Louis Antoine de Saint-Just - Early Life

Early Life

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just was born at Decize in the former Nivernais province of central France. He was the eldest child of Louis Jean de Saint-Just de Richebourg (1716–1777), a retired French cavalry officer, knight of the Order of Saint Louis, and 20 year younger Marie-Anne Robinot (1736–1791), the daughter of a notary. He had two younger sisters, born in 1768 and 1769. The family later moved north and in 1776 settled in the village of Blérancourt in the former Picardie province, establishing themselves as a countryside noble family living out of the rents from their land. A year after the move, Louis Antoine's father died leaving his mother with the three children. She saved diligently for her only son's education, and in 1779 he was sent to the Oratorian school at Soissons. After a promising start, Saint-Just acquired a reputation as a troublemaker, augmented by infamous stories (almost certainly apocryphal) of how he led a students' rebellion and tried to burn down the school. Nonetheless, he earned his graduation in 1786.

His restive nature, however, did not diminish. As a young man, Saint-Just was "wild, handsome, transgressive". Well-connected and popular, he showed a special affection toward a young woman of Blérancourt, Thérèse Gellé. She was the daughter of another wealthy notary, a powerful and autocratic figure in the town; he was still an undistinguished adolescent. He is said to have proposed marriage to her; she is said to have desired it. Though no hard evidence exists regarding their relationship, official records show that on 25 July 1786, Thérèse was married to Emmanuel Thorin, the scion of a prominent local family. Saint-Just was out of town and unaware of the event, and tradition portrays him as brokenhearted. Whatever his true state, it is known that a few weeks after the marriage he abruptly left home for Paris – without an announcement, but not without gathering up a pair of pistols and a good quantity of his mother’s silver. His venture turned short when his mother had him seized by police and sent to a reformatory (maison de correction) where he stayed from September 1786 to March 1787. Chastened, Saint-Just attempted to begin anew: he enrolled as a student at the School of Law, Reims University. After a year, however, he drifted away from law school and returned to his mother's home in Blérancourt penniless, without any occupational prospects.