ABSTRACT
On Wednesday, March 30, 1791, the Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin is invaded by a restless crowd, “a prodigious and continual concourse of citizens of all ranks and all parties,” reports a privileged witness, Cabanis, Mirabeau's doctor. 1 The people are all hurrying there because Honoré-Gabriel-Victor Riquetti de Mirabeau is dying. Their rallying together consecrates one last time the decisive role played by the orator in leading France from the old to the new regime. In fact it is this Provençal count, excluded from his order, then finding refuge with the delegates of the commoners after the elections to the Estates General who in May 1789 most swiftly abandons, along with Abbé Sieves, the weighty uniform of representative of the old estates to don the suit of the political man of the new National Assembly. We can thus define Mirabeau as the first great political man of the Revolution. 2
