Other Dead White European Males (and a few Dead White European Females)

I think part of the problem with the way history is taught is that you don't get to know the people involved. So here is a little anecdotal biography page of some of the key figures in the French Revolution...an event so personal that it sometimes resembled a magnified soap opera. It's important (not to mention interesting) to learn about these lives built, and often destroyed by a Revolution far beyond individual control.

Name: Gracchus Babeuf
Dates: 1760-1797
Cause of Death: guillotined
Party: Babeuvist
Historical Resume: writer and editor, leader of the "conspiracy of equals", predecessor of modern communism
Description: thin, ragged, dirty, long-haired, large-eyed
Personality: suspicious, alert, paranoid, compassionate, fanatical, energetic, radical
Tidbits: Although Babeuf had been imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, he claimed disciple-ship of Robespierre, which confirmed the bourgeois fear that Robespierre had been in league with attackers of the concept of property.

Name: Jean Sylvain Bailly
Dates: 1736-1793
Cause of death: guillotined
Party: Feuillant
Historical Resume: astronomer, deputy to Third Estate, deputy to National Assembly, first mayor of Paris
Description: tall, thin, dark-skinned, austere, long-nosed
Personality: moderate, modest, tolerant, taciturn, intelligent, reflective
Tidbits: Bailly was a member of the French Academy and was famous throughout Europe for his Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne et Moderne. When he was executed one cold November day, he was shaking. One of the executioner's assistants remarked to him, "Bailly, you are shaking!" "Only because I am cold." He replied.

Name: Antoine Barnave
Dates: 1761-1793
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Feuillant
Historical Resume: member of National Assembly, virtual prime minister after Mirabeau
Description: young-looking, small, pleasant
Personality: idealistic, eloquent, charming, bright
Tidbits: His family was Protestant but well-thought of and very wealthy. His mother was a noble. He was the recipient of coded letters from Marie Antoinette and supposedly was a friend of Camille Desmoulins at some time.

Name: Betrand Barere
Dates: 1755-1841
Cause of Death: old age
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard
Nicknames: Anacreon of the Guillotine
Historical Resume: Deputy to Convention, member of Committee of Public Safety
Description: Pleasant-looking, cheerful, flamboyant, often wore a red scarf
Personaliy: Brilliant, charming, hard-working, eloquent, diplomatic, flowery, malleable
Tidbits: Malleable and brilliant, Barere had managed to be admitted to the bar at the very early age of 20 where he soon became one of the busiest lawyers in Toulouse. Having gone along with 9 Thermidor, he was then exiled in the White Terror but managed to get his way back under the Directory and supported Napoleon on 18 Brumaire. He served as a deputy in the 100 days and therefore was exiled. As an old, poor man after the Revolution of 1830, he was called often to the Palace to talk with Louis Philipe,the Citizen King, son of the Duc d'Orleans, a man Barere himself had condemned to death, to discuss the Committee of Public Safety and the "good ol'days" to a very curious king. He died in poverty, the last of the members of the Committee of Public Safety. He repented his actions against Robespierre and maintained his support for the Republic even on his deathbed.

Name: Paul Francois Jean Nicolas Barras
Dates: 1755-1829
Cause of death: old age
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard
Historical Resume: Deputy to the National Convention, led 9 Thermidor, lead Director
Description: weak-featured, blond, plump, handsome
Personality: generous, open-heated, hedonistic, self-indulgent, corrupt, suave, sophisticated
Tidbits: Barras was a lesser noble. Reflecting to Alexander Dumas as an old man, Barras said that the two worst things he had done in his life were to overthrow Robespierre and to let Napoleon take over.

Name: Jean Nicole Billaud Varennes
Dates:1756-1819
Cause of Death:heart failure
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard-with Hebertist tendencies
Historical Resume: Deputy to National Convention, member of Committee of Public Safety, helped plan 9 Thermidor, exiled to "dry guillotine" in Guyana
Description:scraggly, uncouth, dark-haired, thick-set, sallow, unshaven
Personality: Bloodthirsty, extremist, intelligent, self-absorbed, intensely self-righteous, brutal
Tidbits: Before the Revolution he was a lawyer and had for time worked as a clerk in the law office of a certain M. D'Anton. He also published several plays and an essay attacking the Catholic Church. After playing his large part in the overthrow of Robespierre, Billaud with his friend Collot were both labeled as extremists in the White Terror and sent to the "dry guillotine" at Guyana. Having survived the fever that killed Collot in the nunnery, the rabid dechristianizer lived under the protection of these women who defended him against the very anti-Jacobin governor. Afterwards, he married a native girl named Virginie and settled down to farming and joys of life a la Rousseau. He suffered painful nightmares and increasing regrets about his part in killing Danton and Robespierre. When the English took over in 1816, he and Virginie went to the US but didn't like it there so went to Haiti, a newfound Republic itself, which invited him to serve as a sort of counselor to the government...which he did until his death.

