Pétion de Villeneuve, Jérôme

▪ French politician

born January 3, 1756, Chartres, France

died 1794, near Saint-Émilion

      politician of the French Revolution who was at first a close associate, and later a bitter enemy, of the Jacobin leader Maximilien de Robespierre (Robespierre, Maximilien de).

      The son of a lawyer of Chartres, Pétion practiced as an advocate before accepting a seat with the bourgeois Third Estate at the Estates-General of 1789. When the Third Estate obtained control of the Estates-General (becoming the National Assembly) and set about abolishing France's feudal institutions, Pétion and Robespierre (Robespierre, Maximilien de) led the small minority of deputies who pressed for enfranchisement of the lower classes and other far-reaching democratic reforms. The National Assembly dissolved itself on September 30, 1791, and in November Pétion was elected mayor of Paris. Without breaking with Robespierre, he formed ties with the Girondins (Girondin), the moderate bourgeois democrats who opposed Robespierre in the newly formed Legislative Assembly.

      When the revolutionaries organized a popular demonstration against King Louis XVI in Paris on June 20, 1792, Pétion made only halfhearted efforts to preserve order. Louis retaliated by suspending him from office on July 12, but the Legislative Assembly reinstated the mayor on August 3. Nevertheless, during the Paris insurrection that overthrew the monarchy on August 10, Pétion avoided committing himself to the radical cause.

      In September 1792, Pétion was elected the first president of the National Convention, which succeeded the Legislative Assembly. Jealous of Robespierre's preeminence among the Montagnards (as the Jacobins of the Convention were called), Pétion joined the Girondins, and on June 2, 1793, he and 28 other Girondin leaders were expelled from the Convention in a Montagnard coup d'état. Escaping arrest, Pétion made his way to the vicinity of Saint-Émilion, where he and another prominent Girondin, François Buzot, committed suicide. Their bodies were discovered on June 18, 1794.

* * *