Fauchet, Claude

Fauchet, Claude

(klōd fōshā`), 1744–93, French clergyman and revolutionary, constitutional bishop of Calvados. A leader in the attack (1789) on the Bastille, Fauchet was a member of the Commune of Paris, of the Legislative Assembly, and of the Convention. Self-styled the Attorney General of the Truth, he sided with the GirondistsGirondists
or Girondins
, political group of moderate republicans in the French Revolution, so called because the central members were deputies of the Gironde dept. Girondist leaders advocated continental war.
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; after their fall he was executed.

Fauchet, Claude

 

Born Sept. 22, 1744, in Domes; died Oct. 31, 1793, in Paris. Figure in the Great French Revolution.

Before the revolution, Fauchet was vicar to the archbishop of Bourges. He took part in the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and in 1789 and 1790 he was a member of the Paris Commune. In 1789 he helped found the Social Circle, which lasted until 1791, and in 1790, the World Federation of Friends of the Truth. During 1790 and 1791 he preached the revolutionary ideas of egalitarianism in La Bouche de fer, a newspaper that he published with N. de Bonneville.

In 1791, Fauchet assumed the post of constitutional bishop of Calvados. In his sermons he advanced radical social demands, including his ideal view of social brotherhood, based on the theory of natural law and the ideas of Christianity. Elected to the Legislative Assembly and then to the Constitutional Convention, Fauchet formed ties with the Girondins. He voted against the execution of Louis XVI and attacked the Jacobins in print.

Fauchet was implicated in the murder of Marat by Charlotte Corday. Although he took no direct part in the assassination, the Revolutionary Tribunal sent him to the guillotine.