Joseph Le Bon

Portrait of Joseph Le Bon, lithograph around 1820

Joseph Le Bon (center), etching: Les Formes acerbes

Joseph Le Bon (born September 25, 1765 in Arras ( Département Pas-de-Calais ), † October 16, 1795 ibid) was a French revolutionary .

Life

Joseph Le Bon attended a college of the Oratorians , was ordained a priest afterwards and in January 1791 took the oath on the civil constitution of the clergy. He then worked as a pastor in Vernois near Beaune and in Neuville-Vitasse.

Le Bon, a personal friend of Maximilien Robespierre , was elected mayor of Arras on August 10, 1792 after the Tuileries storm . In September 1792 he was elected by the Pas-de-Calais département as a substitute member of the National Convention. He took his seat on July 1, 1793 and joined the Mountain Party . Appointed Representative en mission , Le Bon worked in the Somme department in August 1793 and, from October 1793, together with his brother-in-law, Augustin Alexandre Darthé , in the Pas-de-Calais and Nord departments . Both built them thereTerror of the Jacobins . Le Bon established a new Revolutionary Court, where he appointed judges and jury himself. He acted extremely brutally against suspects and had hundreds arrested. At the end of his reign of terror, around 1,000 people were in prison and more than 300 had been executed.

Le Bon officiated until July 10, 1794 Chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Cambrai . After the overthrow of the 9th Thermidor of the year II (July 27, 1794), serious accusations were made against him, whereupon he was arrested on August 2, 1794. After spending about 14 months in prison, Le Bon was tried. In front of the court he repeatedly protested his innocence and that he had only implemented the orders of the welfare committee , and he denied most of the allegations brought against him. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to death as a terrorist on October 11, 1795 and publicly executed on October 16, 1795 in front of a large crowd in Arras. He showed great courage on the way to the scaffold and maintained his demeanor until his execution was complete .

literature

• Bernd Jeschonnek: Revolution in France 1789–1799. A lexicon. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-05-000801-6 .

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