Companions of Jehu

The Companions of Jehu were formed in the Lyon region of France in April 1795 to hunt down Jacobins implicated in the Reign of Terror. It is possible that they were founded by The Marquis de Besignan, who also founded royalist underground groups in Forez and Dauphiné with the Prince of Condé in 1796. Their victims are believed to have numbered at least in the hundreds. They were made famous by the 1857 novel The Companions of Jehu by Alexandre Dumas which presented a highly romanticised account of them.

Jehu was an Old Testament character, immortalised in Racine's drama Athalie. He was famous for having killed Jezebel by throwing her out of a window. According to the Books of Kings Jezebel was responsible for inciting her husband King Ahab to abandon the worship of the true God and follow the cult of Baal instead. She also brought false testimony against Naboth and had him killed, and was the cause of much violence and bloodshed. By analogy, Jezebel represented the Jacobins of France, responsible for turning France away from the Catholic religion, bringing false testimony against patriotic citizens and executing them, and spreading violence and bloodshed through the Reign of Terror. By the same analogy, Jehu was the force of righteous retribution, come to restore the true religion, and kill Jezebel, her children and all those who had turned away from the Lord. The reference to Jehu was not universally understood however, and through misunderstanding, uncertain repetition and assimilation with the broader idea of religious restoration, many people referred to the Companions of Jesus instead of the Companions of Jehu, despite this name being essentially meaningless, as was pointed out by Louis Blanc.

The first reference to their existence appears in the records of the National Convention in a report presented on 25 June 1795 from Marie-Joseph Chénier on the recent killings in Lyons. His account says:

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