[20] [Antoine Pierre Joseph Barnave, born 1761, was appointed President of the Constituent Assembly in 1790. He was guillotined November 30, 1793.
Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville, philosopher and politician, born January 14, 1754, was one of the principal instigators of the revolt of the Champ de Mars, July, 1789. He was guillotined October 31, 1793.
Marie Jean Antoine, Marquis de Condorcet, born September 17, 1743, was appointed President of the Legislative Assembly in 1792. Proscribed by the Girondins, he poisoned himself to escape the guillotine, March 28, 1794.
Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, born March 9, 1749, died April 2, 1791.
Jérôme Petion de Villeneuve, born 1753, Mayor of Paris in 1791, took an active part in the imprisonment of the king. In 1793 he fell under Robespierre's displeasure, and to escape proscription took refuge in the department of Calvados. In 1794 his body was found in a field, half eaten by wolves.
Jean Baptiste, Baron de Clootz (better known as Anacharsis Clootz), was born in 1755. In 1790, at the bar of the National Convention, he described himself as the "Speaker of Mankind." Being suspected by Robespierre, he was condemned to death, March 24, 1794. On the scaffold he begged to be executed last, "in order to establish certain principles." (See Carlyle's French Revolution, 1839, iii. 315.)
Georges Jacques Danton, born October 28, 1759, helped to establish the Revolutionary Tribunal, March 10, and the Committee of Public Safety, April 6, 1793; agreed to proscription of the Girondists, June, 1793; was executed with Camille Desmoulins and others, April 5, 1794.
Jean Paul Marat, born May 24, 1744, physician and man of science, proposed and carried out the wholesale massacre of September 2-5, 1792; was denounced to, but acquitted by, the Revolutionary Tribunal, May, 1793; assassinated by Charlotte Corday, July 13, 1793.
Marie Jean Paul, Marquis de La Fayette, born September 6, 1757, died May 19, 1834.
With the exception of La Fayette, who outlived Byron by ten years, and Lord St. Vincent, all "the famous persons" mentioned in stanzas ii.-iv. had passed away long before the First Canto of Don Juan was written.]