Preparing for Battle: The Société des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen

Abstract

“MON PÈRE, THE FATHERLAND HAS CALLED ME,” wrote Étienne-Denis Gallay, a 21-year-old jeweler, on the eve of the 1834 insurrection; “duty commands me to obey and defend our rights, I must not remain deaf to the appeal of our brave citizens and I glory in marching in their ranks; if I succumb it will be in defending my country gloriously if we triumph I will have even greater pleasure in seeing you again, in case of difficulties receive my last embrace.” Afterward, when the police searched his bare little fifth-floor chamber, they found an affectionate letter from his father, warning him against filling his sister’s head with “your nonsense of revolution”; a stack of Étienne Cabet’s republican paper Le Populaire; and 800 homemade cartridges. A member of the republican Société des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (SDHC), of the section named Abolition de la propriété mal acquise (Abolition of Wrongfully Acquired Property), Gallay spent the night on guard duty at a barricade in the rue Beaubourg. He was killed the following morning when the troops took the street.¹