Francois Louis Bourdon was a lawyer/representative of the Oise in Northern France, and one of the first radicals in history, taking part in the insurrections and intrigues of the French Revolution from its inception in 1792 until it's it's last phase before the rise Napoleon ("The Directory"), when he became one of its many victims.
In 1792, as a member of the National Assembly (a legislative body of the government in those earlier years of the Revolution) he voted with the majority to gillotine King Louis XVI. in 1796 this body was succeeded by The Directory, an arrangement when all executive power was shared by five regicides. One of those five Directors was Paul Barras, the debauched Aristocrat and opportunistic adventurer. A couple of years earlier he'd supported Maximilien Robespierre through the Reign of Terror(1792-1794), of which Robespierre was the bloody architect. Our man Bourdon de l'Oise also supported Robie, but in 1794 Barras and Bourdon turned on Robespierre (in the Thermadorian Reaction), and as the government forces under General Napoleon came for his arrest Robie jumped out a window, but they were still able to bring him alive to the guillotine (though with his jaw shot off), and beheaded (it was said, face-up, a first in French history) in 1794.
When in 1796 Paul Barras became one of the five members of The Directory, he and two of the others ordered the suppression of Bourdon and others considered Royalists, this despite Bourdon's earlier vote to kill King Loius XVI ("Louis the Last") and Marie Antoinette. Loyalties and even ideologies switched very quickly in those years of this revolutionary republic, and practically every day numerous people were killed in the name of Revolutionary principles.
They shipped Bourdon de l'Oise off to the Penal Colony of French Guiana, where he died shortly after arrival in 1797.
Its pretty remarkable how complex the French Revolution is, if you try to follow the play by play of warring ideological forces during a period when France was also at war with half of Europe. But "The revolution eats its children" as it is said, and this is the prime historical example.
Napoleon, a General taking his orders from the Director who ordered the downfall of Bourdon, took absolute power for himself in 1799. He didn't bring stability but was hugely successful for a time in conquering Europe. It's impossible to know what he would have been like in peacetime. But we can think of dicators like bacteria -- in terms of survival and reproduction, it's still a 'successful' form of government -- more prevalent throughout the world than democracies and republics (in all but name.)
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