Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois

Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois (1749 - 1796) was an actor and French revolutionist. He was a member of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror.

Life

Born in Paris on the 19th June 1749, Collot left his home in the rue St Jacques in his teens to join the travelling theatres of provincial France. His moderately successful career supplemented by a vigourous outpouring of works for the stage took him from Bordeaux in the south of France to Nantes in the west and Lille in the north and even into Holland, where he met his wife. In 1784 he became director of the theatre in Geneva, Switzerland, and then at the prestigious playhouse at Lyons in 1787. At the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789 he dropped everything and returned to Paris, where his lead actor's voice, his writing skills, and his ability to organise and direct large-scale "fetes" were to come to the fore.

He had from the first a share in the revolutionary tumult; but it was not until 1791 that he became a figure of importance. Then, however, by the publication of L'Almanach du Père Gérard, a little book setting forth, in homely style, the advantages of a constitutional monarchy, he suddenly acquired great popularity.

His renown was soon increased by his active involvement on behalf of the Swiss of the Château-Vieux Regiment, condemned to the galleys for mutiny at Nancy. His efforts resulted in their liberation; he went himself to Brest in search of them; and a civic feast was decreed on his behalf and theirs, which gave occasion for one of the few poems published during his life by André de Chénier. But his opinions became more and more radical. He was a member of the insurrectionary Commune of Paris during the insurrection of August 10, 1792, and was elected deputy for Paris to the Convention, where, on the first day of the Convention (September 21, 1792) he was the first to demand the abolition of royalty. He later voted the death of Louis XVI "sans sursis" ("without delay").

In the struggle between the Mountain and the Girondists he displayed great energy; and after the coup d'état of May 31, 1793 he made himself conspicuous by his pitiless pursuit of the defeated Girondist party. Along with his close friend Billaud-Varennes he sat at the extreme left of the Convention, attacking hoarders and speculators, and proposing proto-socialist programmes. In June he was made president of the Convention; and in September he was admitted to the Committee of Public Safety, on which he was very active as a sort of general secretary. After having entrusted him with several missions to Nice, Nevers and Compiegne,the Convention sent him along with Fouché, on October 30, 1793, to punish the revolt of Lyons. There he introduced the Reign of Terror in its most terrible form, with mass executions, including more than a hundred priests and nuns, and beginning the dismantling of the city itself. Although acting on instructions from the Convention dominated by Robespierre, it was this latter's change of heart which had Collot return to Paris under a cloud before the destruction became widespread.

In May 1794 an attempt was made to assassinate Collot; but it only increased his popularity, and increased the animosity of Robespierre, against whom he took sides during Robespierre's downfall on 9 Thermidor, when he presided over the Convention during a part of the session. During the Thermidorian reaction he was one of the first to be accused of complicity with the fallen leader, but was acquitted. Denounced a second time, he defended himself by pleading that he had acted for the cause of the Revolution, but in March 1795 he was condemned with Barère and Billaud-Varenne to transportation to Cayenne, French Guiana, where he exerted a brief revolutionary influence before dying of yellow fever early in 1796.

Works

Beginning his literary career in 1772 with the critically-acclaimed "Lucie, ou les Parents imprudents" and finishing in 1792 with ""L'aine et le cadet", Collot d'Herbois was an accomplished if minor dramatist in a turbulent period of the French stage. Before the Revolution he wrote at least fifteen plays, of which ten survive, including "Lucie", an adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" ("M. Rodomont ou l'Amant loup-garou"), and an adaptation of Calderon's "El Alcalde de Zalamea" ("Il y a bonne justice, ou le Paysan magistrat"), all three of which kept the stage throughout France for over a decade. During the first three years of the Revolution he wrote at least seven more plays, of which six survive, juggling the tearful love themes of the bourgeois drama with political themes and messages in such plays as "L'inconnu ou le prejuge vaincu" and "Le proces de Socrate ou le regime des anciens temps".

In 1791 he wrote the prize-winning "Almanach du Père Gérard", a fictional account of revolutionary morality, which established his political credentials, and went on to become the best-seller of the period.

He is also the author of the first French Constitution (1793).

References

Please update as needed.

The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, in turn, cites as a reference:

• FA Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Legislative et de la Convention (Paris, 1885-1886), t. ii. pp. 501-512. The principal documents relative to the trial of Collot d'Herbois, Barère and Billaud-Varenne are indicated in Aulard, Recueil des actes du comité de salut public, t. i. pp. 5 and 6.

Much recent study has been done on Collot d'Herbois, in Australia (specialised articles by Paul Mansfield; Peter Bruce's "Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois dans son theatre pre-revolutionnaire") and in France (Michel Biard Collot d"Herbois. Legendes noires et revolution).

A more available work, if outdated and somewhat hostile, is R. R. Palmer's Twelve Who Ruled, which contains a biographical account of the members of the Committee of Public Safety.

See also, A. Kuscinski Dictionnaire des conventionnels (1916)de:Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois fr:Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois