Jean-Bertrand Féraud

A member of the Jacobins, close to Robespierre and Danton, Jean Bertrand Féraud was elected to the National Convention in 1792 from Hautes-Pyrénées.

He delivered a public speech on 9 Germinal Year I (29 March 1793) to the People's Society of Tarbes, at the church of Saint Jean, where the pope was burned in effigy.

During the Thermidorean reaction, he joined the opponents of Robespierre and, together with Paul Barras and his troops, he broke into the Hôtel de Ville to search out the Montagnards in hiding there.

The crowd cut off his head, hoisted it on a pike, and then carried it aloft into the chamber of the Convention in front of its President[7] - who was not Boissy d'Anglas as shown in a famous painting by Fragonard, but Theodore Vernier.

[9] In the tumult, a 50-year-old locksmith's assistant named Jean Tinelle was arrested and condemned to death on 5 Prairial Year III for having carried the head on the pike.

[10] There are various extant representations of Féraud's death, including engravings, paintings and sketches, as well as numerous accounts in newspapers and letters.