Name: Napoleon Bonaparte
Dates: 1769-1822
Cause of Death: heart attack
Party: Bonapartist (During the Rev, he was first Girondin, then Dantonist, then Robespierrist,then for the Directory)
Nicknames: the Little Corporal, the Little Corsican, Boney
Historical resume: Artillery Captain, planned recapture of Toulon from British, conquered Italy at 26,
Description: Small, pale, plain, "plump feminine hands" and "seductive grey eyes" spare and scraggly in his youth, developed a paunch and baldness in middle age
Personality: brilliant, morose, farouche, arrogant, energetic

Name: Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville
Dates: 1754-1793
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Girondin
Historical Resume: Deputy to National Assembly, Deputy to the Convention, Girondin leader
Description: Thin, stooped, frail, shabby
Personality: Idealistic, utopian, peaceful, kind, scatter-brained, eloquent
Tidbits: Before the Revolution, he was a hack writer and had journeyed to England to found a newspaper that would unite all of the best minds in Europe. The paper had failed and he had fled England away from his creditors only to be arrested in the France and held in the Bastille for a pamphlet he had published in England against the Queen. His wife, however, was a good friend of Felicite de Genlis, mistress of the Duke de Orleans, and with her help the Duke let him out of prison.

Name: Therezia Cabarrus (also, Ouvrard, Tallein and the Marquise de Fontenoy)
Dates: lots of them......hahaha... 1773-1835
Cause of Death: old age
Party: Yes, she loved them
Nicknames: Our Lady of Thermidor, Property of the Government
Historical resume: aristocrat, urged Tallein to overthrow Robespierre, mistress of Barras and Tallein and determiner of power during the Directory, friend of Josephine Bonaparte
Description: Tall, voluptuous, gorgeous, dark-haired, always scantily-clad
Personality: Brilliant, charming, seductive, opportunistic, fun-loving, frivolous, generous
Tidbits: Her mother supposedly gave birth to Therezia while she was dancing at a court ball. An aristocratic Spanish beauty and child prodigy, Therezia supposedly seduced her uncle at age 12. It was the start of a long trend. Married to the much older Marquis de Fontenoy at age 19, and had one child by him. He was beheaded and she was thrown in prison in Carmes (with Josephine de Beauharnais among others) after she seduced the young representative en mission to Bordeaux, Tallein. In prison, Therezia sent Tallein a sword and a letter asking him to overthrow Robespierre and rescue her. He complied. They were married and their first daughter Thermidor-Rose..after the day that Robespierre was overthrown. She presided over the glittering Thermidorean reaction and was said to wear dressed made only of strings of diamonds on rides through impoverished Paris. Although married, she was the mistress of Barras...and a lot of other important people..therefore earning the name "property of the government." She settled down eventually with the very rich financier Ouvrard and lived to a ripe old age with her 10 children.

Name: Lazare Carnot
Dates: 1753-1823
Cause of Death: old age
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard
Nicknames: Organizer of Victory
Historical Resume: Engineer in Army Corps, Deputy to Convention, member of the Committee of Public Safety, military strategist, one of Directors, count under Napoleon
Description: rough-hewn, plain, middle-aged
Personality: Competent, hard-working, taciturn, military genius,
Tidbits: Before the Revolution, Carnot had been jailed for a short time after he tried to elope with Ursule de Boillet, an aristocrat. Carnot had once employed a young lawyer in his home province of Artois to help a servant of his receive a considerable inheritance....the name of that lawyer was Robespierre. In his free time, Carnot published works on mathmetics and the fortification theory which is still named after him. After his fall from power in the Fructidor coup, he retired to a home life devoted to his two sons....one would become his biographer and the other a scientist. Although not overly fond of Napoleon,who had appointed him War Minister in 1800 only to not get along with him and fire him (Carnot was to vote against the Consulate and the Empire, costing him dearly) he supported him after the Emperor came back from exile in 1814 and thus was banished as a regicide under Louis XVIII. He died in exile. His grandson was to become president of the French Republic. He is the only member of the Committee of Public Safety whose memory is widely cherished throughout France today.

Name: Jean Carrier
Dates: 1756-1794
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Montagnard
Historical Resume: Deputy to Convention, representative en mission to Nantes, beheaded in White Terror
Nicknames: "The Butcher of Nantes"
Description: Dark, hook-nosed, wild-eyed, disheveled, pale
Personality: insane, violent, sadistic, brutal, fanatical, self-righteous
Tidbits: Invented "noyades" wherein people, often young children and women with babies in their arms, would be put on a boat and sunk in the ocean so they would all drown to death. He was genuinely insane and was said to fly into fits of rage wherein he would foam at the mouth and rip rugs on the floors.

Name: Anarcharsis Clootz (Baron de Clootz)
Dates: 1755-1794
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Hebertist
Historical Resume: Honorary Citizen of the National Convention, Deputy to the Convention, executed w/Hebert
Nicknames: "the orator of humanity"
Personality: Idealistic, naive, humanitarian, generous, sweet, eloquent, gentle, child-like, compassionate
Tidbits: Clootz was a millionaire German philanthropist invited to the National Assembly as a Honorary Citizen, 5 years later he was riding a tumbril with the cowardly Hebertists asking the Parisian people not to "confuse him with these knaves."

