Georges Danton

1759 – 1794

Georges Jacques Danton was a French politician and orator who served as the first president of the Committee of Public Safety in 1793 during the French Revolution. He helped organize the September 1792 Massacres in which more than a thousand prisoners—many of them ordinary criminals or political detainees—were summarily executed by Paris mobs over five days, and he supervised the early phase of the Reign of Terror that followed. After turning against the most extreme phase of the Terror under Maximilien Robespierre, he was tried on charges of corruption and counter-revolution and guillotined in April 1794.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM