Louis Mandrin and the Birth of a New Mode of Resistance: Egalitarian Vigilantism

After his execution in 1755, Louis Mandrin became a legend, a popular underdog who had resisted and ridiculed the hated Ferme Générale. As I will show, his early hagiographers portray the smuggler as a vigilante (the first widely known example in French history), a paradoxical hero who sought to restore royal order and the rule of law by breaking the law. This contrasts with later texts on Mandrin, which focus more on his love of equality and notably on the idea that he stole from taxmen in order to redistribute their wealth to the poor. This later version of the Mandrin legend is far more radical, as the smuggler now denounces the laws themselves, not just their lax or corrupt enforcement, as the source of all injustices. Through the figure of Mandrin and his ever-shifting legend, I thus set out to chart the rise of a new form of resistance, “egalitarian vigilantism,” targeting not specific people or laws but the very inequality at the core of the social contract.