Élisée Loustallot

Elysée Loustallot was a French lawyer, journalist, and editor of the Revolutions of Paris during the French Revolution. He is remembered as one of the major Parisian opinion journalists during the era of the National Assembly and subsequent National Constituent Assembly. A fervent republican, his journalistic writings were anti-royalist in tone and bourgeois in sympathy. As a student trained in philosophy and the French Enlightenment, Loustallot is generally considered by historians to have been a principal proponent of revolution, while cautioning its readership against violence and ideological extremism. This is notably in contrast to the opinion journalism of Jean-Paul Marat's proletariat appeal to the sans-culottes. On the one hand, Loustallot writing articulates the need to reconcile the legitimacy of the Third Estate's call for less taxation and more civil rights, with the necessity of keeping in check the superstition, ignorance, and error of the Parisian masses underpinning the revolutionary fervor of the Third Estate. In particular, Loustallot wrote extensively on issues of social and economic justice, including the price of bread and the unaffordability of foodstuffs and basic staples. He died from illness at the age of 28.