnings, which will have much use to meditate on:

And you faithful representatives,
O you, my dear liberators,
Be always true models
Of patriotism and of mores

I believe I have to reproduce these stanzas; they concern Le Bas who makes part of the “vile accomplices,” “monsters,” “villains,” “hideous ones,” etc. And then, for as lamentable as this song of triumph is, for as piteous and despicable as this official bard and those who paid him are, it is agreeable to me to show to what heights the Thermidorian blows could rise; it is not in the learned compositions of historians, no more than in the hymns sang later by more experimental poets where one must look for the just note of 9 Thermidor; it is among the contemporary writings ordered by measure, and it is of the first rank.
I attach another document here, this one completely official, and which seems to me a masterpiece of unconscious denial:

“COMMUNE OF PARIS.—DEPARTMENT OF POLICE

13 Thermidor

Year II of the French Republic one and indivisible:

General report of the surveillance of the police.

The groups were very good, even the day before yesterday in the evening. Nothing was treated but the great crisis and the safety of the Republic which followed from it.
Parisian idolatry was blamed, in citing Robespierre, that not enough was known.
It seems that the events of the 9th through the 10th have given a new degree of energy to all true republicans, who are brought together to return to the cause of the Patrie. Joy for the punishment of the traitors is at its height, and all dispositions of citizens are reassured.
A singer, in the Place Égalité, sang couplets against the tyrant Robespierre; he was shouted down by three particular people who said: Down with the singer. These three particular people were arrested by the public and driven to the home of the commissary.
An inspector of police, on guard at the Convention, seized in the guard corps an old card game, and replaced it with a republican one. It was remarked that many of these old games recalling tyranny exist.
The electoral club closed its session yesterday evening.
There were some disputes, yesterday, for the steps between the sections, far from the deputations to the National Assembly; they have had no following.”
(Following is the enumeration of several suicides.)
“Rue Benoit, Section de l’Unite, the sewer was open, a worn-out horse-harness was close to this sewer, which was closed only by weak planks, and the backside of a horse passed into the sewer; such efforts as it could make, the backside led the rest of the body, and the horse, having fallen in the sewer, died there, and has been removed in pieces.
Upon reading the newspaper, yesterday, at four or five in the morning, where it could be seen that all the members of the Commune were outside the law, the citizen Michel, one of the administrators of police, manifested the symptoms of insanity, and weakness succeed; returned to him, his furor made him take a hand to himself; he stabbed himself four times with a knife; he was seized and driven to the house of welfare for the Patrie.
It is said they are not dangerous.
Much lard has been delivered in the sections. Order reigns.

