Live Free or Die

The years preceding Camille Desmoulins were filled with increasing levels of public angst.  France had just gone through a financial crisis and their congress was convened to try and procure emergency funds.  The people were represented with the great exception of the third estate which represented the most populous lower class.  Their representatives were actually locked out of the meeting.  This was gasoline on the already smoldering rage against the centuries old class system.  Later pamphlets came out trying to unify the third estate and they began to identify themselves as the ‘real France.’  It was in this setting that Desmoulins wrote his treatise “live free or die.”

 

His tone is very accusatory and grandiose as he complains about the upper class, especially the king, and their total indifference to the plights of the ‘people.’  He gives an interesting hypothetical narrative where he lists off different types of people and their behaviors in relation to the King’s supposed perspective of them.  He declares that “everything gives umbrage to a tyrant.”   According to Camille Desmoulins, if you are a popular citizen with a following you are therefore suspect of treason because you must be plotting an overthrow of the government!  If you a reclusive, you must be plotting something and are suspect!  If you are sad you must be appalled by the state of public affairs and therefore are a suspect.    If you are happy, you must be rejoicing over the king’s gout problem and are a suspect!  His use of repetition is also very effective in getting his point across. 

He throws back to a renaissance style by reminding the public of the ancient affairs in Rome and its own problems with social estates.  The roman officials of the time were oppressing the popular citizens.  Apparently it used to be rather difficult to have a death sentence in ancient Rome until Augustus took power and extended the conditions to almost whoever he wanted to off.   Amusingly enough, Desmoulins doesn’t mention which Augustus.  He makes the connection clear for the audience to be riled up by saying that this same absolute killing power is present in their own country.  He declares that death is better than this oppression.  It rhetorically paints the audience into a corner because if they do nothing there is death, and if they try to be free they might die, but there is also the chance that they will live and be free.  So naturally the audience must choose the path of freedom.  "Live Free or Die," - Camille Desmoulins