Pierre Louis Roederer

On the proposition of Roederer, in 1787, the Royal Society of Science and Arts of Metz offered a prize for the best essay in answer to the question: "What are the best means to make the Jews happier and more useful in France?".

In the National Constituent Assembly, Roederer was a member of the committee of taxes (comité des contributions), prepared a scheme for a new system of taxation, drew up a law on patents, occupied himself with the laws relating to revenue stamps and assignats, and was successful in opposing the introduction of an income tax.

The directory of the département, of which the Duc de la Rochefoucauld d'Enville was president, was at this time in pronounced opposition to the radical views that dominated the Legislative Assembly and the Jacobin Club, and Roederer was not altogether in touch with his colleagues.

But the directory did not long survive: with the growing revolutionary opposition in the capital, many of its members resigned and fled, and their places could not be filled.

Roederer himself fell under suspicion and went into hiding during the Reign of Terror, emerging again only after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre and the start of the Thermidorian Reaction.

Having escaped deportation at the time of the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor, he took part in organizing Napoleon Bonaparte's 18 Brumaire Coup—alongside Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, Saint-Jean d'Angély, and Count Volnay—and wrote the Adresse aux Parisiens (Napoleon's speech to the people of Paris, given immediately after the coup).