Honoré Mirabeau

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, (often referred to simply as Mirabeau) (March 9, 1749 - April 2, 1791) was a French writer, popular orator and statesman. During the French Revolution, he was a moderate, favored a constitutional monarchy built on the model of Great Britain, and conducted secret negotiations with the king in order to reconcile the monarchy and the revolution--an effort that failed.

Early life, conflict with father, imprisonments

Honoré Mirabeau was born at Le Bignon, near Nemours as the eldest surviving son of the economist Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau and his wife Marie-Geneviève de Vassan. When three years old, a virulent attack of smallpox left his face disfigured, and contributed to his father's dislike of him. Destined for the army, he was entered at a pension militaire at Paris. Of this school, which had Joseph Louis Lagrange for its professor of mathematics, there is an amusing account in the life of Gilbert Elliot who met Mirabeau there.

Related Topics:
Le Bignon - Nemours - Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau - Smallpox - Paris - Joseph Louis Lagrange - Gilbert Elliot

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On leaving school in 1767 he received a commission in a cavalry regiment which his grandfather had commanded years before. In spite of his ugliness, he won the heart of the lady to whom his colonel was attached; this led to such scandal that his father obtained a lettre de cachet, and Mirabeau was imprisoned in the Ile de Ré. His love affairs form a well-known history, owing to the celebrity of the letters to "Sophie".

Related Topics:
Cavalry - Lettre de cachet - Ile de Ré

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On being released, the young count obtained leave to accompany as a volunteer the French expedition to Corsica. After his return, he tried to keep on good terms with his father, and in 1772 he married a rich heiress, Marie Emilie, daugter of the marquess de Marignane, an alliance arranged for him by his father. His extravagance forced his father to send him into semi-exile in the country, where he wrote his earliest extant work, the Essai sur le despotisme.

Related Topics:
Corsica - Marignane - Essai sur le despotisme

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His violent disposition led him to quarrel with a country gentleman who had insulted his sister, and his exile was changed by "lettre de cachet" into imprisonment in the Château d'If in 1774. In 1775 he was removed to the castle of Joux, where he was not closely confined, having full leave to enter the town of Pontarlier. In a house of a friend he met Marie Thérèse de Monnier, his "Sophie", and the two fell in love. He escaped to Switzerland, where Sophie joined him; they then went to the United Provinces, where he lived by hack work for the booksellers; meanwhile Mirabeau had been condemned to death at Pontarlier for seduction and abduction, and in May 1777 he was seized by the French police, and imprisoned by a lettre de cachet in the castle of Vincennes.

Related Topics:
Lettre de cachet - Château d'If - Joux - Pontarlier - Switzerland - United Provinces - Hack work - Vincennes

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The early part of his confinement is marked by the indecent letters to Sophie (first published in 1793), and the obscene Erotica biblion and Ma conversion. In the dungeon of Vincennes he met the fellow prisoner Marquis de Sade who was also writing erotic works; the two disliked each other intensely. Later during his confinement, he wrote Des Lettres de Cachet et des prisons d'état, published after his liberation (1782). It exhibits an accurate knowledge of French constitutional history skillfully applied in an attempt to show that the system of lettres de cachet was not only philosophically unjust but constitutionally illegal. It shows, though in a rather diffuse and declamatory form, that application of wide historical knowledge, keen philosophical perception, and genuine eloquence to a practical purpose which was the great, characteristic of Mirabeau, both as a political thinker and as a statesman.

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