Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes
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Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, often referred to as Malesherbes or Lamoignon-Malesherbes (December 6, 1721 – April 23, 1794) was a French statesman, minister, and afterwards counsel for the defence of Louis XVI.
Born at Paris from a famous legal family, he was educated for the legal profession. The young lawyer soon proved his intellectual capacity, when he was appointed president of the cour des aides in the parlement of Paris in 1750 on the promotion of his father, Guillaume de Lamoignon de Blancmesnil, to be chancellor. One of the chancellor's duties was to control the press, and this duty was entrusted to Malesherbes by his father during his eighteen years of office, and brought him into connection with the public far more than his judicial functions. To carry it out efficiently he kept in communication with the literary leaders of Paris, and especially with Diderot, and Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm even goes so far as to say that "without the assistance of Malesherbes the Encyclopédie would probably never have been published".
In 1771 he was called upon to mix in politics; the parlements of France had been dissolved, and a new method of administering justice devised by Maupeou, which was in itself commendable as tending to the better and quicker administration of justice, but pernicious as exhibiting a tendency to over-centralization, and as abolishing the hereditary "nobility of the robe", which, with all its faults, had from its nature preserved some independence, and been a check on the royal power. Malesherbes presented a strong remonstrance against the new system, and was at once banished to his country seat at Malesherbes,[1] to be recalled, however, with the old parlement on the accession of Louis XVI, and to be made minister of the maison du roi in 1775.
He held office only nine months, during which, however, he directed his attention to the police of the kingdom, which came under his department, and did much to check the odious practice of issuing lettres de cachet. The protest of the cour des aides in 1775 (Les Remontrances) is one of the most important documents of ancien régime France. It gives a complete survey of the corrupt and inefficient administration, and presented the king with most outspoken criticism.
On retiring from the ministry with Turgot in 1776, he betook himself entirely to a happy country and domestic life and travelled through Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. An essay on Protestant marriages (1787) did much to procure for them the civil recognition in France. He had always been an enthusiastic botanist; his avenue at Malesherbes[2] was world famous; he had written against Buffon on behalf of the botanists whom Buffon had attacked, and had been elected a member of the Academie des sciences as far back as 1750. He was now elected a member of the Académie française, and everything seemed to promise a quiet and peaceful old age spent in the bosom of his family and occupied with scientific and literary pursuits, when the king in his difficulties wished for the support of his name, and summoned him back to the ministry in 1787. Lamoignon-Malesherbes held office but a short time, but returned to his country life this time with a feeling of insecurity and disquiet, and, as the troubles increased, retired to Malesherbes. [3]
Nevertheless, in December 1792, in spite of the fair excuse his old age and long retirement would have given him, he voluntarily left his asylum and undertook, with François Tronchet and Raymond Desèze, the defence of the king before the Convention, and it was his painful task to break the news of his condemnation to the king. After this effort he returned once more to the country, but in December 1793 he was arrested with his daughter, his son-in-law M. de Rosambô, and his grandchildren, imprisoned in the Prison Port-Libre, and on the April 23, 1794 he was guillotined, after having seen all whom he loved in the world executed before his eyes for their relationship to him.
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica writes, "Malesherbes is one of the sweetest characters of the 18th century; though no man of action, hardly a man of the world, by his charity and unfeigned goodness he became one of the most popular men in France, and it was an act of truest self-devotion in him to sacrifice himself for a king who had done little or nothing for him."
He was the great-grandfather of Alexis de Tocqueville.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Grosclaude, p. 467. The EB, Eleventh Edition, erroneously says "at St. Lucie", possibly confused by a type of cherry tree, prunus mahaleb called arbre de sainte-Lucie.
- ^ Grosclaude, p. 467; as above, the EB, Eleventh Edition, erroneously says "at St. Lucie")
- ^ Grosclaude, passim. The EBEleventh Edition, says "retired to Switzerland"; according to Grosclaude, he did visit an ill daughter abroad, but returned.
[edit] References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition article "Malesherbes", a publication now in the public domain.
- Pierre Grosclaude, Malesherbes, témoin et interprète de son temps, Paris, Libr. Fischbacher, 1961
| Preceded by Nicolas-François Dupré de Saint-Maur |
Seat 38 Académie française 1775–1794 |
Succeeded by François Andrieux |