For report:
The administrators in the police department.
THIBOUST.”
(National Archives, F7, 4432).
[6] We must, to shed light on this document, attach another to it:
“Today, 2 Fructidor, Year II of the French Republic one and indivisible.
We, Nicolas Lhuillier and Laurent Garnier, commissioners of the Revolutionary Committee of Surveillance and of the Section des Piques, on the requisition of the citizen representatives of the undersigned people, charged by the Convention with the examination of the papers of the condemned deputies, are transported to the domicile of Le Bas, put to death by the law, where being in the presence of the citizen representatives, have placed our seals, after having recognized them sound and whole, such that those affixed by the department according to the authorization of the representatives of the people, which having entered into the room of the aforementioned Le Bas seizing the papers, have had extracted those which they have found necessary and useful to their operations, after which having received the declaration of the citizen Jean Louis Rousseau, who says that the seals were affixed in the home of the aforementioned Le Bas about five in the evening, the last 9 Thermidor, in the presence of Le Bas, accompanied by a gendarme and an agent of the Committee of General Security and attending that there were no effects in the room relating to the aforementioned papers, having, according to the citizen representatives, left free the aforementioned room and discharged only the guardian of the seals, leaving him still surveying the effects remaining in evidence.
From all above, having made and prepared the present document that who have signed with the citizen representatives.
It should be noted here that, of the nine signatures that follow, that of Guffroy is the first; this personage, we will recall, had played a villainous enough role some time before Le Bas’s marriage. (See, higher up, the manuscript of the widow of the conventionnel.)
[7] Merda later changed his name to Méda, which is adopted, from instinct or by euphemism, by almost all historians. Hamel reestablished his real name by method of authentic documents (Histoire de Robespierre, III, p. 791); he could also follow the destination of this personage, who did not cease to make money from Robespierre’s death: he was named under-lieutenant in the 5th regiment of hunters, from the 25th Thermidor, for having opened fire on the traitors Couthon and Robespierre (Moniteur of the 28th Thermidor: 15 August 1794). Fatigued by his obsessions, Collot d’Herbois and Barère later declared him no assassin (Letter from Merda to the Directory, dated 20 Germinal Year IV: Girardot’s collection). He finished in advancement, for he died colonel and baron of the Empire. (National Archives F7 4770.)
[8] The report of Raymond, public functionary, and of Colmet, commissioner of police of the Section des Lombards, assisted by the citizen Rousselle, member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Section de la Cite, in the absence of the citizen justice of the peace (taken from Beuchot’s collection).—The Minutes of the Sessions of the Convention (tome 42, page 216) contains, among others, the following mention: “The justice of the peace of the Section des Gravilliers brought to the National Convention… the effects found on the cadaver of Le Bas (at the Commune); they were instantly sent to the Committees of Public Safety and General Security (Session of 9 Thermidor).” V. the extract of the death certificate further on.
[9] Here is the text of the document that I found in Le Bas’s collection (see similarly the annotation at the bottom of page 331):
Section des Sans-culottes
From 11 Thermidor Year II of the Republic:
We, commissioners of police of the aforementioned section, have been requisitioned to be transported at seven in the morning to the house of arrest of Pelagie, in effect to confirm and prepare the confession forced from a citoyenne detained in the aforementioned house, and the requisition was made to us by the citizen Dauphinot, concierge of the aforementioned house, who has signed the requisition.
On what we, commissioners of police, accompanied by the citizen clerk, we were taken in the aforementioned house and in the presence of the citizen Ballay, administrator of police, by citizen Dufrene, police inspector, and citizen Dauphinot, we have entered a room on the second floor, no. 1, were we found a female cadaver, in a chemise, a red handkerchief around her head, her left arm pressed against the window, her body perpendicular, the two feet turned out, attached to a black ribbon, and this ribbon attached to a bar of the window, the cadaver hanged on it. Following having made a search in the room where the cadaver was found, whom the citizen Dauphinot has told us is that of Francoise-Eleonore Vaugeois, Duplay’s wife, fifty-nine years of age, entered yesterday into the aforementioned house by order of the Committee of General Security; we have found in one of her pockets a red wallet, in which there was the sum of 28 livres 10 sols in assignats, three livres nine sols in silver coins, a six-liard coin and a two sols in copper, a token of silver, twelve papers of different kinds, like letters, receipts, and her provision of the oath, which has been noted and paraphrased by the citizen Ballay. Then we had a ring, mounted in gold and having for a stone a pressed flower surrounded by small rubies, removed from her finger, and a gold band, two pairs of glasses, Indian negligee, a striped taffeta skirt, a white skirt, a white pair of stays, a black overdress, a chemise, a pair of pockets, three linen handkerchiefs, one handkerchief of muslin, a pair of cotton stockings, a bonnet decorated with lace marked M. D., and the handkerchief she has had son her head, a pair of gold earrings; the assignats and the jewelry have been returned to the wallet.
We have requisitioned the citizen Barrias, surgeon-major of the Section des Sans-culottes, to the effect of examining the aforementioned cadaver and make his report on it to us. On what, the aforementioned citizen Barrias has declared to have recognized has having found a cadaver attached to a window bar, which cut off the tracheal artery and the two jugulars, and having examined the surface of the body, neither gun wounds nor abrasions nor blunt punctures, he found the thighs and legs darkened with blood from cellular tissues and fat in the body, estimated that the cause of death was determined by the abovementioned strangulation, that the cadaver could have been there since midnight or one in the morning, and signed.
And all the above effects they left in the keeping of the citizen Dauphinot, at his charge that they represent at all time what will be requisitioned from him, and the twelve papers mentioned at present, the citizen Ballay was charged with returning them to the Committee of General Security, and has sealed and signed them presently.
BALLAY, DUFRESNE, DAUPHINOT, HENRIOT, secretary-clerk
BLONDÉ, commissioner of police”

We have seen, above, that Duplay, still behind bars, was disquieted at Fouquier-Tinville’s trial, and was not released, after acquittal, until 25 Floréal, Year III.
As to his son, he was kept in prison until 9 Thermidor Year III, one year, day for day, after his incarceration. I pray the reader to think on the following piece, and I recall that the young Duplay was incarcerated at the age of sixteen.

