Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/515

Rh MIRABEAU 493 France has ever produced, was born at Bignon, near Nemours, on March 9, 1749. M. de Lomenie has shown that the family of Riquet or Riqueti came originally from the little town of Digne, that they won wealth and municipal honours as merchants at Marseilles, and that in 1570 Jean Riqueti bought the chateau and estate of Mirabeau, which had up to that time belonged to the great Provengal family of Barras, and took the title of esquire a few years later. In 1685 Honore Riqueti obtained the title of Marquis de Mirabeau, and his son Jean Antoine brought honour to it. He served with distinction through all the later campaigns of the reign of Louis XIV., and especially distinguished himself in 1705 at the battle of Cassano, where he was so severely wounded in the neck that he had ever after to wear a silver stock ; yet he never rose above the rank of colonel, owing to his eccentric habit of speaking unpleasant truths to his superiors. On retiring from the service he married Frangoise de Castellane, a remarkable woman, who long survived him, and he left at his death, in 1737, three sons Victor, Marquis de Mirabeau (see next article), Jean Antoine, Bailli de Mirabeau, and Comte Louis Alexandre de Mirabeau. The great Mirabeau was the elder surviving son of the marquis. When but three years old he had a virulent attack of confluent small-pox which left his face for ever disfigured, and contributed not a little to nourish his father s dislike to him. His early education was conducted by Lachabeaussiere, father of the better known man of letters, after which, being like his father and grandfather destined for the army, then the only profession open to young men of family, he was entered at a pension militaire at Paris, kept by an Abb6 Choquart. Of this school, which had Lagrange for its professor of mathematics, we have an amusing account in the life of Gilbert Elliot, first earl of Minto, who with his brother Hugh, afterwards British minister at Berlin, there made the acquaintance of Mirabeau, an acquaintance which soon ripened into friendship, and to which Mirabeau in later life owed his introduction into good English society. 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. He at once began love making, and in spite of his ugliness succeeded in winning the heart of the lady to whom his colonel was attached, which led to such scandal that his father obtained a lettre de cachet, and the young scapegrace was imprisoned in the isle of Rhe. The love affairs of Mirabeau form quite a history by themselves, and a well-known history, OAving to the celebrity of the letters to Sophie ; and the behaviour of the marquis in perpetually imprisoning his son is equally well known, and as widely blamed. Yet it may be asserted that until the more durable and more reputable connexion with Madame de Nehra these love episodes were the most disgraceful blemishes in a life otherwise of a far higher moral character than has been commonly supposed. As to the marquis, his use of lettres de cachet is perfectly defensible on the theory of the exist ence of lettres de cachet at all. They were meant to be used (see LETTRES DE CACHET) by heads of families for the correction of their families, and Mirabeau, if any son, surely deserved such correction. Further, they did have the effect of sobering the culprit, and the more creditable part of his life did not begin till he left Vincennes. Mirabeau, it may be remarked at once, was not a states man of the Alcibiades type, and he did not develop his great qualities of mind and character until his youthful excesses were over. These will be passed over as rapidly as possible, for it was not till 1781 that the qualities which made him great began to appear. On being released from his first imprisonment, the young count, who had always intended to continue his military career, obtained leave to accompany as a volunteer the French expedition which was to effect the reduction of Corsica. The conquest was one of sheer numerical strength, for the whole population was on the side of Paoli, and Mirabeau, perceiving the value of public opinion, is said to have written a treatise on the oppression the Genoese had formerly exercised over the island, which the Government was ready to publish had not the Marquis de Mirabeau thought fit to destroy it because of its divergence from his own philosophical and economical views. For his services in Corsica Mirabeau was made a captain of dragoons, though not in any particular regiment, and on his return his father endeavoured to make use of the literary ability he had shown for the advancement of his own economical theories. He tried to keep on good terms with his father, though he could not advocate all his ideas, and even went so far in 1772 as to marry a rich heiress, a daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, whose alliance his father had procured for him. He did not live happily with her, and in 1774 was ordered into semi-exile in the country, at his father s request, where he wrote his earliest extant work, the Essai sur le Despotisme. His violent dis position now led him to quarrel with a country gentleman who had insulted his sister, and his semi-exile was changed by lettre de cachet into imprisonment in the Chateau d If. In 1775 he was removed to the castle of Joux, to which, however, he was not very closely confined, having full leave to visit in the town of Pontarlier. Here he met Marie Therese de Monnier, his Sophie as he called her, a married woman, for whom he conceived a violent passion. 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. The affair ended by his escaping to Switzerland, where Sophie joined him ; they then went to Holland, where he lived by hack-work for the. booksellers ; meanwhile Mirabeau had been condemned to death at Pontarlier for rapt et vol, of which he was certainly not guilty, as Sophie had followed him of her own accord, and in May 1777 he was seized by the French police, and imprisoned by a lettre de cachet in the castle of Vincennes. There he remained three years and a half, and with his release ends the first and most disgraceful period of his life. During his imprisonment he seems to have learnt to control his passions from their very exhaustion, for 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, while to the later months belongs his first political work of any value, the Lettres de Cachet. The Essai sur le Despotisme was an ordinary but at times eloquent declamation, showing in its illustra tions a wide miscellaneous knowledge of history, but the Lettres de Cachet exhibits a more accurate knowledge of French constitutional history skilfully applied to an attempt to show that an existing actual grievance was not only philosophically unjust but constitutionally illegal. It shows, though still in rather a 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. With his release from Vincennes begins the second period of Mirabeau s life. He found that his Sophie was an ideal ized version of a rather common and ill-educated woman, and she speedily consoled herself with the affection of a young officer, after whose death she committed suicide. Mirabeau first set to work to get the sentence of death still hanging over him reversed, and by his eloquence not only succeeded but got M. de Monnier condemned in the costs of