François Hanriot (1761 - July 28, 1794), French revolutionist, was born at Nanterre (Seine) of poor parentage.

Having lost his first employment--with a procureur--through dishonesty, he obtained a clerkship in the Paris octroi in 1789, but was dismissed for abandoning his post when the Parisians burned the octroi barriers on the night of the 12th-13th of July 1789. After leading a hand-to-mouth existence for some time, he became one of the orators of the section of the sans-culottes, and commanded the armed force of that section during the insurrection on August 10, 1792 and the massacres of September. But he did not come into prominence until the night of the 30th-31st of May 1793, when he was provisionally appointed commandantgeneral of the armed forces of Paris by the council general of the Commune.

On May 31 he was one of the delegates from the Commune to the Convention demanding the dissolution of the Commission of Twelve and the proscription of the Girondists, and he was in command of the insurrectionary forces of the Commune during the émeute of June 2. On June 11 he resigned his command, declaring that order had been restored. On the 13th he was impeached in the Convention; but the motion was not carried, and on July 1 he was elected by the Commune permanent commander of the armed forces of Paris.

This position, which gave him enormous power, he retained until the revolution of the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794). His arrest was decreed; but he had the générale sounded and the tocsin rung, and tried to rescue Robespierre, who was under arrest in the hall of the Comité de Sureté Générale. Hanriot was himself arrested, but was rescued by his adherents, and hastened to the Hotel de Ville. After a vain attempt to organize resistance he fled and hid in a secluded yard, where he was discovered the next day. He was arrested, sentenced to death, and guillotined with Robespierre and his friends on the 10th Thermidor of the year II.