François Hanriot (2 December 1759 – 28 July 1794) was a French Sans-culotte leader, street orator, and commander of the Garde Nationale during the French Revolution. He played a vital role in the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 and subsequently the fall of the Girondins. On 27 July 1794 he tried to release Maximilien Robespierre, who was arrested by the Convention. He was executed on the next daytogether with Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthonby the rules of the law of 22 Prairial, only verifying his identity at the trial. Life Early years François Hanriot was born in Nanterre, now a western suburb of Paris. His parents were servants (gardeners) to a former Treasurer of France, and came from Sormery in the Bourgogne. Between 1779 and 1783 he supposedly was a soldier in America serving under Lafayette, but there are no documents to prove that. Not a man of any specific profession, Hanriot held a variety of different jobs. He took his first employment with a procureur doing mostly secretarial work but lost his position due to dishonesty. Next, he obtained a clerkship in the Paris octroi in 1789, doing tax work. His position there was also ill-fated; he was dismissed after leaving his station on the night of 12 July 1789, when the popular Jacques Necker was fired, and angry Parisians attempted to burn down the building belonging to the Wall of the Ferme générale. Hanriot was arrested and imprisoned in Bicêtre and released the next year with the help of Jean-Paul Marat. After his string of unfortunate professions, Hanriot remained unemployed and subsequently very poor. His next string of occupations is rather hazy in history; many people of the time connect him to a variety of professions including shopkeeper, liquor-seller, and peddler. He lived near the Jardin des Plantes at 21, Rue de la Clef. Role in the first years of the Revolution After generating a more substantial fortune he moved around the corner to Rue du Battoir, now Rue de Quatrefages. In January 1792, Hanriot became well known for his anti-aristocratic outlook and for attacking Lafayette. He became an orator for the local section sans-culottes, one of the most populous and poorest districts of the capital. On 9 August 1792, when the Assembly refused to impeach Lafayette, the tocsin called the sections into arms. In the evening the "commissionaires" of several sections (Billaud-Varenne, Chaumette, Hébert, Hanriot,