BATZ, JEAN, BARON DE (1 761-182 2) , French Royalist, was born in Gascony on Dec. 6, 1761, and died at Chadieu, Jan. Io, 1822. At the time of the French Revolution he was grand seneschal of the duchy of Albret, and in 1789 was nominated deputy at the States General by the nobility of Nerac. In the con stituent assembly De Batz was on the committee for finance ; on July 3, 1790, he reported on the public debt, and he opposed the issue of assignats. On Jan. 21, 1793, the baron made a futile attempt to rescue Louis XVI., on his way to the guillotine; five months later he organized a conspiracy to help Marie Antoinette to escape from the Temple. On the failure of this plot on June 21, he left Paris for a time. His next step was to join the foreign conspiracy which aimed at the dissolution of the convention and the restoration of the monarchy. Drawing suspicion on himself by his connection with certain members of the convention, Fabre d'Eglantine, Chabot, Bazire, etc., who were accused of speculating in the public funds, De Batz was attacked on June by Elie Lacoste, who accused him, before the convention, of con spiracy with Jacobins to restore the Bourbons. Of a number of proscribed men who were arrested and guillotined, De Batz was the only one to escape. After this, little is known of his move ments; he served, apparently, in Conde's army till 1800, and on the return of Louis XVIII., in 1814, was made a Knight of St. Louis. In 1820 he retired to his estate at Chadieu, where he died in 1822.
See R. de Batz, La vie et les conspirations de Jean, Baron de Batz (i go8) , and Les conspirations et la fin de Jean, Baron de Batz (1911) .