I am an idiot...

[estellacat]

It was Duquesnoy's 260th birthday yesterday. I was going to mention it and I entirely forgot. If you don't remember who Duquesnoy was, I suggest re-reading That Book About Le Bas.

To summarize, in case you don't remember, he was another Montagnard Conventionnel from Pas-de-Calais who went on mission with Le Bas on several occasions. He was still on

Comments

[citoyenneclark]

Me thinks the wiki article on him needs redoing. It sounds pretty biased against him. "Duquesnoy forgot his dignity as a representative and behaved with an insupportible despotism. Recalled to Paris on 10 August 1794, he succeeded in excluding Tallien from the club des Jacobins and having Guffroy beaten before Carnot."

Translation problem? Somehow I'm not seeing how he actually had someone beat up in front of Carnot. Did the writer mean beaten politically?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Dominique_François_Joseph_Duquesnoy

[estellacat]

Doubtless it does. Unfortunately, the only reputable source I have on Duquesnoy is Soboul's Dictionary, which doesn't mention the incident. French wikipedia does seem to imply that Guffroy did complain of a physical beating, but I'm not sure we have any way of verifying that. At any rate, Guffroy was a pretty nasty piece of work, so I wouldn't blame Duquesnoy too harshly even if it were true.