Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville , known as Fouquier-Tinville , born with Herouël (Aisne), on June 12th 1746, dead guillotine with Paris on May 7th 1795, is a French politician, Public prosecutor of the revolutionary Tribunal.
Presentation
Wire junior by a rich family, old nobility, it made studies of right and became towards 1765 clerk of a prosecutor to the Châtelet. In 1774, it bought the load to him and a year later it married his cousin, of which it had five children. After the death of his wife, it remaria and had to sell its load in 1783. Sifted debts, it obtained an employment in the offices of the police force of the king and in 1789 became police chief of its district. With the support of his cousin Camille Desmoulins, it obtained to be appointed director of one of the jurys of charge of the court of the August 17th 1792, created to consider the royalists stopped the August 10th. After the removal of this court, the November 29th 1792, it became substitute of the public prosecutor of the criminal court of the the Seine. The March 12th 1793, it was named judge with the court of Saint-Quentin.
Public prosecutor
The March 10th 1793, the national Convention had created the extraordinary criminal court, which will bear the revolutionary name of Tribunal from the 8 brumaire year II (October 29th 1793). In its meeting of the March 13rd, Convention proceeded to the election of the members of this court. Faure was elected Public prosecutor, by 180 votes out of 377 voters. Substitutes were elected: Fouquier-Tinvillle, 163 votes, Fleuriot-Lescot, 162 votes and Donzé-Verteuil, 162 votes. Faure declined the proposal and Fouquier-Tinville accepted the function.It is him which was the engine of the court, which accommodated the sworn judges and, who chooses the room, which wrote bills of indictment, which made apply the law, which accepted the torturer, which fixed the number of carts of condemned, which returned account to the Comité of public hello.
It is him the public prosecutor with the lawsuits of Charlotte Corday, (July 17th 1793), of the queen Marie-Antoinette, (23-25 vendémiaire year II, 14 October 16th, 1793), of the Girondins, (3-9 brumaire year II, 24 October 30th, 1793), of Barnave (7-8 frimaire year II, 27- November 28th, 1793), of the Hébertistes, (1st-4 germinal year II, 21 March 24th 1794), of the Dantonistes (13-16 germinal year II, 2 April 5th, 1794).
It is still him, which after the Thermidor 9, proceeded to the recognition of identity of the put rebels outlaw Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon etc, before being sent their to the guillotine.
As of Thermidor 10 (July 28th 1794), the Committee of public hello dealt with the complete renewal of the court and Barère presented to Convention a list of judges and sworn. At the head of the list the name of Fouquier-Tinville appeared, with the mention public prosecutor. They are only three days later that Fréron was astonished to see the name of Fouquier-Tinville on the list and asked for a decree of arrest against him.
Its lawsuit
Its lawsuit was that of the revolutionary Tribunal. 8 germinal year III (March 28th 1795), Fouquier-Tinville and its twenty-three co-defendants (whose Marie Joseph Emmanuel Lanne) appeared before the revolutionary tribunal reorganized by the law of the 8 nivôse year III (December 28th, 1794). Six others were in escape. Judicis was the new public prosecutor.He showed it in particular, especially since law the 22 meadow year II (June 10th 1794), to have put in judgment a considerable number people who had never known each other, to include/understand them in the same bill of indictment, and to adapt the same offense to them; to have put in judgment and makes carry out certain people, without it having against them no bill of indictment there, to have made carry out certain people without it having against them neither judgment there nor judgment; that in consequence of precipitation, there was substitution of a person for another, that not condemned people were carried out in the place of condemned people; that judgments of a great number of people are always in white and do not comprise any device whereas these people all are carried out, etc
From the 9 germinal year III (March 29th 1795) with the 12 floréal (May 1st), 419 witnesses, including 223 with discharge, were heard. The 12 floréal, the Cambon substitute pronounced its indictment and during one day and half, Fouquier-Tinville presented its defense. It finished the 14 floréal in these terms: “ It is not me which should be translated here, but the chiefs of which I carried out the orders. I acted only under the terms of the laws carried by an invested Convention of all the capacities. By the absence of his members, I am the chief of a conspiracy which I never knew. Ridges here me is with calumny, with always avid people to find culprits. ” 15 and 16 floréal, the defenders of its co-defendants were expressed.
The 17 floréal (May 6th), the deliberation lasted two hours and to 5 a.m., it was read out judgment. Fouquier-Tinville and fifteen of its co-defendants, Foucault, Scellier, Garnier-Launay, Leroy, known as Ten-August, Renaudin, Vilate, Prior, Chatelet, Girard, Lanne, Hermann, Boyaval, Benoit, Verney and Dupaumier, were condemned to death, “were convinced operations and plots tending to support the liberticides projects of the enemies of the people and the Republic, to cause the dissolution of the national representation, and the inversion of the republican mode, and to excite the armament of the citizens the ones against the others, in particular while making perish in the disguised form of a judgment an innumerable crowd of French, any age and any sex; while imagining, for this purpose, of the projects of conspiracies in the various prisons of Paris; while drawing up, in these various houses of the lists of proscriptions, etc, and to have acted with bad intentions”. Mayor, Harny, Deliège, Naulin, Lohier, Delaporte, Trinchard, Duplay, Pike, Christian, Ganney, Tray, Guyard, Beausire and Valagnos, discharged, were freed the same day.
Brought back to the Caretaker's lodge, Fouquier-Tinville wrote these last lines: I do not have anything to reproach myself: I always conformed to the laws, I was never the creature of Robespierre nor of Saint-Just; on the contrary, I was about to be stopped four times. I die for my fatherland and without reproach. I am satisfied: later, my innocence will be recognized.
Its execution took place the next morning, Place of Strike. It was guillotine the last of the sixteen condemned to death.
See too
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