Mirabeau, VICTOR RIQUETI, MARQUIS DE, father of the great statesman of the French Revolution, was born, October 5, 1715, at Pertuis in Provence, of a family that claimed a noble Florentine descent, but was really sprung from a wealthy bourgeois family of Digne and Marseilles that had acquired in 1570 the domain of Mirabeau by purchase, and the title in 1685. He was an able but eccentric and exceedingly hot-headed and self-willed man, and he showed himself a senseless and brutal tyrant in the treatment of his family. It is said that he procured at one time or other no fewer than fifty-four lettres de cachet against his wife and children, and he strove to curb the extraordinary genius of his greatest son by a course of unnatural severity, which ended with shattering all the ties of kindred and driving him into the most defiant and reckless excesses. Yet he was himself a theoretical philanthropist and active promoter of physiocratic ideas, and in this cause published a series of books, as Ami des Hommes (5 vols. 1755) and La Philosophie rurale (4 vols. 1763), in which the vigour of phrase often foreshadows the stronger hand of his son. He died at Argenteuil, 13th July 1789.
See Loménie, Les Mirabeau (1878-89), and Oncken, Der ältere Mirabeau (Bern, 1886).
HONORÉ GABRIEL RIQUETI, COMTE DE MIRABEAU, the greatest figure in the French Revolution, and perhaps the ablest statesman that France has yet produced, was born at Bignon in Provence, 9th March 1749, of a family that had been for three generations famous for stormy passions and great abilities. Within his vigorous frame and massive intellect were concentrated all the good and all the evil of his race; his unusually ugly face, scarred with smallpox and crowned with an immense mane of black hair, bore unmistakably the stamp of power, and from boyhood he possessed a marvelous personal fascination which subdued all men and women to his will. His education was left to take care of itself, and at seventeen he entered as a lieutenant the Berri regiment of cavalry, and lived a life of such recklessness at the little garrison-town of Saintes that his imperious father imprisoned him in 1768 on the Isle of Rhé, near La Rochelle, and next sent him with the French legion of Lorraine to Corsica, where his conduct earned him the confidence of his chiefs and the affection of his men. But his father refusing to purchase him a company, he left the service in 1770, and settled down to practise the physiocrat system on an estate in Limousin. Two years later his father married him to the only daughter of the Marquis de Marignan, a sprightly and pretty, but vain and shallow woman, with whom he broke out into lavish expenditure, and lived unhappily. On account of his debts his father confined him, in May 1773, in the town of Manosque, next in the Château d'If, near Marseilles, and at last in 1775 in the castle of Jonx, near Pontarlier. Here he formed an intrigue with Sophie de Ruffey, the young wife of the gray-haired legal president, the Marquis de Monnier, and fled with her to Switzerland and thence to Amsterdam, where for eight months he made his bread by laborious hack-work for the Dutch booksellers, among other tasks translating from the English Watson's Life of Philip II. His Essai sur le Despotisme, begun at Manosque and now completed, made a sensation by its audacity and vigour. Meantime the parliament of Besançon sentenced him to the penalty of death, in contumacious absence, for abduction and robbery, and caused a paper effigy of him to be beheaded. The search made for him at the instigation of his father at length proved successful, and in May 1777 he was handed over by the States-general and flung into the frowning castle of Vincennes, where, in a close imprisonment of three years and a half, and after he had worked off his grosser feelings in writing the indecent Erotica Biblion and Ma Conversion, he worked out his own salvation by study and meditation, and the writing of his famous Essai sur les Lettres de Cachet et les Prisons d'État (2 vols. 1782). His too glowing letters from the prison to Sophie were discovered later by Manuel in the archives of police at Paris, and published under the title of Lettres originales de Mirabeau, écrites du Donjon de Vincennes (4 vols. 1792). In December 1780 Mirabeau was released, and he at once began by a bold process to labour for his restoration to society. At length, September 1782, after eloquent pleadings that drew upon him all eyes in France, he succeeded in getting his sentence annulled. Next year he lost his suit at Aix for the restitution of his conjugal rights, but did something by the attempt to rehabilitate his reputation. Now also he broke off the illicit relation with his mistress, who had not remained true to him, and whose later disappointments in love drove her to the refuge of suicide in September 1789.
Again flung upon his own resources, deeply drowned in debt, and thrifty and extravagant by temperament, Mirabeau made for some years a shifty living by his pen, writing and compiling innumerable books and pamphlets against speculation, stock-jobbing, and other political and social evils of the time, and flitting restlessly from France to Prussia, to Holland, and to England. His grosser passions had not yet burned themselves out, and his life was stained by countless unworthy liaisons, amid which one woman alone—the Dutch Madame de Nehra—stands out as an elevating influence. In England he was intimate with Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards first Earl of Minto, Lord Lansdowne, and Romilly, and his close observation of English politics taught him the good of moderation, compromise, and opportunism. In 1786 he was sent by the French government on a secret mission to Berlin, and there from Major Mauvillon he obtained the materials for his work, Sur la Monarchie Prussienne sous Frédéric le Grand (4 vols. 1787). When the States-general was convened he offered himself as a candidate to the nobles of Provence, and was rejected, whereupon he turned to the tiers état and was returned enthusiastically for both Marseilles and Aix. He chose to sit for the latter, and, badly received though he was at first, soon showed himself a born leader of men, as well as the one really practical statesman in the Assembly. On the 17th June, on the motion of Sieyès, the tiers état constituted itself as the National Assembly, and on the 23d Mirabeau made his memorable answer to the royal messenger, the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, who had come from the king to command the deputies to separate: 'If you have orders to remove us from this hall, you must also get authority to use force, for we shall yield to nothing but to bayonets.'
