11 Facts About Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne presided over the persecution of Louis-Marie Turreau and Jean-Baptiste Carrier for their massacres during the War in the Vendee, which ended by their execution.

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was one of the central figures of the first part of the French Revolution, but he remains little studied or little understood.

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was born in La Rochelle as the son of a lawyer to the parlement of Paris.

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was educated at the college at Niort run by the French Oratorians, and took Philosophy at La Rochelle.

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was sent to another Oratory of Jesus school, the College of Juilly, where he was Hall prefect of studies.

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne then went to Paris, married and bought a position as lawyer in the.

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was included in the Reign of Terror's Committee of Public Safety, which had decreed the mass arrest of all suspects and the establishment of a revolutionary army, caused the extraordinary criminal tribunal to be named officially "Revolutionary Tribunal", demanded the execution of Marie Antoinette, and then attacked Jacques Rene Hebert and Danton.

Once named to the committee, Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne became a vocal defender of that body.

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was next to speak, with Collot d'Herbois controlling the debates from the President's Chair, and in an eloquent planned denunciation directly accused Robespierre of a conspiracy against the Republic.

However, after 9 Thermidor, Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was enough to find himself in prison.

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was arrested, and as a result of the Jacobin-led insurrection of 12 Germinal of the Year III, the Convention decreed his immediate deportation to French Guiana, along with Collot d'Herbois and Bertrand Barere de Vieuzac, where he picked up farming and took as concubine a black slave girl called Brigitte.