The exile of Orléans was only one dimension of a comprehensive campaign against the left undertaken in the post-October Days period. Seeking to hamper the ability of the popular movement to mobilize opposition against it, the newly strengthened Fayettist regime employed the judicial system to pursue radical journalists, popular rioters and agitators, recalcitrant district leaders, and troublesome deputies. The two years of relative calm which followed the October Days can be seen, at least in part, as a reflection of the success of these efforts.

MARAT AND THE ATTACK ON PRESS FREEDOMS

One of the main objectives of the Fayettist regime after the October Days was to shut down the incendiary journal of Marat, who had already attracted official displeasure in late September. On September 25, the self-proclaimed Friend of the People, who had just denounced the municipality and Necker for working together on a “plan de trahison,” was summoned before the Assemblée des Représentants. Marat, however, was not nearly as easily intimidated as Orléans, and he immediately announced that “the hard truths” contained in his journal were “too important to public security for me to be able to retract a single one of them.” “I am the eye of the People,” he told the Représentants, “while you are nothing more than its little finger.” On October 2, he warned the authorities that “if they continue to sacrifice the Public to their own petty passions, I will pursue them relentlessly … I am the Attorney of the Nation and I will never retreat.”