PÉTION DE VILLENEUVE, JEAN, a leader of the French Revolution, was born at Chartres about 1753, and practised for some time at the bar. His first appearance on the stage of politics was in the character of deputy from the commons of his native town to the Estates-General in 1789. He then showed himself to be well fitted to walk circumspectly among the besetting perils of those troublous times. His political creed was liberal and settled, his disposition phlegmatic, his appearance imposing, and his elocution ready. Accordingly, in all the high and critical offices to which he was called during the Revolution, his character was notable for its cool consistency. As president of the National Assembly and of the Criminal Tribunal, he acted in such a straightforward manner that he acquired the surname of "the Virtuous." When he was sent to conduct the royal family home from their arrested flight, this want of respect of persons was carried even to an extreme. He "ate his luncheon, comfortably filled his wine-glass in the royal Berline, flung out his chicken-bones past the nose of royalty itself; and on the king's saying, 'France cannot be a republic,' answered, 'No, it is not ripe yet.' Nor did his coolness forsake him during 1791 and 1792, when, in the capacity of mayor of Paris, it was his duty to guard the safety of the city. Raised aloft on the shoulders of two grenadiers, he quieted and dispersed the insurrectionary populace on the famous 20th of June. Mingling also with the bloodthirsty mob, he tried, with "the austere language of the law," to check the reckless massacres of September. At length, however, the dangers which Péton had with stoical countenance outfaced so long, became too pressing for him. The proscription of his party by the Jacobins on the 31st May 1793, drove him and ten of his fellow Girondins to escape for their lives. As the eleven skulked through the country towards Bourdeaux, their enemies beset them at every turn of the road. At last the ever-thickening perils compelled them to separate, and hide their heads wherever they could. On a July morning of 1794, the dead body
of Pétion, along with that of Buzot, was found in a cornfield near Bourdeaux half-eaten by wolves. (See Carlyle's French Revolution; and Biographie Universelle.)