Provincial Patriot of the French Revolution

François Buzot, 1760–1794

Bette W. Oliver

This biography of François Buzot, a Girondin leader in both the Constituent Assembly (1789-91) and the National Convention (1792-93), illustrates how his early life in Evreux and his training as a lawyer influenced his ideas and actions during the French Revolution, when he championed individual rights and the rule of law in a republic. A provincial leader who distrusted the increasingly centralized government in Paris, Buzot worked tirelessly to defend departmental interests, which led his Jacobin opponents to accuse him of federalism.
Buzot became an active participant in the factional disputes dividing the national assembly in 1792-93, which led to frequent attacks against him and his cohorts by the radical press and demands for their impeachment. Consequently, Buzot and twenty-nine other Girondin deputies were expelled from the assembly in June 1793 and placed under house arrest. While Buzot and some of his friends escaped and fled to Caen, those Girondins who had remained in Paris were executed that October. After their attempt to form a large departmental force to march against the government in Paris had failed, Buzot and his friends fled to St. Emilion, where they survived as fugitives, often hiding in abandoned stone quarries, until June 1794.
Buzot’s memoirs, written when he was on the run in 1793-94, provide an unusual contemporary account of the difficult and dangerous period known as the Terror. In addition, letters to and from his friends, notably Madame Roland, with whom he shared a romantic relationship, offer a more personal view of Buzot than can be found in most texts.
Although Buzot was honored as a local hero by the citizens of Evreux in 1789, by the summer of 1793 the authorities had declared him a traitor and ordered his home demolished, and its furnishings sold at auction. Honored again during the centennial celebration of the French Revolution, by 1989 he had almost been forgotten. This first biographical treatment in English of François Buzot, a “bourgeois gentilhomme,” provides a new dimension to the story of an important revolutionary leader.

Lexington Books

Pages: 182 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-0-7391-9690-8 • Hardback • March 2015 • $102.00 • (£78.00)

978-0-7391-9691-5 • eBook • March 2015 • $96.50 • (£74.00)

Subjects: History / Europe / France, History / Modern / 18th Century, History / Revolutionary

Provincial Patriot of the French Revolution

François Buzot, 1760–1794

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This biography of François Buzot, a Girondin leader in both the Constituent Assembly (1789-91) and the National Convention (1792-93), illustrates how his early life in Evreux and his training as a lawyer influenced his ideas and actions during the French Revolution, when he championed individual rights and the rule of law in a republic. A provincial leader who distrusted the increasingly centralized government in Paris, Buzot worked tirelessly to defend departmental interests, which led his Jacobin opponents to accuse him of federalism.
Buzot became an active participant in the factional disputes dividing the national assembly in 1792-93, which led to frequent attacks against him and his cohorts by the radical press and demands for their impeachment. Consequently, Buzot and twenty-nine other Girondin deputies were expelled from the assembly in June 1793 and placed under house arrest. While Buzot and some of his friends escaped and fled to Caen, those Girondins who had remained in Paris were executed that October. After their attempt to form a large departmental force to march against the government in Paris had failed, Buzot and his friends fled to St. Emilion, where they survived as fugitives, often hiding in abandoned stone quarries, until June 1794.
Buzot’s memoirs, written when he was on the run in 1793-94, provide an unusual contemporary account of the difficult and dangerous period known as the Terror. In addition, letters to and from his friends, notably Madame Roland, with whom he shared a romantic relationship, offer a more personal view of Buzot than can be found in most texts.
Although Buzot was honored as a local hero by the citizens of Evreux in 1789, by the summer of 1793 the authorities had declared him a traitor and ordered his home demolished, and its furnishings sold at auction. Honored again during the centennial celebration of the French Revolution, by 1989 he had almost been forgotten. This first biographical treatment in English of François Buzot, a “bourgeois gentilhomme,” provides a new dimension to the story of an important revolutionary leader.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 182 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-0-7391-9690-8 • Hardback • March 2015 • $102.00 • (£78.00)

978-0-7391-9691-5 • eBook • March 2015 • $96.50 • (£74.00)

Subjects: History / Europe / France, History / Modern / 18th Century, History / Revolutionary

Author

Bette W. Oliver is an independent scholar. She earned a PhD in modern European history from the University of Texas at Austin.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Un Promeneur Solitaire
Chapter 2: On The National Stage
Chapter 3: The Decisive Year, 1791
Chapter 4: Return to Évreux
Chapter 5: The Birth of The Republic
Chapter 6: The Storm Breaks
Chapter 7: From Caen to St. Emilion
Chapter 8: The Last Days

Reviews

Oliver chronicles the major events of the French Revolution, into which she inserts the life and political career of Normand lawyer Buzot. As her narrative progresses, the emphasis is placed increasingly on Buzot himself. She provides an excellent perspective to show that what occurred in France between 1789 and 1794 took many unexpected and dramatic turns and that the lives of 'ordinary' people like Buzot were violently impacted in unforeseeable ways.
— French Review

Until now Buzot has never been the subject of a biography in English. In this thoughtful, scholarly, and sensitive study, Bette Oliver throws new light on Buzot’s life, the dilemmas he faced, and the choices he made. She traces the revolutionary context with a sure hand, giving an evocative sense of what it was like for leaders like Buzot to inhabit the maelstrom of revolutionary politics. Oliver makes extensive use of the unedited version of Buzot’s memoirs which he wrote in the final months of his life. Through the memoirs we hear his authentic voice as he struggled to make sense of his dramatic reversal of fortune, and to vindicate the integrity of the Girondins’ intentions to posterity.

— Marisa Linton, Kingston University

In this volume Bette Oliver explores in detail the life of François Buzot, one of the Girondin deputies in the French Revolution whose final days she chronicled in her earlier book, Orphans on the Earth. Oliver describes Buzot as an "unwilling martyr," in contrast to figures such as Robespierre and Manon Roland who anticipated their fate on the guillotine. Drawing on memoirs, letters, and other published sources, Oliver describes Buzot's childhood and family, his early experiences in the Revolution in Normandy, and the path that took him to national prominence in both the Constituent Assembly and the National Convention, where he emerged as a fierce opponent of Robespierre and the Jacobins, and developed a distinctly negative attitude toward the city of Paris. Oliver also examines Buzot's love affair with Manon Roland, which remained a secret for nearly one hundred years after the French Revolution. This is a most engaging portrait of a man who was both an idealist and a romantic.
— Paul Hanson, Butler University

Provincial Patriot of the French Revolution

François Buzot, 1760–1794

Bette W. Oliver

Provincial Patriot of the French Revolution

François Buzot, 1760–1794

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