Louis-Jérôme Gohier

Louis-Jérôme Gohier (27 February 1746 – 29 May 1830) was a French politician of the Revolutionary period.

Biography

Revolution

Born at Semblançay (Indre-et-Loire), the son of a notary, he was called to the bar association in Rennes, and practiced there until he was sent to represent the town in the Estates-general of 1789. In the Legislative Assembly he represented Ille-et-Vilaine, taking a prominent part in the deliberations. He protested against the exaction of a new oath from priests (22 November 1791), and demanded the sequestration of the émigrés' property (7 February 1792).

Gohier was Minister of Justice from March 1793 to April 1794, overseeing the arrest of Girondists, and, a member of the Council of Five Hundred, he succeeded Jean Baptiste Treilhard in the French Directory (June 1799), where he represented the Republican view in front of growing Royalist opposition.

Bonaparte

His wife was intimate with Josephine Bonaparte, and when Napoleon Bonaparte suddenly returned from the Egyptian campaign in October 1799 he repeatedly tried to win Gohier, who was then president of the Directory, to his political projects. After Bonaparte's coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799), Gohier refused to resign his office, and sought an audience with Bonaparte at the Tuileries Palace, in an attempt to save the Republic. He was escorted to the Luxembourg Palace, and on his release he retired to his estate at Eaubonne.

In 1802, Napoleon made him consul-general at Amsterdam (in the Batavian Republic), and on the union of the Kingdom of Holland with the French Empire, he was offered a similar post in the United States. His health did not permit of his taking up a new appointment, and he died at Eaubonne.

Works

• Mémoires d'un vétéran irreprochable de la Révolution (published in 1824)
• A report on the papers of the civil list preparatory to the trial of King Louis XVI, printed in Le Procès de Louis XVI (Paris) etc., while other reports are featured in the Moniteur Universel.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.