List of people associated with the French Revolution

This article is part of the History of France series.

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This is a partial list of people involved in the French Revolution. It includes both supporters and opponents of the revolution. It attempts to give identifying facts and ultimate fates. As a rule, the best place to clarify complexities is in the article on the individual in question.

• Charles Pierre François Augereau - officer throughout the Revolutionary era and Empire, general, later Marshal of France.
• François-Noël Babeuf - proto-socialist, guillotined 1797 after a coup attempt
• Jean Sylvain Bailly - leader of the Third Estate, administered the Tennis Court Oath, made mayor of Paris after the fall of the Bastille, guillotined during the Reign of Terror.
• Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave - constitutional monarchist / Feuillant (faction)
• François Barthélemy - briefly a Director, exiled to French Guiana, returned during the Empire
• Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte - General, later king of Sweden
• Louis Alexandre Berthier - General, effectively Napoleon Bonaparte's chief of staff
• Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne - on Committee of Public Safety, more radical Robespierre, but survived on 9 Thermidor; was later deported to French Guiana
• Louis de Breteuil - royalist, briefly supplanted Necker in the royal cabinet
• Cardinal Etienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne - royalist, President of the Royal Council of Finances shortly before the Revolution
• Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville - Girondist (faction), (Girondists are sometimes designated "Brissotins"), guillotined
• Guillaume Marie Anne Brune - political journalist, Jacobin, friend of Georges Danton. Went directly from civilian life to being a general; later marshal of France. Murdered by royalists during the White Terror
• Edmund Burke - English philosopher and politician, author of a famous 1790 polemic against the Revolution
• Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès - a moderate throughout the Revolutionary era, Second Consul under Bonaparte, chief contributor to the Napoleonic Code
• Pierre Joseph Cambon - a rather independent member of the Committee of Public Safety
• Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot - mathematician, physicist, on Committee of Public Safety, turned against Robespierre on 9 Thermidor, a Director, ousted in 18 Fructidor coup
• Jacques Antoine Marie Cazalès - royalist
• François-René de Chateaubriand - royalist
• Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, like Jacques Hébert a devotee of the Cult of Reason, guillotined with Hébert
• André Chénier, poet, guillotined
• Étienne Clavière - Girondist (faction), finance minister in 1792, died in prison 1793
• Jean Marie Collot d'Herbois - actor, part of the insurrectionary Paris Commune (French Revolution), belated Montagnard (faction), on Committee of Public Safety. After the Thermidorian Reaction, was deported to French Guiana, where he died
• Marquis de Condorcet - philosopher, mathematician, loosely associated with the Girondist faction, probably suicide in prison.
• Charlotte Corday - assassin of Marat
• Charles-Augustin de Coulomb - major contributor to the metric system
• Georges Couthon - Montagnard (faction), on Committee of Public Safety, guillotined after 9 Thermidor
• Georges Danton - writer, Jacobin but neither a Girondist nor a Montagnard (factions), on Committee of Public Safety, guillotined 3 months before Robespierre
• Pierre Claude François Daunou - historian, loosely associated with the Girondist faction, survived to serve under the Directory and Empire as well.
• Jacques Louis David - painter, Montagnard (faction), on Committee of General Security, fell from power after 9 Thermidor but survived
• Camille Desmoulins - journalist, Montagnard (faction), close to Danton and shared in his downfall, guillotined
• Denis Diderot - Enlightenment author and atheist philosopher, influential on the Revolution
• Jacques François Dugommier - General
• Charles François Dumouriez - General, sometime Girondist (faction), foreign minister in the Girondist cabinet, eventually defected to the Austrians
• Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours - constitutional monarchist, president of the National Constituent Assembly, eventual exile
• Fabre d'Églantine - author of the names and months of the French Revolutionary Calendar
• Joseph Fesch - Roman Catholic cardinal, closely associated with Napoleon Bonaparte
• Henri Grégoire - revolutionary priest, supporter of Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
• Jacques Hébert - polemical writer, editor of Le Père Duchesne, guillotined late in Reign of Terror for advocating yet more radical measures than those in place
• Marie Jean Hérault de Séchelles - on Committee of Public Safety, revised Condorcet's Constitution of 1793, close to Danton and shared in his downfall, guillotined
• Lazare Hoche - ascended from corporal to general in the early years of the Revolution, died in 1797 of tuberculosis*Joséphine de Beauharnais - Empress, wife of Napoleon
