1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Treilhard, Jean Baptiste

TREILHARD, JEAN BAPTISTE (1742–1810), French revolutionist, was born at Brives (Corrèze). In Paris he gained reputation as an avocat at the parlement, and was a deputy to the states-general in 1789. In the Constituent Assembly he showed great capacity in dealing with the reorganization of the Church and the nationalization of ecclesiastical property. Ineligible, like all the members of the Constituent Assembly, for the Legislative Assembly, he became president of the criminal tribunal of Paris, but failed through lack of firmness. The department of Seine-et-Oise elected him to the Convention, where he attached himself to the group known as the Mountain (q.v.) and voted for the death of Louis XVI. He was a member of the committee of public safety, and became president of the Convention on the 27th of December 1792. Under the Directory he entered the Council of the Five Hundred (of which he was president during the month of Nivose, year IV.), was a member of the Tribunal of Cassation, plenipotentiary at the Congress of Rastatt, and became a director in the year VI. After the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire he became president of the tribunal of appeal and councillor of state. He took an important part in drafting the civil code, the criminal code, the code of civil procedure and the commercial code. He died on the 1st of December 1810 a senator and count of the empire.

See Bonnal de Ganges, “Représentants du peuple dignitaires par Napoleon . . . Treilhard,” in the Revue du monde catholique (7th series, vol. iii., 1900); Guyot d’Amfreville, Vie de J. B. Treilhard (Limoges, 1879).