Georges Couthon

Georges Auguste Couthon, born in 1755 in Orcet, Auvergne, came from a family of the lower bourgeoisie; his father was a notary, his mother a shopkeeper’s daughter. He followed his father into notarial work, which led to his first political role on the Provincial Assembly of Auvergne in 1787. That same year he married Marie Brunet, and the couple would have two sons, Antoine and Hippolyte.

Couthon was considered an honest, well-mannered man. From childhood he suffered joint problems, but his condition worsened in 1782; by 1791 he needed a cane, and by 1793 he relied entirely on a hand-cranked wheelchair. Doctors diagnosed meningitis in 1792, though Couthon himself blamed his paralysis on youthful sexual activity.

He tried mineral baths, but grew steadily weaker. In 1790 he joined the Freemasons in Clermont and became active in its literary society, where he was praised for a discussion on patience. In 1791 he was elected a deputy for Puy-de-Dôme to the Legislative Assembly.

Deputy

Arriving in Paris, Couthon joined the Jacobin Club. At the Assembly’s first meeting he sat on the Left, but soon distanced himself from the radicals, fearing they would alienate the majority. He was a skilled speaker.

In September 1792 he was elected to the National Convention. While in Flanders seeking medical treatment, he befriended General Charles François Dumouriez and wrote glowing reports about him to the Assembly, calling him “a man essential to us.” This connection briefly tempted Couthon toward the Girondist faction, but after Girondist electors denied him a seat on the Committee of the Constitution in October 1792, he committed himself to the Montagnards and to Maximilien Robespierre’s inner circle, sharing many of Robespierre’s views. At the trial of Louis XVI in December 1792, he argued against a Girondist proposal for a referendum and voted for death without appeal.

On 30 May 1793 he was appointed secretary of the Committee of Public Safety. Along with five others, including his close friend Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, he helped draft the French Constitution of 1793. Three days later, he was the first to demand the arrest of the proscribed Girondists.

Lyon

Lyon had seen unrest in early 1793. On 5 July the National Convention declared the city “in a state of rebellion,” and by September the Committee of Public Safety sent Couthon as its representative. Lyon surrendered to him on 9 October.

Suspicious of further uprising, he forbade local Jacobins from meeting. In August he had carried a law imposing twenty years in chains for selling assignats below face value, and on 8 September he made foreign investments punishable by death. On 12 October the Committee decreed that Lyon itself should be destroyed.

Couthon set up special courts to oversee the demolition of the richest homes, sparing the poor, and to execute rebels and traitors. He found the destruction hard to accept and contributed little to it; by the end of October he could no longer stomach the task. The National Convention replaced him on 3 November 1793 with Jean Marie Collot d’Herbois, under whose tenure 1,880 Lyonnais were condemned by April 1794.

After leaving Lyon, Couthon returned to Paris and was elected president of the Convention on 21 December. In March 1794 he helped prosecute the Hébertists and Dantonists. His exact alignment with Robespierre and Saint-Just at that point remains unclear. On 28 July 1794, during the Thermidorian Reaction, Couthon was arrested and executed alongside his two allies.