page_title: Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
section_title: Constitution of 1793
hierarchical_section_title: Louis Antoine de Saint-Just / Constitution of 1793
caption_attribution_description: The Entrance of the Committee of Public Safety in 1793
context_page_description: Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just was a Jacobin leader during the French Revolution. He was a close friend of Maximilien Robespierre and served as his most trusted ally during the period of Jacobin rule in the French First Republic. Saint-Just worked as a legislator and a military commissar, but he achieved a lasting reputation as the face of the Reign of Terror. He publicly delivered the condemnatory reports that emanated from Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety and defended the use of violence against opponents of the government. He supervised the arrests of some of the most famous figures of the Revolution and saw many of them off to the guillotine. For his unyielding severity, later writers dubbed him the "Angel of Death".
  From its beginning in 1789, the Revolution enthralled the young Saint-Just, who strove to take a leading role. Early on, he became a commander in his local National Guard unit. Shortly after reaching the minimum legal age of 25 in August 1792, he won election as a deputy to the National Convention in Paris.
context_section_description: Because the first French Constitution had included a role for the king, it was long since invalid and needed to be updated for the Republic. Many drafts had circulated within the Convention since Louis XVI's execution, and Saint-Just submitted his own lengthy proposal on 24 April 1793. His draft incorporated the most common assertions of the others: the right to vote, the right to petition, and equal eligibility for employment were among the basic principles that made his draft tenable. He stood out from the pack, however, on the issue of elections: Saint-Just argued against all complex voting systems, and supported only the classical style of a simple majority of citizens in a nationwide vote. Amid a flurry of proposals by other deputies, Saint-Just held inflexibly to his "one man one vote" plan, and this conspicuous homage to Greco-Roman traditions (which were particularly prized and idealized in French culture during the Revolution) enhanced his political cachet. When no plan gained enough votes to pass, a compromise was made which tasked a small body of deputies as official constitutional draftsmen. Saint-Just was among the five elected members. In recognition of the importance of their mission, the draftsmen were all added to the powerful new Committee of Public Safety.
  The Convention had given the Committee extraordinary authority to provide for state security since the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War in early 1793. Committee members were originally intended to serve for periods of only thirty days before replacements were elected, so they needed to work quickly. Saint-Just took charge of the issue and led the development of the French Constitution of 1793. Before the end of his first term the new document was completed, submitted to the Convention, and ratified as law on 24 June 1793.
  The new constitution remained a showpiece for Saint-Just but little more. Even if he wanted to see it implemented, emergency measures for wartime were in effect, and those measures called for (or provided cover for) a moratorium on constitutional democracy. Wartime gave supreme power to the sitting Convention, with the Committee of Public Safety at the top of its administrative pyramid. Robespierre, with Saint-Just's assistance, fought vigorously to ensure that the government would remain under emergency measures—"revolutionary"—until victory.
caption: Entrance to the Committee of Public Safety. Saint-Just became a member of the Committee on 30 May 1793.[50]
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