Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Léon Florelle de

French revolutionary. A close associate of Robespierre, he became a member of the Committee of Public Safety 1793, and was guillotined with Robespierre.

Elected to the National Convention 1792, he was its youngest member at 25 and immediately made his mark by a radical speech condemning King Louis XVI (‘one cannot reign without guilt’). His later actions confirm the tone of his book The Spirit of the Revolution 1791 in which he showed his distrust of the masses and his advocacy of repression. On his appointment to the Committee of Public Safety he was able to carry out his theories by condemning ‘not merely traitors, but the indifferent’, including Danton and Lavoisier, although his own death was to follow within weeks.