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Character assassination has always been a very effective weapon to win political battles or settle personal scores. This assertion is certainly true regarding the French Revolution (1789–99), in whose political culture and practices attacks on character, identity, and private life played a key part. Character assassinations in journals, pamphlets, caricatures, and by word of mouth, a habit which had already flourished under the prerevolutionary governments of Louis XV and XVI, targeted almost all leading political figures after 1789: from Marie-Antoinette to Robespierre.² Readers might be familiar with famous eighteenth-century caricatures depicting Louis XVI as a gluttonous pig and his wife as a spoiled, promiscuous foreigner who took little interest in the country's well-being.³ Throughout the early 1790s, similar smear campaigns were directed at whole groups of undesirables: foreigners, often accused of forming a fifth column, and nobles, labeled as traitors and parasites to the nation.⁴ Character assassination equally targeted the revolutionary camp: abroad, where the British press portrayed the sans-culotte movement as cannibals, and from inside France, where false claims could quickly end politicians' lives and careers. Even such a man of exemplary conduct as Maximilien Robespierre, nicknamed the Incorruptible, became the victim of character assassination after his fall on 9 Thermidor year II (July 27, 1794) when his enemies painted him as a bloodthirsty tyrant who had harbored shameful private vices.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137344168_10

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