Name: Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois
Dates: 1750-1797
Cause of Death: fever
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard-with Hebertist tendencies
Historical Resume: Deputy to the National Convention, member of Committee of Public Safety ,representative en mission to Lyons, helped plan 9 Thermidor, exiled to "dry guillotine" in Guyana
Description: Tall, gaunt, sharp-featured, dark, black-eyed
Personality: Theatrical, mercurial, extremist, paranoid, hard-working, resourceful, treacherous
Tidbits: Before Revolution, he worked as a traveling actor and playwright (he was in some of the same plays as future revolutionary Claire Lacombe) and he always remembered the booing his play received at Lyons (The town that, in 1793, he burned to the ground and executed indiscriminatingly) Although he helped plan Robespierre's overthrow, his name was too closely linked to acts of terrorism to escape justice in the Thermidorean reacion and he was sent to the "dry guillotine"---a penal colony in Guyana--with Billaud. He died on fever despite the constant ministrations of some generous nuns shortly thereafter.

Name: Marquis de Condorcet, Marie Jean Antione de Caritat
Dates: 1743-1794
Cause of Death: Committed suicide by poison
Party: Girondin
Historical Resume: philosopher, mathematician, aristocrat, deputy to the First Estates, National Assembly, Convention, executed with Gironde
Description:
Personality: Sweet, thoughtful, absent-minded, considerate, brilliant, independent
Tidbits: His wife, the beautiful and brilliant Sophie was the hostess of one of the most intellectual saloons in early Revolutionary France. They were forced to divorce when he was accused with Gironde party and afterwards she earned a living making street-side portraits and selling lingerie. He believed that women should have the right to vote. Having fled Paris after he was indicted, he was supposedly given away when he, famished and with an aristocrat's ignorance of practical matters, ordered an omelet at a local restaurant in Bourg la Reine. He was asked how many eggs he wanted in. "Twelve" was his response. The suspicions of the townspeople were confirmed by the copy of Horace in his pocket.

Name: Charlotte Corday
Dates: 1768-1793
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Girondin
Nicknames: Angel of the Assassination
Historical Resume: Assassin of Marat
Description: Pretty, blond, fresh and innocent-looking, well-built
Personality: aloof, independent, bookish, brave, stoic, idealistic, intelligent, cold, competent
Tidbits: Corday, forever obsessed with the values of the Ancients, was the great-grandaughter of the dramatist Corneille who wrote always of Classical values. She was educated in a convent and spent most her time reading Plutarch. After she assassinated Marat, which she did with surgical precision and stoic calm, the deputies refused to believe that a woman could have come with the nefarious idea of killing The People's Friend on her own and so linked her to a list of Girondin lovers--inluding Duperrat and Barbaroux. She died with remarkable sangfroid, dressed in the red of a parricide.
Quotes About: "She has killed us, but she has showed us how to die."
--Pierre Verginaud

Name: Georges Couthon
Dates: 1756-1794
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard-Robespierrist
Historical Resume: Deputy to National Convention, member of Committee of Pubic Safety, representative en mission to Lyons, one of Robespierrist "triumvirs", beheaded w/Robespierre 10 Thermidor
Description: Sweet-faced, crippled
Personality: Spoke very bloodily but was actually a clement, just, thoughtful, devoted family man
Tidbits: His paralysis was caused by meningitis which he associated with a time in his much more decadent youth when he had been visiting a lady and had to run away in stormy weather when her husband arrived unexpectedly. His wife, they were a very devoted couple, pushed him around everywhere. He had to be carried up stairs in a basket. He was actually called back from Lyons for being too clement---for only attacking property and not people. On 9 Thermidor, Freron screamed that Couthon "wanted to make of our corpses so many steps to mount the throne." Couthon, looked wryly down at his withered legs and remarked "Oh yes, I wished to mount the throne."

See Georges Danton

Name: Jacques-Louis David
Dates:1748-1825
Cause of Death: old age
Party: Robespierrist (later became a Bonapartist)
Historical Resume: famous painter, deputy to the National Convention, member of the Committee of General Security, official painter for Napoleon
Description: ugly, warty-cheeked, uncouth, ferocious-looking
Personality: fanatical, intense, radical, generous, fastidious
Tidbits: His fame had been established with Oath of the Horatii. He usually painted in a velvet waist coat. He did most of the famous paintings not to mention scenery for festivals (such as that of L'Etre Supreme) of the French Revolution. On 8 Thermidor, after Robespierre mentioned martyrdom, David said "We will drink hemlock with you!" He escaped the fate of his fellow Robespierrists (namely because he didn't volunteer to die) but was sent to prison. Released he became an adamant Bonapartist. He spent the very last part of his life in exile.

See Camille and Lucile Desmoulins

Name:Charles Francois Dumoriez
Dates: 1739-1823
Cause of Death: old age
Party: Girondin
Historical Resume: hero of Valmy, commanding general of French Army, betrayed France to opposition
Personality: brilliant, unstable, treacherous, polished, opportunistic
Tidbits: Dumoriez, a follower of Choiseul, had been imprisoned in the Bastille for several months in 1770. After fleeing to Austria and telling Emperor Joseph of the Republic's military plans, he spent the rest of his life wondering around Coalition European looking for buyers. He was a very well-paid advisor to the Pitt and Castlereagh administrations, giving them information that allowed them to prosecute a war against his home country. He was denied permission to return to France under the Bourbons because of the information he had given Wellington in the Spanish wars, so he died in England in obscurity.

