Hébert, Jacques René

Hébert, Jacques René

(zhäk rənā` ābĕr`), 1757–94, French journalist and revolutionary. An ardent supporter of the French Revolution, he gained the support of the working classes through his virulent paper Le Père Duchesne and was prominent in the CordeliersCordeliers
, political club of the French Revolution. Founded (1790) as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, it was called after its original meeting place, the suppressed monastery of the Cordeliers (Franciscan Recollects).
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. He became one of the leaders of the Commune of ParisCommune of Paris,
insurrectionary governments in Paris formed during (1792) the French Revolution and at the end (1871) of the Franco-Prussian War. In the French Revolution, the Revolutionary commune, representing urban workers, tradespeople, and radical bourgeois, engineered
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, and, as such, his power was a counterforce to that of Maximilien RobespierreRobespierre, Maximilien Marie Isidore
, 1758–94, one of the leading figures of the French Revolution. Early Life

A poor youth, he was enabled to study law in Paris through a scholarship.
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. He was largely responsible for the tightening of the maximum price laws during the Reign of TerrorReign of Terror,
1793–94, period of the French Revolution characterized by a wave of executions of presumed enemies of the state. Directed by the Committee of Public Safety, the Revolutionary government's Terror was essentially a war dictatorship, instituted to rule the
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 and for the Law of Suspects. An atheist, he and Pierre ChaumetteChaumette, Pierre Gaspard
, 1763–94, French Revolutionary. A member of the Cordeliers, he collaborated with Jacques Hébert to eliminate the royalists and to introduce (1793) the cult of Reason.
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 were the founders of the cult of the worship of Reason. Hébert's policies and his power over the commune threatened the government and aroused Robespierre's opposition. When Hébert and his followers began preparing for a possible popular insurrection, they were arrested (Mar., 1794), tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and guillotined.