Saint-Just, LOUIS ANTOINE LÉON FLORELLE DE, French Revolutionist, was born at Decize near Nevers, 25th August 1767, and was educated by the Oratorians at Soissons. He began the study of law at Rheims, but early gave himself to letters, and found his gospel in the writings of Rousseau. At nineteen he set off for Paris, perhaps to avoid taking orders, with some of his mother's plate and other valuables, and was, at her request, imprisoned for six months for selling these. Like most young men of his age he was fired by the revolutionary fever, which, added to the native enthusiasm of his temperament, was yet to carry him far. He published in 1789 a poor poem, L'Organt, a mere boyish imitation of Voltaire's Pucelle, and in 1791 an essay of a different promise, L'Esprit de la Révolution. Next year he was returned fifth deputy for Aisne to the Convention. He first attracted notice by his fierce tirades against the king, and he opened the memorable debate on the verdict in his trial. 'Royalty,' said he, 'is in itself a crime. Every king is a rebel and a usurper. We must judge Louis, not as a citizen, but as an enemy; that is to say, put him to death without forms of process.' He soon became a devoted follower of Robespierre, and by his influence was sent on missions to the armies of the Rhine and the Moselle, which his energy and enthusiasm, as well as administrative ability, urged on to victory. He made bombastic rhetorical speeches before the Convention, but his slight youthful figure, mild voice, large blue eyes, long black hair, and singular beauty gave no promise of the intensity and relentlessness of the fire that burned within him. 'He carries his head like a Saint Sacrament,' said Camille Desmoulins. 'And I,' retorted Saint-Just, 'will make him carry his like a Saint Denis'—a ferocious prophecy soon to be fulfilled. Saint-Just began the attacks on Hébert which sent him to his doom, quickly followed by the fall of Danton and his friends. Early in 1794 he laid before the Convention a comprehensive report on the police, and soon after proposed Robespierre's famous civil institutions—a ludicrous scheme for a new organisation of society. Boys were to be taken from their parents at seven and brought up for the state, not the family; marriages were not to be proclaimed till after the birth of the first child; friendship was to be no longer a domestic tie, but a public obligation, every citizen being required on reaching twenty-one to declare in the temple who were his friends, he that had none to be banished. Until the citizens were sufficiently educated for this splendid programme a strong dictatorship was necessary, and the faithful follower and his chief alike saw the one man in Robespierre. Saint-Just fell with Robespierre, but unlike him carried his head high on the tumbrel, and died without a word, 28th July 1794.
See S. Fleury, Saint-Just et la Terreur (1851), and the Life by Ernest Hamel (1859), the latter as eulogistic as the former is the opposite; also vol. ii. of Aulard's work, Les Orateurs de la Législative et de la Convention.