Armand Gensonné

Who was Armand Gensonné?

Armand Gensonné was a French politician.

The son of a military surgeon, he was born in Bordeaux, Gascony, and studied Law before the outbreak of the French Revolution, becoming lawyer of the parlement of Bordeaux. In 1790 he became procureur of the Bordeaux Commune, and in July 1791 was elected by the newly created départment of the Gironde a member of the court of appeal.

In the same year he was elected deputy for the départment to the Legislative Assembly. As rapporteur of the diplomatic committee, in which he supported the policy of Jacques Pierre Brissot, he proposed two of the most revolutionary measures passed by the Assembly: the decree of accusation against the King Louis XVI's brothers on 1 January 1792, and the declaration of war against the Habsburg ruler Francis II.

He was a denouncer of the intrigues of the court and of the Comité autrichien, but the violence of the extreme republicans, culminating in the riots of 10 August, alarmed him.

Elected to the National Convention, where he was regarded as one of the most brilliant of the group of orators from the Gironde, Gensonné denounced, on 24 October, the actions of the Paris Commune following the September Massacres. At the king's trial in late December, he supported an appeal to the people, but voted for the death sentence. He participated to the Constitution Committee that drafted the Girondin constitutional project.