François Buzot

François Buzot
Born
François Buzot

1 March 1760
Évreux, France
Died24 June 1794(1794-06-24) (aged 34)
Saint-Émilion, France
Cause of deathsuicide
Known forFrench politician and leader of the French Revolution

François Nicolas Léonard Buzot (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa nikɔla leɔnaʁ byzo]; 1 March 1760 – 24 June 1794) was a French politician and leader of the French Revolution.

Biography

Early life

Born at Évreux, Eure, Buzot studied Law, and, at the outbreak of the Revolution was a lawyer in his home town. In 1789, he was elected a deputy of the Third Estate to the Estates-General, and became known there for his radical opinions. He demanded the nationalization of the possessions of the Roman Catholic Church, and the right of all citizens to bear arms.

After the dissolution of the National Constituent Assembly, Buzot returned to Évreux, where he was named president of the criminal tribunal.[1]

Convention

In 1792, Buzot was elected deputy to the National Convention, and joined the Girondists under the influence of his friend Madame Roland. Buzot entered a polemic with the main rival of the Girondists, Jean-Paul Marat, and demanded the formation of a National Guard from the départements to defend the Convention against the Paris crowds of sans-culottes. His proposal was carried, but never put into force - the Parisians subsequently singled him out as a target of their hatred.

In the trial of King Louis XVI, Buzot voted in favour of the capital punishment death, but with appeal to the people and postponement of sentence (sursis). He had a sentence of death passed against the Royalist émigrés who did not return to France, and against anyone who should demand the re-establishment of the monarchy.[1] At the same time, he opposed Georges Danton and The Mountain, and rejected the creation of a Committee of Public Safety and Revolutionary Tribunal (but abstained when the question of Marat's trial before the Tribunal was brought up by the Girondists). On 5 May 1793, his servant was arrested in the Jardin du Luxembourg.[2]

Flight and resistance

Proscribed with the Girondists on 2 June 1793, Buzot escaped, and took refuge to Calvados in Normandy, where he contributed to organize a Girondist insurrection against the convention, which was suppressed soon after.[1]

The Convention prosecuted him, and decreed "that the house occupied by Buzot be demolished, and never to be rebuilt on this plot. [Instead,] a column shall be raised, on which there shall be written: "Here was the sanctuary of the villain Buzot who, while a representative of the people, conspired for the overthrow of the French Republic"". He fled, together with Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, to Saint-Émilion, near Bordeaux and remained in hiding. Both of them most likely committed suicide; their bodies were found in a field a week later, half-eaten by dogs.[3] It is unclear whether the men used poison or shot themselves with a pistol,[4] which is likely due to the decomposed state in which their bodies were found.[5]

Buzot's house in Evreux was purposefully burnt to the ground, plus an effigy of Buzot, by a crowd on 27 July 1793.[6]

Buzot left behind his Memoirs, first published in 1823.

References

  1. ^ a b c  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Buzot, François Nicolas Léonard". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 895. This cites as reference:
    • Mémoires de Pétion, Barbaroux, Buzot, published by C. A. Daubon (Paris, 1866).
  2. ^ Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre, Volume 9, p. 479, 134
  3. ^ Mémoires sur la Révolution Française By François Buzot, p. 108
  4. ^ Stephens, H. Morse (1891). A History of the French Revolution. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 278. Pétion and Buzot escaped the captors of Barbaroux by hiding in a pine forest; but their spirit was broken by their long sufferings and the death of their comrade, and, in despair, the once-adored Mayor of Paris, and the lover of Madame Roland, blew out their brains.
  5. ^ MacFarlane, Charles (1845). The French Revolution: Volume IV. London: Charles Knight & Co. p. 10. It was not ascertained whether they had committed suicide by poison or by other means, or whether they had perished of hunger, for their bodies were half-devoured by animals
  6. ^ Chronicle of the French Revolution ISBN 0-582-05194-0