Reaction and Directory
From that moment until July, he remained inactive. On 27 July, the start of the Thermidorian Reaction, Legendre, after having signed his name on the list of speakers, would have asked Jacques Alexis Thuriot (one of the putsch leaders): "Strike my name off. I shall see how this turns out". As Robespierre's fall seemed inevitable, Legendre sided with the Reaction, and led troops against putsches of Jacobins and Charles Pichegru (1795).
He was elected president of the Convention, and helped bring about the impeachment of Jean-Baptiste Carrier, the perpetrator of mass executions by drowning (noyades) of royalist sympathizers. He was subsequently elected a member of the Council of Ancients. During the French Directory, Legendre was elected to the Council of Five Hundred, but was already suffering from dementia.
Read more about this topic: Louis Legendre
Famous quotes containing the words reaction and/or directory:
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)
“An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.”
—Donald Sinden (b. 1923)