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Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (25 August 1767 – 28 July 1794) was a Jacobin deputy of the National Convention who was instrumental in ordering the executing of King Louis XVI of France and passing the French Constitution of 1793. He was executed during the Thermidorian Reaction due to his alliance with Maximilien Robespierre.

Biography[]

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just was born in Decize, France on 25 August 1767, and he graduated from an oratory school in Soissons in 1786, having been known as a troublemaker. He joined the National Guard at the start of the French Revolution, and he initially wrote publications in favor of a constitutional monarchy, but he was elected to the National Convention in 1792 as a Jacobin, the convention's youngest member. He famously said that Louis XVI of France "must reign or die", and he was a driving force behind the former king's execution in 1793. That year, he helped in creating the French Constitution of 1793, abolishing the Kingdom of the French and founding the First French Republic. He advocated the suppression of the Girondins, began to send commissars from the convention to oversee the progress of the French Revolutionary Army (improving the army's organization and successes), and became President of the National Convention, working together with Maximilien Robespierre to govern France. On 27 July 1794, he was arrested alongside Robespierre and other Jacobin leaders during the "Thermidorian Reaction", and he was guillotined by the moderate Thermidorians the next day.

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