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'Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just' (25 August 1767 – 28 July 1794), usually known as 'Saint-Just', was a French revolutionary leader. Closely allied with Robespierre, he served with him on the Committee of Public Safety and perished with him after the events of 9 Thermidor.

Contents

Biography

Camus and Saint-Just

Fictionalized accounts

References

See also

External links

Biography

He was born at Decize in the Nivernais, the eldest child of Louis Jean de Saint-Just of Richebourg (1716-1777), a cavalry officer, and Marie-Anne Robinot (1736-1791), the daugher of a lawyer. He had two younger sisters. Several years later, the family moved to Oise and later to Aisne in Blérancourt. From 1779 to 1785, Saint-Just attended the Oratorian school at Soissons. In 1786, he ran away from home, after which he was sent, at the request of his mother, to a reformatory (''maison de correction'') in Paris from September 1786 to March 1787. In October 1787, he went to the School of Law at Rheims, before returning the following year to Blérancourt, where he remained until September 1792.
Early in 1789, he published twenty cantos of licentious verse, in the fashion of the time, under the title of ''Organt au Vatican''. This poem was strongly critical of the monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. Afterwards, however, he assumed a stoical manner, which, along with what the 1911 ''Encyclopaedia Britannica'' characterised as his devotion to a "tyrannical and pitilessly thorough" policy, became a lifelong characteristic.
He joined the revolution at its outbreak, was elected an officer in the National Guard of the Aisne, and falsified his age to become a member of the electoral assembly of his district.
He entered into correspondence with Maximilien Robespierre, who befriended him. With Robespierre's support, Saint-Just became deputy of the ''département'' of Aisne to the National Convention, where he made his first speech on 13th November 1792, condemning Louis XVI. he became one of the leaders of The Mountain. In the Convention, in the Jacobin Club and among the people, his close relationship with Robespierre became known, and he was dubbed the "St. John of the Messiah of the People". His appointment as a member of the Committee of Public Safety placed him at the centre of the political arena.
In the name of this committee he was given the job of drawing-up reports to the Convention on the absorbing themes of the overthrow of the party of the Gironde (report of 8 July 1793), of the Jacques René Hébert, and finally, of the denunciation of Georges Danton which consigned him and his followers to the guillotine. Camille Desmoulins said of Saint-Just: "He carries his head like a Holy Sacrament." "And I," replied Saint-Just, "will make him carry his like a Saint Denis." The threat was not vain: Desmoulins accompanied Danton to the scaffold.
In the external policy of France, he proposed that the National Convention should, through its committees, direct all military movements and all branches of the government (report of 10 October 1793). Under this policy, Saint-Just and his fellow deputy and friend, Philippe Lebas, were dispatched to Strasbourg to command military operations. It was suspected that the enemy was being helped by French traitors. Saint-Just's solution was guided by his experience in Paris, where he helped run the Reign of Terror. There were no executions at Strasbourg, and Saint-Just repressed the excesses of Jean-Georges Schneider, who as public prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal of the Lower Rhine had ruthlessly applied the Terror in Alsace. Schneider was sent to Paris and guillotined.
The conspiracy was defeated, and the armies of the Rhine and Moselle having been inspired by success - Saint-Just taking a leading part in the fighting - and having joined, the frontier was secured and the German Rhineland was invaded. On his return to Paris, Saint-Just was made president of the Convention, where he was instrumental in the downfall of the followers of Danton and Hebert. He proposed the Ventôse Decrees, which would have redistributed the property of enemies of the Revolution to the needy. Later, he served with the army of the North, when he gave the generals the choice of victory over the enemies of France or trial by revolutionary tribunal; he organized a unit specially charged with the slaughter of those who should seek refuge by fleeing. Success again came his way, and Belgium was gained for France by May 1794.
Robespierre recalled Saint-Just to the capital. According to Barère, on 5 Thermidor Saint-Just proposed a dictatorship as the remedy for the convulsions of society. Barère's report is highly questionable, however. As one of the leaders of the Thermidorian Reaction, his testimony is necessarily suspect and it has been argued (Fayard, p. 311) that the policy Barère alleged is not at all typical of Saint-Just. At the famous sitting of 9 Thermidor, Saint-Just tried to present as the report of the committees of General Security and Public Safety a document expressing his own views. However, he had refused to show it to the rest of the committee the previous day. He was loudly interrupted by the other members of the committee, and the sitting ended with an order for Robespierre's arrest. On the following day, 28 July 1794, twenty-two men including Saint-Just and Robespierre, were arrested and guillotined.

