When it all went wrong for Antoine Lavoisier!

Lavoisier was the first child of a wealthy family living in Paris.

He attended the well-known College Mazarin and then studied Law in accordance with the family tradition, his father and grandfather had both been in an elite set of barristers able to present cases before the High Court in Paris. He had other ideas and changed course to begin scientific research, particularly in Chemistry and was very successful. In 1878, at the early age of 25, he  was admitted to the Paris Academy of Sciences.

At this time he inherited a great deal of money from his mother’s estate and invested in the Government tax scheme, whose members were called the “les fermiers-generaux”, which made him even richer.

He is also known for many philanthropic ventures.

Lavoisier welcomed the French Revolution and worked on a rational scheme of weights and measures, urgently needed to improve trade in France and on other schemes.

With his income he was able to buy what equipment he needed for his research and to hire assistants.

His wife turned out to be a very good assistant, taking part in many of his experiments.  She learned English to translate the English texts Lavoisier wanted to read.  She was tutored by one of his assistants and respected by many people.

As a chemist, he researched the oxygen theory of combustion and established a critical perspective which had been rather lacking in chemistry. His careful experiments marked a change in how chemistry was explored and he is often credited with being the father of modern chemistry.

I have always been perplexed by how he ended up on Robespierre’s guillotine during the days of the Terror.  The Revolutionaries believed that a new France could be forged by science and technology and respected those involved in new discoveries.

The two words “fermiers-generaux” sealed his fate.  He was a member of the hated French Tax System. Think of Robin Hood and his merry men ambushing the carriages carrying the money stolen from the poor to increase the wealth of the rich. This was in England in the 14th Century and the system had been long discarded in England.

This is how it worked. The King decided how much money he needed for a year and then sold the right to obtain that money from the taxpayers of France.  Many nobles and royals and the Church were exempt from taxation.  In return for that right, the Tax Farmers passed over that sum to the King and set about recuperating that money(and their expenses) by way of taxation in any way they could.  The right to demand the taxation very often involved the common people and at the final stage of this taxation, they were often attacked by local thugs to ensure the books were balanced further up the chain.  After all, everyone had to be paid.

Many people left France at the outbreak of the revolution, fearing their connections to the King might bring them to the notice of the Revolutionaries, but Levoisier and his wife remained in Paris.  

Robespierre’s eye did fall on those rich people who had been responsible for this hated tax system.  Lavoisier was condemned to the Guillotine along with his father in law and 26 other Tax Farmers.

Lagrange, another eminent French scientist, said:

“It took them only an instant to cut off that head and a hundred years may not produce another like it for a hundred years.”