• François Christophe Kellermann - longtime officer, became general early in the Revolution, hero of Valmy, marshal of France, employed in the administration of the army under the Empire
• Jean-Baptiste Kléber - Revolutionary general, assassinated in Cairo 1800
• Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Bonapartist general, author of Les Liaisons dangereuses
• Lafayette - general, constitutional monarchist / Feuillant (faction)
• Jean Lannes - rose through the ranks to become general, marshal of France. Close to Napoleon Bonaparte, killed during the campaign of 1809
• Antoine Lavoisier - a major contributor to the metric system; guillotined for his role as a tax collector.
• Charles Leclerc - General, close to Napoleon Bonaparte, served in Haiti
• Louis LePeletier de Saint Fargeau - ex-noble, voted for the execution of Louis XVI, assassinated shortly thereafter.
• Jacques-Donatien Le Ray - a key figure in engineering French support for the American Revolution, but an émigré during the French Revolution.
• Robert Lindet - a rather independent member of the Committee of Public Safety, but opposed the Girondist faction
• Louis XVI of France - king at the start of the Revolution, deposed, guillotined
• Louis XVII of France - the "lost dauphin"
• François-Séverin Marceau - General
• Marie Antoinette - queen at the start of the Revolution, deposed, guillotined
• Jean-Paul Marat - radical journalist, Montagnard (faction), assassinated by Charlotte Corday
• Jean-Sifrein Maury - royalist
• Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes - while not particularly a royalist, was the former king's defense counsel at his trial.
• Philippe-Antoine Merlin - a Director, later a Bonapartist
• Honoré Mirabeau - Although noble, entered the 1789 Estates-General as a representative of the Third Estate and was a major figure until his 1791 death from natural causes
• Montesquieu - Enlightenment political philosopher, influential on the Revolution
• Jean Victor Marie Moreau - general, with a complicated career full of intrigues
• Napoleon Bonaparte - General, then First Consul, then Emperor
• Jacques Necker - liberal royalist, Director-General of Finances at start of Revolution
• Olympe de Gouges - writer, advocate of gender equality, guillotined.
• Thomas Paine - American revolutionary writer, imprisoned and sentenced to death during Reign of Terror, but survived
• Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve - insurrectionary mayor of Paris, on the firstCommittee of Public Safety, loosely connected to the Girondist faction, ultimately a suicide during the Reign of Terror
• Pierre Phélippeaux - Montagnard (faction)
• Philippe-Egalité - Duke of Orleans, constitutional monarchist, voted for the execution of his own cousinLouis XVI; guillotined on (probably false) suspicions of intriguing
• Claude Antoine, comte Prieur-Duvernois (a.k.a. Prieur de la Côte-d'Or) - engineer, on Committee of Public Safety, close to Carnot, turned against Robespierre on 9 Thermidor, under the Directory he sat in the Council of Five Hundred
• Pierre Louis Prieur (a.k.a. Prieur de la Marne) - on Committee of Public Safety
• Maximilien Robespierre - Montagnard (faction), on Committee of Public Safety, prominent in Reign of Terror, guillotined after 9 Thermidor.
• Jean Marie Roland de la Platière - Girondist (faction), interior minister in 1792, committed suicide in 1793
• Madame Roland (born Manon Jeanne Philpon) - wife of Jean Marie Roland, author of many writings under his name, salonière, guillotined
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Enlightenment political philosopher, influential on the Revolution
• Jacques Roux - Hebertist
• Marquis de Sade - erotic and philosophic author
• Jean Bon Saint-André - Montagnard (faction), on Committee of Public Safety, later a naval officer
• Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just - on Committee of Public Safety - Montagnard (faction), on Committee of Public Safety, close to Robespierre, prominent in Reign of Terror, guillotined after 9 Thermidor
• Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès - Although a member of the clergy, entered the 1789 Estates-General as a representative of the Third Estate. Author of pamphlet "What is the Third Estate?". Instigated the coup of 18 Brumaire, but was outflanked by Napoleon Bonaparte
• Madame de Staël - salonière, writer, daughter of Jacques Necker
• Talleyrand - clergyman and diplomat; first a royalist, then one of the authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and a constitutional bishop, eventually Foreign Minister under Napoleon.
• Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target - lawyer, generally associated with Directory-era politics.
• Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud - Girondist (faction) leader, guillotined.
• Louis Charles Antoine Desaix de Veygoux - general, died in battle 1800
• Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac - Girondist, then a Montagnard (factions), on Committee of Public Safety, drew up the 9 Thermidor report outlawing Robespierre; later a Bonapartist.
• Voltaire -- Enlightenment author, deist/agnostic philosopher, influential on the Revolution

• For groups and factions, see Glossary of the French Revolution
• List of Historians of the French Revolution