Jean-Bertrand Féraud

Jean Bertrand Féraud, (Arreau 4 August 1759 or 1764 - Paris 20 May 1795)^[1][2] was a French politician of the French revolutionary era.

Early life

Jean Bertrand was the son of Jean-Baptiste Féraud, notary royal, and his wife Jeanne-Marie Casteret. His uncle Félix Féraud, also a notary, was secretary to the last meeting of the Estates of

In the winter and spring of Year III (1795), agriculture and trade were in chaos and the currency was rapidly devaluing. Townspeople were starving as the prices of staple foods rose. The convention, which had mobilised its armies against external threats and deployed them to repress rebellions in the provinces, could hardly contain the unrest in Paris. During the Revolt of 1 Prairial Year III the crowds forced their way into the convention's sessions to demand bread.

Newly placed in charge of supplies for Paris, Féraud tried to harangue the crowd while waiting for reinforcements from the National Guard, but a woman in the crowd, incensed, shot him dead with a pistol. The crowd cut off his head, hoisted it on a pike, and then carried it aloft into the chamber of the Convention in front of its President

In the tumult, a 50-year-old locksmith's assistant named Jean Tinelle was arrested and condemned to death on 5 Prairial Year III for having carried the head on the pike. He was the 2,807th and final person to be condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal before it was suppressed.^[10]

There are various extant representations of Féraud's death, including engravings, paintings and sketches, as well as numerous accounts in newspapers and letters.^[11]

References