Bara and Viala, or Virtue Rewarded: The Memorialization of Two Child Martyrs of the French Revolution

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the commemoration of republican child martyrs Joseph Bara and Joseph-Agricol Viala, in Year II (1793–4), during the French Revolution. It compares the official interpretation of their deaths with the subsequent appropriation of this narrative in wider culture. The article argues that leading revolutionaries—notably Robespierre, Barère and David—utilized the heroic deaths of children specifically for their associations with natural virtue and innocence, setting the tone for a new model of republican morality. It then demonstrates that the state’s narrative was widely circulated, yet appropriated and commodified, using popular prints and theatre as case studies. This article thus demonstrates the limits of official control over French Revolutionary culture and traces the fragmented roots of what would become a revived memory cult in the Third Republic.