Born August 25, 1767; guillotined, July 28 (10th Thermidor), 1794, in Paris. His father, a retired army captain, died in 1777, and St. Just was placed in the Oratorian school of Soissons, where he remained for seven years. On leaving school he studied law for a short time at Rheims, but finally decided to embrace a literary career. Having written a volume of poems, he proceeded to Paris, to arrange about their publication, towards the close of the year 1789, and he there became an enthusiastic revolutionary, giving up literature for politics. His youthful ardour and natural eloquence were assisted by an extraordinary beauty of form and feature, grave and serious manners, and a haughty and resolute demeanour. His private life was that of an ascetic until the termination of his short but chequered career. The inhabitants of his native town, Decize (Minervais) elected him lieutenant-colonel of their newly formed National Guard, and he conducted a detachment of that regiment to Paris in 1790 to join in the Feast of Federation. His youth prevented his election to the Legislative Assembly until September 1792, when he attained the age of twenty-five. From that time he took a most active part in the Government, and became the intimate (perhaps the only intimate) friend of Robespierre. On November 12, when the question of the King’s trial came before the Convention, St. Just’s diatribe was by far the most violent of the many violent and fanatical speeches made on that occasion. On December 16 he proposed the exile of all the Bourbons. At the trial of Louis XVI. he voted for the immediate execution of the King. In the meantime the Republic was attacked on all sides, from both without and within, for, of the eighty-four Departments, sixty-five were known to be secretly hostile to the Revolution, and to desire the restoration of the _ancien régime_. On April 24, 1793, St. Just presented to the Convention the following scheme: The Republic, one and indivisible, was to be represented by a Legislative Assembly, elected every two years by universal suffrage and by a Council elected every three years by the electors of the second degree. This Council, composed of a member for each Department, could only act by the authority of the Assembly, and the Ministers whom it was to appoint were to have _no personal or individual power_. Any conflict between the Council and the Assembly should be settled by an appeal to the people.