Danton, Georges Jacques 1759-94
French Revolutionary leader

He was born of peasant stock, in Arcis-sur-Aube. At the outbreak of the French Revolution he was practising as an advocate in Paris, where he had instituted the Revolutionists' Cordeliers' Club with Jean Paul Marat and Camille Desmoulins. He fled to England in 1791, but in 1792 he became Minister of Justice in the new republic following the fall of the monarchy. Elected to the National Convention, he voted for the death of the king in January 1793 and was one of the nine original members of the Committee of Public Safety, frequently undertaking missions to Dumouriez and other republican generals. He also contributed to the fall of the Girondins, or moderate party (October 1793), and to the subsequent supremacy of the extremist Jacobins. As president of the Jacobin Club he strove for domestic unity, government stability, and to abate the pitiless severity of the Revolutionary Tribunal (which he had himself set up) but he lost power to Robespierre in the Reign of Terror. Danton retired from active politics, but in March 1794 he and his followers were arrested for conspiracy to overthrow the goverment. His audacious, satirical defence moved the people so greatly that the Revolutionary Tribunal concocted a decree to shut the mouths of men who had 'insulted Justice', and on 5 April Danton was guillotined.

Bibliography: Norman Hampson, Danton (1978)