Paul-François-Jean-Nicolas, viscount of (Fox-Amphoux, June 30, 1755 - Chaillot, Paris, January 29, 1829).
“Noble as the Barras, as old as our rocks », used to say the people of Provence.
The young Barras was a cadet gentleman at sixteen, served in India, attained the rank of captain, then resigned in 1783, settled in Paris and had a wedding there, quickly dissipating his fortune. He attends the storming of the Bastille as a spectator and leaves a Paris in revolution to find his Provence. There he was elected to the Convention, intervened little there, voted death for the king, was sent on a mission to Provence and took part in the siege of Toulon where he befriended Lieutenant Bonaparte whom he had appointed captain. Suspected of prevarication by Robes-pierre, he was recalled to Paris in January 1794.
Feeling the ax of the guillotine on his neck, Barras stood up and rallied the opposition to Robespierre. The 9-Thermidor, its action is decisive in the fall of the "Incorruptible". With the support of Bonaparte, he crushed the royalist insurrection of Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795). Elected one of the five directors, he is, in fact, the head of the Executive Board, organizes the various coups d'etat which allow him to perpetuate himself in power. Warned of Sieyès' intrigues and Bonaparte's preparations for a coup d'etat, Barras let it go and signed a letter of resignation in which he hid behind the First Consul. Installed in Gros-bois where he led a joyful life, Barras was too close to Paris for Bonaparte's taste, who scolded him to retire at least 40 leagues (160 km) from Paris.
He then left for Brussels. Authorized later to return to Provence, Barras still worries the Emperor who exiles him to Rome in 1810. Returning to the fall of the Empire, he settles in Chaillot and ends his existence there in opulence without ever having was worried by the Bourbons, although he was a regicide.