Name: Elisabeth de France, Madame Elisabeth
Dates: 1764-1794
Cause of Death: guillotined
Part: royalist
Nicknames: Queen of Pity
Historical Resume: youngest sister of Louis XVI, voluntarily followed him in imprisonment, beheaded
Description: plump, sweet-faced, plain-featured
Personality: Kind, gentle, very shy, very pious, affectionate
Tidbits: Madame Elisabeth was Louis XVI's favorite sibling though she was 10 years younger than he. She was well-loved by the people for her kindness, she once had 60 poor young girls vaccinated at her own expense. She gave a lot of money and time to charities. She accompanied the family to Varennes and Petion, on the ride back, thought she had fallen in love with him when she was merely sleepy. Voluntarily accompanying her brother into imprisonment, she shared his fate. When her captors came to take her to the scaffold, she insisted on taking her Bible. She recited De Profundis on her way to the scaffold. The 25 others who were beheaded before her bowed to her before they mounted the scaffold. When her muslin shawl slipped as she was tied to the board, baring her shoulders she said, "in the name of decency, cover me up."

Name: Fabre d'Eglatine, Philippe Francois Fabre
Dates: 1755-1794
Cause of Death: guillotined
Party: Dantonist
Historical Resum: Deputy to the Convention, designer of the Revolutionary Calendar,executed with Danton
Description: always carried a lorgnette, slim, pleasant-faced
Personality: mercurial, charming, poetic, treacherous, opportunistic, optimistic
Tidbits: He was the author of the song Il Pleut, Il Pleut Bergere and worked as a poet, actor and artist. He supposed eloped with a girl to save her from being raped by her father only to be caught and nearly hanged for it. The name "Eglatine" comes from a wild rose of gold that he won as a literary prize at the floral games in Toulouse in 1775. He became a friend of Danton's and was dying with tuberculosis while imprisoned. He had been deeply involved in the East India Company scandal. He supposed was upset that he would never be able to finish his play The Maltese Orange.....and commented to Danton about never being able to finish his poems "vers". Danton laughed and said that in a few days he'd been making many vers (worms).

Name: Joseph Fouché (Duke of Ortonto)
Dates: 1759-1820
Cause of Death: Old age
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard-Hebertist
Nicknames: the Butcher of Lyons
Historical Resume: Deputy to Convention, representative en mission to Lyons---responsible for slaughter of 2,000 there, main plotter of 9 Thermidor,. Chief of Police and master spy under Napoleon, Duke of Otronto
Description: Ugly, bony, long-nosed, gray-eyed, albino
Personality: Brilliant, shrewd, treacherous, opportunistic, vicious, secretive, brutal, good family man
Tidbits: Starting out as a physics teacher and priest at a Jesuit school, Fouche survived the fall of the Hebertists, the wrath of Robespierre, the Thermidorean reaction against the terrorists, the fall of the Directory and the fall of Napoleon and died the richest man in France and the Duke of Otronto. Known as the only man Napoleon feared. Fouche was one of the extremists against Christianity and had "Death is an eternal sleep" put over all cemeteries in 1794. He and Collot d'Herbois were responsible for the indiscriminate deaths of over 2,000 people in Lyons, a city which they burned to the ground, posting the sign "Lyons made war on liberty....Lyons is no more." He was a kind and devoted father and husband. He named his daughter Nievre after the district he was assigned to. Before the Revolution, he had been engaged to Charlotte Robespierre, sister of the man he killed.
Quotes: "Death is the eternal sleep."
Quotes About: "Soul of a demon, face of a corpse."
--Victor Hugo
"The man feared by men others feared."
--I don't know who but a damned smart guy

Name: Antione Fouquier-Tinville
Dates: 1746-1795
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Montagnard
Historical Resume: Public Prosecutor of Revolutionary Tribunal, beheaded in White Terror
Description: Swarthy, ugly, thick-set, shaggy, dark-haired,
Personality: Hard-working, competent, unimaginative, devoted family man, alcoholic
Tidbits: Fouquier Tinville was the older cousin of Camille Desmoulins who had got him his position as Public Prosecutor in 1793. A year later, Camille, charged before Fouquier's Revolutionary Tribunal, "regretted his nepotism." Before the Revolution, there was a rumor that he had poisoned his first wife. He was an alcoholic and the strain of his position during the Terror made him more of one, and he became prone to hysterical laughing/crying fits in court and for suffering from nightmares about headless bodies. He was a devoted family man and supporting his wife and eight children was one reason he remained at his job as Public Prosecutor.

