Andrés de Guzmán

"Brissot, Madame Roland, all of them were an impediment to the Revolution! Whoever slows the Revolution is its enemy!"

―Andrés de Guzmán speaking to a crowd, 1794.

Andrés María de Guzmán y Ruiz de Castro t'Serclaes de Tilly, comte de Guzmán (1753 – 1794), or Andrés de Guzmán, was a Spanish aristocrat and a radical revolutionary of the French Revolution.

Biography

Born in Spain, Guzmán moved to France in 1778, where he lived lavishly, bringing him to the verge of bankruptcy. At the height of the French Revolution, he joined the extreme radical camp of Jacques Hébert and the Enragés, becoming an intensely vocal opponent of the Girondists, particularly their policy of spreading the revolution through war.

Guzmán often incited the crowd at the Louvre gardens and advocated political execution. He also became part of the bande noire ("the black band"), a group of speculators who issued false bank notes and purchased various châteaux and abbeys at reduced prices.

After many Girondists were executed, the Parisian Brotherhood's Assassin Council sent Arno Dorian to eliminate Guzmán as retribution for his role in their deaths. Although Guzmán once again spoke under heavy guard to a crowd in the Louvre gardens about the Girondists' downfall, Arno was able to kill him. In effort to conceal his assassination, official records reported that he had been executed by the guillotine the same day as Georges Danton.

Behind the scenes

Andrés de Guzmán is a historical figure who appears in the 2014 video game Assassin's Creed: Unity. His in-game database entry erroneously refers to him as an Enragés member despite his not being part of this group. This may be a developer oversight as a result of confusing the Enragés with the journalist Jacques Hébert's similarly named faction called Exagérés ("Exaggerators"), another radical revolutionary group that strongly supported the dechristianization of France during the French Revolution.

Even if Guzmán spots Arno in his assassination mission "Retribution for a Rabble-Rouser", he will not engage him in combat nor attempt to flee.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Unity