He was born at Paris, of a noble family connected with those of Contades and Polignac. He made his debut as a lawyer at the Châtelet, and delivered some very successful speeches; later he worked for the parlement of Paris. His legal occupation did not prevent him from devoting himself to literature, and after 1789 he published an account of a visit he had made to the comte de Buffon at Montbard. Hérault's delicately ironic account has been called a masterpiece of interviewing, before the day of the journalist.
Hérault, an ardent champion of the French Revolution, took part in the storming of the Bastille, and on December 8, 1789 was appointed judge of the court of the first arrondissement in the department of Paris. From the end of January to April 1791 Hérault was absent on a mission in Alsace, where he had been sent to restore order. On his return he was appointed commissaire du roi in the court of cassation. He was elected as a deputy for Paris to the Legislative Assembly, where he gravitated more and more towards the extreme left; he was a member of several committees, and, when a member of the diplomatic committee, presented a famous report demanding that the nation should be declared to be in danger (June 11, 1793).
After the revolution of August 10 1792, he co-operated with Georges Danton, one of the organizers of this rising, and on 2 September was appointed president of the Legislative Assembly. He was a deputy to the National Convention for the départment of Seine-et-Oise, and was sent on a mission to organize the new départment of Mont Blanc. He was thus absent during the trial of Louis XVI, but he made it known that he approved of the condemnation of the king, and would probably have voted for the death penalty.
On his return to Paris, Hérault was several times president of the Convention, notably on June 2, 1793, the occasion of the attack on the Girondins, and on August 10, 1793, on which the passing of the new constitution was celebrated. On this occasion Hérault, as president of the Convention, had to make several speeches. It was he, moreover, who, on the rejection of the projected constitution drawn up by the Marquis de Condorcet, was entrusted with the task of preparing a fresh one; this work he performed within a few days, and his plan, which differed very little from that of Condorcet, became the Constitution of 1793, which was passed, but never applied.
As a member of the Committee of Public Safety, Hérault was chiefly concerned with diplomacy, and from October to December 1793 he was employed on a diplomatic and military mission in Alsace. This mission made him an object of suspicion to the other members of the Committee of Public Safety, especially to Robespierre, who as a deist and a fanatical follower of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, hated Hérault, the follower of the naturalism of Diderot. He was accused of treason, and after being tried before the revolutionary tribunal, was condemned at the same time as Danton, and executed on the 16th Germinal in the year II. He was one of the most individual figures of the Revolution.
See the Voyage a Montbard, published by FA Aulard (Paris, 1890); FA Aulard, Les Orateurs de la Legislative el de la Convention, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1906); J Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, Étude sur les Dantonistes (Paris, 1875); Dr Robinet, Le Procés des Dantonistes (Paris, 1879); "Hérault de Séchelles, sa premiere mission en Alsace" in the review La Revolution Française, tome 22; Ernest Daudet, Le Roman d'un conventionnel. Hérault de Séchelles et les dames de Bellegarde (904). His Œuvres littéraires were edited (Paris, 1907) by E Dard.
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