François Hanriot
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François Hanriot (1761 - July 28, 1794) was a French popular leader and street orator of the Revolution.
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[edit] Life
[edit] Early life
Born to impoverished parents in Nanterre (Île-de-France), he lost his first employment with a procureur through dishonesty, and obtained a clerkship in the Paris octroi in 1789, but was dismissed for abandoning his post when the Parisians burned the octroi barriers on the night of the July 12-13 1789. After leading a pauper existence for some time, he became one of the orators of the section of the sans-culottes in the Jardin des Plantes area, and commanded the armed force of that section during the insurrection on Storming of the Tuileries Palace (August 10, 1792) and the September Massacres.
[edit] Insurrection leader
Hanriot did not come into prominence until the night of the May 30-31 1793, when he was provisionally appointed commandant-general of the armed forces of Paris by the council general of the Paris Commune. On the following day, he was one of the delegates from the Commune to the National Convention demanding the dissolution of the Committee of the Twelve and the proscription of the Girondists, and he was in command of the insurrectionary forces of the Commune during the riots of June 2; he was declared a Sauveur de la patrie ("Saviour of the Motherland") by the riots' instigator Jean-Paul Marat.
On June 11 he resigned his command, declaring that order had been restored. On the 13th he was impeached in the Convention, but the motion was not carried, and on July 1 he was elected by the Commune permanent commander of the armed forces of Paris.
[edit] Events of Thermidor
He kept this immensely powerful position until the outbreak of the Thermidorian Reaction (July 27, 1794). His arrest was decreed, but he had the générale sounded and the tocsin rung, and tried to rescue Maximilien Robespierre, who was under arrest in the hall of the Committee of General Security.
Hanriot was himself arrested, but was rescued by his adherents, and accompanied to the Hôtel de Ville. After a vain attempt to organize resistance, he fled and hid in a secluded yard, where he was discovered the next day. He was arrested, sentenced to death, and guillotined with Robespierre and his friends on the 10th Thermidor of the year II.
Hanriot has a rather negative image among historians, who tend to depict him as a rather brutal man of limited intellect. He is also said to have been an alcoholic and to have been unable to command properly his troops before the assault of Robespierre's enemy against the Hôtel de Ville, because of his inebriated state. The veracity of this detail is, however, disputed.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
