العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
EspañolRAYMOND DESèZE
'Raymond Romain, Comte de Sèze' or 'Desèze' (September 26 1750–May 2 1828) was a French advocate. Together with François Tronchet and Malesherbes, he defended Louis XVI, when the king was brought before the Convention for trial.
Desèze was born in Bordeaux, Gascony, and studied in the famous law school of that city. He gained a reputation for remarkable passion and persuasivness, and came to prominence in 1789 when he defended the Baron de Bensenval against charges of high treason. When, at forty-four, he was called out of retirement to aid the last push of the kings defence, he was considered one of the best lawyers in the kingdom. Though he had to prepare his defence arguments in an incredibly short amount of time, his brilliance shone through in a first draft that, although incredibly moving, Louis rejected as too rhetorical, saying, "I do not want to play on their (the Convention's) feelings". When the time for the real defence came, despite having had no sleep for over four days, he pled the king's case for three hours, arguing eloquently yet discreetly that the revolution spare his life. Beginning with a description of why the charges were invalid (under the terms of the constitution of 1791 Louis, as king, was immune from prosecution), he attacked the right of Convention to stand as judge and jury. Finally, he moved to a rejection of the charges in the acte enonciatif drawn up by the constitution charge by charge, with a royalist history of the revolution, portraying Louis as 'the restorer of French Liberty". He finished, like many of the set-piece speechs of the revoltion, with an appeal to history:
Jean-Paul Marat, the ''démagogue'' of the ''sans-culottes'', was favourably impressed, and declared: "DeSeze read a long speech made with a great deal of art". The Commune, the most violent of the factions at the time, described the speech as "very adroit". Nevertheless, the case was lost, and the king was sent to the guillotine. De Sèze himself was also imprisoned during the revolution, but he managed to elude the scaffold. After release upon the fall of Robespierre, he disappeared from public life, refusing to serve neither the Directory nor the Napoleonic government, both of which he saw as illegitimate. Upon the return of the Bourbons he was made a peer, as well as a judge and a member of the French Academy, before dying at the age of eighty.
★ ''The King's Trial (Louis XVI vs The French Revolution)'', David P. Jordan, University of California Press, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition. Copyright 1979, 2004
Raymond de Sèze.
Desèze was born in Bordeaux, Gascony, and studied in the famous law school of that city. He gained a reputation for remarkable passion and persuasivness, and came to prominence in 1789 when he defended the Baron de Bensenval against charges of high treason. When, at forty-four, he was called out of retirement to aid the last push of the kings defence, he was considered one of the best lawyers in the kingdom. Though he had to prepare his defence arguments in an incredibly short amount of time, his brilliance shone through in a first draft that, although incredibly moving, Louis rejected as too rhetorical, saying, "I do not want to play on their (the Convention's) feelings". When the time for the real defence came, despite having had no sleep for over four days, he pled the king's case for three hours, arguing eloquently yet discreetly that the revolution spare his life. Beginning with a description of why the charges were invalid (under the terms of the constitution of 1791 Louis, as king, was immune from prosecution), he attacked the right of Convention to stand as judge and jury. Finally, he moved to a rejection of the charges in the acte enonciatif drawn up by the constitution charge by charge, with a royalist history of the revolution, portraying Louis as 'the restorer of French Liberty". He finished, like many of the set-piece speechs of the revoltion, with an appeal to history:
Jean-Paul Marat, the ''démagogue'' of the ''sans-culottes'', was favourably impressed, and declared: "DeSeze read a long speech made with a great deal of art". The Commune, the most violent of the factions at the time, described the speech as "very adroit". Nevertheless, the case was lost, and the king was sent to the guillotine. De Sèze himself was also imprisoned during the revolution, but he managed to elude the scaffold. After release upon the fall of Robespierre, he disappeared from public life, refusing to serve neither the Directory nor the Napoleonic government, both of which he saw as illegitimate. Upon the return of the Bourbons he was made a peer, as well as a judge and a member of the French Academy, before dying at the age of eighty.
| Contents |
| References |
References
★ ''The King's Trial (Louis XVI vs The French Revolution)'', David P. Jordan, University of California Press, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition. Copyright 1979, 2004
This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.
psst.. try this: add to faves
