Everything about Louis Michel Le Peletier De Saint-fargeau totally explained
Louis Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau (sometimes rendered as
Louis Michel Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau;
May 29,
1760 –
January 20,
1793) was a
French politician.
Born in
Paris, he belonged to a well-known family, his great-grandfather,
Michel Robert Le Peletier des Forts, count of Saint-Fargeau, having been
Controller-General of Finances. After the death of his title holding family, Lepeletier gained a vast amount of wealth.
He entered into politics by becoming an avocat (French term for Lawyer) to the
Place du Chatelet, a prison. In 1785 Lepeletier was advanced to avocat-general. In 1789 he was elected to the
Parlement of Paris, and in that same year he became a deputy of the noblesse to the
States-General.
At this time, he shared the
conservative views of the majority of his class; but by slow degrees his ideas changed and became very advanced. On
July 13,
1789 he demanded the recall of
Necker, whose dismissal by the king had aroused great excitement in Paris; and in the
Constituent Assembly he'd moved the abolition of the
death penalty, of the
galleys and of
branding, and the substitution of
beheading for
hanging. This attitude won him great popularity, and on
June 21,
1790 he was made
president of the Constituent Assembly. He remained in this position until
July 5,
1790.
During the existence of the
Legislative Assembly, he was elected President of the General Council for the
Yonne départementin 1791. He was then elected by this
département to become a deputy to the
Convention. Here he was in favor of the trial of
Louis XVI by the assembly and was a deciding vote for the death of the king.
While in the Convention Lepeletier focused mainly on revolutionary reform for education, his idea was a
Spartan education. All the people, male and female, would be taught in state run schools. They would be taught revolutionary ideas instead of the normal; history, science, mathematics, language and religion. His educational plan was supported by
Robespierre and his ideas were borrowed in later schemes (notably by Jules Ferry).
Death and memory
JPG of Louis Michel Le Peletier, Marquis de Saint-Fargeau,:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/image:Louis-Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau p1400538.jpg
In mid January 1793 the Convention was faced with the decision of what to do with the king. A close vote of 361 to 360 deputies and the king was condemned to death by
guillotine. Lepeletier is rumored to be the deciding factor of this vote. Supposedly Lepeletier was originally for the survival of the king, but
Duc d’Orleans the king’s own cousin persuaded him to vote otherwise.
This rumor won him the hatred of the
Royalists and on
January 20,
1793, the eve of the execution of the king, he was assassinated in one of the
Palais Royal’s restaurants. His murderer, Philippe Nicolas Marie de Pâris, a member of the
Grade du Corps, allegedly plunged a saber that he'd hidden under his cloak into the chest of Lepeletier.
Edmond Bire wrote the following conversation in his paper,
Journal d’un Bourgeois.
“Paris approached Lepeletier, ‘You voted for the death of the king?’ ‘Yes, Monsieur, I voted according to my conscience. What matters you?’ But Paris drawing out his saber from beneath his cloak cried, “Wretch, then you'll vote no more!’ and he plunged his weapon into the body of Lepeletier. So little did the citizens who filled the dinning-room area resent the crime that not a murmur arose, and Paris was allowed to leave the restaurant unmolested.”
His assassin fled to
Normandy, where, on the point of being discovered, he supposedly shot himself in the head. Other sources states that this was a set up, the real murderer having fled to England where he died years later. The true reasons of the death of Le Peletier may remain a mystery (related to a plot involving Spain), but the repercutions of his death at the hands of the revolutionaries was minimal. He was quickly presented to the People of France as the FIRST martyr of the French Revolution, and stood as a symbol of liberty and commitment to the Revolution. Also in 1793 the martyr deaths of Marat,Chalier,and Robespierre in 1794.
The Convention honored Louis Michel Le Peletier 9 who wanted to be known as Louis Le Peletier, to distinguish himself from his father, Michel Robert Le Lepetier, with a magnificent funeral, with his body being displayed at
Place Vendôme directly under the statue of
King Louis XIV.
