Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris

Marc-Antoine Jullien, called Jullien fils (March 10, 1775 in Paris – April 4, 1848 in Paris) was a French revolutionary and man of letters. Son of Marc Antoine Jullien, deputy from Drôme in the National Convention, he entered the Collège de Navarre in 1785; his studies were interrupted by the beginning of the Revolution. Encouraged by his ardently patriotic mother, Rosalie Ducrolay, named "Madame Jullien", he attempted a career in journalism, in 1790 becoming a collaborator on the Journal du Soir. The following year, he became a member of the Jacobin Club, in which he became an opponent of war. In the spring of 1792, Jullien was sent to London by the Marquis de Condorcet, at the time president of the comité diplomatique of the Legislative Assembly. There he served as a student-diplomat, becoming an intermediary between the more liberal English factions and the Girondists. Among those he met there were Talleyrand and Lord Stanhope. Returning to France that autumn, he was named aide-commissaire and then commissaire des guerres, of the army of the Pyrenees, in January 1793. He was soon transferred to Tarbes "due to age". He rejoined the army of the Pyrenees on April 16, entering Paris with them on August 4. Jullien then became a protégé of Robespierre, and was sent by the Committee of Public Safety on a mission to several Atlantic ports, beginning on September 10, 1793. Charged with ensuring surveillance of the military situation and of Jacobin propaganda, he attempted to gain for himself a rapport with public feeling. In Nantes, on February 4, 1794, he wrote a letter to Robespierre in which he denounced Carrier. At Bordeaux, he stood in opposition to Jean-Lambert Tallien and his mistress, Thérésa Cabarrús. He left Bordeaux to return to Paris on April 24, 1794; there he was named to the Executive Committee on Public Instruction. On May 18, he returned to Bordeaux, to purify the municipality and the Jacobin Club and seek out secret Girondists among the deputies.