Prieur de la Marne

(1756-1827)

   political figure

   Pierre-Louis Prieur, or Prieur de la Marne as he is known, was born in Sommesous, Champagne. An attorney, he served as a deputy for the Third Estate to the estates general (1789) and, during the revolution of 1789, became a member of the jacobin Club. He sat with the extreme Left in the Constituent Assembly, where his violent statements earned him the sobriquet "Crieur de la Marne." Reelected to the Convention (1792), he helped to put forth the decree ordering the raising of a force of 300,000 for the military (February 24, 1793). He was a member of the Committee of General Defense (March 1793), then the Committee of Public Safety (July 1793), where, with jean bon saint-andré, he worked on the organization of the navy. After the fall of maximilien Robespierre (9 Thermidor Year II [July 27, 1794]), he was implicated in the montagnard insurrection of Year III but remained in hiding until the Amnesty Law of Year IV. He was proscribed as a regicide in 1816 and went into exile.