Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (; 25 August 176728 July 1794), sometimes nicknamed the Archangel of Terror,Belissa, Marc, et al. « Saint-Just, mémoires et histoire », Annales historiques de la Révolution française, vol. 390, no. 4, 2017, pp. 175–202. was a French revolutionary, political philosopher, member and president of the French National Convention, a Jacobin club leader, and a major figure of the French Revolution. The youngest person elected to the National Convention, he was a member of the Mountain faction and a steadfast supporter and close friend of Maximilien Robespierre. He was swept away in Robespierre's downfall on 9 Thermidor, Year II.
Renowned for his eloquence, he stood out for his uncompromising nature and inflexibility of his principles advocating equality and virtue, as well as for the effectiveness of his missions during which he rectified the situation of the Army of the Rhine and contributed to the victory of the republican armies at Fleurus. Politically combating the Girondins, the Hébertists, and then the Indulgents, he pushed for the confiscation of the property of the enemies of the Republic for the benefit of poor patriots. He was the designated speaker for the Robespierrists in their conflicts with other political parties in the National Convention, launching accusations and requisitions against figures like Danton or Hébert. To prevent the massacres for which the sans-culottes were responsible in the departments, particularly in Vendée, or to centralize repression (a point still unclear), he had the departmental revolutionary tribunals abolished and consolidated all procedures at the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris.
He was also a political theorist, and notably inspired the Constitution of Year I,. and the attached Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1793. He also authored works on the principles of the French Revolution. On the 9th Thermidor, he defended Robespierre against accusations made by Barère and Tallien. Arrested alongside him, he remained silent until his death the following day, when he was guillotined on the Place de la Révolution with the 104 Robespierrists executed, at the age of 26. His body and head were thrown into a mass grave. Saint-Just, and Robespierrists in general, were long perceived by historians as cruel, bloodthirsty, and having a wild and violent sexuality. This began to change in the second half of the 20th century.
Early life Louis Antoine de Saint-Just was born in Decize in the former Nivernais province of central France. He was the eldest child of Louis Jean de Saint-Just de Richebourg (1716–1777), a retired French cavalry officer (and knight of the Order of Saint Louis), and Marie-Anne Robinot (1736–1811), the daughter of a notary. He had two younger sisters, born in 1768 and 1769. The family later moved north and in 1776 settled in the village of Blérancourt in the former Picardy province, establishing themselves as a countryside noble family living off the rents from their land. A year after the move, Louis Antoine's father died, leaving his mother with their three children. She saved diligently for her only son's education, and in 1779 he was sent to the Oratorian school at Soissons. After a promising start, his teachers soon viewed Saint-Just as a troublemaker, a reputation later compounded by infamous stories (almost certainly apocryphal) of how he led a students' rebellion and tried to burn down the school. Nonetheless, he graduated in 1786.
His restive nature, however, did not diminish. As a young man, Saint-Just was "wild, handsome [and] transgressive". He reportedly showed a special affection towards a young woman of Blérancourt, Thérèse Gellé. She was the daughter of a wealthy notary, a powerful and autocratic figure in the town; he was still an undistinguished adolescent. He is said to have proposed marriage to her, which she is said to have desired. Though no evidence of their relationship exists, official records show that on 25 July 1786, Thérèse was married to Emmanuel Thorin, the scion of a prominent local family. Saint-Just was out of town and unaware of the event, and tradition portrays him as brokenhearted. Whatever his true state, it is known that a few weeks after the marriage he abruptly left home for Paris unannounced, having gathered up a pair of pistols and a good quantity of his mother's silver. His venture ended when his mother had him seized by police and sent to a reformatory (maison de correction) where he stayed from September 1786 to March 1787. Upon returning, Saint-Just attempted to begin anew: he enrolled as a student at Reims University's School of Law. After a year, however, he drifted away from law school and returned to his mother's home in Blérancourt penniless, without any occupational prospects.
Organt
Saint-Just had shown a precocious fascination with literature, and he wrote works of his own including a one-act play Arlequin Diogène. During his stay at the reformatory, he began writing a lengthy poem that he published anonymously more than two years later in May 1789 at the very outbreak of the Revolution. The 21-year-old Saint-Just thereby added his own touch to the social tumult of the times with Organt, poem in twenty cantos. The poem, a medieval epic fantasy relaying the quest of young Antoine Organt, extols the virtues of primitive man, praising his libertinism and independence whilst blaming all present-day troubles on modern inequalities of wealth and power. Written in a style mimicking Ariosto, the work foreshadowed its author's future political extremism. Spiked with brutal satire and scandalous pornographic episodes, it also unmistakably attacked the monarchy, the nobility, and the Church.