Name: Olympe de Gouges, (Marie Gouze)
Dates: 1748-1793
Cause of death: guillotined
Party: Constitutional monarchist
Historical Resume: wrote Declaration of Rights of Women
Description: tall, statuesque, beautiful wore ruffled muslin on her head (which looked rather odd)
Personality: outspoken, courageous, talkative, lively, very intelligent
Tidbits: Olympe was very far ahead of her time in her Declaration of the Rights of Women (which resembled Vindication of the Rights of Women of her English counterpart Mary Wollstonecraft) She wrote a lot, getting into a heated argument with the Comedie Francaise before the Revolution because they wouldn't perform one of her plays. There are rumors that she was illiterate and that she dictated her works, but that seems rather ridiculous. A constitutional monarchist, she petitioned the Convention to let her be a lawyer to the King. Her request was not granted but she was executed for it.

Name: Jacques-Rene Hébert
Dates: 1757-1794
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Nicknames: Pére Duchesne
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard-Hebertist
Historical Resume: editor of radical Pere Duchesne, organizer of "New Cordelier", designed of the Cult of Reason and extreme dechristianizer, executed in 1794 for radicalism
Description: Small, pale, plump, neat, (compare to his bearded, coarse disheveled namesake)
Personality: Crude, vulgar, irreverent, cowardly, demagoguic, weak-minded
Tidbits: The son of a prosperous blacksmith, he had lost his fortune by a smear campaign against his former lover, the wife of pharmacist, 20 years older than he was. Married to defrocked nun Francoise Hebert (who went bravely to the guillotine in the same tumbrel with her new friend Lucile Desmoulins....wife of a man who had hated and helped kill her husband) Hebert worked as a hack writer and ticket seller for the Comedie Francaise before the Revolution. Although his violent and crude paper often mocked those who went stoicly to the guillotine, he himself was a pathetic and cowardly mess at his death.
Name: Herault d'Seychelles
Dates: 1758-1794
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: animal! (Just kidding :)) Jacobin-Montagnard
Historical Resume: aristocrat (favorite of Marie Antoinette's), lawyer, member of Paris parlement, Deputy to Convention, member of Committee of Public Safety, writer of 1793 Constitution, executed with Dantonists
Description: Very handsome, blond, elegant, impeccably dressed
Personality: Flippant, brilliant, witty, bouyant, aristocratic, facile, charming, suave
Tidbits: Herault was said to be so handsome that women would fight for a lock of his hair. He was related to the Polignacs, favorites of Marie Antionette, and he himself was said to be very much on her good side. (This, along with his flippant matter *truly* endeared him to Saint-Just and Robespierre) At 18, rather than the normal 25, he was allowed to enter the Paris court's as a king's attorney. He wrote Reflections on Declamation and Theory of Ambition, wherein he discussed the joys of being a sophisticated egotist. He loved good wines, women, books, ideas, clothes and traveled to Holland to purchase the autographed copy of Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise. A great believer in physiogomy (telling the future by the shape of the face) he sent a portrait to the European expert Lavater, asking him for prediction. Lavater vaguely foretold that he had "much to suffer." Lavater was right. Herault would be beheaded in 1794.

Name: Marquis de Lafayette, Marie Gilbert Motier
Dates: 1757-1834
Cause of Death: old age
Party: Feuillant (Constitutional Monarchist)
Historical Resume: Hero of American Revolution, captain of National Guard, member of first Estate, dputy to National Assembly, general in Revolutionary Army,unofic
Nicknames: Hero of Two Revolutions (Worlds), Kid Blondy, Giles Caesar Esquire
Description: Slender, sharp-featured, long nosed ("head like a pineapple"---Gore Vidal hehehehe)
Personality: Liberal, devoted, unimaginative, idealistic, optimistic, moderate
Tidbits: He was a general at 19, having volunteered to serve in the American War of Independence (having been laughed at by Marie Antionette at court for being a lousy dancer), he became one of Washington's personal favorites (Lafayette named his daughter Virginie after the "Father of our Country"-s home state and his son was named George Washington) When the Bastille fell, Lafayette sent the key to the Bastille to Washington as a token of shared republican feelings. His errand boy was a costumed Indian who called him "father" and each Monday he would have an "American dinner" and invited lots of famous Americans and Englishmen to his house where democracy was often the subject. He kept a copy of the American Bill of Rights on the wall next to an empty frame that he said would be "for the French Declaration of Rights."Lafayette fled to Austria before time got too radical for generous aristos. He had a second moment of glory in 1830, presenting the Duc d'Orleans to the people of Paris.

Name: Princess de Lamballe, Maria Therese de Savoie Carignan
Dates: 1749-1792
Party: royalist
Cause of Death: eviscerated, ripped apart and behead in September Massacres
Historical resume: confidante of Marie Antoinette, superintendent of Marie Antoinette's household, killed in September Massacres
Description: small, frail, not very pretty, sweet-faced, beautiful hair
Personality: meek, kind, delicate, dependent
Tidbits: In the September Massacres, she was brutally killed, her heart ripped out (and according to some eaten) and her head was put on a pike and paraded past the Queen's jail cell at the Temple.

