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Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville

Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃twan kɑ̃tɛ̃ fukje tɛ̃vil], 10 June 1746 – 7 May 1795), also called Fouquier-Tinville and nicknamed posthumously the Provider of the Guillotine[1] was a French lawyer and accusateur public of the Revolutionary Tribunal during the French Revolution and Reign of Terror.

Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville
Antoine Fouquier Tinville during the Reign of Terror
Born10 June 1746
Herouël, Aisne
Died7 May 1795(1795-05-07) (aged 48)
Paris, France
Cause of death
Guillotine
OccupationLawyer
Signature

From March 1793 he served as the "public prosecutor" in Paris, demanding the execution of numerous accused individuals, including famous ones, like Marie-Antoinette, Danton or Robespierre and overseeing the sentencing of over two thousand of them to the guillotine.[2] In April 1794, it was decreed to centralise the investigation of court records and to bring all the political suspects in France to the Revolutionary Tribunal to Paris. Following the events of the 10th Thermidor, he was arrested early August.[2]

He was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal as one of the major figures responsible for the excesses and injustices that marked the period of the Reign of Terror. During his trial, he defended himself by stating, "It is not I who ought to be facing the tribunal, but the chiefs whose orders I have executed. I had only acted in the spirit of the laws passed by a Convention invested with all powers." Generally, his defense involved shifting the blame for the executions onto the Committee of Public Safety, especially on Maximilien de Robespierre.

Despite this defense, he was sentenced to death, alongside the judges and some jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal, among other charges, for abusing his authority and neglecting proper legal procedures during trials.[2] He was guillotined in Paris on 7 May 1795, and became the last individual to be executed by the Revolutionary Tribunal before its abolition.[2]

His precise role in the Reign of Terror is still a subject of debate; modern historians suggest that it is more valuable to view his role as part of a group of officials and various terrorist actors rather than solely as the sole instigator of the Judicial Terror.[3]

Biography

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Origins

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The Fouquier de Tinville family, now known as Fouquier d'Hérouel, descends from an old bourgeois family from the vicinity of Saint-Quentin, in the present-day department of Aisne. In the 18th century, Éloy Fouquier de Tinville, lord of Tinville, Hérouel, Auroir, and Foreste, was a farmer and a royal officer in Péronne.[4]

Early career

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Hérouel

Antoine Fouquier de Tinville was born in Hérouel on 10 June 1746, and was baptized two days later (which often leads to confusion regarding his birthdate).[5] He was the second of five siblings. His father, Éloy Fouquier de Tinville,[5] a farmer and lord of Hérouel, gave him the name of the land of Tinville, while the name Hérouel went to his older brother, Pierre-Éloy.[5] The two younger brothers received the names Foreste and Vauvillé. His mother, Marie-Louise Martine,[5] came from a prosperous family. For six years he studied law in Noyon and in 1774 purchased a position as prosecutor or procureur attached to the Châtelet in Paris, which was an exceptional royal jurisdiction tasked with targeting, among other things, revolutionaries.[6][7] He sold his office in 1781 to pay off his debts and became a clerk under the lieutenant-general of police.[7] In 1775 Fouquier-Tinville married Geneviève-Dorothée Saugnier, his cousin, with whom he would have five children (two twins). He was widowed seven years later. Four months after his wife's death, he remarried Henriette Jeanne Gérard d'Arcourt, with whom he would spend the rest of his life. They had three children together.[8]

In early 1791 freedom of defence became the standard; any citizen was allowed to defend another.[9][10] From the beginning, the authorities were concerned about this experiment's future. Derasse suggests it was a "collective suicide" by the lawyers in the Assembly.[11] In criminal cases, the expansion of the right gave priority to the spoken word.[12]

Little is known of the part he played at the outbreak of the Revolution. According to himself, he was part of the National Guard at its formation.[13] He was active in the political committee of his section in 1789. In September 1791 former "advocates" lost their title, their distinctive form of dress, their status, and their profession orders and adapted their practices to the new political and legal situation.[12] Also Fouquier called himself "homme de loi". In Summer 1792, he supported the sans-culottes movement. On 25 August, backed by his cousin Camille Desmoulins, and after Robespierre refused the position, Fouquier de Tinville became for three months the foreman of a jury established to pass verdicts on the crimes of enemies of the people arrested after the Insurrection of 10 August 1792.[7]

Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, engraving by François Bonneville, Paris, BnF (National Library of France), Department of Prints and Photography, 1796.

