The Plain was dominated by the radical Montagnards and Barère as one of their leaders supported the foundation of the Committee of Public Safety in April and of a sans-culottes army in September 1793.

[3] Jean-Pierre would later earn a spot in the Council of Five Hundred alongside the very men who discarded any notion of accepting Bertrand Barére as a member.

Barère practiced as an advocate with considerable success and wrote some small pieces, which he sent to the principal literary societies in the south of France.

This body held a yearly meeting of great interest to the whole city, at which flowers of gold and silver were awarded for odes, idyls, and eloquence.

According to François Victor Alphonse Aulard, Barère's paper, the Point du Jour, owed its reputation not so much to its own qualities as to the depiction of Barére in the Tennis Court Oath sketch.

After the Constituent Assembly ended its session, he was nominated one of the judges of the newly instituted Cour de cassation from October 1791 to September 1792.

[7] He voted with The Mountain for the king's execution "without appeal and without delay," and closed his speech with: "the tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.

[16] On 5 September 1793 Barère incited the French National Convention with a speech glorifying terror and the founding of revolutionary armies by Sans-culottes: The aristocrats of Internal Affairs are since many days meditating a movement.

It will be organized, regularized by a revolutionary army that at last will fulfill that great word that it owes to the Paris Commune: Let's make terror the order of the day!

The blade of the law should hover over all the guilty.On 12 October when Hébert accused Marie-Antoinette of incest with her son, Robespierre had dinner with Barère, Saint-Just and Joachim Vilate.

His role as the chief communicator throughout the Reign of Terror, combined with his lyrical eloquence, led to his nickname: "Anacreon Of The Guillotine.

"[22] He changed his stance when the Hébertists called for another revolution in March 1794; the voluntary Guards and militant Sans-culottes lost influence quickly.

[9] Barère went on to state that "the Republic leaves the guidance of your first years to your parents, but as soon as your intelligence is developed, it proudly claims the rights that it holds over you.

His influence on education is seen in American schools today as they recite the pledge of allegiance, and teach the alphabet and the multiplication table.

[23][24][25][26] During the Festival of the Supreme Being Robespierre was not only criticized by Barère, but also by Vadier, Courtois and Fouché, the other members of the Committee of General Security.

Some members of the Committee of Public Safety, such as Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne, had pursued aggressive campaigns of Terror.

[32] Finally, aggressive representatives on mission, including Joseph Fouche, had been recalled to Paris to face scrutiny for their actions in the countryside and all feared for their safety.

On 4 Thermidor, Barère offered to help enforce the Ventose Decrees in exchange for an agreement to not pursue a purge of the National Convention.

These decrees, a program of property confiscation that had seen little support in the previous four months, were received with cautious optimism by Couthon and Saint-Just.

[34] Saint-Just declared in negotiations with Barère that he was prepared to make concessions on the subordinate position of the Committee of General Security.

[35][36] Robespierre continued down this path until 8 Thermidor when he gave a famous oration alluding to multiple threats within the National Convention.

[38] After being ejected from the Jacobin Club that night, Collot and Billaud-Varenne returned to the Committee of Public Safety to find Saint-Just at work on a speech for the next day.

Though Barère had been pushing Saint-Just to give a speech regarding the new unity of the Committees, both Collot and Billaud-Varenne assumed he was working on their final denunciation.

Laurent Lecointre was the instigator of the coup,[40] assisted by Barère, Fréron, Barras, Tallien, Thuriot, Courtois, Rovère, Garnier de l’Aube and Guffroy.

Here Barère played his role in 9 Thermidor, by submitting a bill that would blunt the ability of the Paris Commune to be used as a military force.

[42] According to Barère, the committees asked themselves why there still existed a military regime in Paris; why all these permanent commanders, with staffs, and immense armed forces?

On 2nd Germinal of the year III (22 March 1795), the leaders of Thermidor decreed the arrest of Barère and his colleagues in the Reign of Terror, Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois and Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne.

Barère escaped on 4 Brumaire IV (26 October 1795), with the help also of a local man named Eutrope Vanderkand.

The last surviving member of the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety, his memoirs were published posthumously in four volumes by Hippolyte Carnot in 1842[49] and reviewed for English readers at exhaustive length (80 pages) by Thomas Babington Macaulay.