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Gilbert Romme
Gilbert Romme
	Gilbert Romme
Born	26 March 1750; Riom, Puy-de-Dôme, Auvergne region, France
Died	17 June 1795 (aged 45); Paris, France
Nationality	French
Occupation(s)	politician and mathematician
Known for	Developed the French Republican Calendar

Charles-Gilbert Romme (26 March 1750 – 17 June 1795) was a French politician and mathematician who developed the French Republican Calendar.^{[citation needed]}

Biography

Charles Gilbert Romme was born in Riom, Puy-de-Dôme, in the Auvergne region of France, where he received an education in medicine and mathematics.^{[citation needed]} After spending five years in Paris, he went to Russia to become the tutor of Paul Stroganoff. He returned to Paris in 1788 and entered political life.^{[citation needed]}

He was a member of the Masonic lodge, Les Neuf Sœurs.^{[citation needed]}

Elected on 10 September 1791 to the Legislative Assembly, Romme aligned himself with the Girondists, but after his election to the National Convention on 6 September 1792, he sided with the Montagnards.^{[citation needed]}

He voted in favour of the death sentence for Louis XVI.^{[citation needed]} Later, in the events leading up to the Reign of Terror, he was arrested by Girondist supporters and was imprisoned in Caen for two months.^{[citation needed]}

During his tenure in National Convention, Romme served in the Committee of Public Education [fr] (Comité de l’instruction Publique), where he presented his report on the republican calendar on 17 September 1793 and then developed an agricultural almanac based on the new calendar.^[1] Aware of their military importance, he was also an early supporter of semaphore telegraphs.^{[citation needed]} He served as president of the Convention from 21 November to 6 December 1793. ^{[citation needed]}

Because he was on an assignment to organise gun production for the navy, he had no hand in the coup of 9 Thermidor an II (27 July 1794), which resulted in the fall of the Robespierre (and ultimately led to the return of the Girondists).^{[citation needed]}

When rioting sans-culottes, demanding bread and the Jacobin constitution, violently occupied the Convention on 1 Prairial an III (20 May 1795), Romme supported their demands. This insurrection was quickly put down however, and he and other Montagnards were arrested.^{[citation needed]} While waiting for their trial, the defendants agreed to commit suicide in case of a death sentence.^{[citation needed]}

On 29 Prairial (17 June), Paris, France, Romme and five others were sentenced to the guillotine. With a knife hidden by Jean-Marie Goujon, he stabbed himself repeatedly while on the staircase leading from the courtroom, and died — his last words are reported to have been "I die for the republic".^{[citation needed]}

In Romme le Montagnard (1833), Marc de Vissac described Romme as a small, awkward and clumsy man with an ill complexion and a dull orator but also as possessing a pleasant and instructive style of conversation.^{[citation needed]}