Born, 1763; died, 1832.
The son of a receiver of taxes at Auxonne, Prieur was an officer in
the Engineers at the time of the Revolution, which he joined from
its outset. Elected by the _Côte d’Or_ to the Assembly, the
Convention, and finally to the Council of the Five Hundred, he sat
in all these Assemblies from 1791 to 1793, and distinguished himself
by his genuine Republicanism, was for a short time President of the
Convention, but after August 10 joined the Army of the Rhine.
At the King’s trial he voted for the immediate execution of the
accused. Three months later the Convention sent him to Normandy to put
down the counter revolutionary projects of the Girondins, who succeeded
in arresting Prieur and his brother commissionary, and they remained
fifty-one days in the prisons of Caen. On his return to Paris, Prieur
became a member of the Committee of Public Safety (August 1793). At the
time of the Revolution of 18th Brumaire, Prieur was once more with the
army, acting as a colonel in the Engineers, but being too republican to
serve the First Consul, he in 1800 retired from military service.
He was one of those few among the revolutionists who was an admirable
organiser and a practical man. He worked heart and soul for the
re-establishment of Public Instruction, and together with Mouge helped
to found the _École Polytechnique_. Prieur was the author of the
great reform in the metric system.