Billaud-Varenne, Jean-Nicolas

Billaud-Varenne, Jean-Nicolas (1756-1819), French revolutionary, born in La Rochelle, and educated in law at Paris and Poitiers. He became a member of the extreme revolutionary group known as the Jacobins. Elected a member of the National Convention of France in 1792, he advocated the establishment of a federal republic and the execution of King Louis XVI, and in 1793 he led the attack on the moderate Girondins. In the same year he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety, the centre of governmental power. Although he joined in the attack on the Jacobin leader Maximilien de Robespierre in July 1794, Billaud-Varenne was arrested and prosecuted as a terrorist after Robespierre's overthrow, and in 1795 he was deported to Cayenne in French Guiana, where he married and took up farming. Released in 1816, he went to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he died.