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.

Period before French Revolution

With his release from Vincennes (August 1782) begins the second period of Mirabeau's life. He found that his Sophie had consoled herself with a young officer, after whose death she committed suicide. Mirabeau set to work to get the sentence of death reversed, and by his eloquence not only succeeded in this but got M. de Monnier condemned in the costs of the whole law proceedings. From Pontarlier he went to Aix-en-Provence, where he claimed the court's order that his wife should return to him. She naturally objected, and he lost the case. He then intervened in the suit pending between his father and mother before the parlement of Paris, and attacked the ruling powers so violently that he had to leave France and again go to Holland, and try to live by literary work.

Related Topics:
Suicide - Aix-en-Provence - Parlement

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About this time he met Mme de Nehra, the daughter of Zwier van Haren, a Dutch statesman and political writer, an educated, refined woman, capable of appreciating Mirabeau's good points. His life was strengthened by the love of Mme de Nehra, his adopted son, Lucas de Montigny, and his little dog Chico. After a period of work in Holland he went to England, where his treatise on lettres de cachet had been much admired, being translated into English in 1787, and where he was soon admitted into the best Whig literary and political society of London, through his old schoolfellow Gilbert Elliot, who had become a leading Whig member of parliament. Of all his English friends none seem to have been so intimate with him as Lord Shelburne, and Sir Samuel Romilly. Romilly was introduced to Mirabeau by Sir Francis D'Ivernois (1757-1842), and readily undertook to translate into English the Considérations sur l'ordre de Cincinnatus, which Mirabeau had written.

Related Topics:
Zwier van Haren - Whig - London

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It was the only important work Mirabeau wrote in the year 1785, and it is a good specimen of his method. He had read a pamphlet published in America attacking the proposed order, which was to form a bond of association between the officers who had fought in the American War of Independence against England; the arguments struck him as true and valuable, so he re-arranged them in his own fashion, and rewrote them in his own oratorical style.

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He soon found such work not sufficiently remunerative to keep his petite horde in comfort, and then turned his thoughts to employment from the French foreign office, either in writing or in diplomacy. He first sent Mme de Nehra to Paris to make peace with the authorities, and then returned himself, hoping to get employment through an old literary collaborateur of his, Durival, who was at this time director of the finances of the department of foreign affairs. One of the functions of this official was to subsidize political pamphleteers, and Mirabeau had hoped to be so employed, but he ruined his chances by a series of writings on financial questions.

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On his return to Paris he had become acquainted with Étienne Clavière, the Genevese exile, and a banker named Panchaud. From them he heard plenty of abuse of stock-jobbing, and seizing their ideas he began to regard stock-jobbing, or agiotage, as the source of all evil, and to attack in his usual vehement style the Banque de St Charles and the Compagnie des Eaux. This last pamphlet brought him into a controversy with Caron de Beaumarchais, who certainly did not get the best of it, but it lost him any chance of literary employment from the government.

Related Topics:
Étienne Clavière - Caron de Beaumarchais

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However, his ability was too great to be neglected by a great minister such as Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes undoubtedly was, and after a preliminary tour to Berlin at the beginning of 1786 he was despatched in July 1786 on a secret mission to the court of Prussia, from which he returned in January 1787, and of which he gave a full account in his Histoire secrete de la cour de Berlin (1789). The months he spent at Berlin were important in the history of Prussia, for while he was there Frederick the Great died. The letters just mentioned show clearly what Mirabeau did and what he saw, and equally clearly how unfit he was to be a diplomat. He certainly failed to conciliate the new king Frederick William II; and thus ended Mirabeau's one attempt at diplomacy.

Related Topics:
Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes - Berlin - Prussia - Frederick the Great - Frederick William II

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During his journey he had made the acquaintance of Jakob Mauvillon (1743-1794), whom he found possessed of a great number of facts and statistics with regard to Prussia; these he made use of in a great work on Prussia published in 1788. But, though his De la monarchie prussienne sous Frédéric le Grand (London, 1788) gave him a general reputation for historical learning, he had in the same year lost a chance of political employment. He had offered himself as a candidate for the office of secretary to the Assembly of Notables which the King Louis XVI had just convened, and to bring his name before the public published another financial work, the Dénonciation de l'agiotage, which abounded in such violent diatribes that he not only lost his election, but was obliged to retire to Tongeren; and he further injured his prospects by publishing the reports he had sent in during his secret mission at Berlin. 1789 was at hand; the states-general was summoned; Mirabeau's period of probation was over.

Related Topics:
Jakob Mauvillon - Louis XVI - Tongeren

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