List of people associated with the French Revolution
This is a partial list of people involved in the French Revolution. It includes both supporters and opponents of the revolution.
For a list of groups and factions, see Glossary of the French Revolution.
Inevitably, many individuals here played multiple roles. For example, the Bonapartist General Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was an active Jacobin and associated, to some degree with both the Girondists and the Montagne. (He was also a prominent author.) As a rule, the best place to clarify these complexities is in the article on the individual in question.
Royalists
In this context, "royalist" refers specifically to supporters of the Bourbon monarchy (not to Bonapartistss).Bourbon Royalty
- Marie Antoinette
- Louis XVI of France
- Louis XVII of France - the 'lost dauphin'
Royal Ministers
- Cardinal Etienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne
- Jacques Necker
- Louis de Breteuil
Other Royalists
Feuillants
See main article Feuillant.The Gironde
See main article Girondist.Girondist ministers
- Étienne Clavière
- General Charles François Dumouriez, eventually defected to the Austrians
- Jean Marie Roland de la Platière
Other important Girondists
- Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville - initial leader of the Gironde, hence their other designation as "Brissotins".
- Manon Jeanne Phlipon, (Madame Roland)
- Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud
Also associated with the Gironde
- Marquis de Condorcet - not properly a Girondist, but often associated with them.
- Pierre Claude François Daunou - also not an actual member of the Gironde, but allied with them politically.
- Olympe de Gouges - advocate of gender equality.
The Montagne (Mountain)
See main article The MountainMembers of the Committee of Public Safety
See main article Committee of Public Safety It is possible that some of these should not be listed as Montagnards; research needed.- Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac - Earlier a Girondist, later a Bonapartist, drew up the 9 Thermidor report outlawing Robespierre.
- Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot - physicist
- Georges Couthon
- Georges Danton
- Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles
- Claude Antoine, comte Prieur-Duvernois (a.k.a. Prieur de la Côte-d'Or)
- Pierre Louis Prieur (a.k.a. Prieur de la Marne)
- Maximilien Robespierre
- Jean Bon Saint-André
- Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just
Other Montagnards
- Camille Desmoulins
- Jean-Paul Marat
- [[Phélippeaux]
Hebertists
- Jacques Hébert - polemical writer, editor of Le Père Duchesne
Members of the Committee of Public Safety
See main article Committee of Public SafetyOther members of the Committee for Public Safety
It is possible that some of these should be listed as Montagnards; research needed.- Cambon
- Lindet
Bonapartists
Napoleon and his retinue
- Napoleon I of France - General, then First Consul, then Emperor
- Joséphine de Beauharnais - Empress, wife of Napoleon
Other Bonapartists
- Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (Second Consul)
- Joseph Fesch
- General Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, also known as an author
- General Charles Leclerc
Too fluid to classify
- Henri Grégoire - revolutionary priest, supporter of Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand - first a royalist, then one of the authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, eventually Foreign Minister under Napoleon.
- Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès - Although a member of the clergy, entered the 1789 Estates-General as a representative of the Third Estate. Author of pamphlet "What is the Third Estate?", later a Bonapartist.
Other revolutionary generals
- Charles Pierre François Augereau
- Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte
- Louis-Alexandre Berthier
- Guillaume Marie-Anne Brune
- Jacques François Dugommier
- Lazare Hoche
- François Christophe Kellermann
- Jean-Baptiste Kléber
- Jean Lannes
- Jean Victor Marie Moreau
- Louis Charles Antoine Desaix de Veygoux
- François-Séverin Marceau
Other political figures
- LePeletier de Saint Fargeau - ex-noble, voted for the execution of Louis XVI, assassinated shortly thereafter.
- Philippe-Egalité - voted for the execution of Louis XVI, his own cousin
- Jacques Roux (associated with Jacques Hébert)
- Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, Marquis de Mirabeau - Although noble, entered the 1789 Estates-General as a representative of the Third Estate.
- Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target - lawyer, generally associated with Directory-era politics.
Writers
See also List of Historians of the French Revolution.Philosophers who influenced the Revolution
- Denis Diderot -- Enlightenment author and atheist philosopher
- Montesquieu, political philosopher
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Jean-Marie Arouet dit Voltaire -- Enlightenment author, deist/agnostic philosopher
Polemical writers contemporary with the Revolution
Other writers contemporary with the Revolution
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of writers of the revolutionary period, just of those significantly involved in (or impacted by) the events of the Revolution.- Marquis de Sade - erotic and philosophic author
Artists
- Jacques Louis David - painter
- Jean Antoine Houdon - sculptor
Others
- Charlotte Corday - assassin of Marat
- Joseph Cugnot - inventor
- Charles-Augustin de Coulomb - major contributor to the metric system.
- Fabre d'Églantine - author of the names and months of the French Republican calendar
- Eleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours
- Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours
- Antoine Lavoisier - also a major contributor to the metric system, but executed for his role as a tax collector.
- Jacques-Donatien Le Ray - a key figure in engineering French support for the American Revolution, but an emigre during the French Revolution.
- Montgolfier brothers - balloonists, responsible for the first-ever aerial reconnaissance.
