Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve

Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve ( born January 3, 1756 in Chartres, † summer of 1794 in Bordeaux) was a leader during the French Revolution.

Pétion de Villeneuve worked as a lawyer in Chartres and came when the Estates-General were appointed as deputy of the Third Estate to Versailles, where he soon made ​​known by its opposition to Mirabeau and by the ruthless attacks on the queen.

In December 1790, he was elected President of the National Assembly and appointed in June 1791 as President of the Paris Criminal Tribunal. In this capacity, he was responsible along with Latour- Maubourg and Antoine Barnave with the return of the royal family taken on the run.

On 16 November 1791, Pétion de Villeneuve mayor of Paris, his rival candidate was supported by the Court Lafayette. As a partisan of radicals known he had this the way: the Tuileries August 10, 1792 overthrew the revolution finally the monarchy in France. At the National Convention, whose first president was to Pétion de Villeneuve held the Gironde and agreed at the trial of King Louis XVI. for the appeal to the people and the death of the king without delay. On December 1, 1792 de Villeneuve was succeeded in his office as Mayor of Paris by Nicolas Chambon.

After the treason of Dumouriez was revealed Robespierre used this as a weapon against Pétion de Villeneuve and took it to hard. On May 31, he was subsequently proscribed public and captured on June 2, unceremoniously. It succeeded Pétion de Villeneuve still to escape to the south of the country, where he was until June 1794, but you could feel it up there. He fled again with a companion in the Bordeaux area, where you soon as a corpse, half- eaten by wolves, found him.

Works

• Oeuvres de Pétion de Villeneuve. 4 volumes, Paris 1793