Name:Philipe Lebas
Dates: 1764-1794
Cause of Death: shot himself
Party: Robespierrist
Historical Resume: deputy to the National Convention, head of the Cadets of Mars school, member of Committee of General Security, representative en mission to Alsace w/Saint-Just, shot himself on 10 Thermidor
Description: open-faced, young, brown-haired, blue-eyed
Personality: loyal, friendly, outgoing, personable, idealistic
Tidbits: Lebas, though much younger than his friend Robespierre, supposedly met him while attending Louis-le-Grand. Lebas married Elisabeth Duplay, the middle daughter of the carpenter's family whom Robespierre boarded with. Robespierre was the best man at their wedding. Their son was three months old two weeks before Thermidor when Philipe declared "If it were not for the baby, I'd shoot myself and take you with me." Philipe headed the School of Mars, which as R.R. Palmer noted "was more like Hitler Youth than Boy Scouts." The boys were to sleep on mats, drill for war and avoid meat. (Don't ask me what Lebas and Saint-Just had against meat...)Lebas worshipped Saint-Just. Henriette, Lebas' younger sister was engaged to Saint-Just for a time. Both Elisabeth (she never remarried and even in old age kept portraits of Saint-Just, Robespierre and Couthon on her wall) and Henriette refused to renounce the Robespierrist faction after Thermidor. Philipe shot himself at Saint-Just's feet at 10 Thermidor and was buried when the Hotel de Ville fell.

See Louis XVI

Name: Louis XVII, Louis Charles de France
Dates: 1785-1795
Party: royalist
Cause of death: starvation/neglect
Nicknames: "Honeybunch"
Historical Resume: dauphin of France
Description: sweet-faced, blond-haired, blue-eyed
Personality: intelligent, obedient
Tidbits: Louis XVII was taken from the care of his mother and placed under care of the cobbler Simon. He was found dead in 1795. There are persistent rumors that the dead boy was a decoy, but recent DNA testing revealed him to indeed be the true son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI

See Jean-Paul Marat

See Marie Antoinette

Name: Marie Therese, Madame Royale
Dates: 1778-1851
Cause of Death: old age
Party: royalist
Nicknames: Muslin the Serious
Historical Resume: eldest daughter of royal family, married Duke d'Angouleme, eminence gris under Louis XVIII
Description: pretty, curly-haired, blond
Personality: pious, reactionary, always very serious, proud
Tidbits: Having survived the Revolution, being exchanged for prisoners in Austria in 1795, Madame Royale became a huge influence on her uncle the Comte d'Artois when he became Louis XVIII.

Name: Henri Gabriel Riqueti Comte de Mirabeau
Dates: 1749-1791
Cause of Death: Overwork/poisoning?
Party: Constitutional Monarchist
Nicknames: the Torch of Provence
Historical Resume: Deputy the Second Estate (one of first to join National Assembly), President of National Assembly, unofficial Prime Minister
Description: Huge, outrageously ugly, pock-marked, disheveled, coarse-featured
Personality: Hard-working (burned candle at both ends) hedonistic, brilliant, shrewd, arrogant, born showman, cynical , ambitious, eloquent, forceful
Tidbits: Teh family of Mirabeau claimed noble descent from Charlemagne's nobles in the 800s (well, they claimed this anyway), a pedigree hard to match in aristcratic France. It was since the 800s that the Mirabeaus had a reputation for being inspired by the devil. They were a very turbulent family, Mirabeau was always fighting with his brilliant and irascible father who had him thrown in the Bastille (where he was forced to spend time with the Marquis de Sade....you have to pity him there) on letres de cachet. Despite his horrendous physical appearance, he was immensely popular with women. One of his many mistresses, Sophie de Mournier, a beautiful and intelligent aristocrat, committed suicide in 1788 because she couldn't stand her abusive husband. It was little wonder that the stolid borgeouis did not trust their fellow Third Estate Deputy Mirabeau.

Name: Jacques Necker
Dates: 1730-1804
Cause of Death: old age
Party: Constitutional monarchist
Historical resume: Financier, millionaire, dismissal sparked the fall of the Bastille
Description: Well-dressed, stout, pear-faced
Personality: Very self-confident, verbose, opportunistic
Tidbits: His wife, Suzanne, had for a while been thinking of marrying Edward Gibbon, the great author of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Instead, she married Necker a Swiss millionaire, became the hostess of one of the most intellectual saloons in ancien regime Paris and had one child, Germaine, a child prodigy who, for a time was engaged to William Pitt the Younger, child prodigy son of British Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder Earl of Chatham. Germaine declined for the same reasons her mother had....mainly England was too cold and too sexist. Germain instead married the Swiss ambassador and become.....the Baroness de Stael. Jacques Necker, though he always had very good publicity, really didn't know what to do about the financial situation of the monarchy. However, the Parisian populace adored him, hence the riots that led to the fall of the Bastille.

