Christopher Hibbert - The Days of the French Revolution

BERNADOTTE. Appointed a marshal of France under the Empire, he was elected successor to the Swedish throne in 1810. He became King Charles XIV of Sweden in 1818 and died at Stockholm in 1844.

BESENVAL. Arrested after the fall of the Bastille, he was brought to trial by the tribunal of the Châtelet and acquitted. He died in obscurity in Paris in 1794.

BILLAUD-VARENNE. Deported to French Guiana after the insurrection of 12 Germinal 1795, he survived the ‘dry guillotine’ in a hut made of palm leaves and refused a pardon offered him by Napoleon after 18 Brumaire . He left Guiana in 1816 for Haiti where he died of dysentery three years later.

BOISSY D’ANGLAS. Suspected of royalism by the Directory whom he vigorously attacked, he was proscribed on 18 Fructidor 1797 and went to live in England. Returning to France after 18 Brumaire , he was elected a member of the Tribunate, a senator in 1805 and a peer of France in 1814. He served Napoleon during the Hundred Days and was consequently for a time excluded from the chamber of peers. He died in 1828.

BONAPARTE, LUCIEN. Became Minister of the Interior during the Consulate but differences of opinion with his brother led to his dismissal. He was appointed Ambassador in Madrid in 1800 but disagreed with his brother there, too. The final break with Napoleon came when he married his mistress instead of the widow of the King of Etruria as was required of him. He went to live in Italy, and subsequently lived in England having been captured by a British ship on his way to the United States. He returned to Rome in 1814, but went back to France to support Napoleon, with whom he was by then reconciled, during the Hundred Days. Returning once more to Italy at the Second Restoration, he died in Rome in 1840.

BOURDON, LÉONARD. Arrested after 12 Germinal and imprisoned in the Château de Ham from which he was released by the Directory to establish a comité de propagande in Hamburg. Soon recalled, he was appointed a member of the administrative council of the military hospital at Toulon under the Consulate. He died shortly before the Restoration.

BOURDON DE L’OISE. Arrested after 18 Fructidor , he was deported to French Guiana where he died soon after his arrival.

BOURIENNE. Sent to Hamburg as French envoy in 1802, he was recalled in disgrace in 1810, having accumulated an enormous fortune. He went over to the Bourbons in 1814, and thereafter lived in obscurity, dying at Caen in 1834.

BRETEUIL. After the fall of the Bastille, he fled to Switzerland, one of the first of the émigrés . For some time he acted for Louis XVI in negotiations with the European courts and with the Comtes de Provence and Artois; but, following the execution of Marie Antoinette, he retired into private life in Germany. He returned to France in 1802 and died in Paris in 1806.

BRIENNE. Returned to France from Italy at the outbreak of the Revolution and took the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Tried to explain his conduct to the Pope who would not excuse it and accepted his resignation as a cardinal. Distrusted also by the revolutionary Government, he was arrested at Sens in November 1793 and died in prison soon afterwards either of poisoning or of a stroke.

BROGLIE. An early émigré , he commanded the ‘army of the princes’ for a short time in 1792. He died at Münster in 1804.

BUZOT. After the fall of the Girondins, he fled to Normandy thence, when the uprising there failed, to the Gironde. Hunted by police spies with trained dogs he was forced to leave his hiding place and on 18 June 1794 his body, partly devoured by animals, was found on the outskirts of a wood near Châtillon.

CALONNE. After being dismissed by Louis XVI and exiled to Lorraine, he went to live in England where he corresponded with Necker. Forbidden to return to France to offer himself for election to the Estates General in 1789, he joined the émigrés at Coblenz. He went back to France with Napoleon’s permission in 1802, but died a few weeks after his arrival.

CAMBON. During the Thermidorian reaction he was proscribed as a former Montagnard and felt compelled to leave France. He returned in 1795 and went to live in retirement near Montpelier. Condemned as a regicide in 1816 he had to go abroad again. He died in Brussels in 1820.

CARNOT. Fled abroad after the coup d’état of 18 Fructidor , returning after 18 Brumaire and becoming Minister of War in 1800. He resigned the following year and in 1810 published his celebrated work on fortifications, De la défense des places fortes . When France was threatened in 1814 he offered his services to Napoleon and was appointed Governor of Antwerp. Minister of the Interior during the Hundred Days, he had to go abroad again on the second Restoration. He died at Magdeburg in 1823.

CAZALÈS. Emigrated after the fall of the monarchy in 1792. He fought with the émigré army. Returning to France in 1802, he died two years later.

CHABOT. Compromised in financial speculations in 1794, he was executed with the Dantonists who protested against being associated with this former Franciscan friar, the ‘ fripon ’, who had claimed Christ as the ‘first of the sans-culottes ’.

CHARTRES. Driven from France by the hostility of Louis XVIII, he went to live in England. He became Louis Philippe after the deposition of Charles X in 1830. Following the revolution of 1848 he fled to England and died at Claremont, Surrey, in 1850.

CHOISEUL. Arrested after the flight to Varennes and imprisoned at Verdun. Transferred to Orléans, he was released when the King accepted the Constitution and returned to Paris where he was appointed chevalier d’honneur to the Queen. After the Queen’s imprisonment in the Temple, he fled to England in the guise of a Spaniard. On his return he was accused of taking part in a conspiracy against Bonaparte and exiled. At the Restoration he was created a peer of France and later became aide-de-camp to Louis Philippe and Governor of the Louvre. Died in Paris in 1838.

CLERMONT-TONNERRE. Having advocated Louis XVI’s right to an absolute veto, he was murdered by the mob during the insurrection of 16 August 1792.

CLÉRY. Remained in the Temple until March 1793 when he was released and went to live at Juvisy. He was rearrested in May and imprisoned in La Force. Saved by Thermidor , he went to Strasbourg where he wrote his memoirs which were published in London in 1798. He returned to Paris in 1802 where he tried to get a new edition of the memoirs published. The authorities refused to allow this unless an apology for the new régime was included. He declined the compromise and later angered Napoleon by turning down the offer of becoming First Chamberlain to the Empress Josephine. He left France and died at Vienna in 1809.

COFFINHALL. Escaped from the Hôtel de Ville on 9 Thermidor and hid in a boat on the Seine near the Île des Cygnes for three days. Anxious for news, he went to his mistress’s house in the Rue Montorgueil where he was arrested. His identity being established he was executed the same day.

COLLOT D’HERBOIS. A victim of the ‘dry guillotine’, he died at Cayenne in 1796, less than a year after his transportation there.

CONDORCET. His outspoken support of the Girondins and condemnation of the Montagnards led to his being declared hors la loi . Concealed for a time by Madame Vernet, the widow of a sculptor, he left her house for the country where he died in April 1794, evidently of exposure and exhaustion.

CORDAY. Perfectly composed during her trial, she moved her position so that a man who was sketching her portrait could get a better view of her. In the tumbril Sanson said to her conversationally, ‘It’s a long journey, isn’t it?’ ‘We’re bound to get there,’ she replied, ‘in the end.’ Sanson, profoundly impressed by her beauty and courage, considerately stood up when they came in sight of the guillotine so that she should not see it, but she asked him to sit down: a person in her position was ‘naturally curious’. After her execution Sanson’s assistant picked up the head to show to the crowd and slapped it across the cheek. Some said they saw her face blush; others maintained it was the effect of the red stormy sunset. ‘ Elle nous perd ,’ Vergniaud said, ‘ mais elle nous apprend à mourir .’