ARMAND

GENSONNE (1758-1793)  , French politician, the son of a military surgeon, was born at Bordeaux on the loth of August 1758 . He studied law, and at the outbreak of the Revolution was an advocate of the parlement of Bordeaux . In 1790 he became procureur of the Commune, and in July 1791 was elected by the newly created department of the Gironde a member of the court of appeal . In the same year he was elected deputy for the department to the Legislative Assembly . As reporter of the diplomatic committee, in which he supported the policy of Brissot, he proposed two of the most revolutionary measures passed by . the Assembly: the decree of accusation against the king's brothers (January 1, 1792), and the declaration of war against the king of Bohemia and Hungary (April 20, 1792) . He was vigorous in his denunciations of the intrigues of the court and of the " Austrian committee "; but the violence of the extreme democrats, culminating in the events of the loth of August, alarmed him; and when he was returned to the National Convention, he attacked the Commune of Paris (October 24 and 25) . At the trial of I ouis XVI. he supported an appeal to the people, but voted for the death sentence . As a member of the Committee of General Defence, and as president of the Convention (March 7-21, 1793), he shared in the bitter attacks of the Girondists on the Mountain; and on the fatal day of the 2nd of June his name was among the first of those inscribed on the prosecution list . He was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 24th of October 1793, condemned to death and guillotined on the 31st of the month, displaying on the scaffold a stoic fortitude . Gensonne was accounted one of the most brilliant of the little band of brilliant orators from the Gironde, though his eloquence was somewhat cold and he always read his speeches .