Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (10 September 1755 – 13 January 1841) was a French politician, freemason, journalist, and one of the most notorious members of the National Convention during the French Revolution.
Early career
He was born at Tarbes in Gascony. The name Barère de Vieuzac, by which he continued to call himself long after the renunciation of feudal rights on the 4 August abolition of feudalism, came from a small fief belonging to his father, a lawyer at Vieuzac. Barère's father, Jean Barère, was a procurator and a lawyer. Barère’s mother, Jeanne-Catherine Marrast, was of old nobility. When Barère was a child, he went to a parish school, and when he and his siblings were of age, his brother, Jean-Pierre, became a priest. After finishing school, Barère attended a college before he began his career in revolutionary politics. He began to practice as a lawyer at the parlement of Toulouse in 1770, and soon earned a reputation as an orator, while his fame as an essayist led to his election as a member of the Academy of Floral Games of Toulouse in 1788.