Jean, baron de Batz

Jean, baron de Batz (born December 26, 1760, Goutz, France—died January 10, 1822, Chadieu) was a royalist conspirator during the French Revolution.

Born of a noble family in Gascony, Batz entered the army at the age of 14, rising to the rank of colonel by 1787. During Louis XVI’s reign he busied himself with financial transactions and made a fortune. He was sent to the Estates-General of 1789 and was a member of the National Assembly, serving on the Committee on Finances. After emigrating, he returned to France to work against the Revolution. He laid an unsuccessful plot to save Louis on his way to the guillotine in January 1793 and tried to rescue Marie Antoinette from prison in June.

Meanwhile, he and a cosmopolitan clique of financiers were doing their best, by dubious operations, to discredit the Republic and to raise funds for the royalists. A number of deputies to the Convention were implicated with them in a fraudulent scheme to make money on the shares of the French India Company. After Batz’s schemes were discovered late in 1793, the Convention offered a reward for him dead or alive and executed 55 of his alleged associates (June 1794). Arrested for participating in the uprising of 13 Vendémaire, year IV (October 5, 1795), Batz somehow managed to win his freedom. Thenceforth he lived in obscurity at his estate at Chadieu. He was honoured with a knighthood for his “heroism” after the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815.