Félix Pyat

Born Oct. 4, 1810, in Vierzon; died Aug. 4, 1889, in Saint-Gratien. French politician, journalist, and writer.

During the Revolution of 1848, Pyat served as a commissioner of the provisional government and as deputy of the Constituent, subsequently Legislative, Assembly. In 1849 he helped organize the New Mountain, a bloc of petit bourgeois democrats and socialists. Pyat emigrated after the failure of the antigovernment demonstration in Paris on June 13, 1849. He was sentenced in absentia to exile. After 1864, Pyat was a member of the French section of the First International in London. He waged a slanderous campaign against the General Council of the First International and against K. Marx personally. Pyat was in Paris in 1868–69 but had to flee to escape prosecution. He returned to France after the revolution of Sept. 4, 1870. In September 1870 he began publishing the newspaper Le Combat, in which he scourged the Government of National Defense. Pyat participated in the uprising of Oct. 31, 1870, after which he was arrested (though soon released) and his newspaper banned. In February 1871 he founded the newspaper Le Vengeur, which was published until May 24. He was elected a deputy to the National Assembly.

Pyat was a member of the Paris Commune of 1871 and a leader of the Jacobin-Blanquist majority. He served, in succession, on the Commune’s and executive finance commissions and its Committee of Public Safety. He made slanderous attacks on the socialists A. Vermorel and A. Serraillier. After the suppression of the Commune, Pyat emigrated to Great Britain, and in 1873 he was sentenced in absentia to death. He returned to France after the 1880 amnesty and started publishing the radical newspaper La Commune, later La Commune libre. In 1888, Pyat became a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He opposed General G. E. Boulanger. N. G. FEDOROVSKII

Pyat’s revolutionary and antityrannical plays were popular during the 1830’s and 1840’s. They included Ango (1835; written with A. Luchet) and Cedric the Norwegian (1842), and the melodramas The Two Locksmiths (1841) and The Ragpicker of Paris (1847), where the author shows the moral superiority of the urban poor over the members of the propertied classes. Pyat also wrote short stories and sketches.