Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau

Louis-Michel Lepeletier , marquis of Saint-Fargeau is a politician and French lawyer born in Paris the May 29th 1760, dead assassinated in the same city the January 20th 1793.

Biography

Resulting from a famous family of members of Parliament, grandson of Michel Robert the Furrier of the Forts, count de Saint-Fargeau, Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau was to advise with the Parlement of Paris by waiving of age limit as of 1779, and President with mortar before 1789. From 1788, it chaired the room of vacations, and it is in front of him that the famous Kornmann lawsuit was pled, of the name of the banker of Strasbourg defended by famous Lyons lawyer Nicolas Bergasse, former partisan of Mesmer, slinger pre-revolutionist and one of the future leaders of the current known as of the " Monarchiens " at the beginning of the Revolution. This last, in an extreme peroration of eloquence, began to continue with excess the crime and its iniquities; then, addressing himself to president de Saint-Fargeau, he pronounced this vibrating praise, not stripped of interests: “And you, who chair this court; you, the friend of manners and the laws; you, in whom we admire all, beside the talents which make the large magistrates, the simple and soft virtues who characterize the man of good and the sensitive man… receive my oaths…. ”

He is elected appointed of the nobility of Paris to the General states of 1789, disavows his noble origins and becomes one of the burning lawyers of the cause of the people.

The June 19th 1790, day of the removal of the titles of Nobility, it makes vote which no citizen will be able to carry of another name that of his family reduced to his simpler portion. As of the following day, Louis Michel Lepeletier, marquis de Saint-Fargeau, do not sign any more from now on but by Michel Lepeletier. The June 21st 1790, he becomes president of the constituent National Assembly.

He is elected with the Convention by the Département of Yonne. He joint with the Mountain and writes a plan of organization of State education. After having been adverse of the capital punishment, it is charmed, and not without to have hesitated, it votes the death of Louis XVI (January 20th 1793), this why it is assassinated in a restaurant of the Palais Royal, by old a bodyguard of Louis XVI, Philippe Nicolas Marie de Pâris, on January 20th 1793. The real reasons of its assassination remain obscure, certain today sources giving a report on a tortuous plot implying Spain. At all events, the political recovery of its death will be used as general repetition so that the death of Marat will set in motion a few months later: the worship of the " revolutionary heroes fallen for the exemple".

Posthumous homages

Regarded as the “first Martyr of the Revolution”, its body was exposed in a setting in imposing scene Place Vendôme and its Obsèque S gave the kickoff to interminable kneaded revolutionary celebrations of propaganda. It was buried with the the Pantheon of Paris.
Its family recovered her body on February 14th, 1795.

The plan of education worked out by Michel Lepeletier, presented by Robespierre on July 13rd, 1793 (the very same day where Marat was assassinated) was voted the August 13rd 1793 by the deputies of Convention, but was not carried out. Many its ideas will be found well later, at the 19th century, in the thought of Jules Ferry.

Under the Revolution, the islands of Lérins took the name of islands Marat and Lepeletier . Its death was painted by Jacques-Louis David under the title the last moments of Michel Lepeletier or Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau on his bed of dead . Exposed in the room of national Convention where was to join it later its during, the Death of Marat , the table was recovered by David in 1795, and was held hidden. After the death of the painter, in 1826, it was repurchased with the heirs to this last by the girl of Lepeletier, Louise Suzanne de Mortefontaine. Since, the table ceased being visible. It would be hidden in the Château of Saint-Fargeau, or was perhaps destroyed (in 2006, its " repeinture" was undertaken by the painter Luc Scaccianoce). This " absence" occulted a long time that it was about the first table completed (what the Oath of the play of palm, started earlier, was never) Revolution, a capital work from an iconographic point of view, a great modernity in what she was conceived for a public at the national level. That Lepeletier has be assassinated one January 20th, day coinciding with religious holiday of saint Sebastien (date which was reproduced on the table of David), recently its interpretation supported, inter alia, like revolutionary Sebastien saint. In this, it was a question of laicizing a secular imagery Christian, in particular while taking as a starting point Roman models, which could only correspond favorably to the effort political subtle and categorical to join again in turn with the republican ideal of ancient Rome, aspect that the personal course of Lepeletier, man of dialog and jurisprudence, incarnated since 1789.

The Parisian subway station Saint-Fargeau pays homage to this character, in the Quartier of Saint-fargeau whose name draws its origin from the Saint-Fargeau park, remains castle of Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau or castle of Ménilmontant. Saint-Fargeau is the only name used twice in the denomination of the RER and subway stations since a station of the RER is also called Saint-Fargeau, this one being located on the commune of Saint-Fargeau-Ponthierry.

He had as brothers the Entomologiste Amédée Louis Michel Lepeletier (1770-1845) and the politician Felix Lepeletier. He counts among his descendants the writer academician Jean d' Ormesson.

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