After Robespierre refused, Fouquier-Tinville was appointed as president. The Paris commune made the decision to permanently install the guillotine.[14]

Public accuser

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Act of death sentence signed by Fouquier Tinville, public accuser to the committee of public safety in the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Conciergerie in 1790; the medieval towers still exist.
Procès de Marie-Antoinette le 15 octobre 1793

When the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was created by the National Convention on 10 March 1793, and Fauré refused, Fouquier was appointed on 15 March as public accuser, an office that he filled from the end of the month until 1 August 1794.[7] According to all the testimonies, including those of his critics, Fouquier-Tinville is said to have been a very hardworking and conscientious man.[15] The documents were sent by the Committee of General Security to the public accuser, who examined them, summarized the facts, grouped the grievances, quoted the incriminating words or writings, and mentioned the denials of the accused. In a word, he drew up his indictment.[16] Fouquier was known for his radicalism.[7] His zeal in prosecution earned him the nickname Purveyor to the Guillotine.[17] On 29 July he accused Jacques-Bernard-Marie Montané, president of the tribunal, of being insufficiently radical. On 17 September the Law of Suspects was introduced. On 26 September 1793 Martial Herman was appointed as president and René-François Dumas as vice president; Coffinhal and Joachim Vilate were each appointed as one of the judges and jurors, Adrien Nicolas Gobeau as substitute of the public accuser

Fouquier lived at Rue Saint-Honoré but moved to Place Dauphine and then to fr:Quai de l'Horloge both on Île de la Cité. An apartment between the towers of the Conciergerie was the home of Fouquier-Tinville.[18][19] He lived there with his wife and twins while conducting the trials in the courtroom. His activity in the Conciergerie and the Palace of Justice earned him the reputation of one of the most sinister figures of the Revolution.[20] His office as public accuser arguably reflected a need to display the appearance of legality during what was essentially political command, more than a need to establish actual guilt.

On 29 October 1793, Fouquier-Tinville sent a letter to the National Convention, which was later used during his trial. In the letter, he wrote:[21]

We are arrested by the formalities prescribed by the law. [...] Moreover, one wonders, why witnesses? The Convention, all of France, accuse those whose trial is being conducted; the evidence of their crimes is evident; everyone in their hearts is convinced that they are guilty; the tribunal can do nothing on its own, it is obliged to follow the law; it is up to the Convention to remove all the formalities that hinder its progress.

Early April 1794 Fouquier-Tinville asked the tribunal to order the Indulgents who "confused the hearing" and insulted "National Justice" to the guillotine. Claiming the Dantonists were not serving the people and were "false patriots", who had preferred personal and foreign interests to the welfare of the nation.[22] He did not align with any specific political movement, keeping his distance from factions such as the Jacobins, and he did not maintain any particular relationships with leaders from the Montagnards, such as Maximilien Robespierre, as reported by Antoine Boulant.[21]

On 21 May 1794 the government decided that the Terror would be centralised, with almost all the tribunals in the provinces closed and all the trials held in Paris.[23]

On 10 June 1794, Georges Couthon introduced the Law of 22 Prairial, which radically simplified proceedings before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Defendants were deprived of legal counsel, witnesses could be dispensed with, and juries were instructed to decide cases on the basis of their moral conviction rather than formal rules of evidence.[24][25] According to one deputy, if the law were adopted, "all we have to do is blow our brains out". Fouquier-Tinville expressed concern about the practical consequences of the legislation and wrote to Robespierre, but received no reply.

