French politician, born in Limoges, C France. He studied in Paris, became an advocate in Bordeaux (1781), and was sent to the National Assembly (1791), where he became spokesman for the Girondins. In the Convention he voted for the king's death, having previously failed to persuade the Assembly to spare the king's life. When the Girondins clashed with the rival revolutionary faction, the Montagnards, Vergniaud and his party were arrested and guillotined.
Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud (May 31, 1753 - October 31, 1793) was a French orator and revolutionary.
Background
He was born at Limôges, the son of a merchant who lost most of his money by speculation. The young Vergniaud on one occasion recited some of his own poetry in the presence of Turgot, who was struck impressed by his talent. Through his patronage, Vergniaud was admitted to the college of Plessis at Paris. The speeches of Vergniaud reveal the solidity of his education, and in particular of the wide range of his knowledge of the classics, and of his acquaintance--familiar and sympathetic--with ancient philosophy and history.
Charles Dupuy, president of the parlement of Bordeaux, with whom Vergniaud became acquainted, conceived the greatest admiration and affection for him and appointed him his secretary. Vergniaud was afterwards called to the bar (1782). but Vergniaud, though capable of extraordinary efforts, lacked the stamina for study and sustained exertion, even in a cause which he approved. This weakness appears equally in his political and in his professional life: he would refuse work if he was not short of money, and would sit for weeks in the Assembly in listlessness and silence, while the policy he had shaped was being gradually undermined, and then rise, brilliant as ever, but too late to avert catastrophe.
Beginning of his political career
In 1789 Vergniaud was elected a member of the general council of the département of the Gironde. Vergniaud delivered one of the great speeches of his life, depicting the misfortunes of the peasantry in language of such combined dignity, pathos and power that his fame as an orator spread far and wide.
In the Legislative Assembly
Vergniaud was chosen a representative of the Gironde to the Legislative Assembly in August 1791, and he proceeded to Paris. The Legislative Assembly met on October 1. but on October 25 he ascended the tribune, and he had not spoken long before the whole Assembly felt that a new power had arisen which might control even the destinies of France. Between the outbreak of the Revolution and his election to the Legislative Assembly the political views of Vergniaud had undergone a decided change.
The sentiments and passions which his eloquence aroused were made use of by a more extreme party. Even his first Assembly speech, on the émigrés — proposing that a treble annual contribution be levied on their property - resulted in a measure passed by the Assembly, but vetoed by the king, mandating the death sentence and confiscation of their goods. On March 19, 1792, when the perpetrators of the massacre of Avignon had been introduced to the Assembly by Collot d'Herbois, Vergniaud spoke indulgently of their crimes and lent the authority of his voice to their amnesty.
He worked at the theme of the émigrés, as it developed into that of the counter-revolution; and in his occasional appearances in the tribune, as well as in the project of an address to the French people, which he presented to the Assembly on December 27, 1791, he stirred the heart of France, and, especially by his call to arms on January 18, shaped the policy which culminated in the declaration of war against the king of Bohemia and Hungary on April 20. On March 10 Vergniaud delivered a powerful oration in which he denounced the intrigues of the court and uttered his famous apostrophe to the Tuileries: "In ancient times fear and terror have often issued from that famous palace;
The speech overthrew De Lessart, whose accusation was decreed; By June the opposition of Vergniaud (whose voice still commanded the country) to the king rose to fever pitch. On May 29 Vergniaud went so far as to support the disbanding of the king's guard; The party used Vergniaud, whose lofty and serene ideas they travestied in action.
On August 10 the Tuileries was stormed, and the royal family took refuge in the Assembly. Vergniaud presided, replying to the request of the king for protection in dignified and respectful language. An extraordinary commission was appointed: Vergniaud wrote and read its recommendations that a National Convention be formed, the king be provisionally suspended from office, a governor appointed for his son, and the royal family be consigned to the Palais Luxembourg. He denounced the massacres of September — their inception, their horror and the future to which they pointed — in language so vivid and powerful that it raised for a time the spirits of the Girondists, while on the other hand it aroused the fatal opposition of the Parisian leaders.
The question of whether Louis XVI should be judged, and if so by whom, was the subject of protracted debate. and four days afterwards Vergniaud and his whole party were further damaged by the discovery of a note signed by him along with Gaudet and Armand Gensonné and presented to the king two or three weeks before August 10. Vergniaud voted early, and voted for death. On the 17th Vergniaud presided at the Convention, and it fell to him, labouring under the most painful excitement, to announce the fatal result of the voting.
Proscription of the Girondists
When the institution of a revolutionary tribunal was proposed, Vergniaud opposed the project, denouncing the tribunal as a more awful inquisition than that of Venice, and avowing that his party would all die rather than consent to it. On the 13th Vergniaud boldly exposed the conspiracy in the Convention. He fastened on Vergniaud's letter to the king and his support of the appeal to the people as proof that he was a moderate in its then despised sense. Vergniaud made a brilliant extemporaneous reply, and the attack for the moment failed. But now, night after night, Vergniaud and his colleagues found themselves obliged to change their abode, to avoid assassination, a price being even put upon their heads.
Vergniaud took refuge for a day, then returned to his own home. On one of the walls of the Carmelite convent to which for a short time the prisoners were removed Vergniaud wrote in letters of blood: Potius mon quamfoedari. Vergniaud was executed last.
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