Georges Couthon

Georges August Couthon

Georges Auguste Couthon (Saint-Sauves-d'Auvergne, Puy-de-Dôme, 22 December 1755 - Paris, 28 July 1794) was a French politician and lawyer of the Revolutionary period.

Biography

Deputy

He travelled to Paris in order to fulfill his duty as a deputy to the Legislative Assembly, and immediately joined the Jacobin Club of Paris. He chose to sit on the Left at the first meeting of the Assembly, but soon decided against associating himself with such radicals as he feared they were "shocking the majority."^[1] He was a very proficient speaker, and there is evidence that he exploited his infirmity--he was paralyzed in his lower body, and so confined to a wheelchair--in order to gain the ear of the Assembly on certain issues.

In September 1792 Couthon was elected to the National Convention, and during a visit to Flanders, where he was treating his health, he met and befriended Charles François Dumouriez. At the trial of the king he voted for the death sentence without appeal. He hesitated for a time as to which party he should join, but finally decided for The Mountain and the inner group formed around Maximilien Robespierre - with whom he shared many opinions, especially on religious issues such as revolutionary dechristianization (to which he was opposed- see Cult of the Supreme Being). He was the first to demand the arrest of the proscribed Girondists.

Lyons

On 30 May 1793 he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety, and in August was sent as one of the commissioners of the Convention attached to the French Revolutionary Army before the anti-revolutionary Lyons. Wishing to accelerate the progress of the besieging force, he decreed a levée en masse in the département of Puy-de-Dôme, gathered an army of 60,000 men, and commanded them himself on the way to Lyon.

When the city was taken, on 9 October 1793, although the Convention demanded its complete destruction, Couthon did not carry out the decree to its full extent. He ordered only a dozen or so of the richest houses be destroyed, and showed moderation in the punishment of the rebels, generally only executing the leaders. The Republican atrocities began after Couthon was replaced, on 3 November 1793, by Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois.

Leadership of the Convention and Thermidor

Couthon returned to Paris, and on 21 December was elected president of the Convention. He contributed to the prosecution of the Hébertists, and was responsible for the Law of 22 Prairial, which in the case of trials before the Revolutionary Tribunal deprived the accused of the aid of counsel or of witnesses for their defence, on the pretext of shortening the proceedings.

During the crisis preceding the Thermidorian Reaction, Couthon showed considerable courage, giving up a journey to Auvergne in order, as he wrote, that he might either die or triumph with Robespierre and liberty. Robespierre had disappeared from the political arena for an entire month because of a supposed nervous breakdown, and therefore did not realize the situation in the Convention had changed. His last speech seemed to indicate that another purge of the Convention was necessary, though he refused to name names. In a panic of self-preservation, the Convention called for the arrest of Robespierre and his affiliates, including Couthon, Saint-Just and his own brother, Augustin Robespierre.^[2] Couthon was guillotined on 10 Thermidor alongside Robespierre, although it took the executioner fifteen minutes (amidst Couthon's screams of pain) to arrange him on the board correctly due to his paralysis.^[3]

Legacy

Because of his paralysis, Couthon was not able to go on many missions for the Revolution, as much as he would have enjoyed bringing Revolutionary justice down upon the heads of the counter-revolutionary rebels. He was therefore almost always in Paris, becoming an anchor for the Committee of Public Safety along with Robespierre and Saint-Just. Although the extraordinary measures taken by the Committee of Public Safety seem radical and at some times excessive, they do not in fact seem so when viewed through the eyes of revolutionaries themselves. Through Couthon's almost constant correspondence, one is able to understand that to these men, the actions taken were necessary for the survival of the Revolution. It was seen that the Revolution was hanging on a delicate thread constantly being frayed by external forces (mainly invasion and war with Austria and Prussia) as well as internal threats (Federalist and Vendéean Rebellions). The persistent and relentless rumours of conspiracies, so popular during this time, did not help matters.

The executions of alleged counter-revolutionaries was certainly nothing new, and seemed absolutely necessary at the time of these crises. Execution by guillotine was, in fact, viewed as humane (when compared to the methods employed by the French monarchy) and was seen as rendering every man equal in death. However, time passed and the internal and external threats were eventually suppressed. Yet more and more possibly innocent people charged on flimsy evidence were being executed, and many began to see this radical government as unnecessary and in fact tyrannous. In the end, the "National Razor" (as the guillotine was so aptly called) ended up eradicating the very ones who had put it to such frequent use.

Unfortunately, the Terror did not stop with the execution of Robespierre and his triumverate of Couthon and Saint-Just. France, still in disarray and confusion, continued the executions and even went into a stage of reaction against the virtue held so dear to the heart of Robespierre and revolutionaries. What was once scorned (silk stockings and short pants called cullotes) was now being paraded by prisoners set free from the prisons of Paris. It was in these times that a prominent general would come to the fore and create one the mightiest armies Europe had seen at that time: Napoleon Bonaparte.

References

1. ^ Bruun, Geoffrey. “The Evolution of a Terrorist: Georges Auguste Couthon.” Journal of Modern History 2, no. 3 (1930), http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00222801%28193009%292%3A3 %3C410%3ATEOATG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-9.
2. ^ Jones, Colin. The Longman Companion to the French Revolution. London: Longman Publishing Group, 1990.
3. ^ Lenotre, G. Romances of the French Revolution. Translated by George Frederic William Lees. New York: William Heinemann: 1909.

• The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, in turn, gives the following references:
  • Francisque Mége, Correspondance de Couthon … suivie de l'Aristocrate converti, comédie en deux actes de Couthon, Paris: 1872.
  • Nouveaux Documents sur Georges Couthon, Clermont-Ferrand: 1890.
  • F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Legislative et de la Convention, (Paris, 1885-1886), ii. 425-443.
• R.R. Palmer, 12 Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution , Princeton U. Press, 1970(reprint)
• Bruun, Geoffrey. “The Evolution of a Terrorist: Georges Auguste Couthon.” Journal of Modern History 2, no. 3 (1930), http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00222801%28193009%292%3A3 %3C410%3ATEOATG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-9.
• Doyle, William. “The Republican Revolution October 1791-January 1793.” In The Oxford History of the French Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Furet, François, and Mona Ozouf. “Committee of Public Safety.” In A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1989.
• Jones, Colin. The Longman Companion to the French Revolution. London: Longman Publishing Group, 1990.
• Kennedy, Michael L. The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution 1793-1795. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000.
• Kennedy, Michael L. The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution: The Middle Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
• Lenotre, G. Romances of the French Revolution. Translated by George Frederic William Lees. New York: William Heinemann: 1909.
• Schama, Simon. Citizens. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
• Scott, Walter. The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Walter Scott. London: Whittaker and Co., 1835. http://books.google.com/books?id=aasCAAAAYAAJ&printsec=titlepage#PPA 195.M1.
• The French Revolution. London: The Religious Tract Society, 1799.

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