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Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce,
baron Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or kn ...
de Cloots (24 June 1755 – 24 March 1794), better known as Anacharsis Cloots (also spelled Clootz), was a Prussian nobleman who was a significant figure in the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are consider ...
. Perhaps the first to advocate a world parliament, long before Albert Camus and
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
, he was a world federalist and an internationalist anarchist. He was nicknamed "orator of mankind", "citizen of humanity" and "a personal enemy of God".


Biography


Early life

Born near
Kleve Kleve (; traditional en, Cleves ; nl, Kleef; french: Clèves; es, Cléveris; la, Clivia; Low Rhenish: ''Kleff'') is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany near the Dutch border and the River Rhine. From the 11th centur ...
, at the castle of , he belonged to a noble Prussian family of Dutch origin. The young Cloots, heir to a great fortune, was sent to Paris at age eleven to complete his education, and became attracted to the theories of his uncle the ''
abbé ''Abbé'' (from Latin ''abbas'', in turn from Greek , ''abbas'', from Aramaic ''abba'', a title of honour, literally meaning "the father, my father", emphatic state of ''abh'', "father") is the French word for an abbot. It is the title for low ...
'' Cornelius de Pauw (1739–1799), ''
philosophe The ''philosophes'' () were the intellectuals of the 18th-century Enlightenment.Kishlansky, Mark, ''et al.'' ''A Brief History of Western Civilization: The Unfinished Legacy, volume II: Since 1555.'' (5th ed. 2007). Few were primarily philosophe ...
'', geographer and diplomat at the court of
Frederick II of Prussia Frederick II (german: Friedrich II.; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the S ...
. His father placed him in the
military academy A military academy or service academy is an educational institution which prepares candidates for service in the officer corps. It normally provides education in a military environment, the exact definition depending on the country concerned. ...
of Berlin, but he withdrew at the age of twenty and travelled through Europe, preaching his revolutionary philosophy and spending his money as a man of pleasure.


Revolution

On the breaking out of the Revolution, Cloots returned in 1789 to Paris, thinking the opportunity favorable for establishing his dream of a universal family of nations. On 19 June 1790 he appeared at the bar of the National Constituent Assembly at the head of thirty-six foreigners, and, in the name of this embassy of the human race, declared that the world adhered to the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (french: Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789, links=no), set by France's National Constituent Assembly in 1789, is a human civil rights document from the French Revolu ...
. After this, he was known as the orator of the human race, by which title he called himself, dropping that of baron, and substituting for his baptismal names the pseudonym of Anacharsis, from
Jean-Jacques Barthélemy Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (20 January 1716 – 30 April 1795) was a French scholar who became the first person to decipher an extinct language. He deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754 and the Phoenician alphabet in 1758. Early years Barth� ...
's famous philosophical romance ''
Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece ''Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece'' (French: ''Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce'') was a fictional work about the travels of the Scythian named Anacharsis in Greece in the middle of the 4th century BCE, written by Jean-Jacques Bart ...
''. In 1792 he placed 12,000
livres The (; ; abbreviation: ₶.) was one of numerous currencies used in medieval France, and a unit of account (i.e., a monetary unit used in accounting) used in Early Modern France. The 1262 monetary reform established the as 20 , or 80.88 gr ...
at the disposal of the
French Republic France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan are ...
for the arming of forty or fifty fighters in the cause of man against
tyranny A tyrant (), in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to re ...
(''see
French Revolutionary Wars The French Revolutionary Wars (french: Guerres de la Révolution française) were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted French First Republic, France against Ki ...
''). After the riots of 10 August he became an even more prominent supporter of new ideas, and declared himself "the personal enemy of
Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
Christ", abjuring all
revealed religion In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Background Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on the ...
s.


Convention

In the same month he had the rights of French citizenship conferred on him; and, having in September been elected a member of the
National Convention The National Convention (french: link=no, Convention nationale) was the parliament of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year National ...
, he voted in favor of
capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
for
King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the t ...
Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was e ...
, justifying it in the name of the human race, and was an active partisan of the war of
propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
.