Contemporaries regarded Organt as a salacious novelty and it was quickly banned. Nevertheless, censors who tried to confiscate copies discovered that few were available anywhere. It did not sell well and resulted in a financial loss for its author. The public's taste for literature had shifted in the prelude to the Revolution, and Saint-Just's taste shifted along with it: he devoted his future writing almost entirely to unadorned essays of sociopolitical theory, aside from a few pages of an unfinished novel found amidst his papers at the end of his life. With his previous ambitions of literary and lawyerly fame unfulfilled, Saint-Just directed his focus on the single goal of revolutionary command.
Early revolutionary career
The rapid development of the Revolution in 1789 upended Blérancourt's traditional power structure. The notary Gellé, previously an undisputed town leader, was challenged by a group of reformists who were led by several of Saint-Just's friends, including the husband of his sister Louise. Their attempts were unsuccessful until 1790 when Blérancourt held its first open municipal elections. Mandated by the National Constituent Assembly, the new electoral structure allowed Saint-Just's friends to assume authority in the village as mayor, secretary, and, in the case of his brother-in-law, head of the local National Guard. Despite not meeting the legal age and tax qualifications, the jobless Saint-Just was allowed to join the Guard.
He immediately exhibited the ruthless discipline for which he would be famous. Within a few months he was the commanding officer, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. At local meetings he moved attendees with his patriotic zeal and flair: in one much-repeated story, Saint-Just brought the town council to tears by thrusting his hand into the flame of a burning anti-revolutionary pamphlet, swearing his devotion to the Republic. He had powerful allies when he sought to become a member of his district’s electoral assembly. He initiated correspondence with well-known leaders of the Revolution like Camille Desmoulins. Mid August 1790, he wrote to Robespierre for the first time, expressing his admiration and asking him to consider a local petition. The letter was filled with the highest of praise, beginning: "You, who uphold our tottering country against the torrent of despotism and intrigue; you whom I know, as I know God, only through his miracles...."
L'Esprit de la Revolution While Saint-Just waited for the next election, he composed an extensive work, L'Esprit de la Revolution et de la constitution de France, published in the spring of 1791. His writing style had shed all satire and now reflected the stern and moralizing tone of classical Romans so adored by French revolutionaries. It presented a set of principles deeply influenced by Montesquieu, and remained fully confined to a paradigm of constitutional monarchy. He expressed abhorrence at the violence in the Revolution thus far, and he disdained the character of those who partook in it as little more than "riotous slaves." Instead, he heaped his praise upon the people's representatives in the Legislative Assembly, whose sober virtue would guide the Revolution best. Spread out over five books, L'Esprit de la Revolution is inconsistent in many of its assertions but still shows clearly that Saint-Just no longer saw government as oppressive to man's nature but necessary to its success: its ultimate object was to "edge society in the direction of the distant ideal."
The new work, like its predecessor, attracted minimal readership. On 21 June 1791, just days after it was published, all attention became focused on King Louis XVI's ill-fated flight to Varennes. Saint-Just's theories about constitutional monarchy were suddenly outdated. The episode fostered public anger toward the King which simmered all year until a Parisian mob finally attacked the Tuileries Palace on 10 August 1792. In response, the Assembly declared itself ready to step down ahead of schedule and called for a new election, this one under universal male suffrage. The timing was excellent for Saint-Just, who turned the legal age of 25 before the end of the month. The fear inspired by the invasion of the Tuileries made most of his opponents retire from the scene. Guard commander Saint-Just was able to win election as one of the deputies for the département of Aisne. He left for Paris to join the National Convention as the youngest of its 749 members.
Deputy to the Convention Among the deputies, Saint-Just was watchful but interacted little at first. He joined the Parisian Jacobin Club, but he remained aloof from Girondins and Montagnards alike. He waited until 13 November 1792 to give his first speech to the Convention, but when he did the effect was spectacular. What brought him to the lectern was the discussion over how to treat the deposed King. In dramatic contrast to the earlier speakers, Saint-Just delivered a blazing condemnation of him. He demanded "Louis Capet should be judged not as a king or even a citizen, but as a traitor, an enemy who deserves death. "As for me," he declared, "I see no middle ground: this man must reign or die! He oppressed a free nation; he declared himself its enemy; he abused the laws: he must die to assure the repose of the people, since it was in his mind to crush the people to assure his own." Towards the end of his speech, he uttered an ominous observation: "No one can reign innocently."
The young deputy's speech electrified the Convention. Saint-Just was interrupted frequently by bursts of applause. Robespierre was particularly impressed—he spoke from the lectern the next day in terms almost identical to those of Saint-Just, and their views became the official position of the Jacobins. By December, that position had become law: the King was taken to a trial before the Convention, sentenced to death, and executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793.
On 29/30 May 1793 Saint-Just was added to the Committee of Public Safety; Couthon became secretary, which was one day before the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June.
Constitution of 1793