Trial and Execution of Antoine Lavoisier
I. Causes
A. General Cause
1. Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror was a period of the French Revolution that lasted from 1793 to 1794.
B. Specific Cause
1. Lavoisier's peripheral involvement in tax collection under the Bourbons
II. Setting
A. Duration: Approximately six hours
B. Paris, Place de la Révolution
C. 8 May 1794
III. People Involved
A. The Committee for Public Safety
B. Jean Paul Marat
Marat was a doctor who wished to be recognised as a scientist. His disappointment at not being recognised as a scientist led him to hate those who were successful or in power. When his writing gained him a place in the Revolutionary government, he took advantage of the anger of the crowds to wreak revenge on old enemies, aristocrats and those who had served them.
C. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
Lavoisier was born and spent most of his life during the Age of Enlightenment. This time period was characterised by tolerance, change, progress and attention to Natural Laws. The French Revolution of 1789 sprang from the philosophies of the Enlightenment, but ended in the Reign of Terror. Although he became known as the Father of Modern Chemistry, he grew up in a time when Aristotle's four chemical elements were still taught.
1. Performed the first quantitative chemical experiments
2. Examined the nature of combustion
3. Traité elémentaire de chimie (1789)
IV. Event Sequence
A. Lavoisier is arrested
B. Trial and condemnation during the morning hours of 8 May
C. Executed by guillotine along with 27 others, including his father-in-law
V. Effect
A. Delay in improvements to the manufacture of gunpowder and countless other scientific contributions
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