Georges Danton

Georges Jacques Danton (26 October 1759 – 5 April 1794) was a French politician and a key figure in the French Revolution. Before the Revolution, he was an obscure lawyer of modest means. He rose to prominence as a powerful orator for the Cordeliers Club and, after the monarchy fell on 10 August 1792, became France’s Minister of Justice. He is thought to have stirred up the September Massacres. The National Convention sent him to intervene in General Dumouriez’s military campaign in Belgium. In the spring of 1793, Danton backed the creation of a Revolutionary Tribunal and served as the first president of the Committee of Public Safety. During the insurrection of 31 May to 2 June 1793, Danton reversed his stance on using force and subsequently lost his seat on the committee, deepening his rivalry with Maximilien Robespierre. In early October 1793, Danton withdrew from politics but was urged to return to Paris to argue, as a moderate, for ending the Reign of Terror. His ongoing criticism of the Committee of Public Safety invited further attacks. Robespierre responded to Danton’s plea to stop the Terror on 25 December (5 Nivôse, Year II). At the end of March 1794, Danton gave another speech declaring the Terror over. Within a week, he was accused of royalist sympathies, put on trial for conspiracy and corruption, and executed by guillotine. Historians have long debated Danton’s role in the Revolution’s start, especially during the Third Republic (1870–1940). Many describe him as the main force behind the overthrow of the French monarchy and the founding of the First Republic. Danton was born in Arcis-sur-Aube, in the Champagne region of northeastern France, to Jacques Danton, a respectable but not wealthy lawyer, and Madeleine Camus. He was a cousin of Georges Nicolas Jeannet-Oudin and Louis-François Jeannet. As a baby, he was attacked by a bull, and a few years later he caught smallpox, which left his face scarred and disfigured. He first attended school in Sézanne but left home at thirteen to enter a seminary in Troyes, then moved to a boarding school in the same area. While there, his classmate and friend Jules-François Paré was about to have his hands rapped as punishment, but Danton defended him and spoke out against corporal punishment in class. His speech was so persuasive that the school’s head banned the practice. In 1780, Danton settled in Paris, becoming a clerk under barrister Maître Vinot. He passed the bar exam in Reims in 1783 and became a prosecutor (Conseil du Roi) in 1787. He began frequenting a café called the Parnasse, where he met Antoinette Gabrielle Charpentier. They married on 14 June 1787 at the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. The couple lived in a six-room apartment on the Left Bank, near the Café Procope, and had three sons: François (born May 1788, died in infancy on 24 April 1789), Antoine (born 18 June 1790, died 14 June 1858), and François Georges (born 2 February 1792, died 18 June 1848). In the spring of 1789, Danton began his revolutionary career by giving speeches to crowds at the Palais Royal. His loud voice and rhetorical skill quickly earned him fame and the nickname “The Thunderer.” The Cordeliers district where he lived grew more radical and formed its own street militia, which took part in the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. Danton was not present for that event, but soon after he led the Cordeliers militia and other revolutionaries on a mission to retake the Bastille from its provisional governor, boosting his popular support. He and his district opposed the Marquis de LaFayette, commander of the National Guard, and Jean Sylvain Bailly, the provisional mayor. In early October, Danton was elected president of his section (around the Cordeliers Convent) and deputy to the Commune. He wrote a poster for the Cordeliers calling Parisians to arms. His home on Rue des Cordeliers was open to many neighbors. Danton, Desmoulins, and Marat—who lived nearby—often met at the Café Procope. Danton protected Marat from legal trouble, and in March 1790, LaFayette ordered Danton detained. The Paris Commune was divided into 48 sections that could meet separately. Danton was removed from office by a redistricting of Paris, for which he was compensated. On 27 April 1790, he became president of the Club de Cordeliers. On 2 August, Bailly became Paris’s first elected mayor; Danton received 49 votes, while Marat and Louis XVI each got one. In spring 1791, Danton suddenly began investing heavily in property in or near his birthplace. Robespierre, Pétion, Danton, and Brissot dominated the Jacobin Club. On 17 July 1791, Danton initiated a petition. According to Albert Mathiez, Robespierre went to the Jacobin club to cancel the draft of the petition, persuading the clubs not to support it. After the Champ de Mars massacre, repressive measures against popular society leaders forced Danton to take refuge in London for a few weeks.