The law marked the beginning of the Grande Terreur. The Tribunal increasingly functioned as an instrument of repression, with acquittal and death becoming the only possible verdicts.[26] The courtroom was enlarged to accommodate a growing number of defendants, and plans were even considered to place a guillotine inside the Palais de Justice, although executions continued elsewhere in Paris.[27]

At the beginning of Thermidor Year II, Parisian prisons held more than 8,000 suspects.[28] The number of death sentences rose sharply, and more than 2,400 people were condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal during the final months of the Terror.[29] Within three days, 156 prisoners were guillotined, including the members of the Parlement of Toulouse.[30][31] The scale of the executions created serious problems for the city's cemeteries, leading to the excavation of new mass graves at Picpus Cemetery in July 1794.[32]

Among the last groups prosecuted by Fouquier-Tinville were eight religious women, including seven former Carmelite nuns living in Paris. The indictment accused them of maintaining a centre of religious fanaticism and sheltering refractory priests and counter-revolutionaries. Fouquier-Tinville portrayed them as enemies of the Republic who sought to undermine the principles of liberty and equality.

Downfall

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Fouquier Tinville par Vivant Denon

On 26–27 June, Robespierre demanded that Fouquier-Tinville, who had become involved in the trial of Catherine Théot, be replaced because he was considered too closely associated with the Committee of General Security.[33]

During the events of 9 Thermidor, Fouquier-Tinville remained at his post. When the presiding judge Dumas was arrested during a session of the Revolutionary Tribunal by decree of the Convention, Fouquier-Tinville insisted that "justice take its course" and ordered the proceedings to continue.[34] That evening, while dining with Coffinhal, he learned of the arrest of Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just and their associates. Invited to join the insurgents at the Hôtel de Ville, he refused, declaring that he recognised only the authority of the Convention. During the night he reported to the Committee of Public Safety and, after learning of the defeat of the Commune, congratulated the Convention on its victory.[35]

On the morning of 10 Thermidor (28 July 1794), Fouquier-Tinville appeared before the Convention to assure it of the Tribunal's loyalty. He pointed out a legal difficulty concerning the verification of the identities of the prisoners, since thirteen of those declared hors la loi were members of the insurrectionary Commune.[36] After the Convention resolved the issue, Fouquier-Tinville supervised the formal identification of Robespierre and the other outlawed insurgents. Since they had already been declared hors la loi, no trial was required, and they were sent directly to the guillotine under the provisions of the law of 22 Prairial.[37]

Although Fouquier-Tinville was initially retained as public prosecutor by the new government, as confirmed by Barère before the Convention, his position soon became untenable.[38] On 14 Thermidor, Fréron denounced him as an accomplice of the Terror and demanded his arrest [39]. Imprisoned on 1 August 1794, he argued that he had merely executed the laws and decrees enacted by the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. On 21 Thermidor, Year II (8 August 1794), he was allowed to present his defence before the National Convention. His arguments failed to persuade the deputies, who decided that he, together with several judges and jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal, should stand trial for his role during the Terror.

Trial

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Fouquier-Thinville trial

Tallien, one of the leaders of the Thermidorians and a central deputy in the fall of Robespierre, opposed subjecting him to thorough questioning. This is generally interpreted as a maneuver aimed at preventing Fouquier-Tinville from providing lists of deputies who may have been complicit in his judicial work, including Tallien himself.[21] Fouquier defended his innocence vehemently.[21] In a letter to his wife and children dated 12 November 1794, in which he enclosed a lock of hair, he maintained his innocence, claimed to be the victim of slander, and stated that he was "sacrificed to public opinion."[21]

His trial ensued, lasting forty-one days, the longest of the French Revolution.[39] From the 9th Germinal, Year III (29 March 1795), to the 12th Floréal (1 May), a total of 419 witnesses were called, including 223 for the defense and 196 for the prosecution.[21] Among the witnesses for the prosecution was, for instance, the Paris clerk, who accused him of shedding the blood of innocents, especially Danton.[21] Also among the prosecution witnesses was the bailiff Lucien Dupré, who spoke of his "relentlessness."[21] Among the witnesses for the defense was the owner of the Palais de Justice tavern, who claimed that Fouquier-Tinville had complained to her about the number of executions, and the lawyer Bernard Malarme, who asserted that he had released many patriots.[21]

