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Paul François Jean Nicolas, Viscount de Barras (; 30 June 1755 – 29 January 1829), commonly known as Paul Barras, was a French people politician of the French Revolution, and the main executive leader of the French Directory regime of 1795–1799.
Shipwrecked on his voyage, he still managed to reach Pondicherry in time to contribute to the defence of that city during the Second Anglo-Mysore War. Besieged by British forces, the city surrendered on 18 October 1778; after the French garrison was released, Barras returned to France.He left on a cartel named Sartine. This was not the Sartine that the British Royal Navy had captured at Pondicherry and taken into service. He took part in a second expedition to the region in 1782/83, serving in the fleet of the renowned Admiral Pierre André de Suffren. Afterwards, he spent several years back home in France at leisure in relative obscurity.
In January 1793, he voted with the majority for the execution of Louis XVI. However, he was mostly absent from Paris on missions to the regions of the south-east of France. During this period, he made the acquaintance of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Siege of Toulon (his later clash with Napoleon made him downplay the latter's abilities as a soldier: he noted in his Memoirs that the siege had been carried out by 30,000 men against a minor royalist defending force, whereas the real number was 12,000; he also sought to minimize the share taken by Bonaparte in the capture of the city).Canteleu, pp. 35–37. When Barras became Director, he gave Napoleon position of general in the battalion of Italians.
Owing to his intimate relations with Joséphine de Beauharnais, Barras helped to facilitate a marriage between her and Bonaparte. Some of his contemporaries alleged that this was the reason behind Barras's nomination of Bonaparte to the early in the year 1796. Bonaparte's success gave the Directory unprecedented stability, and when, in the summer of 1797, the royalist and surviving Girondist opposition again met the government with resistance, Bonaparte sent General Charles-Pierre Augereau, a Jacobin Club, to repress their movement in the Coup of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797).
Since he had amassed a large fortune, Barras spent his later years in luxury. Napoleon had him confined to the Château de Grosbois (Barras's property), then exiled to Brussels and Rome, and ultimately, in 1810, Internment in Montpellier; set free after the fall of the Empire, he died in Chaillot (now Paris), and was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Although a partisan of the Second Restoration, Barras was kept in check during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X (and his Memoirs were censored after his death).
Barras was portrayed by Tahar Rahim in the 2023 film Napoleon.
National Convention
At the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, he advocated the Democracy cause, and became one of the administrators of the Var. In June 1792 he took his seat in the high national court at Orléans. Later in that year, on the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, Barras became commissioner to the French Army, which was facing the forces of Sardinia in the Italian Peninsula, and entered the National Convention as a deputy for the Var.
Thermidor and the Directory
In 1794, Barras sided with the men who sought to overthrow Maximilien Robespierre's faction. The Thermidorian Reaction of 27 July 1794 made him rise to prominence. In the next year, when the Convention felt threatened by the malcontent National Guards of Paris, it appointed Barras to command the troops engaged in its defence. His nomination of Bonaparte led to the adoption of violent measures, ensuring the dispersion of royalists and other malcontents in the streets near the Tuileries Palace, remembered as the 13 Vendémiaire (5 October 1795). Subsequently, Barras became one of the five French Directory who controlled the executive of the French Republic.
Downfall and later life
Barras was alleged to have dozens of mistresses and male lovers. The corruption of his administration was claimed to be extraordinary even for France. Barras's alleged immorality in public and private life is often cited as a major contribution to the fall of the Directory, and the creation of the French Consulate. In any case, Bonaparte met little resistance during his 18 Brumaire coup of November 1799. Barras supported the change of government, but was left aside by the First Consul when the latter reshaped the government of France.
Films and television
Richard McCabe played Barras in the Napoleon episode of the BBC series Heroes and Villains (2007).
See also
Bibliography
Notes
Jean-Barthélemy Le Couteulx de Canteleu (2025). 9780312431105, Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN 9780312431105
Further reading
Categories: 1755 Births, 1829 Deaths, People From Var, Viscounts Of Barras, Politicians From Provence-alpes-côte D'azur, Military Governors Of Paris, Thermidorians, Deputies To The French National Convention, Members Of The Council Of Five Hundred, Directeurs Of The First French Republic, Regicides Of Louis Xvi, Représentants En Mission, Bisexual Male Politicians, Bisexual Male Writers, Bisexual Memoirists, Bisexual Military Personnel, French Lgbtq Military Personnel, French Bisexual Men, French Bisexual Writers, French Bisexual Politicians, Lgbtq Nobility, 18th-century French Military Personnel, Exiled French Politicians, Prisoners And Detainees Of France, French Prisoners And Detainees, Leaders Who Took Power By Coup, Leaders Ousted By A Coup, 19th-century French Writers, 19th-century French Memoirists, Burials At Père Lachaise Cemetery, People From French India
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