François Hanriot ( , ; 2 December 1759 – 28 July 1794) was a French Sans-culotte leader, street orator, and commander of the National Guard during the French Revolution. He played a vital role in the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 and subsequently the fall of the Girondins. On 27 July 1794 he tried to release Maximilien Robespierre, who was arrested by the Convention. He was executed on the next daytogether with Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Georges Couthonby the rules of the law of 22 Prairial, only verifying his identity at the trial.
Life
Early years François Hanriot was born in Nanterre, now a western suburb of Paris. His parents were servants (gardeners) to a former Treasurer of France, and came from Sormery in Burgundy. Between 1779 and 1783 he supposedly was a soldier in America serving under Lafayette, but there are no documents to prove that.Moreau, J. (2010) "François Hanriot, general-citizen", pp. 32–34. Nanterre: Société d'Histoire de Nanterre.
Not a man of any specific profession, Hanriot held a variety of different jobs. He took his first employment with a procureur doing mostly secretarial work but lost his position due to dishonesty. Next, he obtained a clerkship in the Paris octroi in 1789, doing tax work. His position there was also ill-fated; he was dismissed after leaving his station on the night of 12 July 1789, when the popular Jacques Necker was fired, and angry Parisians attempted to burn down the building belonging to the Wall of the Ferme générale. Hanriot was arrested and imprisoned in Bicêtre and released the next year with the help of Jean-Paul Marat. After his string of unfortunate professions, Hanriot remained unemployed and subsequently very poor. His next string of occupations is rather hazy in history; many people of the time connect him to a variety of professions including shopkeeper, liquor-seller, and peddler. He lived near the Jardin des Plantes at 21, Rue de la Clef.
Role in the first years of the Revolution After generating a more substantial fortune he moved around the corner to Rue du Battoir, now Rue de Quatrefages. In January 1792, Hanriot became well known for his anti-aristocratic outlook and for attacking Lafayette. He became an orator for the local section sans-culottes, one of the most populous and poorest districts of the capital. On 9 August 1792, when the Assembly refused to impeach Lafayette, the tocsin called the sections into arms.N. Hampson (1978) Danton, p. 72 In the evening the "commissionaires" of several sections (Billaud-Varenne, Chaumette, Hébert, Hanriot, Fleuriot-Lescot, Pache, Bourdon) gathered in the town hall. The next day the Tuileries was stormed by the National Guard, the Fédérés and the people from the revolutionary sections of Paris.
As a member of the Cordeliers club he was strongly in favor of imposing taxes on the aristocracy, presenting them "with a bill in one hand and a pistol in the other." With this attitude he gained a loyal following of local sans-culottes and they would appoint him on 2 September as captain of the National Guard battalion of his section. It is unlikely he participated in the September Massacre as the Sainte-Pélagie Prison in his section was not visited at all. The next evening he was present at Bicêtre with his battalion. According to Cassignac his men were involved in the massacre.Cassagnac, Adolphe Granier de (1860) Histoire Des Girondins Et Des Massacres de Septembre d'après Les Documents Officiels Et Inédits, p. 433
The Fall of the Girondists
The Spring of 1793 was a period of great political tension in Paris as the radical voices in the Commune and the Montagnards in the Convention became more overtly hostile to the ruling Girondist faction. The authorities' decision to arrest Jean-Paul Marat in April brought matters to a head and precipitated the fall of the Girondins in which Hanriot played a major part. In the evening of 30 May 1793 the Commune appointed Hanriot provisionally to the position of "Commandant-General" of the Parisian National Guard, because Santerre was fighting in the Vendée. He was ordered to march his troops to the Palais National. The purpose of this move was to force the Convention to dissolve the Commission of Twelve and the arrest of 22 selected Girondists. Some people on the galleries called "A la Vendée".
During the night of 30–31 May, the city gates were closed and at 3 the tocsin (in the Notre-Dame) was rung.Mémoires de Louvet de Couvray, p. 88 Hanriot ordered the firing of a cannon on the Pont-Neuf as a sign of alarm, without the permission of the Convention.Thompson, J.M. (1959) The French Revolution. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p. 353. Vergniaud suggested the arrest of Hanriot. (Robespierre attacked Vergniaud and denounced the commission of Twelve.) In the evening of 1 June the Comité Insurrectionnel ordered the arrest of 27 Girondins, including Jean-Marie Roland, Lebrun-Tondu and Clavière, the banning of the Girondist newspapers and the arrest of their editors.Mathiez, Albert (1995) The French Revolution, p. 325. Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix. It also ordered François Hanriot, to surround the Convention ‘with a respectable armed force’.Davidson, Ian. The French Revolution, p. 161Le Temps (Paris) 1904-03-29
The Convention (about 100 deputies) decided to allow men to carry arms on days of crisis and pay them for each day. It also promised to indemnify the workers for the interruptions over the past four days. It postponed any other decisions regarding the accused deputies for three days.Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, 5 juin 1793 On Saturday 1 June the Commune gathered almost all day and was devoted to the preparation of a "great movement". In the evening 40,000 men surrounded the building to force the arrests. Hanriot's first care was to seize the key positions—the Arsenal, the Place Royale, and the Pont Neuf. Next, the barriers were closed and prominent suspects arrested. At midnight the commune decided the men should take a rest and go home. The next morning the Convention invited Hanriot, who told them all his men were prepared and posts occupied.
