 schools now do today; that is say the pledge of allegiance, alphabet, and the teaching of the multiplication table. Barère believed that the fatherland could educate all.
9 Thermidor, prison, and later life
Barère was also known to have attacked Maximilien Robespierre by calling him "a pygmy who should not be set on a pedestal". During the Thermidorian Reaction (27 July 1794), after some initial hesitation, he drew up the report outlawing Robespierre which turned up to be ultimately decisive. Some have considered him one of the main conspirators behind the Thermidorian Reaction.
Unfortunately, Barère was still questioned on the grounds of being a terrorist. Before Barère was sentenced to prison, "Carnot defended him on the ground that [Barère] was hardly worse than himself." However, the defense proved ineffective. Nonetheless, in Germinal of the year III (21 March to 4 April 1795), the leaders of Thermidor decreed the arrest of Barère and his colleagues in the Reign of Terror, Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois and Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne.
Barère was sentenced for his betrayal of King Louis XVI (by voting to execute him), for being a traitor to France, and for being a terrorist, and he was imprisoned on Oléron, on his way for transportation to French Guiana. While Barère was in prison, he was very depressed and wrote his own epitaph because he thought he was going to die.
Barère was in prison for two years before the National Convention decided they were going to retry him for death by the guillotine. When Barère found out that he was being retried, someone helped him escape from prison and went to Bordeaux, where he lived in hiding for several years.
In 1795, he was elected to the Directory's Council of Five Hundred, but he was not allowed to take his seat. However, Barère served Napoleon. Under the First Empire, he was used as a secret agent by Napoleon, for whom he carried on a diplomatic correspondence.
Some time afterward, Napoleon placed Barère back in prison, but Barère escaped again. He became a member of the Chamber of Deputies during the Hundred Days, and he behaved as a royalist in 1815. However, once the final restoration of the Bourbons was achieved, he was banished from France for life "as a regicide". Barère then withdrew to Brussels, where he lived until 1830. He returned to France and served Louis Philippe under the July monarchy until his death on 13 January 1841. He was the last surviving member of the Committee of Public Safety.
- Histoire des journaux et des journalistes de la révolution française (1789-1796) By Léonard Gallois
- Gershoy 1962, p.4.
- Gershoy 1962, p.8.
- Gershoy 1962, p.113.
- Lee 1902, p.151.
- Gershoy 1962, p.156.
- Paley 1999, p.98.
- Brookhiser 2006, p.207.
- Gershoy 1927, p.425.
- Gershoy 1927, p.427.
- Gershoy 1927, p.426.
- Gershoy 1927, p.422.
- Gershoy 1927, p.429.
- Dalberg-Acton 1920, p.270.
- Gershoy 1962, p.290. In Barère’s diary, he would not give up the name of the accomplice who had helped him escape from prison, for fear that it would bring about his friend’s death.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Barère de Vieuzac, Bertrand". Encyclopædia Britannica 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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- Brookhiser, Richard (2006). What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions Their Answers. New York: Basic Books. p. 207.
- Dalberg-Acton, John Emerich Edward (1920). Lectures on the French Revolution. London: Macmillan and Company. pp. 84–289.
- Gershoy, Leo (September 1927). "Barère, Champion of Nationalism in the French Revolution". Political Science Quarterly 42 (3): 419–430. doi:10.2307/2143129.
- Gershoy, Leo (1962). Bertrand Barère: A Reluctant Terrorist. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 1–402.
- Lee, Guy Carleton (1902). Book Orators of Modern Europe. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. pp. 151–152.
- Paley, Morton D. (1999). Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poe