House of arrest and justice of Plessis,
called Equality

“Report of release, delivered to the citizen Maurice Duplay, 8 Thermidor Year III of the French Republic one and indivisible.
The Committee of General Security affirms that the citizen Maurice Duplay, detained for a year with no other motive than those of general security, aged seventeen years, is to be put it liberty and that the seals placed on his papers are to be removed.
The administration of police is charged with the execution of this order.
The members of the Committee of General Security:
Signed: SEVESTRE, PIERRET, BAILLY, BAILLEUL, KERVELEGAN,
DELAUNAY, COURTOIS, BOUDIN
Certificate conforms to the original deposed in the aforementioned house.
Paris, this 9 Thermidor Year III
The clerk-concierge (Signature)
(Piece from Le Bas’s collection)

Let us recall, to remember, that the father and son were arrested anew, the 27th Floréal Year IV, not to be released until the 7th Prairial Year V, after acquittal in Babeuf’s trial.
[10] Here are the acts ordering the arrest and release of Mme Le Bas.
First piece
“This day, 13 Thermidor, 2nd Year of the Republic one and indivisible.
We, Nicolas Lhullier and Michel Crespin, members of the Revolutionary Committee of Surveillance of the Section des Piques, on the requisition made to us by the citizens Patté and Sigogne, secretarial agent of the Committee of General Security and of the Convention, on today’s date and whose order follows: ‘The Committee orders that the citoyenne widow Le Bas be immediately arrested, in the house called la Petite Force; the most precise seizure must be made of her papers and those which seem suspect must be taken to the Committee.—The representatives of the people, members of the Committee of General Security and of the Convention: VOULLAND, LOUIS (of the Lower Rhine).’
In consequence of the order of the Committee of General Security, we the lower-mentioned commissioners, were taken to the rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, no. 148, to the domicile of the named widow Le Bas, where climbing to the third floor where we found this widow Le Bas, to whom the knowledge of the Committee of General Security’s order was given, which she obeyed, and we were then occupied with the most precise search and examination of the papers of this widow Le Bas, amongst which there was nothing that merits description or would need to be taken to the Committee of General Security. This done, we retired, leaving all the effects in the keeping of the citoyennes Le Bas and Duplay, sister and sister-in-law, and of the citizen Rousseau, previously established guardian of the seals affixed to Le Bas’s papers, and of which he remains guarantor.
From all that we have done above and prepared the present account, we have signed with the denoted below. Let us observe having extracted from the secretary the cachet of this Le Bas, baring the imprint of the statue of Liberty and the words: “Representatives of the French people,” which we have returned to the citizens Sigogne and Patté, so that it may be deposed to the Committee of Security by them, so that they will recognize it, and on the interrogation made to this widow Le Bas to declare to us where the secretary of Robespierre the elder is, she responded that he was her cousin, and that he was staying in her father’s house, rue Saint-Honoré, with two guards, which she has affirmed as true and signed.
(Following these signatures: ÉLISABETH DUPLAY, widow Le Bas, SIGOGNE, PASTÉ, ROUSSEAU, CRESPIN, and LHULLIER.)”
(National Archives, F7, 4770).

Second piece
“Liberty.—Equality.
NATIONAL CONVENTION
Committee of General Security and of Surveillance of the National Convention.
The 18th Frimaire, the third year of the French Republic one and indivisible.
The Committee orders that the widow Le Bas, detained as a suspect, be released and the seals [on her papers] removed.
The members of the Committee of General Security:
Signed: BOURDON, de l’Oise, REVERCHON, LOMONT, MATHIEU, LEGENDRE, p. BARRAS, MOMNAYON, MEAULTE, and BOUDIN.
That the copy conforms to the order deposed to the clerk of the house of arrest of the Luxembourg, the 18th Frimaire, Year III of the French Republic, one and indivisible.
BOSQUIER, secretary-clerk.”
“The Commission of the civil administrators, police and tribunals, certifies that the signature of the citizen Bosquier is that of the clerk of the Luxembourg.
Done in Paris, the 24th Frimaire, 3rd year.
The provisionary charged,
AUMON.”
(Piece from Le Bas’s collection)
[11] Here is the certificate ordering the partial return of the objects seized in Le Bas’s house:
“Liberty, Equality.
BUREAU OF THE NATIONAL DOMAIN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PARIS.
National Convention.—Committee of General Security
From the 25th Pluviôse, Year III of the French Republic, one and indivisible:
Seeing the reclamation of the citoyenne widow Le Bas, staying in Paris, rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, no. 148, section des Piques, and her release on the date of the last 18 Frimaire,
The Committee of General Security orders that all the effects, animals, linens, books, and leather overcoat belonging to her be returned and restituted by the depositories here and in such depots as they would be, all under recognition of having received them.

Also, daughtermestizo, I was actually wrong about La Vie Privée de Robespierre not having anything about Saint-Just (I hadn't actually read the whole thing at the time)... I can type that up too if you're interested...