Abstract EN:

Normandy, divided in five "departements" since 1790, offers a good example of provincial newspaper'press evolution during the French Revolution. This period saw the press multiply its tittles throughout the country and journalistic language be altered by politics, at the very same time as the french people started to experience the parlementary system. From patriotic, narrrative and optimistic at the beginning of the revolution, the presse became partisan when the two following matters occured : the religious one in the summer of 1970 and the part played by clubs on the national political scene in the summer of 1791, after the king took to flight. By a more accurate use of the news, journalists ceased to be just inquirers : they became guides of "l'esprit public" and asserted themselves as interpreters of lobbies eager to interfere in local politics and representative of the great national political trends. Actually the press, free since 1789, has been all along the French Revolution, a photograph of the divided public opinion, one of ways of modern citizens' education and a mean to argue in political debates which completly ceased during the Consulate.