Hanriot ordered the National Guard to march from the town hall to the National Palace. In the early evening of 2 June, a large force of armed citizens; estimated by some sources as 80,000, but spoken of by Danton as 30,000 souls,Le Républicain français, 14 septembre 1793, p. 2Moreau, J. (2010) François Hanriot, general-citizen, p. ?. Nanterre: Société d'Histoire de Nanterre. surrounded the Convention with 63 pieces of artillery. "The armed force", Hanriot said, "will retire only when the Convention has delivered to the people the deputies denounced by the Commune." Attempting to exit, the accused Girondins walked around the palace in a theatrical procession. Confronted on all sides by bayonets and pikes, they returned to the meeting hall and submitted to the inevitable. Twenty-two Girondins were seized one by one after some juggling with names. They finally decided that 31 deputies were not to be imprisoned, but only subject to house arrest.Davidson, Ian. The French Revolution, pp. 161–162
On 2 June 1793 at 11 in the morning, women gathered in front of the Convention. Then Hanriot's troops surrounded the Convention with thousands of armed volunteers, cannons, and pikes while it was in session, and throngs of sans-culotte soldiers entered the building and disrupted the sessions. The President of the Convention, Herault de Sechelles, came out to appeal to Hanriot to remove his troops, but he refused. Under that pressure, the Convention voted the arrest of 22 Girondist deputies, removing that faction from power. Marat and Couthon regarded Hanriot as the "Savior of the Fatherland". (Gérard Walter insists on the contrary on the perfect discipline of the men commanded by Hanriot. The historian thus attributes to the sans-culotte commander the merit of having avoided bloodshed during the exclusion and the arrest of the Girondins deputies.) On 11 June Hanriot resigned his command, declaring that order had been restored. On 29 June he was reelected in his section.Moreau, J. (2010) François Hanriot, general-citizen, pp. 32–34. Nanterre: Société d'Histoire de Nanterre. On 1 July he was elected by the Commune and two days later appointed by Jean Bouchotte as permanent commander of the armed forces of Paris.
On 4 September, the sans-culottes again invaded the Convention. Supported by Hanriot they demanded tougher measures against rising prices and the setting up of a system of terror to root out the counter-revolution. On 11 September the power of the Committee of Public Safety was extended for one month; Robespierre supported Hanriot in the Jacobin club as having led the insurrection on 2 June. On 19 September the Convention supported his appointment as General commanding the Parisian National Guard (at that time numbering 130,000 men). Hanriot moved into an apartment on the third floor of the Hôtel de Ville, Paris,Gustave Hue (1907) "Deux géneraux de la République". In: Les Contemporains, 1 janvier 1907 with busts of Brutus, Marat and Rousseau displayed. He hired seats in Théâtre de la République and Opera-Comique. On 8 December he declared that he would not use arms against the people; instead he would use reason.
End of the Reign of Terror
During the spring of 1794, there were increasing tensions between Robespierre and the Committees on the one hand, and the Paris Commune and the sans-culottes on the other. On 6 March Hanriot appeared in front of the Convention with 1,200 men. This culminated in the arrest of Hebert, Momoro, Vincent, Ronsin and their associates on 13 March. Hanriot, a Hébertist, was protected by Robespierre.The public prosecutor of the terror, Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, p. 250 On 27 March the sans-culotte Revolutionary Army was disbanded and its artillery units brought under Hanriot's control. Although he was broadly supportive of the radical ideas of Hébert and his associates, Hanriot remained loyal to Robespierre. On 2 April 1794 – the first day of the interrogation of Danton – he was informed not to arrest the president and the public prosecutor of Revolutionary Tribunal.The Jacobin Republic 1792–1794 By Marc Bouloiseau, p. 117
Hanriot opposed Lazare Carnot who stripped Paris of its gunners. Hanriot managed to prevent the queues in front of the butchers and bakeries from turning into a riot. On 5 June François Hanriot ordered the detaining of every baker in Paris who either sold his bread to people without (distribution) cards or who came from other sections.Le republicain francais, 8 juin 1794; Mercure universel, 24 juin 1794
On 27 July 1794 a group of Convention members organised the overthrow of Robespierre and his allies in what became known as the Thermidorean Reaction. Laurent Lecointre was the instigator of the coup, assisted by Barère, Fréron, Barras, Tallien, Thuriot, Courtois, Rovère, Garnier de l’Aube and Guffroy. Each one of these prepared his individual role in the coup. They decided that Hanriot, his aides-de-camp, Lavalette and Boulanger,Cobb, Richard, The people's armies: the armées révolutionnaires: instrument of the Terror in the departments, April 1793 to Floréal Year II, trans. Elliott, Marianne (New Haven, CT, and London, 1987), pp. 65–66. Google Scholar the public prosecutor Dumas, the family Duplay and the printer Charles-Léopold Nicolas had to be arrested first, so Robespierre would be without military or other effective support.