Mirabeau's political sagacity and foresight quickly made him a great force in the Assembly, while his andacity and volcanic eloquence made him at once the darling of the mob and the terror of the court. Meantime he extended his influence by unceasing diligence in journalistic work, and for his États-Généraux, Lettres à mes Commettants, and Courrier de Provence, drew on the knowledge and abilities of a host of coadjutors, such as the Genevese Duroveray and Étienne Dumont. Moved by his instinctive dread of anarchy, he proposed the establishment of a citizen-guard, out of which grew the National Guard, but he trembled at the 'nocturnal orgies' of August 4, 1789, when in the breathless legislation of a single night were swept away together serfdom, feudal jurisdiction, manorial ground-rents, tithes, game-laws, saleable offices, fees, clerical robing dues, municipal and provincial privileges, privileges of rank, exemptions from taxes, and plurality of offices and livings. None of his contemporaries equalled him in breadth of view, temperance in judgment, and freedom from prejudice—no actor in the great drama save himself saw that 'the notion of equality is only a fit of the revolutionary fever.' He saw clearly the fatuity of such schemes as the foolish Lafayette's theatrical declaration of the rights of man, pointing out that such a thing might well enough be done after the work of constructing the constitution had been accomplished. Mirabeau was not personally responsible for the furious émeute of October 5 and 6, which brought the king to Paris, for indeed hatred of anarchy was his most deeply-rooted political principle. As early as May 1789 he had tried in vain to come to terms with Necker and Lafayette, yet his character was too magnanimous to desire revenge for the rebuffs with which his overtures had been received. He formed a warm friendship with the Count de la Marck, a particular friend of Marie Antoinette, and in conjunction with him he drew up his first memoir for the guidance of the court, just after the transference of the king and Assembly to Paris. In this admirable paper he set forth the necessity for a new constitution, the initiative to come from the king; that all that had been passed must be ratified, and a responsible ministry appointed after the pattern of the English parliamentary usage; and that the king must leave Paris for some such loyal city as Rouen, and throw himself frankly upon France. He suggested a ministry, with Necker and Lafayette as his prominent members, himself to have a seat but no portfolio. But the infatuated queen detested and distrusted the great tribune, and the Assembly, mad with suspicion and fear, passed a suicidal self-denying ordinance (November 7, 1789) that no member should take office under the crown while holding his seat, or for six months after. Mirabeau's hopes were thus blasted for the time, yet he worked on with unabated energy. He surrounded himself with a group of able and enthusiastic friends who provided him with his facts, and even wrote for him his speeches and articles, content to efface themselves to enhance a beloved master's glory. Never was there so marvellous a collaboration of unpaid enthusiasm: Dumont wrote the political speeches; Clavière, the financial; the Abbé Lamourette, those on the civil constitution of the clergy. Pellenc, the private secretary, constantly accumulated facts; the Genevese Reybaz wrote the speeches on the assignats, and on the right of making war and peace. The orator took freely these materials so generously prepared for him, fused them in the alembic of his own marvellous genius, and stamped them afresh with the impress of his own individuality.
