COLLOT D'l I E111301S, JEAN MARIE, wee born at Paris in 1750. Ile was in his fortieth year at the faking of the Bastille (July14,1789), having for twenty years led the life of a strolling player. During this part of his career he bad visited Geneva, where he first imbibed his republican ideas; and then Lyon, where ho was hissed off the stage— a silk:race which he afterwards most fearfully avenged. Some natural talents however he must have possessed, for be produced many dramatic pieces; and one of these, ' Le Paysan Alagistrat,' was very successful, and kept the stage for more than sten years. He first attracted public notice by his popular ' Altnanach du Pere Gerard,' in January 1792, for which he received a prize from the Jacobin Society.
Ills next step was his public display of forty liberated convicts, whom he had caused to be released from Brest, and whom he paraded along the whole line of the Boulevards, in a grand triumphal car, surmounted with sags and laurel-wreaths. Collet stood up in the centre of the group, and harangued the multitude. These convicts wore their red caps, to wear which soon after became the fashion. This audacious exhibition made Collet a public man. Ile was elected in September to sit in the Convention as one of the deputies for Paris. Absent on a mission in December, he did not take part in the trial of Louis XVI., but wrote to the Convention that he voted for the king's death. When the Committee of Public Safety was formed, Collet became a leading member, and his sanguinary proscription. far exceeded those of Robespierre. It was this fiery zeal, and a certain inflated arrogance of speech, joined to • stentorian voice, which caused him to be sent on several misaions into the departments, to propagate tho principles of the revolution.
In November 1793 Collet was despatched to Lyon, with his colleague Fouchd, and iu this ill-fated city 1600 persoua were destroyed, as well by dischargs a of artillery as by the guillotine. Moreover, on the 21st Veudemiaire, a decree was hawed that Lyon was to be razed to the ground. 'ibis ferocious monster made it a crime to look even dejected, and ordered " that .11 persons were to be treated as suspected in whose countenances any signs of either grief or pity could be traced." On the 23rd of May 1794 Collet was attacked, on his return home after midnight, by a man mines! Admiral, who discharged two pistols at him, but without effect. The éclat produced by this event increased Cellaa influents in the Couvention, and from that hour the fatal eyo of the dictator was fixed upon him. During the struggle which followed between them, Collet became President of the Convention, July 19, 1791; and nine days after, Robespierre (the remnants of all the discom fited factious having united to overthrow him) was sent to the scaffold.
But now his own fall was at hand. Denounced first by L"cointre of Versailles, and then by the butcher Legeadre, October 3, 1791, Collet was condemned In the following March to be transported to Cayeone, with Varennos, and Bares. here ho lingered for a few mouths, and having caught tie freer natural to the climate, he expired amidst osnrulsious of great agony, January 8, 1796.