Name: Philipe Duc d'Orleans
Dates: 1747-1793
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard
Nicknames: Philipe Egalite
Description: Plain, heavy-featured, corpulent, always well-dressed
Personality: Ambitious, liberal, hedonistic, self-serving, rather stupid
Tidbits: Owned the Palais Royal (afterwards, Palais Egalite) known as a center for culture and prostitution. His mistress Felicite de Genlis was a disciplined and tough-minded woman who was an accomplished writer in her own right. Their beautiful and intelligent daughter Pamela was educated by her mother under the pretense that she was an "orphan." The Duke of Orleans, though a cousin to the King, early showed his sympathies for the revolutionaries and changed his name to Philipe Egalite. Legend has it his was the one vote that had the King executed rather than imprisoned. (This is not true---there was a 7 vote margin) He was mistrusted by the Jacobins for his interest in the Crown and beheaded. His son (by his real wife), Louis Philipe, became Louis Philipe the Citizen King after the revolution of 1830.

Name: Thomas Paine
Dates:1737-1809
Cause of Death: old age
Party: unaffiliated, closest to Gironde
Historical Resume:Author of Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, Honorary Citizen of France, Deputy of the National Convention
Description: Ugly, hook-nosed, beady-eyed
Personality: radical, idealistic, restless, intelligent, egalitarian, passionate
Tidbits: Born to a English Quaker corsetmaker, Paine had been destined for the same life but had early on developed a passionate taste for liberty which inspired him to write Common Sense, the pamphlet which in a large way sparked the American Revolution. Familiar with the Founding Fathers, Paine was supposedly said to have answered Franklin's "Where freedom is, there is my country" with the reply "Where freedom is not, there is mine." Washington, Hamilton and the newly established Federalist party began to distrust that "dirty little atheist" who had started their Revolution. So he went back to his home country of England and embraced the French Revolution, writing The Rights of Man in response to Burke's pessimistic Reflections on the Revolution in France. His lese majesty did little to endear him to the English government, where Prime Minister Pitt issued a warrant for him for treason. The Prime Minister commented to his niece Lady Hester Stanhope in private, "Mr. Paine may very well be right. But if I did as he said I'd have the country in anarchy in a week." So, making use of his Honorary Citizenship, Paine went to France where he joined the liberal Girondin. HE spoke little French and so always needed a translator. Nevertheless, he soon made himself vocal as a supporter of women's rights and opponent of slavery and the death penalty. He thought that the King should be exiled to Louisiana where, in America, he might learn some democratic ideas. As a foreigner, Paine was thrown in jail in the xenophobic Reign of Terror and wrote Age of Reason there, while awaiting execution. Released, but his faith in democracy slightly shaken, he returned to the United States where he married and died in obscurity.
Quotes: "These are the times that try men's souls."

Name: Jerome Petion de Villeneuve
Dates: 1756-1794
Party: Girondin
Cause of Death: committed suicide
Historical Resume: deputy to National Assembly, Mayor of Paris, deputy to National Convention,
Description: tall, stout, nice-looking
Personality: naïve, blustery, sensitive, charming, warm-hearted
Tidbits: Supposedly went to school with Robespierre and Desmoulins. Believed that Madame Elizabeth fell in love with him on the ride back from Varennes. While fleeing near Libourne with Barbaroux and Buzot, Petion, committed suicide.

See Maximilien Robespierre

Name: Jean Marie Roland de la Platiere
Dates: 1734-1793
Cause of Death: Committed suicide by running into sword
Party: Girondin
Nicknames: the Virtuous Roland
Historical Resume: Deputy to the National Assembly and Convention, Minister of the Interior
Description: Stick thin, balding, gray, plain, long-faced, always very drably dressed with hat
Personality: puritanical, pedantic, priggish, unorginal, phlegmatic, egocentric
Tidbits: After hearing that his wife had been executed in Paris, Roland ran into his own sword (he had been shipped away from the capital earlier due to poor health)

Name: Jeanne Manon Philipon Roland
Dates: 1755-1793
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Jacobin-Girondin
Nicknames: Circe, the Virtuous Manon
Historical resume: Wife of Minister of the Interior, hostess for Girondin party, ghost writer of her husband's speeches
Description: Small, dark-eyed, pretty, plump
Personality: Brilliant, passionate, tempermental, brave, bookish, romantic, strong-willed, egocentric
Tidbits: Her father was an engraver. She was supposedly sexually molested by one of his apprentices as a little girl. She was a child prodigy and read Plutarch at 8...in church, instead of the Bible. She adores Rousseau as well as Classical values. Her husband, whom she married out of intellectual respect, was almost 20 years older than she. She raised her only daughter Eudora a la Rousseau which entailed breast feeding. She was fanatical about the importance of this. She hated Danton who used to try to make her warm up to him by such things as pinching her bottom. She had a crush on Robespierre and often invited him to her frugal dinners, but he said little and she began to hate him too after he broke with her husband's party. She fell in love with the young deputy Buzot and felt obliged to confess the whole thing...though it seems to have been platonic....to her husband. At her execution, which she went to like a Roman martyr, she turned to the Statue of Liberty near the guillotine and said "Liberty, Oh liberty! What crimes have been committed in thy name!"
Name: Jacques Roux
Dates: 1752-1794
Cause of Death: Poisoned himself in prison
Party: Enrage
Nicknames: the Red Priest
Historical Resume: Ex-priest, leader of Enrages
Description: Very thin, sharp-faced, tall,
Personality: Brave, fanatical, extreme, liberal, merciless, tenacious,

