BILLAUD-VARENNE, JACQUES NICOLAS 1819), French revolutionary, was the son of an avocat at the parlement of Paris. In 1785 he left the Oratorian College where he was prefect of studies, married and bought a position as avocat in the parlement. Early in 1789 he published at Amsterdam a three-volume work on the Despotisme des ministres de la France, and he adopted with enthusiasm the principles of the Revolution.
At the Jacobin club he became from 1790 one of the most violent of the anti-royalist orators. After the flight of Louis XVI. to Varennes, he published a pamphlet, L'Acephocratie, in which he demanded the establishment of a federal republic. In the night of Aug. io, 1792, he was elected one of the "deputy-commis sioners" of the sections who shortly afterwards became the gen eral council of the commune. Elected a deputy of Paris to the National Convention, he at once spoke in favour of the immediate abolition of the monarchy, and the next day demanded that all acts be dated from the year 1 of the republic. At the trial of Louis XVI. he added new charges to the accusation, proposed to refuse counsel to the king, and voted for death "within 24 hours." On June 2, 1793, he proposed a decree of accusation against the Girondists; on June 9, at the Jacobin club, he out lined a programme which the Convention was destined gradually to realize : the expulsion of all foreigners not naturalized, the establishment of an impost on the rich, the deprivation of the rights of citizenship of all "anti-social" men, the creation of a revolutionary army, the licensing of all officers ci-devant nobles, the death penalty for unsuccessful generals. Sent in August as "representative on mission" to the departments of the Nord and of Pas-de-Calais, he showed himself inexorable to all suspects. On his return he was added to the Committee of Public Safety and published a book, Les Elements du republicanisme, in which he demanded a division of property, if not equally, at least pro portionally among the citizens. But he became uneasy for his own safety and turned against Robespierre, whom he attacked on the 8th Thermidor as a "moderate" and a Dantonist. Surprised and menaced by the Thermidorian reaction, he denounced its partisans to the Jacobin club. He was then attacked himself in the Convention for his cruelty, and a commission was appointed to examine his conduct and that of some other members of the former Committee of Public Safety. He was arrested, and as a result of the insurrection of the 12th Germinal of the year 3 (April I, 1795), the Convention decreed his immediate deporta tion to French Guiana. After the i8th Brumaire he refused the pardon offered by the First Consul. In 1816 he left Guiana and took refuge in Port-au-Prince (Haiti), where he died of dysentery.