MURAT. Married Napoleon’s sister, Caroline, after 18 Brumaire. Promoted marshal in 1804, he later succeeded Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, as King of Naples in 1808. Defeated by the Austrians at Tolentino, he escaped to Corsica. Taken prisoner in an attempt to recover his kingdom, he was shot on 13 October 1815.
NARBONNE. Emigrated in 1792. Returned in 1801 and was later appointed aide-de-camp to Napoleon. In 1813 he became French ambassador in Vienna. He died in 1813.
NECKER. Returned to Switzerland in 1792 and settled down on his estate near Geneva where he devoted himself to writing until his death in 1804. His wife, who had sorely missed her salon in Paris, had died ten years before.
PÉTION. After the fall of the Gironde, escaped to Caen thence to Saint-Émilion. Tracked down by police spies, he left the wigmaker’s house where he had been sheltered and on 18 June his body, with that of Buzot, was found on the outskirts of a wood partly eaten by animals.
PICHEGRU. Implicated in a plot to restore Louis XVIII, he offered his resignation to the Directory who accepted it. Arrested on 18 Fructidor, he was deported to Cayenne. He escaped to London and returned to Paris in 1803 to organize a royalist insurrection against Napoleon. He was betrayed, arrested, and on 15 April the following year he was found strangled in prison.
POLIGNAC, Gabrielle de. Emigrated in 1789 and died abroad shortly after the death of the Queen.
PROVENCE. Remained in England until 1814 when he returned to France as Louis XVIII. Obliged to leave Paris again on Napoleon’s escape from Elba, he returned to France after Waterloo and reigned until his death in 1824.
REUBELL. Retired from public life after 18 Brumaire and died at his birthplace, Colmar, in 1807.
REVELLIÈRE-LÉPEAUX. Forced to resign on 30 Prairial, he went to live in retirement in the country. He returned to Paris in 1809 but took no part in public affairs, dying in 1824.
RIVAROL. Emigrated in 1792 and lived at first in London, then in Hamburg and Berlin where he died in 1801.
ROCHAMBEAU. Arrested during the Terror but managed to escape execution. Pensioned by Bonaparte, he died at Thoré in 1807.
ROEDERER. Went into hiding after 10 August 1792. He appeared again after Thermidor and was appointed to a chair in political economy. Created a senator by Napoleon, he became Joseph Bonaparte’s Minister of Finance at Naples and a peer of France during the Hundred Days. He was deprived of his offices on the Restoration, but his title of peer of France was restored in 1832. He died three years later.
ROLAND. Went into hiding at Rouen but, on learning of his wife’s execution, he walked out into the countryside, pinned a paper to his coat declaring that since her murder he could ‘no longer remain in a world stained with enemies’, and stabbed himself to death with a swordstick.
ROSSIGNOL. Achieved high rank in the war against the Vendéens. Involved in the Babeuf conspiracy, he was tried and acquitted but exiled in 1800 to the Seychelles where he died two years later.
ROUGET DE LISLE. Although he wrote a few songs other than the Marseillaise, for which he composed the words and perhaps the music – though this has been disputed – none was to achieve much success. A less than ardent republican he was cashiered and imprisoned for a time. He died at Choisy-le-Roi in 1836, and his ashes were transported to the Panthéon.
ROUX. Condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 15 January 1794, he stabbed himself with a knife and was carried away to Bicêtre where he died.
SANSON, Charles. Remained the public executioner of Paris until 1795 when he handed over to his son, Henri, who died in 1840.
SANTERRE. Relieved of his command of the Paris National Guard in 1793, he was sent to command a force in the Vendée. Blamed for the failure of this expedition and accused of having written a prejudiced report upon it, he was sent to prison where he remained until Thermidor. He then resigned his command and returned to his business. The brewery, however, was not the prosperous concern it had been and he died in poverty in 1809.
SÈZE. Retired to a house he owned in the hamlet of Brevannes in the spring of 1793. Created a count by Louis XVIII, he lived on until 1828.
SIEYÈS. Lived in retirement during the Empire but prudently left France at the time of the Restoration. He returned after the 1830 revolution and died in Paris six years later.
TALLEYRAND. ‘Treason,’ said Talleyrand ‘is merely a matter of dates.’ Foreign Minister under the Directory and Napoleon, he also served Louis XVIII in that office. After representing France at the Congress of Vienna he became King Louis Philippe’s ambassador to the Court of St James’s. He died in Paris in 1838.
TALLIEN. He was elected to the Council of Five Hundred, but, distrusted by the moderates as a former terrorist and by the Left as a reactionary, he made little mark. He sailed to Egypt with Bonaparte in 1798 and edited the official journal, the Décade Egyptienne. He then became consul at Alicante. Having contracted yellow fever and lost the sight of an eye he returned to Paris where, having failed to obtain a pension, he died in poverty in 1820. He had married the fascinating Comtesse de Fontenay in 1794 but obtained a divorce from her in 1802. She married the Comte de Caraman, later Prince de Chimay, in 1805.
TARGET. Having disappeared from view during the Terror, he emerged to become a member of the Institute and of the Court of Cassation. He died in 1807.
THURIOT. After 18 Brumaire became juge au tribunal criminel of the département of the Seine. Replaced at the first Restoration, he took up his functions again during the Hundred Days. Banished as a regicide in 1816, he obtained permission to practice law in Liège where he died in 1829.
TOURZEL. When the royal family were imprisoned at the Conciergérie she asked to be taken there with them. This request and a subsequent one to share Madame Royale’s imprisonment were both refused. She was imprisoned for five months but survived the Terror and died at her château at Abondant in 1832 at the age of eighty-two.
TRONCHET. A deputy of the Council of the Ancients during the Directory and president of the Court of Cassation during the Consulate. He died in March 1806.
VADIER. Condemned to deportation under the Directory, he escaped and remained in hiding in Paris until May 1796. Tried with the Babeuf conspirators, he was acquitted but kept in prison for four years at Cherbourg. Released after 18 Brumaire, he went to live in Toulouse where he was kept under police surveillance. Exiled as a regicide in 1816, he died at Brussels in 1828.
VILATE. Executed 7 May 1795.
APPENDIX 2
Glossary
aides: excises on various goods such as wines, playing cards and soap.
ami du peuple, L’: founded by Marat in September 1789 and, like Le Père Duchesne, circulated widely among the people. Often suppressed, it changed its name to Publiciste de la République française in March 1793. The last issue appeared the day after Marat’s murder.
armée révolutionnaire: armed force of Jacobins and sans-culottes raised in several places in the late summer of 1793. Its principal purpose was to force farmers to release their stocks for Paris and other towns. It was disbanded after the execution of the Hébertists.
Assignats: interest-bearing bonds which – with a face value of 1,000 livres each – were intended to be used in payment for biens nationaux. Further issues were made from time to time to ensure a regular flow of money, and in this way France was given a new paper currency. Assignats stopped bearing interest in May 1791; and, by the time of the Directory, 100 livres in assignats were worth no more than fifteen sous.