Generally, he defended himself by assigning responsibility for the executions of the Revolutionary Tribunal to the Committee of Public Safety, especially Maximilien de Robespierre.[39] According to his testimony, he claimed to have met with Robespierre privately every evening to decide on the executions for the following day.[39] This did not convince his prosecutors and he was sentenced to death.[39]

Death

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He was guillotined on 7 May 1795, together with 15 former functionaries of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who were sentenced as his accomplices.[40] These are his final words, which he wrote before his execution:[21][41]

I have nothing to reproach myself with; I have always complied with the laws, I have never been a creature of Robespierre or Saint-Just; on the contrary, I have been on the verge of being arrested four times. I die for my country and without reproach. I am satisfied: later, my innocence will be recognized.

Analysis

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Long considered the primary instigator of the judicial Terror, his role is now nuanced, with the most recent research including him in a broader process of judicial Terror with other actors.[3] Fouquier-Tinville appears to have generally followed the instructions of Maximilien Robespierre but especially those of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security during the period of the Terror.[42] However, in some cases, he is said to have shown a desire for independence from political power, especially by granting significant rights to certain defendants.[15]

Posterity

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  • Video game : Tinville appears in the game We. The Revolution where he aids the player as a prosecutor for the Revolutionary Tribunal during the Reign of Terror.

