Isaac René Guy le Chapelier

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Isaac Le Chapelier
Deputy to the Estates General
for Third Estate
In office
5 May 1789 – 9 July 1789
ConstituencyRennes
Personal details
Born
Isaac René Guy le Chapelier

(1754-06-12)12 June 1754
Jacobin (1789–1791)
Feuillant (1791–1792)
SpouseMarie-Esther de la Marre
Alma materUniversity of Rennes
ProfessionLawyer

Isaac René Guy Le Chapelier (12 June 1754 – 22 April 1794) was a French jurist and politician of the Revolutionary period.

Biography

Le Chapelier was born in Rennes in Brittany, where his father was bâtonnier of the corporation of lawyers, a title equivalent to President of the Bar. He entered the law profession, and was a noted orator. In 1775, Le Chapelier was initiated as a freemason at the Grand Orient de France.[1]

In 1789 he was elected as a deputy to the

feudalism was abolished in France, and in late September 1789 was added to the Constitutional Committee, where he drafted much of the Constitution of 1791
.

Le Chapelier introduced a motion in the

Le Chapelier Law
. The law effectively barred guilds and trade unions in France until 1864. There had been an effort, by Turgot, to abolish the compulsory guilds (producer cartels) in 1776 - but it did not go into effect. The Estates General proclaimed against the guilds on August 4, 1789 - but the end of these compulsory producer cartels did not come till 1791.

In May, 1789, when the

Jacobin Club
, of which Le Chapelier was the first president.

Like many radical deputies, Le Chapelier wished for the central role played by such popular societies early in the French Revolution to come to an end with the settling of the state and the pending promulgation of a new constitution. This conviction was increased by the

Champs de Mars Massacre of 17 July 1791. Within days, Le Chapelier joined the mass exodus of moderate deputies abandoning the Jacobin club in favour of a new organisation, the Patriotic Society of 1789 and later the Feuillant club
.

Le Chapelier, in his capacity as chairman of the Constitutional Committee, presented to the National Assembly in its final sessions a law restricting the rights of popular societies to undertake concerted political action, including the right to correspond with one another. It passed 30 September 1791. By the virtue of obeying this law, the moderate Feuillants embraced obsolescence; the radical Jacobins, by ignoring it, emerged as the most vital political force of the French Revolution. The popular society movement, largely founded by Le Chapelier, was thus inadvertently radicalised contrary to his original intentions.

During the Reign of Terror, as a suspect for having had links with the Feuillants, he temporarily emigrated to Great Britain, but returned to France in 1794, in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the confiscation of his assets. He was arrested, and guillotined in Paris on the same day as Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes.

In popular culture

He is a character in Rafael Sabatini's historical novels Scaramouche (1921) and Scaramouche the King-Maker (1931).

Bibliography

References

  1. ISBN 978-2-7535-6569-2
    , retrieved 2020-10-27
  2. ^ a b  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Le Chapelier, Isaac René Guy". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 353–354.
  • Cahiers du Cevipof
    , Nr. 39, April 2005, pp. 30–40
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