Hébert

Hébert, JACQUES RENÉ, commonly known as Père Duchesne, one of the most despicable characters of the French Revolution, was born at Alençon, in 1755. At an early age he went to Paris as a servant, but was dismissed from more than one situation for embezzling money. Soon after the commencement of the Revolution he became one of the most prominent members of the extreme Jacobins; and when this group established Le Père Duchesne newspaper, for the purpose of crushing the constitutional paper edited by Lemaire and bearing the same title, Hébert was made editor of it. And he conducted his paper with such reckless ribaldry as to make himself a darling of the mob. In consequence of the events of the 10th August he became a member of the revolutionary council, and played a conspicuous part in the massacres of September. He was one of the commission appointed to examine Marie Antoinette, and his name will survive in unending infamy for one foul and baseless charge he brought against her. He and his associates, called Hébertists or Enragés, were mainly instrumental in converting the church of Notre Dame into a temple of Reason. But he went too fast for Robespierre, who got rid of him through the guillotine, 24th March 1794. His whining cowardice on the scaffold earned him the jeers and insults of the fickle mob.