Execution

Excluded at the insistence of
Maximilien Robespierre Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (; 6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794) was a French lawyer and statesman who became one of the best-known, influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution. As a member of the Esta ...
from the
Jacobin Club , logo = JacobinVignette03.jpg , logo_size = 180px , logo_caption = Seal of the Jacobin Club (1792–1794) , motto = "Live free or die"(french: Vivre libre ou mourir) , successor = P ...
, he remained a foreigner in many eyes. When the
Committee of Public Safety The Committee of Public Safety (french: link=no, Comité de salut public) was a committee of the National Convention which formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the Reign of Terror, a violent phase of the French Revolution. ...
levelled accusations of treason against the
Hébertists The Hébertists (french: Hébertistes), or Exaggerators (french: Exagérés) were a radical revolutionary political group associated with the populist journalist Jacques Hébert, a member of the Cordeliers club. They came to power during the Rei ...
, they also implicated Cloots to give substance to their charge of a foreign plot. Although his innocence was manifest, he was condemned and subsequently
guillotine A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with stocks at t ...
d on 24 March 1794. He incongruously followed
Vincent Vincent ( la, Vincentius) is a male given name derived from the Roman name Vincentius, which is derived from the Latin word (''to conquer''). People with the given name Artists *Vincent Apap (1909–2003), Maltese sculptor *Vincent van Gogh ...
, Ronsin, Momoro and the rest of the Hébertist leadership to the scaffold, in front of the largest crowd ever assembled for a public execution.


Thought

Cloots was an original political thinker who crafted his own interpretation of the meaning of the French Revolution. He was a proponent of the world state, and he sought to promote a more broad-minded and internationalist understanding of the Revolution's potential. He imagined the institutions of the world state along the lines of those of the French
Revolutionary Republic A revolutionary republic is a form of government whose main tenets are popular sovereignty, rule of law, and representative democracy. It is based in part on the ideas of Whig and Enlightenment thinkers, and was favored by revolutionaries d ...
. Cloots's thought was expressed in several works, most importantly in his ''Bases constitutionnelles de la République du genre humain''.Alexander Bevilacqua,
Conceiving the Republic of Mankind: The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots
, ''History of European Ideas'' (2012), pp. 1–20.


Works

*''La Certitude des preuves du mahométisme'' (
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, 1780), published under the pseudonym of ''Ali-GurBer'', in answer to
Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier (; 31 December 1718 – 9 April 1790) was a French Catholic theologian, known for his engagement with the atheist '' philosophes'' of eighteenth-century France. Life Bergier was born at Darney in Lorraine. After a ...
's ''Certitude des preuves du christianisme'' *''L'Orateur du genre humain, ou Dépêches du Prussien Cloots au Prussien Herzberg'' (Paris, 1791) *''La République universelle ou adresse aux tyrannicides'' (1792). *''Adresse d'un Prussien à un Anglais'' (Paris, 1790), 52 p

*''Bases constitutionnelles de la République du genre humain'' (Paris, 1793), 48 p

*''Voltaire triomphant ou les prêtres déçus'' (178?), 30 p. Attributed to Cloots

*''Discours prononcé à la barre de l'Assemblée nationale par M. de Cloots, du Val-de-Grâce,... à la séance du 19 juin 1790'' (1790), 4 p


References


Notes


Sources

* ''In turn, it cites as references:'' ** Avenel, Georges (1865), ''Anacharsis Cloots, l'orateur du genre humain'', 2 vols., Paris: reprint Editions Champ Libre, 1976 ** H. Baulig's articles in ''La Révolution française'', tome 41 (1901) * Labbé, François (1999), ''Anarchasis Cloots, le Prussien francophile. Un philosophe au service de la Révolution française et universelle'', Paris, L'Harmattan, coll. l'Allemagne d'ier et d'aujourd'hui, 546 p. ** Book review by Annie Duprat, «Anarchasis Cloots, le Prussien francophile. Un philosophe au service de la Révolution française et universelle», in ''Annales historiques de la Révolution française'', Numéro 324, n ligne mis en ligne le : 10 avril 2006. URL

Consulté le 21 octobre 2006. * Mortier, Roland (1995), ''Anacharsis Cloots ou L'utopie foudroyée'', Paris: Stock, 350 p. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cloots, Jean-Baptiste Du Val-De-Grace, Baron De 1755 births 1794 deaths People from Kleve French atheism activists Deputies to the French National Convention French essayists Barons of the Holy Roman Empire French religious writers French people of Dutch descent People from the Duchy of Cleves French people executed by guillotine during the French Revolution German emigrants to France Executed Dutch people Executed people from North Rhine-Westphalia 18th-century French writers 18th-century French male writers French male essayists 18th-century essayists 18th-century atheists