See Antoine Saint-Just

Name: Emmanuel Sieyes
Dates: 1748-1836
Cause of Death: old age
Party: The Plain
Historical Resume: wrote What is the Third Estate?, Deputy to the Third Estate, National Assembly, Convention, Director, helped Napoleon's 18 Brumaire Coup, Second Consul
Nicknames: Mole of the Revolution
Description: Small, thin, plain, pale, inconspicuous
Personality: Thoughtful, introspective, indecisive,
Tidbits: When asked what his crowning achievement had been during the Reign of Terror, he replied tersely "I lived."
Quotes: "What is the Third Estate now? Nothing What does the Third Estate want? Something. What will the Third Estate be? Everything."
Quotes About: "Sieyes was a thinker who had gone dry."
--Victor Hugo

Name: Jean Tallein
Dates: 1767-1820
Cause of death: elephantine leprosy
Party: Jacobin-Montagnard
Historical Resume: Deputy to Convention, representative en mission to Bourdeoux, one of main instigators of 9 Thermidor, Napoleonic proconsul
Description: Tall, thin, and either rat-like or handsome depending on who you were
Personality: Passionate, opportunistic, emotional, self-indulgent, charming
Tidbits: While en mission in Bordeaux, Tallein fell in love with the beautiful aristocrat Therezia Carrabus. Supposedly his part in the scheme against Robespierre on 9 Thermidor originating because she was in jail and had sent him a letter along with a knife telling him to kill Robespierre if he wasn't a coward. According to legend, he waved the blade the next day in front of the Convention, saying he was more than willing to "pierce the breast of this new-born Cromwell." He married Therezia afterwards but she being who she was, wasn't exactly faithful to him and eventually they divorced.

Name: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Perigord
Dates:oh yeah!...just kidding... 1754-1838
Cause of Death: old age
Historical Resume: Bishop of Autun, foreign minister under Directory, Minister of State for Napoleon, delegate to Congress of Vienna, Minister of State under restored Bourbon monarchy
Description: Slender, dandified, blond, club-footed, elegant,
Personality: Brilliant, witty, sophisticated, opportunistic, cynical, hedonistic, corrupt, urbane
Tidbits: If survival is an art form, Talleyrand was a Da Vinci. Because of his club foot, Talleyrand, scion of a wealthy noble family, could not enter the military and therefore had to join the clergy. This young man, whose hero was the skeptic Voltaire and whose amorous adventures were enough to shock even the womanizing American ambassador Gouvenor Morris, was too say the least a strange choice for a bishop. Clever and opportunistic, Talleyrand became one of the first priests to swear to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy but, sensing the danger ahead, decided to go on extended vacation to America where he stayed with Alexander Hamilton, among others. (He was startled that the ex-Secretary of Treasury had to actually work as a lawyer after leaving office. Most French officials would have absconded enough to support themselves in high style for the rest of their lives) His estate was auctioned off---and it was found that his wardrobe contained a lot of women's clothes...very odd for a bishop. A notorious womanizer, he was said to be the father to artist Eugene Delacroix. After Robespierre's fall, Talleyrand came back to France and served first the Directory, then the Empire, then Louis XVIII, then Napoleon again and became the French delegate and the Congress Vienna, winning by his slickness many bargains the French would not have usually been conceded as losers of the war. In 1830, the Revolution of 1830 outside his bedroom window, he said "Yes! We are winning!" A young disciple watching the events outside turned around and said "Who's we?" Talleyrand replied. "I'll tell you tomorrow."
Quotes About: "You are s---- in a silk stocking!!!
--Napoleon
(To which Talleyrand replied calmly, "Such a shame such a great man must be so ill-mannered")

Name: Anne-Marie Theroigne de Mericourt
Dates:1762-1817
Party:Girondin
Historical Resume: led attack on the Bastille and the March to Versailles by the Parisian fishwives, active in the street hangings of aristocrats during the 10th of August. Beaten near to death for supporting the Gironde
Description: Small, lithe, pretty, dark
Personality: Forceful, eloquent, brave, ruthless, energetic, resourceful, loyal, smart, a natural leader
Tidbits: Born to a peasant family, her beauty and brains made her an aristocratic courtesan but she never forgot her roots. Hence her sympathies in the Revolution. She was a fine marksperson and horse-rider. It was rumored that before the Revolution she had been the lover of Marat, which was perhaps the reason that he stopped the mob from killing her when she defending the Girondin. After her beating, she went insane and spent the rest of her life deranged in a mental institution

Name: Pierre Verginaud
Dates: 1755-1793
Cause of Death: Guillotined
Party: Girondin
Nicknames: Nightingale of the Gironde
Historical resume: Deputy to the National Assembly, Deputy to the Convention, Girondin orator
Description: Balding, tall, slight, pock-marked
Personality: Eloquent, kindly, intelligent, passive, ineffective,
Quotes by: "They are making the Revolution by means of Terror, I wished to do it by love."
"The Revolution, like Saturn, will devour its children."