In the spring of 1790 communication opened anew with the court, and fresh appeals were made to Lafayette. If Mirabeau was a bitter enemy of feudalism he was a devoted friend of order, and saw the necessity of a strong executive as its foundation, but he was constantly mortified to find himself mistrusted and misunderstood. His past rose up in judgment against him, and he could not gain the full confidence either of the respectable classes or of the court—as he himself said bitterly to Dumont, 'The sins which I committed in my youth are giving me their full punishment now.' The court provided money to pay his debts, which were scheduled at 208,000 livres—among them the bill for his wedding-clothes—and agreed to allow him 100 louis a month, with 300 livres for De Comps, his copyist, whereupon Mirabeau broke out into indiscreet extravagance. He risked all his popularity by successfully opposing Barnave's motion that the right of peace and war should rest not with the king but the Assembly. On the 3d July the queen gave him an interview in the gardens at Saint-Cloud, and at its close Mirabeau, with the fine chivalry of his nature, as he bent to kiss her hand, assured her with the words, 'Madame, the monarchy is saved.' But as the popular movement progressed his dream of placing the king at the head of the revolution became more and more a dream, and he was cut to the heart to find, as he did by the winter of 1790, that the court did not yet grant him its full confidence, but listened also to other counsellors than himself, and that it would not accept his plan of an appeal to the provinces. He inspired Montmorin in his management of foreign affairs, and showed himself a really great financier in his measures to avert national bankruptcy, while he continued to interchange notes of advice with the court. His secret aim was now to undermine the popularity and influence of the Assembly, and compel it to dissolve. Neither counter-revolution nor foreign intervention were within his schemes, but the advent of a new assembly, which he hoped to guide to a moderate conception of liberty and to wise concessions to the throne. He suggested the establishment of a bureau of correspondence with the provinces, a publishing committee to buttress the cause of order with the throne as its centre, a plan for gaining over the chief members of the present Assembly in preparation for its dissolution, and an organised system of ascertaining the opinions of journalists and leading politicians. But the queen would not commit herself to the tribune, and Mirabeau's heart sank within him as he saw slip from his grasp his great dream of establishing a responsible parliamentary government in France. This summer his health and eyesight gave way alarmingly, but he refused to abate his giant labours. In December 1790 he was elected president of the Jacobin Club; as well as an administrator of the Seine department, and in the January following one of its eight directors; but by Lafayette's influence he was defeated in his candidature for the office of its procureur-general-syndic, as well as for the presidency. He was chosen, however, commandant of the battalion of National Guards of his district, and on January 30, 1791, was at last elected president of the Assembly for the fortnight, and none showed more dignity and impartiality in the office. He overthrew the proposed law against emigration, and that same evening at the Jacobin Club bore down all opposition by his irresistible eloquence, and left the club amid thunders of applause. He opposed vigorously the motion of Sieyès (March 22) that in the event of the king's death the regent should be elected by the Assembly, as an abandonment of the hereditary principle, and carried his point. But his health was fast sinking, although he refused to allow himself any relaxation—a splendid atonement of self-sacrifice for the errors of his youth. His last battle was on the rights of property in mines, into which debate he threw himself with the enthusiastic chivalry of friendship, for it was a question closely affecting the interests of his dear friend De la Marek. He returned from the Assembly utterly exhausted, with the words, 'Your cause is won, but I have got my death-blow.' On the last day of his life he said, with the prophetic foresight of genius, 'I carry with me the ruin of the monarchy. After my death factions will dispute about the fragments.' As he looked on the sun he exclaimed, 'If that is not God, it is at least his cousin.' The famous chemist Cabanis from the first gave no hope, and on the morning of April 2, 1791, after a night of agony, when speech had gone, he wrote on a slate, 'Sleep—I wish only to sleep,' and a few moments after his heart had ceased to beat. He was buried in the Pantheon amid universal mourning, his funeral procession extending for about four miles. Another National Assembly, the Convention, two and a half years afterwards, when the papers revealing the secret relations of Mirabeau and the court were discovered in the king's iron chest, ordered the body to be disinterred from the Pantheon and cast into the churchyard of Sainte-Catherine.
'Do not rejoice over the death of Mirabeau,' said the king to Marie Antoinette; 'we have suffered a greater loss than you imagine.' That loss was the one influence that might still have saved the throne, and averted a deluge of blood in which the light of liberty was itself extinguished.
His writings were collected by Blanchard (10 vols. 1822). For his life, see especially the Mémoires Biographiques, Littéraires, et Politiques de Mirabeau écrits par Lui-même, par son Père, son Oncle, et son Fils Adoptif—Lucas de Montigny, son of Madame de Nehra (8 vols. 1834; Eng. trans. down to the commencement of his public life, in 4 vols. 1835-36). See also Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau (1832), and A. Stern, Das Leben Mirabeaus (2 vols. 1889); and for his political ideas especially M. de Bacourt's Correspondance entre le Comte de Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marek (3 vols. 1851). Loménie's work, Les Mirabeau (5 vols. 1878-91), is mostly upon his father and uncle. Other works of value are Mézières, Vie de Mirabeau (1892); Plan, Un Collaborateur de Mirabeau—Reybaz (1874); H. Reynald, Mirabeau et la Constituante (1873); and Aulard, L'Éloquence parlementaire pendant la Révolution Française (1882). See also the Histories of the Revolution of Carlyle, Von Sybel, and H. Morse Stephens (vol. i.); and essays by Carlyle (Miscellanies, vol. iv.) and Henry Reeve (Royal and Republican France, vol. i. 1872).
ANDRÉ BONIFACE RIQUETI, VICOMTE DE MIRABEAU, brother of the preceding, was born 30th November 1754 at Bignon, and from an early age was notorious for his ill-regulated life and for a thirst that earned him the nickname of 'Barrel
Mirabeau.' It was as he said the only vice his brother had left for him. He fought with distinction in the American war, and at the outbreak of the Revolution was returned to the States-general by the nobility of Limoges. Here he showed himself a fierce aristocrat in policy, and after the death of his brother he quitted France, and raised on the Rhine the 'Hussards de la Mort,' a legion of embittered émigrés, with whom he began in 1792 a bloody partisan warfare against his country. He was run through by accident, 15th September of the same year, at Freiburg in Breisgau.