Camille Desmoulins
From Philosopedia
Desmoulins, Lucie Simplice Camille Benôit (2 March 1760 - 5 April 1794)
A French journalist and revolutionary writer, Desmoulins was a fellow student of Robespierre at Paris and became an advocate and an enthusiastic reformer.
In July 1989 he incited the people to the siege of the Bastille, and thus began the Revolution. He edited La Vieux Cordelier and Révolutions de France et de Brabant, in which he stated that Mohammedanism is as credible as Christianity.
Freethought historians describe Desmoulins as a deist to some, an atheist to others, and he preferred paganism to Christianity. Both creeds were more or less unreasonable, he said, but folly for folly he preferred Hercules slaying the Erymanthean boar to Jesus of Nazareth drowning two thousand pigs.
Carlyle called Desmoulins a man of genius, “a fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit—nay, humor.” During the Terror, when the court asked his age, Desmoulins said, “Thirty-three—same as the sans-culotte Jesus” (Jesus without breeches).
Desmoulins was executed with Danton in 1794, and his amiable wife, Lucille Desmoulins, also an atheist, shared his fate a few days later. She astonished all onlookers by the calmness with which she braved death (April 13, 1794). Their son, Horace, who was born on 6 July 1792, died in Haiti in 1825, having been pensioned by the French government.
(See the list of individuals who were guillotined during the French Revolution."
