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Brissot (de
Warville), Jacques-Pierre (b. Jan. 15, 1754,
Chartres, Fr.--d. Oct. 31, 1793, Paris), a leader of the Girondins
(often called Brissotins), a moderate bourgeois faction that opposed the
radical-democratic Jacobins during the French Revolution.
The son of an eating-house keeper,
Brissot began to work as a clerk in lawyers' offices, first at Chartres,
then in Paris. Taking an interest in science, he went to London
(February-November 1783), where he published literary articles and founded
two scientific periodicals, which failed. Returning to France, he was
imprisoned in the Bastille for pamphlets against the queen and the
government but was released in September 1784.
Inspired by the English antislavery
movement, Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of Blacks in February
1788. He left for the United States in May, but, when the States General
were convened in France, he returned and launched a newspaper, Le Patriote français (May 1789). Elected to the first
municipality of Paris, he took delivery of the keys of the Bastille when it
had been stormed. (see also French Revolution)
After Louis XVI's flight to
Varennes, Brissot attacked the king's inviolability in a long speech to the
Jacobins (July 10, 1791) that contained all the essentials of his future
foreign policy. Elected to the Legislative Assembly, he immediately
concerned himself with foreign affairs, joining the diplomatic committee.
Brissot argued that war could only consolidate the Revolution by unmasking
its enemies and inaugurating a crusade for universal liberty. Only the
Jacobin leader Robespierre opposed him, and
war was declared on Austria (April 1792). The early defeats suffered by the
French, however, gave fresh impulse to the revolutionary movement, which
Brissot and his friends had meant to check. Having tried in vain to prevent
the suspension of the monarchy, Brissot was denounced by Robespierre in the
Paris Commune as a "liberticide" on September 1.
No longer acceptable to Paris,
Brissot represented Eure-et-Loir in the National Convention. Expelled from
the Jacobins (Oct. 12, 1792) and attacked by the Montagnards (extreme
revolutionary faction), he was still influential in the diplomatic
committee: his report led to war's being declared on Great Britain and the
Dutch (Feb. 1, 1793). On April 3, 1793, Robespierre accused him of being the
friend of the traitor General Charles-François Dumouriez and of being
chiefly responsible for the war. Brissot replied, denouncing the Jacobins
and calling for the dissolution of the municipality of Paris. He was not
conspicuous in the struggle between the Girondins and the Montagnards
(April-May), but on June 2, 1793, his arrest was decreed with that of his
Girondin friends. He fled but was captured at Moulins and taken to Paris.
Sentenced by the revolutionary tribunal on the evening of October 30,
Brissot was guillotined the next day. |
