Jacques Pierre Brissot

Brissot was born at Chartres, where his father was a caterer and a landowner. Brissot became a lawyer and moved to London.  It was here that he wrote a series of  theoretical law books heavily influenced by Rousseau one of which he dedicated to Voltaire.  He wrote for a series of newspapers whilst on in England.  When he returned to Paris in 1784 he was quickly imprisoned in the Bastille for publishing a seditious pamphlet.  Having been released he released an open letter to Emperor Joseph II of Austria emphasising how subjects had the right to revolt against monarchs who were not fulfilling their duties.  The ensuing clamour this created forced Brissot to move once again to London.  During his visit he met various abolitionists this possibly led him to found the French Society of the Friends of the Blacks (Societe des Amis des Noir).  He also visited the new republic of the United States in 1788.

Brissot was active in politics at the outbreak of the revolution in 1789.  He was presented with the keys to the Bastille and gave speeches at the Jacobin Club as well as editing the Patriote Francais from 1789 to 1793.  He was elected to the Legislative Assembly and then the National Convention.  It was here that he became associated with the Girondins. In 1791 when Emperor Leopold II and Frederick William II of Prussia made their Declaration of Pillnitz stating in the vaguest way that European powers should intervene if King Louis or his family were threatened Brissot was a member of the foreign affairs committee.  Brissot and the Girondins pushed for war believing it would act as a unifying force and would push the King into revealing his true intentions.  Brissot faced stiff opposition from Robespierre and Marat but war was declared on the 20th of April 1792.  The war did not initially go well as disaster followed disaster for the French armies which consequently piled pressure on Brissot and the Girondins.

When Louis XVI was arrested Brissot and the Girondins argued that Louis should not be executed.  He was concerned about the potential of an internal Royalist rebellion but he also saw the potential of Louis as a bargaining chip against France’s many enemies.  When Louis was found guilty Brissot called for a national referendum to decide the former monarch’s fate.  This was overruled by the Jacobins (Montagnards) and he was subsequently executed.

Brissot and the Girondins moved further away from the Montagnards as further divisions were created between the factions.  Brissot’s outspoken dislike of the revolution’s excesses and individuals such as Marat rankled with the more radical elements of the Revolution.  Things came to a head on the 2nd of June 1793 when San-culottes in Parisian National Guard surrounded the Convention.  Hanriot their leader demanded the surrender of the Girondins inside and the arrest of any not present.  The Convention voted to have Brissot and twenty eight other members arrested.  Brissot managed to escape however he was captured without a passport and returned to Paris.  

At his trial on October 3rd 1793 Robespierre was able to change the rules of the revolutionary tribunal such that if the jury were convinced there was a moral certainty of guilt then they could be found guilty.  Accusations were levelled at Brissot that he had spied for the British and had been a police spy ever since his release from the Bastille.  It was with a certain inevitability that they were found guilty and Brissot and nineteen other were guillotined on 31st October.

Madame Roland praises Brissot.  Taken from The Memoirs of Madame Roland a Heroine of the French Revolution, Barrie & Jenkins, London (1989) p80

He is a well-informed political writer who from early youth has studied social conditions and thought about how to improve the human lot.  He is an expert on Man but knows very little about men.  He is aware that evil exists but cannot believe that anyone who looks him straight in the eye can be a villain.  When he does recognise a bad man he treats him as if he were mad and to be pitied.  He cannot hate: one might say that any feeling so vigorous as that is too strong for his sensitive nature.  He knows a lot and he writes easily: he will dash off an article as another might copy out a song.  In some of his writings, despite their serious content, there is hastiness and a touch of levity and his boisterous energy gives him the air of interfering in everybody’s business.  People looking for something of which to accuse him say that he is an intriguer, but that is hardly the word for a man who never thinks of himself, is incapable of looking after his own interests and is not ashamed of poverty or afraid of death.  He devoted all his time to the Revolution with no other aim than the public good.  He made nothing out of the journal which he edited with so much care and was content to let his partner make a small fortune from it.