The History of Sunday - of Blérancourt in the Aisne on the benches of the National Assembly, Saint -Just, "Archangel de la Révolution" and protected from Robespierre

Desmoulins, Condorcet, Saint-Just : trois grandes figures picardes de la Révolution française, des vies brèves à l'empreinte définitive sur l’histoire de France. Leur point commun : tous les trois sont nés ou ont grandi dans le même département, l'Aisne.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just was born in Nièvre in 1767. At the age of 9, he moved to Picardy with his family: his father, a gendarme, decides to come and retire on family lands.The Saint Just is an old family of landowners from Morsain and Nampcel in Aisne.The father of Louis Antoine buys for 6,000 louis d'or a house in Blérancourt which still exists.

Saint-Just will spend 16 years in this Axonaise commune.It was there, in contact with the most disadvantaged, that he will forge his first revolutionary aspirations."It is very appreciated by the small people. And freely offers their services as a lawyer to the poorest of the inhabitants of the town," explains Anne Quennedy, president of the association for the safeguard of Maison Saint-Just, and authorof several works devoted to the youngest of the French Revolution.

Saint-Just is intelligent, a leader of men but a revolted temperament.In adolescence, after studying at Lycée de Soissons, he flees the maternal home (he lost his father a year after his arrival in Blérancourt), following an argument.Perhaps a theft, a jewelry flight, committed by the young man.In any case, her mother suspects him and asks her son to be interned for several months in the correction house.What to stir up the desire for emancipation of Louis Antoine, as well as his taste for politics and justice.

The irresistible rise of a young man with outstanding eloquence

In 1792, he was elected deputy for the Aisne to the National Convention, which then governed the country, in the midst of a revolutionary torment.He is 25 years old, he is the youngest elected official in the assembly."25 years old is the age of majority at the time," explains Anne Quennedey."This almost unknown is very quickly a name by his speaking art which strikes his colleagues. His eloquence, full of content on the legal, constitutional and economic level, is its main asset".And Maximilien Robespierre, the strong man of the diet, makes him his protégé.

Consequently, Saint-Just takes a preponderant place within the revolutionary system."He is a big worker, he sleeps very little, barely two hours, on camp beds, especially when he sits on the Committee of Public Safety" tells us Anne Quennedy.The Committee of Public Safety has been set up to protect France from the European forces of European forces and the civil war which rages in the west of the country, with the revolt of the Vendeans, against the new regime.

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"This man must reign or die".In November 1792 Saint-Just called on the deputies of the Convention to condemn Louis VX."He must die to ensure the rest of the people," he said again, in this famous speech.The execution by decapitation is pronounced and Louis XVI was guillotined in January 1793. We are in the middle of the terror.

"Saint -just is an extraordinary tribune, his adhesive speeches forge his image of an implacable man, brutal", notes Anne Quennedey who also underlines "that Saint-Just is also of immense intelligence: it is he who is chosen forWork with Robespierre at the drafting of the Constitution of 1793 ".But the two men will not go after this task: July 28, 1794 Louis Antoine de Saint-Just was guillotined Place de la Revolution (current Place de la Concorde) in Paris.He is 27 years old.In the tortured cart, his friend Robespierre, who will also be guillotined.And as often during this period, the bodies will be thrown into a common pit.

Political heritage, between shadow and light

Blérancourt's child is still presented today as a fanatic.Was it not the one who had a law, called "suspects", vote?A text that allows you to stop, in its own words, "those who have done nothing against freedom, did nothing for it".Was it not the one who worked for the execution by the guillotine, by Camille Desmoulins, of whom he was close yet?"The fact remains that Louis Antoine de Saint-Just is a pioneer. He has always defended a real social project with a system imagined by him, of defense of the poorest in the decrees of Ventôse (March 1794)" explains Anne Quennedy.A young man animated by the intimate conviction that the French Revolution was going to permanently shake the world as he wrote in a speech: "We do not disguise strong laws; they suddenly penetrate foreign countries like unquenchable lightning".