Bailly, JEAN SYLVAIN

Bailly, JEAN SYLVAIN, a famous French astronomer, President of the National Assembly of 1789, and Mayor of Paris, was born in that city, September 15, 1736. From art he turned aside to literature, but was fortunately induced by Lacaille to study astronomy, which proved to be the true sphere of his genius. He was early admitted to the Académie des Sciences, and he justified his honours by a succession of learned and elegantly written treatises on astronomical subjects, which culminated with his great Histoire de l'Astronomie (5 vols. 1775-87). Elected to the Académie Française, and next year to the Académie des Inscriptions, he was thus a member of the three academies at once, an honour that had fallen to no one before him save Fontenelle. The revolution interrupted his peaceful studies. Elected President of the National Assembly, June 17, 1789, and Mayor of Paris on the 15th of July, he conducted himself in these capacities with great integrity and purity of purpose; but at last lost his popularity by allowing the National Guard to fire on the masses who were assembled in the Champ de Mars, on the 17th of July 1791, to demand the dethronement of the king. He now threw up his mayoralty, withdrew altogether from public affairs, and went to live first at Nantes, and afterwards with his friend Laplace at Melun. Here he was seized by the Jacobin soldiery, and brought to Paris, where he was accused of being a royalist conspirator, condemned and executed with the usual Jacobin preliminary of savage insult, November 11, 1793. From his papers were published his Essai sur l'Origine des Fables et des Religions Anciennes (2 vols. 1799), and his Mémoires d'un Témoin de la Révolution (3 vols. 1804). See Nourisson, Trois Révolutionnaires: Turgot, Necker, Bailly (1885).