Attorney-at-law
Vergniaud's sister Marie had married a wealthy porcelain maker from Limoges named A.M. Alluaud, and it was this brother-in-law who gave fortifying moral encouragement and critical financial support to the aspiring law student. With his help, and the powerful guidance of Dupaty, Vergniaud was accepted by the bar and went straight into practice in April 1782. He did not take long to make his mark in the field. His first few cases were successful enough, but before the end of his first year in practice he was handed the case of Marie Bérigaud, a local woman accused of promiscuity and a consequent infanticide. This sordid, sensational affair held the city in thrall and Vergniaud handled it with tremendous skill: the young woman was proven innocent of all the charges and her false accuser was imprisoned instead. With this shockingly complete victory, Vergniaud was widely recognized as a rising star.
Years of successful advocacy followed, and Vergniaud's rousing eloquence was frequently met with loud bursts of applause in the courtroom. In 1790 he took on the defense of Pierre Durieux, a National Guardsman of Brives who had been imprisoned and sentenced to death for having incited a riot. The Revolution had just begun to spread its reforms through the countryside, and the Durieux affair erupted from the boisterous celebrations of peasants in the small village near Brives called Allassac. Incensed members of the local aristocracy had attempted to quell the indecorum by firing shots in the air; met with rocks and stones, they turned their guns on the crowd and killed several peasants. When Durieux's unit arrived to restore order, the soldier found himself repelled by his duty, and according to the charges he urged the rioters to fight back. Durieux was not alone: many Guardsmen were arrested and two were swiftly condemned to death. While Durieux languished in jail awaiting his turn, the news spread and sparked the furious interest of revolutionaries all around the nation. Vergniaud had already been greatly moved by revolutionary rhetoric, and was an enthusiastic supporter of the reforms which had caused the initial celebrations at Allassac. As Durieux's lawyer, he entered his first case where national politics would be at issue.
The trial began in February 1791 before a packed courtroom. Vergniaud's case was built on the fact that his client had not actually committed any offense: could he be hanged just for something he said, in a moment of righteous anger? He reminded the court of similarly imprudent remarks that had recently been made in the National Assembly itself: "One of its members... speaking of those to whom the people owe their liberty, 'One must fall upon these people saber in hand.' Have you asked for a scaffold to be raised for him?" With rising drama, he repeated the question four times to the hushed courtroom. In a long and incandescent speech, he widened his defense of Durieux to include the whole of the peasant crowd: "They trod in indignation the soil which they so long had watered with their sweat and tears. Their eyes turned with the somber disquiet of resentment to the superb château where they had so often gone to lower themselves by shameful homage, and from which, more than once, the caprices of pride... had spread like devastating torrents." Vergniaud's oration put the entire Revolution on trial, and, like Durieux, it was exonerated completely. Revolutionaries printed copies of his defense and circulated them throughout France. Vergniaud had delivered one of the great speeches of his life, and now the provincial lawyer would be coaxed from all quarters to join the revolution at the national level.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud