| Jean Pierre de Batz, Baron de Sainte-Croix | |
| Birth Date: | 26 January 1754 |
| Occupation: | French royalist and businessman |
Jean Pierre de Batz, Baron de Sainte-Croix, known as the Baron de Batz[1] or de Bance,[2] (26 January 1754 - 10 January 1822), was a French royalist and businessman. He was born in Goutz-les-Tartas (Gers), and died in Chadieu, near Vic-le-Comte (Puy-de-Dôme).
His life and actions in the service of Louis XVI inspired several popular novelists, including Baroness Orczy (Eldorado, 1913), Rafael Sabatini (Scaramouche, 1921) and more recently Juliette Benzoni (Le Jeu de l'amour et de la mort series, 1999–2000).
Under the Constituent Assembly, de Batz's reputation as a financier led to his appointment on 28 May 1790 to the Liquidation Committee, which was responsible for clearing public accounts. It appears that de Batz conducted liquidations of fraudulent debts, and sold them to his friends who then reimbursed him. At the same time, he became a secret adviser to Louis XVI, and organized the financing of a secret policy implemented at the Château des Tuileries under Armand Marc, comte de Montmorin to defend the monarchy, which continued until at least 10 August 1792. On his own account, de Batz advanced to Louis XVI a sum exceeding 500,000 livres. His best ally was the Minister of Finance, Étienne Clavière, and under the guise of missions Clavière entrusted to him, de Batz made several voyages abroad between March 1792 and January 1793.
On January 21, 1793, de Batz tried in vain to raise the crowd in boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle to save the king from execution. Several royalists were killed, though de Batz managed to escape. He remained partially in hiding until he obtained a certificate of non-emigration in June 1793.
At the end of October 1793, fraud was uncovered in the liquidation of the French East India Company, and de Batz was named as the leader of a vast conspiracy against the fledgeling republic. According to a declaration made in prison by François Chabot, de Batz had frequently met with leaders of the Paris Commune and the National Convention, including Committee of Public Safety members Claude Basire, Julien de Toulouse and Delaunay d'Angers. Chabot also asserted that de Batz had held talks with foreign bankers including Junius Frey and his brother Emmanuel Frey (of Austria), Pierre-Jean Berthold de Prosly (of Brussels) (fr), Andres Maria de Guzman (of Spain), and Jacob Pereira (of Portugal). However, this de Batz plot was itself a conspiracy, a political-police operation which concentrated the attention of the Jacobins on the alleged dangers of de Batz and his accomplices to the Convention, with the aim of dissolving it.
At the time, de Batz was constantly traveling between the provinces and Switzerland, and learned that his friends and most of his relations had been arrested. Denunciations were gathered to build an indictment and support the imaginary conspiracy. On 14 March 1794, Hébertistes, Clootz, Pereira and Prosly were guillotined. On April 5, Georges Danton and his friends were executed with Chabot, Basire, the abbot of Espagnac, Guzman, and the Frey brothers.
Police files and de Batz's passport would later exonerate him, as de Batz was not in Paris at the time of the liquidation.
Returning to France, de Batz was involved in the royalist insurrection of 5 October 1795, and imprisoned. After the Coup of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797), he took refuge in Auvergne where he owned a castle. Discovered, he was arrested, but escaped during his transfer to Lyon and fled to Switzerland. The French Consulate had him removed from the list of emigrants and he abandoned political activism, returning to live in Auvergne.
Under the Bourbon Restoration, he was awarded the rank of maréchal de camp (field marshal) and the cross of St. Louis for his services, as well as the military command of Cantal, which was revoked after the Hundred Days period.
Living in seclusion in Chadieu, near Vic-le-Comte, he died on 10 January 1822.
The character of the double agent, a supporter of the monarchy and member of a network of Royalist agents in France and abroad whilst masquerading as a staunch Republican, is a stock character in literature set during the French Revolution. Through his activities, this character sends many revolutionaries to the guillotine, having them convicted of being anti-revolutionaries. Fictionalizations of de Batz appear in several novels:
There are also biographies of de Batz: