Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne
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Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, also known as Jean Nicolas (April 23, 1756 – June 3, 1819) was a French personality of the Revolutionary period.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Born in La Rochelle as the son of a lawyer to the parlement of Paris, he had a chaotic upbringing. At nineteen he became an Oratorian, but never took monastic vows, and occupied himself with literature rather than religion.
In 1785, he left the Oratorian college where he was Hall prefect of studies, came to Paris, married and bought a position as lawyer in the parlement. In early 1789 he published at Amsterdam a three-volume work on the Despotisme des ministres de la France, and he adopted with enthusiasm the principles of the Revolution.
[edit] Early activism
Joining the Jacobin Club, Billaud-Varenne became, from 1790, one of the most violent anti-Royalist orators, closely linked to Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois. After the flight to Varennes of King Louis XVI, he published a pamphlet, L'Aciphocratie, in which he demanded the establishment of a federal republic.
On July 1, in another speech at the Jacobin Club, he spoke of a republic, arousing the derision of partisans of the constitutional monarchy - but, when he repeated his demand for a republic a fortnight later, the speech was printed and sent to the Jacobin branch societies throughout France.
On the night of August 10, 1792 (during the mob attack on the Tuileries Palace) he was elected one of the deputy-commissioners of the sections who shortly afterwards became the general council of the Paris Commune. He was accused of having been an accomplice in the September Massacres in the Abbaye prison.
[edit] Projects in the Convention
Elected, like Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Danton, and Collot d'Herbois, a deputy of Paris to the National Convention, he spoke in favour of the immediate abolition of the Bourbon monarchy, and the next day demanded that all acts be dated from the Year I of the French Republic (a measure adopted a little over a year later in the form of the French Revolutionary Calendar).
At the trial of Louis XVI he added new charges to the accusation, proposed to refuse counsel to the king, and voted for death "within 24 hours". On June 2, 1793, in the context of Jean-Paul Marat's anti-Girondist instigations, he proposed a decree of accusation against the Girondists; a week later, at the Jacobin Club, he outlined a programme which the Convention was to fulfil soon after: the expulsion of foreigners, the establishment of a tax on the rich, the deprivation of the rights of citizenship of all "anti-social" men, the creation of a French Revolutionary Army, the monitoring of all officers and ci-devant nobles (i.e.: those of aristocratic families who no longer held status after the abolition of feudalism), and the death penalty for unsuccessful generals fighting in the French Revolutionary Wars.
[edit] Mission and Reign of Terror
On July 15 he made a violent speech in the Convention in accusation of the Girondists. Sent in August as representative on mission to the départements of the Nord and of Pas-de-Calais, he showed himself inexorable to all suspects.
On his return, Billaud-Varenne was included to the Reign of Terror's Committee of Public Safety, which had decreed the mass arrest of all suspects and the establishment of a revolutionary army, caused the extraordinary criminal tribunal to be named officially "Revolutionary Tribunal" (on October 29, 1793), demanded the execution of Marie Antoinette, and then attacked Jacques René Hébert and Danton. Meanwhile, he published Les Éléments du républicanisme, in which he demanded a division of property among the citizens.
[edit] Thermidor and exile
Becoming concerned about his own safety, he turned against Robespierre, whom he attacked on 8 Thermidor as a "moderate" and a Dantonist. Surprised by the Thermidorian Reaction, he denounced its partisans to the Jacobin Club. He was then attacked himself in the Convention for his ruthlessness, and a commission was appointed to examine his conduct and that of some other members of the former Committee of Public Safety.
Billaud-Varenne was arrested, and as a result of the Jacobin-led insurrection of 12 Germinal of the Year III (April 1, 1795), the Convention decreed his immediate deportation to French Guiana, along with Collot d'Herbois and Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac. After Napoleon Bonaparte's 18 Brumaire coup, he refused the pardon offered by the French Consulate. In 1816 he left Guiana, went to New York City for a few months, and finally took refuge in Port-au-Prince (Haiti), where he died of dysentery.
[edit] Works
- (French) Despotisme des ministres de France, combattu par les droits de la Nation, par les loix fondamentales, par les ordonnances…PDF ("Despotism of the ministers of France, combatted by the rights of the Nation, by the fundamental laws, by the ordinances…"), Paris, 1789.
- Mémoires écrits au Port-au-Prince en 1818, contenant la relation de ses voyages et aventures dans le Mexique, depuis 1815 jusqu'en 1817. ("Memoirs written in Port-au-Prince in 1818, containing the relation of his voyages and adventures in Mexico, from 1815 to 1817"), Paris, 1821 [probably forgeries].
- Billaud Varenne membre du comité de salut public : Mémoires inédits et Correspondance. Accompagnés de notices biographiques sur Billaud Varenne et Collot d'Herbois ("Billaud Varenne, member of the Committee of Public Safety: Unpublished memoirs and correspondence. Accompanied by biographical notes on Billaud Varenne and Collot d'Herbois"), Paris, Librairie de la Nouvelle Revue, 1893 (edited by Alfred Begis).
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. In turn, it gives the following references:
- Billaud-Varenne's autobiographical sketch of his youth, Tableau du prémier age, composed in 1786 - published in 1888 in the review La Révolution française.
- François Victor Alphonse Aulard, Les Orateurs de la législative et de la convention (2nd ed., 1906).
- Arthur Conte, Billaud Varenne : Géant de la Révolution, Paris, Editions Orban, 1989
- Jacques Guilaine, Billaud-Varenne : l'ascète de la Révolution (1756–1819), Paris, Fayard, 1969
- Auguste Kuscinski: Dictionnaire des conventionnels, Paris, Société de l'Histoire de la Révolution française, F. Rieder, 1916 <New edition: Brueil-en-Vexin, Editions du Vexin français, 1973>
- Robert R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled : The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1941 <New edition: Princeton Classic Editions, 2005. – ISBN 0-691-12187-7>
