Louis de Saint Just

Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, (Decize, August 25, 1767-Paris, July 28, 1794) was a French revolutionary politician. Some authors called him the "Archangel of Terror" for having organized the arrests and persecutions of many of the most famous figures of the Revolution.

Biography

Louis was the son of Louis Jean de Saint-Just de Richebourg (1716-1777), a military man who had been knighted in the Order of Saint Louis, and Marie-Anne Robinot (1736-1791), brother of Louis -Marie-Anne de Saint-Just de Richebourg and Marie-Françoise-Victoire de Saint-Just de Richebourg. According to some sources he studied law in Reims, where Jacques-Pierre Brissot and Georges Jacques Danton had also studied. When his youthful friend married a more advantageous match, he stole some jewelry from his mother and fled to Paris, and at his mother's request was committed to a correctional facility for six months at the end of 1786.

While in juvie he wrote a long satirical-pornographic poem "Organt", published anonymously two years later. In it he criticizes the absolute monarchy, the nobility and the Church. He participates from its beginnings in the Revolution in Paris, although he later leaves to join his family in Blérancourt. There he reached the rank of lieutenant colonel of the National Guard in July 1789. This contact with the rural population would serve to make his apprenticeship as a politician, since Saint-Just would become very involved in local life. A radical revolutionary, he participated in the Feast of the Federation in 1790, he was part of the device that escorted Louis XVI back after his escape attempt. He met Robespierre and became one of his closest people. Like the latter, Saint-Just is fascinated by Greco-Roman culture (origin of democracy and the Republic) and compares himself to Brutus.

Although he stood for the elections in 1791 to the Legislative Assembly, he was denied the right to occupy the seat because of his age. He is elected by the Aisne department in 1792 at the Convention and joins the Mountain Party. He soon reveals himself as one of the main orators, both during the trial of Louis XVI (during which he pronounces these sentences that follow an implacable rhetoric inspired by Rousseau: "It is not possible to reign innocently", &# 34;Every king is a rebel or a usurper") as during the drafting of the Constitution. His vehemence and his undeniable rhetorical talent will make him one of the voices of the mountain and later of the Committee of Public Safety, mercilessly fighting against his Girondin adversaries. After the various conspiracies of the king, he was in favor of executing Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who had also resorted to her family in Austria to try to overthrow the revolutionary government by force of arms.

A member on several occasions of the Committee of Public Safety, he was commissioned before the armies, together with his friend and fellow Convention member Philippe Le Bas, from October 22, 1793 to mid-January 1794, in the army of the Rhine. He restored discipline and earned the respect and consideration of the soldiers, although he was also impassive when it came to executing dissidents, which gave him a reputation as one of the most radical in the period of the Terror. He manages to take Bitche and free Landau.

Back in Paris, he is one of the protagonists in the downfall of the Dantonists and Hebertists. His words were: & # 34; No more compassion, no more weakness with the guilty... & # 34; These deaths caused the loss of popular support for Robespierre and Saint-Just.

He was commissioned again on April 28, a supporter of the all-out offensive, which ended with the victories of Cortrique and Fleurus.

On 9 Thermidor of the year II (July 27, 1794), Saint-Just and Robespierre are arrested by the Convention, attacked by both counterrevolutionary and moderate forces, representatives of the rich liberal bourgeoisie, frightened by the course of the events, as well as by the representatives of the radical left dissatisfied with religious politics and with the executions of some popular Parisian leaders. At a time when many of Robespierre's former collaborators decide to betray him, Saint-Just gives unequivocal proof of his integrity and will support him to the end. Despite the fact that part of the people of Paris rose up in arms and freed both, there are interpretations in the sense that Saint-Just refused to organize the popular forces. Arrested again by the Thermidorians, he is executed without trial by guillotine along with Robespierre and his supporters on 10 Thermidor. His deaths marked the end of the period of the Terror.

Works

• 1787 - Organization (Poem in twenty songs)
• 1789 - Arlequin-Diogène (art of theatre)
• 1791 - L'Esprit de la Révolution et de la Constitution de France (The Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution of France)
• 1792 - De la Nature, de l'état civil de la cité ou les règles de l'indépendance du gouvernement (On Nature, on the civil state of the city or the rules of government independence) (inacabado, posthumous work published by Albert Soboul in 1951)
• 1794 - Les Fragments d'institutions républicaines ("The fragments of republican institutions") (inavoked, published posthumously)

Editions of the Complete Works in French

• Œuvres complètes de Saint-Just avec une introduction et des notes par Charles Vellay. Paris: Librairie Charpentier et Fasquell, 1908. Volume I and Volume II
• Œuvres complètes, edition established and presented by Anne Kupiec and Miguel Abensour. Paris: Gallimard, Folio/histoire collection, 2004 ISBN 978-2-07-042275-5
• Œuvres complètes, edition established by Michèle Duval. Paris: Free Champ, 1984. Reissued for editions Ivrea, Paris, 2003. ISBN 9782851841520

Translations

• The Spirit of the Revolution. Buenos Aires: Malinca S.A Editora, 1965.
• Freedom happened like a storm. Texts of the period of the democratic-popular revolution. Barcelona: El Viejo Topo, 2006. ISBN 978-84-96356-66-3

Selections of texts with other authors

• Álvarez Junco, José and Gilolmo, Emilio (Eds.). The Jacobins. Madrid: Edicusa, 1970. (Selection and translation of texts by Maximilien Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat and Louis de Saint-Just)
• Muniesa, Bernat. The Jacobin Speech in the French Revolution (Joan Vinyoli translation). Barcelona: Ariel, 1987. ISBN 84-344-2862-8 (Book that includes an introductory study by historian Bernat Muniesa to the translations of selected speeches by Maximilien Robespierre and Louis de Saint-Just)

At the movies