Marie-Joseph Chenier (11 February 1764 – 10 January 1810) was President of the National Convention of the French First Republic during the French Revolution and a member of the Council of Five Hundred.
Biography[]
Marie-Joseph Chenier was born in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire on 11 February 1764, the son of French consul Louis Chenier and his Greek wife (the grandmother of Paris Commune Revolt leader Adolphe Thiers) and the brother of poet Andre Chenier. Chenier, like his brother, was a poet during the 1780s, and Camille Desmoulins praised his work Charles IX as doing more for the French Revolution than the events of October 1789. He became a member of the National Convention during the revolution, voting for the execution of Louis XVI of France and sitting on the Committee of Public Safety. However, the Jacobin Club hated him for his moderate views, and Chenier survived the Reign of Terror, while his brother did not. Chenier would later sit on the Council of Five Hundred under the French Directory, and he left politics in 1802 due to his opposition to Napoleon Bonaparte. From 1803 to 1806, he was Inspector-General of Public Instruction, and he later reconciled with Napoleon. He died in 1810, and he became famous as the most important tragic poet of the revolutionary era.