Louis Pierre Manuel

He was born at Montargis, Loiret, and entered the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, becoming tutor to the son of a Paris banker. In 1783 his pamphlet, Essais historiques, critiques, littéraires, et philosophiques, resulted in his being imprisoned in the Bastille.[1]

Manuel embraced the revolutionary ideas, and after the storming of the Bastille became a member of the provisional municipality of Paris. He was one of the leaders of the riots of 20 June 1792, and the 10 August storming of the Tuileries Palace, played an important part in the formation of the insurrectionary Paris Commune which assured the success of the latter attack (begun by the taking of the Hôtel de Ville), and was made procureur of the commune.[2]

He was present at the September Massacres and saved several prisoners, and on 7 September 1792 was elected one of the deputies from Paris to the National Convention, where he promoted the proclamation of the First French Republic. He suppressed the decoration of the Cross of Saint Louis, which he called "a stain on a man's coat", and demanded the sale of the Palace of Versailles.

Manuel's missions to King Louis XVI, however, changed his sentiments: he became reconciled to the House of Bourbon, and courageously refused to vote in favor of Capital punishment for the sovereign. Consequently, he had to tender his resignation as deputy.[1]

In 1792 he was prosecuted for publishing an edition of the marquis de Mirabeau Letters to Sophie de Ruffey, but was acquitted. He retired to Montargis, where he was arrested, and was later guillotined in Paris.[1]

According to the bibliographer Antoine-Alexandre Barbier, in his Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes, Volume 1, the pamphlet La Bastille dévoilée (1789) is not written by Manuel, as often cited, but by Charpentier.