René-François Dumas, born 14 December 1753 in Jussey, in the bailiwick of Amont (now in Haute-Saône), was a revolutionary French lawyer and politician, regarded as a "Robespierrist", who died on 28 July 1794 (10 Thermidor) at Paris.
[2][3][4] On 8 April 1794, three days after the execution of Danton and Desmoulins, he became the president of the court, taking over from Martial Joseph Armand Herman, who was appointed Foreign minister.
In this quality, with Fouquier-Tinville as the public prosecutor, he headed several major political trials in which defendants were sentenced to death.
[5] According to Fouquier-Tinville, Dumas and Coffinhal, the vice-president of the tribunal, went each morning to see Robespierre and did what he told them to do, not what the Committee of Public Safety had decided.
[7] At four o'clock in the afternoon a charge of 45 convicts was sent to the guillotine on the Place de la Nation, but was stopped on the way in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.