Jean-François Varlet

Jean-François Varlet was born in 1764 in Paris into a middle class family.  He would go onto study at the College d'Harcourt.

With the outbreak of the Revolution he started to write a series of patriotic songs and create petitions calling for change.  He would openly condemn Lafayette at the Jacobin Club claiming he bore responsibility for the massacre at the Champ De Mars.  It was this that led to his expulsion from the Jacobin Club.

He started to criticise the Assembly and Convention whom he regarded as taking on tyrannical power and abusing the faith of the French people.  He wished for delegates to truly represent their electors through direct democracy.  He took this further by declaring his support for the use of violence as an example of direct democracy.  He supported the removal of the Girondins on the 2nd of June 1793 when the Convention was surrounded by the National Guard and the sans culottes of Paris.  Alongside men such as Roux he was regarded as one of the enragés.

He would be arrested alongside Jacques-René Hébert but then later released.  He was not involved in the arrests and later execution of the Hebertists and Danton and his supporters.  He would be arrested after the fall of Robespierre and spend a year in prison.

When he was released his rage seemed to have faded as he would become a Bonapartist in 1800 and eventually die in 1837.