Camille Desmoulins, Revolutionary Orator, 1760-94
For a few years an impoverished barrister became one of the most effective orators and journalists of the French Revolution, writes John Hartcup.
The studious and childlike nature of Camille Desmoulins blossomed into revolutionary vigour on the day that he called the mob to arms in the gardens of the Palais Royal. Only then did his talents as a writer and rabble-rouser emerge. Up to this time he was miserably poor. What could be less promising than a barrister without a brief, a writer without a public, a tub-thumper with an impediment in his speech?
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