Boissy d'Anglas, François-Antoine, count de

(1756-1826)

   political figure

   Born in Saint-Jean-Chambre, Ardèche, François-Antoine, count de Boissy d'Anglas was a deputy for the third estate to the estates general (1789), and as such, he usually voted with the constitutional faction. Reelected, during the revolution of 1789, to the Convention, he served as its president after 9 Thermidor Year II (July 27, 1794), when maxim-ilien Robespierre was overthrown. A member of the Council of Five Hundred, after having taken part in the drafting of the Constitution of the Year III, he was proscribed during the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor (September 4, 1797), in which the more extreme republican faction of the Directory removed the more moderate and royalist (absolutist and constitutional) members of the government. Boissy d'Anglas, however, escaped deportation and, after the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799) that brought Napoléon Bonaparte (see napoléon i) to power, became a member of the Tribunal, a senator, and eventually a count of the Empire. He was named a peer during the RESTORATION.