People of the Revolution and the USSR

French revolutionary movement Liberalism and republicanism 1748–1836

Clergyman and political theorist of Third Estate sovereignty

Amid the 1788–1789 Estates-General crisis he identified the Third Estate with the whole nation, and later ended the Directory through the coup of 18 Brumaire.

A clergyman and political theorist, Sieyès linked the Third Estate to the nation in his 1789 pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? He helped bring the National Assembly into being and later sat with the Plain in the National Convention. Near the end of the Directory he participated in the coup of Brumaire and helped establish the Consulate.

Girondins Liberalism and republicanism 1754–1793 ✕ Executed

Girondin journalist and deputy who championed revolutionary war

In 1791–92 he led the Legislative Assembly's push for war against Austria, which led to the declaration of war in April 1792. Sentenced on 30 October 1793, he was guillotined the next day.

A journalist and deputy in the Legislative Assembly and National Convention, Brissot also participated in antislavery activism. In 1791–92 he became the chief advocate of foreign war in the name of defending and extending the Revolution and emerged as a leading Girondin. He was arrested after the Girondins’ fall in June 1793 and later executed.

Feuillants Liberalism and republicanism 1757–1834 ○ Natural causes · Paris

French general who fought in the revolutions of two continents

He presented a draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on 11 July 1789, and after the storming of the Bastille was made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. The Guard's firing on the crowd at the Champ de Mars in 1791 cost him popular trust and ended his middle course.

French military officer and politician, born in 1757 to a land-owning family at Chavaniac in Auvergne and dead in Paris in 1834. He volunteered for the American Revolutionary War, served as a Continental Army major general at the siege of Yorktown, sat in the Estates General of 1789, commanded the National Guard, and helped write the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In the Revolution he sought a middle course and defended constitutional monarchy, but the bloodshed on the Champ de Mars in 1791 cost him popular trust, and the Austrians held him over five years after his arrest was ordered in 1792. He refused to serve Napoleon and sat as a liberal deputy under the restored Bourbons. In the July Revolution of 1830 he again commanded the National Guard and backed Louis-Philippe. He advocated the abolition of slavery and was called the 'Hero of the Two Worlds'.

Feuillants Liberalism and republicanism 1760–1829

Politician who moved from the revolutionary triumvirate to the Feuillants

He joined the Third Estate in 1789 but, through the triumvirate and the Feuillants, sought to stabilise the Revolution behind a constitutional monarchy; when the monarchy fell in 1792 he emigrated.

An aristocratic officer and veteran of the American War of Independence, Lameth joined the Third Estate in 1789 and supported the abolition of privilege. He formed the “triumvirate” with Barnave and Duport before becoming a Feuillant defender of constitutional monarchy. After exile and return, he served as a prefect under Napoleon and later as a liberal deputy.

International Workingmen's Association (First International) Liberalism and republicanism 1809–1871 ✕ Killed in action

Jacobin journalist of 1830 and 1848 who became the Commune’s war delegate and walked to his death on a barricade

On 25 May 1871, the final day of Bloody Week, Commune war delegate Delescluze walked unarmed to the barricade at the Place du Château-d’Eau and was shot dead amid the fighting.

Born in Dreux, he fought in the July Revolution of 1830, published republican papers after February 1848 and went into exile. Arrested under the Second Empire, he served time in the penal colony of Cayenne in Guiana, and in 1868 founded the newspaper Le Réveil. Elected to the National Assembly in February 1871, he resigned to join the Commune. A Jacobin “independent revolutionary”, he sat on the Commune's Committee of Public Safety and on 11 May became war delegate as a civilian. On 25 May, with defeat certain, he climbed onto the barricade at the Château-d’Eau and was shot dead.

France state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1841–1929 ○ Died

Radical French prime minister at the end of the First World War who pressed harsh terms on Hungary at the Paris Peace Conference

A physician turned journalist from the Vendée, he became mayor of the 18th arrondissement of Paris in 1870 and the next year tried to broker a compromise between the Paris Commune and the government. A key figure of the Independent Radicals, he advocated the separation of church and state. As interior minister in 1906 he ordered repressive policies toward the workers’ movement and was nicknamed “the Tiger”, and he was prime minister in 1906–1909 and 1917–1920. Appointed in November 1917 at one of the darkest hours of the war, he demanded total victory over Germany and achieved the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference. Seeking to weaken Hungary as Germany was weakened, he brought about the stringent terms of the Treaty of Trianon. He died in 1929.

France state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1878–1966 ○ Natural causes

A republican statesman who urged resistance in the face of defeat

In June 1940, he argued that France should continue the war from North Africa.

Paul Reynaud was a French republican statesman and lawyer whose independent positions ranged across economics, colonial policy, and defence. Facing Nazi Germany, he pressed for wartime financial mobilisation and modern warfare built around tanks and air power. When France collapsed in 1940, he sought to preserve the alliance with Britain and continue the war from North Africa, but resigned as premier after the armistice camp prevailed and was subsequently detained by Vichy and Germany. After liberation he returned to parliament and remained a prominent defender of parliamentary government.

France state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1884–1970 ○ Illness

The Radicals' 'Bull of Vaucluse', who helped build the Popular Front and dismantled it with his own hands

'Ah! les cons! s'ils savaient...', the words attributed to him on seeing the crowds cheering at Le Bourget airfield on his return from Munich on 30 September 1938. Whether he said them, and where and to whom, is disputed.

A baker's son and history teacher who rose to lead the Radical Party. He quit as premier after the 6 February 1934 riot, then as defence minister from June 1936 helped sustain the Popular Front, but after returning as premier in April 1938 he ended the 40-hour week by decree in November and broke the general strike. He signed the Munich accords in September 1938, declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 and banned the Communist Party after the Nazi-Soviet pact. He fell over the failure to aid Finland in March 1940, stood trial at Riom and was interned near Buchenwald and at Itter Castle until 5 May 1945. Back in the Chamber after the war, he opposed de Gaulle's full powers in 1958 and died in Paris on 10 October 1970.

France state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1902–1989 ○ Natural causes

A Radical Socialist who defended the Republic

“Long live the Republic all the same!”

Vincent Badie was a French Radical Socialist lawyer and politician who worked in local government and parliament, defending veterans and republican institutions. In July 1940 he accepted that constitutional revision might be considered, but rejected transferring power to Pétain in a way that would abolish the Republic; he tried to present a motion signed by 27 parliamentarians and then voted against the grant of full powers. After Vichy suspended him as mayor, he joined the Resistance, was arrested, and deported to Dachau. After the war he returned to parliament and twice served as minister for veterans, while also defending French colonial rule and overseas presence.

France state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1907–1982 ○ Natural causes

French prime minister who promised a ceasefire within four months after Điện Biên Phủ and concluded the 1954 Geneva Accords

As prime minister in 1954, Pierre Mendès France negotiated directly with the Viet Minh at Geneva, securing the July armistice that ended the fighting in Indochina, while also initiating talks on Tunisian autonomy.

A Radical Party lawyer and economist of Jewish descent, he joined the Free French during the war. An early critic of the Indochina War, he became prime minister on 17 June 1954, after the fall of Điện Biên Phủ, promising to resign if he failed to secure a ceasefire within four months, and kept the promise with the Geneva Accords of 21 July. In eight months in office he conceded autonomy to Tunisia, and the Algerian War broke out that November; he also laid the groundwork for military co-operation with Israel and the French nuclear programme.