1756–1794
✕ Guillotined
Representative on mission of the Convention who ordered the drownings at Nantes
Born in 1756 at Yolet near Aurillac into a tenant-farming family, he became a procurator and, when the Revolution came, joined the National Guard and the Jacobin Club. Elected to the Convention for Cantal in 1792, an orator of the Cordeliers and Jacobins, he voted for the execution of Louis XVI and took part in the fall of the Girondins. Sent to Nantes in the autumn of 1793, where prisoners from the Virée de Galerne were piling up, from December 1793 to February 1794 he emptied the prisons by mass shootings and by drownings in the Loire on barges with trap-door bottoms. The drownings, which he called “vertical deportation”, killed 1,800 to 4,800 people and the shootings 2,600. Recalled in February 1794, he defended Turreau’s methods and joined the overthrow of Robespierre, but the trial of the Nantes revolutionary committee turned on him and he was guillotined on 16 December 1794.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1784Procurator at Aurillac
- 1792–1794Deputy for Cantal in the National Convention
- 1793–1794Representative on mission at Nantes; directed the drownings and shootings
- 1794Arrested, condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined