Paul Barras

I'm convinced after reading this book.

So we're going to turn now to a salon kept by Thérésia in Paris after the Terror, during the Directory, led by a man named Paul Barras.

And up s- uh, all of a sudden, showing up in these gatherings is a Corsican in uniform, a shoddy uniform.

The book is Liberty, Equality, Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution.

Um, I, I wrote a piece recently about the, the, the Coup of Fructidor, um, which is where I think, I think things really went wrong.

Uh, we had a chance to stabilize things, but Paul Barras, I don't know.

That was great.

Uh, if you have people you wish were canceled or should be rescued from cancellation, drop it in, drop it in the comments.

Thousands of armed royalists were advancing through Paris, and the revolutionary government needed somebody who could stop them.

Paul Barras, one of the political leaders involved in defending the Convention, turned to Napoleon.

Napoleon's career had been drifting.

Now somebody had essentially knocked on the door and asked, "Are you still good with artillery?" This is rather like phoning a recently unemployed Gordon Ramsay and asking whether he might know anything about lunch.

He is a deputy who'd been at the recapture of Toulon, recaptured it, of course, from the British, which is unfortunate.

This guy is called Paul Barras.

He has been a- also accused of going too far, of having rather let himself down with some mass executions, and Barras is gonna be a massive figure in the politics of the late 1790s, in part because he has made friends with a certain young Corsican.

An artillery officer.

An artillery officer.

Who catches scabies, doesn't he, in the course of the siege?

And Barras and, uh, this Corsican artillery officer will in due course share a, a mistress, or at least Barras will give this bloke his mistress.

Would this mistress be called Josephine?