Chrtien Guillaume De Malesherbes Lamoignon
| Chrtien Guillaume de Malesherbes Lamoignon | |
 | |
| Birth | 6 December 1721 Paris |
|---|---|
| Deaths | 22 April 1794 (73 years) Paris |
| Nationality |  Kingdom of France |
| Occupation (s) | jurist and statesman |
| Ancestors | son of William of Lamoignon of Blancmesnil , First President of the Cour des Aides |
Chrtien-Guillaume de Malesherbes Lamoignon ( 6 December 1721 , Paris - 22 April 1794 , Paris ) is a jurist and statesman French.
Summary |
From a prominent family of the nobility of Paris, son of William of Lamoignon of Blancmesnil , he was appointed deputy attorney general of the parliament of Paris in 1741. He was successively adviser in 1744 , first president of the Cour des Aides in Paris and director of the Library in 1750, that is to say, responsible for the royal censorship on printed matter, a post which he uses to support the Encyclopedia. Where the privilege is revoked and publishers that the parliament ordered the seizure of papers Diderot , Lamoignon Malesherbes secretly warn the fact. "Diderot, dismayed, rushed home. "What future? he cried, and how, in twenty-four hours, moving all my manuscripts? I do not have time to do triage. And especially where to find people who want to do it and who can safely? - Send them all home, "replied M. de Malesherbes, people will not seek them. " ! . And his friend Gabriel-Henri Gaillard said of him: "It was love and the delights of the nation . "
But disappointments are fast. Malesherbes as he tries unsuccessfully to abolish the system of lettres de cachet. He resigned the following year, upon returning from his friend Turgot.
From 1787 to 1788 he was a member of the Council on High. It proposes reforms but he is not listening. At the instigation of Louis XVI , however, he published in 1785 a memoir on the marriage of Protestants ( text online ), then passed in 1787 the Edict of Versailles which organizes the vital non-Catholics, thus initiating an early recognition of the plurality of faiths.
He married Miss Grimod of Reyniere who bore him two daughters, Pauline and Antoinette Theresa Margaret, the latter married Louis Le Peletier de Rosanbo. One of their daughters marry the brother of Franois-Ren de Chateaubriand , another will be the mother of Tocqueville.
The botanist
Malesherbes was fond of botany. At age 24, he studied botany of Jussieu. It is in his chateau de Malesherbes , in the Loiret department , he organizes his plantations. It maintains about them a match with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson , exchange plants and takes advice from his country neighbor, the great agronomist Duhamel du Monceau. He enjoys the position of his nephew Henri Cesar de La Luzerne , Governor of the Leeward Islands , sent to get the seeds.
Under the pseudonym of "Mr. William," he likes to go incognito in France and the Netherlands and Switzerland. He brings a wealth of comments, both on agriculture than on industry areas traversed and, of course, plants for its collections.
It is very critical of the Comte de Buffon and openly opposed his Theory of the Earth.
He was elected member of the Academy of Sciences in 1750 , the Academy of Inscriptions in 1759 , and the French Academy in 1775.
During the Revolution
In 1792 , he visited his daughter emigrated to Lausanne , but soon returned to France, though no illusions about the Revolution. Out of loyalty to the king who nevertheless did not love much, he volunteered to take his defense at trial and wrote the president of the Convention : "I do not know if the National Convention will give advice to Louis XVI to defend and if she leaves him a choice. In this case I want to know that Louis XVI, he chose me for this function, I am ready to devote myself . Louis XVI replied: "Your sacrifice is even more generous than you expose your life and you do not save mine" . Later, it meant that the king Malesherbes his death sentence, 20 January 1793.
We remember him as full of terror and, in December, we just look it up in retirement. It is brought back to Paris with his family and imprisoned for "conspiracy with the emigrants. " His son Louis Le Peletier de Rosanbo was guillotined April 21, 1794. The next day, her daughter Antoinette, her grand-daughter Aline and her husband Jean-Baptiste de Chateaubriand, and two of his secretaries are executed with him. On leaving prison to get into the sinister cart, his foot against a stone and made him make a misstep. "This, he said, smiling sadly, a bad omen for me, a Roman would have returned . "
Other publications
- The need to cut spending
- Memory on how to accelerate the progress of the rural economy in France, References
- Franois Guizot , The History of France since the earliest times until 1789, 1876, Volume V, Chapter IV, p. 269
- Letter to Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert , July 6, 1775, in Letters of Mlle de Lespinasse, Charpentier edition, 1876, p. 214
- Quoted by Tyrtaeus Tastet, History of the forty seats of the French Academy since its inception to the present, 1635-1855, Vol. III, 1855, p. 483
- Edict of Versailles (November 7, 1787)
- Letter of 11 December 1792. Cited by Tyrtaeus Tastet, op. cit., p. 487
- Bar at the Court of Appeal of Rennes.
- Letter of 11 December 1792. Cited by Tyrtaeus Tastet, op. cit., p. 488
Sources
- Elisabeth Badinter , the remonstrances of Malesherbes (1771-1775), 1985.
- David Feuerwerker , The Emancipation of Jews in France. From the Old Regime to the end of the Second Empire, Paris : Albin Michel , 1976 ( ISBN 2-226-00316-9 )
- Paul and Pierrette Girault de Coursac , The Defense of Louis XVI by Malesherbes, Tronchet and Deseze preceded the minutes of the questioning of the King, in collaboration with Jean-Marc Varaut , FX de Guibert, 1993
- Pierre Grosclaude, Malesherbes, witness and interpreter of his time, Paris, 1961
- Jean Tulard , Jean-Franois Fayard, and Alfred Fierro, History and Dictionary of the French Revolution, 1789-1799
See also
Related articles
- Lawyer (trade)
- Lawyer in France
- Coif
- List of French ministers of the royal household or of the Emperor
External Links
- Biography of the French Academy
- Letters of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Guillaume Chrtien de Malesherbes Lamoignon Version audio
Preceded by
Nicolas-Franois Dupr de Saint MaurChair 38 of the French Academy
1775-1794Followed by
Franois Andrieux
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