Jean-Marie Collot D'Herbois - Terror, Thermidor, and Deportation

Terror, Thermidor, and Deportation

He was engaged in the struggle between the Mountain and the Girondists. After François Hanriot's coup d'état of 31 May 1793, he was conspicuous in his attack on the defeated Girondist party. Along with his close friend Billaud-Varenne, he sat at the extreme left of the Convention, attacking speculators, and proposing egalitarian programmes. In June, he was made president of the Convention; and in September he joined the Committee of Public Safety, where he was active as a sort of general secretary.

After having entrusted him with several missions to Nice, Nevers, and Compiègne, the Convention sent him along with Joseph Fouché, on 30 October 1793, to punish the revolt of Lyon. There, he introduced the Reign of Terror in its most violent form, with mass executions, including more than a hundred priests and nuns, and beginning the dismantling of the city itself. His excessive behavior led the Committee of Public Safety to have Collot return to Paris as a suspect.

In May 1794, assassination attempts on Collot and Maximilien Robespierre only increased his popularity. As Collot was accused of excessive slaughter and destruction and he suspected that he might soon be arrested and executed, he opposed Robespierre during the Thermidorian Reaction, when he presided over the Convention during the initial session. Despite this change of heart, Collot d'Herbois was accused of complicity with Robespierre, the two having previously been colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety, but was acquitted. Denounced a second time, he defended himself by pleading that he had acted for the Revolution, but in March 1795 he was condemned with Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac and Billaud-Varenne to transportation to Cayenne, French Guiana, where he exerted a brief revolutionary influence before dying of yellow fever in 1796.