Mirabeau french revolution biography channel

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1749, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau ranks 6.

But the Assembly consisted of men inexperienced in practical politics. During the Revolution he received yet more help; men were proud to labour for him, and did not murmur because he absorbed all the credit and fame. She was the daughter of Zwier van Haren, a Dutch statesman and political writer, and was a woman of a far higher type than Sophie, more educated, more refined, and more capable of appreciating Mirabeau’s good points and helping him to control his passions.

During his journey he had made the acquaintance of a Major Mauvillon, 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 1799, as Romilly says, to show that he could write more than a fugitive pamphlet. He had been elected a member of the comité diplomatique or the Assembly in July, 1790, and became its reporter at once, and in this capacity he was able to prevent the Assembly from doing much harm in regard to foreign affairs.

After his wife won a legal separation, he fled to Switzerland with another woman, barely escaping execution.

The French Revolution

During the French Revolution, Mirabeau emerged as a gifted orator and astute politician. Still more did he show his foresight when he attacked the dilatory behaviour of the Assembly, which led to the catastrophes of the 5th and 6th October.

The Comte de la Marck was a Flemish lord of the house of Aremberg, who had been proprietary colonel of a regiment in the service of France; he was a close friend of the queen, and had been elected a member of the states-general. What finer epitaph could a statesman desire!

The best edition of Mirabeau’s works is that published by Blanchard in 1822, in 10 vols., of which two contain his Œuvres Oratoires; from this collection, however, many of his less important works, and the Monarchie Prussienne, in __ vols., 1788, are omitted.

On leaving this school in 1767 he received a commission in the cavalry regiment of the Marquis de Lambert, which his grandfather had commanded years before. . Of his behaviour nothing too strong can be said: he was introduced into the house as a friend, and betrayed his trust by inducing Madame de Monnier to fall in love with him, and all his excuses about overwhelming passion only make his conduct more despicable.

In March his illness was evidently gaining on him, to his great grief, because he knew how much depended on his life, and felt that he alone could yet save France from the distrust of her monarch and the present reforms, and from the foreign interference, which would assuredly bring about catastrophes unparalleled in the history of the world.

Romilly was introduced to Mirabeau by D’Ivernois, and readily undertook to translate the Consideration on the Order of Cincinnatus. For his services in Corsica Mirabeau was made a captain of dragons, though not in any particular regiment, and on his return his father endeavored to make use of the literary ability he had shown for the advancement of his own economical theories.

In early November Mirabeau was prominent in securing a somewhat more onerous taking-up of church lands than Talleyhand had perhaps intended.

  Mirabeau proposed the establishment of a citizen guard, out of which grew the National Guard, and was also prominent in the debates about the Civil Constitution of the Clergy whereby revolutionary France sought to establish a Catholic church in France that was moreso under the supervision of the new France than that of the Pope.

  Mirabeau's health had been greatly compromised by the excesses of his youth and his recent strenuous efforts as a politician and, although elected as president of the National Assembly (January 30th, 1791), only survived to perform his duties until 2nd April 1791.

  At the time of his passing Mirabeau greatly feared for the future of any constitutional Monarchy in France recognising that many powerful and radically inclined interests would not give such arrangements their support.