Prieur-Duvernois, Claude-Antoine

▪ French military engineer

byname  Prieur de la Côte-d'Or  

born December 2, 1763, Auxonne, France

died August 11, 1832, Dijon

      French military engineer who was a member of the Committee of Public Safety (Public Safety, Committee of), which ruled Revolutionary France during the period of the Jacobin dictatorship (Jacobin Club) (1793–94). He organized the manufacture and requisitioning of the weapons and munitions that were needed by the French for war with the European powers (French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars).

      When the Revolution broke out in 1789, Prieur was a lieutenant of engineers in the army. He became a captain in April 1791 and was elected to the Revolutionary Legislative Assembly (October 1791–September 1792) and its successor, the National Convention. While on a mission for the National Convention to Caen, he was arrested by counterrevolutionaries on June 9, 1793, and imprisoned for nearly two months.

      On August 14, 1793, Prieur and his friend Lazare Carnot (Carnot, Lazare) (also a military engineer) were elected to the Committee of Public Safety. While Carnot took charge of military operations, Prieur assumed control of all matters relating to armament. He sought the advice of a number of France's finest scientists and engineers and directed the nationalization of war industries. Prieur thereby played an important role in the extensive economic planning that was carried out by the Jacobin regime. He remained a conservative republican, however, viewing economic controls as a temporary expedient and opposing social welfare measures favoured by the Parisian lower classes.

      Although he supported Carnot in his conflict with Louis de Saint-Just and Maximilien de Robespierre (the committee's leading members) over the conduct of the war, Prieur had no part in the conspiracy that brought about Robespierre's downfall on 9 Thermidor, year II (July 27, 1794). During the continuing Thermidorian Reaction against the Jacobin regime, he resigned from the Committee of Public Safety (October 1794).

      Prieur was largely responsible for the government's adoption of a uniform standard of weights and measures in March 1795. He set up a wallpaper factory in Paris, and in 1811 Napoleon's government granted him a pension.

* * *