PETION DE VILLENEUVE, JEROME French writer and politician, was the son of a procureur at Chartres. He became an avocat in 1778. In 1789 he was elected a deputy to the Tiers Etat for Chartres and showed him self a radical leader. He supported Mirabeau on June 23, and was elected president on Dec. 4, 179o. On June 15, 1791 he was elected president of the criminal tribunal of Paris. After the last meeting of the assembly on Sept. 3o, 1791 Robespierre and Petion were made the popular heroes and were crowned by the populace with civic crowns. Petion was elected on Nov. 16, 1791, mayor of Paris in succession to Bailly. On Aug. 3, 1792, at the head of the municipality of Paris, Petion demanded the dethrone ment of the king. He was elected to the Convention for Eure-et Loir and became its first president. L. P. Manuel's proposal that the president of the Assembly should have the same authority as the president of the United States, was rejected, but Petion got the nickname of "Roi Petion," which contributed to his fall.
His jealousy of Robespierre allied him to the Girondin party. He was elected in March 1793 to the first Committee of Public Safety; and he attacked Robespierre, who accused him of know ing and keeping secret Dumouriez's project of treason. His name was among those of the twenty-two Girondin deputies proscribed on June 2. He escaped to Caen and raised the standard of provin cial insurrection against the Convention; and, when the Norman rising failed, he fled to the Gironde. At last, a month before Robespierre's fall in June 1794, he committed suicide.
See Memoires inedits de Petion et memoires de Buzot et de Bar baroux, precedes dune introduction par C. A. Dauban (1866) ; Oeuvres de Pition (3 vols., 1792) ; F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Constituante (1882).