A critical reading of nine Memoires written by the Girondins in prison (Brissot and Madame Roland), or in flight ((Buzot, Pétion, Barbaroux, Louvet, Isnard, Meillan et Riouffe), shows how these defeated personnages, eager to preserve their honor, presented and represented their role in the Revolution, describing the causes of their conflict with the Mountain, their defeat, as well as their intimate struggles. Bearing the imprint of classical Antiquity, the Enlightenment and Rousseau, these confessions reveal a coherent common culture, more similar to that of the Montagnards than is usually supposed. At once a defense and a collective portrait of the Girondins, these militant texts stigmatize their adversaries, whose discreditable schemes they claim to unmask. Autobiographical accounts detailing the hardships of seclusion or proscription, they dramatize the force of personal identity confronted by the perspective of death. At the same time, they confer a romantic dimension to the individual destinies of the Girondins who aspired to have an impact on posterity.