Joseph Chalier

Joseph Chalier

Marie Joseph Chalier (* 1747 in Beaulard , near Susa in Piedmont , † July 17, 1793 in Lyon ) was a French Jacobin .

Live and act

Chalier came from a family of lawyers and initially entered the Dominicans as a novice before becoming a tutor and eventually partner in a law firm and traveling all over the Mediterranean as a silk salesman from Lyon. In 1789 he was an enthusiastic supporter of the revolution , was involved in the storming of the Bastille on July 14th, met Jean-Paul Marat , Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins and made a name for himself in early 1790 with pro-revolutionary magazine articles.

In the same year he returned to Lyon, which had been the focus of social unrest since 1786. He played a leading role in the city's revolutionary clubs and became a member of the city administration in the commission for trade and industry, then a judge in the trade tribunal.

In December 1791, Chalier was suspended because of alleged violations of authority in house searches. However, before the Chamber of the Rhone et Loire department, he was acquitted of allegations. At the head of a left-wing revolutionary movement - his followers called themselves "Chaliers" - he made social demands such as minimum wages for silk weavers, the abolition of private grain trade and the nationalization of mills. Many of his supporters were elected in the local elections in November, but Chalier himself lost to the Girondins , who represented the property bourgeoisie. Chalier became president of the district tribunal. His combative speeches in the style of Marat made clear his aim of introducing a sans-culottic revolutionary tribunal in Lyon as well.

After the Girondin mayor Nivière-Chol had learned of a secret plot of the "Chaliers", he dissolved the local council and recorded a landslide victory in the following elections on February 18, 1793 with 80 percent of the votes.

Chalier had made himself unpopular in large circles through plans to raise taxes and his inability to improve the social situation. Nevertheless he tried to push through his own candidate, set up a revolutionary tribunal and set up a revolutionary army and station it in Lyon. This finally went too far for the moderates: on May 29, 1793 they marched to the town hall, arrested Chalier and his supporters and appointed a provisional town council. Chalier was sentenced to death and guillotined on July 17th on the “Place des Terreaux”  - the inexperienced executioner tried three times with the guillotine and had to finish his work with the knife. In Paris Chalier was named "Martyr of the Republic" together with Marat and Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau and the march on Lyon was decided.

literature

• François Wartelle: Article Chalier . In: Albert Soboul (ed.): Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française . Press Universitaire de France, 1989