The painter
Jacques-Louis David represented his death in a famous painting
Lepeletier sur son let demert, which ironically destroyed by his daughter. David described his painting of Lepeletier’s face as being “Serene, that's because when one dies for one’s country, one has nothing with which to reproach oneself.” This statement gave the
National Convention a sense of confidence that they'd done right in executing the king.
Though missing, this painting (today known by a drawing made by a pupil of David) incarnates an extremely important and symbolic moment in French art history, because it's considered by scholars as the first completed official painting of the French Revolution, a rehearsal in a way of what
The Death of Marat (also by David) would later achieve. The missing painting has recently been interpretated as a revolutionary Saint Sebastian inspired by a roman model, showing the difficulty of erasing traditions in the process of producing new icons for the masses, achieving as well a complex regeneration of the self not only valid for Lepeletier, but for David himself, and making by this means a dream of so many revolutionairs come true : being more Roman than the antique Romans of the Republic, which was an idea Lepeletier pursued through his actions as a man of law.
Link to painting: http://repeinture.com
Le Peletier was buried in the
Panthéon in Paris in 1793. Other heroes of the French Revolution that were buried there were: Marat, Chalier, Robespierre, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Beaurepaire, His body was removed by his family on
February 14,
1795.
The station
Saint-Fargeau of the
Paris Métro is named after him.
He was elected to the Parliament of Paris, and a Deputy to the State General. In 1790 he was President of the Constituent Assembly. In 1791 he was President of the General Counsel for the Yonne department, then a Deputy to the Convention. A beautiful Sevres bust of Louis Michel Le Peletier is on display in the Chateau De Vizelle, Isere.(Image is on the French version of Wikipedia on Michel Louis Le Peletier. (p1400338.jpg )
Louis Michel Le Peletier who was France's last "Prevot des Marchands" (Provost of Merchants) between 1784-1789. Nine years later. postumously, on 30 Sept 1793 the French ship "Seduisant" one of two newly commissioned Ships of the line" of the French Navy, with 74 guns,over 56 meters in length and 1550 tons in weight, was renamed Peletier,in honor and memory of Louis Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, who had been assassinated Jan 20 1793, on the eve of the execution of King Louis xvi. For reasons unknown, but obviously due to his powerful enemies that succeeded in his assination, on 30 May 1795, the ship reverted back to her original name "Seduisant". 6 months later, on 16 December 1795,an unknown accident caused the Seduisant to sink, claiming 1150 crew and soldier lives, while they were leaving Brest for the Expidition D'lrlande.
Louis Michel Lepeleter, Marquis de Saint Fargeau, who had renounced his title, was an important political figure during the same French Revolutionary period as General Lafayette, who had renounced his Marquis title in 1790. The last projects Le Peletier, worked on in 1793, was his attempt to abolish the death penalty, in an attempt to diffuse the volatility of violence, and then with the assistance of Maximillian Robespiere, the passing of his Education Project, by the Commission of Six, where Primary Education was to be made available and to be paid out of public funding, largely from the rich. However 6 months after his death it was abolished.
J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles) has a beautiful painting of Suzanne Le Peletier, his daughter, by Jacques-Louis David, when she was 22yrs old. Suzanne became a national celebrity at the tender age age of eleven, after the assassination of her father, the first French revolutionary war hero, Louis Michel Le Peletier, the Marquis de Saint Fargeau. Suzanne was officially adopted by the French Nation and given the title "Daughter of the State."
Link to her painting by Jacques-Louis David,at the J.P.Getty museum.
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artobjectdetails?artobj=112575
Family
Le Peletier had a brother, Felix (1769-1837), well known for his advanced ideas. Another brother was
Amédée Louis Michel Lepeletier de Saint Fargeau (1770-1845),
entomologist. His daughter, Suzanne Louise, was the first "adopted child" of the French nation. She is the ancestor of the writer and academician Jean d'Ormesson.
Further Information
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