Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (9 March 1749 – 2 April 1791) was a French writer, popular orator and statesman. During the French Revolution, he was a moderate, favoring a constitutional monarchy built on the model of the United Kingdom. He unsuccessfully conducted secret negotiations with the French monarchy in an effort to reconcile it with the Revolution.

Family history

The family of Riqueti (sometimes spelled Riquet), originally of the small town of Seyne, became wealthy through merchant trading in Marseille. In 1570, Jean Riqueti bought the château and seigniory of Mirabeau, which had belonged to the great Provençal family of Barras. In 1685, Honoré Riqueti obtained the title marquis de Mirabeau. He died in 1737.

His son, Jean Antoine, grandfather of Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, served with distinction through all the later campaigns of the reign of Louis XIV. At the Battle of Cassano (1705), he suffered a neck wound so severe he thereafter had to wear a silver stock. Because he tended to be blunt and tactless, he never rose above the rank of colonel. On retiring from the service, he married Françoise de Castellane with whom he had three sons: Victor (marquis de Mirabeau), Jean Antoine (bailli de Mirabeau) and Louis Alexandre (Comte de Mirabeau). Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau was the son of Victor.

Early life

Honoré Mirabeau was born at Le Bignon, near Nemours, the eldest surviving son of the economist Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau and his wife Marie-Geneviève de Vassan. When he was three years old, a virulent attack of smallpox left his face disfigured. This, combined with Mirabeau's resemblance to his maternal ancestors and his fondness for his mother, contributed to his father's dislike of him . Destined for the army, he was entered at military boarding school in 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. On leaving school in 1767 he received a commission in a cavalry regiment which his grandfather had commanded years before.

Mirabeau's love affairs are well-known, owing to the celebrity of the letters to "Sophie". 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. On being released, the young count obtained leave to accompany the French expedition to Corsica as a volunteer. During the Corsican expedition, Mirabeau contracted several more gambling debts and engaged in another scandalous love affair. However, he proved his military genius in the Corsican expedition, and also conducted a thorough study of the island during his stay. The study was most likely very factually incorrect, but his desire to learn of a country that had been previously unstudied emphasizes Mirabeau’s endless curiosity and inquisitiveness, particularly into the traditions and customs of society. This aspect of Mirabeau’s personality contributed to his popular success in the later years of the Revolution. After his return, he tried to keep on good terms with his father, and in 1772 he married a rich heiress, Marie-Marquerite-Emilie de Covet, daughter of the marquess de Marignane. Emilie, who was 18 years old, was apparently engaged to a much older nobleman, the Comte the Valbelle. Nonetheless, Mirabeau pursued her for several months expecting that his marriage to her would benefit him from the allowance that the couple would received from their parents. After several months of failed attempts at being introduced to the heiress, Mirabeau bribed one of the marquess's maids to let him into their residence, where he pretended to have had a sexual encounter with Emilie. To avoid losing face, her father saw that they got married just a couple of days after that incident. Mirabeau received a small allowance of 6,000 livres from his father and never received the expected 3,000 livres allowance from the marquess.

Mirabeau, who was already facing financial trouble and increasing debt, could not keep up with the expensive lifestyle his wife was used to and their extravagances forced his father to send him into semi-exile in the country, where he wrote his earliest extant work, the Essai sur le despotisme. The couple had a son who died early, mostly due to the poor living conditions they experienced during that time.

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 transferred 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.

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 Vincennes, he met the Marquis de Sade, who was also writing erotic works; however 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 also constitutionally illegal. It shows, though in a rather diffuse and declamatory form, the 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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