(Decize, Nivernais, 1767 - Paris, 1794.) Politician , one of the main figures of the French Revolution.
Of bourgeois origins, Saint-Just was the son of a light horse captain. In 1776, the latter moved with his family to Blérancourt, in the Aisne. The young Saint-Just completed his studies with the Oratorians of Soissons, then took law courses at the University of Reims. His youth was quite turbulent, he spent several months in a nursing home after, it is said, having stolen some precious objects from his mother. In 1789, the young man published, without an author's name, a long satirical and libertine poem, which some considered obscene, Organt. His favorite authors are Rousseau, Montesquieu, Machiavelli.
The Revolution breaks out. Saint-Just goes to Paris, attends the meetings of the Jacobins, comes back enthusiastic about the new ideas and fully committed to the revolutionary movement. Secretary of the municipality of Blérancourt, he was elected in 1790 lieutenant-colonel of the local national guard. As such, he took part on July 14, 1790, in Paris, in the celebration of the Federation. The young and ardent officer of the national guard is passionate about the personality of the man who will become his master, his idol, Robespierre. He wrote to him:“You are not a deputy of a province, you are that of humanity, of the Republic. Compliments that can only flatter Robespierre. And again:“You whom I know only as God by wonders. »
In September 1790, Saint-Just attempted to be elected to the Legislative Assembly. But he is too young, access to the deputies is forbidden to him. At the end of the year, on the other hand, the publication of the Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution of France earned him a certain fame. Finally, in September 1792, Aisne elected him to the Convention. His portraits, due to Greuze and David, show us a young man with a charming face, pure and well-drawn features, pensive eyes, curly hair, a well-set waist in an elegant coat. The Archangel of Terror, as he will soon be nicknamed, has a boundless, exclusive, fanatical admiration for Robespierre, like his revolutionary feelings. Of a clear and cold mind, very intelligent, more than Robespierre, he is above all more firm and audacious in his will. Fully focused on his goal, he pursues its achievement without letting obstacles stop him, and pushes Robespierre to extreme measures. His friend Levasseur said of him:“To found the Republic he had dreamed of, he would have given his head, but also a hundred thousand heads of men with his own. »
In October, the deputy from Aisne delivered his first speech to the Jacobins, in which he opposed the Girondin project to have the Convention protected by an armed guard. His first speech to the Convention, which revealed him as one of the great orators of the Assembly, with a dry and brittle tone, dates from November 13 and concerns the possible trial of the king. On December 27, after the opening of this trial, he resumes his arguments. His violent speeches will contribute to have the appeal to the people and the reprieve rejected. For him, regicide is a “measure of public safety.” He places the trial of the king, who must be judged as an enemy and not as a citizen, on the political level; this procedure is essential to the establishment of the new regime. Saint-Just thus affirms that "what constitutes a republic is the destruction of all that opposes it".
At the beginning of March, the young deputy from Aisne was given the task, along with Deville, of supervising the lifting of 300,000 men in the Aisne and the Ardennes. Following the ancient ideal, and especially the theories of Rousseau, Saint-Just dreams of an egalitarian and virtuous republic. During the discussion of the draft Constitution, in April 1793, he opposed the federalist draft presented by Condorcet, and advocated a republic where the assembly of representatives of the nation, elected by universal suffrage, sovereign, the prevail over the executive and command a democratic army. Some of his views were taken up in the Constitution* of Year I, on which he worked with Couthon and Hérault de Séchelles. On May 30, he was elected to the Committee* of Public Safety. His indictments against the Girondins *, soon arrested, the report he is responsible for writing and reading at the podium on July 8, will lead the deputies to the scaffold.
In the committee, where he was re-elected in July, Saint-Just, like Robespierre and Couthon, spent all his energy to save the Republic from internal and external perils. He deals more particularly with politics and general policing. Faced with perils, he delivered a speech on August 10, 1793 advocating an authoritarian government, the Terror*. His report on the organization of the revolutionary government is adopted by the Assembly, the government will be revolutionary "until peace".
Saint-Just's activity is not limited to the Committee and in Paris. It is in his missions to the armies that he will give the measure of his talents as an organizer and leader of men. From October to December 1793, a first mission led him, with Le Bas, to the Army of the Rhine. Raising the morale of the troops by improving their supplies and clothing, Saint-Just rigorously reestablished the discipline and authority of the command. His rigor also applied to civilians:he eliminated the Enrages who compromised the success of the Revolution by their excesses, and heavily taxed the rich. The citizens of Strasbourg must pay 5 million, those of Nancy 5 million. Thanks to his energetic efforts, the Army of the Rhine, reorganized, retakes Wissembourg and releases Landau. Two new missions lead him in 1794 to the Army of the North, in January, and especially from June 13 to 29. His indomitable activity turns a hopeless situation around. Purifying, breaking corrupt or incompetent officers, having deserters shot, creating new cadres, he restored discipline and the morale of the troops, and contributed to the victory of Fleurus*, which he announced to the Convention on June 26. /P>
However, between two missions, Saint-Just continued the fight in Paris alongside Robespierre. Elected President of the Convention in February 1794, he endeavored to give the Republic an economic and social base, and presented a report to the Assembly on the “Ventôse laws”. The latter confiscated the property of emigrants, enemies of the Republic, and also the property of their families, and distributed it to the needy. At the same time, the Archangel of Terror supports Robespierre in his fight against the Hébertists* and then the Dantonists. On March 13, he delivered a speech denouncing the intrigues of foreigners which corrupted the people. Accusation which targets the Hébertists, arrested on the night of March 14 to 15, executed on the 24th. He then supports the fight of the Incorruptible against the Indulgents *. Spreading on April 4, during their trial, the false rumor of a prison conspiracy, he will put the defendants out of the proceedings, which prevents them from defending themselves.
At the same time , this convinced revolutionary reflects on the future, writes notes which will be published after his death under the title Fragments on your republican institutions. His ideal, like that of other theoreticians of the revolution, unacquainted with economic evolution, is social democracy, an egalitarian republic, populated by virtuous farmers and soldiers in charge of defending it, ready to give their lives for she. The assassins will be dressed in black all their life, he writes, and will be put to death if they leave this dress. Men who have always lived without reproach will wear a white scarf at the age of sixty... He who does not believe in friendship or who has no friends is banished. Until these lucubrations are applied, the dictatorship of the revolutionary government must be tightened. Saint-Just is preparing a public education reform project which provides in particular that, from an early age, children will be entrusted to the State.
Fanatical, but always sincere and convinced, he will not be able to complete his task. On the evening of 8 Thermidor, the faithful minion of Robespierre joined his master. Part of the night, he writes the speech that should allow him, the next day, to silence their opponents. He speaks from the rostrum of the Assembly the next morning. But there, he is interrupted by Tallien and, far from struggling to pick up the thread of his speech, is silent, impassive or paralyzed. Arrested at the same time as Robespierre, freed like him by the Commune, the Archangel of Terror will allow himself to be seized without resistance at the Town Hall. On 10 Thermidor, still cold and impassive, he marched straight to the guillotine.