Lanterne is a French word designating a lantern or lamp post. The word, or the slogan "À la lanterne!" (in English: To the Lamp Post!) gained special meaning and status in Paris and France during the early phase of the French Revolution, from the summer of 1789. Lamp posts served as an instrument to mobs to perform extemporised lynchings and executions in the streets of Paris during the revolution when the people of Paris occasionally hanged officials and aristocrats from the lamp posts. The English equivalent would be "String Them Up!" (British) or "Hang 'Em High!"(American) La Lanterne became a symbol of popular or street justice in revolutionary France. The slogan "À la lanterne!" is referred to in such emblematic songs as Ça Ira ("les aristocrates à la lanterne!" means "aristocrats to the lamp-post!" in this context). Journalist Camille Desmoulins, who had earlier practiced law, designated himself "The Lantern Attorney." He wrote a pamphlet entitled (in translation) "The Lamp Post Speaks to Parisians," in which "la lantèrne" tells the people, "I've always been here. You could have been using me all along!". As the revolutionary government became established, lamp posts were no longer needed as execution instruments, being replaced by the guillotine which became infamous in Paris during 1793–1794, though all major French cities had their own. Hanging people from lamp posts ceased to be a part of Paris rebellions in the 19th Century. Though the tradition continued in symbolic form up to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, via the ritual hanging in effigy of unpopular political figures during street protests. History The first prominent victim of lynching "à la lanterne" was Joseph Foullon de Doué, an unpopular politician who replaced Jacques Necker as a Controller-General of Finances in 1789. On 22 July 1789, the mob attempted to hang him on a lamp post, however, after the rope broke, he was beheaded and radicals marched with his head on a pike through the streets. "If [the people] are hungry, let them eat grass," he is said to have once proclaimed, although the claim is unsubstantiated. Because Foulon, an aristocrat administrator of the royal government, was in charge of the Paris markets. Foulon was known for his coldheartedness towards the needs of the common French people; he was suspected of controlling Paris' food supply and, thereby, keeping food prices unaffordable. So hated that he had even staged his own funeral to