The biography in minor mode: the actors of Varennes, or revolutionary "protagonism"

The notion of "revolutionary protagonism" encompasses a gamut of attitudes and behaviours that were strictly linked to events and represent a powerful factor of individual support for the Revolution and of political participation and consensus. The example of the king's flight to Varennes offers a typical case : a number of occasional protagonists emerged whose lives were turned upside down by the event, which tied them to the Revolution itself ; it was also an opportunity for single individuals to move towards securing those patriotic merits which would bring them to the fore. In a wholly original way, personal itineraries met the revolutionary events, where individual participation was enhanced and framed in a collective dimension : for the first time, politics entered into the daily experience of masses of people who had traditionally been outside public life, and it marked their everyday life in an irreversible way.