Camus and Saint-Just

Saint-Just is discussed extensively in Albert Camus's philosophical essay of 1951, ''The Rebel''. His actions during the course of the Revolution are examined in the context of Camus's analysis of the progression of rebellion and revolution towards enlightenment and freedom throughout history. His fierce advocacy of the execution of Louis XVI and his philosophical treatises on the nature of the Revolution in speeches to the Assembly, are both used by Camus to illustrate how the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy was brought about and from what basis the political ideology of the Revolution grew. Camus claims Saint-Just "introduced Rousseau's ideas into the pages of history" and incorporates Saint-Just and his ideals into his humanist study of the progression of humanity towards enlightened liberalism and democratic pluralism; and the traps and mistakes that have ensnared previous revolutionary attempts towards this goal.
Saint-Just and his fellow Jacobins are resultantly lauded as 'Regicides' with Camus attributing the gradual decline of absolute monarchy that spread throughout Europe following the French Revolution and the resultant growth of popular representation and democracy to the philosophical and political developments initiated and executed by Saint-Just and his fellow Jacobins.
The theological implications of Saint-Just's rhetoric are also discussed by Camus, in successfully arguing for the King's execution, Saint-Just destroyed the facade of monarchical divine right and ensured that kings could never again enjoy such unchecked power as the Bourbon's did. Camus identifies Saint-Just's succesful advocacy of the execution of Louis XVI, a monarch who claimed to be God's representative in the temporal world, as instigating the 'death of God' movement which spread throughout European philosophy in the ensuing 19th century in the works of men such as Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche. Camus argues that the Jacobin regicides allowed for the contemplation of eventual deicide, the Nietzschean 'twilight of the idols'.
However, Camus also holds Saint-Just as a cautionary parable, a lesson in how revolutions; their ideals; and the idealists that lead them can descend into despotism and tyranny. He discusses how Saint-Just and his fellow Jacobins would not compromise their ideals to accommodate the will of the common people, the sans-culottes and so brought about the Jacobin Terror and their eventual downfall in the events of the Thermidorian Reaction.

Fictionalized accounts

★ He (along with Maximilien Robespierre) gives his name and role to Oscar Saint-Just in the Honorverse.

★ Saint-Just is featured in the play Danton's Death by German playwright Georg Buchner.

★ Saint-Just, along with Robespierre, is seen in the anime and manga The Rose of Versailles.

★ He plays an important role in the short story "Thermidor" from Neil Gaiman's ''The Sandman''.

★ Rei Asaka, a character in the anime and manga Oniisama e..., is directly modelled after him.

References

''The 1911 ''Encyclopaedia Britannica'' gives the following references:''

★ ''Œuvres de Saint-Just, précédes d'une notice historique sur sa vie'' (Paris, 1833-1834).

★ E. Fleury, ''Etudes révolutionnaires'' (2 vols., 1851), with which cf. articles by Sainte Beuve (''Causeries du lundi'', vol. v), Cuvillier-Fleury (''Portraits politiques et révolutionnaires'').

★ E. Hamel, ''Histoire de Saint-Just'' (1859), which brought a fine to the publishers for outrage on public decency.

★ FA Aulard, ''Les Orateurs de la Legislative et de la Convention'' (2nd ed., Paris, 1905).

★ The ''Œuvres complètes de Saint-Just'' have been edited with notes by C Vellay (Paris, 1908).

★ ''Théorie politique,'' edited by Alain Liénard, Paris: Seuil 1976.

★ ''Saint-Just,'' Bernard Vinot, Paris: Fayard, 1985.

★ ''The Rebel, '' Albert Camus, 1951.

See also

★ French Revolution

★ ''La Terreur''

External links

★ Saint-Just.net
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