Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne participant of French Revolution
Thermidor and exile
As 1794 progressed, Robespierre began to speak out against over zealous factions: he believed both pro-Terror and indulgent positions were dangerous to the well-being of the Revolution. Robespierre saw danger in members of the Revolution, like Billaud-Varenne, Collot d'Herbois, and Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier who had been too committed to attacks on Church property or had been too vigorous in their pursuit of revolutionary justice (such as Collot at Lyon). The dechristianization program was seen as divisive and unnecessary by some in the convention. Furthermore, the law of 22 Prairial had isolated the police wing of the convention: the Committee of General Security, a body that was extremely anti-clerical, had seen their power severely diminished by the law. The law of 22 Prairial reduced the right of defense to simply an appearance before court, while greatly expanding the list of crimes punishable by death. This is what led directly to the Great Terror, in which more were killed by the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris in those seven weeks than in the preceding fourteen months. Though Billaud-Varenne publicly defended it in the convention, this law was a driving factor in the eventual reprisal against the committee. Serious arguments began to fracture the committee, with Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois pitted against Robespierre and Saint-Just. On 26 June, they argued over the imposition of a new prosecutor to the Revolutionary Tribunal. On 29 June, an argument once again broke out between members of the Committee of Public Safety. Though it could have been about the Catherine Théot affair or the law of 22 Prairial, it led to Billaud-Varenne branding Robespierre a dictator and the latter storming out of the Committee headquarters and ceasing to attend meetings. With tensions being heightened and more guillotined every day – the rate of executions per day in Paris rose from five a day in Germinal to twenty-six a day in Messidor – Billaud-Varenne and Collot d'Herbois began to fear for their safety.Throughout the early days of Thermidor, Bertrand Barère attempted to forge compromise between the splintering Committee. However, Robespierre was still convinced that the Convention needed further purging, and on 8 Thermidor he rose before that body to give a speech that would spark the Thermidorian Reaction. Speaking of "monsters" that threatened the Republic with conspiracy, his speech was pointed enough to serve as a warning while being vague enough to worry many in the body. When he was asked for the names of those in the conspiracy, Robespierre declined to provide them, and he was charged with indicting members of the Convention en masse without a hearing.That night, Robespierre retreated to the Jacobin Club, where he gave the same speech to rousing applause. Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne, as members who the speech may have been aimed at, attempted to defend themselves but were shouted down and expelled from the club as cries for "la guillotine," rained down upon them. They returned to the Committee of Public Safety where they found Saint-Just, the protege of Robespierre, working on a speech he intended to deliver the next day. As one of the chief messengers of the terror, Collot and Billaud-Varenne both assumed that Saint-Just was writing their denunciation. At this moment the last argument of the Committee erupted, with Collot, Billaud-Varenne, and Barère attacking Saint-Just for "dividing the nation." After sometime, they departed the committee and organized the last elements of the Thermidorian Reaction.The next day, 9 Thermidor, Billaud-Varenne would play a critical role in the final stroke against Robespierre and his allies. As Saint-Just delivered his speech, he was interrupted near the beginning by another conspirator, Jean-Lambert Tallien. Billaud-Varenne was next to speak, with Collot d'Herbois controlling the debates from the President's Chair, and in an eloquent planned denunciation directly accused Robespierre of a conspiracy against the Republic. This speech and others were warmly received, and after continued debate arrest warrants were issued for Robespierre, Saint-Just, and their allies. After a brief armed standoff, the conspirators would carry the day, and Robespierre and his allies would be executed the next day.However, after 9 Thermidor, Billaud-Varenne was soon enough to find himself in prison. Too closely associated with the excesses of the Reign of Terror, he was shortly attacked himself in the convention for his ruthlessness, and a commission was appointed to examine his conduct and that of some other members of the former Committee of Public Safety. Billaud-Varenne was arrested, and as a result of the Jacobin-led insurrection of 12 Germinal of the Year III (1 April 1795), the Convention decreed his immediate deportation to French Guiana, along with Collot d'Herbois and Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac, where he picked up farming and married a black ex-slave girl. After Napoleon Bonaparte's 18 Brumaire coup, he refused the pardon offered by the French Consulate. In 1816 he left Guiana, went to New York City for a few months, and finally moved to Port-au-Prince (Haiti), where he became advisor and counsellor to the high court.President of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion granted him a pension which he received until his death. Regarding the colonization of Haiti by the Kingdom of France and the attempts of Louis XVIII to regain control of the island by diplomatic means, he announced to Pétion :
The biggest fault you committed, in the course of the revolution of this country, is not having sacrificed all the settlers, down to the last one. In France we made the same mistake, by not causing the last of the Bourbons to perish.
He died in Port-au-Prince in 1819. Among his last words, he declared: "My bones, at least, will rest on a land that wants Liberty; but I hear the voice of posterity accusing me of having spared the blood of the tyrants of Europe too much."