Jacques Mallet du Pan

Jacques Mallet du Pan (5 November 1749 – 10 May 1800) was a Genevan political journalist and propagandist. A Calvinist thinker and Counter-Revolutionary reformer, he opposed extreme positions held by both Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary partisans during the French Revolution. Life Pre French-Revolution Mallet du Pan was born in Céligny to a Protestant minister from an old Huguenot family. He was educated at Geneva, and through the influence of Voltaire was appointed as a Professor of French Literature at Kassel, however he soon resigned from this position. In 1771, at a time of mounting opposition to the oligarchic rule of the upper class, he wrote what was considered by the ruling council in Geneva to be an inflammatory pamphlet entitled Compte rendu de la défense des citoyens bourgeois. It was condemned by the council and burnt in the main square. Hoping to find more independence as writer, he travelled to London to find Simon Nicholas Henri Linguet and propose that he become co-editor in the production of the "Annales Politiques", to which Linguet agreed. This collaboration was broken in September 1779 with Linguet's imprisonment in the Bastille. Du Pan then brought the Annales to Geneva to continue the work himself (1781–1783) under the title Mémoires historiques, politiques et littéraires. After Linguet's release from the Bastille in 1782 he felt he had to distance himself from the Annales for fear of being accused of profiting from Linguet's misfortune by seizing his property during his imprisonment, and he discontinued this work.