François Hanriot

François Hanriot (3 September 1761 – 28 July 1794) was a French Jacobin leader and street orator of the Revolution. He played a vital role in the Insurrection and subsequently the fall of the Girondins.

François Hanriot was born to poor parents in Nanterre, a western suburb of Paris. His parents were servants to a Parisian bourgeoise which most likely helped influence his support of the Revolution later in life.

Not a man of any specific profession, Hanriot held a variety of different jobs. He took his first employment with a procureur doing mostly secretarial work, but lost his position due to reasons of dishonesty. Next, he obtained a clerkship in the Paris octroi in 1789 doing tax work. His position here was also ill-fated, as he was again fired after leaving his station the night of 12 July 1789, when angry Parisians attempted to burn the building down. After his string of unfortunate professions, Hanriot remained unemployed and subsequently very poor. His next string of occupations is rather hazy in history; many people of the time connect him to a variety of professions including a shopkeeper, a peddler, and a stint as a soldier in America serving under Lafayette (whom he would later speak against to other patriot sans-culottes). He was eventually an orator for a local section of sans-culottes.

After generating a more substantial fortune and moving to Rue de la Clef, a Parisian quarter inhabited by royalists and sans-culottes alike, in January 1792, Hanriot soon became well known for his anti-aristocratic outlook. He was strongly in favor of imposing taxes on the aristocracy, presenting them "with a bill in one hand and a pistol in the other." With this attitude he gained a loyal following of local sans-culottes and they would adopt him as their section leader in the September Massacres later that year. His involvement in the September Massacres secured his place as a soldier in the National Guard in Paris, gradually rising to the rank of captain.

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