Notable victims

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References

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  1. ↑ Jourdan, A. R. M. (2006). "Le Pourvoyeur de la guillotine. Fouquier-Tinville et le tribunal révolutionnaire". In E. de Waresquiel (ed.). Mémoires de la France. Deux siècles de trésors inédits et secrets à l'Assemblée nationale. pp. 52–53.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "ANTOINE FOUQUIER-TINVILLE (1746-1795) - Encyclopædia Universalis". www.universalis.fr. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  3. 1 2 Brunet, Isabelle; Toffoli, Pascal de; Poisson, Philippe; Renneville, Marc (2005). "Accusateur public et parquet : origines et (r)évolution". Le Lien. Bulletin d'histoire judiciaire et pénitentiaire en Lot-et-Garonne (in French) (1).
  4. ↑ Famille Fouquier d'Hérouel, Pierre-Marie Dioudonnat, Le Simili-Nobiliaire-Français, éd. Sedopols, 2012, p. 326-327.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "5Mi1314 - 1693 1790 Archives départementales de l'Aisne". Archives départementales de l'Aisne (in French). Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  6. ↑ Andries, Lise (28 June 2021). "La colère et le crime". Dix-huitième siècle. 53 (1): 49–65. doi:10.3917/dhs.053.0049. ISSN 0070-6760.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Paul R. Hanson, The A-Z of the French Revolution: Fouquier-Tinville, Scarecrow Press, 2007, pp. 134–134.
  8. ↑ Lenotre, p. 15-28
  9. ↑ Journal des États généraux convoqués par Louis XVI, 28 septembre 1791
  10. ↑ Nicolas Derasse, "Les défenseurs officieux : une défense sans barreaux", Annales historiques de la Révolution française [Online], 350 | octobre-décembre 2007, Online since 01 January 2011, connection on 04 December 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ahrf/11230; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ahrf.11230
  11. ↑ Derasse, N. (2012). WORDS AND LIBERTY: HOPES FOR LEGAL DEFENCE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. In: Quaderni Storici, 47 (141 (3)), p. 763. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43780153
  12. 1 2 H.Leuwers (2012) Defence in writing. The end of the printed legal brief (France, 1788-1792)
  13. ↑ Lenotre, G. Madame Fouquier-Tinville, Romances of the French Revolution, 1908. p. 20
  14. ↑ "Les tribunaux criminels à Paris (1790–1792)" (in French). Criminocorpus. 19 January 2010. Archived from the original on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
  15. 1 2 "Creating and resisting the Terror: the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal, March–June 1793". academic.oup.com. doi:10.1093/fh/cry008. hdl:10871/33268. Retrieved 9 September 2023.
  16. ↑ THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:: OF THE TERROR:: ANTOINE QUENTIN FOUQUIER-TINVILLE TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF ALPHONSE J. DUNOYER BY A.W. EVANS WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE AND FOURTEEN OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
  17. ↑ Edwin Bannon, Refractory Men, Fanatical Women: Fidelity to Conscience During the French Revolution. Gracewing Publishing, 1992, pp. 101–104.
  18. ↑ "La Conciergerie".
  19. ↑ "La Conciergerie". Archived from the original on 9 September 2023.
  20. ↑ de Gramont, Sanche, The French, Portrait of a People, Putnam's, New York, 1969, p. 122
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Boulant, Antoine (2018). Le tribunal révolutionnaire: Punir les ennemis du peuple. Place des éditeurs. ISBN 978-2-262-07034-2.
  22. ↑ Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel 5 April 1794
  23. ↑ The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny by Ian Davidson, p. xiv
  24. ↑ Derasse, N. (2012). "Words and Liberty: Hopes for Legal Defence during the French Revolution". Quaderni Storici, 47(141), p. 763.
  25. ↑ Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, 11 June 1794, p. 4.
  26. ↑ "Maximilien Robespierre, Master of the Terror". Archived from the original on 5 December 2017.
  27. ↑ Alphonse Dunoyer, Fouquier-Tinville, accusateur public, pp. 178, 181.
  28. ↑ Furet & Ozouf 1989, p. 143.
  29. ↑ "Le Tribunal révolutionnaire". 25 January 2023.
  30. ↑ Jules Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution française, p. 119.
  31. ↑ Israel 2014, p. 570.
  32. ↑ "Picpus (12)". Paris Cemeteries.Steinberg, Ronen (2008). "Spaces of Mourning: The Cemetery of Picpus and the Memory of Terror in Post-Revolutionary France". Proceedings of the Western Society for French History. 36.
  33. ↑ R.R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled (1970), p. 368
  34. ↑ Boulant, Antoine (2018). Le tribunal révolutionnaire: Punir les ennemis du peuple. Place des éditeurs. ISBN 978-2-262-07034-2.
  35. ↑ Alphonse J. Dunoyer, The Public Prosecutor of the Terror: Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, trans. A. W. Evans (1913), pp. 119–123.
  36. ↑ Dunoyer (1913), pp. 123–126.
  37. ↑ Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (2007).
  38. ↑ Dunoyer (1913), pp. 126–130.
  39. 1 2 3 4 5 Chavanette, Loris (2021). "Le procès de Fouquier-Tinville, ou l'accusation de terreur en l'an III". Histoire de la justice. 32 (2): 47–59. doi:10.3917/rhj.032.0047.
  40. ↑ Pièces original du procès du Fouquier-Tinville et de ses complices, 1795. p. 94
  41. ↑ Associés, Pierre Bergé &. "[FOUQUIER-TINVILLE]". Pierre Bergé & Associés (in French). Retrieved 12 September 2023.
  42. ↑ Jones, Colin (1 February 2015). "9 Thermidor: Cinderella among Revolutionary Journées". French Historical Studies. 38 (1): 9–31. doi:10.1215/00161071-2822673. ISSN 0016-1071.
  43. ↑ Tadié, Jean-Yves (2011). "Les écrivains et le roman historique au xxe siècle: Esthétique et psychologie". Le Débat (in French). 165 (3): 136. doi:10.3917/deba.165.0136. ISSN 0246-2346.
  44. ↑ Le Moderniste Illustre (in French). Slatkine. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  45. ↑ Noiray, Jacques (2007). "Mémoire, oubli, illusion dans " illusions perdues ": L'exemple de Lucien de Rubempré". L'Année balzacienne (in French). 8 (1): 185. doi:10.3917/balz.008.0185. ISSN 0084-6473. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  46. ↑ Chateaubriand, François-René vicomte de (1848). Mémoires d'outre-tombe (in French). P. Arpin. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  47. ↑ Stevenson, Cornelius. “A Biographical Notice of the Duc De Lauzun, Commander of the Troop of Cavalry Which Became Known as ‘Lauzun's Legion’ in the Revolutionary War.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 47, no. 4, 1923, p. 303
  48. ↑ The public prosecutor of the terror, Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, p. 250
  49. ↑ The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle

Sources

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Bibliography

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