Marc-Antoine Jullien, called Jullien fils (March 10, 1775 in Paris – April 4, 1848 in Paris) was a French revolutionary and man of letters.
Son of Marc Antoine Jullien, deputy from Drôme in the National Convention, he entered the Collège de Navarre in 1785; his studies were interrupted by the beginning of the Revolution. Encouraged by his ardently patriotic mother, Rosalie Ducrolay, named "Madame Jullien", he attempted a career in journalism, in 1790 becoming a collaborator on the Journal du Soir. The following year, he became a member of the Jacobin Club, in which he became an opponent of war.
In the spring of 1792, Jullien was sent to London by the Marquis de Condorcet, at the time president of the comité diplomatique of the Legislative Assembly. There he served as a student-diplomat, becoming an intermediary between the more liberal English factions and the Girondists. Among those he met there were Talleyrand and Lord Stanhope. Returning to France that autumn, he was named aide-commissaire and then commissaire des guerres, of the army of the Pyrenees, in January 1793. He was soon transferred to Tarbes "due to age". He rejoined the army of the Pyrenees on April 16, entering Paris with them on August 4.
Jullien then became a protégé of Robespierre, and was sent by the Committee of Public Safety on a mission to several Atlantic ports, beginning on September 10, 1793. Charged with ensuring surveillance of the military situation and of Jacobin propaganda, he attempted to gain for himself a rapport with public feeling. In Nantes, on February 4, 1794, he wrote a letter to Robespierre in which he denounced Carrier. At Bordeaux, he stood in opposition to Jean-Lambert Tallien and his mistress, Thérésa Cabarrús. He left Bordeaux to return to Paris on April 24, 1794; there he was named to the Executive Committee on Public Instruction. On May 18, he returned to Bordeaux, to purify the municipality and the Jacobin Club and seek out secret Girondists among the deputies.
Jullien would likely have become a major player in the Revolution had it not been for the execution of Robespierre on 28 July 1794. Made destitute, he was arrested on August 10 and sent to prison; he would be held at the maison de santé of Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris, and would testify at Carrier's trial. He disavowed his association with Robespierre and was released, through the intervention of his father, on October 14, 1795. Ten days later, the insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire was stopped.
Jullien next became one of the founders of the Club du Panthéon, returning to journalism with the creation of L'Orateur plébéien, a democratic and moderate pamphlet, with Ève Demaillot and Jean-Jacques Leuliette. On March 13, 1796, Merlin de Douai helped him enter the Ministère de la Police, where he became responsible for lists of emigrants. He soon became suspected of Babouvist sympathies, and was forced to hide after the discovery of the Conspiracy of Equals in May 1796; he reappeared in October of the same year.
Jullien next joined the Army of Italy, becoming a writer for its mail service from August to November 1797. He then accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte, in May 1798, on his journey to Egypt. There he became ill, and returned to France. Becoming well, he entered the service of general Championnet, becoming an adviser on December 28, 1798. Among the initiators of the Neapolitan Republic, he became secretary general to Championnet's provisional government on January 26, 1799. He was quickly recalled by the Directory, and was arrested on February 24. On March 12 he stood before a military tribunal, but was freed by the Coup of 30 Prairial Year VII on June 18.
Accommodating the coup of 18 Brumaire to satisfaction, Jullien proposed a plan to unify the Italian states in July 1800. Immediately becoming indignant at anti-Jacobin proscriptions, following the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise he was relegated to handling administrative functions in Paris. He received the cross of the Légion d'honneur in 1803. After a visit to Madame de Staël at Chaumont-sur-Loire, through which he raised Napoleon's suspicions, he was sent to the Kingdom of Italy in 1810; while passing through Yverdon, he became acquainted with the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.
In 1813. Jullien was jailed due to his opposition to the Empire. Freed during the Bourbon Restoration, he published numerous opposition journals between 1815 and 1817, becoming known in the process as a pedagogue. He corresponded regularly with Pestalozzi, to whom he sent his first three sons, at Yverdon, and became a promoter of the Monitorial System of education. In 1819 he founded Revue encyclopédique.[1]
He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1830.[2]
Jullien died in Paris in 1848, aged 73.
In 1801 Jullien married Sophie-Juvence Nioche (died 1832); they had six children.
The eldest of the six, Pierre-Adolphe (born Amiens, February 13, 1803 - died 1873) was a technician, later becoming engineer-in-chief of the Corps of Bridges and Roads; in this capacity he oversaw construction of the Paris-Lyon railroad.
Also among the six, their daughter Antoinette-Stéphanie married the dramatist Lockroy and was the mother of Édouard Lockroy.
