Louis Antoine de Saint-Just - President of The Convention

President of The Convention

With the army advancing and the Girondins destroyed, the Convention was firmly in the hands of the left-wing Montagnards, led by the Jacobins and Robespierre. In these circumstances, on the first day of Ventôse in Year II of the Revolution (19 February 1794), Saint-Just was elected president of the National Convention.

With this new power, he persuaded the chamber to pass the radical Ventôse Decrees, under which aristocratic émigré property would be confiscated and distributed to needy sans-culottes. These acts of wealth redistribution were arguably the most revolutionary acts of the French Revolution, yet they were never implemented. The Committee faltered in creating procedures for their enforcement, and the frantic pace of unfolding political events left them behind.

The Ventôse Decrees were seen cynically by some as a ploy by Saint-Just to appeal to the militant extreme left. Sincere or not, he made impassioned arguments for them. One week after their adoption, Saint-Just urged that the Decrees be exercised vigorously, and hailed them for ushering in a new era: "Eliminate the poverty that dishonors a free state; the property of patriots is sacred but the goods of conspirators are there for the wretched. The wretched are the powerful of the earth; they have the right to speak as masters to the governments who neglect them."