Jean Sylvain Bailly

[close] Jean-Sylvain Bailly (15 September 1736 Paris – 12 November 1793 Paris) was a French astronomer and orator, one of the leaders of the early part of the French Revolution. He was ultimately guillotined during the Reign of Terror.

The Revolution interrupted his studies. Elected deputy from Paris to the Estates-General, he was elected president of the Third Estate (5 May 1789), led the famous proceedings in the Tennis Court (20 June), and - immediately after the storming of the Bastille - became the first mayor of Paris under the newly adopted system of the Commune (15 July, 1789 to 16 November 1791). One of his actions in this position was to secure, with others, and in the face of threats and ridicule, the passage of a decree of Sept. 27, 1791 (confirmed Nov. 30 of the same year), which declared Jews to be French citizens, with all rights and privileges. This decree repealed the special taxes that had been imposed on the Jews, as well as all the ordinances existing against them.

The dispersal by the National Guard, under his orders, of the riotous assembly in the Champ de Mars (17 July 1791) made him unpopular, and he retired to Nantes, where he composed his Mémoires d'un témoin (published in 3 vols. by MM. Berville and Barrière, 1821-1822), an incomplete narrative of the extraordinary events of his public life. Late in 1793, Bailly left Nantes to join his friend Pierre Simon Laplace at Melun, but was there recognized, arrested and brought (10 November) before the Revolutionary Tribunal at Paris. On 12 November he was guillotined amid the insults of a howling mob. In the words of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, "He met his death with patient dignity; having, indeed, disastrously shared the enthusiasms of his age, but taken no share in its crimes."