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Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (25 August 1767 – 28 July 1794), usually known as Saint-Just, was a French revolutionary leader. Closely allied with Robespierre, he served with him on the Committee of Public Safety and perished with him after the events of 9 Thermidor.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Camus and Saint-Just 3 Fictionalized accounts 4 References 5 See also 6 External links

He was born at Decize in the Nivernais, the eldest child of Louis Jean de Saint-Just of Richebourg (1716-1777), a cavalry officer, and Marie-Anne Robinot (1736-1791), the daughter of a lawyer. He had two younger sisters. The family later moved to Oise, and in 1776, settled in Blérancourt (Aisne). From 1779 to 1785, Saint-Just attended the Oratorian school at Soissons. In 1786, he ran away from home, taking a portion of his mother’s silver to Paris. Following this, she had him sent to a reformatory (maison de correction) in Paris from September 1786 to March 1787. In October 1787, he went to the School of Law at Rheims, before returning the following year to Blérancourt, where he lived until September 1792.

In May 1789, he published twenty cantos of licentious verse (after the fashion of the time) under the title of Organt au Vatican. The poem was strongly critical of the monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church.

Saint-Just supported the revolution from its outbreak, and became involved in local political affairs. He was elected lieutenant-colonel of the National Guard of the Aisne, and sought to become a member of his district’s electoral assembly by falsifying his age.

In 1790 he wrote to Maximilien Robespierre for the first time, asking him to consider a local petition. The letter was filled with praise, beginning: “You, who uphold our tottering country against the torrent of despotism and intrigue, you whom I know, as I know God, only through his miracles—it is to you, Monsieur, that I address myself.”^[1] Through their correspondence, the two became friends. With Robespierre's support, Saint-Just became deputy of the département of Aisne to the National Convention. He gave his first speech, a condemnation of Louis XVI, on 13th November 1792. This gained him attention, and he soon became a prominent figure of The Mountain. His close friendship with Robespierre became known to the Convention, the Jacobin Club, and the people, and he was dubbed the "St. John of the Messiah of the People". His appointment to the Committee of Public Safety in 1793 placed him at the centre of the political arena. In the Convention, he reported on the overthrow of the party of the Gironde (report of 8 July 1793).

As for the external policy of France, Saint-Just proposed that, through its committees, the National Convention should direct all military movements and all branches of the government (report of 10 October 1793). Under this policy, Saint-Just, along with friend and fellow deputy Philippe Lebas, was dispatched to Strasbourg to command military operations. Saint-Just's experience with terror in Paris guided him in dealing with suspected treason in Alsace. In Strasbourg, he repressed the excesses of Jean-Georges Schneider, who, as public prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal of the Lower Rhine, had ruthlessly applied the Terror in Alsace. Schneider was sent to Paris and guillotined.

Saint-Just succeeded in inspiring the armies of the Rhine and Moselle. Taking a lead role in the fight, he saw the frontier secured and the German Rhineland invaded. He returned to Paris in January 1794, and was president of the Convention for the month of Ventôse (19 February-20 March). He was instrumental in the downfalls of the Hébertists and the Dantonists. He proposed the Ventôse Decrees, which would have seized property from enemies of the Revolution and redistributed it to the needy. Later, he served with the army of the North, where he gave generals the choice of victory over their enemies or trial by revolutionary tribunal; he organized a unit specially charged with eliminating deserters. Once more he saw success, and Belgium was gained for France by May 1794.

At the end of May, Robespierre recalled Saint-Just to the capital, but he soon departed again with the army until 28 June. According to Barère, on 5 Thermidor (23 July) Saint-Just proposed dictatorship as the remedy for society’s disorder. This report, however, is highly questionable: as a leader of the Thermidorian Reaction, his testimony is suspect, and it has been argued (Fayard, p. 311) that this alleged policy is not at all typical of Saint-Just. At the famous sitting of 9 Thermidor, Saint-Just gave his defense of Robespierre. While he tried to present his report as that of the committees of General Security and Public Safety, he had actually refused to show it to them the previous day. He was loudly interrupted by his fellow committee members, and the sitting ended with an order for Robespierre's arrest. The following day, twenty-one men, including Saint-Just and Robespierre, were arrested and guillotined.

Saint-Just is discussed extensively in Albert Camus's philosophical essay of 1951, The Rebel. His actions during the course of the Revolution are examined in the context of Camus's analysis of the progression of rebellion and revolution towards enlightenment and freedom throughout history. His fierce advocacy of the execution of Louis XVI and his philosophical treatises on the nature of the Revolution in speeches to the Assembly, are both used by Camus to illustrate how the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy was brought about and from what basis the political ideology of the Revolution grew. Camus claims Saint-Just "introduced Rousseau's ideas into the pages of history" and incorporates Saint-Just and his ideals into his humanist study of the progression of humanity towards enlightened liberalism and democratic pluralism; and the traps and mistakes that have ensnared previous revolutionary attempts towards this goal.

Saint-Just and his fellow Jacobins are resultantly lauded as 'Regicides' with Camus attributing the gradual decline of absolute monarchy that spread throughout Europe following the French Revolution and the resultant growth of popular representation and democracy to the philosophical and political developments initiated and executed by Saint-Just and his fellow Jacobins.

The theological implications of Saint-Just's rhetoric are also discussed by Camus, in successfully arguing for the King's execution, Saint-Just destroyed the facade of monarchical divine right and ensured that kings could never again enjoy such unchecked power as the Bourbons did. Camus identifies Saint-Just's successful advocacy of the execution of Louis XVI as the Nietzschean 'twilight of the idols'.

However, Camus also holds Saint-Just as a cautionary parable, a lesson in how revolutions, their ideals, and the idealists that lead them can descend into despotism and tyranny. He discusses how Saint-Just and his fellow Jacobins would not compromise their ideals to accommodate the will of the common people, the sans-culottes, and so brought about the Jacobin Terror and their eventual downfall in the events of the Thermidorian Reaction.

• Saint-Just is featured in the play Danton's Death by German playwright Georg Buchner.

• He plays an important role in the short story "Thermidor" from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

• Saint-Just, along with Robespierre, is seen in the anime and manga The Rose of Versailles.

• He (along with Maximilien Robespierre) gives his name and role to Oscar Saint-Just in the Honorverse.

• Rei Asaka, a character in the anime and manga Oniisama e..., is directly modelled after him.

1. ^ Thompson, J. M.: Robespierre, volume I, page 109. Howard Fertig, 1968.

The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the following references:

• Œuvres de Saint-Just, précédes d'une notice historique sur sa vie (Paris, 1833-1834).
• E. Fleury, Etudes révolutionnaires (2 vols., 1851), with which cf. articles by Sainte Beuve (Causeries du lundi, vol. v), Cuvillier-Fleury (Portraits politiques et révolutionnaires).
• E. Hamel, Histoire de Saint-Just (1859), which brought a fine to the publishers for outrage on public decency.
• FA Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Legislative et de la Convention (2nd ed., Paris, 1905).
• The Œuvres complètes de Saint-Just have been edited with notes by C Vellay (Paris, 1908).
• Théorie politique, edited by Alain Liénard, Paris: Seuil 1976.
• Saint-Just, Bernard Vinot, Paris: Fayard, 1985.
• The Rebel, Albert Camus, 1951.
• Œuvres Choisies, with introduction by Jean Gratien and forward by Dionys Mascolo. Gallimard, 1968.

• French Revolution
• La Terreur
• Maximilien Robespierre
• Committee of Public Safety

• Saint-Just.net

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.