ROLAND DE LA PLATIERE, JEAN MARIE, a French minister of the revolutionary period, was horn at Mizy, near Villefranche (Beaujolais), Feb. 18, 1734. His first inde pendent appointment was that of inspector-ordinary at Amiens. In 1775, at the house of a friend in Amiens named Sophie Cannel, he met Marie Jeanne Phlipon, a young woman of brilliant genius and fascinating beauty, and after a courtship of four years, they were married Feb. 4, 1780. When the revolution broke out in 1789, Roland, as well as his wife, became a decided partisan of the movement. In 1791 he was sent to Paris, by the municipality of Lyons, to represent to the constituent assembly the deplor able condition of the Lyonnese weavers, After the dissolution of the constituent assem bly, he founded at Lyons the Club Central, time members of which, marked by their attachmentlo constitutional liberty, received the name of Rolandins. Toward the close of 1791 he fixed himself at Paris, and soon became one of the heads of the Girondist or moderate section of the republicans. In March, 1792, he was appointed minister of the
interior, a situation which he held till Jan., 1793, when he resigned it, despairing of see ing moderate counsels adopted. After placing his accounts in the hands of the assembly, he asked permission to withdraw from Paris, but it was refused, and an illegal attempt. was made to arrest him, which failed. Immediately after, he fled, and concealed him self in Rouen. When news reached him of the execution of his wife, he committed suicide at a small village in•the environs of Rouen, Nov. 15, 1793. Roland wrote and published several memoirs and disquisitions on branches of industry, besides 6 vols. of Letters addressed to his wife before their marriage, from Switzerland, Ithly, Sicily, and Malta.