Jacques Roux

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Jacques Roux (21 August 1752 – 10 February 1794) was the radical leader of the Enragés faction during the French Revolution.

Career

He was one of the first priests to accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. His radicalism and his surname caused him to be called "the Red Priest". His demands on price and tax reglementation increased his popular support and political influence. He became a member of the 1792 Paris Commune (French Revolution) and took a major role in the 1793 Paris uprising which removed the Girondist government. Before Louis XVI was sent to be guillotined, he asked Roux to pass a parcel with some personal belongings to his wife, to which Roux replied 'I am not here to run errands, I am here to send you to the scaffold. '

He spoke out in the National Convention against "commercial aristocracy", considering it to be worse than the nobility or clergy. The most complete expression of his program was probably in his Address to the National Convention (also known as the Manifesto Enragés) on 25 June 1793:

Freedom is only a vain phantom when a class of men can starve another with impunity. Equality is a phantom, when the rich, by the monopoly, exercise the right of life and death over his fellow man. The Republic is a vain phantom when the counter revolution operates every day through prices which three-quarters of citizens can achieve only with tears.

Arrest

Deserted by former associates during the Reign of Terror, he was arrested under the Law of Suspects in September 1793. Roux was condemned to death at the Revolutionary Tribunal but before his execution stabbed himself and was carried away to Bicêtre Hospital where he died.^[1] Many^[who?]believe Roux's suicide to be an odd decision on his part. His death came at the height of the terror so he would have most probably been considered a martyr of the revolution had he died defiant in his ideology but instead has largely been forgotten.

Quotes

The despotism which spreads under the government of the many, the Senate despotism is as terrible as the scepter of kings, since it tends to move the people, without doubt, since it is degraded, and subjugated by the laws, it is supposed to dictate itself

The laws have been cruel to the poor, because they have been made by the rich and for the rich.

References

1. ^ "Jacques Roux". Encyclopedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/511024/Jacques-Roux. Retrieved 6 May 2009. 

External links

• Jacques Roux Archive at Marxists.org

This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the French Wikipedia.

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