I think the radio programme was suggesting they may have been drunk in charge! Surely that would be impossible - they just couldn't have functioned if they were out of it, though I wouldn't be surprised if they were on more than the usual - ditto coffee. Their work hours and stresses seem superhuman. (A lot of 20thc British governments seemed to have functioned on a surprising amount of alcohol, including Thatcher, who got by on whisky and 5 hours sleep a night, and allegedly became an alcoholic). We're probably living in the most sober times in world history. There's a theory that Victorian sobriety was fall-out from the French Revolution - 18thc London was full of drunk aristos screwing around - the moral climate of the 19thc was a backlash designed to send them back to their country estates and so create the impression that the (Westminter) ruling classes were sensible people quietly doing a good job!

I'm still waiting for my techie friend to download me those programmes! They look hilarious (very camp!) - maybe the writer was into Sherlock Holmes (strange, cerebral bachelor fond of shooting up cocaine)? Robespierre may well have taken laudanum as medicine - many people did, and they wouldn't have felt the need to be secretive about it. I don't think the notion of drug addiction really entered western public consciousness until a decade or so later, but if Desmoulins was over-using opiate 'medicine', it would have been apparent to friends, as it was with Coleridge: it might explain references to his deteriorating health, but his erratic and outspoken behaviour seems to be constant throughout his career (weren't enemies saying he was mad right from the start?) so that's probably just him being him! But it's a theory, anyway - would Robespierre and Danton think of it as a 'vice', though?