The A to Z of the French Revolution by Paul R. Hanson

Author:Paul R. Hanson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2007-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

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MAILHE AMENDMENT. Jean-Baptiste Mailhe was the first deputy to vote in the National Convention in the roll-call on the fate of Louis XVI. Mailhe, a deputy from Toulouse, voted for the death of the king, but proposed that if this should be the will of the majority, the Convention should consider postponing the date of execution, so that the issue might be revisited. This came to be known as the Mailhe amendment, viewed by most as an effort to save the king through a variation of the appel au peuple, a motion already defeated. Only 26 deputies voted for the Mailhe amendment, although they included four leaders of the Girondins: François-Nicolas Buzot, Pierre-Victurnien Vergniaud, Marguerite-Elie Guadet, and Jérome Pétion. Some accused Mailhe of being in the pay of the Spanish, and Maximilien Robespierre called him “the most immoral of men.” Mailhe laid low during the Terror, but was an active Thermidorian after the fall of Robespierre.

MALLET DU PAN, JACQUES (1749–1800). Mallet du Pan’s father was a Protestant pastor in Switzerland, his grandfather a merchant. Jacques studied law and philosophy in Geneva and was drawn to the ideas of the Enlightenment. His first work, Compte-rendu de la défense des citoyens bourgeois de Genève par un natif, was denounced by the authorities of Geneva and burned, and this brought Mallet to the attention of Voltaire. On his visits to Voltaire’s estate at Ferney, Mallet encountered Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet and began a collaboration with Linguet on his newspaper, Annales Politiques et Littéraires. When Linguet was imprisoned in the Bastille in 1781, Mallet took over publication of the Annales until 1788. From 1783 on, he also collaborated with Charles-Joseph Pancoucke on the Mercure de France, and edited the Journal Historique et Politique de Genève as well.

Mallet remained in Paris during the early years of the Revolution, working as a political journalist. From the opening of the Estates-General he supported the monarchist party, even though in Geneva he had expressed republican ideals. He was particularly close to Pierre-Victor Malouet and Jean-Joseph Mounier, and was associated with the founding of the Monarchist club in Paris. In April 1792 Mallet emigrated to Coblenz, entrusted by Louis XVI with a message to the émigrés, as well as to the kings of Austria and Prussia, exhorting them not to open hostilities with France except as a last resort. In subsequent years, he served as an agent/informer for the monarchs, traveling to London, Brussels, and Switzerland. In 1793 he published Considérations sur la nature de la révolution en France, in which he advocated a constitutional monarchy for France, much to the displeasure of the émigrés, who sought the restoration of the absolute monarchy. When France annexed Geneva in April 1798, Mallet was banished. He moved to London, where he published Le Mercure Britannique, modeled on Le Mercure de France. He was among the first political journalists to foresee the role that Napoleon Bonaparte would play. Mallet du Pan died of tuberculosis in England in 1800.

MALOUET, PIERRE-VICTOR (1740–1814). Malouet was among the most influential of the constitutional monarchists in the early years of the Revolution.

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