JOSEPH

See also:

• JOSEPH CHALIER (1747—1793)

CHALIER (1747—1793)  , French Revolutionist . He was destined by his family for the church, but entered business, and became a partner in a firm at Lyons for which he travelled in the Levant, in Italy, Spain and Portugal . He was in Paris in 1789, and entered into relations with Marat, Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre . On his return to Lyons, Chalier was the first to be named member of the municipal bureau . He organized the national guard, applied the civil constitution of the clergy, and regulated the finances of the city so as to tax the rich heavily and spare the poor . Denounced to the Legislative Assembly by the directory of the department of Rhone-et-Loire for having made a nocturnal domiciliary perquisition, he was sent to the bar of the Assembly, which approved of his conduct . In the election for mayor of Lyons, in November 1792, he was defeated by a Royalist . Then Chalier became the orator and leader of the Jacobins of Lyons, and induced the other revolutionary clubs and the commune of his city to arrest a great number of Royalists in the night of the 5th and 6th of February 1793 . The mayor, supported by the national guard, opposed this project . Chalier demanded of the Convention the establishment of a revolutionary tribunal and the levy of a revolutionary army at Lyons . The Convention refused, and the anti-revolutionary party, encouraged by this refusal, took action . On the 29th and 3oth of May 1793 the sections rose; the Jacobins were dispossessed of the municipality and Chalier arrested .

On the 15th of

July, in spite of the order of the Convention, he was brought before the criminal tribunal of the Rhone-et-Loire, condemned to death, and guillotined the next day . The Terrorists paid a veritable worship to his memory, as to amartyr of Liberty . See N . Wahl, "Etude sur Chalier," in Revue historique, t. xxxiv.; and Les Premieres Annees-de laRevolution d Lyon (Paris, 1894) .